Part 4.
As the wind blew as bitter and hollow as his own heart. Heston was poised on his hands and knees by the riverside. To an ignorant onlooker, it would have looked as though he were praying to some bygone God, or praying for mercy from whatever river spirit would have him. In reality, he’d dunked his head into the freezing waters three times now to numb the pain in his jaw. Each time he submerged himself, with the world muting itself in the sound of the rushing water, his mind washed with the sight of his ravaged campsite before weighing the option of throwing himself completely in and seeing where the current would take him. He ultimately decided against it. At this rate, he’d figured he’d likely end up just as likely toppling over a waterfall, or goring himself on a branch, or floating facefirst into an unsuspecting moose that would then mercilessly trample his lifeless corpse indistinguishable from the mud. He sat there with his hair dripping in strings across the grassy riverbed, face half swollen and purple. The only sound aside from the trickling river was a growing congregation of flies around his mule's mutilated body.
As he finally rocked his body back to land on his rear, he tried to reorder his thoughts. ‘Three days and nights in this god damned valley. Nothing but blood and pain and loss to show for it. Not even a single nugget dug from the ground.’ He slowly turned his head toward the deep hole he’d left in the ground the day before, mulling over how shameless and desperate a man might have to be to go digging into the ground with his bare hands. ‘I couldn’t have been that far from the vein.’ He thought while he tongued at a small hole in his cheek. ‘Couldn’t have been.’
His boots made a deep thud into the earth when he jumped into the hole. He was treated to the sight of his pickaxe and bucket still lying at the bottom of the pit. ‘God damned heathens’ He thought. ‘Smart enough to best me in an open field, dumb enough to not look in the damn hole.’He snatched up the pickaxe and with the raw ire of a wildman he tore into a narrow chasm that he’d only chiseled out yesterday, scraping away at the dirt with the pickaxe. Handful after handful he tossed the dirt over the side of the pit, losing sense of self, of dignity, of purpose, eyes crazed and lips trembling as he rampaged through the soil. He lost all sense of patience and chucked the pickaxe to the ground beside him, weyleying into the chasm with his bare hands.
“Ah fuck!” He cried. A wild jab of his left hand skidded into hard rock, nearly shearing his fingernail off. He gritted his teeth and the pain in his jaw and hand only fueled his rage. He throttled up the pickaxe and gave a mighty heave into the hole where he heard the angelic ring of it colliding with hard rock. He spat into his hand and wiped at the stone viciously, again and again reawakening the wounds in his mouth, spitting blood into his palms to smear against the rock. A slender yellow line could be detected beneath his own crimson swaths. Heston grunted in wrathful satisfaction as he tore into the dirt again, digging all around the stone hoping to set it free. He wasn’t focused on a large haul anymore, that was outside of his reality. He wasn’t even interested in the gold anymore. He wanted the rock itself.
He wrestled free a boulder, about two and a half feet wide by a foot deep and heavy as hell. He hefted it over the dirt wall and onto the grass above. After scrambling himself out of the hole he swung down at the boulder with his pickaxe, knocking a hairline down the center of it. Two more swings and the rock fell open into thirds, golden veins softly traipsing like marble through the insides of each one. Two days ago he’d have been overjoyed at the sight, but now the golden laces meant nothing to him. He smashed again at the thirds breaking them down even smaller. He took a moment to inspect the pieces, each of them still fairly large. One third of the boulder he’d left untouched, but he’d managed to break the others into fist sized stones, exactly what he needed.
He shifted his grip to the very end of his pickaxe, swung it madly around his head and brought it crashing down onto the large piece of boulder forcing a crack in the middle of his handle. He then rested the pick on the stone, shifted his stance to the side of it, and drove his bootheel through the handle, breaking it off completely. He peeled off his shirt and gathered all of the fist sized rocks into it, securing it at the top to fashion a bindle, and then tied it to the blunt end of the short handlepiece. He gave his new bludgeoning weapon a few test swings to make sure it would stay secure before grabbing up the other end of the pickaxe, a now shorthandled version of its former self. He swung it around a few times to insure its viability as a weapon. It wasn’t perfect, but as long as he held it by the joint of the pick at the center of the handle, it would suffice.
He stepped over to the scorched patch where his fire once burned and dragged his hand through the soot before staining his face black with the stain of ash and mud. He didn’t care about the gold anymore, didn’t care about old miner’s tricks, or territories or whatever witchcraft or trickery the tree people had in store for him. His only goals now were to survive, make his way back to civilization, and kill any unfortunate bastard that crossed his path in the meantime. He grasped the pickhead tightly in his right hand, slung the heavy stone bindle over his left shoulder and marched towards the treeline.
He remembered well the path he had driven his mule to get out to the valley, he would only have to rough himself through a few miles of untamed forest before finding a dirt trail that would lead him many miles back to town, but Heston was well aware that his trouble didn’t lie with the long hike back to the world, it was the brief, terrible slog through these hellish woods that would push his spirit to its limit.
As he crossed the field, halfway to the tree wall, he heard a clink of glass against the toe of his boot. Looking down he found one of his unused tinctures of cocaine. After a quick stoop he stuffed it into his pocket, a sly grin pulling across his face as he did so. He crossed the tree line, jaw set and eyes peeled watching the trees as the sun began to sink low.
He drove his pick into several trees to peel the bark away, snapping what limbs he could and collecting kindling as he prepared to make camp. He found two twigs and pulled the lace from his boot to create a bow-drill. Within an hour he had secured a small fire. He kept his back to a tree trunk as he kept the flame low, his stone bindle and pick each within arms length as he fiddled the tincture in his hands. He watched as the glowing flames reflected off the glass while the sun sunk behind the towering trees. Heston wondered what the lights would look like from underneath, if he could see them at all.
As night set in the forest grew unnervingly quiet. The only sound Heston could hear aside from the light crackle of his fire was the occasional rustle of the leaves in the wind. “Come on you sons of bitches” he mumbled to himself, waiting for that evil whistle that came with the midnight air. The time whittled on, but clouds covered the moon. Heston pondered its position in the sky when he heard the snap of a twig to his front left, just outside the glow of his makeshift camp. His eyes were open wide now, taking in every bit of light they could and working to cast his vision forward to penetrate the dark. As he stared into the opaque gaps between trees he noticed a strange detail. One of the trees he’d picked bark from was no longer showing signs of his scraping, as though he’d never touched it. He focused on the tree trunk with a harsh intensity, barely illuminated at the edge of his light when he saw the bark shift only the smallest amount, as if the trunk had taken a shallow breath.
Heston shot from his seat, roaring as he swung up the pick. A man emerged from the bark of the tree, his camouflage so seamless in its grain that it looked as though the tree itself were rushing towards Heston now. Heston drove his left foot forward slamming it into the tree man’s chest. He felt a deep crunch in the sole of his boot as he sent the attacker rocketing backwards against the tree trunk. The pick swung with lightning speed through the air, burying its digging end through the assailant's neck and piercing through the other side of his gullet. Heston switched his grasp to the short handle and yanked hard, ripping the pick through the pierced flesh and opening his opponents throat completely, splattering himself in hot blood. Just then a loud commotion rattled through the trees directly above Heston, and another body dropped down behind him, a second enemy landing on his feet and brandishing a club with a hard rock tethered at the end like a crude tomahawk.
The second enemy swung his club towards Heston, but was deflected when Heston twirled his stone bindle, knocking his opponents strike off of its trajectory and nearly disarming him in one move. Heston whirled the pick by the handle once more, sinking the blade with a sickening crunch through the foe’s knee. His enemy bellowed in pain and Heston howled in delight as he yanked again at the pick, snatching the second man's legs from beneath him and sending him to the ground. Heston wound the stone bindle over his head and crashed it down with a powerful blow onto the man's face. Heston wheezed out a devilish laugh as he pulled the bindle from the crater that was once a head, dripping blood and skull fragments as he heaved it back over his shoulder.
He could hear rapid footsteps surrounding his camp now, but Heston, now with the iron scent of blood in his nose, and his veins pumping raw hatred, smiled into the abyss. He began to whistle a low, long, and hollow whistle as he slowly stepped back towards his fire. He traced the sounds of running footfalls just outside his vision, dropped the pick and grabbed up the Cocaine tincture. As he stood up he felt a hand reach from behind him, grabbing at his shoulder in hopes of thrusting him into the unforgiving dark. He dropped his stone bindle and reached up to grab a fistfull of his new victim's hair. Whipping them around, he felt the scalp tear under his grasp as he torqued them forward. He flicked his foot beneath them forcing them to trip and tumble onto the dirt in front of him. Heston’s growl grew into a throaty roar deep from the fire in his own belly as he slung the tincture bottle at the flailing body in front of him. The glass shattered and the air was immediately perfumed with the acrid smell of grain alcohol. Driving a foot through his own fire, he rained embers and sparks onto the new target, erupting the flailing body into a screaming frame of fire and sizzling skin.
As if snapping him back into his mortal form, Heston ducked at the sound of his own rifle firing from somewhere in the darkness. With the knowledge that his own gun was aimed on him, his wrath was renewed. He howled again at the trees as the flaming man sprinted blindly through the forest, betraying the positions of other would be surprise attackers. Heston took up his bindle and pick again and dug his heels into the dirt to pursue the flaming figure. The silhouette of his rifle, protruding from the shadow of a tree trunk caught his eye as he ran behind. Heston leaped through the air winding the pick behind his head as he left the ground. He brought it careening down, aiming only with the fleeting light of the flaming man, he missed his target only by inches burying the pick into the hard wood of the tree trunk. As his feet landed he felt the rifle slam into his ribs. Heston barely had time to let out a feeble grunt when he heard the rifle whooshing through the air once more. He let go of the pick handle in time to block the shot with his forearm, feeling his bones crack and splinter from the blow. A brief yelp of pain escaped him before he felt a massive fist pound into his chest, stumbling him back and slamming him into a tree. He could barely make out the silhouette, raising the rifle over its head, preparing to swing down and split Heston’s head in two. Heston weaved to his left, leaving the rifle to thwack hard into his shoulder. He gritted his teeth hard, blood pumping from his fractured jaw and seething from his mouth as he dropped his bindle and reached over to wrap his hand around the rifle. He jutted the stock forward, stabbing the barrel into the figure. Heston flexed his knee up and into the groin of his attacker. He felt his opponents grip let loose of the gun and topple backwards, freeing him to shoulder the weapon, and with a renewed invigoration at feeling his gun back in his hands, he worked the lever with barely more than the twitch of his hand, firing two bullets in succession, halting the black shadow writhing on the ground in front of him.
As the thunderous pops of the rifle faded through the forest, Heston could still hear the wails and shrieks of the man he’d burned emanating from somewhere out in the darkness. He charged the lever again and held the rifle in one hand while he pried the pick out of the tree trunk. His heart was pumping fast enough that he thought it might explode in his chest. HIs head thumped and ached as he retreated back to the barely glowing embers of his fire. He was still actionable for now, but he knew that if he cooled down, between his jaw, arm, chest, and shoulder, he’d be in far too much pain to even stand let alone fight. Heston’s answer then was to not slow down.
He kept the gun drawn and pick by his side as he passed the fire by, stalking the blackness. Bloody, broken, but unyielding, he whistled into the forest abyss.
