Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (44 page)

“Is that all?” he asked.

“They’ll come back,” she said, and he was pretty sure he was going to slam the door in her face.

“I know,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Do you?”

So many games
, the bees muttered, and for once, he agreed with them.

He didn’t answer her—just glared at her, really—but instead of backing down, instead of looking away or cowering in fear, she cocked her head at him, a small smile playing on her lips. She said, “You really care about him, don’t you?”

“No,” Cavalo said coldly, not bothering to ask who she meant. “I don’t.”

“Shit liar,” she said, smiling fully now, a hint of teeth that Cavalo wanted to knock from her head. “Always been. But if you posture a little bit more, maybe I’ll believe you. It’s—”

A sensor went off from behind him. A click, then a low beep. He set it every time he looked away from the monitor, every time he walked out of the room, so he would know. The panels would light up, and he would
know
.

He thought maybe it was Dead Rabbits. Possibly Patrick, having survived getting plowed into by a falling helicopter, stabbed in the chest, knocked off a seven-hundred-foot dam. He thought it could be them setting off the proximity alarms, coming to finish them off finally, and Cavalo knew he would never find out what happened to Bad Dog and Lucas. He would never know because this was the end.

His heart jackrabbited in his chest as he turned, thinking something he hadn’t quite thought to himself in years:

I wish I had more time.

He looked at the monitors.

And on the one in the upper right, fuzzy and dark as the picture was, stood Bad Dog, tail wagging side to side, ears cocked at the ready near the gate.

Cavalo let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It came out sounding suspiciously wet and broken. Relief like he hadn’t felt in years rolled through him, overwhelming and warm.

He heard Alma already moving away from him toward the outer doors. He reached down and shut off the alarm and the electricity in the gates before following her out.

The people of Cottonwood knew something had happened, and they began to buzz like the bees in his head, whispering in each other’s ears, calling out, wanting to know what had happened, what was going on.

Cavalo ignored them. He didn’t have time for them.

He barely felt the cold as he stepped out into the snow.

Hank was pushing open the gate.

Aubrey was coming in behind him.

Bad Dog barked impatiently, whining that BigHank was taking his goddamn sweet time and he needed to
hurry up because there was MasterBossLord
—

The moment the gate had parted wide enough, Bad Dog squeezed through, hurtling through the snow toward Cavalo, his voice coming out in high-pitched yips that were almost strangled.

Cavalo fell to his knees and held out his arms, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. The twinge in his wrist and fingers.

Bad Dog plowed into him, knocking him back on his heels. He jumped up, paws going to Cavalo’s shoulders, scraping down his front, tongue everywhere on available skin, Cavalo’s nose and cheeks and throat.

You’re okay
, Bad Dog whined frantically.
You’re okay. You are awake. You’re okay and awake and don’t smell like sick and dying, and I am your Bad Dog,
and I’m sorry I left you, but I went with Smells Different to keep him safe, so please don’t be mad because I love you and will be with you forever because you are my MasterBossLord, and I am your Bad Dog and—

“Hey,” Cavalo said quietly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” He ran his hands over Bad Dog’s face, fingers rubbing over his ears, and Bad Dog kept yipping at him, panting and pushing closer and closer as if he wanted to crawl inside Cavalo and never leave.

Cavalo never wanted him to.

He remembered then that they weren’t alone. He looked up and saw Alma smiling faintly, talking with Hank and Aubrey. Behind them, the people of Cottonwood spilled out of the prison, bright-eyed and questioning.

And Lucas.

Lucas stood off near the gates, looking almost unsure of his place. The scowl on his face was normal, the tense way he held himself, but Cavalo knew him by now. Knew him better than anyone here aside from Bad Dog.

Cavalo stood as Lucas eyed him warily. The evidence of his torture had started to fade from his face, the bruising now a mottled green. The swelling around his eye had gone down. His usual painted mask was gone, and he wore Cavalo’s coat around his shoulders.

Bad Dog pressed against Cavalo’s legs as he walked slowly toward Lucas.

He stopped when they were a few feet apart.

They watched each other, for a time.

Eventually, Cavalo said, “You all right?”

Lucas narrowed his eyes, gesturing back at Cavalo with an angry flap of his hand.
Should you even be up now?

“I’m fine,” Cavalo said, but he didn’t know that he was. He didn’t know if he could be, after everything. “Maybe not fine. Better. I’m better.” He wondered how much of that was true.

Not dying anymore?

“I was never dying,” Cavalo said.

We’re all dying
, Lucas retorted.
Every day. We’re already dying.

“But we’re alive while doing it,” Cavalo said.

Lucas snorted and shook his head.
James, ever the optimist. Who would have thought we would live to see such a day?
It was mocking and tart, but his hands were shaking, eyes darting up and away.

“It’s a start,” Cavalo said, taking another step toward him.

Is it?

“I think so. It has to be.”

He looked at Cavalo then, as if seeing him for the first time. Only there was no rage like there had been on that long ago day in the woods on the other side of the road. That had been nothing but anger and desperation. This was something almost like a revelation.

He mouthed a single word.

James
.

Cavalo didn’t know if it was love. He didn’t know if he was even capable of such a thing anymore. But what he did know was that he had descended into the depths of hell for the man standing in front of him, and he would do it again. No hesitations. No questions asked.

He reached out and rested his hand on the back of Lucas’s neck. He brought their foreheads together, and even if he was a clever monster, a clever cannibal, he belonged to Cavalo now just as surely as Cavalo belonged to him.

Those glittering eyes never closed, watching him as they breathed the same air.

Lucas said,
You came for me
.

“You killed your father for me.”

His smile had many teeth.
I would do it again.

And Cavalo said, “
Yes
.”

LATER, THEY
stood in front of the people of Cottonwood, and Hank spoke of the abandoned Dead Rabbit encampment that Lucas had led them to. Crude houses on the ground and built into the trees. There was no sign of any recent life, the fire pits covered in snow, no tracks leading in or out.

It was as if the Dead Rabbits had never been at all, and they’d stumbled across a tiny town from Before, where people got their kicks from Route 66 and Charlie had never lost a single thing, no matter what anyone had said.

“So they’re gone?” a tremulous voice asked from the crowd.

Hank hesitated and looked to Cavalo.

Cavalo sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “Many of them, at least. SIRS… he would have seen to that. He sacrificed himself for us.”

“But what if they come back?” a man asked. “What will we do then?”

“What we did before,” Cavalo said. “We’ll rise up. Fight back.”

A woman scowled at them, angry tears on her face. “You say Patrick is dead. That you
killed
him.”

Lucas tensed next to Cavalo.

“Yes,” Cavalo said. “He’s dead.”

“Then what was the
point
of all of this?” she cried. “Why the hell did we
do
any of this? You didn’t get what you needed from him. People are
dead
. Half the town is
destroyed
and for
what
?”

Cavalo thought the mob would swarm them then. That they would tear them apart piece by piece until there was nothing left of them but gristle and bone. He wouldn’t blame them. He’d wanted to do the same when he’d found out.

But they didn’t.

After everything that had happened, after everything they’d been through in the past weeks, the man named Cavalo was still surprised when they looked to him to tell them what to do. They were lost, he knew. They lived in the borderlands in a world that was all teeth and claws. Messiahs came from the east and were killed by an enigmatic murderer living in a haunted prison with a robot and a dog only he could talk to. This man meted out justice as he saw fit and made them fight against the monsters in the Deadlands. They had won, seemingly, but at a cost.

So of course they looked at him.
Of course
they looked to him.

James Cavalo said, “What’s done is done. It’s over. If they come back, if there are any left, we will fight them too. Go home. Go home and mourn your dead. Go home and rebuild. Just… go.”

And they listened. Eventually.

THAT NIGHT
he dreamt of Mr. Fluff reaching for him with spider-fingers, and he woke shaking in the dark. Lucas was curled around him. Bad Dog lay across their legs, snoring heavily. He took comfort from it, even as he stayed awake for the rest of the night.

“ARE YOU
sure about this?” Hank asked two days later as the people of Cottonwood prepared to return home. It was early morning, and the clouds above were as thin as they’d ever seen them. They would make it home before it started snowing again. “You could come with us.”

Cavalo shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Not now. I have to….” He searched for a word and came only upon “heal.”

Hank didn’t visibly react. “And can you? Heal, I mean.”

No, Cavalo didn’t think he could. He thought he was too far gone to ever go back to the man he once was. Or become the man he could have been. The bees were too strong and had built their nest in his head far too long ago to ever be exterminated. He was what he was, and the best he could hope for would be to find peace. To be able to sleep through the night without dreams of death haunting him.

But he could see the hope on Hank’s face, so he said, “Maybe. I don’t know. Lucas and Bad Dog will help.” Or he’d make it worse for them.

“I expect you around more, Cavalo,” Hank said. “The three of you. We’ve come too far and done too much to have you disappear now. They look to you now. The town.”

That old familiar anger rose, though it was shaped like unease now. “I didn’t ask for that.”

Hank shrugged. “I know. But there it is.”

“I’m not right for that, Hank.”

“Are any of us?”

“I can’t,” he tried desperately, even though he felt it a losing battle.

“Can’t isn’t the same as won’t, James,” Hank said.

“You should hate me,” Cavalo said. “You shouldn’t even want to look at my face. Deke is dead. Your son is
dead
. Bill won’t look at me. Why do you? Why the fuck do you care? I brought this down upon your house. Your home.”

“You didn’t,” Hank said, not unkindly. “We did that on our own. Without you, we wouldn’t be free.”

“But not all of you,” Cavalo choked out, angry at himself for the burn in his eyes. “Not all of you are free.”

“And I will mourn him,” Hank said, “for the rest of my life. He was my son, and he died fighting for something
good
. I am going to go home and stand upon his grave, and I will
rant
. I will
rave
. I will
suffer
. But I will know
why
it happened. And one day, I will be able to remember him with nothing but an ache and a smile.”

Cavalo shook his head, unsure if he deserved even this smallest kindness. “Bill,” he said.

Hank sighed. “Bill is angry,” he admitted, “though it’s misplaced. Richie knew what he was doing when he volunteered. It’s a father’s anger, nothing more. It too shall pass. It’ll have to. We’ll need him. We may have lost Dworshak, but we still have something very valuable in our hands, and Bill is going to be the only one who can help us.”

“What is it?” Cavalo asked.

“Lucas,” Hank said, and Cavalo could barely breathe. “We have Lucas. And that means we have half the schematics. If we have half, we may be able to make a whole. And if we can make a whole, then maybe, just maybe, we can change the world. There will be other Dworshaks, Cavalo. And I aim to find them.”

A MAN,
a boy, and a dog stood in the snow and watched the town of Cottonwood until they disappeared into the trees.

“What happens now?” Cavalo asked before he could stop himself.

Lucas took his hand, entwining their fingers. It was a good grip, a solid grip. Warm and callused, and it felt more like home than Cavalo had known in a very long time. He looked over at Lucas to find the Dead Rabbit watching him.

James
, he mouthed.

And then he said two words. When Cavalo thought on it later, he could never remember if Lucas spoke them or if Cavalo made them up in his head. He could never remember a day when he couldn’t hear Lucas’s voice in his head. He couldn’t remember a day when he didn’t want to.

Lucas said,
We heal.

And James Cavalo believed him.

It started to snow again, light and soft. Flurries, really.

Bad Dog rubbed up against them, grumbling about jerky.

Lucas kept his hand in Cavalo’s as he led them inside.

The outer doors shut behind them.

A moment later there was a sharp hum as the fence around the prison electrified.

Somewhere in the forest, the winter wren sang a song of ulalume, crisped and sere, withering and sere.

In this, the most immemorial year.