“Listen to me, Trader, and keep your fucking voice down, will you?”
“How’s that? You don’t talk to me like that, Abe.”
At least he had the name right this time. “There’s the posse chased us, over yonder, Trader. Dawn’s close and they’ll soon be waking.”
“Right.”
“So, cut me loose.”
Abe had been concentrating on his whispered conversation and hadn’t heard the sound of movement behind him. The first warning was the gruff voice.
“You talkin’ in your sleep, asshole?”
“Guess I was.” He turned his head to where Trader had been crouched, seeing only gray boulders, slick with frost. “Yeah, guess I was.”
“I got somethin’ to shove in your mouth, you shit-for-brains little bastard. Somethin’ good and big and hot and sweet. Mebbe should knock out all your teeth first, so’s you don’t get it into your head to Hey, that’s good, that. Get it in your head . Give some head. Have to”
“Shut the fuck up, Zach, so’s we can all get some sleep. Time for funnin’ when we get us all home. Let it lie till then.”
“Oh, all right.” Zach leaned close to Abe so he could smell the bitter home brew, sour on his breath. “Be back for you tomorrow, sweet thing. Now don’t you go ‘way, will you?”
ABE DREAMED, a classic dream of anxiety, walking along endless corridors, dripping with rank moisture. The only light came from a pallid green fungus that coated the arched ceiling, reflected in the shallow stream that soaked his bare feet.
He was pursuing a minotaur.
Even in his dream, Abe was puzzled by that. He didn’t know what such a mutie creature was, yet in his nightmare there was a clear image of ittall, with the legs and trunk and arms of a powerful man, but with the head and horns of a great shaggy bull buffalo, bloodred eyes glinting in the gloom.
He could hear it snuffling and grunting, somewhere in the vast maze ahead of him, could almost taste its rank, feral scent. The trail led forever downward, with crossings and turnings every fifty paces or so.
Abe was armed with a long knife, though the point and the edge were hopelessly blunt.
The heavy breathing of the minotaur had faded away into stillness, and Abe was able to relax for a few moments. There was some pressing reason for his pursuit of the mutie beast, but he couldn’t quite turn his brain around what that reason was.
Now the noise had started again.
Behind him and not before.
HIS EYES REFUSED to function properly. One of the kicks from the mens’ work boots had opened a shallow gash across his forehead. While he’d wriggled and shaken in his dream, Abe had managed to open the cut again, and blood had trickled down and flooded both eye sockets.
But he could hear.
Hear but not understand.
Abe was sure that he was awake, but the functioning part of his brain was feeding him information that made no possible sense at all to him.
A bellowing, tuneless voice sang loudly, somewhere in the blackness behind the helpless man.
“Oh, goodbye to you moaning gaudy sluts,
For we’re bound off for high Mexico,
To hunt the fair tuna and the wild buckaroo,
The snow-white cunny and the raw abalone.”
Abe tried to speak, but his tongue seemed paralyzed and his lips were clammed together.
Now the singer stopped his chantey and broke into an equally tuneless whistle.
“Trader?” The little ex-gunnner’s voice was a tiny, feeble whisper, like the birth mew of a blind kitten.
Abe wondered for a moment whether he might, perhaps, have died during the night. If that was what had happened, then it was undeniably a relief as there’d be no more pain and suffering. But it didn’t seem altogether likely to him that the celestial clouds of divine paradise would be sullied by Trader with his whistling and singing. Not unless the old man had also inherited his six feet of cold clay.
“Harps of gold,” Abe said, still struggling to open his eyes. “Oh, Jesus, help me.”
“What’s wrong, Brother Abe? Why’re you taking the name of the Lord in vain?”