Hunter's Run(31)

What did he look like in his twin's eyes? Finer hair. Fewer lines and creases in his skin. No scars, and thin whiskers. He would appear to be a younger man. And if the other Ramón didn't already feel that he was seeing himself, there was no reason for him to suspect what the aliens had done. Ramón's advantage was that he knew what had happened, who he was, and all that the other man knew. The other man's advantage was that he hadn't half drowned. And he had a knife.

"Please," Ramón said, searching for things he could say that would make him seem more plausible. "I've got to get back to Fiddler's Jump. You got a van?"

"I look like I have a fucking van?" the other man said, raising his arms out at his sides like Christ crucified. "I've been running from those fucking things for a week. How is it you came to get loose from them just here and now, eh?"

It was a good question. They weren't near the alien hive, and the timing was too convenient. Ramón licked his lips.

"It's the first time they took me out," Ramón said, deciding to keep as near the truth as he could. "They were holding me in a tank. Under a mountain up north of here. They told me there was someone they were hunting. I think they were using me. Seeing what I could eat and like that. I think maybe they didn't know much. You know. About people."

The other man considered this. Ramón kept his gaze away from the knife. Better that neither of them think of it. He heard himself going on, his voice thin and shrill. He sounded afraid.

"I tried to fight against them, but they had this thing. In my neck. Right here, you can see where it went in. If I did anything they didn't like, they shocked me. I've been walking for days. Please, man, you can't leave me here."

"I'm not going to leave you here," the other man said. There was disgust in his voice. Disgust and perhaps superiority. "I've been running from them too. They blew up my van, but I had a few tricks. Fucked them up pretty good!"

"That was you?" Ramón said, trying to make his voice sound admiring instead of false. "You're the one that blew up the yunea?"

"The what?"

You only get one slip like that, Ramón told himself. Hold it together, cabrón. At least until you have the knife.

"The flying box thing. That's what they called it."

"Uh," the other man said. "Yeah. I'm the one. I saw you, too. I was watching."

"So you saw the thing they put in my neck."

The other man seemed reluctantly to agree that Ramón's story had some truth to it. Ramón could see it in the man's stance when he decided not to kill him.

"How'd you get away?" the other man asked.

"Chupacabra killed the alien. Came out of nowhere. The leash came free while they were fighting, and I got out of there."

The other man smiled to himself. Ramón decided to let him think they hadn't seen through his plan with the flatfurs. Better that the other Ramón spend his time thinking how clever he was, and how stupid everyone else could be.

"What's your name, anyway?" the other man asked.

"David," Ramón said, pulling a name out of the air. "David Penasco. I live down in Amadora. I'm a banker with union      Trust. I was camping by myself, maybe a month ago. They took me when I was sleeping."

"union      Trust's got a branch in Amadora?" the other man asked.

"Yeah," Ramón said. He didn't know if it was true, didn't know if there was some other memory that hadn't grown back yet that would rip his story apart, so he plain bare-faced lied it through and prayed. "Has been for about six months."

"Sonofabitch," the other man said. "Well, get off your ass, David. We got work to do if we're going to get out of here. I got maybe a third of a raft finished. If there's gonna be two of us, you better get to work. Maybe later you can tell me what you know about those pinche motherfuckers."

The other man turned and started walking back into the forest. Ramón followed.

The clearing was twenty meters or so into the woods, and the man hadn't bothered to make a shelter or a fire pit. This wasn't a place to live, it was a construction site. Four sheaves of bamboolike cane lay bound with strips of iceroot bark, the red skin of the cane glittering as it died as if it had been lacquered. Pontoons, Ramón thought. Laced together with thin branches and saplings young enough to be hewn with the serrated back edge of the field knife, they would float. It wouldn't be anything near watertight-the river would be splashing onto their legs and asses the whole way down if they didn't have something to cover the raft floor. And the sheaves were too small and too loosely bound. It was damn impressive for some crazed pendejo out by himself with a wounded hand and a demon out of Hell trotting after him, but it wouldn't get one of them to Fiddler's Jump, much less two.

"What?" the man said.

"Just looking," Ramón replied. "We're going to need more cane. You want me to cut it? Just show me where you found it …  ."

The man considered the offer with a pinched, sour face. Ramón knew the calculation going on behind those dark eyes. Ramón-or David, whatever his name was now-was going to harvest faster than the injured man himself, but it meant giving him the knife.

"I'll do it," the man said, nodding toward the deeper forest farther from the river. "You go see if you can find some good branches to put between them. And some food, maybe. Be back here before sundown. We'll try to get this sonofabitch ready to haul down to the water in the morning."

"Yeah, okay," Ramón said. The man spat and stalked off to the south, leaving him alone. Ramón scratched at his elbow where the knot of scar tissue was growing back and turned to walk into the gloom beneath the trees. He realized he'd never asked the man his name. Of course he hadn't; he already knew. The dread grew in him that the other Ramón would think the omission strange. He had to be more careful.

The rest of the day was spent dragging fallen branches and wide iceroot leaves back to the campsite and making up the story he could tell his twin. He stopped once to crack open some sug beetles and eat the raw flesh. Uncooked, they were saltier and the meat slick and unpleasant. There wasn't time, though, for anything more. He tried not to wonder what had happened between Maneck and the chupacabra, which of the two had lost and which was still under the roof of branches, hunting him. It didn't change what needed doing, so there was no point spending valuable time on the question.

By sundown, he and his twin had gathered another six sheaves and perhaps a third of the branches that they would need to make the raft floor. The man seemed pleased by Ramón's wide, soft pile of iceroot leaves as well, though he didn't go so far as to say it. Ramón boiled a double handful of sug beetles and his twin roasted a cooper's dragon-one of the small, birdlike lizards that inhabited the low branches. The dragon had an unnerving way of writhing as it cooked, as if the flesh were still living even though both brains had been cut out and the thin, pale blood drained from the body.

They made small conversation, Ramón careful to ask the man's name and background. Then they planned for the next day-how to carry the branches and sheaves to the water for assembly, how much more would need to be harvested, whether they needed to strip more bark to use for rope.

"You've done this before," the man said, and Ramón felt a pang of distress. Maybe he'd come across as knowing too much.

"I explore a little. When I can. Most of the time, I'm stuck behind a desk," Ramón said, trying to seem flattered. "Banking. You know. But the money's good."

"You ever do any prospecting?"

"No," Ramón said. "Just go out, camp. Look around. You know. Get away from people for a while."

The man's expression softened a little, as Ramón had known it would. He felt a twinge of guilt at playing on the man's feelings that way.

"What about you?" Ramón asked, and his twin shrugged.

"I spend a lot of time in the field," he said. "Not much point staying in town. It's a pretty good living, if you know what you're doing. A good season, I can pull in six, maybe seven thousand chits."

That was a gross exaggeration. Ramón had never taken in more than four thousand, even at the best of times. Two and a half was nearer the average, and there had been several seasons he hadn't managed more than a thousand. The man's dark eyes seemed to challenge him, so he shook his head, feigning amazement. "That's really good," Ramón said.

"It ain't hard, you know what you're doing," the man said, settling back.

"What happened to your hand?" Ramón asked.

"Fucking aliens," the man said, and started to unwrap the bloodstiffened cloth. "I was shooting at them, and my gun blew up. Fucked me up pretty good."

Ramón leaned close. In the firelight, it was hard to see how much of the redness was the swollen flesh itself and how much was reflected flames. The skin of the palm looked like taco meat that had been left out overnight. Where the index finger had been was a rough stump, the flesh burned and scarred to an oddly beautiful opalescent silver.