into it, then larger pieces. It blazed up, silencing the demonic chorus. Moving back to Mary’s side, he drew the Beretta and sat with the pistol in both hands, elbows wedged to his knees to steady his aim. This he could deal with, this was more like it. The fire mounted, disclosing several pairs of eyes, glowing a fluorescent yellow-green in its light. The creatures cautiously drew nearer, he could hear them panting as they halted, one in the lead, the rest a little behind, doglike heads held low, topped by big ears shaped like toadstools, obscene jaws parted, backs humped, scruffy fur bristling, nostrils twitching. He aimed at the leader, slowly let out a breath, and fired twice. He heard the smack of the 9-millimeter rounds striking flesh. The hyena screeched, all four feet leaving the ground at once, and rolled over dead. The rest of the pack, yelping and hooting, ran off a short distance and then turned and held their ground. The two bravest, or maybe they were the hungriest, lunged forward and tore into the carcass of their fallen mate. One turned broadside to Dare, its spotted flanks showing in the firelight. He centered on the shoulder and fired again, and the heart-shot hyena dropped without a sound. The others rushed in and Dare allowed them to drag both carcasses off, to about the middle of the runway. He listened to their snarls, the crunching of bones, the repulsive slurping of entrails, and decided they were still too close. Getting to his feet, he lumbered toward them, against the pain in his side, shooting two more rounds blindly into the darkness. “Go on, eat your buddies, you ugly bastards! She’s not on the menu tonight, and no other night neither!”
He went back, gasping, the icepick jabbing his lungs. “Gone,” he wheezed, and flopped down. “It’s all right, baby, they’re gone, they’re not gonna hurt you.” He looked at her and saw a single greenish-gray eye, wide open and staring at him without a blink. He laid his palm on her forehead and could not remember feeling anything so cold.
She had been dead probably for a couple of hours, and the keen-nosed hyenas had caught the first faint scent of death. He closed the eye and held her and apologized for falling asleep. He was determined to stay awake, in case the animals came back for her. For the rest of the night, watching the stars wheel down the ecliptic, as they always had and always would, for as long as there were stars and a heaven to hold them, he kept his vigil over the one person who had taught him to believe in something beyond himself, to have faith in love and the promise of love.
The sunrise was a wound in the sky. Just like that old Air America pilot had told him in Vientiane a thousand years ago: You’ll know you’re in trouble when you hate to see it come up. He more than hated to see it now. The joyless light peeled the shadows away and revealed to him again the same arid vacancy of sand, dirt, rock, and sparse trees, motionless and indifferent beneath the same annihilating sky; and its disquieting quiet, the silence that wasn’t silent, pressed down on him, as tangible as the heat in the whitening sun. Somehow he knew, as surely as he’d known anything, that a plane wasn’t going to come—not today, tomorrow, or the day after, and even if one did, he would not light his signal fire. He would hide in the trees and wait for his deliverers to fly off.
Mary’s body had grown stiff during the night. One arm was bent at the elbow, the palm facing out, as if she were taking an oath. He tried to straighten it, but it was frozen into that position by the cold a hundred suns couldn’t thaw. The odor of decomposition was now apparent even to the human nose. Flies covered her, she was almost black with them. He fanned them off with his cap, but the instant he stopped, the insects pounced on her again. He would have to bury her. That was the next thing to do. He got up, feeling as though he were rising against a great weight, went off a short distance, and began to claw at the soft soil that had caused his plane to careen off the runway. An hour of digging produced a rectangle six feet long and