Kiss Me, Curse Me - By Kate Shay Page 0,16

brought a sputter of red.

“Look at him. He’s gonna die.”

Patty gave the tall, buzz-cut lug a punch on the shoulder. “One more word out of you, and you’re going down there with him.”

The rope was fetched, tied, and lowered in such a way to allow for the injured party to tie it about himself. Doug struggled at the task, spewing clots, begging for breath. He couldn’t tie it.

“Doug, son, you have to get this on you, or we can’t hoist you up. You have to try,” said Patty.

Struggling to even move, Doug tried to put the rope over his head.

“That’s it, that’s it, move it down more and hold onto it.”

Doug shuffled the rope down to his waist.

“Hold on tight now. Pull . . . pull . . .” Patty hollered, and the three men inched him up. “Pull . . . pull . . .”

The men didn’t dare look over the cliff, just backed up as far as they could leaning against the rock face for balance. The rope was taught and as Doug neared the top, Patty reached down and grabbed him under the arms, heaving to the dusty trail edge.

Doug tried to speak, tried to utter a word, but he couldn’t; there was too much blood, too much damage to his body.

“We gotta get him to the medic; they have a medic for the dam,” said the lug.

Patty shook his head. “I know they do. We won’t make it there; he’s not going to make it there.” Patty rubbed his hand along Doug’s forehead and moved his blond hair out of his eyes. The boy’s face—small-featured and lightly freckled—was okay compared to his body.

“I can get him down there, I know I can. We have to try. We have to,” another voice spoke. Patty looked up at the unknown fellow. Who is this guy? Strong, that’s for sure. “Who are you?”

“I’m Brighton. I’m new here. I just started workin’ down there, pouring concrete, but they saw me yesterday—the medic, for my head.”

“Oh . . . I don’t want to know. If you say so, take him. His name is Doug; he’s seventeen, the same age as my daughter. Take him down there then.”

Brighton lifted the ailing teen and carried him off ahead.

Patty looked at the other weighty fellow and couldn’t be bothered for further discussions. “Come on, we need to find my daughter.”

***

Whatever day or time it was, Ahanu didn’t know by this point. Maybe only an hour had passed, maybe twenty. He pushed on in the dark, feeling the rocky, sometimes slimy walls, and stumbled on the odd lump of something—a stalagmite maybe, or not. He didn’t try to figure it out. It was probably all the same—something dead, something eaten, something rotting. There was no food in that place. It was a place to be fed upon, as far as he could tell. He knew the wolf was around, or maybe there were many wolves. There must have been a den there for them all. Where there was one, there was more; that’s how it was in life, with any creature.

His ancestors were there as well, mixed in somehow, in some unsightly genocide, concealed. That was all he could figure. A mass grave like that only meant one thing. It was unsettling; he could barely handle it there, alone, wandering. His thoughts were going to deeply dark places. Places he didn’t want to think of, places he’d pushed away.

“Hold her down, quick. There’s not much time.”

“No. I can’t.” Ahanu turned his head away, couldn’t look, didn’t want to see.

“Hold her arms down.”

“If you don’t hold her arms down, then you’ll be doing the cutting.”

Ahanu looked into his sister’s eyes. She was in the worst kind of pain—he could feel it in his chest, sense the desperation, the misery. She wanted to die in that moment. He knew it. Of all the times he came home, that was the one time he’d wished he’d stayed out all night in the woods. He would have missed it all.

“Hold her steady, hold her steady,” his father said, taking his place next to his son. They didn’t look alike. Ahanu took more after his mother. His father had that same crook in his nose like his grandfather, his skin a dark tan, his hair completely shaven so that his bald head glistened under the hunter’s sun. Skin to skin, they all knelt on the grass. It was hot enough that just touching one another made each of them that