Page 7 of After the Fade, Vol. 1 (Asheverse: B-Side)

The pile of blistered, golden-brown beer cans had grown at the edge of the coals. One of the boys was pissing uphill—literally—while the other three argued about Jessica Mecham’s tits, whoever that was. I picked out the leader straightaway. He was the one from the C-store: tall, built like God intended him to play defensive line, all-American blond-and-blue-eyed, and decent looking. He wasn’t in Austin’s league. He sure as fuck wasn’t in Emmett’s. But the kid really might have punched Jessica Mecham’s card—if she could stand to be around him. He looked like his name was probably Bud.

“I’m telling you,”

Bud was saying, his speech already a little sloppy. “She fucking squirted when I got done with those big old titties.”

The two boys in the audience hollered and shouted and swore like it was a revival meeting for frat bros. The one pissing tried to pump his fist, and then he swore and hotfooted it and fell. Piss went up in a golden arch and came right down on him.

Jesus Christ. These were the masterminds behind the whole operation.

“Hey,” I said.

The one who was busy getting sprinkled with his own pee had bigger problems, but Bud’s audience turned to stare at me. Bud turned a beer can in his hand, and he had a pretty good poker face.

“You’re the faggot.”

“That’s right. I’m the only one.”

Bud blinked at that. One of the audience participants said, “No, no, he was with that other fag, the one he was kissing.”

“Shut up, Tommy,”

Bud said. “What are you doing here?”

“You shouldn’t have taken our clothes while we were swimming. And you shouldn’t have taken our tent. But you really shouldn’t have taken Austin’s horses because Jesus Christ he is probably a little too responsible for his own good, and he really took it hard.”

They were still staring at me.

“He got upset,”

I clarified. “I don’t like it when Austin gets upset.”

“Look, twinkie, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with swimming and clothes, but those horses are mine, and—”

I didn’t want to kill them. I mean, I did, but I’d pretty much decided against it. So instead, I just blasted them with the bear spray.

The thing about bear spray is that it’s meant for bears. And it packs a pretty nasty punch. I wasn’t sure if it could kill a person, and I didn’t want to find out, so I fired the can from about fifteen yards—farther than the can directed—and just settled for giving them a misting.

I might as well have dipped the audience participants in gasoline and spun the wheel on a lighter. They screamed. They shot to their feet, and their hands were everywhere—their eyes, their mouths, their noses, patting and rubbing and flailing like they were trying to beat out flames.

Bud saved himself by falling ass-backward over the log he was sitting on.

I kept the bear spray going for the full seven seconds, and when the stream died, I walked back up the hill toward the tree line, with a few glances back.

“You—you—you—”

Bud was scrambling through the sedge, and he got a hand around a rock and pitched it overhand. It clipped Emmett’s Sorel, and I felt the dull ache in the side of my foot. Looked like Bud had a decent arm on him. “You fucking faggot.”

“We went over that already.”

The next rock winged my arm, and even with the padding of Emmett’s jacket and sweater, it felt like Sugar had landed a solid kick.

My whole arm flashed with white heat, and I stumbled.

The next rock ripped a patch of bark the size of my head from a ponderosa, exposing white pulp that bled sap.

I decided to pick up the pace a little.

Cradling my arm, I ducked between a pair of lodgepoles.

The sound of Bud’s passage up the canyon floor echoed between the narrow stone walls.

He was breathing like a crazy man, each exhalation punctured by faggot, queer, cocksucker, cunt.

Two more stones whistled between the trees, but they both struck off a good distance from me—he couldn’t see me, and he was throwing blind.

Good.

That meant he was angry and scared and stupid, and I liked all three of those.

I rang the bear bell.

And then again.

I wanted this horsefucker coming after me. I wanted him to know exactly where I was.

He crashed through the skeletal clumps of juniper like he was driving a dozer—just bulled straight into them and kept going.

I could see him now, and I moved backward, keeping him in my sight, picking my steps carefully.

I whistled low and when his head shot in my direction, I blew him a kiss.

His arm came back; I ducked behind a tree as the stone came out of his hand.

The lodgepole I was hiding behind reverberated like a guitar string when the rock hit it.

Ok. Maybe Bud didn’t play defensive line. If he did, his talents were wasted.

“I’m going to fucking rip your asshole in half. I’m going to cut off your fucking cock. I’m going to—”

He hit the first fishing line tripwire and went down, and I stepped out from behind the tree for a look.

He had planted face-first on a rough slab of granite, and it had scraped his chin open.

Lying there, his head up and blood running down his face and neck, he looked like a kid who’d taken a bad spill.

He even had the same confused, hurt look in his eyes.

Like we’d been playing a game and I’d taken it a step too far. The second stone he’d been carrying had flopped out of his hand, and it lay near my foot. I tossed it off into the trees.

He spat blood. And a tooth. “I’m going to kill you.”

I shrugged. “You shouldn’t have gotten my boyfriend so worked up. The C-store stuff, I let that go. But the horses—well, he really likes those stupid horses.”

Bud wasn’t listening.

He was drawing himself up, his palms a bloody hash that left prints on the granite, his knees still bent into a crouch.

I knew even before he did what he was planning: a rush.

He was going to launch himself out of that crouch and try to catch me by surprise.

I took a careful step back. And another.

Bud took off like a Titan rocket.

I shuffled to the left. From the corner of my eye, I watched the gleam of the fishing line.

And then Bud stepped over it. Stepped clean over it. And my last clear thought before Bud hit me at something like a hundred miles an hour was that Bud might have been smarter than I thought.