Dick threw out his arms to catch himself, letting go of the axe. He shouted out, half in surprise. 'Bleu, just, just hold on'' His feet fell away from beneath him and the hill rolled over as he fell, colliding with the loose rock, sliding, skidding as Bleu and the dead man fell away from him. He got a good view of the dead climber finally and saw why there'd been so much confusion as to whether there were six or seven of them. The climber who had Bleu was nothing more than a torso, his legs and abdomen torn away leaving a ragged, stringy wound. Dick reached out, trying to grab Bleu's foot, trying to grab tree roots or solid rocks or anything. He had to save her'he had to get back up and save her, but then his head smacked something hard and cold and his vision went all sparkly.
He opened his eyes without remembering ever having closed them. His body rang like a bell. His mouth tasted stale and white'white? Was that a taste? He was pretty sure he'd wet himself. Above him the stars burned hard and cold. He recognized the symptoms of a bad concussion but his thoughts were swimming through him like fishes, no, no, he had to, he had to stop.
Stop.
Yes. Just lay there for a while in the soft snow. It didn't feel cold at all. Something noisy and terrifying had been happening and he was pretty sure he had the details written down somewhere if he wanted to look them up but just then, just then he only wanted to look up at the stars. Such a beautiful night in the mountains. Something furry brushed against his hand and he reached out to pat it, to pet it. A dog? No, too fleecy.
He managed to tilt his head so he could look and found himself staring into an eyeball with a horizontal pupil. A sheep's eye. Even after years of working as a livestock inspection agent he had never gotten used to those eyes with their sideways elongated pupils like something out of Stephen King. Still. A sheep was nothing to worry about. He gave this one a professional once-over. He recognized the breed:Barbados blackbelly. She seemed slightly off, though. Yes' her rear legs were tucked in too tight and there were pink patches in her coat where she'd rubbed herself raw. Scrapie, alright. A damned shame'she looked like a strong animal and she would have to be put down so she didn't infect the rest of the flock. The sheep put out her tongue and licked his hand. He laughed until she nipped him, hard.
'Hey there,' he said, 'come on,' and he sat up so suddenly the blood rushed right out of his head. He groaned and tried to rub at his temples. It didn't work. The sheep still had his fingers clenched in her incisors. She choked up on his hand and started crushing his fingers with her premolars. Her herbivore's teeth couldn't tear his skin very well but she clearly meant to grind him to paste.
Dick yelled and tried to get up but another sheep, this one missing part of her hindquarters, sprawled across his chest. She weighed two hundred pounds, easily, much more than he could lift'he was trapped. A ram with broken horns got his mouth around Dick's shoulder and clamped down hard. He felt the bones there flex with the pressure. Soon enough they would snap. More sheep arrived. Maybe a dozen. A full flock, all of them showing signs of scrapie.
Bleu had slaughtered all of her sheep'she'd done it herself. She had' she had cut their throats. Bled them. She wouldn't have decapitated them or destroyed their brains. Too messy.
Now they were back. Bloody wool obscured Dick's view but as the ram crushed the skin and muscle of his left arm he saw Bleu herself standing before him. Massive chunks of meat were missing from her neck and throat so that her head seemed to float above her body like a baloon on a string of vertebrae. She didn't say anything as she bent over him, pushing her way in amongst the sheep, and picked up his right arm in both of her hands.
Monster Nation
Chapter Fourteen
DOESAMERICA HAVE ENOUGH GUNS? Assault Weapons Bans and the Congressmen Who Hate Them ['The Economist' magazine, 1/05]