Shallow Water

Grant does not go home.

He stands in Ray Walsh’s yard with one hundred nine women on the map and looks at the thing that has not moved.

Two thousand feet. Same weight as Dale. Same wrong calm. Sitting.

“That’s a camp,” he says. “You don’t sit like that in an empty field. You sit like that on your own floor.”

Mary follows his eyes even though she cannot see what he sees.

“You want him.”

“I want what he has. Dale walked in here, took thirteen, and left. I’m not going to survive fighting over scraps with other guys. If I wait, he comes back when he is stronger. If I go now, I can do that to him instead.”

Eve shifts the rifle.

“He’s over a hundred too. You just got there. That’s an even fight at best, if not worse.”

“I know.”

Mary is quiet long enough that Grant thinks she is going to say no.

Then she says, “You don’t take the bus.”

He looks at her.

“Dale didn’t roll up in a bus with a horn and a second car,” she says. “He came in one vehicle like a man who wasn't here to fight. You do that and go one step further. Bus and Explorer stay here, engine off, behind the buildings. You walk the distance. You talk like Dale. You popped today. You came to see who was sitting on the water. You do not take a girl with you. You do not take a rifle he can see. You get inside his polite distance, and then you end him before he decides you’re a danger after all.”

Zoya frowns.

“That’s it? Walk up and talk?”

“That’s it,” Mary says. “Men like that think other hundreds want a look. Give him a look. Don’t give him a convoy.”

Grant almost argues. He doesn’t. It is better than charging the dock with Jose.

“If I don’t come back in thirty minutes, you leave. Go to the store. Not the penthouse first. Leanne honks, you don’t play hero.”

“Thirty,” Mary says. “Not a minute more.”

He goes.

The river path is gravel, then mud, then a service track that Ray’s map had marked with a slash. Grant keeps the range open. The hundred does not move. Claimed points cluster around it, dense, stacked, more than Walsh ever had. He cannot see their faces the way he sees blanks. He can feel the weight of a house sitting on one man.

Dusk is coming. He can already see too well. His eyes refuse to let the light die.

The camp is a boathouse and two trailers and a string of solar. No cars. A skiff on a lift. Women on the deck in a loose watch, tighter than Walsh. Somebody cooking. Somebody with a rifle who is not Eve.

The man on the dock sees him at a hundred yards and does not raise a gun.

He waits. Sweater. Boots. Hands visible. Older than Dale. He seems to have been at a hundred longer. Grant can feel it in the way he stands.

Grant walks in like he has all the time in the world.

“You the one who popped,” the man says.

“Today. On Walsh’s gravel.”

“I felt it. Felt Ray go too. That you?”

“That’s me. Just defending my own.”

The man almost smiles.

“I’m Harlan. You walk in alone, I respect that. You walk in alone because you want what’s sitting behind me, I respect that less.”

“I came to see if you were sloppy.”

Harlan’s mouth goes flat. He has heard that sentence before.

“Cute. You steal Dale’s lines, you steal Ray’s lot, now you want a look at my water. You come alone?”

“I did. Just came to talk.”

“That so?” Harlan glances past Grant, looking for the bus that is not there. Mary’s plan holds for one more second. “You’re young for a hundred. Walsh wasn’t even there yet. Dale’s gonna come back this way when he’s bored. You picked a bad night to tour.”

A woman on the deck shifts. Rifle. Not pointed yet.

Grant hears Harlan’s heart. Calm. Hundred-calm. Heavier than Walsh. Heavy as Dale.

“I’m not touring,” Grant says.

He moves first.

It is a mistake.

Harlan is not Walsh. Ray swung like a man showing off. Harlan has been sitting on this dock long enough to practice. He steps inside Grant’s first hit, takes it on the shoulder like he budgeted for it, and puts an elbow into Grant’s throat.

Grant’s vision blurs. The heal starts. Harlan does not wait for it to finish. A knee in the ribs. A fist in the same place. The rib that closed this morning opens again. Grant hits the planks on his back and the skiff chains rattle over his head.

The watch on the deck screams and comes, because they are Harlan’s.

Grant rolls. A boot misses his face and takes a splinter out of the dock. He grabs the ankle and yanks. The woman goes down. He cannot claim her. He throws her into the next two and buys three seconds.

Harlan uses two of them.

The gaff hook is in his hand when Grant looks up. The point goes through Grant’s forearm and out the other side. Grant hears the metal scrape bone. The heal tries to close around the hook and cannot, not with the steel still in him.

Harlan twists it.

Grant makes a sound he has not made since the penthouse fight.

He hits Harlan in the face with the hooked arm anyway. Teeth. Blood. The hook tears free. The hole in his arm shuts in a hot rush that leaves him shaking. Harlan staggers, not far.

“You just got here,” Harlan says, breathing harder now. “Too bad you won’t get to leave!”

Grant does not answer. He doesn’t get the chance.

Harlan drives him through the door with his whole body. Drywall. A cot. A lamp. Grant’s head hits a cabinet and the world tilts. Harlan grabs a handful of his hair and slams him again. The healing starts closing his scalp. Harlan slams him a third time before it finishes.

Grant gets a fist into Harlan’s gut. Once. Twice. Harlan’s calm breaks for half a second. Grant uses that half second to get a knee up and shove. They go out the side wall onto dirt.

A rifle cracks.

The shot takes Grant in the back, high, left of the spine. It exits under the collarbone. He drops to a knee. The woman on the deck works the bolt. Harlan kicks Grant in the face while the hole is still open.

Grant’s mouth fills with blood. The hole starts to close. The second shot hits the dirt next to his hand.

He moves on the third.

Not at Harlan. At the rifle.

He is on the deck before she fires again. He takes the gun and throws it in the river. She claws at his face. He throws her into the cooking setup and turns back. Harlan is already there with a length of chain from the skiff lift.

The chain catches Grant across the thigh. Something in his muscle goes. He stays up because falling is how this ends. Harlan swings again. Grant catches the chain and they pull like two men who both think they are stronger.

Harlan is stronger.

Not by much, but enough.

Grant’s heels dig grooves in the dock. Harlan walks him backward toward the water. The piling hits Grant’s spine. Harlan grins wide and leans in to knock him over.

Grant lets go of the chain.

Harlan overcommits. Grant hits him under the jaw with everything the hundred gave him. Harlan’s feet leave the dock. He hits the lift frame. The frame bends.

It does not drop him.

Harlan comes off it roaring and they go into the shallows together.

Four feet of water. Bad footing. Harlan gets Grant’s head under. Grant’s only view is black water and hands. The healing does not give him air. He claws, finds the sweater, and they break surface together, gasping, hitting, no technique left.

Harlan gets the chain around Grant’s neck from behind.

Grant’s vision blurs again. The links bite. The healing tries to save skin that is being crushed. He drives an elbow back. Once. Nothing. Twice. Harlan’s ribs give a little. Third time Grant puts his whole back into it and they both go under.

He gets the chain off in the mud.

When they come up, Harlan is slower.

Not slow enough.

A knife comes out of Harlan’s boot. Short. Ugly. It goes into Grant’s side, under the ribs, and Harlan leaves it there and punches the handle.

Grant’s knees give out.

The shallows take him to one hand. He can feel the blade in him, the healing fighting metal the way it fought the hook. He grabs Harlan’s wrist so the knife cannot twist. They kneel in the water, forehead to forehead, both shaking.

“You should’ve brought the bus,” Harlan says, almost kind.

Grant headbutts him.

Cartilage. Blood. Harlan’s grip slips. Grant pulls the knife out of his own side and the hole dumps heat into the river and then shuts, slower than the arm, slower than the back. He is running out of heals. He can feel that now. The hundred has a limit.

He still has the knife.

He does not use it well. He uses it enough. Shoulder. Then the arm Harlan needs to hold him. Then he drops the knife because his hand will not keep it.

They hit with forearms and elbows like men who have nothing left to pick up.

Harlan gets Grant on his back in twelve inches of water and puts both hands on his throat.

Grant’s map flickers. One hundred nine points at the Walsh lot. Mary’s thirty minutes. Is she coming? He is drowning in a river four feet from a dock.

He gets one knee up. Not enough. He gets a thumb into Harlan’s eye. Harlan yells and does not let go. Grant does it again, worse, and Harlan’s hands loosen one inch.

Grant takes that inch.

He rolls them. He is on top. He hits Harlan in the throat, the face, the throat again. Harlan’s hundred-calm is gone. He is just a man trying not to die.

Grant hits him until the hands stop coming up.

Then he hits him once more, because Walsh got up, and Dax got up, and this one does not get to.

Harlan goes still in the shallows.

Grant stays on him for a full second to be sure. Then he falls off him into the water and stares at the sky.

The map detonates.

One hundred twenty-seven points go blank in the same breath. The boathouse. The trailers. The deck. The path behind the solar. A cluster in the second trailer. Loose. Ownerless. Screaming.

Grant gets to his feet like a man climbing a wall.

They run. Some at him. Some at the trees. Some into the water.

He starts taking wrists with hands that still shake.

“I claim you.”

“Dara.”

110.

The woman who shot him is reaching for another gun that is not there. He takes her.

“Kate.”

111.

He does not get speeches. He gets names.

“Lynn.”

112.

“Soren.”

113.

“Mira.”

114.

The second trailer empties into him. Doorway. Steps. Solar rack.

“Julie.”

“Tessa.”

“Ryn.”

“Amy.”

“Valerie.”

120.

The trees eat a dozen. He is faster. The healing is a dull throb. His thigh still feels wrong even though it closed.

A group of eight tries the skiff. He is on the lift before the hull clears the cradle. He claims them on the wet boards.

He hits two hundred on a woman against the boathouse wall. Ninety-one of Harlan’s, on top of the 109 he walked in with.

“I claim you.”

“Luce.”

200.

It is not like a hundred.

A hundred was gravel and a rib closing.

This is an explosion inside his body, and it hits him while he is still bleeding from a fight that already ended.

The map slams outward. Walsh’s lot. The access road. 12th. The penthouse. Dale, east. And the women — not just blanks. Dale’s thirteen. North lot. The river is a diagram.

His eyes feel like they are brand new. The trees have edges. The water has a bottom. He can see Harlan on the mud like it is noon. He can’t even tell it is night anymore.

His people change at the lot. Ten percent of his speed. The healing in them ramps up. The pull: they know where he is now. Mary’s point turns toward him.

The last of Harlan’s women are still in the hundred-foot ring around the dock.

The new energy he feels vibrating in his hands is not just increased speed and strength.

He wants them. The want goes out.

A blast. Not air. Not sound. A push that only finds women who do not belong to anyone yet. They all stop as it touches them. The ones in the trees. The one in the water up to her waist.

“Bryn. Yours.”

“Cara. Yours.”

“Nellie. Yours.”

The rest stack. He does not catch every name. He feels the count.

236.

Grant sits down on the dock because if he does not sit he is going to fall.

Harlan is still floating in the shallows.

Mary breaks the thirty minutes. Of course she does. He feels her coming before he hears her.

She comes out of the tree line with Eve and Zoya, sees the wrecked trailer, the chain, the blood in the water that is both his and Harlan’s, and she runs the last stretch.

“Grant!”

“He’s down.”

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?”

“All of them. One twenty-seven. I hit two hundred in the middle of it.” He looks at his hands. They are still shaking. “I didn’t have to touch the last ones. It went out. It’s a start, but I still need to get stronger.”

Mary stares at the ring of new girls. Then at the dark, which is not dark to him anymore.

“This wasn’t nothing,” she says. “You are now a problem for every man on this river. And you are going on the bus. You are not walking.”

Dale’s thirteen are still east.

North lot is inside a mile. Another man’s house. Sitting.

Grant breathes. The healing finally fixes all that was broken. The hundred had a limit. Two hundred just bought him a much deeper one.

“Tell Jose to bring the bus,” he says. “Thirty minutes is up.”