That kicked off another few minutes of generally fruitless shouting, followed by profuse apologies from the Department of the Interior man, who claimed his schedule was tight and he was already overdue to fly to his next meeting. That came as a surprise to his pilot and flight engineer, who had to be retrieved from lunch, but they had their chopper spun up and vanishing over the hills with commendable speed.
“Amputating,” repeated Nimmo. “This ain’t a state now, it’s a phantom limb. What chance you reckon those Exclusion Zones don’t get any bigger in a few years, Blackburn?”
“No bet,” said Emery. “I think we’re all gonna find out what it’s like to live on the rez.”
“Not the sort of thing a lawman should admit,” said Nimmo, “but I confess I never much cared for the concept of poetic justice. Was kinda hoping I could die peacefully of old age before I ever had to face any.”
“Maybe the dragons can accommodate you.”
“Well, we’re accommodating them, ain’t we?”
Howard Jones was the first department casualty of ‘63. The evacuation of the smaller towns and hamlets was in full swing, and Howard was so busy helping an old lady get every last one of her caged chickens onto a truck, he didn’t notice the little dragon, just eighteen feet long, that padded up behind him, equal parts curious and hungry. Jones fought well with his sidearm, but a Police Positive was just a noisemaker for a funeral against a target like that.
E. B. Daglish, distraught at the loss of his closest friend, handed in his badge the next day and lit out for parts unknown. Half the remaining county population followed his example that year, one way or another.
Emery’s department killed thirty dragons in ‘64, then half as many in ‘65. The old need was gone. There just weren’t enough places left to terrorize or enough slack-brained militia types running around and getting stepped on.
In the long summer of ‘66, the dragons did discover the joys of uprooting and playing with telephone poles, so at least Emery had a reason to get out of bed until that blew over.
By ‘68, the Exclusion Zones had metastasized as foreseen. Most of Carbon County was an amusement park for dragons. About a thousand people remained holed up together in Rawlins, guarded by lovingly folk-crafted mud walls and ditches and scrapped-car barriers. They had good wells and secure fields, and the growing season was half a month longer no matter what anybody from Washington said, so with that and supplies from the one secure route to Cheyenne, nobody had to tighten their belt much.
Emery remained sheriff, and his department consisted entirely of Delia Sanchez. The caseload was mild. The people that remained were neighborly, a curious combination of hurt and invincible, proud of the rugged outpost they were keeping, bitter that they had been left to keep it. In Rawlins, the postal service came in once a month. In the suburbs of Maryland, the city walls were forty feet high. The baseball games were packed, the stadiums guarded by Oerlikon cannon emplacements, the ice-cream vendors equipped with backup generators in case anything made the power flicker.
Dragons stalked the Wyoming landscape at leisure, congregating in packs as large as seven or eight, and all around them a curious rewilding was taking place. Deer, moose, longhorns, wolves, and coyotes surged in numbers, and were even seen following dragons around. It was as if the creatures were practicing some sort of stewardship, satisfying themselves with a more leisurely predation.
More strange weather. Chinooks blew cold without reason, but even in winter the days were mild and the sunlight was honey-rich. The telephone lines hissed and crackled even when there wasn’t a cloud visible for miles. The world seemed heavy with invisible possibilities, as if the sky itself were vibrating.
Not many dragons bothered with human livestock any longer, but a few, just a few, were inexplicable assholes. Delia Sanchez died in ‘71 handling a thirty-foot talker as it spouted nonsense and smashed sections of defensive wall. She couldn’t find a vantage point for a distance shot, so she got point-blank, using six rounds to do the job. She was close enough as she squeezed off the last one that the dragon’s dying tail-lash took her off her rooftop perch, breaking her neck.
The town doctor told Emery she hadn’t felt a thing, that her troubles were over now, and Emery graciously held back from punching him in the face.
A request to Cheyenne for a pine coffin was denied, as was a request for a funeral announcement, an honor guard, or literally anything, any damn thing they could be bothered to cough up. The voice on the radio told him that local deaths were strictly local problems, over and out.
The townsfolk stepped in, pushed Emery respectfully aside, cobbled together a fine box in no time. They hung dragon claws around her neck and buried her with her gun, in the back of her garden.
After the funeral, Emery walked back to his office, locked the windows tight, pulled the shades. He contemplated one of his remaining rifles, before settling on the long-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 29 that had sat long and little used in a desk drawer. He strapped it on, slid it in and out of its holster a few times, then nodded and loaded the shells. He left the office with just those six, wanting no reloads, incapable of using them in any case. After locking his office door, he set the key on the indefatigable Claire O’Dell’s desk, in a spot where she couldn’t miss it.
“Maybe just go up there and talk to it,” he whispered, as he gassed up the department’s last remaining Jeep from five-gallon cans.
It was mid-evening as he drove out, under a cloudy carnation-colored sky, and nobody at the gate asked his business.
There were always dragons lurking about near Rawlins Point, up a slope just northwest of town. Emery drove up, flashing his lights and honking his horn as he approached, and he was gratified to see five pairs of golden plate-sized eyes staring at him from within the lengthening shadows of the rock. He screeched and rattled to a halt about thirty yards in front of the creatures.
“Hey!” Emery yelled. “Hey up there! Any of you know how to talk? I need directions!”
His request had eventually amused them. He was pretty sure that was the only reason they’d given him answers. They claimed the dragon he sought was farther north, up beneath the purpling heights of the Ferris Mountains, and they spoke of a green vale between two running waters. It was there, all right, a valley like an emerald cyst between Birch Creek and Cottonwood Creek, surrounded by smooth round rises of scrub and rock. Twilight was coming down, the sky a star-specked cobalt shot through with ripples of orange fire. In the trees, lights that were obviously not fireflies drifted in gentle clouds, and the air smelled like heated copper. Emery went in on foot, judging it more respectful than rolling up in the Jeep.
The dragon, the only dragon there (and very sufficient it was) lay curled and coiled in the midst of scattered white bones. Its chest was broader than a Sherman tank, and in length, it had to be pushing sixty feet. Its scales were metallic scarlet, its eyes deep pits of molten light, and it moved its wings as it regarded him, stirring the air of the glade, casting the drifting lights onto new courses.
“Killer,” the dragon said without preamble.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Emery.
“The whelps informed me of your approach.”
“I told them I wanted the biggest, oldest, wisest whatever-you-are they knew how to reach. Seems they steered me right.”