User:Posti/Salvage

{{#ifeq: User |User| Salvage | Salvage}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: User |User| Salvage | Salvage}}| ]]
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 {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}} | | 
   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}} | || 
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}| ]]
   }} | 
   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}} | |
     Author: {{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}}| ]]
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 {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}} | |
   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}} | | Authors: ' | 
     Authors: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}]] 
   }} | 
   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}} | |
     Authors: {{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| Posti | Posti}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Bob Stein | Bob Stein}}]] 
   }}
 }}

}} {{#if:| — see [[:Category:{{{category}}}|other works by this author]]}}

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A thick layer of brown leaves carpeted the ground, spotted here and there by a green tendril of grass or ivy trying to find the sun. The trees were gray and naked, new buds just visible on their branches. Jon worked his way carefully down the steep hillside, hoping that he wouldn’t discover a hidden hole or rock the hard way. He was a city boy, and the only beautiful thing to him was the dark blue mid-sixties Chevy lying on its roof in the bottom of this ravine.

Well, maybe not beautiful in the normal sense. The back end was smashed from some long-ago accident, and its roof was either crushed or sunken into the soft ground. However, the rusty carcass might contribute some pieces needed to restore his Olds 4-4-2 convertible. Many of the old muscle cars from the sixties and seventies shared parts with their more mundane sedan and station wagon cousins, and this forlorn sedan was blood kin.

So far so good. He needed a hood hinge and a headlight bucket, and it appeared that the upside-down Nova still had both items. Old cars were a challenging hobby – you couldn’t buy new parts for thirty-plus year-old vehicles. However, some creative salvage work usually provided what he needed. The hood hinge was the wrong color, but with a coat of paint no one would ever know it hadn’t always been part of his Oldsmobile. And in a way, part of the Chevy would live on, too.

There was movement in the corner of his eye, and he looked up the opposite embankment. At first, he didn’t see anything unusual. Then his breath caught in his throat as he saw a big deer watching him from the crest. It was a stag, with antlers that blended in with the bare branches around it. If it hadn’t moved, he might not have ever noticed it.

The animal seemed to regard him calmly, ears flicking occasionally. Jon was fascinated. He’d never seen a deer outside visits to the zoo when he was a child. Granted, the junkyard was remote and heavily wooded, but in all his visits in the past, he’d never seen so much as a squirrel. Too bad he didn’t have a camera. After a couple of minutes, the stag turned and trotted further down the ridge, gradually vanishing behind the hilltop.

Sighing, Jon began circling the car, looking for anything else he might be able to use. The exposed chassis was caked with rust, and most of the parts were wrong for his car anyway. Anything that might have been in the open trunk would have fallen out years ago. He squatted slightly to look anyway as he edged around the other side – and felt something large and hard move under his foot. Startled, he spun around to find that he was standing on the hoof of a dead dear.

“Shit!” Jerking away, he stumbled and fell backwards, landing on his butt with a soft thud. Unfortunately, the ground under the leaf cover was marshy, and he was instantly soaked to the skin. Crab-walking backwards, he didn’t get up until he was ten feet away. Brushing muddy hands on his jeans, he circled around the carcass, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

A doe – that much was obvious from his hind-end view. She was sprawled on the ground next to the old Chevy, with her head twisted down and caught in some fallen branches. A large wound in her side was caked with dried blood, apparently the result of a hunter’s rifle. Damn bastards! After seeing the buck just moments before, Jon felt a surge of anger towards whoever had shot the animal and left it to die. There was no odor of decay, and some of the blood still looked wet. She might have been shot yesterday, and struggled into the junkyard before finally collapsing here. No wonder the male had been so close by.

Just then, the doe’s chest rose slightly, and fresh blood bubbled slightly from the wound. Jon paled and then spun around as lunch erupted from his mouth in a sour spray. Dammit! He spit the remaining bile from his mouth, not wanting to turn around. The animal was still alive. His first reaction was to run off and let nature take its course. There was nothing he could do anyway. Except maybe find a rock or old tire iron and put the beast out of its misery.

Oh, right. He had just puked his guts out over a little blood, and he was going to be able to smash its head in? Not that Jon was some PETA fanatic or anything. He ate meat and liked it. But picking up a sirloin from the meat counter wasn’t quite the same as beating a helpless animal to death. Besides, that would be no improvement over her current situation. She couldn’t possibly survive much longer. If he just went away from a while…

The doe shifted feebly, her head and neck lifting slightly and then dropping back onto the old branches. Her position had to be uncomfortable, but she lacked the strength to move. Jon tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, but took a few cautious steps towards her. If his presence bothered the doe, she was too weak to show it. God, he felt so helpless. Moving slowly, he worked his way behind her, not sure what to do. If he could lift her head off the branches, it might make her a little more comfortable. Except that there wasn’t anyplace soft within range. He sure wasn’t going to try dragging her to smoother ground.

Finally, he sat cross-legged on the wood directly behind her and slipped his hands under her head. He winced as his fingers encountered sticky, warm dampness pooled under her mouth. Blood, no doubt. She had been shot through the lung. Oh, Hell. His jeans were probably ruined anyway. As gently as he could, he raised her head and lowered it into his lap, deathly afraid that she would suddenly bite him in fear. Perhaps she realized he was just trying to make her more comfortable, or else she was so far gone that any threat he posed no longer mattered, for she simply sighed out another bubbling breath.

One liquid brown eye fixed on him, and he found himself stroking her neck. It wasn’t all that hard to imagine the doe as some oversized dog. However, she wasn’t someone’s family pet. The worst part was that he didn’t know if his attention was soothing or terrifying her. Yet he couldn’t just leave her to die alone. It was silly, perhaps, but it was all he could do for her.

Jon felt the stag’s presence before he heard it behind him. His stomach tightened as its shadow fell over him, and he had to fight an urge to scramble up and run. He’d never actually heard of deer attacking humans. Hopefully, it was just curious. The animal’s head dropped down over his shoulder and snuffled at the doe’s ear, one antler catching the back of Jon’s head and forcing him to lean forward slightly. A heavy mix of dirt, sweat, and musk filled his nostrils, and he found himself trembling in fear.

The stag’s examination dropped to the wound, and with his head framed by the animal’s rack, Jon was forced to twist down with him. His mouth and nose picked up the copper tang of blood. Antlers pushed him, as if the stag were trying to force his face into the gore. Then it stepped back suddenly, releasing him. Jon felt a warm breath on the back of his neck, and a cold, wet nose against his right ear. Moving very slowly, he turned his head towards the buck, and found himself eye-to-eye with the animal.

It was impossible to read that liquid brown orb. Was this a mate filled with rage? Or just curiosity? Jon felt odd, slightly dizzy and disoriented. He was falling into the stag’s head, yet he could not look away. The animal moved closer until their eyes were almost touching. For a moment, he thought he picked up a trace of emotion – regret, sorrow, perhaps grief for the dying female. Then a shock of pain exploded in his chest.

Jon screamed and arched back, spraying liquid from his mouth. Convulsing on the hard branches, he grabbed at his chest and drew back blood-covered hands. Breathing in caused another blast of agony, and he heard the air bubbling from his body. Pulling open his jacket, he ripped his shirt apart and stared down at himself. Blood was pumping rapidly from a gaping wound, matting the dense brown fur around it. Fur? Dazed, Jon touched the hair with one finger, dimly recognizing the texture from the doe’s neck.

As pain faded suddenly into a dull throbbing, the heavy weight on his lap shifted, and suddenly vanished. The doe shook herself, and then rose up easily to stand over him. No longer able to move, Jon stared up at the smooth, unbroken fur on her chest. No, not unbroken – just above the change from white to brown was a large patch of pinkish-brown skin. Human skin. His skin.

Jon’s mind screamed denial. It was impossible. The fur surrounding bare flesh began to close in, and he felt the fur on his own chest vanish. Somehow, the stag had swapped parts of his healthy body out with the mortally injured doe. God, he’d been salvaged by an animal! Part of his mind found humor in the irony. The rest screamed betrayal and horrible unfairness.

Vision was starting to close in, and he felt cold. The doe’s hide was unblemished now, no sign of her injury left. She dropped her head down to snuffle at the torn human flesh that had once been hers, and then moved to stare at him as the stag had done.

Pain was gone now, leaving only the cold, sick terror of impending death. Jon found himself falling into the doe’s eye, this time feeling only strange warmth that began to melt away the fear and memories in his mind like hot wax. Was this death? It was already hard to remember his past. Images of strange, two-legged creatures blurred, knowledge now useless simply faded away, leaving sensations of warmth, of contentment. And then there was only awareness.

The doe jerked her head away from the human’s lifeless body, and trotted to more solid ground. There, she flagged her tail and signaled readiness. Her mate dispensed with the usual courtship, instinctively aware he had to fertilize the single egg that had formed in her womb. It wasn’t quite normal, but with his seed to reshape it, no one would ever know the salvaged soul hadn’t always been a fawn.

The End