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horrors lay
beneath the blanket.
    “How
exactly did you hit him with your truck? Were you just not paying attention?”
    “I
don’t know.” The intoxication was beginning to show. “I was at the bar and had
decided to leave early. I had gotten in and backed up and felt the truck hit
something. When I got out and looked, he was lying on the ground. His face looked
pretty bad, but I couldn’t see if anything else was wrong. I panicked. I don’t
even know what he was doing out there that late. He should have shifted.”
    He
was right. I had never seen any Sayner be struck unless copper was involved.
The shift was a defense mechanism they had that could allow them to dissipate
to a sand-like state before taking a hit. Copper was the only weakness they had,
and it would stop the shift in its tracks. It had been the reason they had
avoided most of the gunshots in Sayner, Wisconsin. The copper-jacketed bullets
were the only ones that made an impact, sticking to their victims and taking
them down.
    Chase
was getting caught up again with his guilt. What with that and the beer, I knew
he was going to break down at any minute. Right now, I couldn’t deal with it. Drunk
or not, I needed him to be there with me. He was asking a lot, and I wasn’t
going to do this alone.
    “Well,
let’s see what you brought me. I’m not making any promises, but it really can’t
be that bad if you just backed up into him.” I was hoping I was right – not
just for Chase’s sake, but my own.
    I
held my breath as he pulled away the blanket. It was worse than I could have
imagined. I would have gasped, but I couldn’t inhale what I was already holding
in. I could hear Chase make a gagging noise from the smell of blood and dirt
mixed together, holding back anything his stomach wanted to expel. I had never
seen anything so horrific in person.
    He
had been right. The Sayner’s face looked like it had taken the full force of
the truck. The left side of his face had taken on the appearance of a purple
sack of potatoes. His eye was a crescent, and almost lost in the swelling. The
bruising ran up the left side of his cheek bone to a knot above his eyebrow. It
was hard to see where the damage started and ended, since a gash from the knot
had covered that side of his face with dark crimson blood. There were other
minor cuts on his face that had bled freely across the bridge of his nose and
both lips.
    The
right side didn’t look nearly as bad. His mouth was partway open, pulling in
air, and I could see the blood that formed at the corners of his mouth and
between each pearl tooth. It still didn’t look bad enough to die from, but
looking at the rest of him, I could see why Chase should be concerned.
    Patches
of semi-dried blood clung to his shirt, probably from dripping off his face.
There was a hole in the right side of his shirt, and I could see a gash running
from his side and across his abdomen. What else was left of his shirt was
tattered and soaked. Something metal in the wound reflected the light. Whatever
it was, it was stopping the flow enough that he wasn’t laying in a pool of his
own blood.
    Moving
down to his lower half, there wasn’t any blood, which was a good sign, but
there was something else wrong. Though his right leg looked fine, his left foot
was twisted awkwardly outward. I didn’t have to pull back his filthy pant leg
to know it was broken.
    “I
don’t think you did this with your truck; I think someone might have beaten you
to it,” I said, trying to make him feel better about this.
    “Why
do you think that? I hit him pretty hard.”
    “I
think some of his face may have been your fault, but I think he was ugly before
that.”
    I
knew it was wrong to make jokes right now, but it was hard not to. It’s how I
coped with any situation. It made dealing with a crisis easier. Chase wasn’t
laughing. He was still in shock. I tried to explain it in as simple terms as
possible. “There is something in his side. I think it