by mike Evans
Paul nodded slowly, thinking of what her words meant when she mentioned it was a group and knowing damn well that Matt in no way had any control over the urge to kill. The taste for blood was strong with him. He remembered fondly when he was a boy, and having to teach him the best control that he could, and how hard it had been for him to even do that. He had been the one to suggest for him to go into the army; he knew that if he could kill other warriors, it might be just enough to take care of his urges regularly. But when he started reading about unsolved mysteries in foreign countries close to him, it was a bit disturbing to know that even with the enemy at hand, it still wasn’t enough. When he’d gotten his criminal justice degree while in the army and came back to be a police officer, he could only think of the old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and knew he’d probably made the wisest decision that he could. When the killings had begun yet again in each place that Matt had lived, Paul had decided that was the time to become a man of nature and to force himself to control his thirst for death. He wasn’t stupid, and if given enough time knew that he would make a mistake, or that Matt could make one, and there would be an investigation that would lead back to himself.
Paul said, “Well, these are the North Woods, miss. You probably don’t know this, but they’ve been off limits for quite some time. Probably since before you were allowed to drive, if I had to guess. You don’t look too old now.”
Joyce held the stick up when he approached, taking a half a swing with it. Paul kept his distance and said, “So what seems to have you all bound up here? You seem a little high strung… Is there something I can do to help you?”
“Yeah, do you have a fucking gun? Because there’s this psycho fucking killer chasing us. I don’t know what to do, I don’t think that I’m going to be able to hold my shit together for very much longer.”
“Psycho killer, huh? Big guy, little guy? How do you know he’s a killer?”
“Are you fucking stupid? My friend came running up the hill, and when she made it, there wasn’t anything that we could do for her.”
“Why did she need help in the first place?”
Joyce actually laughed at this, “Why? Why did she need help? I’ll tell you fucking why—because some fucking crazy fuck cut her god damn arms off and then sent her off running back to us like a chicken with its head cut off! I'm not going to lie, it is probably the number one fucked up thing that I have ever seen in my life!”
Paul thought about it. He’d never been much for mutilation. He wasn’t above cutting someone’s heart out, but that was usually more for pleasure than causing the person pain. He enjoyed looking into their eyes and watching the light fade from them as they passed to the other side, given that there was one. “Makes sense, I mean, that is definitely awkward.”
“Awkward? Are you going to help me? I mean, what are you doing out here?”
“Exercise, dear. When you get to be my age, you need it to keep going or you aren’t going to survive. My ticker isn’t what it used to be, but I tell you clean living and not boozing it up like when I was young isn’t a bad thing at all.”
“What about helping me? What are you going to do?”
“Well, I think I’ve done what I need to,” he said. “I’m not going to lie though, I'm going to have one stern talk with my son after this. I mean, what are we going to do with him? I give him miles and miles of woods and what does he do? He finds the only fucking group of people out in the middle of nowhere; such a disappointment. I thought for sure he could at least last a few months.”
“I don't understand, what you are talking about? What is wrong with you?”
“Oh, I’ve heard that a few times. I’m not going to lie, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, but I don’t happen to be an ant like the rest of society. I don’t think it’ll matter soon, if he’s coming for you.”
“An ant, a what—my god, you are nuts? I don’t get it! And what did you mean, ‘he’s coming for you’? Did you say son?”
“Well, he won’t kill dear old dad. Will you, Son?”
Joyce was shaking at this point. The word “dad” made her half sick to her stomach. “What… what?”
Joyce spun around, not getting the reference of his use of the words “will you, son”. When she’d spun, Matt was standing there waiting for her, smiling. He looked to his dad, who was shaking his head. It was not difficult to see that he was disappointed in what he had done today. Joyce tried to run, but he took hold of her wrist, squeezing it until it was just shy of snapping.
“I'm sorry, Dad. I swear I was just out practicing my archery and hoping for something I could put on the plate tonight. It hasn’t been long enough, and I’ve had a taste for blood as long as I have been here. I don’t think that I am here to stay,” Matt explained.
“Son, you weren’t ever meant to stop killing, but unless you learn how to control your lust for death, you’ll never see forty. I don’t know what else I can do. I can’t hold this one against you; I'm sure that having death as a toy in front of you was more than you could handle. Please, tell me that if we can clean this up, you will be able to handle it. I'm going to have to be able to promise Zeke that we can behave ourselves. He can’t have too many people coming around looking, or he’s going to have to let someone find us—or we are going to have to go on the run again. I mean it, we need to be smart. I'm too damn old and tired to have to worry about running. The reason I live here is that I don’t want to do stupid shit like that anymore. I don’t know a better way to explain it. If they catch you, you know damn well that they’ll either put you in a prison or a home for the mentally unstable, except you’ll never have a chance of getting out of either of them. You realize that, I know you aren’t stupid.”
Joyce screamed not startling either of them, just merely annoying the two Hardin men. “What the fuck are you talking about. Let go of my wrist, I need to leave. I'm going to just forget I ever saw you two! If you’ll let me go, I swear to God, I won’t say anything, not to anyone; you just let me go, I’ll move on. I didn’t like them that much anyways.”
Paul hushed her, “You’re being quite rude, we are trying to have a civilized conversation.”
The bitchiness that she was trying her absolute best to keep on the inside came flooding out with that comment. “What the fuck crazy train are you on? You can eat a dick, asshole.”
It was not difficult for her to see where Matt got the look she’d seen in his eyes. Paul leaned in very close and Matt watched, thinking it wasn’t often he’d ever seen his dad actually in action, doing what he had given up so long ago. Joyce was going to say something else, but Paul said, “You need to be quiet. I need to make sure that my boy understands this.”
Matt, who couldn’t help it, cleared his throat and said, “Funny thing about eating dicks, but you’ll never see that guy again.”
“You aren’t helping, Matt. Stop trying to get a rise out of her,” Paul scolded.
When the implications hit home of what it meant that she was privy to what their names were, she said, “I don’t understand, why are you saying your names?”
“You city folk aren’t too intelligent, now, are you?”
Joyce tried to tell him something else, but the old man took his walking stick in both hands and pulled her from Matt’s grip, spinning her around in a circle and into a tree trunk. He slammed her hard into it, letting her slam her skull against it. When she tried to say something, Paul pushed the stick into her neck until she could only choke. He bent down, putting his arms under it and lifted the stick and Joyce with it. She clawed at his hands on the stick, but he did not let go of his grip. He only smiled, looking directly into her dark green eyes. When the light began to fade, he dropped her to the ground, pulling the bottom of his stick off, exposing a sharpened tip.
Matt said, “Wait, I thought that you didn’t feel the urge anymore? I thought that-”
“Don’t be greedy, Son, it isn’t my fault. You could have let them go, but you didn�
��t.”
Joyce said, “I won’t say anything, I promise! I promise, I won’t do anything. I won’t be stupid, really!”
“If that was the case, you wouldn’t be in my woods right now, dear.”
Paul lifted the stick as high as he could and brought it down into her spine. Her screams filled the woods for the next few minutes until they slowly began to fade, as did what was left of her time on Earth. Paul placed a foot on her spine, ripping the spear from her back, and knelt down, flipping her over and staring into her eyes. He picked her up, cradling her like a baby, or possibly a present in this circumstance—one that he did not think he would be allowed to enjoy.
Matt tried to say something, but Paul held up a finger. His eyes were soft but serious. “You need to shut up and not ruin this for me. I never had a reason to hide or kill until you started ruining everything. Don’t ruin this. Be quiet.”
“She was mine though.”
“Then you shouldn’t have toyed with her. I don’t know why you ever started that. I sure as hell never taught you to do that. The last thing you want is to have to deal with someone escaping. Do you have a plan for that, or is your plan that you are fucked and you have to run? You kill, you don’t waste your time, and you get the fuck out of dodge—I'm not kidding. Your first option needs to be to not kill, but if you can’t handle it, you run, and you don’t stop until you’re so far away that you don’t have to look over your shoulder. It’s going to be some time before people forget what you did. You have come back so often, so many times, that you don’t give anyone the opportunity to forget about you.
“It also seems like if these people had any intelligence that they’d have stayed home today. It makes me wonder what they’ve been saying about you since you’ve been here. Maybe you’ve lost enough blood that they think you must be dead. They aren’t giving you any credit for being a Hardin. They forget that what we do is survive.”
“I got fucked up pretty bad, and it seems like every time I get a chance to heal, that is when I get fucked up all over again,” Matt said.
“You didn’t ever used to have this problem, Matt—that is until you couldn’t keep your head straight and you started fucking up left and right. You had the best gig in the world. What I would have given to be able to go and see my kills over and over again. Oh, it makes me half hard, or it would if that part still worked like it used to.”
“Maybe one day, when it has been long enough, I’ll be able to try to go back. I could attempt to start over some way. I’m sure there’s something that I could do.”
“Just remember that if you attempt to do it before you are ready, you’ll be back on your own and you might not get away next time. The police will have a hard on for you. If they know you survived, if they know that you are still out there, then you'll just be a target. There won’t be any questions asked; they won’t try to take you in safe and sound. They’ll kill you in the street and be called heroes for it. If you think I’m wrong, fuck up again. Zeke isn’t going to help us forever,” Paul tried to plead to Matt. “Is this getting through to you, I mean is any of it getting through that thick head of yours?”
“I'm very well aware that if I try to go anywhere that I’m going to die. You told me to stay in the North Woods, and to try to keep my shit together. You can’t leave an eight ball with a coke head and expect them to behave themselves this soon into sobriety, now, can you?”
“I think you are missing the point, Matt. You fuck up anymore, even if someone else comes to the North Woods, and I can’t promise what Zeke is going to do. There’s enough heat on you that Zeke will only be able to bypass so many chances to start a new life somewhere tropical, famous, rich, and away from here. You keep giving him reasons and he’s going to fuck with you, I assure you, boy.”
“You don’t trust him?” Matt asked.
“You haven’t been here long enough for him to trust you. I’m sure he’s drinking himself to sleep each night knowing that you are around. The idea that he has the deadliest man in America is not something that probably makes it easy to rest his head at night. I want you to go and get the car keys for these kids. I’m sure one of them have it. How much cleanup do we have to do here today?”
“Probably enough that it will be dark by the time we are done.”
Paul sighed, motioning to the woman. Matt said, “You going to help me carry her?”
“Sure as hell not. Throw her ass over your shoulder. I don’t have the back for shit like that anymore.”
Matt didn’t hesitate, uncaring about the blood. He pulled his father’s makeshift spear and walking stick and handed it to his father, who put the blunt cap back over it. He took Joyce by the belt, dead-lifting her up, and threw her over his shoulder, making his way back towards the hill. When they made it to the top, his dad looked at the two on the ground. He wasn’t sure whether the castrated man or the woman missing both of her arms was more disgusting. When he looked to Matt, he was smiling deeply and enjoying coming back to see the scene.
Paul said, “Is this what you think I was talking about when I speak of fucking killing and running? This isn’t getting out of dodge, this is you setting up shop, marrying a woman, and fucking her until you’ve got a few new grandkids for me, Matt. You need to pull your fucking head out of your ass or…”
“Dad, I should warn you that when I get a taste for it, sometimes it doesn’t matter who is around me. That is usually when I go away for a bit, and being rude to me does very damn little to help in assisting my attitude towards others. Now, you are a smart man, probably smarter than me and definitely more controlled, so I’m sure you are able to understand what it is that I am trying to relay to you.”
“I understand, but if you kill me, you’ll need to run, and you’ll never get the chance to stop and heal the way you need to. Your body is still a very long way from being near a hundred percent. I’m an old man, I don’t give a shit if I survive, but I would like for you to make it through to the end. If you learn one day about control, it might be the thing that you need to do the most to make sure you have more days on this Earth.”
Matt dropped down his knife and bow. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that I might regret later.”
Paul said, “Do any of these two have the keys?”
“No, I’m pretty sure that they are down at the bottom of the other hill, with the last male. He seems like he was the driver. What is going to happen with the car? What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m not sure yet. I might have to take it out somewhere far enough away that it won’t cause questions.”
“Right, but how are you going to get back? Why don’t you let me do it? It’d probably be a smart idea. I don’t think that you’ll be able to make it back, do you? I mean I’m assuming you are talking miles, not anything small here, right?”
“You know it’d be great if I could send you, Matt.”
“Then why don’t you, Dad?”
“Because you don’t seem to be able to handle the simplest of requests right now. The last thing that I am going to do is have you go and be out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to worry about something going wrong like a school bus trying to give us a ride. Christ that would be the end of all things here. I want you to take these four as far into the woods as you’ve ever gone and chop them into as many pieces as you can, and then build a fire. I want them to be nothing but ash by tonight. You get out the rest of your aggression with them. Chop their bodies until you don’t have any hate left.”
Matt smiled, dragging the first of them behind him. “It was never anything to do with hate, Father. I love these people, I love every single second I get to spend with them. It is the most precious thing I’ve ever had to think about. There is a taste, a hunger; I can’t get enough of it though.”
Paul nodded, seeing where the man that would have the keys was, and headed towards him. He fished the jeep keys out of Tim’s pockets and said nothing else.
Chapter 9
Washi
ngton
5 Years Later
Deputy Laughlin drove slowly through town, nodding his head to the townspeople’s men and tipping his hat to the women. Laughlin had gone out of his way to kiss ass to every single potential voter in a three-county vicinity. He saw the trucks he’d been combing the city for and pulled into Duff’s Bar. Laughlin sat out front for a few minutes, waiting for his smoke to be gone. He made his way inside, nodding to the bartender, Duffy and took a seat. Laughlin had always appreciated an establishment that knew how to keep their mouths shut and the glasses full, while not letting anyone head out driving after they’d consumed beyond their means.
Laughlin pulled out his wallet, but Duffy backed away, shaking his head. He laughed, saying, “Now, Sheriff Laughlin, you know your money ain’t any good in here.”
Laughlin put it back away and said, “Pretty sure the title is still deputy for a few weeks longer, Duffy. I’ve sure as hell paid for plenty of beers over the years. I take it Zeke never took you up on that underlying rule?”
