The trailers and tents were still set up, but they looked abandoned. He couldn’t see Sturm’s pickup. He darted across the open ground in a low, crouching run at the corral in the middle of the field and opened the gate for the sheep. But, being sheep, they simply huddled against the far fence and wouldn’t come near him. Frank left the gate open and crawled through the stiff dead grass to the corral behind the barn.
He opened the gate, then circled around the barn to the distorted, bulging cage. Lady and Princess watched him with sleepy eyes. They’d been feeding regularly, and so they were happy, content, and sluggish. Frank pushed down and slid the bolt back, letting the cage door swing wide. The cats just watched him.
Frank ducked into the barn. He jogged around the aisle and lifted the tarp over the horizontal freezer. He decided not to try and move the air-conditioner, though it took all of his strength to lift the hood just enough to see inside. “Shit,” he breathed.
The gun safe was still inside.
He scratched his head violently. The pill wanted to go kick down the door and shoot Sturm in his bed. That way, he could come back and get the safe anytime he felt like it. But killing Sturm wouldn’t be as easy as sticking a knife in Chuck’s throat. There was a damn good chance Sturm would shoot back. Frank reminded himself of all the animals still left locked away at the auction yard.
So he lowered the lid and slipped out of the barn, heading back to Chuck’s truck. Lady and Princess hadn’t moved. That was okay, though. They’d get the idea, soon as the sheep figured out that the gate was open and went wandering around the pasture.
* * * * *
Frank started at one end of the auction yard and moved fast, popping latches and swinging the cage doors wide, bouncing from one side of the aisle to the other. Frank left the big doors at the back open, and sunlight spilled inside, beckoning the animals.
The dogs, big cats, a few wolves, and one lone hyena, mostly watched the other animals with caution before they crept out of their cages. Once the animals were out, they snapped at each other a few times, but most of them simply ran for the sunlight.
Frank stepped out of the auction yard and turned quickly, walking along the wall towards the parking lot. Two wolves burst out of the building, headed for the clowns’ trailer, and disappeared into the fields. Several lionesses slunk out, heading along the wall away from Frank. The exodus was slow at first, but more and more animals plunged into the sunlight and left the auction yard behind.
He strolled across the parking lot over to the lone car. He knocked on the driver’s side window. The window rolled down. A voice, groggy and pissed, said, “Fuck’s your problem? What?”
Frank stuck the .30-.30 into the open window and fired. Someone else inside screamed. The passenger door popped open and another other dog owner sprinted across the gravel towards the building. Frank shot the guy in the leg. The man twirled like a ballet dancer and landed hard on his side in the gravel. He saw the back doors yawning open no more than ten yards away, a possible sanctuary, and crawled over and slammed the doors behind him.
Not all of the animals had left, though, and the guy had just locked himself in the building with the rest of them. Frank got a kick out of that; he waited until he heard screaming and then reopened the doors and left them open. He climbed back into Chuck’s truck, reloaded, and drove back down into town.
* * * * *
Frank peered over the edge of the deep end of the pool and saw that the Siberian Tiger was gone. They’d either taken it or it had been able to jump clear over the fence or scrabble up one of the walls, down near the shallow end. The Komodo Dragon was curled in his corner, surrounded by Mr. Noe’s bones.
Frank climbed down into the shallow end and unlocked the fence from the ladder, and dragged the concrete blocks back, clearing a pathway for the Komodo Dragon. That long tongue shot out and it tasted the air, looking from Frank to the shallow end. It broke for the new exit, moving fast, faster than Frank had expected. He didn’t bother running for the ladder, just hoisted himself onto the deck and scrambled to the front gate. He risked a look back. The dragon’s head appeared of the edge. The vicious claws scraped concrete. It wouldn’t take long for the giant lizard to be roaming the streets.
Frank left the front gate open, climbed into Chuck’s truck, but then noticed a pickup and camping trailer in the parking lot. It wasn’t Billy’s; Frank was hoping to run into the Komodo’s owner. He pulled into the lot and stopped next to the campfire. A steel coffee pot burbled happily to itself as it rested on a blackened grate over the coals. It smelled delicious. But with all the chemicals surging through his system, Frank decided he didn’t need any caffeine. He knocked briskly on the trailer door.
The door opened. A hunter stepped out onto the steps, scratching the four-day stubble on his chin. “Morning,” he said, looking down at Frank and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Morning,” Frank said. “Afraid I have to take a look at your hunting licenses.”
“Hunting license?” The hunter turned into the trailer. “Greg, you know anything about any licenses?”
Frank couldn’t hear Greg’s reply. The first hunter turned back to Frank. “You’re looking for what now?”
Frank shot the hunter in the chest. The guy went down hard on his ass, legs sticking out of the trailer. Frank stepped over him and found Greg rolling off the bed, bloated white flesh spilling out over his jeans as he struggled to pull a handgun from a leather holster. Frank shot him in the jaw. Greg spun sideways and left a spray of blood against the yellow fridge.
Frank slung the rifle over his shoulder and picked up Greg’s handgun. Greg waved his own hand a little, but Frank ignored him, concentrating on the pistol. A 1911 Colt .45. Semi-auto. Frank liked it immediately. Compared to the rifle, it was small, compact. It took a while, but he figured out how to release the magazine It held seven rounds.
Greg tried to get up. He was doing a damn fine job too, despite having half a jawbone and only one lower cheek, when Frank slapped the magazine back into the gun, yanked the slide back, and shot Greg in the stomach.
It was a practice shot, and it worked beautifully. Frank admired the lethal efficiency, the simplicity of the handgun, the feel of it jumping in his hand like something alive, while Greg fell against the table, landing on his ruined jaw. Greg made a sound like a rat getting its tail caught in a garbage disposal and dropped heavily back to the floor. Frank stepped over him and poked around a little and found a full box of shells. He slung the holster over his shoulder and put the box of shells in his suit pocket. Greg was still rolling around on the floor, but he was slipping into shock and wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
He heard a pickup door slam outside.
Frank stepped on the first hunter’s chest getting out. A third hunter was running for the road. He must have been sleeping in the pickup. Frank decided that, as much as he liked his new .45, this was a job for the .30-.30. He stuck the handgun into Chuck’s jeans, pulled the rifle in snug, tracked the running man for a moment, and shot him in the base of the spine.
The third man flopped onto the single rope of chain that separated the parking lot from the highway and twitched erratically, like a worm hung over an electric fence. The guy was making a high-pitched keening sound, and it hurt Frank’s head. He walked over and shot him a few more times with the .45.
Something out of the corner of his eye made Frank look up, bringing the Colt around, ready to fire. But there, not more than twenty yards away, he saw the Gloucks’ four-wheel drive station wagon, slowly rolling to a stop. Edie was driving, Alice next to her, Annie in the passenger seat; a handful of kids were stuffed into the back. They all stared.
* * * * *
Frank stuck the pistol in Chuck’s loose belt and tried to smile as the pill walked him over to the car. He caught a glimpse of himself in the car windows and something disgusting uncoiled in his chest and he thought he might throw up. He looked like some careless butcher with a hungry tapeworm; fl
ecks of blood, tissue, and bone were splashed across his suit and hands and face. The chassis of the station wagon was so high off the pavement he could look directly into their faces without bending over.
Annie stared through the bug-spattered windshield at the corpse on the fence and wouldn’t meet his eyes. Her expression told Frank that she didn’t care about anything, but he knew that wasn’t true because her legs were half-crossed, knees crushed against each other, calves rigid as she pushed up on the balls of her feet, fingers hanging onto each other for dear life. She felt Frank watching her, and tears spilled over the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
Alice raised a trembling hand. “Is that who…who killed Petunia?”
Frank thought it might make them feel better. “Yes.”
They were silent for a moment. “We’re going up to the lake to bury her, Frank. Would you like to come?” Alice asked.
“I can’t,” Frank said and focused on Annie. “Last night. I told you. Why didn’t you take the safe and leave?”
“Leave to where, exactly?” Edie asked. “This is our home.”
“I don’t think it’s your home anymore.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” Edie said.
“I don’t think you understand. Things have changed. Sturm—”
“We’ve dealt with Sturm for years. We can handle this.”
“Yeah, but once Jack and Pine and Chuck find—”
“You leave Jack and Pine to us, Frank. They’re family.”
“What?”
“Annie didn’t tell you? Jack and Pine don’t like to admit it, but they’re still our sons, even if they don’t come around much anymore.”
Frank remembered Chuck telling him not to bring up Annie around Jack and Pine, their resentment over not being invited to dinner, and their unrelenting hatred of the Glouck family. Now, looking at the mothers, the resemblance was faint, but it was there. Jack was Alice’s son, and Edie had had Pine. Looking back on everything, it made a weird kind of logic, but Frank had a feeling that if things got bad, real bad, if it came down to it, the clowns would take Sturm’s side over their own mothers. Being a family clearly meant more to Edie and Alice.
“You had no business volunteering Annie to go get that safe,” Edie continued. “We didn’t raise our children to be thieves. No, this is still our home, and it will be our home for a long, long time. We’re not looking to push Sturm into a fight.” She looked at the dead man on the fence and shook our head. “Our dog is gone. That’s enough. No more. You seem like a good boy, Frank, but you’ve gone too far. You should clear out before things get worse.”
Annie touched his hand. “Goodbye, Frank. Please take care of yourself.” And with that, Edie put the car in gear and they pulled slowly away. The few boys and Amber in the back, knees drawn up around the shrouded figure of Petunia, watched Frank with wide eyes.
He went back and sat in Chuck’s pickup. His head was starting to throb and he wondered if he should take another pill. Maybe Edie and Alice were right. Maybe he should just leave. This was their home. He had a little cash, not much, but enough that he wouldn’t have to spend the first few nights in the car. He could head west, see the ocean. He had a full box of rum in the trunk, after all. It might not be so bad, just sit on the beach and watch the waves for a while. He’d caused enough damage this morning. If nothing else, the remaining animals would most likely be shot, and wouldn’t be forced into fighting for their lives. Their deaths would be quick.
He watched the sun climb higher and made up his mind. He would go back to the long black car and drive away and never look back. It was over. He had done enough. The Gloucks knew where the gun safe was if they didn’t get paid. It was up to them now.
He twisted the key and stomped on the gas. Something about the animals nagged at him, like an infected tooth, but he couldn’t figure it out. He had done everything he could. He had turned them all loose. Sturm would have his hands full with over a dozen cats, a tiger, a few wolves, one lone hyena, and a goddamn Komodo Dragon running loose through town. If Frank’s luck held, he would make it back to the car without anyone seeing him and he could leave this valley forever.
Frank was nearly out of town when it hit him like a punch in the gut.
The rhino. He’d forgotten the rhino.
Last night, he’d turned the cats loose from the vet hospital, but hadn’t thought to go out to the barn. Goddamnit. He punched the steering wheel, pissed at his own stupidity and thirst for rum. It had gotten in the way. He pulled the truck in a wide U-turn and shot back into town, back to the vet hospital.
* * * * *
The rhino was gone.
The gate stood open, a few handfuls of grain scattered across the floor. “Shit,” Frank said, gritting his teeth. The drugs were really kicking his heart into high gear now, marching double-time through his limbs, making him flail and shiver and jump. He scratched his scalp with trembling hands and paced up and down the barn aisle.
The sudden urge to simply grab the .45 and start shooting at anything, everything, seethed through his veins, just unload his rage and guilt on the barn, the vet hospital, Chuck’s truck, the trees, the sun. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere.
As much as he tried to tell himself that all he had to do was jump back into the truck and drive out to the long black car and he would be free, he knew, deep down, that this was different. No matter how many bottles of rum he had, it wouldn’t be enough to blot the memory of the rhino’s warm breath on his hand. It wasn’t like the horses. Not that the rum had helped his nightmares much.
It didn’t matter that the rhino was damn near dead to start with. He was responsible. And if didn’t try, that wrinkled gray beast would haunt his nights for the rest of his life. “Shit,” Frank said again.
He went outside and stood in the sun. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but already the air was hot enough to singe his skin, his eyes, his lungs. Sweat boiled out of his pores, trickling down his temples and back and collecting in the insides of his elbows and knees.
He turned in a slow circle, wondering which way to head. Sturm’s ranch was probably the most logical place to start, but he sensed that it would probably be the last place he would have a chance to look. Sturm might be there, and even if he wasn’t, the place was undoubtedly crawling with hunters with guns.
So on the chance that the rhino was somewhere else, he decided to circle the town, check out some of the other fields where’d they been shooting. Then maybe swing by the auction yard again. If he got lucky, he would find the rhino and be on his way.
But as he drove into town, he wondered what the hell he was going to do if he found the rhino. It wasn’t like he could take it away with him. Shit, it wasn’t like he had really helped any of other animals out, not really. They were going to die, just the same. If you wanted to get right down to it, it was his fault these animals were here in the first place.
* * * * *
Frank had just unscrewed the cap on a fresh bottle of rum when he came upon a bunch of pickups at the town park. He slowed down, pulled Chuck’s hat lower over his face, and got a better look. Six or seven hunters gathered around one of the picnic tables out near the sidewalk. A bunch of small caliber rifles were laid out on the table. Theo walked along the bench seat on the other side of the picnic table, throwing his arms out in grand gestures and laughing.
And there was the rhino, tied to a tree in the middle of the park.
Frank hit the brakes. He pulled in next to the pickups and shut off the engine.
Theo’s voice drifted in through the open windows. “Fuck, it’s easy, ya’ bunch of pussies. Fifty bucks a bullet. That’s it. Just fifty bucks. You decide the target. Head or heart. It’s your call.” He had seen Chuck’s truck, assumed it really was Chuck, and just ignored him.
“We been shooting for half an hour,” one of the hunters said. “It ain’t going down.”
Theo snorted. “I s’pose you’re the kind of pussy that goes to Ve
gas and whines when you don’t hit the jackpot after giving a slot machine one pull. You never fucking know. Could be your bullet’s the one that cracks that skull. Or punches through that heart. Or it could be that the fucker finally just bleeds to death and you happen to have had the last shot. That’s the kind of game this is.” Theo checked his watch. “And in, oh, thirteen minutes, the price of the bullets go up to a hundred bucks a pop.”
The last hunter to shoot said, “Take your time, boys. Look at it, it’s not going down.”
“Fuck you, Todd,” another hunter said. “That sonofabitch is ready to fucking drop any second. Oh hell, here.” The hunter handed Theo two hundred. “Gimme four bullets.”
Frank felt icy fingers claw at his insides.
The thin crack of a .22 split the air. A tiny pop of rough hide and blood burst out of the rhino’s head. It swayed, blood running in swift rivulets along the wrinkles, but did not go down. The hunter fired again, at the same spot. More blood. The rhino still stood.
Frank squeezed the .405’s barrel until he heard his knuckles crack.
* * * * *
The hunter fired two more times, but still couldn’t kill the rhino. “Who’s next?” Theo cried. “We’ve gotta be close now. Could very well be the next shot is the one. Any bullet could do the job. You just never know. Just fifty bucks for another,” he checked his watch, “seven minutes. Then we’re up to a hundred bucks a pop. Come on you cunts, you drop it, you win it all.”
The hunters checked their wallets, argued with each other, and watched the rhino. It stood in the full sun, gray hide the color of ash, head down, eyes closed. Bullet holes the size of peas were clustered in two main areas, in the chest just behind the front leg, and in the head, under the ears. It had taken over fifty rounds of small caliber bullets, and somehow, it was still on its feet. Frank could hear its wheezing, agonized breathing from thirty yards away.
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