Hunters

by Chet Williamson

  "I'm not taking any chances, honest. I'm going to head over to the eastern entrance now."

  "Ned—"

  "Larry, if I thought there were any danger, I'd come in. But there isn't. I'll fill out a report for the wild shot, but that's all it was. Nobody's after me."

  Several miles away, Jean Catlett sat shivering behind the wheel of her jeep and watched Ned Craig's house. It was a modest place, a rustic A-frame with a large lot, and she thought that it couldn't be that big inside. Maybe a couple of small bedrooms upstairs with one large room and a kitchen downstairs.

  It had been cloudy all day, and she had been able to see into that downstairs front room just enough to detect a large, gray stone fireplace and wood paneling. Typical outdoorsy bullshit. Cars came and went frequently, and neighbors' houses were near, so she didn't go any closer to Craig's house.

  She had arrived there at eleven in the morning, shortly after she talked to Larry Moxon, who answered the number listed under "Game Commission: Law Enforcement Supervisor" in the phone book. She had hoped to find Craig somewhere in the field, and thought that if she did it would be easy to shoot him. If she shot a game warden other than Craig, it would be no big deal. They were all bastards anyway, helping to perpetuate a barbarous slaughter that they called hunting. The game wardens were as much to blame as the goddamned hunters. All they were there for was to make sure that the right animals died, and that no one cheated the state out of its blood money.

  But Moxon hadn't told her where Ned Craig was working today, so she couldn't very well surprise him there. Instead she had looked up his address in the phone book, and driven to the quiet residential street backed by thick woods. There she had waited for Craig to appear. It seemed unlikely that he would arrive home in the middle of the day, but she waited nonetheless, thinking that he might be home for lunch, or that if he had started early in the day, he might quit by mid-afternoon.

  She was disappointed in these suppositions, but shortly after three o'clock her heart started to race as a small, dark green car pulled into the short driveway of Ned Craig's house. But instead of the large, burly man that she had imagined, a tall woman with long dark hair got out. She was dressed casually in jeans and a waist-length, down-filled jacket, and had a leather portfolio tucked under her arm.

  Jean thought that maybe the woman was a reporter trying to get a story about the shootings, a real version of the false ID with which she had called Moxon. But when the woman slipped a key into the lock and went in, Jean figured she had to either be Craig's wife or his lover. She glimpsed the woman through the window, and the casual way she tossed her jacket on a sofa and threw herself on top of it confirmed her suspicions.

  This complicated matters, and Jean sat back and considered the situation, letting out her breath in a great puff of vapor that fogged the inside of the jeep window. From where Jean's jeep sat diagonally across from Craig's house, the tall woman looked as though she were sleeping on the sofa, or at least resting with her eyes closed. Jean started the engine, and winced as the still cold air poured out through the vents against her legs. By the time it was warm, the woman inside the house would be dead.

  That was the way to do it, wasn't it? Ned Craig had killed Jean's mate, so she would do the same to him, take away the person he loved most. It would be a good start, at any rate.

  She edged the jeep thirty yards ahead, until she was directly across from the A-frame. The couch was nearly parallel with the long wall, so that the size of the target was reduced, but her face was clearly visible. That was where Jean wanted the bullet to go. That was how she wanted Ned Craig to find his dead lover.

  An AK was in an unzipped, padded sleeve on the seat next to her, and she slid the weapon out. It was already loaded. She hadn't wanted to fumble when Craig finally put in an appearance. Jean rolled down the window. She was a right-handed shooter, so she shifted her body in the seat so that she could extend her right arm out the window. It was uncomfortable, but she could brace herself well against the door, the barrel through the window, the banana shaped magazine of the weapon inside. If the glass of the A-frame's large front window deflected her first shot, she could keep firing. There were thirty rounds in the AK that could be fired as fast as she could pull the trigger. If she couldn't tear up Craig's bitch with that firepower, she'd crawl back to Southern California.

  Jean took another look up and down the street, then pulled the AK back and waited for a ten year old Ford Escort to putter by. One last look, and she thrust the barrel out the window again and put the woman's head in the sights.

  Just as her finger started to tighten on the trigger, a grinding roar filled her ears. She twisted her head to look out the back window, and saw a beat-up pickup truck tearing down the street toward her. "Fuck!" she said, yanking the rifle back into the car again. "Go on, you bastard," she whispered angrily. "Hurry the hell up..."

  But the truck began to slow, and Jean rolled up her window and crouched down in her seat. The truck passed her and then cut in directly in front of her. One of the brake lights went on and the vehicle lurched to a stop two feet from the curb.

  The truck was a hideous piece of equipment. Ancient red paint had faded to nearly the same shade as the rust that covered the rest, except for the patches of gray primer that looked as if they had been applied with a sponge. Two bumper stickers, both tattered and faded, were on the tailgate. The first read, "Shit Happens," and the second proclaimed "Clinton For Change," with the "C" in Clinton formed by the Communist hammer and sickle. Great, Jean thought. A fucking genius.

  Her estimate didn't change when the driver got out. He was pure white trash, without a doubt, short and stringy with a stubbly little beard like the geeks in Deliverance. He had on one of those wool, red checked hunting shirts that every other hunter wore up here, and blue jeans that were way too dark to be fashionable. His brown hair desperately needed styling gel.

  The man's gaze fell on her then, and she froze. He gave her a leer, a twisted grin, and a two-fingered salute, then slammed shut his truck door and walked across the street toward Ned Craig's house, and up the walk with an air of one who belonged there.

  Jesus, she thought, could this be Craig? She had pictured the man as more official looking, and wearing a uniform, but maybe this bony, puny redneck was what game wardens looked like in this inbred backwater. If it was him, she would never have a better opportunity. She could take them both now. If he went in and sat on the couch next to his bitch, it would be the perfect setup.

  Jean feverishly cranked open the window and picked up the gun once more, twisting her body so that she could shove the barrel through the window. But the geek didn't walk right in through the door. Instead he knocked and waited, his hands stuck in the hip pockets of his jeans.

  The woman inside jerked upright, and Jean saw her get up and walk to the door. That did it then. Whoever it was, it wasn't Craig. Jean choked down her disappointment, set the rifle back on the seat, rolled up the window, and started the jeep. She pulled away without looking back.

  She hadn't gone two blocks before she realized that she was relieved that she hadn't had to kill anyone. But she told herself that didn't mean that she wasn't capable. When the time was right, she could do what had to be done. She could kill Ned Craig and his bitch. She could do it for Andrew, and she could kill for the animals.

  Megan had been thinking about her late husband Butch when she heard the knock on the door, and when she opened it she gasped, because she thought for a moment that it was Butch standing there in the cold, his red wool shirt open as always, as if to show everybody what a man he was. The man outside was Butch's height, and had his lanky build as well, along with the natural smirk that drew up the left side of his mouth. The resemblance was so uncanny that she almost flinched.

  "Yes?" she said, thinking that he didn't look like a salesman, or like the Jehovah's Witnesses who came through every year or so.

  "Oh...Mrs. Craig?" God, the voice was the same pitch as Butch's too, and had t
hat petulant bite to it.

  She wasn't about to correct his mistake, though. It wasn't this little man's business that she and Ned weren't married. "You're looking for Ned?"

  "Well, ma'am, I guess you could say I'm looking for a friend."

  The nonsensical words and the purposeful, almost desperate look on the man's face made her think for the first time that he might have something to do with what happened the day before, with what Ned had had to do, and she drew back a step.

  "No need to be scared, ma'am," the man said as he too retreated several steps, back to the edge of the porch. "I know Ned well. We been close, him and me."

  "Who are you?" Megan asked.

  "Well, you just tell him his brother came to call."

  "His brother?"

  "Yes, ma'am, that's right. "His blood brother." The man jerked his arm, and a knife with a long blade fell from his sleeve into his right hand.

  Megan sucked in her breath with a hiss. Immediately she began to calculate the time it would take her to slam and lock the door, then run upstairs and grab and load a gun before the man beat his way in. She knew she should do it now, but she stood there as if ensorcelled by the smiling man holding the knife whose dull blade shone only at the very edge, where it appeared to have been freshly honed. She knew that he could not reach her before she could slam the door, so she stood and watched, just the way she had stood and watched Butch grow madder and madder, until it was too late to run.

  But this strange man did not come at her with fists raised. Instead he kept smiling, and said, "I just want to leave a short message for my blood brother. Here it is." Then he took the knife and drew it across his left palm.

  Megan's eyes grew wide as the man grinned at the pain. He held up his hand so that Megan could see the other grin, the red one, in his hand. The hand closed as he squeezed the fist, and droplets of red fell from between his fingers onto the natural boards of the porch.

  He chuckled at the sight. "Don't slip on that now," he said, then cocked his head and looked at her. "What's your name, honey?"

  She didn't answer. She could only stand there, fascinated and horrified by the blood dripping onto her porch.

  "Well, it don't matter. I'll find out. And I'll be seeing you." He pointed at her with his bloody fist, then turned and walked down the drive as nonchalantly as if he'd just sold a vacuum cleaner, got into his truck, and drove away.

  Megan stood there, the door open to the chilling cold, for a long time. She was lost in terror, and lost in her memory of Butch, her husband who had been as mad as this man who smiled and drew his own blood on her porch and talked of blood brotherhood. Their grins had been the same, the grin while the man slashed himself, and the grin as Butch had slashed her with first his open palm, and then his fist, and then in other, far more intimate and more terrible ways. And the same words, over and over again—

  This is what you need, bitch...

  And today, although she knew this other madman was not, could not be Butch, it was almost as if he had come back to torment her, to accuse her of letting him die, to smile with that killer's grin and raise that bloody hand again and strike her, not only with his hatred, but with her own fear.

  But it must have something to do with Ned. He had asked for Ned, he had not come for her. It must have something to do with the other madman Ned had been forced to shoot yesterday. Still, as she finally turned back into the house, her mind was choked with thoughts of her husband, and that last day.

  He came home from work angry, ready for a fight. When she wouldn't give it to him, he hit her, and choked her, and was about to tear at her clothes, when suddenly something inside said no, no more of this, not ever again, and for the first time in her life she struck back. She hit him hard with her fist, right on the jaw, and heard something crack.

  It staggered him, just enough for her to push away, run past him and out the back door. She had no idea where she was going, but she knew she had to run. She could no longer be the good and patient wife, a vessel not only for her husband's lust, but also for his hatred of his sour, circumscribed, hopeless world, and she ran toward the rocks, thinking, rocks, won't you hide me, the cliff in back of their house that she climbed once nearly every day in fine weather with her strong, sinewy fingers.

  It was raining now, a light mist that dappled the gray ridges of stone with moisture, but it would take more than that to stop her. She knew that she was running for her life, and she heard the heavy, sodden footsteps and the ragged, furious breathing of her husband close behind, deadly purpose in both sounds.

  She did not pause when she reached the rocks, but went straight up, grasping the shards and ridges as easily as a ladder's rungs, pulling herself upward, out of reach of the taloned hand that swept up at her like an angry bear's, to rip the skin of her bare ankle, tear whatever it could, before she pulled it higher, away. Megan did not look back. She only climbed, and felt as though she were flying up the side of the cliff, a panicked bird seeking any nest except for the bitter one it had just fled.

  As if in response to her thought, a gray swift burst from its haven in the rock above her, startling her with its wet, feathery blur of motion so that she nearly fell, but caught herself in time, hitched a breath, and kept climbing. She felt safer now, high above her husband and the terrors of the world, and she turned to look down, as she always did, without fear of falling, as if a quick and fatal descent into Butch's world would be better than a slow, intact one.

  She was amazed to see that he was still pursuing her, only ten feet below, his teeth bared with the effort of his climb, his hands clawing for grips, the tips of his heavy, steel-toed shoes digging into the crevices of granite, displacing soft shale that her lighter tread had never broken. Her fear drove her upward, and she wondered for a terrifying instant what she would do when she reached the top, and there was nowhere higher to go.

  When she heard the cry below her, it sounded like a cry of triumph, and she expected to feel, a split second later, his wiry fingers close on her ankle and yank her from the cliff, indeed was nearly ready to welcome the fall into oblivion and darkness. But no angry hand grabbed her, and she heard the cry again, further away, and thick with the fear she felt.

  She paused, looked down, and what she saw filled her with both a deep chill and a dark joy. The shale of a ledge on which she had trod countless times had finally crumbled beneath her husband's feet, and Butch was hanging from his right hand over the abyss, his left hand scrabbling for a hold on the smooth, wet rock. His heavily shod feet dangled like lead weights, ready to pull him down.

  He tried to grasp the edge of rock that his other hand clung to, but it was too small, and now he reached toward her, his hand twitching like a wounded bird. "Meggie..." he croaked. "Help..help me..."

  There was none of the monster in him now, only a little boy, fiercely frightened and in peril of his life, a stupid little boy who was suddenly afraid of pain and death and falling. Megan's feet were on a granite outcropping wide and strong enough to support them both. She dropped to her knees, twisted her body, and began to reach down toward Butch's hand. But what she saw in his eyes stopped her.

  It was not gratitude or relief she saw there, but a glare of triumph, of winning once again, of beating her one final time. It was a look that said, Pull me up, you bitch, and I'll kill you and tear out your guts to climb back down again.

  She knelt there, looking down at him until he knew that she was not going to help, that she was going to let him die. "Help me!" he cried, not fearfully now, but angrily, as if he feared the loss of his power over her more than his own death. "Meggie! Help me!"

  She couldn't move. She could only watch him as his free hand struggled upward to meet her in some way, if only to grasp her and drag her down with him. It was not like a bird now, but like a crushed, thrashing snake, and she pulled away from it.

  Megan stood up, and watched for what seemed like hours until his white fingers finally weakened and slid on the moist rock, and he fell, shout
ing as he flew away from her, words that she did not then understand, and even though she had heard them a thousand times since, waking and sleeping, had never understood.

  Afterward, and even now, she did not know whether the hatred she saw in her husband's face as she started to reach for him was really there, or if she had put it there herself, if, tired of the beatings and the rapes and the words that hurt even more, she had let him die rather than saved her own life.

  The police were more forgiving. Butch had a reputation, and although she had never pressed charges, enough people had witnessed Megan's humiliations that no time was lost in pronouncing the death accidental. It helped that the district magistrate's wife was a friend of Megan's mother, who had told her tales of her daughter's woe at length.

  And though it had all happened years before, and half a state away, Megan still kept it with her every day, wondering what she had done, and why she had done it. Her life was far better now, that much was true. She had a man who loved her and never touched her except with gentleness, love, or passion. But she always had Butch as well, walking just behind her, breathing around the corner, hanging beneath her on the cliffs of her dreams, falling away until his grin was only a speck of white in the darkness, and his cry the faintest murmur of night wind.

  She thought she heard that cry today, in the madman's I'll be seeing YOU. She wondered if it was true, and feared that it was.

  Afraid to stay in the house any longer, she left Ned a note telling him that she had gone down to the newspaper office, and that he should meet her there. On the way out the door, she thought about getting a pistol from upstairs and putting it in her purse, but decided against it. It had been a gun, after all, that had started all this. If this crazy man hadn't been a friend of the butcher Ned had killed the day before, then who the hell else could he be?

  "Goddam, goddam, goddam! That was great!" Sheldon Lake crowed as he drove. He steered the car with his right hand, and squeezed a white handkerchief in his left. The blood soaked into it, making it red.