The Wilds

by Richard Laymon

  Wasn’t too careful about it, either. In my rush to jerk the knife out of harm’s way, I slashed my trunks.

  About that time, water started splashing up my legs. I had a pretty good lead on Max. I figured to run out a bit father, then dive and swim away from her. But the plan went to hell when I pulled the knife. The trunks went loose, slipped down and grabbed me around the thighs. I fell sprawling. Smacked the water. Before I could push myself up, she was on me.

  She dragged my trunks all the way down and off. She flipped me over onto my back. She dropped to her knees between my legs and grabbed my butt with both hands and hauled me up out of the water. She didn’t even glance at my face, just kept her eyes on my dick, panting as she pulled me higher. Then she licked her lips and bowed down.

  Maybe she wanted to suck me off.

  Maybe she wanted to bite me off.

  I never found out which. I put my knife into her left eye.

  As I already wrote, it was a very big knife.

  It stopped a few inches in when the blade got too wide for her eye socket. It got kind of caught in the bone hole, and I had a hard time pulling it out. Her head jerked every which way while I worked on removing the knife. The whole time, stuff kept pouring out of the socket onto my belly and groin. Not just blood, but glop and pieces of bone.

  At last, I got the knife out of her. I shoved her away, then scurried out to deeper water and washed myself off.

  I was pretty grossed out, actually.

  And petrified. Now I’d killed one of these throw-backs. There’d be hell to pay.

  I had to get out of there.

  Get while the gettin’s good.

  What the hell is that, Get while the gettin’s good? Anyway, it went through my head like a chant – get while the gettin’s good, get while the gettin’s good – over and over again as I scanned the shore in a panic and splashed my way out of the water and ran into their camp.

  Told myself to calm down. The others wouldn’t be back for a while. When they couldn’t find me at the place by the stream, they’d probably search around for a while. I had time.

  So I threw some more food into the backpack. Held the knife between my teeth to leave my hands free. Which made breathing hard. After a while, it made my jaw ache. A very big, heavy knife.

  When I had enough food to last me a couple of weeks, I swung the pack onto my back.

  Gotta get while the gettin’s good.

  Right.

  I took the knife out of my mouth and stood there, taking deep breaths.

  Gotta get!

  There was a single, logical place to go. Back to my car. A long journey, but from there I could drive away and be safe. No other course of action would be safe. My only chance for survival, it seemed, was to drive out of the wilds, back to civilization.

  And I’d better get started fast.

  Get while the gettin’s good.

  God only knows why I stayed put. I just stood there with the pack on my back and the knife in my hand, staring at nothing in particular while I tried to make up my mind.

  Maybe I had made up my mind, but just hadn’t admitted it yet.

  It felt a little as if I was in a trance.

  I got to feeling very calm, and didn’t even get worked up when the voices came.

  At the sound of the voices, I unshouldered the pack and eased it to the ground. I ducked inside one of the tents. It was a red tent. The sun came through, filling the air with ruddy light. It made my skin look red. Two sleeping bags were spread out side by side. I turned myself around so I faced the front, lay down flat in the middle and put one eye to the narrow gap between the flaps.

  I had a while to wait. The sleeping bags felt soft and nice under me, but the air was heavy, stifling. The tent was like a car parked in the sunlight, its windows shut. Sweat poured off me. It tickled. It stung my eyes. It made the handle of the knife slippery.

  Beyond the gap, dust motes swirled in the sunlight. A chipmunk atop a shadowed rock reared up and gazed toward the lake. I saw the leaves of a bush near the fireplace shiver with the touch of a breeze.

  The stifling air smelled of pine and old dry wood, mixed with a faint but pungent odor of plastic from the tent and sleeping bags. There was also a sweetish aroma of insect repellent.

  I watched an ant crawl across a twig a few inches beyond the tent opening.

  I heard everything.

  I heard myself. Each breath trembled. My heart thumped very loud. I heard the blood surging through every vessel in my body. My eyelids made soft, wet clicking sounds when I blinked. Each dribble of sweat whispered a soft hiss as it skidded down my skin.

  Those were my sounds, but not the only sounds. Off in the distance, gulls squealed. The wind made a long shhhhhh. Near and far, bugs hummed and buzzed. The voices got louder.

  There would be Skinny, Fatso, and Muscles. There would be T-shirt girl and My Girl.

  My Girl?

  I wished.

  Me against five.

  It was very likely that I would be killed.

  I thought about that Indian who was about to go into battle (maybe at the Little Big Horn?) and supposedly said, “It is a good day to die.” But I think maybe he was full of shit – that there’s no such thing as a good day to die.

  I decided that there are good places to die, though.

  This was a good, peaceful place. The idea of being dead here didn’t seem terrible. Not in the tent, but out in the open. I would be a body on the ground like the bodies of dead insects, dead birds, trees that had fallen and were gradually becoming part of the ground. All of us slowly becoming part of things. Blending in.

  It seemed all right. It seemed almost perfect.

  But then they walked into camp, talking calmly. And terror squeezed me.

  Their voices suddenly changed.

  “Holy shit!” one blurted.

  The other yelled, “Max!”

  They ran past the tent.

  Two of them. Skinny and Fatso. As they ran by, Skinny threw down the easel he’d been carrying. He propped a canvas against a rock with a certain amount of care, while Fatso simply dropped his wooden box. The box was the size of a small suitcase, and I found later that it was loaded with tubes of paint, a palette, brushes, rags and other odds and ends an artist might need for depicting mountain scenery.

  In a moment, the two guys were out of sight.

  I crawled from the tent. Nobody else was there. The air felt cool, delicious.

  They stood at the edge of the lake, apparently staring at Max. She was a few yards out on the water, floating on her back.

  They wore jeans, but no shirts. Their backs and arms were acrawl with green and blue and red tattoos.

  Skinny heard me first. When he started to turn around, I chopped the side of his neck with my Bowie knife. The blade made a soft thump. I had no trouble pulling it out. It left a deep raw wedge that sprayed blood.

  He yelled and grabbed the wound and kept turning around. I elbowed him out of my way. As he stumbled backward, I went for the Fatso. He squealed like a woman and put out his hands and backed away from me. He was almost as floppy as Max.

  I went after him. He said things like, “What’s the matter with you?” and “Why are you doing this?” and “Leave me alone!” and “Don’t hurt me! Please, please, don’t hurt me.”

  He kept his hands out in front of him to ward off the knife.

  They got awfully hacked up. He lost a few fingers. He had the head of a screaming woman tattooed on his big old belly. She looked like Medusa. When I finally got past his hands, I put the blade right into Medusa’s mouth.

  His own mouth made a tight little O and he said, “Oooooo.”

  I pulled the knife out and he dropped onto his butt.

  Then Skinny came at me from behind. He was bloody all over, and wet from falling into the lake. He wasn’t in very good shape any more. I put the knife in under his chin so hard it lifted him to his tiptoes.

  After that, I finished off both of them. />
  Three down, three to go.

  I felt great. Better maybe than I’d ever felt before. And more excited, too.

  I should’ve been scared about going after the rest of them – especially Muscles. The guy was big and buffed and could probably take me apart with his bare hands. I should’ve been terrified. But I looked forward to nailing him. I relished the idea.

  Not as much, though, as I relished the idea of getting the two gals.

  I couldn’t wait.

  So after washing the blood off me, I went looking for them. I scurried and crept, stealthy as a savage. And found the others in a cove near the south end of the lake.

  Not all the others. Just Muscles and the T-shirt girl. The girl I wanted most – my former captive – was still missing.

  The two I found were together on a slab of granite that slanted down into the water.

  Today, the gal wore a bright orange T-shirt. She sat with her back straight, her legs crossed, a fishing pole in her hands. Her line was in the water. She used one of those bobbers that’s like a small plastic ball. It drifted on the water a few feet in front of the rock ledge where she sat.

  She wasn’t watching her bobber. Her head was turned toward Muscles, just over to her right.

  He was doing push-ups.

  He wore leopard skin bikini pants. With every push-up, muscles bulged and writhed under his gleaming tanned hide.

  I trembled as I watched him.

  He was a sleek and powerful beast. My prey.

  He did forty push-ups just while I was watching, and he was still at it when I hurried away.

  I came back a little while later in the water, steering Max beside me. She floated very well on her back. I guided her with the knife, which I’d plunged in under her shoulder blade. Her body made a good holder for the knife, and the knife made a good handle for propelling her alongside me.

  I kept her body between myself and the shore.

  I had my head just beneath her armpit and close to her body. There, I not only had the thickness of her upper torso for shelter, but also the great hills of her beautifully decorated breasts.

  My head was basically wedged into the soft V between her thick upper arm and her side. Her skin felt slippery and very cold against my face.

  Concealed by my barge of tattooed female flesh and fat, I made my way toward the cove.

  We stayed far out.

  I could see nothing except Max. She had no tattoos on her side. That stretch was a clean slate of shiny skin as white as a fish belly.

  “How’s the water out there, Maxine?” called a voice I took for that of the T-shirt gal.

  Maxine, of course, ignored her.

  “Yo! Y’deaf?” A few moments passed. Then, in a voice that wasn’t so loud, she said, “Hey, Miles. Miles! Cut it out. There’s something the matter with Max.” Another pause. “See? She doesn’t wanta move or nothing. And look at her eye. There’s something funny about her eye.”

  The funny thing about Max’s eye was that it was Fatso’s eye. It had been a major improvement over her raw empty socket. I hadn’t given the whole thing much thought – putting in a fresh eye had seemed like a good idea. Guess I wanted my decoy to look alive.

  I won’t go into all the gory details. I did a fast and messy job, got Fatso’s eye out in one piece (his face wouldn’t win any prizes afterward, ha ha), but I kind of screwed the eye up when I tried to shove it into Max’s socket. Anyway, I got it in, but the thing ended up looking a bit shriveled and crooked.

  Miles said, “Yeah. Looks kinda fucked up.” Then he called, “Max! Are you okay? What’s wrong with you?”

  Pretty soon, the gal said, “She isn’t dead, is she?”

  “Naaah.”

  “She kind of looks dead.”

  “Naaah, she’s fine.”

  “She doesn’t look very fine.”

  Miles shouted, “Damn it, Max! He sounded steamed.

  “You’d better go in and get her.”

  “You go in and get her if you want her so bad.”

  “I can’t swim, and you know it. If I could swim, I would. I think she’s dead. We can’t just leave her in there. What if she sinks?”

  “She’s too fat to sink,” Miles said.

  “Maybe she pitched a heart attack.”

  “That’d surprise the hell out of me. Her cardio-vascular system’s gotta be shot to shit. I’m surprised she didn’t drop dead years ago, the cow.”

  “Shhhh. What if she hears you?”

  “I thought you said she’s dead.”

  “I don’t know she’s dead. She just isn’t moving, that’s all. And her eye. Does a heart attack fuck up your eye?”

  “Maybe we better go find Doug and Louie.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp. Go in and get her.”

  “Let Louie do it. She’s his wife. Sides, he swims better than me.”

  “That’s a hell of a note. What good are all those muscles of yours if you can’t even…”

  “They’re dense, hon. They weigh me down like rocks.”

  “If you had any rocks, you’d quit whining and go after her.”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez! Chill. I’ll do it. Okay?”

  I waited to hear a splash.

  Instead of a splash, I heard Miles say, “It’s freezing, Liz!”

  “You big baby!”

  “Okay, okay!”

  At last, the splash. From the sounds of churning water, Miles was swimming toward me on the surface.

  I tugged my knife out of Max, then took a deep breath and ducked underneath her. My eyes were open, so I could see up through the water. The sunlight came in at an angle, bands of it slanting down like the blades of golden swords. Except you could see through these blades, and they were full of swirling specks – dust and bugs and bits of dead stuff. It was lovely to look at, but sort of made you want to take a bath.

  Then Miles came along.

  He was swimming, stretched out straight, blocking the sunlight, churning the water with a pretty good form when I got him.

  Put my knife into his belly button and shoved up. The knife punched into him, but the shove thrust me downward, too. I went down so fast that the blade pulled right out of him.

  It got a little crazy after that. (Maybe it had gotten a little crazy before that, ha ha.)

  Anyway, Miles grabbed onto Max and tried to climb on her as if she were a life raft and if he could only board her, he’d be all right. But she couldn’t hold his weight up. She sank and rolled. The two of them looked like wrestlers.

  He should’ve been wrestling with me, not her.

  Lucky break for me.

  I caught hold of his pony tail. Hanging onto that so I wouldn’t go scooting away again, I stabbed him a few times in the back. Then I cut his throat.

  I surfaced on the other side of Max. That way, I could grab some air without Liz seeing me. She sounded hysterical. She was yelling stuff like “Miles! What’s going on! Stop it! If you think you’re being funny, you’re not! Miles!”

  Then I swam under Max and over Miles. He was sinking, so maybe he’d been right about his muscles being as heavy as rocks. He was going lower and lower, ribbons of blood curling up from his throat. A tiny fish, flashing silver in the faint light, darted in at his neck and nibbled a shred of something.

  Miles looked as if he planned to sit on the bottom. He was all wavery and shimmery. His head was back. He seemed to be watching me. Both his arms were raised toward me, and the fingertips of one hand stroked my thigh as I swam over him.

  His touch sent goosebumps racing all over my skin.

  I liked it.

  I swam under water all the way, then reached high and grabbed the edge of granite and burst through the surface – up into the hot air and sunlight in an explosion of spray.

  Liz was squatting about six feet away. She glanced at me, then lowered her head. She reached down between her knees and rummaged through a rusty green tackle box.

  I scurried onto the granite slab and went for her.<
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  Letting out a cross between a whine and a growl, she sprang up and hurled the tackle box at me. The instant it left her hands, she spun around and ran.

  My left arm whacked the tackle box away. But out jumped everything; a stringer, needle-nosed pliers, the Swiss Army knife that Liz had probably been searching for, plus leaders and weights and bobbers and hooks, small jars of bait, rubber worms, and a collection of artificial lures.

  Most of the stuff either missed me or bounced off.

  Nothing really hurt me.

  Except the lures.

  Beautiful, sparkling bright decoys shaped like small fish, most about the size of my thumb. Some were outfitted with silvery spoons to make them jig in the water. Others had spinners, and some had squidlike rubber tentacles. From every last one of the lures dangled no less than three small grappling hooks.

  I don’t know how many lures hit me. But six of them stuck.

  They hit, then started to fall, then found pieces of my bare skin to snag with their barbed hooks.

  One pierced my shoulder, one my upper arm. Another hooked my left nipple. Another got me at the knob of my hip bone. One caught my thigh. And then there was the big silver minnow that dropped onto my boner. It lay there like a guy trying to shinny up a tree trunk. Its barbs gripped me like tiny, sharp fingernails. I clamped the knife between my teeth, then used both hands and very carefully removed it.

  Couldn’t even think about Liz until that was taken care of.

  She should’ve used the opportunity to run. Instead, she only backed away as if she were afraid to take her eyes off me.

  I threw away the damn minnow, decided I could live with the rest of the lures, snatched the knife out of my teeth and went for her.

  That’s when she turned tail and ran.

  But it was too late.

  I raced after her, leaping from rock to rock, then chasing her through the trees. She headed in the direction of her campsite. Maybe she thought Louie and Doug would save her.

  The lures were a nuisance. They dangled and bounced like weird ornaments, digging their hooks in deeper, grabbing on with more barbs. I bled. My wounds hurt. But none of that slowed me down.

  Liz was halfway across a sunny clearing when I got her. A shove between her shoulder blades threw her headlong out of control. She hit the ground and skidded. Then she rolled onto her back and kicked and flapped her arms at me, trying to keep me away.