The Killer's Game

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The world was coming back green, and he felt like there was nothing much left but the green. His parents were long dead now. The Revolution had taken them.

  Back in the before time, the bad times when he was really small, he hid more than anything. The people who survived the fighting didn’t seem much interested in him. Sometimes someone would take him in and feed him. Sometimes he’d just steal food. He stole so little, no one much minded. One time an ugly man, an outsider who talked funny tried to take him outside of town on his bike but Jim cut him with his knife and bit him for good measure and escaped. And then Sleepy Sam had killed him after a poker game went wrong and the man refused to hand over his bike. Jim never knew the drifter’s name. He hadn’t been a regular in Mud Creek and certainly not on his street.

  Part of the street sign had broken off so he couldn’t quite remember the whole name of the street. Something Heights. His mom had had a book called Wuthering Heights that she liked a lot. “Nobody ever wrote a book as good as Wuthering Heights.” Funny how things stuck in a person’s head. Jim took to calling his place “Wuthering Heights” although most of the house had burned down during the Revolution when his parents ran off and left him or were killed. He couldn’t remember anything. Seemed his life began one day when he woke up in the back seat of the SUV, head on his plaid backpack, sucking his thumb and holding on to his old brown teddy and his blue blankie and his crackers. He loved his warm sleeping space in the family’s unworkable SUV that was parked in what was left of the garage. He had been old enough then to survive.

  And, in time, there was no one really hunting boy meat anymore, or anybody doing much of anything. Sleepy Sam said the cannibals focused on the still-crowded cities, not on the dead little towns or out here on the fringe—that’s what Sleepy Sam said. Jim thought that suited him just fine out here by the rockets. And as far as it went, he was okay. Cannibals didn’t like rockets, he guessed. Can’t eat rockets. And they didn’t seem to like any meat but human meat. Animal meat must seem too tame.

  “Stay here and keep your nose clean,” Sleepy Sam said. He had a generator so he had electricity when the lights went out and stayed out a few years ago.

  Most people left the little town during the Revolution or were killed by the monsters and the cannibals. Some stayed and some came back, then left again. They were primarily teens with no parents and no place to go, but the intense jungle that had suddenly surrounded and engulfed the town freaked them out and most left. They liked concrete and danger better. It put him in mind of The Jungle Book he kept in his ragged backpack. His parents were long dead now but they used to read from that book sometimes, together at night when he was little and dreaming about living in a jungle someday and here he was. The Revolution had taken his parents but given him back the jungle. He kept a picture of another jungle at his sleeping space. He’d stolen it from the library. The picture also showed some terrible animals attacking each other. What if this jungle would summon such creatures? He began considering the possibility such wild beasts might arrive and decided he would always be ready. He kept his pocketknife, a sharp stick and a hammer always handy.

  Not long ago there was a group that rode into town who seemed nice at first and then turned deadly. He had had little to no interaction with those just passing through Mud Creek, but these people laughed and danced and sang a lot. They built a big bonfire and ate rabbits and squirrel they shared with him. They made a game out of chasing a big beach ball one of them blew up and threw around like it was something special. Then one of the women got angry, the red-headed leader and her man who had a long, black beard. They fought like feral cats and it scared him. He crawled back home when they started killing each other.

  The next day, when he went to see if their camp in the parking lot of the abandoned police station was still there, he found it abandoned. Gone from Mud Creek. He was relieved and sad at the same time.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Sleepy Sam had said when Jim told him and his son. Cranky Dan’l, who rarely spoke, nodded his head.

  “Dey kilt my hog, Billy. I hate dem,” Dan’l said.

  “They be lost wanderers, those gypsy kind. They don’t care about nothing but getting high and eatin’ all they can, stealin’ all they can and fightin’ about what they didn’t eat and didn’t steal,” Sleepy Sam said.

  “But they danced. They sang songs. They seemed real happy and they just went crazy.”

  “I know. But the whole world be crazy now, son. Just keep clear of weirdos.”

  Jim took the advice and a hat full of eggs and left.

  Mud Creek was just a little town near the Rockets now. Weeds and grass grew in the cracks of the streets, curbs and sidewalks. The windows of most buildings no longer were glass. Most of the stores had been looted and truthfully, Jim had done his share of looting before going away to hide, but after most of the people left, he found it just wasn’t as much fun doing it alone.

  Jim knew there was still much to be had for one man and he shouldn’t act like a kid, afraid of the ghosts in the stores. If he needed something now, he just took it like a man. Jim knew he had to act like a man now, not a little boy. The encounter with the ugly man had taught him that, as much as his own jungle dreams which sometimes included a sad-faced girl with big eyes and soft pink lips.

  He wondered where everyone had gone to after they left Mud Creek and what in the Sam Hill could be better out there? He envisioned only the worst. All of them gone crazy and eating one another like sharks with blood in the water.

  The town provided most of his needs and the library had provided books that taught him about things like sharks that he had never seen except in pictures, and about bears and such, the monkey, the lion, the birds. From Sleepy Sam and Cranky Dan’l, he also learned about how to plant the seeds from the stores, and because he planted them behind the garage, he survived because he didn’t have to depend on Sleepy Sam or on anyone. He even bartered with his extras, sometimes with an old lady who made beeswax candles. She sold them in the center of town along with some moonshine her old man made, but she frightened him. She always made awful cannibal jokes.

  “I got me a hankering for boy today. My stomach aches to eat me some boy. You know some boy I can eat? What’s pink and white and et’ all over?” she’d laugh.

  “Raw boy,” Jim would have to say or she wouldn’t exchange her candle for what scavenged item he was proffering, usually some stolen book, unbroken crockery or beans. Mr.’s moonshine wasn’t too bad and it was cheap. A book of matches and Jim was set with a jar full of amber fire. He didn’t drink it, though. He used it to clean stuff.

  Their set-up was in an old gasoline station that smelled funny. He avoided Mr. and Mrs. (they had no other names that Jim knew of). He preferred the Rockets.

  He had even come to like the quiet, the sky and the moon, the stars at night. The sun in the daytime. The rain. He had a good shelter not far from the SUV where he hid things and sometimes slept when he wasn’t too scared. It was inside one of the old Rockets and it was roomy in there and the power that ran the lights never went down. It was not bad at all. He felt safe there, protected.

  Being alone was not bad until he saw the girl. Saw her one day in town while he was hunting for things to barter with to go with what he grew. Saw her scrounging through an old Wal-Mart store, dressed only in a pink T-shirt, flip-flops and boy’s underwear. He saw her. She saw him. And she ran. And in that moment he knew he did not truly like being alone or with farts like Sleepy Sam and his dumb son.

  After that, he thought of her often. Her long, blonde hair and the way she looked in that underwear.

  He knew about girls—and women like Mrs. and the insane warrior woman and her maniac man who fought till they died. Girls were better. There had been girls when there was a school, but after the Revolution there were few more girls to see, just some guys. The girls often fled to the cities. He assumed some girls lived nearby, he’d just never seen any. He thought most went into hiding becau
se of the monsters that enjoyed taking women to their masters, so he thought they were all gone and he figured cannibals liked girl meat even more than boy meat. He liked to watch the old movies Sleepy Sam had on videos and DVDs. Sleepy Sam had quite a stash and Jim had loved watching the Star Wars series over and over but Sam always demanded payment. Jim had swiped the first Star Wars movie and watched it several times on a small, battery-powered DVD player he had found in some rich person’s house, but the battery went dead and he hadn’t found another battery that would work. After a while, though, he just got tired of the movies, especially the porno films Sleepy Sam adored. Too many pretty women in the movies.

  It was better to know you were alone, and just be alone, and learn to like it. If you didn’t, you thought too much, and if you thought too much, you hurt too much, and that led to wondering too much about imagined things that could not be. Then, if you held yourself in your hand at night and made pleasure come, it became a mean, hollow pleasure that only made you want the other and that made you feel just how lonely and alone you truly were.

  If you didn’t watch the DVDs and the jerky videos, then you didn’t think about it so much.

  Not so much.

  Not as much.

  But, once he knew the girl existed, he could not rest. He could no longer be alone and like it.

  Alone was no longer the absence of others. It was a hollow ache, a hole that couldn’t be plugged and had no bottom. Then he asked Sleepy Sam what he did to get over being lonesome.

  “I just never think about it none.”

  “What about Dan’l’s mom?”

  “She died.”

  “Well, how’d you get over it?”

  Sleepy Sam attacked the dirt with his hoe. “You just don’t.”

  “Well, then how do you stand it?”

  “You just do.”

  Not much help. Jim supposed the two were his best friends in the universe but they weren’t really very bright. He guessed he would have to find the girl. He needed to talk to her.

  On another day, as the year wound down and summer died out and the cool winds came in, bringing the first rains of the winter to come, he went back to town and scrounged about for some canned goods. He found some canned meat, and was happy even if the expiration date had come and gone years ago. He thought pork and beans and tuna and Spam would just make Mr. and Mrs. the happiest souls on the planet. And the tin of sardines, even if slightly spoiled, would make Sleepy Sam laugh. He also found a CorningWare lid in excellent condition. That should be worth three candles at least. If he had a gun he might shoot something fresh to eat, but he had only seen a few crows and scrawny squirrels.

  All the guns in town had been taken; the stores looted of them and their ammunition. So that was out. He fished from time to time with a pole, cord, and hook made from a paper clip. Worms he dug out of the ground for bait. Sometimes he used crickets. But finding the canned meat was a good thing. He had thought it was all gone, but there were several cans in a store he thought he had checked out. They were stashed under a tarpaulin inside an old standing fridge.

  It was the store where he had first seen the girl. He was hoping she might be there.

  She wasn’t.

  He took the meat back to the rocket ship and ate the Spam with some fresh carrots and enjoyed it, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about the girl, and he couldn’t be happy alone anymore.

  The boy had long, dark hair. He kept it tied back with a strip of black leather. He acted tough, like he owned Mud Creek and he made her so angry. He stole her stash of food that she’d found the day before. She watched him cram everything into a kid’s backpack. Her stomach growled. He was like a monster, one of those creeps that stole her family. She hated him and yearned for him at the same time. She decided to stalk him, pretend he was a beast she could capture and roast over a slow fire for dinner. A little garlic made anything edible. She carried a jar of garlic powder, pepper, and salt with her at all times. Her mother had taught her how to cook when she was six years old. That was how old she was when the rockets came and the Revolution began.

  The monsters. The cannibals. The robots.

  How long had it taken her to reach Mud Creek? “Get to Mud Creek,” were her mother’s last words before the fire and the screams sent her running into the forest straight into the claws of a monster. She had told her the coordinates every night before bedtime and what to do when she got inside one of the spaceships. “Go home,” her mother said. Sally didn’t know where home was. She had to find out though.

  She followed him quietly, like an Indian. Mother was an Indian. Maybe. Actually, Sally was not sure what Mother was, just that she was alone and much older than six.

  And now seeing her reflection always disturbed her. How did she get so big? Her body had betrayed her. She even bled once a month and that meant she could have a baby. She saw a monster take a baby once. And she didn’t want to know what it did with it. It frightened her. How she wanted to rip it from its claws and protect it.

  That was when she got the dog. The dog, a shaggy, Golden Retriever became her friend and loyal companion. She knew his breed because her mother once showed her a dog book with wonderful pictures. When she saw him scavenging for food on the outskirts of a city, she called to him with a pang of longing sweeping through her: “Little One!” He came to her as if he had always known her. They slept together at night, Sally’s hand often resting on his head. It was better than being alone. But the dog couldn’t talk. She wished it could talk, explain to her what had gone so terribly wrong with the world that they had been forced to live like this, so alone, so horribly, hideously alone.

  She called the dog Little One even though he wasn’t exactly little because someone had once called her that. Maybe her mother or her father had whispered those words—his face was an even more distant memory than her mom’s, featureless with two dark smudges for eyes and a mouth that never opened except to say, “Good bye.” She was not sure. Maybe she didn’t even have a dad.

  Sally tracked the boy to the library, a place of rotting books and broken computers, several times. It took all her courage to confront him on the third visit. He rummaged in the librarian’s office, squatting in front of an old DVD player. “If I could just figure out how to make a battery or make a generator. I really should study on it some. I think I could do it…” he said out loud, as if he knew she was standing behind him.

  “I hate you,” she finally said to force him to turn around, her shadow almost touching his. Of course he knew she was there. The light in her lantern glowed.

  “Say what?” he turned slowly and looked at her.

  “Won’t do no good,” she said, “—that thing can’t hear you scream when I kill you. I’ve decided to roast you well-done with wild onion and garlic or make me some boy jerky that will last me a year or more. How’d that be? You scared yet?” She set the lantern down with one hand. In the other she held a Glock 19, something she stole from the last cannibal she’d killed.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” the boy said, eyes wide. The gun always frightened the country boys.

  Sally smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you got a knife, show it now. Toss it over here or I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”

  The knife slid between her feet. “I’m unarmed now. You got me dead to rights. But are you sure you want to kill and eat me? You don’t look like a cannibal.”

  “There ain’t much meat on you, I do confess. Some fat makes for better eating when it comes to roast meat.”

  “I got some carrots, onions, potatoes and I can get some eggs. Wouldn’t that taste better?”

  “Yeah and I bet you’ve got some Spam, pork and beans and sardines. Am I right, you lousy, no good, asshole THIEF?”

  “And you got a cute T-shirt and some Hanes underwear I think I might like to have. Fair exchange?”

  “Not on your life,” Sally said, trying to keep a smile from flickering across her lips. The fall weather meant her legs were
cold. And the T-shirt wasn’t enough to protect her against the cold to come.

  “And tea. I got tea back at my sleeping space. Lipton or some Stash spice tea I’ve been keeping for just the right time. I’ll share it with you if you don’t kill me. That’s a fine piece of gun you got there. I don’t reckon I’ve seen one of them guns before. Not in these parts, anyway. You from the city?”

  “I want my food back.”

  “I’ll give it to you, just put the gun away. Okay? Let’s be friends.”

  Her dog, Little One, had done nothing. He had stood beside her, didn’t growl and his tail began wagging.

  “Nice dog. What’s its name?”

  “Little One.”

  “He’s not very little.”

  “I know and if you are mean to me, one word and you’re dead meat.”

  “Okay.”

  “So—do you want to go shopping with me? I need me some clothes.” Mother and Sally used to go shopping. She would never forget shopping. That was another word for scavenging now.

  “Only if you don’t kill me if we don’t find much. There is this little clothes place that still has some wearable stuff. I bet you’re kind of cold.”

  Sally looked at her torn, smelly T-shirt. “Yeah, I am. Lead the way.”

  The boy stood. He was a young man with long legs in worn jeans. The bare chest that showed through the opening of his button-less flannel shirt had brown hair on it while his shirt had sleeves that were far too short for his arms. He had some hair on his face, too, not a lot but enough to scare her just a little bit. At least it wasn’t a lot and it looked kind of fine. Sally also realized he was a lot taller than she was. She followed him cautiously.

  He led her out of the library and down about three blocks or so, to a small department store. A few mannequins still stood in one display, miraculously sporting the latest in pre-Revolution, post-Republic of Texas fashion, cobwebby and filthy. But the shoes looked intact—sturdy black shoes that might fit. Hands slightly shaking, she snatched them and tried them on. He threw her some socks. She put them on and then tried the shoes. They fit. “This is good,” she said. She didn’t know how long they’d last but she’d take them.