The Terror of Living

by Urban Waite

  Drake clutched the gun close to his body. He was running, following the imprint of Grady's footfalls in the new snow. In the dark he could see only about thirty feet in front of him before the prints disappeared into the night.

  The footprints went on, and he was running blindly. No sound, just the wind bringing the snow, then the shadow of someone running in the distance. He stopped in the street and raised the shotgun. A dull click of the trigger, the shotgun jammed and Drake just holding it useless in his hands. No time to dig the shell out. He threw the shotgun down and, running, brought out his service pistol from the holster at his belt.

  Drake came to the perimeter fence, barbed wire all the way along it. Tall grass poked up through the new snow, a buffer area of about a hundred yards between the perimeter fence and the last of the neighborhood houses. There were no streetlights now, just the distant blinking of the runway lights to guide him to Grady.

  HUNT TURNED THE TRUCK AROUND AND FOLLOWED the road to the edge of the airport fence. He found a small alley, where he parked the truck under cover of shadow and sat looking out at the world beyond. A strange stillness out there, a light wind working the falling snow, everything white.

  Hunt asked Nora again about the horses and told her to repeat the information back to him. When he was satisfied, he took the Browning and slid it down into the pocket of his rain slicker.

  "You shouldn't be doing this," Nora said.

  "I can't just leave him out there," Hunt said. "There's been too much taken away because of me."

  "What if he's dead already?" Nora said.

  He opened the door and felt the cold night come through the cab of the truck and mingle with the steam of their breath. Hunt didn't have any more to say. Nora tried to tell him something, but he didn't wait for her. He left the keys in the ignition and closed the door.

  He limped to the edge of the alley and looked down the street, not a single car, just clean white snow, the perimeter fence across the street, stretching on into nothingness. He took a deep breath and plunged forward through the wind, his bad leg dragging against the drifting snow.

  He didn't have any clear idea where he was going, but he knew he'd find his way. He kept to the middle of the road where cars had passed and flattened a path before him. Running, half hopping to avoid injuring himself further, he almost tripped over the shotgun in the street. He was two blocks off the main road, the gun just resting there in the snow. He put his hands on the gun, the metal cold as the air around him. Hunt knew it had been Drake's gun. Scanning the nearby snow, he soon found the track of Drake's footsteps.

  The chamber was jammed, and using his finger, he pried out a disfigured shell and dropped it into his pocket. One shell left. He held the gun in his hands, eyes searching through the storm-filled blackness. There was no sign of Drake but the footfalls in front of him, leading off toward the airport and quickly filling with snow.

  DRAKE RAN ON. THE SIRENS HAD FADED AWAY AND now he could hear his own breathing, feel his heart pumping, sweat cold on his forehead. He stopped with the snow beneath him. He was in a wide field before the perimeter fence with the house lights a hundred yards back. Farther down the fence stood a series of shadowed dampening walls, built to block out the airport noise.

  A set of guidance lights flashed on with a quiet intensity, brilliant white light everywhere and the thunder of jet engines overhead. The dark underbelly of a plane passed in the air above him at an incredible speed, and moments later he heard the scuff of the tires as they took the runway. Lights out, and Drake back in darkness, his pupils struggling to make sense of the quick shift from bright daylight back to the blackness of night.

  The whistle of a bullet in the air, sound of bone and tissue tearing, his right knee collapsing, warm liquid down his shin and into his shoe. He fumbled forward. Blood splattered on the snow. His blood. He took another step, his body weight on his wounded leg, hot white pain. He gasped, held it, felt his lungs burn with it, his knee thumping. He fell and lay in the snow, eyes open, the tips of grass poking out of the fresh-fallen white field.

  He heard the crunch of footsteps, tried to get up, his body not doing what he wanted it to. He got up on his elbow and pointed his pistol into the night. Beneath him he could feel the snow growing warm with his own blood. The crunch of footsteps. He took aim and fired toward the sound. Another bullet hit him in the right forearm. He yelled out, dropped the gun, his hand held over the new wound in his arm.

  Crunch of snow again, the shuffle of it as it parted. Grady came out of the night holding the AR-15 on Drake. Grady's breathing was irregular. A patch of blood was forming on Grady's right side. Drake didn't think he'd shot him, but he couldn't be sure.

  Drake panted, his face covered in a growing sweat. He felt light headed. He tried to keep his vision straight, but it was going and he couldn't seem to help it.

  Grady kicked Drake's gun away. He tapped the scope on the rifle. "Could have taken off your head, but it'll be more interesting this way." Grady put a hand under his jacket, and when he brought it out, there was blood on his fingers. He looked at it. Felt the texture of it between his trigger finger and thumb. It seemed to amaze him.

  "For who?" Drake managed to say.

  "For me." Grady let the rifle slip down through his hands into the snow.

  Drake lay there, looking up, wet snow beneath him, the ground hard with the cold, his knees pulled in and his good hand over the hole Grady had torn in his forearm. He closed his eyes. He couldn't find the energy to move. Grady placed a hand around Drake's throat and held him down. Drake just lay there, feeling the inevitability of what would come next.

  There was the sound of a spring releasing, something pulled forward on a slide. Drake opened his eyes and saw the blade come at him. Instinctively, he put out his hand and felt the knife slice in. The new pain surprised him. He found some reservoir of energy and pushed back in the snow with his good leg, his knee on fire and Grady on the ground slashing after him. Drake reached out again, his hand bloody, and grabbed for Grady's sleeve. He felt the mechanism under there. He felt the handle of the knife and he tried to twist it off Grady's arm. Grady put his whole weight on top of Drake, pushing the knife down.

  For a moment it was just them in the snowfield. Nothing but their gasps, teeth clenched. Spit falling from their mouths, snow crushed beneath them. Grady on top of Drake, trying to drive the knife in, Drake trying to lever him off. Snow falling. The dim red flash of the lights from the runway. Drake landed his good knee in

  Grady's gut, and both men called out in pain. The tip of the knife dropped into Drake's shoulder and he felt it there throbbing in the muscle. He forced Grady's hand back up.

  A plane passed overhead, blinding landing lights, dragging a human shadow across the two of them. The snowfield bold and flat all around them. The landing lights flooded the scene in pure white light, and suddenly Hunt was there, pulled from the darkness like a magic trick.

  Drake heard the click of the hammer a split second before the shotgun went off. He heard it but didn't turn his face, didn't even think to shield his eyes. The barrel was a foot away from Grady's temple. Grady looked up, his face taking it in, realizing what was coming, for a half second his eyes widening, looking down the length of the gun. Hunt let his finger down onto the trigger, and Drake watched as the bullet took teeth and gums, tongue and throat, all the way back through Grady's head and left it in a splattered mess on the snow-covered field.

  A jet touched down, the thick sound of rubber meeting tarmac, the scuff of wheels, and the rise of smoke off the runway. Drake felt every muscle in his body give way. He felt the cold beneath him, welcomed it, let it soak in. Hunt stood there with the gun half- raised over Grady's body, as if perhaps Grady might come back, as if he might still pose some threat. The lights dimmed around all of them until there was nothing but the faint red pulse once again.

  "He was going to kill you," Hunt said. He didn't look at Drake as he said it. He just said it.

  "I kno
w."

  "I just shot a man," Hunt said, his voice in a fog, turning to look at Drake, the shotgun still held in his hand.

  "I know," Drake said.

  "I never wanted to."

  Drake coughed. He was watching the gun in Hunt's hand, the pain in his knee aching and his vision going milky. He leaned over on his side and tried to focus, snow falling and accumulating on his lashes, the red-lit profile of Hunt's face the only thing there to tell Drake he hadn't imagined it all. "Even if I wanted to arrest you," he said, "I'm in no condition to do it."

  Hunt gave Drake a blank stare, gun faced out toward him. Drake couldn't read him.

  Drake brought out his phone and toggled down through the numbers until he found Driscoll's. The gun was still pointed at him. "Do you mind," Drake said, motioning to the twelve-gauge pump.

  Hunt threw the gun down in the snow and watched as Drake pushed Send and waited for Driscoll to come on the line. Drake lay back in the snow and watched the flakes coming down. Driscoll was saying something, but it didn't matter to Drake. He wasn't ready for it, though he knew he couldn't wait any longer. He felt his head swim for a moment, the dizziness coming over him. When he turned back to find Hunt, he saw only his rough shadow jogging across the field, the far-off lights of houses behind his limping figure, the path he'd taken already filling in behind him. Everywhere the soft fall of snow, a distant crunch of footsteps, and then no sound at all.

  AFTER THEY HAD RESTED, HUNT TOLD HER ABOUT the house. He said that it wouldn't have made sense to go back there anyway, that the place didn't exist for them anymore. It was all gone, all of it, and to go back there - even just to pick up the heroin-would have risked arrest, would have meant jail time, and he couldn't do that.

  They were sitting in the little pasture up the forgotten road. There was frost in the grass, but no snow. A day had passed and it was night again. Hunt had built a fire against the cold and hidden it as best he could with a wall of rocks, but no cars passed, nor did they ever seem to, and he knew they would be safe here, just like the old times, before all this. And he told Nora that he knew it would all change, but he didn't know the future as he'd thought he did, and the only thing he knew with any certainty was that it was coming and he hoped it would be good.

  Out of the darkness, they listened to the sounds of the horses in the pasture, the hard-soled hooves, the lap of their tongues as they bent into the bucket and drew water. Hunt and Nora had washed in the little stream, and Hunt had cleaned Nora's lip and lifted her shirt to look at the bruises left on her body from the trunk. They had stood there next to the stream for a long time, just like that, half-naked, bruised, goose bumps on their skin, but happy. Hunt put a hand to Nora's stomach and eased his palm around onto her back and embraced her and felt her warmth close to his.

  "Don't worry," he said. "We'll figure this out and we'll be all right." She had cried then, but he didn't know what to do except to hold her and run his hand along her head, down onto her neck, and then begin again.

  He didn't tell her that these were his words from twenty years ago. That he had told himself these very same things. He'd said them then because that was what he believed. He'd said them because he knew that he couldn't go back to jail, that he would never go back, and he'd known then, just as he knew now, that he would make something happen and they would be all right. That they might not have everything, but they would have something, and the only thing he could hope for was that it would be something good.

  WHEN DRAKE SAW DRISCOLL AGAIN, IT WAS IN THE hospital room. Drake's surgery had taken five hours. His kneecap was partially shattered, pieces of the patella everywhere, the muscle so torn up that the doctors said he'd probably walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Sheri sat in the little chair near his bed. She'd pulled it out from the wall so that they could see each other around the IV drip, and from time to time she would hold his hand and tell him not to be so stupid again.

  Drake could see the sour look on Sheri's face when Driscoll walked through the door. "I'll get some ice chips," she said. Then, as she passed Driscoll: "No more adventures."

  Driscoll opened his mouth but didn't say anything. He watched her walk past, and then when she was gone he said, "You read the paper today?"

  "I never read the paper."

  "Can't say I blame you."

  Drake coughed. "Stopped reading it after my father went away. Kind of strange reading about your family in the paper like that. It's like reading a review of the life you're leading while you're living it. Never made me feel too good."

  "Your name came up." Driscoll smiled and then said with obvious sarcasm, "You're famous again."

  "Seems like I can't go a week these days without my name in print. I already know what happened, I was there."

  "Still no sign of Hunt. Know anything about that?"

  "What does the paper say?"

  "Bag of knives, bag of heroin sitting in the snow. Two dead Vietnamese men inside the house. Nothing on Hunt."

  "You think that's it, then?"

  "Almost a hundred thousand in heroin."

  "The girl was carrying that much?"

  "A little less," Driscoll said. "But we found evidence they had been bringing in girls on an almost monthly schedule."

  "Any girls?"

  "No."

  "You think they got smart after what happened to Thu?"

  "I don't know," Driscoll said. "This story will never reach across the Pacific. They'll just say it never happened, that Thu is still alive, living the good life somewhere."

  "The good life, huh?"

  "Yes."

  "That's a crazy way of putting it."

  "What's crazy is it will start all over again."

  "And Hunt? Anything?"

  "Nothing."

  "What about the drugs? What about the stuff he took off Thu?"

  "I don't know. Probably shot up in the vein by now, junkies from here to Montana." Driscoll sighed. "I can't say really."

  "Do you think he'd have sold it?"

  "He's your best buddy now. You tell me."

  Drake made a face. "I'll just give him a call. You got your cell phone on you?"

  "Come on, Drake. I don't know. I'm just giving you some shit. Can't I do that? Who knows where those drugs are now. Hunt knows. But who knows where he is?"

  "So that's it, then?"

  "Found another dead guy in a house in North Seattle. Executed right there in his front room. Nice place, a view out over the water. The guy was supposed to be some sort of lawyer, seems to have done just about everything, you know? A little of this, a little of that. The bullet we took out of his head matches the twenty-two we found in Grady's knife bag. We're looking into it, but we're pretty sure this dead guy was the one putting the whole thing together."

  Drake coughed, looked out the window, the pain in his muscles tensing his body as his lungs filled. The wound in his arm was just a thick line of stitching, but nothing broken, nothing beyond repair.

  Driscoll walked over to the IV and fingered the bag. "What's in here?" he said. "Anything good?"

  "Saline. Vitamins. Superpowers."

  "No joke?"

  "No joke."

  "There's one thing," Driscoll said. "It was hard to tell with all the snow out there, and the struggle. Footprints from the medics, from the cops, from our guys. I mean, there was blood everywhere, covered over by snow-half the time we didn't even know we were stepping in it. But it looked, from what I saw, like Grady was shot from a standing position."

  Drake thought about this for a moment. Almost from his subconscious, he moved a hand to his thigh and worked the muscle. He'd had an old basketball injury there once, a bruise the size of his hand, too big to hide. "I can't really say how it happened," Drake said. "The adrenaline was going, I could have done anything, stood on two busted knees if I had to. All I knew was that he was coming after me and I could only stop him one way."

  "What did you say was in that IV?"

  "Superpowers."

&n
bsp; Driscoll smiled but didn't say anything. Sheri wasn't back with the ice, though Drake knew there wasn't going to be any. "What I said to you when we first met, about your father," Driscoll said. "I'm sorry if I implied anything. You did a good thing out there."

  "I know that-"

  "I didn't mean anything by it."

  "Don't worry about it, Driscoll. I'm looking at six months of paid vacation time."

  "Vacation time, huh? Just like your stay downtown this last week? That worked out well for you."

  THE DOCTORS RELEASED HIM WHEN HE COULD WALK to the end of the hall and back again without resting. He knew there would be physical therapy, and lots of it. Twice a week he would need to drive down from Silver Lake and come to the hospital in Seattle, where the state paid for his rehabilitation.

  When he was eighteen he thought he'd have his own place, live out a ways and buy property the way his father had. But when his father went away, the property he'd grown up on became his. Twenty acres of land, a fence made of chopped alder and set in a frontier-style A-frame around two acres of the property, the soft wood rotted in many places. And the horses that his father had once kept-confiscated and sold. He was lucky even to have the house.

  Sheri drove him to the bottom of their steps and helped him walk up the stairs to the door. "Are you going to be okay here?" she asked, leaning him up against the porch railing.

  He'd been in the hospital a month, and just standing there in the open with his property all around him felt better than anything he'd felt in a long time. "I'll wait for you here," he said. He adjusted his balance a little, taking the strain off his bad leg and putting his weight on his good.