Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  Not as unnerving as when a human target did the same thing...

  He shook off the thought and the discomfort it generated, not wanting to go down that particular road, and centered the sight on a point just to the left of the fox’s right eye, knowing it would move into death at the crack of the bullet, which because of the relative velocities of bullets and sound would reach the fox in the wrong order as far as the animal was concerned.

  The fox stood there, seemingly staring at him.

  He couldn’t have asked for an easier target. There was no sport to it.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, preparing to shoot.

  At the last second he stopped and drew his finger away from the trigger.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He wasn’t normally the sentimental type, he didn’t have a tender bone in his body, too many souls would attest to that, but something about the animal stopped him short. He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger and snuff out its life. Once the deer was dressed and cured he’d have enough meat to see him through. A few scraggy tendons of fox weren’t going to be the difference between life and death, no matter how cold it got on the mountainside this winter. And that was the only reason to kill now. Survival.

  There’s been enough death today, he thought, and lowered his weapon.

  As if on cue, the fox chose that moment to turn and bound away into the undergrowth.

  Live brilliantly, little furface, because next time the fates might not be so kind.

  Goodfellow slung the rifle over his shoulder, gathered up his pack of supplies, and began to make his way back down the ridgeline to where he’d parked the quad before sunrise. He slipped his rifle and gear into the cargo rack behind the driver’s seat, climbed aboard, and fired up the engine with a quick twist of the key. From there it was just a short five minute ride to the clearing where the deer lay waiting.

  He quickly field dressed the deer, ensuring a rapid loss of body temperature to keep the meat from spoiling, and then buried the entrails with a collapsible shovel he kept in the storage rack of the quad for that very purpose. He used some cord to tie the deer’s front paws together and then did the same for the rear pair. His years in the military had left him in excellent physical condition, and life on the mountain kept him that way, even so hefting the carcass up onto the quad’s front hood wasn’t light work. He secured it with bungee cords to keep it from sliding off as he drove back to his cabin, which was several miles away.

  Goodfellow glanced around the clearing one last time to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything and then, jumping back aboard the quad, headed for home.

  From its hiding place beside a fallen tree on the other side of the clearing, the fox watched him go.

  ***

  It took about a half hour for Michael Goodfellow to make his way back to the cabin he called home. Considering he’d lived there for three years it didn’t offer much in the way of creature comforts. The cabin stood in a small clearing two hundred feet back from the edge of a good-sized lake that provided both fresh water and fish year round. The cabin itself was a small affair, just two rooms and a loft for storage, powered by the solar panels on the shingle for the most part, though he did have a back-up generator and several barrels of gasoline stored in the shed in case of emergency. He’d built the place with his own two hands, staying in a pop-up tent for the month it had taken him to cut and strip the timber, dig out the foundations and finally construct the shell. He’d been slowly adding to it ever since. The storage shed where he kept the quad had come first, and he’d followed that with both a root cellar and a front porch where he could relax in the summer.

  He parked the quad in front of the cabin and turned off the motor. Dismounting, he unclipped the bungee cords that held the deer in place, then hefted the carcass up over his shoulders and carried it on his back around to the dressing station. There he tied a rope and hook to the deer’s rear hooves and used a hoist he’d connected to a nearby tree to get it off the ground so that he wouldn’t have to hold it while he flushed the body cavity with cold water from the rain-collection tank that was standing just a few feet away. When he was finished with that messy but necessary chore, he hoisted the carcass as high as it would go, heaving it nearly fifteen feet in the air, where he’d leave the meat to age for the next week before he skinned and butchered it. The first summer he was here he’d learned the hard way to keep any meat that he was curing out of reach of the wildlife that roamed the woods around his little outpost. The smell would still call to them, meaning he’d have to be careful wandering around outside for the next few days, but the meat itself was safely out of reach.

  Michael rinsed his hands in the water bucket and then carried the bucket around the cabin in order to wash the blood from the hood of the quad, working up a sweat despite the chill in the air. Satisfied, he wheeled the vehicle back to the shed and stored it inside. He then carried his rifle and his pack inside the house and racked those. Then and only then did he sit down for a quick lunch of cold rabbit and potato stew and a hunk of freshly baked bread, leftovers from the night before. It was frugal fare, but filling. Living without the modern conveniences of microwave ovens and expensive stoves necessitated a certain creativity in a kitchen that consisted of two bottled-gas burners and an old-fashioned fireplace.

  His appetite satisfied, Goodfellow curled up on the narrow wooden cot to catch a few hours of sleep to make up for the ones he’d missed the night before.

  By early afternoon he was back at work.

  There were several trees at the back of the property showing signs of rot. He didn’t trust them to make it through the winter unbroken. They were the next project on his never-ending list. He used a fire axe to chop them down, each fresh cut making the muscles of his upper arms and lower back burn, and one by one he watched them fall. They came crashing down, but because he was there to see it, offered no clue as to the answer that had plagued theorists forever and a day: if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it does it make a sound? It took several more hours to chop them down into cords small enough to wrap a rope around and drag over to the woodpile. The entire thing took the rest of the day, but by the time he was finished he had felled five trees and had some fifty hefty-sized logs that he could break down tomorrow into foot-long pieces of firewood that would keep him warm through the winter.

  Content with the day’s work, Michael wandered down to the lake’s edge. He kicked off his boots and stripped off his clothes, peeling the sweaty shirt from his back and bundling it up on one of the rock’s beside the water’s edge, then took a quick dip to clean himself up. The cold mountain water was bracing, the chill invigorating after the hard day’s work. He sank down beneath the surface, then rose, running his calloused hands through his hair. It was longer than he was used to, but after the buzz cuts of the military everything felt long. Standing there, waist deep in the lake, beads of water streaming down the contours of his chest, Michael turned his back to the sun and dove, striking out for the distant shore. It took him fifteen minutes to cross the lake, his strong steady breaststroke cutting through the still water, then closer to twenty minutes back as his muscles tired. He loved to swim. He loved the way it focused his mind, bringing his thoughts down to one fine point where the world around him ceased to exist. The problem was that it always came back.

  Naked, he carried his clothes back to the cabin, letting the winter sun dry him as he walked. He banked a fire up inside the fireplace, the heat from it warming him before he changed into clean clothes. The fire served a twin-purpose; he used it to warm up a pot of beef stew and then settled down to enjoy it on the front porch.

  Twilight descended as he used another hunk of bread to mop up the gravy on the side of the pot, the setting sun casting a purple swatch of color across the horizon.

  Seeing it, Michael thought, Marnie would have loved that.

  That was all it took: one simple thought and the rage and grief that were his constant co
mpanions washed over him like the lake water had only hours before, dragging him down into their depths with practiced ease, to that rocky place where despair swam in the shadows.

  Bitter experience had taught him that there was only one thing that could be done at that point, only one possible solution that would allow him to get even a simulacrum of rest that evening, and so he got up from his chair and wandered inside the cabin.

  When he returned to the chair a few moments later, he had a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.

  He cracked it open and took a long swig, savoring the bite of the liquid as it burned its way down the back of his throat; trying to drown out the memories before they could take root. It was too late. The door had been opened and now the ghosts crept out to sit beside him in the gathering darkness.

  There was his wife, Marnie, the love of his life and the only reason he’d persevered long enough to make it through the police academy. It had been his desire to provide a better life for her that had led to his decision to apply for the SWAT unit and it was the pride he’d seen in her eyes that kept him pushing through when the selection process had become almost too difficult to bear. In the end, it had been his decision to join SWAT that had decided her fate and all the sorrow in the world wouldn’t let him take that back. Marnie was not alone, of course, not by a long shot. He could have lived with one ghost. Beside her was the shade of their daughter, Jess, taken in the space of an instant, and next to Jess stretched the long line of men, women, and children that had fallen victim to the implacability of his orders and his skill with the rifle.

  It was hard to think of himself as a good man, despite his name, with all of them there to say the opposite.

  Michael Goodfellow did the same thing he always did when the shell he’d constructed around his grief cracked open and those things he’d spent nearly half a decade running from began to seep out, calling to him from the darkness; he drank.

  But that didn’t silence them.

  The cacophony of voices didn’t begin to dim until he’d downed more than a third of the bottle and it took nearly half that again before he had quieted them enough that he could lie convincingly enough to himself to pretend he might be able to sleep.

  By then he was nearly too drunk to walk, but he knew that if he stayed out here on the porch dressed the way that he was he’d stand a good chance of freezing to death before the sun came back up again in the morning. He was a survivor. It was ingrained in him. That was what caused most of his pain. But it meant that he forced himself to his feet and stumbled inside, the bottle still clenched firmly in one hand. He made it to his cot in the corner and then collapsed atop it, unconscious before the bottle fell from his hand and hit the floor beside the bed, spilling out the rest of its amber liquid.

  ***

  The dream began as it always did, just as the real events that spawned the nightmare had done so many years before.

  He, Marnie and Jess were in the car, on their way home from the theater after seeing the latest animated film his little girl had fallen in love with like she always did – this one had a redheaded mermaid who fell in love with a human prince and despite all of the obstacles, like a mermaid breathing air, would get her happily ever after – when he glanced down at the gas gauge and saw that they were almost out. There was probably enough in the tank to make it home, but not enough to make it in to the Stationhouse in the morning.

  “Might as well stop now rather than to try and squeeze it in before work in the morning,” he said to Marnie, who smiled and nodded in agreement. It made sense. She liked to be prepared. No surprises. No unforeseen circumstances.

  He knew there was a gas station a couple of blocks away, so at the end of the next block pulled the SUV over, swung around the corner and into the station, slowing to a stop alongside the outer row of pumps closest to the street.

  He caught Jess watching him in the rear view mirror.

  He winked and said, “Be back in a minute, Ariel.”

  Her giggly laugh was still ringing in his ears as he got out to fill the tank.

  Of course, the card reader on the pump wasn’t working. That would have been too easy. He had to take it inside to have the clerk run it from there.

  He was turning away from the counter, receipt in hand, when he heard the growl of an approaching engine. It shouldn’t have been out of place. He was in a gas station after all, but something about the sound set the alarm bells in the back of his head to ringing.

  He reacted without thought, pushing his way past the other customers in line and out the door of the mini-mart to see what was going on.

  The Charger was just coming up along the outside of the SUV as he came rushing out the door of the mini-mart, the glass doors swinging closed behind him as he watched in disbelief. The passenger window of the approaching vehicle slid smoothly down and the barrel of a gun was thrust out into the open air, it’s cold black eye drawing down on everything that he loved.

  In real life it all happened so fast, but in the way of dreams time slowed down to a punishing crawl, determined to show him every last flutter and failing flicker of life in excruciating detail. Once seen it could not be unseen.

  ...he could see Marnie leaning around between the front seats, saying something to Jess who was still strapped into her car seat in the back, laughing at whatever it was her mother was saying. Those last words he’d never know.

  ...he could see the shooter in the passenger seat of the Charger as it drew even with the SUV, a young Hispanic male with lurid tattoo on his forearm that marked him as a blooded member of the Crimson Kings leaning out of the window.

  ...he could see the black eye of the gun, looming ever larger in his sight as the shooter lined it up, his family still and forever unaware just a few yards away.

  He hollered Marnie’s name then, a futile effort to warn her of the danger at hand. That turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to do. She turned toward him instead of toward the threat, leaving him with a clear view of her face as the gunman opened fire.

  The sounds were too real, even now, the crack of automatic gunfire combined with the crash of breaking glass and the squeal of tortured steel. Bullets ripped through the side of the SUV and into the bodies of the two people inside, making them dance and twist in the windows for Goodfellow to see until the splash of blood across the glass mercifully obscured his view.

  He screamed in rage as time snapped back into place, suddenly racing too quickly for him to react even as he raced forward, his service weapon in hand, pointed uselessly at the back of the gunman’s car as it accelerated away from the scene.

  As he passed in front of his own vehicle he fired – once, twice, more than a dozen times, drawing down again and again until the weapon clicked empty, then still trying to fire more shots at the disappearing car – and knew he’d put a dozen shots into the vehicle but it didn’t slow. Within seconds it had raced away down the block, carrying the murderers away.

  Only then did he realize that it hadn’t had a license plate.

  In the dream, just as in life, he turned and faced the SUV behind him, knowing what waited for him.

  He could see the bodies of his wife and daughter lying slumped in their seats, unmoving.

  He knew they had been snatched away from him, all of the future days they’d meant to have together, the growing up, the growing old, the watching the wrinkles set in to their experienced faces, wearing them so well, gone, obliterated by a hail of bullets. When you die, your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. When someone you love dies, the life you were supposed to lead does the same.

  “No! No, no, no!” he shouted, the words blurring into one sound, losing all meaning, as he ran toward the SUV. His gun fell from his hand and lay forgotten the pavement behind him as he reached the front passenger door. He was shaking as he wrenched it open, desperately scrambling to catch his wife as she tumbled out, broken in ways she was never meant to be broken...

  Goodfellow woke shouting into the
darkened cabin, still feeling the weight of his wife’s lifeless body as it fell into his arms pressing down on his chest. That was the weight of grief. How much did a lost life weigh? How much did all of those days unlived weigh? The few ounces of the bullet that stole them away? The deadweight of the body left behind? The incredible, unbearable burden of loneliness that weighed down with all the forces of hyper-gravity? Tears streamed down his face. His heart raced in his chest, hammering against his ribcage a mile a minute. Blood pounded inside his head, a brutal ache blurring his vision after all the drinking he’d done.

  But he was still alive.

  And he hated himself for that.

  He turned on the light, then dragged himself out of bed and hauled himself over to the sink. Night sweats clung to his skin, transforming his shirt into a second almost reptilian layer. Taking off his shirt, he splashed cold water on his face, but it wasn’t enough to clear his head or banish the hated memories, so he filled the sink with ice cold water from the pail beside it, and dunked his head in it over and over, spluttering and rising, shaking the freezing cold off only to dunk his head back down again. His family had been dead for more than five years by now – two thousand and fifteen days, but who was counting? – and still the thought of how he’d failed them tore at his heart. If only they’d gone straight home. If only they’d stopped at another gas station. If only the card reader on the pump had worked and he’d been there to see the Charger approaching.

  If only, if only...

  The perpetrators had been caught less than a week later. One of them had holed up in a roach motel with a gunshot wound in his arm, but as it had started to fester he’d been forced to look for a doctor who’d turned him in. If the investigation had been metaphorical a game of Jenga, that little gangbanger’s festering wound had been the one block that brought the whole tower crashing down. They’d been members of a crew that called themselves the Crimson Kings, a major meth supplier in East L.A., and the hit had been in retaliation for a SWAT raid on one of their distribution centers that had netted more than three million in illegal drugs and had left five of the gang members dead or hospitalized when they’d tried to fight back.