"For fun," Orlon said. "For the sheer pleasure and dramatic excitement of hearing Allison scream."
"Hey, Orlon, this isn't some fucking movie."
His brother turned from the wire-mesh cage and looked at Ray.
"Sure it is, Ray. Sure it's a movie."
***
Thorn stripped to his Jockey shorts, lay down on the bed. Allison used the bathroom, stayed in there a long while. He was half asleep, the other half drugged. Not sure if his eyes were still open, not sure if he was dreaming or not when he saw Allison's thin, womanly shape move across the room.
Then a moment later he felt the mattress shift, felt her easing into the double bed beside him, felt the warmth of flesh press close. A polite snuggle, her left arm circling him. He lay still, breathed in her fragrance, a mild sandalwood with a delicate undercurrent of something else. The scent of sunbaked flesh, a warm glow of vanilla.
"Do you mind?" she whispered.
Thorn didn't answer, but relaxed his body, let her fit deeper against his back, both of them adjusting in small nudges and angles till the congruency was perfect. Skin to skin, their bodies becoming a single mass of heat and comfort, a curative blend of flesh.
For Thorn it was as though he were nestling in the protective cradle of Allison's body, a fleshy ark that could carry them safely beyond this difficult world. And he heard in the rhythm of her breath, the deep, soothing rasp of approaching slumber, that she was exactly where he was, the same pulse, the precise other half of his ragged self. Reminding him dimly of that dime-store jewelry heart he'd bought years ago, a bumbling teenager, half a valentine around his neck, its ragged edges matching the other half worn around his first love's neck. Like that, Allison and Thorn, their bodies notch to notch, a mesh that for that moment, in the blackness of the Everglades night, felt more exact, more flawless than any embrace he'd ever known.
***
It was an hour later, two perhaps. A human noise outside. Thorn lurched awake, sat up, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, set them on the floor. For one flashing moment his head seemed to splinter into two crimson halves along the seams of the machete wound.
Allison came up beside him just as something overturned in the front room. Then an animal snorted and huffed like a lawn mower engine struggling to catch on. A bottle broke, the remains of their wine.
"What is it?" she hissed beside him.
Thorn winced and pushed himself to his feet. Braced himself with a hand against the headboard.
"Were you expecting someone?"
Whatever it was was large, and its odor filled the house like sewer gas, and there was the reek of some other chemical as well, like the sour body odor of a steroid-chewing trucker. The creature was lumbering erratically around the front room, breaking, toppling. For a moment Thorn felt the floor rock, the creak and sway of the walls as if the house were about to capsize in giant swells.
Dizzy, he moved to the bedroom door, which stood a few inches ajar, showing the smallest light coming from the living room, some electric appliance sending out its pale green numbers. Three-twelve in the morning.
He caught the shadowy blur of something low and large trundling beside the couch. And heard the unmistakable snuffle and grunt of a hog.
It was then he saw the bone-white glow of its short tusks as it turned and faced him. After a split second's consideration, the hog squealed once and churned its hooves against the hardwood floor and hurtled toward the bedroom door.
CHAPTER 28
The bedroom door rattled against its hinges and something in the living room crashed, an object as large and ungraceful as a refrigerator. Allison watched the bedroom door shudder as the creature barged against it once more.
The ghost of her dream was lingering. In that dream she'd been at the Shack with her father and his rowdy friends — the first female ever invited along. But for some reason she was banished to the bedroom while just beyond the door the men went wild with bourbon and raucous stories and their muscular rituals, and Allison felt more cheated than ever, taunted by the proximity of all she'd missed, the rambunctious, dangerous world of men, her father and his gang brawling out there, free of civilization, beyond the restraints of mothers and wives and girl children, beyond rules and manners and good taste, doing their lunatic dance around the campfire of masculinity.
As the door jolted again, Allison came up behind Thorn, only barely recognizing him through the last haze of her dream. She touched him on the back and he swung around, bringing a fist with him. But he caught himself in time and the punch fell away.
"Sorry," he said. "Sorry."
Thorn moved past her, went quickly to the single bedroom window, halted, took hold of the bars and rattled them. He turned around, shook his head, a rueful smile.
"There's just that one gun?"
"Yes, just the Remington," she said. "Out there."
"Is it loaded?"
"Yes." She rubbed the vision back into her eyes.
"How many shots?"
"Two."
In the living room a lamp broke. Allison turned and listened. It sounded as if the creature had snagged himself in a knot of electrical cords, and now everywhere he turned he toppled something else. Even in her primitive shack there were a hundred booby traps of modern life, flower vases perched on shelves, walls hung with fragile framed photos, and at ankle level the trip wires of ottomans and coffee tables, with throw rugs lying like patches of slippery ice across the oak floor. Not a place for a frenzied animal to navigate in the dark. A maze of snares, precariously balanced furnishings. A clock, a bell jar, an old transistor radio, plates and glasses, a bowl full of polished stones, her computer, and her fax machine. The animal was reducing them to rubble. Trying to make the room safe for his wildness.
"It's a hog," Thorn said. "Meriwether's hog."
"That bastard. This is his idea of a practical joke."
"I'm afraid it's more than that."
"That bastard."
"I'm going out there," he said.
"Why? We could just stay here, wait it out. It'll leave eventually."
"It isn't leaving. It's trapped in here with us."
Allison felt the shiver rise up her flanks. She walked to the bathroom where she'd dumped her jeans and jersey and she slipped into them. Thorn, still in his Jockey shorts, watched her.
"You can't go out there," she said. "It's too dangerous."
"I don't see there's a choice."
"Okay. All right, then I'll distract it. Throw a pillow or something."
Thorn turned from her and stared at the closed door. The house had become abruptly quiet now. He pressed his ear to the wood, held it there for a long moment, then turned back to her.
"You stay in here. Keep the door shut."
"Screw that, Thorn. I'm not some terrified little girl. This is going to take both of us."
She reached out, put a hand on his ribs, felt the bands of tension across his stomach.
"All right," he said quietly. "But not the goddamn pillow. At least throw something that could do some damage."
Allison drew her hand away, but Thorn caught it and gave her a reassuring squeeze. She squeezed back, and they held hands for a moment before letting go.
"I know just the thing."
Allison went to the small closet beside the bathroom and on a high shelf found the old Kenmore iron.
"That's the ticket," Thorn said. "Okay."
The living room was very still. A breeze filtered through the open window, budged the curtains aside. A gassy draft steeped in sulfur, the rich rotting muck of stranded pools of water. Algae, mildew, mold. A fertile brew, heady as Limburger.
"I go first," Allison said. "Throw the iron, hit the bastard if I can, then I'll duck back in here, hold the door, yell and scream, distract it while you get the Remington."
"But stay clear, be ready to get down," he said. "I may have to fire back in this direction."
"Okay."
"Where's the rest of the ammo store
d?"
She smiled.
"What? You don't think you can kill a hog with two shots?"
"Allison," he said. "When we're finished with what's in the living room, we're going to have to deal with what's outside."
***
Rayon White was toying with the idea of shooting Crotch Meriwether in the back of the head, then doing the same thing to Orlon. And finish off the evening sucking on the hot barrel himself. A hat trick.
He hated this. Squatting out in the dark fifteen feet from the front porch of the small wood block house, slapping at mosquitoes, waiting for Allison or the guy to come crashing out the front door. It was stupid and sloppy, just the kind of moron stunt Orlon would dream up.
Orlon with the Colt .357, Meriwether with some blunderbuss that looked like he'd stolen it from a Civil War museum, the Glock nine. All of them huddled behind Crotch's truck, waiting for the screams, waiting for somebody or something to try to escape. And without even an idea if the two of them in there were armed. Shit, about the only half-smart thing Orlon had done was to climb up a pine post out in the yard and snip their phone line.
"Nobody's screaming," Ray said. "Or have I missed something?"
"Give 'em time."
"That hog's harder to kill than a mad dog on amphetamines," Crotch said. "Put it in a pen with a pit bull, a gator, and a heavily armed man, I'd bet my last nickel on that hog."
"If you had a last nickel," Orlon said.
"Two of us could go up to the windows," Ray said. "Start firing inside, stir things up. The other one could stay out front, pick them off as they come out."
"What's your hurry, Rayon? Anticipation, man, that's half the fun. Foreplay. Foreplay's where it's at."
"Man, this is completely and totally fucked. I can't believe I'm going along with this. And Crotch, you're as bad as Orlon. I'm out here in the dark with two totally crazy fucking people. We had a simple situation here, a clean kill, and we made it into something that could turn messy in a dozen different ways."
"Yeah," Orlon said. "That's the beauty of it."
"Shut up, you fuckfaces," Crotch said, "before I change my mind and start thinking I should've thrown in with Allison."
"I love it," Orlon said. "I love it. The old man's cracking, Rayon's cracking, that wood cabin is about to explode. Man, I'm about to cream my jeans."
"You wouldn't talk that way in front of Darlene Annette."
Orlon froze. Then very slowly he stood up, raised his pistol, and held it on his brother. He shook his head, mouth twisted.
"Jesus Christ, Ray, you sure know how to ruin a good moment. That's just about the one and only fucking thing in life you're truly good at, spoiling my fun."
***
Allison stood outside the bedroom door staring into the dark silence. She could see the rolltop desk was overturned, the computer facedown nearby, the couch on its back. There was the shine of broken glass; books and papers everywhere. The same room, but with a completely new terrain.
Thorn slid past her out the door. He followed the east wall, a hand guiding him toward the front door. In the jumble, Allison could see nothing of the hog. There was only the slightest breeze stirring the air, a splinter of moonlight lying across the overturned caneback chairs.
Thorn was three strides from the Remington, going past the east window, when she heard one of the caneback chairs scrape the floor and saw it begin to move along an angle to intercept Thorn.
She took aim, waited till she had a glimpse of pallid flesh, and hurled the iron. The hog squealed and the chair launched into the air. Allison yelled out and stamped her feet, and watched as the moon-pale tusks stopped and turned her way.
By then Thorn had the Remington and was fumbling with its mechanism when she saw a shadow larger than a man suddenly rise up from the floor beside the couch.
"To your right!" she screamed. "Look out!"
And she watched the shadow move, step into the bright spear of moonlight, and saw its shape clarify. A black bear, shorter than Thorn by a foot, but twice as heavy. In the wild they were timid creatures, wary of people. They would run at the slightest human scent. But in such a place as this, trapped with the hog and these two humans, there was no telling what its terror would make it do.
Thorn stepped back from the bear, held the shotgun up, aiming it at the dark shadow. To her right she heard the hard clack of hooves against the wood floor like a card shark riffling the deck.
In the languorous blur of simultaneous events happening impossibly fast, she saw the feral hog trundling toward her ankles, watched the bear take a sluggish swipe with its great paw at the Remington, saw the bright flash of the shotgun, and heard the blast doubled in volume by the small room. Then felt herself fall hard onto her rump in the doorway of the bedroom, and saw the Remington sail through the air, hit the overturned couch and spin away, skid across the floor, saw the black bear lunge at Thorn, watched him duck, all this as the feral hog held still, just a foot from her face, glowering at her with eyes as yellow as rotten corn, its tusks splintered and mangled, and she saw Thorn tossed sideways onto the rolltop desk, heard the air go out of him, and the bear turned and growled and began to lumber toward Allison.
Her body was prickly and numb, muscles useless as if she'd jolted her spine at a crucial juncture. Through a vague fog of rising pain she watched helplessly as the bear waddled toward her, dropping down to all fours.
Hearing its approach, the hog swiveled around to face the dark, foul-smelling beast. Across the room Thorn groaned and began to crawl on his belly toward her. As the thousand needle pricks of a waking limb filled her body, she writhed backward toward the bedroom. But a seam of her jeans snagged on the head of a nail at the doorjamb and caught her there.
The hog lurched forward at the bear, thrashed its head from side to side, slashing at the animal's forelegs. For a moment Allison thought she could smell the bear's breath, a blast of putrid air. With only a small growl the black bear rose up and swung its paw, then swung the other. Beneath its reach, the hog rushed at the bear's ankles, slammed into it, drove the animal sideways, knocked it off balance into a pile of chairs.
She shot a look at Thorn where he lay a foot from the Remington, one arm outstretched toward the shotgun, gasping like a swimmer washed ashore from a week at sea.
The feral hog charged the fallen bear and the bear flailed at the squat, slippery creature, kicked and sliced its claws as the hog punched its tusks into the bear's thick haunch. Allison sat up against the doorjamb, watching the struggle before her as if from a euphoric mile away.
The feeling was beginning to leak back into her legs and torso. There was a bloody gash on her right ankle and her legs felt swollen twice their size. Thorn had wriggled another foot and his hand was on the shotgun's stock.
"Push it to me, Thorn. Shove it."
With a grunt he jerked his arm straight, slid the Remington a yard across the floor. She reached out for it, lifted it up, fit the weapon to her shoulder. She pressed her back against the wall and watched as the bear swatted the hog with a numbing blow, then gripped it and lifted the writhing creature in its claws.
The bear dropped its shaggy head forward and sunk its teeth into the tight, fat back of the hog's neck. The animal squealed and blood erupted from the bear's mouth. It took another bite and wrenched its head to the side, and the hog went slack.
Allison held her aim, watching the bear stand and drop the lifeless hog to the floor. Watched the black bear waver for a moment, injured, confused, far from any comfort it knew. A thin white strip of bone showed at its ankle, a green-tree fracture with its spray of splintered particles blooming from the bear's damp fur.
The bear stared down at Allison, then shifted its gaze to Thorn. Allison sighted the shotgun on the animal's wide chest, held her aim until the bear shifted its feet and turned its back on her, began a slow, dreary shuffle toward the front window where the moonlight shone the brightest.
There it stopped and took hold of the bars, and held t
hem for a moment as if gathering its strength, then in several awkward heaves it wrenched the entire cage out of its wooden socket, dropped it on the floor, and climbed through the window.
Allison lowered the shotgun, rested her back against the wall. She could hear Thorn wheezing as if he had a punctured lung. She pushed herself to her feet and then she heard the voices outside, men approaching.
Her mind was as flat and bland as it had ever been. No fear, no hope, no anger. She flattened her back against the wall and aimed the shotgun at the door and waited till it was fully open and the silhouette of a man showed clearly there.
And she fired the remaining shot, blew the man's shadow backward out the door. Outside in her yard the men yelled and cursed, and a moment later the roar of an engine sounded nearby, the screech and clashing of gears. And then the long unwinding of the motor's roar.
Allison leaned the Remington against the wall and went to Thorn. He was sitting up, his breath noisy in his throat. She helped him stand, looped his right arm over her shoulder, hauled him to the bed and lay him down.
Between long gulps of air, he told her he was all right. Maybe a broken rib, but nothing worse. She checked him but found no blood. When he was calm, eyes closing, she went out to the living room, picked her way through the debris, and stepped outside into the blanched moonlight.
The man had fallen backward, his legs still on her front steps, but his head and shoulders lay against the sandy ground. At first she couldn't find the wound at all, in the half-dark against his black clothes. But after a moment more she noticed the ragged tear where his right shoulder once had been. A shoulder that had braced the butt of carbines and shotguns and flintlocks and muskets of every kind. A lifetime of bringing down the running deer, of cutting short the lazy flight of birds, of knocking from the trees and tall grasses the game that would fill his stewpot, whose plumage or fur or thick hide he would trade for his livelihood.
Allison stood above the fallen man and watched Meriwether's blood leak into the earth that in his own twisted way he had loved so much.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 28
