by Scott Blade
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A T THE END OF THE ROAD to cabin’s ashes, the Major’s guy rode his hog up over the rise and started to ride down. He could see the Marshal’s truck in the distance, past the trees, tail end hung out onto the dirt road.
Just then, his radio started buzzing to life.
“Weeks. Come in?” a voice said. He heard it because the radio was in his inner jacket pocket.
Shit, he thought.
He swerved over and slowed the hog and stopped.
“Weeks! Damnit, come in!”
It was the Attack Dog, his direct superior.
He switched the hog off and pulled the radio out, clicked the button.
“Yeah?”
“Where the hell are you?”
What was he supposed to say? It had been his responsibility to make sure the scene was cleaned up, but he had been too late. Now the cops were there, looking at everything.
“I’m headed to the cabin.”
The Attack Dog paused and then came on the line .
“You’re headed there? You’re supposed to have already been there and back?”
The Major’s guy waited and said, “There’s a problem.”
“What problem?”
“The cops. They’re already there. I’ve been waiting around, watching them.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“The locals?”
“Looks like it.”
“I was about to take care of them.”
“Take care of them? How?”
“I was going to shoot them both with my Smith and Wesson.”
Silence.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Have they called anyone?”
“I don’t think so. Phones don’t work out here.”
“What about the radio? The Marshal’s got one in the truck.”
Silence again.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Standby.”
The Major’s guy waited.
After a long minute, the Attack Dog came back on the line and said, “Don’t let them use that radio.”
“Affirmative. What about disposal?”
“Take care of it.”
“Another fire?”
“Not necessary. We’re not trying to cover up their deaths. Just dump em in a ditch. ”
“Affirmative.”
The Major’s guy dropped the radio back into his pocket and started the hog. He peeled off the gravel and dirt, the tires kicking up a plume of dust.
He headed to the cabin, back to the scene of the crime.
Chapter 12
E VENTUALLY, the day passed by like any other end-of-summer day, with a long process of turning to dusk that seemed to last over an hour. The whole progression stretched the shadows on the ground to long, thin versions of their previous selves.
The night sky slowly battled its way to victory, conquering the daylight. Widow was left in early blue darkness until an outside light buzzed to life, followed by the street lights lining the main drag. The light was an eerie yellow that had it been coming from the sun, the people of Earth would all surely die. The weak yellow light would’ve meant that the sun was cooling and dimming and that the heat from it could no longer reach Earth.
After he left Mable’s Diner, Widow walked to one end of the town and then made a one-eighty and walked to the other, from east to west, almost in a straight line. He stopped for coffee one last time at a small outside café with a walkup service window and park benches out front with patio umbrellas. He ordered an espresso and sat down, under the shrinking shadow of a large tree.
Supervised children played in a park across the street. Parents hung out near the gated entrance to the park, socializing with each other. Cars passed. Some of the drivers would slow and take a gander at Widow like a gorilla in a zoo, and then they moved on.
The grass remained dewy from the hard rain the night before.
Widow finished the espresso and tossed the paper cup into a trashcan. The barista behind the walkup window had told him that no bus ran through Hellbent, but there was an Amtrak. It came through once a day, which he already knew.
He thanked her, and with no choice, he started walking back east to where he had seen rows of motels.
After twenty minutes, Widow stopped on motel row and gazed around. Four obvious choices all right there in walking distance. There were vacancy signs posted everywhere. He had his pick. His first choice was a bed and breakfast across the street for no logical reason other than the building was two stories and had recently been painted white with green shutters. A fresh paint job told him that maybe it had newly been renovated.
There was a yard, green and freshly cut. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, squaring off around to the corners of the building .
Widow tried to open the gate, but before he could push it forward, he froze.
He heard the rumble of a diesel engine and the winding of gears and the screech of brakes. He stopped and twisted around and saw one of those big diesel trucks from Mable’s parking lot. It was an old model, but the exterior was cleaned and polished to a shine.
The truck stopped on the street, right in its lane. Widow heard the parking brake spring, and both doors opened up. Pairs of heavy legs with heavy boots stepped out.
Two of the lumberjacks from the diner clambered out like aliens out of a crashed saucer. They were having a harder time than most because they were both big guys, overweight in the way an oil drum is overweight.
After the two lumberjacks piled out, a third one came out through the driver’s side door.
As he shut the door behind him, Widow saw that they were all empty-handed.
They lumbered out and around to the nose of the truck. They formed up in a reverse pyramid with Widow right at the bottom and the leader of the group at the top corner.
“How’s it going, fellas? I don’t need any help finding my way around. I thank you for the interest.”
The three dinosaur lumberjacks stayed where they were.
They were all hefty, large men, five years older than Widow in one case, and more than ten in another and one somewhere in the middle .
Widow expected the leader to speak. He did not.
Widow said, “What? You can’t think of what to say?”
The leader said nothing.
Widow started to feel like he was in the twilight zone.
“This is the part where you threaten me for being an outsider, or whatever. You guys always seem to start a conversation that way.”
Just then, Widow found out exactly why the three dinosaurs said nothing.
He heard a new sound directly behind him. Coming from the other direction was another big diesel truck.
First, the lights flooded his shadow in front of him. Then the truck stopped, leaving the headlamps on. And the other four large lumberjacks piled out.
Within seconds, Widow was no longer in a pyramid. Now, he was standing at the center of a seven-man diamond formation, not counting himself in the diamond.
Shit, he thought.
Chapter 13
T HE LEAD DINOSAUR LUMBERJACK spoke after all.
He said, “You think you’re a funny guy?”
“I’ve been told so from time to time.”
“You come into our town making jokes? Starting trouble?”
One of the other lumberjacks spoke from behind Widow.
He said, “We don’t want you here.”
Widow was grateful for him speaking out of turn because it gave Widow a reason to twist at the waist and glance back at the four guys behind him. He hated having to worry about a threat from the back. Not an ideal position to be in. But he took it as it was.
He twisted, kept his feet planted where they were, and scanned the four. No weapons in their hands. No gun profiles visible in waistbands. No knives or sharp objects. No blunt tools or clubs or hammers. It meant that they had made some half-assed plan before they found him. In that p
lan, someone with half a brain, maybe the leader, had ordered them to leave their weapons in their trucks. Surely, they had weapons. Lumberjacks had axes and saws and hammers and all kinds of big, heavy tools that would make devastating weapons. No question about it. Country boy lumberjacks had access to and an affinity for weapons and guns.
The fact that no one had any in his possession was a relief to Widow.
“With seven of us, you ain’t so funny now.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Why you coming into Mable’s asking questions that you ain’t got no right to be asking?”
“I can ask any questions I damn well please to ask.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s a fact. Besides, what’s so wrong about asking about such a peculiar grave?”
The dinosaur lumberjacks did not answer that.
Widow had clocked four guys standing behind him almost in an exact diamond formation if he included the three in the front of him, which he did.
Widow said, “So what’s the deal, fellas? You here to tuck me in?”
“We’re here to offer you a choice.”
“What choice is that?”
The leader said, “You can hop in the truck with us and get a ride out of town.”
Then he stopped speaking like that was the end of the sentence.
Widow said, “And? ”
“And what?”
“A choice requires more than one option to choose from. So far, you’ve given me one option and nothing else. So, what’s the second option?”
“There is no second option. You only got the one.”
Wind blew between them and under the carriage of the truck in front of Widow. It carried the smell of rain, distant but maybe headed this way.
Widow could see that the three dinosaur lumberjacks in front of him were squinting their eyes. That’s when he realized the headlamps on the truck behind him blinded them and he was given a slight advantage. Which would be very welcome because no man’s ideal opponent numbers seven. He had handled worse odds, but still, not ideal.
“I’ll tell you right now. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to rent a room. I plan to put my head on a soft pillow and get a good night's sleep. None of you are going to take that away from me. Maybe I’ll leave tomorrow. And maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll look around for a rental. Stay awhile. This is a beautiful town. I think, yeah, that’s a great idea.”
He nodded and continued, “That’s what I’m going to do tomorrow. I’ll look for a place to rent.”
One of the other dinosaurs spoke out of turn, not the same one from behind him. This time it was one of the ones in the front triangle. It was the one who was maybe five years older than Widow .
He said, “You can’t rent here.”
“Why’s that?”
“Ain’t nothing to rent around here. Not for you. You gotta have a job.”
Widow kept his head locked forward but flicked to his left, stared at the guy five years older than him.
“What makes you think I don’t have a job?”
The guy looked at Widow, up and down. He raised one hand to block out the headlamp beams behind Widow. Then he looked over at his nearest buddies.
“You ain’t got no job. No way.”
“You’re right about that. I don’t have employment, not at the moment. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I’ll find some tomorrow. I bet that tomorrow I can get up, find a new house to rent and a job all in the same day.”
“You look homeless. Where you gonna get work?”
Homeless? That kind of offended Widow because his clothes were clean and not very old. Plus, he’d just gotten a shave and a haircut that day. Worst of all, the guy telling him that he looked homeless was a greasy, sooty-looking lumberjack.
Widow said, “I’ll just go down to the local lumber mill and apply there.”
The three lumberjacks in front of him looked at each other right after that comment. Widow heard the four behind him make different audible sounds, not quite gasps, but not far from it.
The leader said, “You’d never make it in what we do.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re a big guy and all, but not lumberjack material.”
“Explain your reasoning for that.”
“You’re not qualified.”
“What kind of qualifications do you need?”
They paused.
Widow said, “What? You gotta be ugly to be a lumberjack?”
They were quiet.
“You gotta be stupid?”
He paused.
“Both?”
“You gotta be skilled.”
“Tell you what. Tomorrow, when I go down there for a job, I’ll skip lumberjack and go right to foreman.”
“To what?”
“The foreman. Supervisor. Or whatever the hell you guys call him.”
They said nothing.
Widow said, “You see I spent sixteen years in the US Navy. So, the fact is, I’m not unqualified. I’m overqualified. In fact, I’m so overqualified that I bet your boss hears my resume and gives me his job. I’ll be bossing you guys around tomorrow. No question.”
The leader said, “Not gonna happen.”
“You think? ”
The five-year-older lumberjack said, “Navy? That’s almost as bad as the Air Force.”
“How you figure that?”
“Navy’s a bunch of queers riding around on boats.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah?”
“You know that from your fantasies?”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“I just assume that you imagined that from your fantasies.”
“Fantasies? I don’t wanna be in the Navy.”
“Don’t get offended. Nothing wrong with being gay and liking men.”
“What the hell you saying?”
“Just to clear it up with you though, the Navy is a lot of work and mutual respect. So, don’t go to your local recruiter and try to get in thinking it’s like it is in your fantasies.”
“I ain’t no queer.”
The other two in the triangle looked over at the guy. Widow wasn’t sure, but he figured so were the four behind him.
Two parts of his brain told him to make a move right then. The first was the primitive part. It said now. This was the time. They were all distracted for a moment. The second was pure impatience. It told him it was time because this was dragging on.
Widow did not need to listen to the second because he spun on his toes, about-faced the four behind him. The headlamps didn’t matter because he had already mapped their positions in his head.
In an eruption of prehistoric and primitive powerhouse of violence, Widow exploded at the closest lumberjack to his left, the ten o’clock position.
Widow uppercut the guy right in the chin. He used the momentum of his violent twisting and the power of his left hand to blow the guy right off his feet. He came up off the ground in a heap like a traffic sign blown away by a tornado.
Widow moved straight into the eleven o’clock guy. He did not pause. He did not wait. He did not take a breath.
The ten o’clock guy was hitting the concrete by the time Widow jabbed a right straight into the guy’s solar plexus. It was a hard, vicious blow. Six inches north and the lumberjack would’ve been dead by the time he hit the pavement. But Widow wasn’t trying to kill anyone. Not yet.
The eleven o’clock guy did not hit the pavement at first. Widow walloped him so that he flew back off his feet and his heavy mass carried him a little down a slope in the road, slamming him into the truck’s front grille.
Everyone heard a loud BANG!
The sound of fat flesh and bone clanked with the cheap metal on the truck’s front grille.
The one and three o’clock guys were next, and they both knew it.
The leader and the other two heard the sounds and saw the actions, but
the headlamps blocked out most of what was happening. It was as if the drifter knew exactly where to move and where to strike to keep them blinded.
Widow moved into the one and the three guys at the same time.
He watched as the one o’clock guy tried to swing at him with a right hook. Widow blocked the whole movement with a kick to the balls.
He was blessed with long arms, even longer legs, and a big shoe size.
He did not kick as hard as he could, but the blow was amplified because the guy ran into it like a car slamming into a battering ram.
Widow could only imagine that the damage was just as devastating.
The one o’clock lumberjack was leaning back on the grille, cupping his groin and moaning like a soprano giving birth.
Widow paid the three down guys no attention. They weren’t getting back up. Not right then. He took his time and stood up tall, stretching himself out vertically. His hands fell by his sides, like a grizzly bear standing up on its hind legs.
The three o’clock guy knew that he was out of range of his friends. He knew that they weren’t coming to help him. He knew that for the next seconds ahead, he was on his own.
Widow looked down at him, promenaded toward him like he was Bigfoot standing in the fog, from out of the woods, and here to kill the man chopping down the trees of his home .
Suddenly, the guy got brave, like a shot of adrenaline was needled straight into his veins. He charged at Widow.
Widow let him come and then sidestepped to the right and wound back and flung forward. He shoved the guy with both hands onto the shoulders of the guy to the left and away. The guy came up off his feet and slammed into the front grille of the truck. He hit the passenger side headlamps with his head. A CRACK! roared in the silence.
Widow wasn’t sure, at first, if the sound had been the glass from the headlamp shattering or the guy’s skull. He figured it might’ve been a combination of both. The guy was dazed and conscious when he landed on his butt, but he was dizzy, and blood trickled out of his mouth.
That’s when Widow was hit with the thought that he’d made a mistake. He took a second to check to make sure the guy wasn’t seriously injured.
That was a mistake because just then he felt a shattering pain across his upper back and he heard a loud splintering, crushing sound. He saw splinters of fresh timber crack and dust all around him. A long broken piece of lumber toppled over his shoulder and bounced off the pavement.
