Hunters (11 page)

But Moxon hadn't told her where Ned Craig was
working today, so she couldn't very well surprise him there.
Instead she had looked up his address in the phone book, and driven
to the quiet residential street backed by thick woods. There she
had waited for Craig to appear. It seemed unlikely that he would
arrive home in the middle of the day, but she waited nonetheless,
thinking that he might be home for lunch, or that if he had started
early in the day, he might quit by mid-afternoon.

She was disappointed in these suppositions,
but shortly after three o'clock her heart started to race as a
small, dark green car pulled into the short driveway of Ned Craig's
house. But instead of the large, burly man that she had imagined, a
tall woman with long dark hair got out. She was dressed casually in
jeans and a waist-length, down-filled jacket, and had a leather
portfolio tucked under her arm.

Jean thought that maybe the woman was a
reporter trying to get a story about the shootings, a real version
of the false ID with which she had called Moxon. But when the woman
slipped a key into the lock and went in, Jean figured she had to
either be Craig's wife or his lover. She glimpsed the woman through
the window, and the casual way she tossed her jacket on a sofa and
threw herself on top of it confirmed her suspicions.

This complicated matters, and Jean sat back
and considered the situation, letting out her breath in a great
puff of vapor that fogged the inside of the jeep window. From where
Jean's jeep sat diagonally across from Craig's house, the tall
woman looked as though she were sleeping on the sofa, or at least
resting with her eyes closed. Jean started the engine, and winced
as the still cold air poured out through the vents against her
legs. By the time it was warm, the woman inside the house would be
dead.

That was the way to do it, wasn't it? Ned
Craig had killed Jean's mate, so she would do the same to him, take
away the person he loved most. It would be a good start, at any
rate.

She edged the jeep thirty yards ahead, until
she was directly across from the A-frame. The couch was nearly
parallel with the long wall, so that the size of the target was
reduced, but her face was clearly visible. That was where Jean
wanted the bullet to go. That was how she wanted Ned Craig to find
his dead lover.

An AK was in an unzipped, padded sleeve on
the seat next to her, and she slid the weapon out. It was already
loaded. She hadn't wanted to fumble when Craig finally put in an
appearance. Jean rolled down the window. She was a right-handed
shooter, so she shifted her body in the seat so that she could
extend her right arm out the window. It was uncomfortable, but she
could brace herself well against the door, the barrel through the
window, the banana shaped magazine of the weapon inside. If the
glass of the A-frame's large front window deflected her first shot,
she could keep firing. There were thirty rounds in the AK that
could be fired as fast as she could pull the trigger. If she
couldn't tear up Craig's bitch with that firepower, she'd crawl
back to Southern California.

Jean took another look up and down the
street, then pulled the AK back and waited for a ten year old Ford
Escort to putter by. One last look, and she thrust the barrel out
the window again and put the woman's head in the sights.

Just as her finger started to tighten on the
trigger, a grinding roar filled her ears. She twisted her head to
look out the back window, and saw a beat-up pickup truck tearing
down the street toward her. "
Fuck!
" she said, yanking the
rifle back into the car again. "Go on, you bastard," she whispered
angrily. "Hurry the hell up..."

But the truck began to slow, and Jean rolled
up her window and crouched down in her seat. The truck passed her
and then cut in directly in front of her. One of the brake lights
went on and the vehicle lurched to a stop two feet from the
curb.

The truck was a hideous piece of equipment.
Ancient red paint had faded to nearly the same shade as the rust
that covered the rest, except for the patches of gray primer that
looked as if they had been applied with a sponge. Two bumper
stickers, both tattered and faded, were on the tailgate. The first
read, "Shit Happens," and the second proclaimed "Clinton For
Change," with the "C" in Clinton formed by the Communist hammer and
sickle. Great, Jean thought. A fucking genius.

Her estimate didn't change when the driver
got out. He was pure white trash, without a doubt, short and
stringy with a stubbly little beard like the geeks in
Deliverance
. He had on one of those wool, red checked
hunting shirts that every other hunter wore up here, and blue jeans
that were way too dark to be fashionable. His brown hair
desperately needed styling gel.

The man's gaze fell on her then, and she
froze. He gave her a leer, a twisted grin, and a two-fingered
salute, then slammed shut his truck door and walked across the
street toward Ned Craig's house, and up the walk with an air of one
who belonged there.

Jesus, she thought, could this be Craig? She
had pictured the man as more official looking, and wearing a
uniform, but maybe this bony, puny redneck was what game wardens
looked like in this inbred backwater. If it
was
him, she
would never have a better opportunity. She could take them both
now. If he went in and sat on the couch next to his bitch, it would
be the perfect setup.

Jean feverishly cranked open the window and
picked up the gun once more, twisting her body so that she could
shove the barrel through the window. But the geek didn't walk right
in through the door. Instead he knocked and waited, his hands stuck
in the hip pockets of his jeans.

The woman inside jerked upright, and Jean saw
her get up and walk to the door. That did it then. Whoever it was,
it wasn't Craig. Jean choked down her disappointment, set the rifle
back on the seat, rolled up the window, and started the jeep. She
pulled away without looking back.

She hadn't gone two blocks before she realized that
she was relieved that she hadn't had to kill anyone. But she told
herself that didn't mean that she wasn't capable. When the time was
right, she could do what had to be done. She could kill Ned Craig
and
his bitch. She could do it for Andrew, and she could
kill for the animals.

M
egan had been
thinking about her late husband Butch when she heard the knock on
the door, and when she opened it she gasped, because she thought
for a moment that it was Butch standing there in the cold, his red
wool shirt open as always, as if to show everybody what a man he
was. The man outside was Butch's height, and had his lanky build as
well, along with the natural smirk that drew up the left side of
his mouth. The resemblance was so uncanny that she almost
flinched.

"Yes?" she said, thinking that he didn't look
like a salesman, or like the Jehovah's Witnesses who came through
every year or so.

"Oh...Mrs. Craig?" God, the voice was the
same pitch as Butch's too, and had that petulant bite to it.

She wasn't about to correct his mistake,
though. It wasn't this little man's business that she and Ned
weren't married. "You're looking for Ned?"

"Well, ma'am, I guess you could say I'm
looking for a friend."

The nonsensical words and the purposeful,
almost desperate look on the man's face made her think for the
first time that he might have something to do with what happened
the day before, with what Ned had had to do, and she drew back a
step.

"No need to be scared, ma'am," the man said
as he too retreated several steps, back to the edge of the porch.
"I know Ned well. We been close, him and me."

"Who are you?" Megan asked.

"Well, you just tell him his brother came to
call."

"His brother?"

"Yes, ma'am, that's right. "His
blood
brother." The man jerked his arm, and a knife with a long blade
fell from his sleeve into his right hand.

Megan sucked in her breath with a hiss.
Immediately she began to calculate the time it would take her to
slam and lock the door, then run upstairs and grab and load a gun
before the man beat his way in. She knew she should do it now, but
she stood there as if ensorcelled by the smiling man holding the
knife whose dull blade shone only at the very edge, where it
appeared to have been freshly honed. She knew that he could not
reach her before she could slam the door, so she stood and watched,
just the way she had stood and watched Butch grow madder and
madder, until it was too late to run.

But this strange man did not come at her with
fists raised. Instead he kept smiling, and said, "I just want to
leave a short message for my blood brother. Here it is." Then he
took the knife and drew it across his left palm.

Megan's eyes grew wide as the man grinned at
the pain. He held up his hand so that Megan could see the other
grin, the red one, in his hand. The hand closed as he squeezed the
fist, and droplets of red fell from between his fingers onto the
natural boards of the porch.

He chuckled at the sight. "Don't slip on that
now," he said, then cocked his head and looked at her. "What's your
name, honey?"

She didn't answer. She could only stand
there, fascinated and horrified by the blood dripping onto her
porch.

"Well, it don't matter. I'll find out. And
I'll be seeing
you
." He pointed at her with his bloody fist,
then turned and walked down the drive as nonchalantly as if he'd
just sold a vacuum cleaner, got into his truck, and drove away.

Megan stood there, the door open to the
chilling cold, for a long time. She was lost in terror, and lost in
her memory of Butch, her husband who had been as mad as this man
who smiled and drew his own blood on her porch and talked of blood
brotherhood. Their grins had been the same, the grin while the man
slashed himself, and the grin as Butch had slashed her with first
his open palm, and then his fist, and then in other, far more
intimate and more terrible ways. And the same words, over and over
again—

This is what you need, bitch...

And today, although she knew this other
madman was not,
could
not be Butch, it was almost as if he
had come back to torment her, to accuse her of letting him die, to
smile with that killer's grin and raise that bloody hand again and
strike her, not only with his hatred, but with her own fear.

But it must have something to do with Ned. He had
asked for Ned, he had not come for her. It must have something to
do with the other madman Ned had been forced to shoot yesterday.
Still, as she finally turned back into the house, her mind was
choked with thoughts of her husband, and that last day.

H
e came home from
work angry, ready for a fight. When she wouldn't give it to him, he
hit her, and choked her, and was about to tear at her clothes, when
suddenly something inside said no, no more of this, not ever again,
and for the first time in her life she struck back. She hit him
hard with her fist, right on the jaw, and heard something
crack.

It staggered him, just enough for her to push
away, run past him and out the back door. She had no idea where she
was going, but she knew she had to run. She could no longer be the
good and patient wife, a vessel not only for her husband's lust,
but also for his hatred of his sour, circumscribed, hopeless world,
and she ran toward the rocks, thinking,
rocks, won't you hide
me
, the cliff in back of their house that she climbed once
nearly every day in fine weather with her strong, sinewy
fingers.

It was raining now, a light mist that dappled
the gray ridges of stone with moisture, but it would take more than
that to stop her. She knew that she was running for her life, and
she heard the heavy, sodden footsteps and the ragged, furious
breathing of her husband close behind, deadly purpose in both
sounds.

She did not pause when she reached the rocks,
but went straight up, grasping the shards and ridges as easily as a
ladder's rungs, pulling herself upward, out of reach of the taloned
hand that swept up at her like an angry bear's, to rip the skin of
her bare ankle, tear whatever it could, before she pulled it
higher, away. Megan did not look back. She only climbed, and felt
as though she were flying up the side of the cliff, a panicked bird
seeking any nest except for the bitter one it had just fled.

As if in response to her thought, a gray
swift burst from its haven in the rock above her, startling her
with its wet, feathery blur of motion so that she nearly fell, but
caught herself in time, hitched a breath, and kept climbing. She
felt safer now, high above her husband and the terrors of the
world, and she turned to look down, as she always did, without fear
of falling, as if a quick and fatal descent into Butch's world
would be better than a slow, intact one.

She was amazed to see that he was still
pursuing her, only ten feet below, his teeth bared with the effort
of his climb, his hands clawing for grips, the tips of his heavy,
steel-toed shoes digging into the crevices of granite, displacing
soft shale that her lighter tread had never broken. Her fear drove
her upward, and she wondered for a terrifying instant what she
would do when she reached the top, and there was nowhere higher to
go.

When she heard the cry below her, it sounded
like a cry of triumph, and she expected to feel, a split second
later, his wiry fingers close on her ankle and yank her from the
cliff, indeed was nearly ready to welcome the fall into oblivion
and darkness. But no angry hand grabbed her, and she heard the cry
again, further away, and thick with the fear she felt.

She paused, looked down, and what she saw
filled her with both a deep chill and a dark joy. The shale of a
ledge on which she had trod countless times had finally crumbled
beneath her husband's feet, and Butch was hanging from his right
hand over the abyss, his left hand scrabbling for a hold on the
smooth, wet rock. His heavily shod feet dangled like lead weights,
ready to pull him down.