by David Haynes
He shook his head.
“Compared to this, it’s like Disneyland.” She smiled. “We went there once too. After we got married.”
The smile left her face as quickly as it had arrived.
“I’m not an outdoors person, not like Lisa. Back home, I like to get drunk, smoke pot and dance. We both did but he said we should come up here and see it, just the once, before it got ruined. So that’s what we did.” She paused and closed her eyes. “And now I’ve seen it.”
Jonesy thought about putting his arm around her. She looked so small, so vulnerable and frightened. He raised his hand.
“Did you ever make a decision and regret it, wished you could take it back and choose the other option?” she asked. Her eyes were still closed.
“All the time,” he answered. He lowered his hand to his waist.
She opened her eyes, keeping them fixed on the window.
“We saw a bear the first day we set out. A big old thing. Olin said it was a grizzly and it might have been for all I knew. We watched it cross a creek, heading toward the mountains like it was out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. It was just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It was so powerful, so strong. You could tell just by watching it move. Then it stopped, slapped its paw into the water and hooked a salmon out. It turned to us and bit the head off that fish, staring right at us, like it was showing us what it was about.”
Jonesy had no idea where she was going with this. He glanced over at the door, hoping Lisa would come through and rescue him.
“Every living thing has two faces,” she continued. “That bear, as handsome as he was, would bite my face off given the chance.” She paused and looked up at him. “And people are just the same. Aren’t they?”
Her expression sent a shiver down his spine.
11
He wasn’t ready to die yet. It wasn’t his time. He knew it as certainly as he’d known it that afternoon in Melladay’s yard. It was as obvious as the moon in the night sky or the sun in the... okay, so maybe not the sun, not at the moment anyway. Down in the lower forty-eight these conditions would be a newsworthy report, something about the apocalypse. Up here, it was just the onset of another winter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun. Everything, the sky, the ground, the air, the meat, they were all just shades of gray.
He would get out of this mess one way or another. The manner of escape was irrelevant, he just needed to get out of the hole. What was important was life. The continued living of his life. That was all that mattered. Survival. Now and always.
He pushed the last square of frozen gray-meat into his mouth and chewed. It tasted gray. It tasted dead, which was no real surprise since he was the one who had killed it in the first place. His teeth bounced off something that could have been cartilage. He bit down harder, shredding it, enjoying the brief sense of victory and then swallowed. It caught in his throat on the way down and scratched a trail all the way to his empty belly.
His stomach churned as the meat landed. Is that it, it asked? Is that the best you can do?
“Protein,” he said. “To keep your strength up. Build muscle.”
He laughed but it turned into a fit of coughing. The coughing became a series of painful heaves, driving him onto all fours. The gray-meat was ejected onto the filthy floor in a nest of bile and spit. He picked it up and leaned against the cold timber wall. His teeth had done nothing more than soften it. They hadn’t destroyed it, ground it up, bent it to his will.
He popped it back into his mouth as if it were a piece of candy. His stomach had warmed it up, melted the ice a bit, and that made it easier to chew. He rolled it around his mouth. He was no butcher. He had cut in haste, not really caring what it was or where it had come from. He just needed to cut it into pieces small enough to put in his mouth.
He swallowed again, fighting off the retch impulse as his gut tried to reject it a second time. He put a hand over his mouth to stop it coming back up and silently counted up to ten. He knew if he made it to double digits he was safe. The fight was over and the last piece of meat was gone.
There was nothing left now. All of it was gone. At least all the bits he wanted to eat. He sure as hell wasn’t eating any cock or balls. He used the wall to haul himself upright. And he sure as hell wasn’t eating eyeballs either. He kicked them across the floor. They bounced off the wall like glass marbles.
If he was going to get out of here, it had to be now. Another day and he might be tempted to start chewing on the ball-sack. If he wasn’t mistaken, it looked like that particular cut might take a bit more chewing than the rest. He felt his stomach lurch again.
“Stay down you son of a bitch!” he shouted.
No, he had to leave today. Nobody was going to rescue him except himself and if he had to eat anymore of that gray-meat, he was going to hurl so hard he would flip himself inside out.
He felt a little unsteady on his feet but at least he was warm. He had two jackets and two pairs of pants on. They should keep him warm until he found somewhere to hole up for a while. He opened the door and squinted into the grayness he so despised. The wind blew flakes of snow as big as his fist right into his eyes.
Lauren was out there somewhere. Either lying under ten feet of snow or in the belly of some creature, a bear or maybe a wolf. Perhaps she was inside the wolf that was inside the bear, like one of those Russian dolls. He felt bad but only for a second. She had run out on him, left him to die in that cabin all alone when he’d done his best to provide for her. He took a step out into the wind. He shouldn’t feel bad about that, it had been her decision and if she was in the belly of the beast, then that’s exactly what she deserved.
He almost fell forward as he put his foot down. The snow came up past his knees but he kept on moving until he reached the treeline. He knew the snow would be more manageable under the cover of the branches, out of the clearing. He had no idea where he was, even less than Lauren had. He’d tried to instill confidence in her, convince her that he knew where he was and where they were going. The thought made him smile. It had all been bullshit. They had walked round and round in circles until she saw the cabin. Then she saw it again on the return journey from the wild goose chase he’d taken her on. He could be on the moon for all he knew at that very moment.
He remembered some of what happened. And then there was this gray-area that went nicely alongside the gray-meat. The gray-area was populated with events that may or may not have been real. In the last few days things had started to get a bit hazy on that score, and some of what he thought he remembered might actually have been part of a dream. He knew the confusion was down to the cold and hunger, particularly the cold. Last night he’d woken up shivering so hard that he thought his brain had shaken itself out of his ears. He also thought he’d shit his pants. And yet this morning there was nothing. No brain, no shit. Nothing.
That gray-area was a tricky bastard to come to terms with but once you got down to it, particularly in this circumstance, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that you stayed alive. If you had to live in that gray-area for a while and eat gray-meat to do that, then so be it.
He thought there was another cabin but it was something he wasn’t sure about. It might have been part of a nasty little trick played by his brain or, then again, it might have been real. There was no way to know for sure until he felt the timber beneath his fingers. But there was a postcard image of that place in his mind, from a few weeks back, and that seemed pretty clear. He was almost sure he’d passed it along the trail somewhere.
He threaded his way through the forest, keeping where he thought the trail might be on his left shoulder. If the cabin were there, he might just take a knee and have himself a little nap. If not then he definitely remembered the town. Big Sucks. There had been a dog, a strong handsome dog. He remembered that. He licked his lips and winced. What he wouldn’t give for a chap-stick right now. A chap-stick and a slice of that dog to chew on. He patted the Glock on his hip. It was
n’t much and he had some doubts over whether it would stop a bear, but it was something at least.
He stumbled and fell forward, landing face-first in the snow. It wasn’t unpleasant, just a little cold, a bit like a huge pillow. He tried to stand, to push his hands down and get some leverage but his hands just sank deeper and deeper until he was gone from the shoulders down. He was tired, really, really tired. If he just closed his eyes for a few minutes, some of his strength would return and he’d be able to make it into town.
No. Survive! He roared into the snow and rolled along the bank until he hit a tree. He used that as leverage to pull himself upright. Something was happening to his nose. The skin was prickling. He brushed his hand over it. Did they have ants up here? That’s what it felt like – hundreds of tiny fire ants rampaging over his face. The fingers on his left hand felt the same too, but he was used to that, they had been like that for the last couple of days.
He took a deep breath to stay the nausea, then looked upward. Snow drifted through the branches and fell silently on his face. One landed directly in his eye, making a sparkling kaleidoscope of all the shades of his current favorite color – gray.
He blinked it away. Which way had he been walking? He saw the groove he had made in the snow, following it up to his last footprints.
When they found the empty cabin, Lauren hadn’t wanted to go inside. She said it looked creepy, like something from a movie she’d seen, something about zombies. He hadn’t seen the movie, didn’t care for any movies in fact, but he could see where she was coming from. They had laughed about it, her a little nervously, but at that point they didn’t know what was coming, what was going to happen.
He had no idea who owned that place and even less idea about why someone would want to build a home that far out in the middle of nowhere. It seemed pretty stupid. You’d have to have a screw loose to want to live out here. What was clear, though, was that whoever had been there had cleared out in a hurry. And, by the looks of it, hadn’t been back in a long time.
All the trappings of life were there. Except food of course, there was none of that. There was a bed – a single naturally. Nobody who chose to live out here could possibly have a wife or a girlfriend. No, it had to be some sad old bastard who looked like he’d beamed in from the Klondike Gold-Rush. There were still blankets on the bed too, ragged threadbare things that fell apart as soon as he’d picked them up. They smelled too – boy, did they reek. Old men and sweat, just like the smell his grandpa had so proudly worn like cologne.
There was a stove, and when they’d seen that they thought they might be able to spend the winter there, a proper adventure like in Lauren’s movies, something to tell the kids about. But there was something wrong with it and after three days of trying to burn part of the bed, they gave up. It wasn’t like they had anything to cook on it anyway.
What food they had ran out, the day after he put a round into the stove. The bullet barely dented the damn thing. It just sat there, grinning with its yawning, dark, toothless mouth waiting to be fed.
Four candy bars, two bags of Ruffles and three cans of Red Bull don’t go very far. Even with strict rationing. He still wasn’t sure if a packet of peanut butter cups had gone missing at some point. He was pretty sure he’d spied it in Lauren’s pack a few days ago but when he’d taken the pack later and looked inside, it was gone. It would probably explain why she was so mad at him, she was saving it for herself. She should have learned to share better.
He kept his mind focused on the cabin. It was easier to be there than here, in the present. His will to live was strong, it always had been. Even as a kid he’d known that fighting was better than curling up in a ball, even when the other kid was twice his size. Fighting was always the answer.
Lauren hadn’t wanted to screw him. That was where the trouble, the real trouble, started. He didn’t understand her point of view on that score and that only made them both dig their heels in more. They might have been out there in the middle of nowhere with no food, little water, both shivering so hard the whole cabin was shaking, but needs were needs. She had taken some convincing over his point of view, but eventually she’d come around. He wished he’d got the chance to fuck her one last time but she went and ran off before they could go at it again. Her loss.
He fell to his knees again. Every step was a life-sapping trudge and the truth of the matter was, he had no idea where he was going or how long it would take to get there. Convincing someone else that you knew where you were going was one thing, persuading yourself was another matter entirely.
He couldn’t feel the fingers on his left hand at all now. Even the spiky, tingling sensation had stopped. That couldn’t be a good sign. He crouched, holding his hand to his face, and tried to wiggle his fingers inside the glove. They wouldn’t respond, not even the smallest movement. He tried the same thing with his other hand. His fingers moved right away, if a little stiffly.
He lifted his head and squinted into the swarming cloud of snow. What the hell was that? Something big moved between the trees, sidling toward him. A truck? No, not a truck, even above the wind he would have heard an engine revving. Maybe it was all part of the gray-area he now lived in. Real, imagined, dream, it was all the same when you were one touchdown away from death. He tried to get up but he knew his leg, the right one, wouldn’t respond. He tried anyway.
The truck, or whatever the hell it was, was closer now, so close in fact that he could see the paint-job. Brown, furry and the grille had big white teeth poking out of it.
“Well, hello, you grizzly bastard,” he said.
The bear was on all fours. It looked surprised to see him, pausing where it was. Staring.
He moved his right hand to his hip and found the clip to release the gun. The click was as loud as a cannon being fired, so quiet had everything become.
The bear wrapped its tongue around its big old teeth and pulled itself up to its full height. It was impressive, no getting away from the fact. More formidable than a fat two-bit gangster, that was for sure.
He flicked the safety off the Glock. He’d fought kids twice his size before but not five times his size with big teeth and claws. This would be a first.
The bear mouthed something and made a sound like Satan having a bad day in the bathroom. Then it charged toward him.
He pulled the glove off with his teeth, lifted the Glock and squeezed the trigger.
12
“What was that?” Lisa snapped her head around.
Jonesy ran to the window. “Sounded like gunfire to me. Three, four shots,” he said. He couldn’t see farther than the bank of trees on this side of the cabin. It was difficult to say with any certainty from which direction the shots had come but he thought it was deeper into the forest, farther along than the cache.
“See anything?” asked Lisa.
“Not a thing,” he replied.
Lauren had been outside helping to stack wood from the tree they felled. She came rushing into the cabin with Lad at her side.
“Was that a gun?” she asked. Her eyes darted from Jonesy to Lisa and then back again. The large ax she was using seemed impossibly huge in her hands. It looked too heavy to lift but not only had she lifted it, she had been hefting it and splitting wood. She seemed to enjoy the work.
“I think so,” said Jonesy.
Lisa came up beside him, looking out of the window. “Couldn’t be hunters. Not at this time of year, not with the weather like that.”
Outside, the snow blew sideways across the clearing. He nodded.
“Sounded like it was right outside,” said Lauren. She had her free hand on Lad’s neck.
“Some way off,” replied Lisa. “Things always sound louder out here than they do in the city. Nothing else to compete with.”
Lauren closed the door and came to stand behind them. She tried to peer over Jonesy’s shoulder but he was too tall. He stepped to the side and allowed her access to the window.
“Not much to see except snow,” h
e said.
She flicked her head from side to side, following the flakes of snow as if they were cars on the racetrack. Her throat moved up and down rapidly as she swallowed several times.
“I should go and check,” Jonesy said. He nudged Lisa. When she turned, he nodded toward Lauren. “You never know.”
Lisa shook her head. “Not a chance. No way you’re going out there. If someone’s stupid enough to be out there, then my husband isn’t going to go and babysit them.”
She covered her mouth, turning to Lauren. “Sorry, no offense.”
Lauren half-turned but kept her eyes focused on the snow. “Huh?” She hadn’t heard.
Jonesy raised his eyebrows. “Lauren?”
She ignored him.
He touched her elbow, making her jump. “Lauren? Did Olin carry a gun? A rifle maybe?”
She didn’t turn around, didn’t move a muscle.
He looked at Lisa who shrugged back at him.
“Lauren, I need to know. Was Olin armed?”
She still hadn’t told either of them what happened to her husband. He was dead, that was all she’d said.
“Yes,” she finally replied, turning away from the window. “No...I don’t know.”
Jonesy frowned. “You don’t know? How can you not know a thing like that? He either was or he wasn’t. Did he own a gun?”
Lisa shot him a look but he ignored it. He was tired of pussyfooting around with the girl. This was his own safety at stake.
She nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“A rifle?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “A handgun. A pistol.” She looked to Lisa for support. “I don’t know what it was.”
Lisa took over. Jonesy’s impatience was obvious. “Lauren, what happened to him? We need to know. If there’s a chance...”
Two more shots rang out. They all turned to the window again.