Granny Goes Wild

by Harper Lin

  Not on my watch.

  I gripped my spear, keeping it in my own shadow so the knife that made its business end wouldn’t catch any reflections, and waited. I didn’t even think about my back; all I thought about was protecting the people whose safety had become my responsibility.

  Another rustle, much closer this time, then the sound of someone stumbling.

  A whoosh in the air, a thud, and a cry.

  Like some Paleolithic cavewoman, I raised my spear high, let out a yell, and charged down the hill to defend my young. A hundred thousand years of instinct burned through my veins, giving me the fighting instinct of a saber-toothed tiger.

  The instinct, but not the ability.

  I slipped on the wet grass and landed on my rear end, sending a spike of pain up my back. My war cry turned into a yelp. For a moment, I was paralyzed and could only sit there helpless, still clutching my spear but unable to use it.

  Orrin staggered into view, emerging from the shadows into the firelight like some demonic vision. He clutched his side, blood flowing freely through his fingers. His face was rigid with pain and rage. In his other hand, he gripped a hammer.

  A hammer. What kind of psychopath takes a hammer on a hiking trip?

  This psychopath. And now he was coming for us.

  “Run!” Martin cried. I heard him and his friend rush off into the underbrush.

  So much for adolescent bravado.

  “Orrin Hitt,” I said in an authoritative voice, “everyone knows it was you. You won’t get away with this. You’ve already killed one man. That’s going to give you years of prison time. You kill anyone else, and that’s the electric chair.”

  When I say “authoritative voice,” I mean a pained, warbling squeak.

  Leveling my spear at him was probably more effective. I hoped my face didn’t betray how painful even that simple movement was.

  Still clutching his side from where my booby trap had hit him, he approached me. His gait grew steadier. While he was in pain and losing blood, rage gave him strength.

  It became painfully obvious to me that I was not his match. Perhaps if my back hadn’t been out, I could have taken him on. Perhaps if I had been fighting on a full stomach. Perhaps if I were ten years younger.

  “Perhaps” wouldn’t mean anything when he got within swinging distance with that hammer.

  Time for a radical change of plan. Ignoring the pain in my back as much as I could, I let loose with one final effort. I reversed the grip on my spear, coiled up, and threw it at the dead center of his chest.

  The pain almost knocked me out. My gasp mingled with his own. I looked up, my eyes half-shut, my head swimming, and I saw him stagger to the side, my crude spear stuck in his thigh.

  A throw at a large man less than ten feet away, and I almost missed? I reminded myself not to get into fights after three-day hikes with a bad back.

  Orrin snarled. With a jerk, he pulled the spear out of his thigh. He stood there a second, grinding his teeth, and then limped toward me.

  Oh well. It all had to end sometime. At least the boys had gotten away.

  A bellow from behind me made us both look. Quinten, wearing a shirt, his underwear, and nothing else, ran down the hill with the skillet in his hand. With a deft movement, he tossed the contents into Orrin’s face, who screamed and clutched at the half-burnt cornmeal.

  Not for long. Quinten followed up with a swing of the frying pan at Orrin’s head, connecting with a loud clong.

  The evil janitor went down for the count.

  Quinten stared at the motionless body at his feet. “Omigod, did I kill him?”

  I could see Orrin breathing. “No.”

  “Whew! Uh-oh. We need to tie him up or something.”

  I pointed my flashlight down the gully, where the spiked ball hung at the end of the rope.

  “Use your Swiss Army knife to cut that rope. You can use that.”

  “Righto.” Quinten sneezed.

  “Be careful of the spike traps. Stick to the center of the gully.”

  Quinten got back safely, still sneezing, and tied Orrin’s hands behind his back, sneezing on him a couple of times. I hoped Orrin would catch his cold.

  “Well done,” I said. “You’re shivering again. Get out of the rain and back into your sleeping bag.”

  I had managed to struggle to my feet. My back was a solid plank of pain, but I could move after a fashion, and Orrin was no longer a threat.

  For the first time, Quinten noticed his own state of undress. He looked down at himself, yelped, and scurried back into the modest safety of his sleeping bag.

  “Don’t worry about it. At least you had your underwear on.”

  “It dried out quicker than my pants. I put it back on just before he showed up. It’s nice and toasty now.”

  Too much information, as my grandson would say.

  The boys!

  “Martin! Butch!”

  A rustle in the bushes, and two frightened faces poked out of the greenery and into view.

  “We saw everything!” Butch said. “You were awesome, Dad!”

  Quinten gave a thumbs-up from inside his sleeping bag.

  “Those traps really got him!” Martin enthused. “And you even threw a spear. You’re a badass, Grandma.”

  I basked in the admiration, as I’m sure Quinten did too. While there must have been easier ways to gain adolescent approval, I took what I could get.

  “Careful with the pit traps!” I shouted as they approached the camp.

  “Don’t worry, Grandma. I’m the one who dug them, remember?”

  I retrieved my spear, taking a good thirty seconds or so to bend down enough to grasp it and another thirty seconds to get back up.

  Martin and Butch stood a little ways away, staring at Orrin. The janitor was just beginning to stir.

  “Martin, go fetch my first aid kit. He’s wounded, and I don’t want him to bleed out before he sees a courtroom. I’m in no condition to patch him up, so you’ll have to do it under my instructions.”

  “I don’t want to touch him!”

  “Do you want him to bleed to death in the rain?”

  Martin hesitated then ran to get the first aid kit.

  The boys propped Orrin against a tree, and Martin bound up the flowing wounds in his side and thigh. Then he put some anti-burn salve on Orrin’s face.

  The killer had woken up fully now and glared at us in silence.

  “So why did you kill Thomas Cardiff?” I asked, pointing my spear at him.

  His reply was unprintable.

  “He got you fired, didn’t he? He found something in your past, something reported in a newspaper in some town near to Cheerville. I’m thinking your name rang a bell. He remembered it in connection to some story that wasn’t published in his own paper but that he had glimpsed a few years ago in a neighboring paper. So last month, he looked it up and got you canned. Why? You worked at the high school for several years, and he didn’t do anything. What changed?”

  Orrin glared at me. Even tied up and wounded, he was intimidating, and I was not easily intimidated. I was amazed the photography teacher had dared to take him on.

  Orrin shrugged. “Maybe he recognized my name, and maybe he didn’t. He never messed with me until I tried to get money off him.”

  “How?”

  “He got into big trouble for going to the B&B. It’s a—”

  “Strip club. I know.”

  Martin gave me a scandalized look.

  “Yeah, well, the school board told him if he ever went back, he’d get fired. Then I saw him there. I took a picture of him and told him I wanted five hundred bucks a month or I’d show it to the school board.”

  Great. Another employee of the public school system going to the local jiggle joint. The more I dug into the secrets of Cheerville, the less I liked what I found.

  “Did he pay?” Quinten asked from his place beside the fire.

  “The first month, yeah. That was just playing for time. I guess
my name did ring a bell, because he found out I had a criminal record. Couple of cases of assault in Millersburg, where I used to live. Smacked around some people who didn’t show me respect. Nobody messes with me.”

  “And Millersburg is where you got familiar with the outdoor shop. Go on. How did you get a job with the school system if you’re a convicted violent criminal?”

  He gave me an arrogant smile. “Easy. I got connections in the state government. Right at the top. I got my parole records wiped.”

  “Most likely you bribed or intimidated some low-level bureaucrat to wipe your records,” I said. “It happens all the time. But you couldn’t wipe the newspaper archive. Your distinct name gave you away. Thomas remembered reading your name in the Millersburg paper and looked you up.”

  “And that got him wondering why you weren’t on parole,” Quinten said. “That’s why Thomas was looking at legal books—to check if you should be on parole or not. When he found out you were supposed to be, he put two and two together.”

  “Yeah, and got me fired!” Orrin snapped. “He figured that if he showed them that, they wouldn’t care if he had been in the B&B. So they forgave him and fired me! You know how hard it is to get a job these days?”

  While it unsettled me that they had continued to let Thomas teach, he had revealed that a criminal with a violent past was working in the school. That was more important than some little suburban peccadillo.

  I shook my head in disgust. “So you decided on revenge. You couldn’t stand losing a job you shouldn’t have had in the first place. Even worse, you couldn’t stand being outsmarted. But murder, Orrin? You were willing to actually kill for this?”

  Orrin sneered. “He didn’t show me any respect. I told you, nobody messes with me.”

  “What was the burning H for?” I asked.

  The firelight shone like an evil gleam in his eye. “I wanted him to know. I wanted him to fear me. Live with it for a day before I offed him.”

  “But he managed to photograph you. So you snuck into camp and stole his camera. What did you take out of his wallet?”

  “A memory card. Those are both gone. You’ll never find them.”

  “Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. What happened the night you killed him? He went out to confront you.”

  “He heard me close to your camp. He came out to offer me a bribe and threaten me with those pictures. It was too late for all that. I bashed his head in.”

  “Did the others get away?” Martin asked. He stood with Butch a few yards away, staring in wonder at the man they had only known as a humble janitor, now grown in stature to a ruthless killer.

  Orrin fixed those baleful eyes on my grandson, who took a step back.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t stop everyone. I came after you because you were nosing around my camp.”

  “You wanted to clean up the evidence and get rid of us,” I said. “That still wouldn’t have covered your tracks. They would have proven it was you sooner or later.”

  “I don’t like people nosing into my business.”

  “Like Thomas. You bashed his head in with that hammer for nosing into your business.” My anger rose. “And you would have done the same to me and Quinten. And then you would have smashed the skulls of two fourteen-year-old boys. You would have killed two innocent children just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I stepped forward and pressed the tip of my spear against his throat.

  “You’re lucky I’m one of the good guys.”

  The chop chop chop of a helicopter cut through the night. It grew louder, joined by the sounds of two or three others. Distant spotlights beamed down from the sky onto the valley about a mile away.

  “That must be the police!” Martin said. “Butch, help me pull the tarp away so they can see the fire.”

  The boys ran off. I remained where I was, the tip of my spear poking Orrin’s throat.

  He gave me a mocking smile. “You’re not going to do it, are you? If someone threatened someone I cared about, I’d bash their heads in.”

  “I seriously doubt you care about anyone.”

  “No one crosses me without getting hurt. Go on. Do it. No one’s watching. You can say I lunged at you and you defended yourself. Everyone will believe you. No? Coward. I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

  I glared at him. “I’m one of the good guys. I told you.”

  “One of the weak.”

  “Says the man who never rose above janitor and who will now be mopping a jail cell instead of a school until he’s an old man. If I’m one of the weak, why did I beat you? Me and a librarian and two boys? You’re not some rugged individual, some misunderstood genius. You’re just a thug and a loser. You’re not even that good a criminal. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go join someone who loves me and watch the helicopters come in.”

  I turned my back on him and walked back up the hill.

  The boys had torn away the tarp so that the fire was more visible from the sky. The helicopters immediately turned and came in our direction. Martin and Butch cheered, jumping up and down and waving. Quinten sat up in his sleeping bag and waved too.

  “We did it! We’re safe!” Butch cried.

  “You did it, Grandma,” Martin said, giving me a hug.

  “Well, you certainly helped.”

  Martin’s face fell. “I ran. Me and Butch. We left you guys alone to face Orrin.”

  I gave him a hug. “You’ve been very brave through all of this. You helped me across the bridges, and you helped me set the traps. You can’t be expected to face a maniac with a hammer.”

  “You did.”

  “I have lots of experience.”

  I hadn’t meant to say that. It just slipped out.

  Martin looked at me quizzically. “What did you really do for the government, anyway?”

  I was saved from having to answer by the thunderous approach of the helicopters. A search beam blazed down on us.

  “THIS IS THE POLICE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE,” a loudspeaker blared. “WE ARE COMING TO SAVE YOU.”

  The lead helicopter hovered directly overhead, its searchlight blinding us like some UFO about to beam us aboard. From out of this light came a pair of human silhouettes, rappelling down from the helicopter. Two SWAT team members in full Kevlar and assault rifles thumped to the ground next to us. I dropped my spear in case they got trigger happy.

  “Stay where you are!” one shouted. “We’ll clear the area!”

  “We already have,” Martin said.

  They ignored him. More SWAT team members rappelled down to our position, descending by pairs in rapid succession.

  “Cool!” Butch said.

  “The murderer is tied up over there,” I shouted over the hammering of the helicopter and the cops screaming orders at each other. They ignored me.

  “Move out!” their commander called.

  A dozen bulky men and women charged down the slope.

  “Wait!” I cried. “The forest is booby trapped!”

  As if on cue, three of them stepped into my pit traps all at once and fell down.

  “They’re firing at us!” one of the fallen said.

  “No one shot you,” I said. “It’s—”

  “Return fire!”

  The SWAT team began firing into the woods. A series of repeated flashes sparked from the helicopters as snipers join in.

  A hulking man let out a battle cry and ran past me toward the stream.

  “Not that way! I’ve set—”

  He set off the trip wire. The ball of spikes swung down and implanted itself in his back armor.

  “He’s got me!” the cop shouted, spraying the shrubs on full auto. Leaves and branches flew everywhere. He even managed to shoot the rope of the trap, leaving the ball of spikes stuck in his back.

  Through all this, Orrin sat, amazed, staring at the leafy carnage all around him. No one paid him the slightest attention.

  As the guns blared, another figure came rappelling down out of the ligh
t. I immediately recognized the plump silhouette of Cheerville Chief of Police Arnold Grimal. The harness had hitched up his belly to make it look like a single large breast. He spun at the end of the line, waving his arms and legs like a spider on too much caffeine, and thumped to the ground in a heap. I went over and unclipped him.

  “Ugh. You again,” he said. I could barely hear him over the gunfire.

  “The perp is over there. Get your friends to stop firing before they kill every tree out here. I know a local P.E. teacher who will turn you in if you’re not careful.”

  Grimal slumped off down the slope, waving his arms and screaming for everyone to stop. It took him some time to be heard.

  “I got the perp right here,” he announced, slapping cuffs on Orrin’s wrists even though they were already tied together. “He was working alone.”

  “Then what about the platoon that was firing at us?” a Kevlar-clad behemoth asked.

  “There is no platoon. You were firing at trees, you idiot.”

  I cringed. Hearing Grimal calling someone an idiot had to be the worst insult ever.

  The firing died down as the SWAT team slowly began to realize that Grimal was right and there weren’t any perps out there firing back at them.

  “Don’t worry, lady. We’ve secured the area,” one of them told me. He still had my spiked ball stuck in his back armor. I decided to leave it there.

  I was relieved to see that the three who had fallen into my pit traps weren’t hurt. Their boots had been tough enough to resist the wooden spikes.

  Still, Martin was quite proud of himself.

  “We took out a whole SWAT team, Grandma.”

  I smiled and put my fingers to my lips. “Sometimes it’s best not to brag about your achievements.”

  We were evacuated to the nearest police station, where we were reunited with the rest of the group, who sat in a conference room, drinking coffee and eating donuts. The four of us dove for the donuts. Grimal almost pushed me to the floor to get a couple for himself.

  The next few minutes were a cacophony of enthusiastic teenagers sharing their adventures. Soon, Martin took center stage.

  “And then we built traps for him! We made pits with spikes in them and swinging spike balls and everything! He tripped on one and got a spiked ball stuck right in him. Then my grandma and Butch’s dad fought him off.”