by mike Evans
Matt clarified, “So, I get to live here, I stay out of your town, and any drug dealers that try to set up shop are mine to do with as I please, so long as no one ever finds them, I suppose?”
“Same damn deal I got with your dad,” Zeke replied.
“What do I do when you retire?”
“That isn’t going to be my problem. You can try your best to make a deal with the new sheriff, but there’s three men every time the election comes up, and you never know who they are going to be. More than likely, it's going to be some young buck with a hard on for trying to clean this place up or that has their hand in the dealer’s pockets and are thinking of the big money. I’ve turned down offers my entire career. I like to think that is why I'm still alive and why I'm still getting elected year after year.”
Paul asked, “Just out of curiosity, Zeke, if you did get replaced, how long do you think we’d have before people decided to start making their way here? What I mean is, this is prime hunting land, trust me on that; can we count on the next person leaving this as is?”
“I’d say you can’t count on shit with a new sheriff, but I got years left. You got no problems for as long as I am around, Paul. You two make yourself nice and happy up here and try not to kill every damn deer in the woods. I might sneak up here one day to hunt. It’d be nice if there was still something decent.”
“I only hunt, Zeke, when I’m hungry.”
“Hard to beat venison.”
The Hardin men both looked at each other and the sheriff realized he very clearly was not thinking on the same page as the two serial killers. “Well, you best get your stuff out of the back of my trunk. I volunteered for night shift tonight. One of the younger kids had another baby.”
Paul made his way down, crossing in front of Matt, who still had his pistol. He squeezed his son’s shoulder lightly, smiling. “It is good to see you, boy, even if it could have been under better circumstances.”
“Yeah, I know, Dad, I-”
Paul held up a hand. “We’ll talk when we get back to the cabin. We really do have a walk ahead of us. I’m glad that you got the young knees because I fear it is getting harder and harder to make the trip in and out of there. I hate to think what would happen if I had to be out here alone forever.”
“You know that you don’t have to stay here, don’t you?”
“Well, that was true—until you got blood hungry.”
Zeke cleared his throat. “If there won’t be anything else, I’ll be heading out. You two going to be able to manage everything getting back to the cabin on your own?”
Paul smiled, nodding yes. “It won’t be any problem whatsoever, having my boy here to help me out. No more double trips. Now, Zeke, I know there is quite a name my son here has made for himself. We aren’t going to have any issues—I mean none at all—with you trying to further your long-term, heroic relationship in the spotlight, correct?”
“Paul, I’m an old man; the last thing I want is to have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of my life.”
“You wouldn’t be sleeping with one eye open, because if you fuck me in any way at all, sheriff, I assure you to the highest degree that I will find you. I’ll make anything you’ve seen about me on television by that bitch news reporter look like a pleasant after school special. You understand the gist of what I'm getting at?” Matt threatened.
“Talk and I die.”
“Yeah, something like that, Zeke; but slower.”
Paul said, “Okay, boy, let’s get going. Come on, we got a few hours’ trip ahead of us.”
“A few hours? Christ, how far are you?”
“Get the shit and let's go. Save your breath, I got a feeling you’re going to need it. Back in your army days, you might have been able to hump it back here, but I think you’ll be feeling it in the morning. You look like you’ve gotten soft. A woman will do that to you. Of course, you’ve been on your own for a few months or more now, haven’t you? I don’t get all the news like everyone else, but every so often I’ll catch a newspaper or get a shitty radio transmission. Boy, you were the talk of the town for a while, weren’t you? Nothing like listening to all those damn lessons I taught you, huh?”
“Damn it, Dad, it isn’t that easy.”
“It isn’t that easy? You’re kidding me right, you got half the blood that I do. You had your mother to help dwindle the killer in you. If I can do it, you can do it; your kids should be even better off than you.”
“My kids aren’t plagued with my genes. I only hope that it passed over the two of them. Maybe their kids will have something to worry about—I don’t want to think about it. We can talk when we get there.” With that, Matt resigned himself to silence.
His dad took half the items, putting them into one of two packs, and then got the second one, handing it over to Matt. The two made their way into the woods, not talking, and watching their steps. His dad showed him booby traps along the way; as they got closer there were more and more of them. He’d set them up to look like natural pieces of the woods, but ones that would leave a person disabled and unable to make their way back home. When Matt saw the small cabin, he was thankful and eager to rid himself of the aching in his shoulders and back from the pack.
His dad saw the relief on his face and said, “We still need to put it away, Matt. Don't look so relieved just yet. The light is near.”
Matt was looking around the woods, thinking of the time he’d spent without killing before, and wasn’t sure if he could even survive two months out here before losing his shit. He then realized his dad was the only one who had known how to get out of the woods. He felt a bit of calmness wash over him because of that fact. The idea that even when he was hungry that he could do little about it except for splitting his dad’s head open eased his mind. He was pretty sure if he was okay with killing the mother to his children, that he would be able to handle his dad’s demise, if it came to that.
When his dad opened the door, Matt was impressed. “Shit, Dad, you got enough supplies?”
“I’ve been asking for double what I need, one in the event that something happened to Zeke.”
“And the second?”
“I always had a fear in the back of my mind that it’d be best to have enough in case your police officer gig didn’t pan out. I wasn’t really surprised when someone figured out what you’d done. You really fucked up a good thing. Christ, you were getting to look into your own murders; I can’t imagine how you ever kept the smile off your face. And then on top of it all, in Colorado you were able to pin it on someone else and were a national hero, not once, but twice when you found the man in the woods. I still don’t understand how in the fuck you pulled that all off.”
“There were a lot of things going for me that day. My only fuck up was the bastard’s service on his truck’s location was shut off a few months before. Had I looked into that a little harder, I would have been able to still be doing what I did. The kids were too close to my toy though, and I wasn’t done torturing her.”
“You definitely never slowed down after that. Lord, I can’t imagine what happened with you and your wife.”
“From the night that I took out the men who came for me, I haven’t seen her, except one more time when I picked up my go bag.”
“You realize it’d have been a little smarter had you put your go bag somewhere else besides your house, right? If you want to be old enough to gray, then you might want to start planning for the future. One kill at a time is great and all, but being around to continue is even better,” the old man scolded. “I think that you’ll find it peaceful out here. You can quite literally spend all day hunting, never see another human, and can do whatever you need to with the animals to fix your urges. The only problem is that they don’t plead.”
Matt smiled, as did his dad, each of them thinking of their favorite people they’d killed, begging for mercy, to be left alone, and then in the end—when they could take no more punishment, no more pain—finally pleading to be killed.
Matt felt his side and nodded, thinking he’d do good to be able to heal for a while before trying to insert himself back into society somewhere. He figured if he could handle it, he could always head further north to work on a fishing boat, or maybe somewhere to work an oil rig. He was damn smart, but the fact was that any job that was going to not pay in cash was going to ask for a date of birth, a valid driver's license, and a social security number.
His dad saw ideas rushing through his son’s face. Since Matt was little, Paul was well aware that his boy was different; even before he had begun his spree of killing local pets in the neighborhood. Paul set down the supplies, walking over and taking his son by the shoulders. “Matt, you don’t have to figure it all out today. Heal. We can figure it out—you can figure it out. It doesn’t have to be this second. How long can you go before the hunger starts pulling at your skin?”
Matt smiled. “I’m already imagining what the inside of yours and Zeke’s skulls looks like, Dad.”
“You to, huh?”
“I can handle it for a while. I'm pretty lame right now, and I'm going to need some time. I took a hard hit falling out of the house's window.”
“You shouldn’t fall out of windows, Kid,” Paul joked.
“My plan was to send the special agent who had a hard on for killing me out of it. He didn’t seem too worried about dying, and took me with him after I had slid a knife into his side.”
“Someone must’ve had a death wish.”
“I don’t think he had a lot to live for. We never got a chance to sit down and chat though.”
“Did you want to sit down with him?”
“I don’t think it’s going to happen. I’m sure that he’s gone. I wouldn’t think that he’d be up for that though.”
Paul nodded towards a cot. “That’s yours. Why don’t you lay down before you pass out?”
Matt took one more look out of the small thick windows. He could only see trees and nature for as far as the eye could see. He pulled his boots off, thinking that it was a good thing that he and his dad were about the same size; he was going to need some different clothes when he woke up. His were covered in dried blood, gore, brains, and God knows what else.
Chapter 5
UCLA Medical Hospital
Three weeks later
Melinda sat in the chair next to Jack’s bed, trying to not tell herself she was going to hell for having thoughts about the doctors passing by. Jack was getting the best care that was available, and the media had been shunned from the hospital. She’d tried giving the reporters updates at first, but one question became two, then three, and it went on for hours. They’d researched what had happened with his wife and been thirsty for everything they could learn. Over the last few weeks, there had been dozens of different news stories about him and how heroic and brave he’d been. She wasn’t sure if she was proud of her brother, or pissed with him. The fact that the doctors had kept him sedated while he healed was the best thing for him, they’d said. Jack had woken violently twice now, and had ripped hours’ worth of surgery back open each time.
Jack began to stir in his bed and Melinda rose slowly, not wanting to be within arm’s reach of her brother’s giant hands, which were made even more powerful by his massive biceps. She placed one hand on his chest and the other on the button to call the nurse. Melinda whispered, “Jack? Jacky, it’s me. Are you there, Jack? It’s Melinda. You’re alive, you made it, Jack. Oh, thank God you woke up, you were so messed up every time you came back around.”
Jack tried to say something, but he didn’t have any spit in his mouth. She put a glass of water up to his lips, pouring a small drink for him. He coughed on it at first and then took a few drinks. He held his eyes shut until the water lubricated what it needed to so that he could speak. “Melinda, what… what happened, how the fuck am I still alive?”
“Don’t sound so excited to be alive; you’re in deep shit, you know that, right?”
“I’m feeling great, thanks for asking, Sis. I’m sure my boss is all kinds of pissed.”
“I don’t give two shits about your asshole boss, I’m talking about me, you asshat. What the hell were you thinking trying to take on a serial killer by yourself?”
“I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could finally stop that fucker.”
“Okay, that makes sense. But really, are you okay now?”
Jack tried to sit up and couldn’t. “I’m not paralyzed am I?”
“They did everything they could, Jack.”
He sat up and a new sense of worry fell across his face. He didn’t want to be alive, but if he was going to be, he sure as shit didn’t want to be in a wheelchair, especially with that thing, that monster still out there. “Are you saying that I’m going to be in a fucking wheelchair?”
“You see that feeling you have right now, Jack?”
“Yeah, and what of it?”
“That’s the way I felt when the FBI came to my damn house, told me that you almost died, and that you were three thousand miles away from me.”
“It isn’t three thousand miles from New York to UCLA. Oh, and I hate you—a lot. I wish mom were still alive so I could tell her to come and kill you, damn it,” he complained.
“I’m going to go get your doctors and let them know that you are alive, and that they aren’t going to have to sedate you this time.”
“Christ, ‘doctors’? How many people are taking care of me?”
“Seems every doctor on this floor is trying to say that they took care of the hero. The man that…”
“That what? That what?”
“The man that almost killed the deadliest serial killer ever to grace the continent of North America,” Melinda said.
“What do you mean? He lived?”
“Oh yes, he definitely lived. As he was on his way out of the Kivett house, he smashed her face into the door frame until she wasn’t recognizable.”
“Is that the only other victim?” he asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to shoot his puppy, but knew someone with much less compassion would tell him the story very soon if she didn’t. “He killed a group of police with a handgun, and then to top it all off, he stopped by a news reporter who was tracking the two of you, only to get herself almost decapitated. It wasn’t much different though, with what he did to her and her news crew.”
“God damn it, why doesn’t he die? What the hell does he keep getting saved for? There is absolutely no way that God is looking out for him! He does no good in this world! Nothing, not a fucking thing!”
“You need to breathe, Jack, and remember that the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“No, that isn’t the case whatsoever. He has the Devil looking out for him—if he isn’t the fucking devil himself,” he insulted. “How long have I been out for?”
“You’ve been out for a little over three weeks.”
Jack pushed himself up, seeing a beard had gotten a healthy start on his face, with a healthier amount of gray hair than he would have liked to have seen. He stopped when he could see the tiniest of red dots beginning to form on his hospital gown, on the side that he’d been stabbed. “Fuck, how many people has that psycho killed since then? How many people have had to deal with him?”
“I don't know, Jack, it’s really strange. The night that he killed everyone but you, he stopped. They say that three weeks is a long time, and they honestly wonder if he might have died. They don’t have any proof to back that up, but regardless, they can only speculate that is the case without more killings. Unfortunately, they have their hands tied. They’d been tracking him by video for quite a while, but he went off-road at some point and they were never able to pick up on him again.”
“So he stopped, we lost him, he got away—again—and he hasn’t started back up? I know his body count would’ve been damn high that night, but there’s no way you can please a killer. He’d gotten hot and heavy into it that night; you’d think that he would still do his best
to try to kill more. I can’t imagine that sadistic bastard has got an on-off switch. I need him out there being stupid, so that we can catch him in the act and take him down once and for all.”
“You need to rest and heal. You aren’t going to be any good to anyone until you get checked out, you hear me? You are stuck in this bed at least until the nurse swings in to see you. I’m going to go find your doctor. Do you think that I can trust you not to do anything stupid for five minutes?”
“Like, the entire five minutes? Yeah, sure, go on ahead and go. I don't care. I don’t think my legs are awake yet anyways.”
Melinda watched him a moment longer before she could tell he was going to be twice as pissed at whatever poor soul had to come in here if she left him unattended, but thought he needed the babysitter instead. His eyes were always easy to read and had been since childhood. This was definitely a great “go fuck yourself” look. “You know, you could say thank you for me sitting here for the last three weeks. You aren’t real interesting to watch, and apparently, the playboy doctors don’t like a chick with a little cushion for-”