Cold Heart

by Chandler McGrew

  That and the odd way he held the shotgun.

  For some reason the kid kept his middle finger on the trigger.

  She didn't remember mentioning that to the police. In the chaos of the moment and her grief, it had probably slipped her mind.

  But she could see it now as though she were viewing the scene through high-powered lenses. Focused tightly on the man's hand on the gun.

  Her memory was a strange amalgam of uncontrollable images. The killer's finger. The flowers around her father's corpse. The smell of mums and chemical extender. Her parents’ screams as they died. The rhythmic slapping of tennis shoes, padding room by room behind her as she crept on her hands and knees through the darkened shop. Wiping blood from her hands onto the tight weave of the carpet. The black-and-white lines of shadow and light thrown against the closet walls by the louvered doors. Like prison bars.

  The wind died down and the snow fell in giant starfish flakes, so thick that everything beyond the cub's back was a kaleidoscope of white. Early May and McRay was in the middle of a blizzard. She knew that it might go on all night, or it might stop and the snow could melt under the blast of warm winds in hours, even minutes. The storm was as strange as the day.

  She had no idea what to do now.

  People around McRay were always talking about bears. But now it seemed all the advice she had been given on grizzlies wouldn't fill a decent paragraph.

  Don't feed them. Don't get between a sow and her cub.

  Make lots of noise and they'll usually leave you alone.

  If one charges, play dead.

  But she couldn't remember anyone ever mentioning what to do after you played dead or how long you might have to do it.

  What's the attention span of a bear?

  And why the hell are they still interested in me?

  It occurred to her again that it would be very bad for her to be lying on the ground outside El's house if El returned home.

  It was at least a fifteen-minute walk to the store, probably more in the snow. But El had Clive's four-wheeler. He could be anywhere by now.

  How long has it been since Dawn called? Five minutes maybe?

  The fact that the girl wasn't using the radio intensified Micky's fear for her. If Dawn wasn't talking, it probably meant that El was too close.

  Would Dawn have time to make a final call if he caught her?

  Is there anything I could do to help her if she did?

  Micky tried to remember everything she had ever learned about hostage situations. But that mostly amounted to calling for superiors who would bring in professional negotiators and El wasn't taking hostages anyway. There was nothing she could threaten him with or promise him.

  What do I do if the call comes right now?

  Reach for the radio and risk having my arm ripped off?

  Why was God doing this to her?

  Micky promised herself an answer for that one sometime in the future. Someone was going to tell her why. She wasn't going to accept Milquetoast explanations from some psychiatrist. She was going to demand to know what kind of God would send three killers for the same woman on three separate occasions. Three men with dead eyes and powerful guns intent on killing someone they had never met.

  Well, she had met El. If you wanted to call it meeting. But, really, she didn't know him any better than she had known either of the other two and that brought her full circle to her obsession with the repeating gunman.

  Although it was impossible, her mind kept telling her that the exact same terror was happening again. That it was the same man behind all the killings. Just as she had known in the hospital that the gunman in the bar was the same man who had killed her parents.

  Could he have gotten out of prison?

  No way.

  Did God have that sick a sense of humor?

  Sure.

  The same man.

  Over and over.

  Wasn't there an old saw about that?

  Whom the gods would kill, first they make insane.

  “I'm getting really tired of this shit,” she said.

  It was only when the cub snorted and fell over backwards that she realized that she had spoken out loud. A heavy slap on the back of her neck stung her and her head rocked enough to send a shooting pain down her spine.

  But what she took at first to be the sow growling in surprise was actually the snarl of Clive's four-wheeler, somewhere off in the distance.

  3:08

  THE COZY FIRE WARMED Terry Glorianus's woodstove. Terry and Howard were tucked in beneath their shrouds. And Marty and Stan were halfway up the trail to El's cabin.

  Stan still wanted to head right down to the store and find out what was going on but Marty had convinced him, barely, that they were better off inspecting El's place first. If El was there, then one of them would stake the place out while the other went to the store for help. If he was gone, then chances were he was already down to the store and they ought to check out his cabin to see if there was anything that might give them a clue to what he was doing. There was also the chance that he might have gone across the river toward Micky's place.

  The snow fluttered across their cheeks, into their eyes and mouths, trying to soften a hard day.

  Stan was following, as usual, and talking, as usual, and Marty really wanted him to shut up.

  “What if you're wrong? What if it wasn't El?” said Stan. “What if El is dead in his cabin? Then what?”

  Marty shook his head without looking back.

  “Then I guess we'll have to find out who did it,” said Marty.

  “Who the hell else would do something like this?” said Stan, breathing heavily.

  “How the hell would I know? Shut up! What was that?”

  Marty could have sworn he'd heard a woman's voice again, just up ahead. But Stan was jabbering, and with the breeze and the snow and his own breathing, and the pumping of his heart Marty couldn't be sure. His muscles tightened and he slipped his finger around the trigger of his rifle.

  “Hear what?” said Stan.

  Marty gave him a look that would have melted rock and for once Stan was silent.

  Marty pointed with his rifle, up the trail, and Stan got the hint, moving up close and walking silently behind.

  They were only yards from the clearing at El's cabin.

  “I thought I heard a voice,” said Marty.

  “At El's?” whispered Stan.

  Just then, from the direction of the store, they heard the distinctive chatter of the four-wheeler cranking up.

  “Want to wait and see if Clive shows up?” whispered Stan.

  Marty shook his head.

  “Maybe we should,” said Stan.

  “You're really pissing me off now,” said Marty.

  3:10

  THE CUB WAS SO close to Micky's face that she could have licked his nose. Her head was getting slapped around from behind, but not as roughly as before. Apparently the sow had reached the opinion that this human thing wasn't dangerous to her cub. Now the grizzly just wanted to know what made it tick.

  Maybe she was getting ready to see if it was edible.

  Suddenly something caught the cub's attention. He glanced at his mother, then back down the trail toward Terry's place, then back at his mother. There was a low growling from the sow and an astonished expression on the cub's face.

  The four-wheeler buzzed in the distance, too far off to be exciting the bears.

  So what were they looking at?

  Perhaps it wasn't El on the four-wheeler at all.

  What if it was Dawn?

  What if El was coming up the trail on foot and Dawn had escaped on the four-wheeler?

  Did that make sense?

  Micky didn't have time to decide.

  The sow's growling increased to a roar.

  Micky heard familiar voices and, ignoring the cub, she rolled over onto her back as she felt the sow rumble away.

  Marty and then Stan emerged into the clearing. Micky saw their shocked expressions
as the big grizzly tore down the hill at them like a runaway train with claws and teeth.

  Marty lifted his rifle.

  Stan tried to mimic him with trembling hands.

  Stan's first shot tossed up a spray of snow at his feet. His whole body quivered as he struggled to work another round into the chamber of the bolt-action rifle.

  Marty had his gun at shoulder level, sighting down it, squeezing the trigger. The gun bucked and he calmly chambered another shell as the huge grizzly seemed to sidestep, the bullet penetrating somewhere but not doing fatal damage. The big bear was slowed but not stopped. In the confines of the clearing, her roar of rage and pain sounded like a jet engine. Her enormous mass hurtled inexorably onward.

  Stan managed to get his rifle up and fire but this time the shot was high, and then he was fighting with the bolt again.

  Marty fired again, just as the beast reached them.

  Stan was swept aside by the rushing mass of the animal, losing his rifle and falling into the trees. The bear landed on top of Marty and he struggled to pull himself tightly against the huge creature. He grasped at fur and hide, struggling to become part of the bear, while the bear clawed at his back and sides.

  “Shoot her!” Micky screamed at Stan, who was climbing shakily to his knees.

  Micky ran, slipping and sliding, down the hill, across the Teflon-slick snow toward Marty's rifle, lying on the side of the trail. Stan seemed dazed, staring with glazed eyes at the bear and Marty, dancing their deadly ballet.

  Marty screamed as the long talons ripped through his flesh and cartilage like scythes. His head was tucked tightly beneath the bear's chin and she gnawed and gnashed, twisting her head viciously back and forth, trying to get her teeth into him. Marty's toes clambered for purchase in the fur along the hind legs and belly of the bear. And his fingers were buried in the pelt around her fat neck.

  Micky fell but managed to get her fingers around the stock of Marty's rifle, as the bear stumbled right over her, dragging Marty along backward toward the woods.

  She raised the barrel toward the massive hulk of hair and hide and teeth and talon but the bear kept turning and twisting and clawing like a hairy maelstrom. The animal's fur was covered in blood, Marty's and its own. And Micky was afraid that she had as much chance of shooting Marty as she did the bear.

  But Marty kept screaming for someone to shoot and Micky knew that very soon it would no longer matter which of them she hit.

  She pointed up at the writhing mass without searching for anything vital and fired. The gun bucked in her hand, the explosion stung her ears.

  The bear reared back and shoved Marty away from her as though he were a piece of clothing she had inspected and found not to her taste. He dropped in a heap at the sow's feet. She shook herself off and staggered through the alders near Stan, as though the thick brush were made of cheesecloth. But she was lurching as she went and Micky noticed a wide trail of blood on the snow.

  The cub barreled down the hill and rushed after its mother, squealing like a terrified piglet, and for an instant Micky felt sorry for him. She knew what it was like to see a parent shot. To hear the cries of fear and pain from someone you had always believed to be invulnerable.

  But then she turned back to Marty.

  He lay spread-eagled across the path. A flap of skin and hair had opened on the right side of his face from the top of his scalp down to his chin. The flap covered his eye and nose and exposed bright red muscle and white bone beneath. Marty's ear hung by a thread of skin and his right arm seemed to be twisted at an impossible angle.

  But he was breathing.

  Micky crawled over to him and gently slipped the large flap of skin back as close as she could to its normal position. His face seemed wrinkled then, as though he had too much flesh.

  “We have to get him inside,” she told Stan, nodding toward El's cabin. “He'll die of shock or hypothermia out here.”

  Stan didn't move.

  “It is El, isn't it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Micky.

  “He might be in his cabin.”

  “No. It's locked. He's at Cabels’. He killed Clive and Rita, and Dawn's hiding in the store.”

  “He killed Terry and Howard too.”

  “I know.”

  Stan glanced back down the trail, managing finally to crank another shell into the chamber of his rifle. “You're sure he's at the store?”

  “I think he's using Clive's four-wheeler. I don't know exactly where he is right now. Stan, we have to get Marty inside.”

  “You think maybe he heard the shots?”

  She thought about it. She was pretty sure that she had heard the four-wheeler after the last shot. More than likely El wouldn't have been able to hear the shots over the engine noise but there was no way of telling.

  “I don't know.” She pressed her finger against Marty's neck. His pulse was strong but his breathing was shallow.

  Stan stared off in the direction of the Glorianus cabin. “He cut their eyes out. Jesus Christ. He cut out their eyes. We gotta kill him. Don't we?”

  “Can you get Marty's shoulders if I carry his feet?” she said.

  “I think so,” said Stan.

  They just managed it, though they had to stop for Micky to rest halfway up the slope.

  Marty kept mumbling, trying to talk, dipping in and out of consciousness. Micky knew that he wouldn't be in a great deal of pain now. That would come later.

  If he lived.

  They got him up onto the stoop and both of them stared for just a moment at the padlock. No one in McRay locked their cabins. It was like a sign saying Look at me! I don't belong here! I don't trust you!

  “Wonder what he's afraid of?” said Stan.

  “Us,” answered Micky.

  She stepped over to the one small window and noticed that a blanket had been fashioned as a blackout curtain. Without hesitation, she broke the window with her elbow, then finished off the remaining shards with the sole of her boot. She ripped the blanket down and climbed inside, turning to lean out.

  “Drag him over here,” she told Stan. “You'll have to pass him in to me. We've got to get him inside.”

  Stan nodded and went to work. But, as he dragged Marty nearer the window, he stopped to stare at the snow behind him on the porch.

  A broad swath of blood stained the virgin-white snow.

  Micky swallowed a lump in her throat as she and Stan lifted Marty. There was definitely something wrong with his right arm. It was limp and pliable and she knew they might be doing irreparable damage by putting Marty's weight on it. As she dragged him backward into the room his feet hit the floor and Stan hurried through the window to help her.

  The swirling snow followed him in.

  The layout of the cabin was almost identical to Micky's. The woodstove sat in the far corner and, where her tiny kitchen would have been, El had a workbench.

  But El's decor was a lot different.

  Even with only the light through the busted window what they saw inside brought Micky and Stan up short.

  “Holy shit,” said Stan, turning slowly around.

  Micky couldn't think of anything better to say.

  Every inch of wall space seemed to be covered. There were rifles and carbines, shotguns and revolvers and automatic pistols. The back wall seemed to be dedicated to different types of assault rifles and machine pistols. Boxes of ammo were stacked to the ceiling in the far corner.

  He has all of this and he's driving around with only a rifle and the pistol?

  Why?

  If he was planning on killing everyone in town, why wouldn't he gear up like Rambo and wade through McRay spraying bullets?

  “How did he get all these guns without anyone noticing?” asked Stan.

  “Nobody knows what comes in on Rich's plane,” said Micky. “A box is a box.”

  Stan looked at the submachine pistols. “Are these legal?”

  “No. But they're easy enough to get if you know who to buy from.
My bet's El spent some time in prison. You make a lot of connections inside.”

  Marty groaned at Micky's feet.

  “Light a lamp and put the blanket back over the window,” said Micky tersely, dropping down beside Marty on the floor. Stan hurried to obey. He looked around and finally grabbed a short-barreled shotgun off the wall beside the door. He rehung the blanket, then laid the gun onto the bottom of the makeshift drape to keep it from fluttering open again. Snow still flitted in on either side but the wind no longer whistled through the tiny cabin.

  Though she didn't want to do it, Micky had no choice but to roll Marty over and inspect the extent of the wounds on his back, where the bear had ripped and slashed. She could only imagine what those six-inch claws had done to the soft tissue. If they had entered below the rib cage, they might well have gotten his kidneys or spleen or gone even deeper. He might be bleeding to death and there was nothing that she could do. But the wounds, no matter how bad, could not possibly be as terrible as her imagination would make them, given time.

  And Marty had no time.

  Micky took a deep breath and rolled him over onto his side.

  His jacket and shirt and long johns had provided no more protection than a layer of gauze against the ravages of the razor-sharp talons. The cloth was tattered and twisted and bunched together in bloody clots. Micky carefully rolled him over onto his stomach. She glanced up at Stan for help and saw instantly that he was trying hard not to vomit.

  “Do you have a knife?” she asked.

  Stan dug under his jacket. He fumbled open the clasp and handed her his knife, sinking to his knees beside her.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” he muttered.

  She opened the six-inch blade, sucking in another breath. Grabbing hold of the gummy, twisted cloth, she cut it away, tossing it on top of the broken glass in the corner. Blood still oozed onto the floor but Micky immediately noticed that there was no spurting.

  That was a good sign.

  Of course that didn't rule out internal bleeding.