Hunted Past Reason

by Richard Matheson

  Bob was unable to speak. He could only stare at Doug, believing himself to be in the presence of a madman. A madman he had to kill, somehow, someway.

  Finally, Doug spoke.

  "That puts a slightly different complexion on the game, doesn't it, Bobby boy?" he said. "Still want me to kill you now?"

  The murderous fury he'd felt while Doug was sodomizing him erupted so suddenly that the words spewed forth without thought. "You miserable son of a bitch!"

  Before the sentence was finished he'd lunged to his feet and flung himself at Doug, hitting him so fast and hard that Doug, completely caught off guard, was unable to grab the golak from his lap.

  Knocking Doug back with the impetus of his charge, Bob started pounding at his face as hard as he could. Doug raised his arms to block the punches but couldn't prevent some of them from driving into his cheeks, his eyes, his mouth. "Damn!" he snarled.

  Bob couldn't speak. Fueled by his rage, he only wanted to keep hitting Doug, pounding him unconscious, killing him if necessary. Thought was gone. He could only concentrate on one thing: stopping Doug, now. It gave him a wild, perverse pleasure to see the look of startled amazement on Doug's face, hear the muffled flooding of curses from him. Hit him, hit him! The words were shouted in his brain by a voice he'd never heard before.

  Then Doug's knee was driven up into his groin and, with an instant flare of pain, the fight was ended. Rolling on his side with a groaning cry Bob drew up his legs with convulsive suddenness and, abruptly, lay in a taut fetal position, unable to catch his breath, eyes slitted, teeth bared in a grimace of agony. Vision blurred, he watched Doug stagger to his feet. "Motherfucker," he was mumbling. "Motherfucker."

  Now Doug loomed over him, nose bleeding, cheeks bruised, an expression of demented malice on his face. "You bastard," he muttered, "you dumb fucking bastard." Bob watched his right arm raise up, the golak clutched in his hand. "Now you die."

  Bob closed his eyes, tensed for the violent stroke of the golak that would end his life. Protect Marian, he thought, having no idea to whom the plea was being sent. Please protect her!

  When the blow from the golak didn't come, he opened his eyes and looked up in pained curiosity.

  "Oh, no," Doug was saying. "No. Too easy, motherfucker. You are going to die but not this easy, not this easy. Oh, no, not this easy, motherfucker, not this easy."

  Reaching down, he grabbed Bob by the hair with his left hand and yanked him to his feet. Before he was up, Doug had reared back his right fist and driven it as hard as he could into Bob's jaw.

  Bob reeled back and fell, collapsing to the ground, darkness flooding across his brain. He felt Doug drag him up by the left arm and drive another violent blow to his abdomen. As he doubled over, gagging, Doug jarred him erect with an uppercut to his jaw. Now the darkness was almost complete. He felt himself sinking into it, his face and body almost numbed by pain. As though through a film he saw Doug's face, his twisted look of fury. Then, unexpectedly, somehow more horrible than the expression of malevolence, a smile of fierce pleasure.

  "Now the game begins," he said.

  He let go of Bob who crumpled to the ground, legs drawn up again, soft groans of pain filling his throat.

  "You hear me, Bobby boy?" Doug asked. He sounded almost happy. "Now the game begins."

  1:48 PM

  He had to stop and rest for a while. He'd been trying to walk rapidly, sometimes trot, but he simply couldn't manage it. The backpack was considerably lighter— just the bare minimum of equipment and supplies to keep him going— but it still dragged at his back; and his body and head still ached where Doug had punched him so sadistically.

  Taking off his pack, he lay down on his back and started doing stretching exercises he hadn't done in years— pelvic thrusts, raising his legs one at a time, then both together, drawing up his knees. He groaned in misery as he exercised. How the hell am I going to make this? he wondered. Doug was fit and strong; he was unfit and covered with pains and aches. For a while, a rush of despair engulfed him. It was hopeless. He was kidding himself. Outrun Doug? Nothing in the world seemed less possible to him at the moment.

  His legs fell heavily to the ground and he groaned, partially in pain, mostly in despondent recognition. There was just no way—

  "Shut up!" he ordered himself. He had to survive— for Marian's sake if not his own. Doug's diabolical scenario must never take place. Never.

  He looked at his wristwatch. He'd been gone a little more than an hour now. Would Doug really wait three hours before following him? Or had that been a cruel joke?

  He jerked his head around, hearing a noise to his left, a crackling sound. Was Doug already here? He sat up fast, wincing at the pain it caused. Listening intently, he sat without moving.

  Then he thought, no, Doug wouldn't make any noise. He'd come stealing up like an Indian tracking prey. He'd never hear a sound. The first thing he'd know Doug's presence would be the whistling streak of an arrow and the final pain of it burying itself in his back— or his chest, depending on which way he was facing.

  For several minutes, he tried to convince himself that Doug wouldn't actually stoop to murder. The rape he understood— to agonize and humiliate him. But actually kill him? Surely, Doug had no such intention.

  He scowled at his Pollyanna figment. Doug would kill him all right. He said he would, and if he caught up, that was exactly what he'd do.

  He groaned again as he stood. I am in such miserable shape, he thought disgustedly; a regular goddamn athlete.

  "Well, what do you expect?" he assailed himself. "You hadn't planned on being chased by a homicidal maniac." The remark made him grunt with a humorless smile. If I wrote this in a spec script, they'd throw me out of the office.

  But it was really happening, that was the rub. Truth really is stranger than fiction, he thought. As far-fetched as it was in a creative way, it was darkly, horribly true. It was happening. The man who was going to take him on a pleasant research backpacking hike was now intending to murder him. Cut me up in pieces for Christ's sake! he thought. He is a fucking maniac. He is.

  He pressed down gingerly on his right foot. The blister was still there, probably broken open by now. He'd have to put a clean bandage on it later. Sure, he thought in bitter amusement. Got to protect yourself from that lethal blister.

  He put on his pack again, took a drink from his water bottle, and started off. Was he going to have enough water to last him? He couldn't ration it too much; Doug had made that point clear enough. But was he going to run across drinkable water? That Doug hadn't told him as he'd left.

  "Much he cares," Bob muttered as he tried to walk in long, even strides.

  He stopped walking suddenly. He'd never manage to outrun Doug and there was only one alternative.

  He had to lay in wait for Doug, attack him somehow, kill him. It was the only possibility. He felt too weak and sick to outdistance Doug's pursuit.

  But how? he asked himself. How?

  Again, there was only one possibility.

  Taking off his backpack, he pulled out his hunting knife and looked around for a branch thin enough for him to cut into a cudgel he could hit Doug in the face with, lunging out from behind a tree.

  As he searched, he considered the possibility of improvising a spear with the knife and a branch, fastening the knife to the branch with shoelaces. Immediately, he discarded the notion. What if the knife wasn't fastened to the branch tightly enough, slipping off or, at best, shifting to one side as he tried to drive it into Doug's chest. No, a cudgel was the only way. Smashing Doug across the face. A lunge from behind a tree and smashing him across the bridge of the nose, trying for an instant kill.

  Instant kill. The words were sickening to him. Still, there was no other choice. He was too weak to move out quickly. It was self-defense: kill or be killed. Not just for himself. It was to protect Marian from Doug's deranged plan. That was what he had to do; no choice. No choice whatever.

  Blanking his mind, he kept looking
until he'd found a fallen tree, a small branch jutting up from its surface. Slowly, grimacing at the weakness in his arm, he began to hack and saw away at the base of the branch. Doug had been right. His knife seemed almost worthless. He wished to God he had a golak too. With a few hard strokes, the branch would be off. Hell, the thought occurred. If he had a golak, he wouldn't need the cudgel. He could drive the golak blade across Doug's face, plunge it into his chest. Involuntarily, he found the vision deeply shocking. No choice, Bob, he commanded himself. No choice at all.

  It took him more than fifteen minutes to cut the branch loose and shorten it into a cudgel about two and a half feet long.

  That done, he sat on the fallen trunk of the tree and, for a short while, examined his improvised club.

  It was about three inches thick. The bottom half, the part he'd hold, was straight for almost a foot and a half. The upper half twisted sideways, small stumps jutting out from it. He touched the ends of the stumps with his right index finger. They all felt sharp to the touch. Again involuntarily, he visualized the stumped end of the cudgel hitting Doug's face, digging into his cheek, perhaps gouging out one or both of his eyes.

  He clenched his teeth and willed away the image. No choice, he told himself again and again. No choice.

  He examined the cudgel for almost ten minutes before realizing that his plan had gone no further than the preparation of the club and the vague idea of him stepping out from behind a tree and smashing Doug across the face with it.

  Idly, he plucked loose three small dead leaves from the upper half of the club. How much time had he used now to prepare it? He looked at his wristwatch. He'd wasted— utilized! he berated himself— almost twenty minutes now. If Doug had told him the truth, he'd have to wait in hiding for more than two hours.

  Doubts began to pile up in his brain. What made him assume that Doug would come this way? What if he hid behind a tree in waiting only to have Doug bypass him by a hundred yards, two hundred? Then his plan was worthless.

  Worse, what if Doug did come by this way but from a different angle? He might very easily spot him hiding behind a tree, casually notch an arrow into his bow, and let it fly. He wouldn't have to be anywhere near Bob to kill him.

  Worse still, what if Doug's plan was to bypass him anyway, hurry on to the cabin, play out his lachrymose scene for Marian, and talk her into driving away with him to find the nearest ranger or sheriff's station? By the time he reached the cabin— presuming he'd reach it at all, Marian could be gone. How could he conceivably make his way out of the forest to find help? He'd end up hopelessly lost, finished. In his condition, he couldn't possibly endure another extended hike through the forest. Lost— or killed by some wild animal— he'd die knowing that Marian was now the unwitting victim to Doug's ungodly plot.

  The more he examined the possibilities, the less sense his plan made to him. Doug was too skilled to be caught by surprise, and he might never even see Doug. No, it made no sense, no sense at all. To wait here, lurking behind a tree, his only chance the improbable appearance of Doug in such a convenient way that he could jump out at him and smash the club across his face. Jesus Christ, Hansen, he scorned himself. Great plan. He was sure to fail the attempt, lose everything, his wife, his children, his life. You're out of your mind, he told himself. Absolutely out of your mind. There was only one hope he had. To reach Marian before Doug could overtake him. That was it. As weak and physically depleted as he was, it was his only hope.

  He scowled at his own unthinking gullibility and looked at the compass Doug had given him. Doug had told him that the cabin was on a magnetic bearing of forty degrees from where they were standing. He had turned the compass housing to the forty-degree bearing, then turned the entire compass until the red end of the needle was lined up with the N arrow on the bottom of the circular housing.

  "Now you're oriented," Doug had told him as though lecturing a student on some casual direction-finding problem. "Just turn the compass until the red end of the needle is pointing north, then turn the base plate until the direction-of-travel needle points toward a forty-degree bearing— got it?"

  Bob turned the compass until the needle was pointing at N on the compass. He was off the mark by twenty degrees. Turning, he pointed himself in the corrected direction. What was it Doug had said, trying to be "so helpful"— something about picking out a distant landmark. Looking up, he saw a mountain peak on approximately the forty-degree bearing; maybe it was forty-five. He could adjust to that.

  Nodding to himself in satisfaction (oh, now you're an official backpacker, his brain mocked him), he started walking again.

  Was it possible that Doug had lied to him completely about the bearing to follow to reach the cabin? That he was actually sending him into untraveled forest, planning on him getting lost, dying of thirst or hunger, maybe even being killed by a wild animal? The idea made him ill.

  No, he told himself then. No, he wouldn't do that. What if he goes right to the cabin and tells his story and I survive and show up? That would be too much of a risk. He has to kill me, he realized. There was no other way.

  At first, he thought it was the idea of Doug sending him into impenetrable wilderness that was making his stomach churn. Then he realized— "wonder of wonders," he muttered— that he had to move his bowels.

  He did what Doug had suggested (well, he's done that much for me anyway, the bizarre thought occurred) finding a fallen log and sitting on it, hovering his rear end over the ground.

  It was hardly the best bowel movement he'd ever had but he groaned and sighed in relief as he emptied his bowels. In a few minutes, he sat motionless, smiling despite the dire circumstance he was in. He listened to the faint soughing of the wind in the high trees, admired the colors of the leaves, the massive silence of the forest.

  The momentary pleasure ended as he wiped himself, seeing the bright blood on the tissue. "Bastard," he muttered. "Son of a bitch." He sighed wearily. A far remove from metaphysical reflection, he thought. Hanging off a log, wiping blood from my ass.

  He looked at his watch as he kept moving, managing to achieve a certain rhythm and timing to his strides. He'd been gone more than two hours now. If Doug had been honest about the "rules" of his lunatic game, he'd be starting after Bob in less than fifty minutes. He visualized Doug, smiling excitedly to himself, lunging into the forest, intent on his prey. How would he know which direction to take? Had he backpacked here often enough that he had a built-in compass in his brain? Bob didn't know. All he did know was that Doug would be on the move with a zeal that was near crazed.

  He was sure of that.

  Still, he thought, Doug couldn't have been planning on this right from the start. Why impart any woodlore at all if he intended killing Bob from the very beginning? No, the anger and resentment had built up in the last two days. Now it had crested and erupted like a mental volcano.

  When? he thought as he walked steadily. When had it all begun? What had he said to generate this madness in Doug's mind? Was it any one thing he'd said? Or was Doug primed for this from the beginning, needing only constant exposure to Bob's thoughts and words to be aroused to murderous rage? And it was rage. Doug could act as "cool" as he wished— but flowing under his mock-amused behavior had to be raw, untrammeled rage, which now was out and flourishing.

  He suddenly recalled what Doug had said about the vivid panoply of hues in some of the trees. It signified the destruction of the leaves; they were dying in a blaze of color. How appropriate a memory, he thought.

  It occurred to him— causing a chill to wrack his body— that Doug didn't have to kill him with an arrow, dismember him and bury the parts. He could just as easily, catching up to him, throw him off a cliff or drown him. That way, he could still enact his "Oscar-caliber" performance for Marian and the authorities. An accident. He tried to protect Bob while they were climbing, while they were crossing that river. It just happened so fast. Tears and sobs. Guilt presented with performing skill.

  "No," he said. "No good.
" Doug wanted to kill him with an arrow, two arrows, then use his golak to hack him up. Why was he so sure of that? He just was. It was as though he'd seen, full measure, into the blackness that pervaded Doug's mind and there was no room for any further doubt.

  Doug would do what he said he would.

  "If I let him," Bob muttered angrily. "But I won't. I won't." Never mind what he believed. It wasn't of any significance at the moment. At the moment, he almost agreed with what Doug had said to him just before he left.

  "Your philosophy is shit, Bobby. A lot of stupid words. You have to fight for what you get in this lifetime, not fucking meditate on the glories of the fucking universe. You grab and you take— that's the only way to live. Survival of the fittest, Bobby. Ever hear of that? Well, you better take it to heart or you'll be skewered before sunset."

  Still, as he walked, he began to wonder that if the moment had actually occurred, that his ploy of waiting behind the tree had worked, that he'd actually been able to lunge out from his hiding place and use the club on Doug, would he really have been capable of killing Doug? Easy enough to rationalize that it would be self-defense, kill or be killed. But what he'd be doing was committing a violent homicide. Despite all considered facts of the situation, would he have been able to live with the realization that he was now a murderer?