by Mike Kilroy
Bray finished his apple and tossed the core into the fire. “Well, not until you deliver me Shep and Tig.”
Hope pushed out her lower lip into a pout. “I’m telling you, I’m trying, but they ain’t going anywhere. I don’t know how you’re gonna get them to leave.”
“You’ll think of something.”
***
Bray’s patience was beginning to wear thin.
Hope continued to come to him periodically with reports of all things Attica and none of the news was good. It appeared Shep and Tig were taking a liking into their new home.
Bray didn’t want to have to go in there. Hope had drawn for him the layout of the town and how many of the heavily armed guards patrolled day and night. It was not good. If Bray tried to go in and take Shep and Tig with force, he would surely fail.
This was certainly not Coe’s pretend kingdom.
It angered him to be so close to his goal, yet so far.
Hope came to him on a snowy, frigid night that even had Bray’s teeth chattering. She breathed heavily, her hot breath training out of her lips and condensing in thick, white smoke. She appeared to have something substantial to say, but her words were lost amid her gasps for air.
“What is it!” Bray bellowed, grabbing Hope by the arms.
She finally calmed herself enough to speak. “I got Tig to leave. I told some of the guards she and Padrig have been hanging out in the windmill, and then told Ward that the guards were gonna catch them and he ran off and helped them escape.”
Bray grunted in frustration. “What about Shep?”
“He’s gone, too.”
“What?” Bray fumed.
“It happened so fast. Tig escaped and then they grabbed that Shep guy and put him on trial and stuff, but he made Rhian all mad and then Ward stepped in and took over and then Shep left today. With all the drama, the town was super secure. This was the first chance I got to leave. I’m sorry.”
Bray collected his belongings, stuffed them into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know. Tig and Padrig went north. I bet that Shep guy goes that way, too, to find them.”
Bray nodded and pushed past Hope, who reached out and grabbed his arm. “Take me with you. You said you would.”
Bray pulled his arm away and sneered at Hope, who backed away, shocked and betrayed. “I lied,” he said as he pushed his way into the woods, leaving Hope by the cold fireplace.
He had no time to babysit little girls.
He had an appointment with vengeance to keep.
Chapter Eight
An Eye for An Eye
This boy, Padrig, cried like a little girl.
His wrists were bound to an electric pole, as were his legs. He squirmed in an attempt to get free, but it only served to tire him out.
Bray watched him struggle with a smile on his face as he circled him.
“Just tell me where they are and I’ll let you down, Padrig.”
“It’s Patrick.”
“What the fuck ever. Just tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Tig! Shep! I know they were in that town with you. I know you and the girl escaped and I know Shep left a few days later.” Patrick lifted his head and set his eyes on Bray after that revelation. Perhaps he doesn’t know Shep got free. But I know he knows where Tig is and Shep will go back for her He’s gallant like that. “Drop this playing dumb shit.”
“What do you want with them?”
Bray smiled. “Shep’s my Cape Buffalo.”
“What?”
“I used to have hunting trophies—a lot of them. I got just about every animal there is to get, except a Cape Buffalo. Billy fucking Shepard is my Cape Buffalo.”
Patrick’s eyes grew wider. “Oh my God, you’re Frail Man.”
Bray clenched his jaw, balled up his right hand into a fist and punched Patrick in the gut. The boy vomited on Bray’s boots, so he slugged him again.
Patrick coughed and spit up a few more bits of vomit from his mouth before he spoke. “I don’t know where there are.”
“I doubt that,” Bray said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “Twilight Nude. I’m not sure this is a good shade for you. But I bet it makes Tig look very fuckable.”
Patrick began to sob. Bray hated nothing more than when a man sobbed. He supposed, though, Patrick wasn’t a man. Just a boy—a stupid, lovestruck boy.
“Be a man. Jesus.” Bray grabbed the back of Patrick’s mussed hair and pulled it back. “I’ll make you a deal. I won’t kill your precious Tig, as long as she leads me to Shep. And for that to happen, you have to lead me to Tig. Are you following this train of thought?”
“No matter what you do to me, I’ll never tell you where she is.”
Bray let go of Patrick’s hair and sighed. He pulled a knife from his holster and held it up high for Patrick to see. There was fear on the boy’s face, for sure, but also a resolve that, under different circumstances, Bray could admire.
There was no time for mercy now. The longer their whereabouts eluded him, the less likely he was to find them.
“We’ll see if you stick to that story when the excruciating pain becomes too much for you to bear.”
***
Bray kicked at the snow and sighed. He peered up at Patrick, who hung dead on the post, barbed wire digging into his neck. Bray had sliced the boy’s neck in a fit of rage. He wasn’t gonna talk anyway.
Several of Patrick’s severed fingers lay near the boy’s feet.
I was sure after the second one he would talk.
Bray nodded to Patrick. “I have to give you credit, kid. You didn’t give her up. You must have really loved her.”
Bray reached into his pocket and pulled from it the tube of “Twilight Nude” lipstick and stuffed it into the pocket of Patrick’s bloody coat.
He left Patrick hanging there. Birds had already begun circling overhead and he grimaced at the thought of the vultures feeding on the poor boy.
But that was the way of the world—the strong devoured the weak.
It is what it is.
He trudged along through the thick, heavy snow. With each step, his anger built. He was no closer to his goal now than he was all those months ago. He was no closer now to seeing Shep dead than he was the day that loathsome man shot an arrow through his wife’s eye in a cold act of murder.
Each step he took reminded him of that fact. He had no idea where he was going or what he would find over the next horizon. He could be heading in the right direction, or the wrong one.
He came to a house surrounded by tall, red pines. A man, old and thin, burst out into the cold from inside the home, pointing an old revolver at Bray, who just smiled and held up his hands.
“Maybe you can help out a poor, hungry soul?
***
Bray lay in the snow, cast red by the blood that poured from a hole where his right eye used to be.
That bitch. That fucking bitch Tig poked my eye out. She’s back on my shit list.
He could still feel the pop of the finger breaking through his cornea, the nail digging into his pupil and retina, mashing it into a pulp. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t steal himself against it.
He reached up a trembling hand to his face and pressed it against the hole. He felt the warm gush on his hand, the blood seeping out through his fingers and he began to laugh.
This is how I’m gonna go out? Of all the ways to die—death by losing an eye.
He pushed himself to his feet, but stumbled back to the snow. He tried to stand again, but couldn’t. He heard the snapping of twigs as someone pushed through the brush, and he was sure it was Shep or Tig coming to finish him off.
At least it will be over.
Instead he felt a small, tender hand on his face. He peered up with his one good eye and saw Hope. She smiled at him and opened up a bottle of whiskey—where she got it, he ha
dn’t the foggiest idea.
“This is gonna hurt,” she said. She poured some of the alcohol on the piece of gauze and pulled his hand, finger by finger, away from his face. She turned peaked at the sight and dry heaved as she pressed the whiskey-soaked gauze over his mangled face.
Bray punched at the ground and screamed from the pain. He felt faint and the world around him spun. He rolled to his back, Hope still pressing the gauze to his face as she whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”
***
Bray awoke the next morning with the gauze secured tightly to his head with his belt. He felt the bandage and it was wet and soaked with blood.
Hope stood over him, her coat caked with his dried blood and a pill pinched between her index finger and thumb. She held it and a metal cup of water out to him. “Take this. I got it from your stash of antibiotics. I hope it works.”
A fire smoldered to his right and he appeared fine—other than the gaping hole where his right eye used to be.
He sat up and his head pounded. He grabbed the pill, popped it in his mouth and chased it down with several gulps of water. It tasted like melted snow.
“You did all this?” Bray asked.
Hope nodded. “I’m not as useless as you think.”
Bray felt his stomach rumble. He was in no position to hunt and he doubted Hope could catch anything out here but her death.
“Don’t suppose you got any food from where you got that whiskey?”
“I did.” Hope winked. She grabbed a handful of jerky out of her bag of tricks. “I have some of that whiskey left, too.”
Bray wiggled his fingers for her to give him both.
He ate the jerky and took a swig from the whiskey bottle.
“I got more stuff,” Hope said, excitedly, as she reached into her bag. She pulled from it a couple of cans of baked beans, a winter hat and a snowglobe. She turned the globe upside down, shook it and turned it rightside up again, watching as the fake flakes fell on Las Vegas. “It doesn’t snow in Las Vegas. How weird is that?”
Bray cocked his head. He was afraid to ask, but he had to know. It was the detective in him. “Where’d you get all that stuff?”
Hope didn’t answer. She pulled a pistol out of the bag next and held it out to Bray. “Do you need another gun?” She reached into the bag again and pulled out a long, serrated knife that was covered in dry blood. “I got a big knife, too. It cuts real good.”
Bray looked at her again, at the blood that covered her coat and hands and at the splatters under her chin and on her neck. “What did you do?”
He already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from her.
“Nothing you wouldn’t have done. There was this guy wandering around. He was nice. He saw me and felt sorry for me, I guess, and brought me back to this little cabin he found not far from that one you were in. When he wasn’t looking, I stabbed him a bunch of times and took his stuff. Didn’t think I could do it, did ya?”
She seemed proud. There was a gleam in her eyes that was even off-putting to Bray. She did it for the stuff, sure, but she also seemed to do it for the pleasure. Bray took no pleasure in his killing—well, he would when Shep’s time came—but the people he had killed had to go, not for the thrill of it or the rush of it, but for survival.
Even that fat man, Walter, he killed for a reason—to cover his tracks so Coe’s men wouldn’t think to hunt for him. He killed Halle to set her free from a life spent in purgatory.
He always had a reason.
There was no reason for Hope to kill that man in that cabin. She didn’t need his things. Bray didn’t need his things. She had done it for the reason most people do things: just because they can.
That was not a good enough reason.
“Are you proud of me?” Hope asked.
Bray smiled and waved for her to come close. She did and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
“I’ll protect you,” Hope said. “You and me, we’ll be unstoppable.”
***
Hope had taken great care of Bray. She gave him antibiotics, fed him, melted snow for water and hummed a song that he recognized, but couldn’t name.
Days had passed since his injury and he was already feeling better. The wound was healing, but still throbbed and cursed at him.
Bray watched Hope as she slept. He ran his fingers through her hair and she smiled and cooed.
This isn’t gonna be easy.
Bray drove the serrated knife into her chest. She awoke with a gasp and clutched at the wound, her eyes wide and full of shock as she realized Bray’s betrayal.
She mouthed “why?” and began to cry.
“The world is better without you, Hope.” Bray said as she drew her last breath.
Hope was dead for a reason. Maybe not tonight or tomorrow night or even the next one or the next one, but one night Hope would kill him.
And that simply would not do.
***
At times the pain was unbearable. Those were the good times. In the bad times, the pain drilled into him, climbed into his very marrow and shook him to his core.
This was one of those times.
The wound where Bray’s right eye once sat in the socket of his skull oozed continually. He popped antibiotics and kept the flesh clean. He thought perhaps it was so painful because it was healing. He thought those things at the most optimistic of times when he woke from a short spell of sleep.
That’s all his pain would allow—all too brief stretches of slumber.
In the other times he felt as raw as the skin around his wound, festering with nerves exposed, feeling the anguish of every light breeze, of every ray of sunshine, of every nip of cold or wave of heat from a fire.
Nothing soothed him.
Only one thing would—well two things now: Shep and Tig dead.
Despite the pain, he trudged on, finally picking up their trail on their steady march toward Halcyon.
Shep had big feet. Tig had little feet. They always walked side by side, their gait very much in tune, as if they were in a marching band, playing a happy tune on their way to the happy place of promised utopia called Halcyon.
He watched them through that one good eye of his, waiting for his opportunity. But they were smart. They slept in shifts and were always aware of their surroundings. Bray was still in no condition to take them head on.
They’re smart, but they’ll slip up, and when they do, I’ll strike.
Bray found it much harder to hunt for food with one good eye. He had no depth perception and he had to adjust to taking his aim with that in mind.
He managed.
What struck him was how few people he saw on this leg of the journey, how the land was open and free. No resistance. He wondered if the world was cleansing itself, shedding the unwanted skin.
He wondered how long it would take for the new world springing from the old to jettison him. He did not belong in this world any more than Hope did.
He hoped to hang on just a while longer.
Bray had an appointment with revenge to keep.
He wondered how it would feel to eventually kill them. He wondered in what order he would take them.
It was the same ritual he went through all those years ago in that other world in that other time when he went hunting for game. He decided this hunting trip was the same.
It didn’t matter.
Bray dabbed his eye with a clean cloth and sighed. Would it be worth it? Would he get the satisfaction he so craved from their blood?
Then he thought of his wife and the day she crumpled to the burnt, brown grass—snuffed out so suddenly and callously. He remembered the unfeeling, stoic look on Shep’s face in the moment after he wantonly took her life.
Yes, goddammit. It’ll be worth it.
Bray felt it would happen soon. Spring was near. A time of rebirth.
And also a time for death.
Chapter Nine
Armageddon Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Bray hung on the post in a dimly lit tent, his hands and feet bound and lashed to the wood. It was quite uncomfortable—his arms and legs burned.
It was hot and sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his face. The salt of his perspiration burned in his wound even still, after all these months.
At least half his bloodlust had been satiated. Bray was beginning to come to the realization that half would have to do.
His end was certainly near.
An old woman entered the tent, her hair white and her face etched with wrinkles that told of the passage of time. What she must have seen. What she must have experienced before and after The Ejection. She was accompanied by one of the men who had captured him a day ago as he stalked the last of his prey. He was a big, stout man with rounded shoulders and a “don’t fuck with me” look on his square face.
The old woman walked slowly toward Bray, a look of pity in her sunken eyes. “Paul Bray, is it?”
She knows my name. How the fuck does she know my name?
Bray chuckled. “Jesus, woman, how old are you?”
The man pushed past the old woman, but she reached out and grabbed him. He begrudgingly stopped.
“I’m Alma.”
“Well, Alma, why do you have me strung up like this? I’ve done nothing to you or your people.”
“You’re a bad man,” Alma said in disgust. “You’re a wanton killer.”
Bray laughed. “What do you know about it?”
“I’ve killed,” Alma said, peering down at the dirt below her small feet. “I know about it all too well. But I killed for good reasons. You don’t.”
“My reasons are good enough.”
“You want to kill one of my people. I won’t allow it.”
Bray squirmed on the post. That only served to make his arms and legs ache more. “Then you’re gonna have to kill again because I won’t stop.”
“Oh, I won’t be killing you. Your life is not mine to take or to spare. Your fate will be decided by the one you hunt.”
Bray smiled. “Then you might as well let me off this post now.”
Alma shook her head. “No, I think the choice will be a wise one. You’re like a rabid animal. Dangerous. Reckless. You must be put down.”