by Blake Banner
I turned, ran ten paces, then walked ten paces, then ran another ten and kept going, following that relentless rhythm, barely seeing where I was going, channeled by the steep sides of the canyon, wondering how in hell I would know which way to go when I reached the open slopes: up would be about as close as I could get to a direction. I had Sean’s compass, but with at least four men on my heels I would have no time to stop and consult it. After twenty minutes, my legs were starting to tremble and breathing was becoming painful. I could just make out, up ahead, about sixty or seventy yards away, where the canyon wall rose steeply, forcing the track to turn west again, and I knew I had reached the second bend in the inverted ‘S’. It also told me that the snow was beginning to ease. And that was bad news, because it meant I might not be able to lose my pursuers on the slope.
I was sure I had pulled ahead of them. Unless they had been following the same regime of running and walking as me, there was no doubt that I had. But I’d paid a heavy price in my energy reserves. I would soon need to stop, rest, and have some hot soup and coffee. For that, I relied completely on being able to lose them beyond the dogleg, as I climbed the open slopes toward the peak. But if the snow stopped, or even eased too much, my tracks would be clearly visible and I would become an exhausted, exposed sitting duck, with a bow and arrows against at least four rifles and pistols. I’d be as screwed as a two-dollar whore during shore leave.
So I had to start thinking about modifying my plan. To modify my plan I needed intel, and to get intel I needed to get close.
I forced myself to keep up the pace a little longer. I could see that at the bend, the growth of trees and bushes was a little thicker. It was obviously a spot where water was trapped and accumulated during the rainy season, making it more fertile. That angle in the bend was the spot where I could come off the track without leaving obvious prints, get above my pursuers and observe them. However, coming off there also meant that if they did notice I had left the track, I would then be committed to taking them out, in a fight I was not sure I could win.
On the other hand, I was pretty sure that ship had sailed anyway.
I finally came to the bend in the track—there was no track to be seen; all there was was the bend in the canyon, the rock face ahead, and the empty, white space between the fringes of ferns and trees on either side. I put on a burst of speed, leapt over the fringe of ferns, and then walked backward in among the trees, throwing snow over my tracks. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough, and the wind and the snow that was still falling would do the rest.
Then I started clambering, slipping, sliding, and crawling, clawing my way up through the trees toward a rocky outcrop I had seen sixty yards farther on, forty yards above the road. It would afford me a vantage point from which to observe, and possibly strike if I decided to.
As I clambered up, above the tree line I noticed that the snow was definitely easing. It was no longer a blizzard. It was barely even heavy snow. Which meant, among other things, that if I was not concealed behind rocks by the time they came around the bend, I would be in plain view against the white blanket. My breath was rasping painfully in my throat and my fingers were in a kind of numb, frozen agony from clawing at the icy rocks. I tried not to think of the fact that, if it came to it, I would have to use those numb, agonized, frozen fingers to set up and pull a seventy-pound bow.
I made it to the outcrop, crawled onto the rocks, dropped behind them, and landed in a painful heap behind a boulder. I gave myself fifteen seconds to wallow in self-pity, then took off the kit bag, tore it open, pulled out the takedown bow, and started clumsily assembling it with fingers that felt like anesthetized sausages—sausages that hurt despite the anesthetic.
I got it assembled and strung, extracted an arrow from the frame of the bag, and peered over the edge of the rocks. It was only about seven in the evening, but if it had not been for the snow, they would have been practically invisible. As it was, they stood out clearly against the perfect white background. There were four of them. I couldn’t make out if Joe Vasco was among them, or my talkative pal Earl, but I could see that they were big, and they were all carrying rifles. They’d stopped walking and were just standing, looking around. I figured they were confused because despite the easing of the snow, my tracks had suddenly disappeared without a trace. One of them pointed at the forest opposite. Another pointed up into the hill where I’d come to hide. They couldn’t decide. Eventually one of them walked on ahead. The others watched him a moment. He stopped and turned back to them, seemed to talk and point at the bend in the canyon that led to the open slopes. I knew what he was saying. He was saying what I would have said: “Wherever he’s gone, wherever he is, he has to pass this way to get down to Lovelock. And this is where we’ll kill him.”
And that was when I made up my mind. I was never very good at being the prey. I was always more comfortable as the predator. Being the predator means you get behind, not in front.
I nocked the arrow, drew to my ear and sensed the shot. I gave it a second till I was sure, then loosed. The arrow whispered a moment, disappeared from sight, a heartbeat, two, and below, there was a moment of confusion. My mark leaned forward, with his hands on his knees. Then he sat down in the snow. His companions came up close to him, bending. There was a shout. The guy who’d walked ahead started running back. But by that time, I’d gone. I was crouching, running back the way I’d come, from rock to rock, tree to tree, placing myself behind them. All my thinking till that point had been based on the idea of trying to fight them off as they closed in on me and I fled toward Lovelock. But now everything had changed. Now they were going to be pursuing a prey they believed to be ahead of them, but who was in fact behind them, hunting them.
I came to the tree line, slipped in among the ferns and the pines, and made my way rapidly and silently, crawling on my belly, to the edge of the road. They were gone, only the corpse remained, sitting motionless on the white blanket of snow. It was what I had expected. I gave it a moment. I knew they were hiding in the trees, waiting for me to make a move. Now the deck was stacked in my favor. I was exhausted and needed the rest. I drew the blankets from the kit bag, wrapped myself in them, and settled against a tree trunk to drink half a flask of hot chicken soup and watch the area where I knew they must be hiding. While I was resting and drinking hot soup, they were lying in the snow, growing cold. I was confident they would move first.
They did. After fifteen minutes, they couldn’t take it anymore and they came out onto the road. The wind was all but gone. Billows of condensation issued from their mouths, and snatches of their talk came to me on the frozen air.
“…Good damn it…!”
“…we been hidin’ he’s been getting away…!
“…we was sittin’ ducks…!”
“…up there and look in them rocks…!”
One of them lumbered slowly up the side of the canyon toward the rocks where I’d been hiding, while his two pals covered him. After a few minutes his voice echoed across the dark. “Nothin’ up here…!”
I smiled. Another voice, this one from below. “Head in toward the slopes! See if you can find his tracks!”
They were confident they would catch me there. And if I had continued to play the prey, they would have been right. But the game had changed, and now I was hunting them.
Nine
Before I made my second kill, I needed them back together again. I didn’t want them to scatter. If they did, I’d have to hunt in two separate directions. So I hung back and let them move down the track toward the point where it split and went through the pass and onto the open slopes. I figured that would be the point where the three of them would join up again. At that point there was no cover, and that would be the perfect place to claim my second kill.
I loped across the road and into the woods where they had been hiding just a little earlier. From there, I saw them round the bend toward the broad fork. Three great masses of rock rose toward the black sky, and two gaps yawne
d between them. I checked Sean’s map. The one on the left sloped down, but as he had said to me, it led somewhere you didn’t want to go. The other, on the right, lead along a broad, shallow canyon for half a mile and then opened up onto a steep escarpment, half a mile across at its widest point, two hundred yards at its base. Here they would be wading knee-deep in snow, climbing up hill, virtually immobile between one exhausting step and the next, and with no cover.
They were about fifty yards ahead of me. I watched their scout scramble down from where he’d been hunting for my tracks. They weren’t put off by the fact he hadn’t found anything. As I trailed them, I heard their voices. “If he wants to get to Lovelock, there is only one way he can go. If he’s ahead of us, we’ll get him. If he’s hiding, we’ll wait for him. One way or another, we got him.”
As we walked, the snow continued to thin and I saw breaks begin to appear in the cloud cover: patches of blackness a little blacker than the clouds themselves, with frozen sparkles of starlight piercing them. Odin was not on the side of the prey tonight. Tonight Odin favored the hunter.
As they approached the end of the canyon, where it opened into the broad valley, I slipped in among the sparse trees and began to climb at a tangent to the three men, on an intercept course which would place me above them as they climbed. After five minutes, I found a tree and settled to wait.
I was invisible to them, in the shadows of the pines, but they were very clear to me, stark against the increasingly luminous snow. I saw them come into the valley beneath me, stand looking for tracks, then, grunting great billows of condensation, begin to climb. They passed within six or eight yards of me. They didn’t look up or to the sides. They were focused too hard on the effort of climbing. I recognized the farthest of the three as Earl. I let them get twelve feet above me, then I stood, nocked an arrow, took careful aim, and shot the nearest guy through the heart. It was a silent kill. The broadhead punched through his ribs and sliced deep into his heart, causing a massive hemorrhage. He would have bled out in a couple of seconds. The other two didn’t even notice. He sank to his knees, lay down, and slipped into the void.
I nocked a second arrow and aimed for the middle guy. He was a little ahead of Earl, but that was OK. I wanted Earl to see. I loosed and the barb thudded home through the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord and his windpipe and protruding six inches out of his esophagus. His body did a strange jerky dance and I saw Earl stop and stare at him for a moment. I figured from where he was he probably couldn’t make out the arrow. By that time, I’d put down my bow and I was wading across the slope. He still hadn’t seen me because I was behind him.
Then, the guy with the feathered neck leaned forward and slumped into the snow, and the shaft became clearly visible. Earl grabbed for the lever-action rifle he had slung across his back and as he did it, he saw his other pal lying face down a couple of yards behind him. I heard him swear violently, and that was when he saw me. But by then, I was just three paces away from him, pushing knee-deep through the snow. He tried to turn and take aim, but he was hampered by the drifts around his legs. He fired one shot that went wide. I lumbered two steps, circling further behind him as I went, forcing him off balance. He levered, tried to take aim again, and stumbled, unable to get his footing. My leg muscles were screaming, going into cramp, but I forced myself and surged two more steps toward him, struggling up the slope. He fell back and swung the rifle like a club. I tried to block it and he struck my elbow with the butt. The pain was excruciating. I fought to ignore it and pulled my knife from my boot as I fell on him.
He scrabbled up the slope, on his back, kicking at my face. I grabbed his ankle and stabbed at his leg, but he yanked it away and struck at me again with his rifle. I took the blow on my shoulder and scrambled to my feet, slipping and falling twice in the process. Meanwhile, he was fumbling the rifle around, levering another round into the chamber, trying desperately with frozen, gloved fingers to get a grip and take aim at me. I grabbed the barrel as he pulled the trigger and felt the bullet tear through my jacket. He was still on his back, lying on the slope. I kicked savagely at his hands where they were gripping the weapon, slipped on the icy slope, and fell again, yanking the rifle from his hands. I hurled it away and grabbed clumsily for his leg. He kicked at me and caught me a glancing blow on my face.
Next thing, he was on his knees and he’d pulled a big, ugly hunting knife from his belt. I was lying awkwardly on my side, with my knife hand pinned underneath me in the snow. He lunged, plunging the blade down at my chest. I caught his wrist in my left hand and rolled, pulling him on top of me. His face was twisted into a manic grimace as he grabbed the hilt with both hands and put all his weight on the knife. I held him with just my left hand. I knew I couldn’t hold him long, but I also knew I didn’t need to. Because I still had my Fairbairn & Sykes in my right hand, and now I rammed it savagely into his right shoulder. I could have gone for his armpit, but that would have killed him in a very short time, and I wanted this son of a bitch alive.
The long blade plunged two inches into the joint. I levered hard back and forth. He screamed and gibbered, spraying spittle from his lips, dropped his knife, and staggered to his feet, clawing at his shoulder as I yanked the blade free. I got on one knee and struck again in a straight thrust at his left thigh. He went down on his back and I went after him.
I knew his left arm was useless now, so I knelt on his right and held the long, razor-sharp blade to his throat.
“This goes one of two ways, Earl. I cut you badly and you bleed out here in the snow. Or I take you back to the trucks. What’s it going to be?”
He was weeping like a child, sobbing and repeating over and over, “It hurts! Oh God, it hurts!” For a moment, I almost felt compassion for him. Then I remembered Peggy.
“Earl, focus. I can make it stop. I can stop the pain and I can get you to safety. Or I can make the pain worse and leave you out here to die in the cold. Get a grip, Earl.”
“Anything, anything, just please make it stop!”
“Who raped Peggy?”
“I don’t know, honest I don’t.”
“Was it Vasco?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know… please help me…” he was moaning, slobbering.
“Who sent you after me?”
“Vasco. He told us to come and finish you. Please, please…”
“Who told him I was here?”
“Someone in the village….”
“Who?”
His face screwed up with grief and agony. “I don’t know! I swear to God I don’t know! Have mercy, please! I can’t take it! He just told us to come after you! And…”
I waited. “And what? Abi? Did he tell you to go after her, too?”
He shook his head, still sobbing. “Just you. You and Peggy-Sue. We had to kill Peggy-Sue before you! God forgive me…!”
I didn’t think, kneeling there in the snow, under the frozen stars in that black sky, that it was possible to get any colder. But a chill trickled through me that was colder than the ice and the snow, and froze my heart in my chest. I looked down at him, weeping, slobbering, begging for pity and mercy, and I couldn’t find any of those things inside me. All I could find was an unwavering certainty that this being should not be allowed to live another moment. I placed the tip of the blade over his fifth intercostal, a terrible, monstrous roar came out of my throat and I hammered down on the hilt with my right fist; and drove that blade clean through his heart. Or whatever it was he had in his chest.
Peggy was dead.
I have long since forgotten how to weep. But I sat there in the snow that night with a terrible, unendurable desolation inside me; not for myself, but for that poor, fragile child who had been brutalized by these monsters and betrayed by her parents; and for this tragic, ugly world where these things are possible.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually an icy, silver moon rose over the mountaintops, raining a frosted light on the blue-white valley
, and I got to my feet and started the long, frozen walk back toward Independence. There was no point in going on to Lovelock for an ambulance. The child was dead. And I would not go for the sheriff. I did not want a police investigation, an arrest, a prosecution, a trial. The courts were not equipped to dispense the kind of justice that Peggy-Sue was entitled to; the kind of justice that the black rage inside me demanded.
But I was.
I struggled back to collect my bow and my kit bag. Then I stumbled and slid down the slope, landing half-buried in a drift at the bottom. For a moment I lay there, looking up at the blackness, finely peppered with silver, wondering if I had the strength to get to my feet, thinking that perhaps a short sleep would help. I knew that sleep led irrevocably to death: a short sleep to eternal sleep.
Anger, hot and red, forced my arms and my legs to move. I pushed and struggled against the yielding, enfolding snow and got to my knees, then to my feet. I had begun to shiver badly. I was exhausted and hypothermia was setting in. I could not allow that. I had to get back. I had to avenge Peggy. I had to find and punish her killer. There was no logic or rationality to my thinking. It was a simple imperative.
I stumbled to the cover of some pines, sat on a fallen trunk and pulled the thermos from my kitbag. I swallowed some chicken soup, taking it slowly, one small sip at a time, and began to feel some strength coming back into my limbs and some clarity to my mind. Even so, when I thought of the walk back to the trucks, I wondered if I would have the strength.
I took some hot, sweet coffee, stood, and began to walk. It became a strange, surreal sensation: as though I were not really the man in the canyon, walking among the dark slopes and the trees, following that luminous, blue-white path, down into the dark bowels of Independence, where a child lay dead. It was as though I were up, in the crystal clear, freezing cosmos, beside the leering moon who rained frozen light down on that dark, luminous path. And through it all, there was the relentless rhythm of one foot before another, one foot after another, another step, just one more step.