At the House on the Island
Jim Hart knew it; he could feel it.
They were in the house with him. They were watching. Waiting. Sizing him up. Would he use the gun, or not? Would he run? If so, how fast? And where to?
Would he bring anybody back with him?
He wanted to know if they really thought he was so much of a fool that he had no idea of their intentions. Their intentions were murderously and obscenely clear.
He whispered, as low and as menacingly as possible, "Show yourselves, bastards!"
He pulled the .38 from his pocket and held it up so they could see it clearly. "I'll blow you both away. I will!"
It surprised him that he was not trembling or fearful, that his resolve was so plain. When they showed themselves he really would blow them away. Because it wasn't he who had stripped off the thin veneer of civilization. They had done that. So, civilization's laws did not apply to them anymore. This island was like a ship in distress on the high seas. He was its captain. They were the mutineers.
It was all very simple.
He would blow them away. He would blow a hole the size of his fist through both of them. And have loads of fun doing it.
He realized dimly that he had wet himself. He glanced quickly at his crotch, saw the stain there, and smiled crookedly. "I will!" he said aloud, "I surely will!" as if holding a one-sided conversation with himself.
Jim Hart had set one foot into madness. No other course was open to him.
They ate what they could. It made little difference. They received pleasure not so much from eating—it nourished them and kept them alive—but from the chase and the kill, because it was then that their muscles sang and the air they breathed grew warm and vibrant with life, and, in this greatest act of love, they were able to come together with other creatures that shared the earth with them. And all of them grew a little as a result.
The big man inside them both, at that moment—and for the remainder of their lives—was not unlike many who had gone before. He was filled with hate (an emotion Seth understood but which Elena, newer to the earth, had yet to grasp) and he had killed for reasons even Seth did not completely understand (it had something to do with sex, he thought). But the energy within the big man, the energy which held him together and kept him alive, was enormous, dizzying, a thing of immense beauty and power.
He could have been one of their own.