Individual pools of blood widened and made contact in the middle of the floor. Ray’s face and jaw ached, and for long, lonely seconds misery grabbed hold and squeezed. Time back, he wished for, time back to give it all up, to firm up and make a better effort at staying away from the business. He thought of his family, patient until patience was all gone. Bernie popped into his head then, poor old Bern, chopped up by some righteous savage seeking justice. Bern didn’t deserve his head on a post. He never hurt anyone, not knowingly. Neither did Morg, as far as Ray knew. Wayne, well, fuck him. Wayne was the kind of monster who deserved what he got.
Ray slumped against the door, neck deep in despair and wallowing in it, and heard someone moaning. It took him only a moment to realize it was him. His swollen eyes leaked bloody tears and he carefully dabbed a coat sleeve against them.
“Hey!”
The voice tightened Ray’s scrotum. He turned to the picture window.
“Hey you! In the cabin! You shoot someone in there?”
The innocuous question reminded Ray of one kid asking another if he had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch.
“Hey! I said did you shoot someone in there?”
Ray regarded the dead hunter on the floor.
“Goddamnit, answer me!”
Ray stuck his gun out the window and fired off a round, in the direction of the tree line. There’s your fuckin’ answer, he fumed, enduring sinuses packed tight with fluid.
“All right, buddy, all right,” the voice drifted from the dark. “Don’t matter. We’ll catch you soon enough. Have a beer in the meantime…”
“Like hell,” Ray muttered. He considered his gun and wondered how many rounds were left. Probably not too many. It would be awkward to check with one hand, which got him thinking about escape. It was nighttime and he was supposedly surrounded. He wondered just how much of his captive’s story was true regarding the number of people outside. Ray shook Morg’s keys and stuffed them into a pocket. He was getting to that car and getting out of this place. He’d report back to Joey and Julian and whatever they decided to do would be fine with him.
As of that moment, Ray was out of the business.
But he knew he just might have to get a little dirty for the next hour or so.
The first thing he did was lean over the guy he belly shot and check him for weapons. He found a short skinning knife with a bone handle and clumsily transferred it and the scabbard to his coat pocket. The other hunter had nothing except his bow, which Ray ignored. The camouflaged coats and head gear were stained with blood, so he left that as well. At one point he stopped and pressed his gun hand to his forehead, steadying himself and taking the dizziness that seemed to radiate from the back of his skull. When the feeling subsided, he went to the fridge and closed the door, completing the darkness within the cabin interior. He felt along the wall, remembering where the back door was, and shortly located it. The locks clicked loudly, and Ray winced with every sound.
Get out the door and hit the tree line. Hit the tree line and cut through it. Eventually he’d find the road, and then the car. He considered going through the drawers for a flashlight but decided against it. The flashlight would mess up his night vision.
Ray cursed Wayne Roberts for stomping on his right hand. Fuming at the clumsy grip, Ray jabbed the Glock into one armpit and remembered Bernie nipping the same pistol between his knees. That almost got a chuckle.
Taking a breath, Ray did the one thing he hadn’t done in a very long time.
He blessed himself.
Then he opened the door and staggered into the night.
Cold November air filled his throat as he pulled the door closed and ran to his right. A full, pearly white moon radiating beauty hung in the night sky, but he didn’t stop to appreciate it as he would have liked. Ray sped across the grass, glancing around him, waiting for an arrow’s hiss or worse. The forest loomed ahead, and before he could slip into that tangled wall, unseen branches licked at his tenderized face. One straight twig scraped along the skin of his temple, missing his eye by millimeters. Ray flinched and shoved the coarse tendril away. All he needed was to stumble through the woods at night like a drunken moose with an eye poked out. He could barely see as it was.
“Who’s on the back?” a voice shouted. “Just saw someone run from the back!”
Ray bolted, crashing through branches, stomping down wiry lengths of frigid foliage. Rough fir boughs pawed at his body. He tripped and crashed, his right hand a floppy paw of searing pain. A grunt escaped him and he rolled onto his back in reflex, seeing how low the moon hung, its face scraped by hairline whips.
“Over there! Over there!”
Bodies waded through the bush. Hurried footfalls chugged toward Ray’s position. Amazingly, he still gripped the gun. He pulled the firearm to his cheek, snarling a ruined smile and swearing to put a bullet into whoever tried to stop him. His scalp bled anew, the flow trickling into his left eye. He wiped the blood away with the back of his wrist.
The footsteps grew louder.
Then… nothing.
The fuck…? Ray thought and forced himself to be quiet.
A dull shadow passed by not two feet away, hunched over and holding a bow. The phantom moved without so much as a snap or crackle, which perplexed Ray as the ghost vanished into the woods. Ray waited, forced himself to be patient, and waited a little longer.
Another silhouette moved past his position. Another silent bowman.
Then a nearly indistinct third.
The fourth man floated by like a grim reaper. Ray stopped breathing until that one went past, fearful of the axe the figure carried.
Four ghosts. Hunters. And the forest had grown quiet again.
Not daring to move, Ray lay there, hidden in the undergrowth, and counted off the seconds.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Time to move.
He shifted and froze at the crisp, potato-chip crunch of detritus underneath his body. With desperate effort he stumbled to his knees and plunged forward—onto a beaten path. Ray stopped and, through the white-hot siren of his smashed fingers, squinted in stunned amazement at the trail before him. Though the moonlight was fragmented by overhead boughs, the ground itself was illuminated by two dimly lit lines that looked like the emergency lights down an airplane’s narrow aisle. The white lights, like low-powered Christmas strands, revealed hard-packed dirt, swept and carefully maintained. Knee-high hedges rose on either side of the lighting, containing the glow so that it wouldn’t be noticed from the cabin clearing. Ray took a hesitant step in the direction of the ghosts and discovered the noise of his walking had been greatly reduced. The lit pathway snaked off through the forest gloom and he followed it, making like a ninja.
He realized his pursuers would be equally stealthy.
The pathway kept straight, and at one point Ray came to a second trail veering off to the right. He followed it for only a few steps before stopping and gawking in wonder.
Well, holy shit.
The path ended in a camouflaged wall that hung from the trees. An old chair, its seat dark and worn, faced forward and a narrow slit about eye-level height had been cut in the hunter’s veil. The shape of a camera stood poised upon a tripod. A headset and black box appearing all spidery with wires rested on a nearby milk crate. The setup amazed him. Ray listened, heard nothing move, and bent over to peek through the gash.
The cabin stood in the clearing, awash in moonlight, as stark and imposing as a mausoleum.
Holy shit! Ray straightened, horrified, and turned around just as a figure stepped into the path.
A ghost. Armed with, of all things, a prong.
There was no time for pleading or bargaining and, at that range, no chance to miss. Ray fired from the hip, the gunshot as loud as a cannon blast, and blew the top off the surprised hunter’s head in a grisly puff of chunks. The body landed some two feet back and Ray jumped over it, crashing into the low hedge. Branches stabbed his lower legs and clawed at his face. He fought through, and, though he couldn’t hear them, he knew whoever had surrounded the cabin was converging on his location with haste.
Ray ran, the trail’s lights flashing by his feet like laser beams.
Something dark rushed toward him.
On impulse, Ray jumped the path and steered right, crashing through the woods and avoiding another fight. Branches slashed at his face. He raised his gun hand to deflect the stinging whips and hooked his foot into a stump.
“He’s gone off the path!” a voice shouted behind him.
“Get after him.”
“I ain’t goin’ in there.”
A meeting occurred then, but Ray couldn’t understand the mutterings as he struggled to rise in the thicket. His right hand felt as if he’d plunged it into a vat of flaming pitch. He lifted the trembling palm and moaned when he noticed his last two fingers had been plied backwards at boneless angles. The sight evaporated the rush of endorphins flooding his system and left him gasping. He squealed, spat, and crossed wrists, his left hand over his right. The fingers had to be straightened, and he either did it now or later.
With a suppressed yelp, he raked one hand over the other as if sharpening a stick. In that searing supernova burst of pain, bones shifted, rolled and were reset in their proper direction. A cold fire seized Ray’s hand and blowtorched frayed nerves all the way to his brain. After a second wild squawk, he collapsed in a starry-eyed daze.
“Over here! He’s over here!”
The shout reanimated Ray and he gulped down air. They couldn’t capture him. He wouldn’t allow it. Not if they were going to find his family. Stuffing his suffering hand into an armpit, he rose and stomped onwards through the wilderness, all thoughts of stealth lost. He splashed through a brook, the frigid water soaking his sneakers and dousing his lower legs. Roots tripped him and he tumbled to his knees once again, but managed to catch himself before landing flat on his face. The woods crowded in and reached for him, extending shadowy limbs. Weaponized twigs scratched at his face and eyes. Always the eyes, as if the trees knew a good blinding would deepen his misery. The water numbed his feet and legs and Ray forced himself to keep still in the prickly mesh, to endure the shivering and listen. His pulse hammered along, the beats becoming a muffled klaxon situated right behind his eyes and in his ears.
Underbrush crackled to his right.
Ray didn’t dare move, very much aware that the slightest twitch would draw murderous attention.
Another step toward him, cautious and testing, followed by twigs zipping along weatherproofed outerwear.
Ray cringed, every deep breath sawing at the toothless holes in his mouth. His mind screamed at him to move, that he’d been found and he should be running at full speed, that he was about to fucking die.
The noise stopped, but in its absence other things moved, all around him, farther away, but they were out there. Listening. Creeping. Searching. In Ray’s tortured mind, men no longer stalked him. Monsters did. Wicked creatures with wings folded, attracted by blood. They walked on two legs, their heads gray and bald and fixed atop crooked necks and narrow shoulders. Whispers permeated the woods, sinister exchanges no human could possibly utter or understand. Ray heard every snap and crinkle, every malefic murmur, fully tuned into that evil wavelength that putrefied his ears and befouled his brain.
A descending weight squashed the underbrush nearby, much closer than before, and Ray stayed still.
It’s dark. They can’t see me. They can’t.
His temples were on the verge of exploding, his blood pressure soaring.
Another step, and Ray felt a presence invading his personal space like noxious gas, but that wasn’t what truly disturbed him. What truly disturbed him was the abrupt hole of silence just behind him, as if the hunter himself sensed he was close, very close, and that it only took a moment’s patience to locate the rabbit. Just a moment and all would be revealed.
Ray didn’t breathe, and in those mile-long seconds, he heard someone take a breath, a very quiet breath. just above the forest’s silence.
A breath before someone committed to action.
Fright ripped through Ray and he propelled himself forward as if he’d had a rocket strapped to his ass. The falling axe, swung with all the might of an angry titan, missed his foot by a flesh-splitting sliver and bounced off the frozen earth.
“HE’S OVER HERE!”
The forest burst into action.
The trees whipped Ray as he charged forward, keeping his head low. He glimpsed a faceless specter emerging from the bush ahead. The apparition held a wicked bow and snapped the weapon up to a ready position.
Ray was faster.
He barreled into the meaty ghost, bowling him over with a grunt, and landed on his chest. The hunter released the bow as Ray pounded the Glock’s hilt onto a nose as if striking a nail. Ray struggled to rise but the hunter beneath him clutched at his clothing, dragging him back down.
“Got him! I got the bast—”
Ray shot him through the face, blasting the man away. He rose and spun in time to see the axe man had arrived, swinging from the shoulder and chopping at a hip. Ray twisted and fell flat on his back. Springy saplings cracked under his weight. The axeman howled as he reset. Ray fired three times. A chest erupted. A shoulder exploded and the axe dropped. The man staggered back and crashed to the ground, boot soles pointed at the heavens.
Ray panted, unbelieving at his luck, and pulled himself up as sounds of pursuit closed in from all quarters, summoned by the recent killing.
He flinched at a shotgun blast. The pellets ripped through the trees like a killer rain, close enough for him to hear. He wondered when the big guns would start shooting. Through the forest gloom, shades materialized.
Ray took aim at the nearest hunter and fired.
Click.
That single note frightened him more than the collection of killers on his tail. Ray ran, still holding the gun, the empty weapon raised before him like a lantern. The men hounding him gave chase, shouting at times, shrieking at others. Ray didn’t think. All thoughts were focused on finding the road. Find the road and Morg’s car. He increased his pace, pushing himself, the trees flaying him as he plowed through, pinballing off dark pillars that only materialized at the last possible second. His lungs ached. Blood found his eyes and his mouth. A heavy bough slapped the gun from his grasp and he left it, no time to retrieve the weapon. The woods had to clear out soon. He had to have covered a kilometer cross-country, and if there was a road he should be hitting it any second. A baleful moon hung above the landscape, fat and ivory-white and scarred, the pupil of an angry god.
Voices cut the night. Missiles hissed past him. Another gunshot peppered the trees behind him as he turned and beheld the forest wall. Ray screamed and thrust his good hand forward, bursting through the barrier of vegetation like an exhausted missile. He fell, dropping as if going over a cliff, and hit an embankment of solid earth. The impact confused him as cold gravel jammed itself into his ruined mouth. Ray righted himself and clawed out of the ditch, fingers raking pavement.
The highway.
He stumbled onto the cold asphalt, triumphant in his discovery, and heard crashing waves on a far-off shore. A starless void lay ahead.
A delirious laugh escaped Ray. Hope spiked. All he needed to do was locate the dirt road and backtrack to Morg’s car. He’d drive all fucking night to get back to Julian and Joey and damn well sure those two would plan bloody revenge on whoever owned the—
A rush of motion charged in from his left, drawing Ray’s attention. He glanced ahead as a gleaming wall rushed toward him, momentarily befuddling his pain-wracked mind.
Twin moons blinked to life, blinding him, freezing him to the spot.
The car struck Ray while approaching ninety kilometers an hour, killing him upon impact.