Hunters (29 page)

He tried to bat away his attacker, but he was
pushed back into his seat and held there with a massive forearm
across his neck, while an arm reached across his body and released
the belt. It whirred back into its holder, and before he could do a
thing, the hands dragged him out of his seat, out of the Blazer,
and down onto the snow.

"Hey," he said feebly, as his head and
shoulders were hauled off the ground.

"Hay's for horses, man," a voice growled down
into his face, and Larry heard someone laugh in a high-pitched
voice. The only light was from his headlights and the yellow cab
light in the Blazer, so he couldn't see much of the face of the man
who held him. But he was big and, if his manhandling of Larry was
any indication, very strong. The man reached behind him with his
right hand, and when he swung it back around, Larry saw a monster
of a pistol, and thought it had to be one of those assault
weapons.

Then he knew who these people were, and he
drew in his breath harshly, and successfully tried to keep himself
from urinating in terror.

"You Moxon?" the big man said.

Larry tried to say yes, but nothing came out.
He nodded jerkily.

"Well, howdy, Larry. I'm Chuck. Let's go
inside, okay? 'Cause I'm freezin' my nuts off out here."

Keeping a hand on Larry's coat collar, Chuck
let him get to his feet. Larry was no sooner erect than he felt the
cold barrel of the pistol pressed just under his ear. "Okay," Larry
said, breathing hard. "Okay, I'm going...whatever you say..."

"Boy, Larry," said Chuck, "you been drinkin'?
Your breath smells like a distillery, pal. Well, most likely you're
gonna need a drink or two unless you tell us what we want to know.
C'mon now..."

As they moved toward Larry's back door, the
lights of his Blazer went off as he heard its door close behind
him. The beam from a flashlight held by one of the people he hadn't
yet seen illuminated the way to the back door of the house. He saw
someone go in ahead of them, a woman, he thought, and turn on the
kitchen light.

"Sorry we don't have time to let you stop and
take off your wet boots, Larry," Chuck said, "but we're in kind of
a hurry." The man kept pushing him through the kitchen and into the
living room, where they turned on a floor lamp. All the curtains in
the room had been drawn. "Sit down." The big man pushed Larry into
the recliner. The chair's back went down under Larry's weight, but
did not topple. "Comfy?"

The bulb of the floor lamp was set at the
dimmest of its three wattages, but Larry could easily make out the
features of the quartet, two men and two women, none of whom were
familiar to him. One of the women, tall and palely beautiful,
stepped toward him. "We need some information from you."

"Who...are you?" he asked.

"No," she said. "
We
need information
from
you
, not the other way around. We're looking for Ned
Craig."

He didn't know what to say. The only thing he
could think of was to stall for time, though it made no sense. No
one would be looking for him until morning, and if anyone called,
his machine would pick it up. "Why?" he said. "Why do you want
him?"

The woman looked at Chuck, then back at Larry
again. "There's no point in lying," she said. "You know who we are.
We were at that camp yesterday. Where they found the dead men? We
were responsible for it."

"You sick fucks..." Larry said, but he was
the one who felt sick at the thought of what they might do to
him.

"
Us
sick?" said the other woman, no
more than a girl. Her red hair was cropped close, and she carried
an assault rifle like she knew how to use it. "Hey, man,
we're
not the ones who kill deer and like, bunnies! You
assholes shoot anything cute that hops!"

"We don't have the time for this," said the
taller, thinner man who was standing in the corner. "Where's
Craig?"

"I don't know." Nothing, Larry vowed, would
make him tell them. He knew they were going to kill him anyway.
They had to. He had seen their faces. Besides, they had already
killed so many there was no reason not to kill one more. He
wouldn't drag Ned and Megan along. And that determination kept his
fear at bay. He felt as though he could spit in their eyes as he
died.

"The hell you don't," the older woman said,
and picked up one of his topographic maps. "This is where, isn't
it?" She stuck the map of Potter County in his face. "There, where
it's circled in red."

She might have been crazy, but she wasn't
stupid. "No," he said, hoping she couldn't read the lie.

"What is it then?"

"Just a...where there was an accident earlier
this week. Somebody was shot."

The woman shook her head. "I think you're
lying to me, Larry. And believe me, I'm not in the mood to be lied
to. The weather is getting worse, and if we have to go far in it,
we want to start as quickly as possible. Now you know where he is,
and I want you to tell us."

"He's in Pittsburgh," Larry said.

"You're lying again. He's not in Pittsburgh,
because when we saw him this morning, he was headed northeast. I
don't need your maps to know that Pittsburgh is southwest of here.
Now I want you to tell us the truth. Where is Ned Craig?"

"Go to hell."

She shook her head disgustedly. "You're very
stupid, Larry Moxon. You could have made this easy, but now it's
going to be hard."

"You're gonna kill me anyway. Why should I
tell you a thing?"

"To save yourself a lot of pain, baby," said
the red-haired girl. She reached into her coat and took out a long,
thin-bladed knife, and the smile she gave him made his balls creep
up into his body. "Tie him down. I'll make him talk."

It was then Larry knew he had to act. Once he
let them tie him up, he would be helpless, but while his body was
still free, he could at least choose the way he would die.

The two men moved toward him. The tall one
was closest. He might be faster than Chuck, or he might not. It
didn't matter. All that mattered was that Larry should die quickly
and do as much damage as possible.

He surprised them. Instead of pulling away,
back into the chair, he leapt out of it directly at the tall man,
who, surprised by the move, started to bring up his gun fast, but
not fast enough. Larry batted the barrel away as it fired its first
few rounds. In the small room, the contained sound was deafening,
and Larry saw the bullets hit the rug. Then he wrenched the weapon
from the man's hands, and tried to swing it around on the
others.

His gut and hips and thighs felt as though
someone had smashed them with a sledgehammer, and then he heard the
sound of the shots that were pounding into him. He fell, sliding
his finger around the trigger and pulling it, feeling it buck in
his hand as he went down, firing blindly, unable to aim, unable to
do anything but fall and hold on to the trigger as though it were
the rung of a ladder, and if he held on he wouldn't fall to his
death.

Then he was down on the floor, and the gun
flew from his hand, and there was screaming, and a weight was on
him, and something that felt wet and cold was going into his chest
and his neck, and he thought the screaming would never stop, but it
did.

Everything stopped.

"Y
ou dumb
bitch!
" Chuck grabbed Sam Rogers's knife hand, twisted her
wrist, and wrenched the blade away.

"He
shot
me! The motherfucker
shot
me!
Look!
"

"For crissake, relax...it's not that
bad."

"Not that
bad?
You ain't the one
shot!
" And with that, Sam burst into tears and rolled off
the body of Larry Moxon.

"Oh shit," Chuck said, "what the hell are you
crying for?"

"She got
shot
," Michael said, kneeling
next to Sam and tearing away the pant leg over the wound.

Sam howled. "
Quit
it! You asshole!"
Michael drew away.

"What the hell did you stab him for?" Chuck
said, shaking his head.

"He
shot
me!" Sam blubbered.

"Yeah, okay, he shot you, but Jesus Christ,
he
dropped
the gun! I gut-shot him so's he could still talk,
and you stick a knife in his fucking neck, and
snick!
goes
the vein and the bastard's
dead!
" Chuck kicked at the body,
from whose neck blood still slowly pumped. "Ain't gonna get shit
out of him now."

"Well, I'm really sorry!" said Sam with a
snarl whose force was weakened by the sobs that followed.

"I know where he is," Jean said. It was the
first she had spoken since the melee. "He's at that tower. I saw it
in his eyes." She looked down at Sam with contempt. "Clean her up,
and let's go."

"I wanta see a
doctor
," Sam
whined.

"No. No doctor. We're going to the tower."
Jean walked back to the desk, sat down, turned on the banker's
light, and examined the map.

Chuck sighed, knelt by Sam, and took out a
knife of his own. "I'm gonna cut away your pants leg. Mikey, go
check out the bathroom, see what you can find far as bandages and
antiseptics and stuff. Some hot water too. Now just relax, Sam, for
crissake, you're not bleeding bad, so he probably didn't get a
vein, okay?"

The girl nodded and took a deep breath, but
never stopped crying softly. Chuck cut away the cloth over her left
calf as carefully as possible. Some of the fabric had stuck to the
bloody wound, and when he peeled it back, Sam yelped.

Just then Michael came back in with gauze,
bandages, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and a basin of hot water,
in which soap and a washcloth floated. Chuck poured some hot water
over the wound, and, ignoring Sam's tortured hiss, pulled away the
last of the cloth. The entry wound was small, but ragged around the
edges. He turned the girl's leg to see the other side.

"That's good," he said, smiling. "Went right
through. Still be in there, it'd be a bitch to dig out. Chewed up
the meat, but didn't hit any bone. You're gonna be okay. Won't walk
real fast for a few days though." He cleaned the wound with hot
water and soap, then held up the alcohol bottle. "This is gonna
burn like hell, but only for a little while."

That started her crying all over again, and
Chuck wiped her nose with the bloody washcloth. "What's the matter?
I thought you were into pain."

"Just other people's," Michael said, and joined Jean
at the desk. Both of them jumped at the screams when the alcohol
hit the wound.

B
y the time Chuck
got the wound wrapped and Sam had herself under control, it was
nearly 8:00. They turned off the lights inside the house and went
outside, where they were amazed to see how much snow had
accumulated in so little time.

In the jeep, Chuck drove, with Jean riding
shotgun. Michael and Sam sat in the back, with Sam's back against
the door and her legs across Michael's lap. The weapons and gear
were piled in the back.

"Thought we'd head back to St. Mary's," Chuck
said, "then get on 256 and catch 219 at Johnsonburg. Then we'll
head north to Route 6 East, take us into Potter County."

Jean looked at the highway map with her
flashlight. "That's the long way," she said. "We'll take 155." She
folded the map with an air of finality.

"'Scuse me," Chuck said, "but have you
noticed that we're in the middle of a snowstorm here? 155 is a
dogshit little road that won't be plowed in the middle of the
night." He took the map and opened it back up, flicking on the
overhead map light. "See? 155 is a thin little gray line on this
map. And a thin little gray line is a map symbol for dogshit. And
see those two that go north off 155? One of them's like open and
the other is speckled or whatever? That's worse than dogshit,
that's horseshit. That means the road's made of mud or gravel or
fucking pudding. We don't want to take 155. Okay?"

"It's the shortest way, and nothing else is
going to be plowed anyway."

"Bullshit! Look—256, 219, 6, those are all
red
on the map. That means like real roads that get plowed,
roads that people have to use all the time. They don't
have
to use those little gray roads all the time, so they'll plow those
last—probably sometime after
Christmas!
"

"We're taking 155."

"Fine. You wanta drive?"

"You're the driver. But we're taking
155."

"Hell," said Michael from the back seat,
"let's just take it. It's going to be terrible everywhere, and
we've got a jeep with chains."

"Easy for you to say," Chuck said. "You wanta
drive?"

"I'll take my turn."

"Let's just
go..."
Sam said.

"Okay, fine," Chuck said. "But if we're
taking 155, we're gonna go back in the house and get some food and
water and blankets. So when we get stuck in the snow, we have a
little better chance of survival."

"All right,
fine!
" said Jean, throwing
open the door and trudging back through the snow to the house.

In five minutes they had placed a pile of
food, several blankets, and two plastic gallon jugs of water in the
back with the gear. "Can we go
now
?" said Sam, who had
remained in the jeep.

The headlights of the jeep were no match for
the blowing snow, and it was touch and go getting down Larry
Moxon's long drive. They pulled out onto the main road only to
learn that conditions there weren't much better.

"I can't see dick," Chuck said, but no one
responded to his complaint. He hit the dimmer switch to turn off
the high beams, and the flood of snow seemed to diminish. But it
was still as though every snowflake the sky threw down was hurled
directly into their windshield.

After what seemed like hours, they finally
saw the lights of St. Mary's. "So we gonna drive all night?" Chuck
said.