Hunting Season (16 page)

Bitch.

It's one thing to ignore me.  It's another to screw some asshole in front of your husband.

The guy goes to town.  Gwen rubs her breasts.  Slurping sounds echo off the bamboo floors.

My blood boils.  Fists clench.  I'm ready for action.  Ready to kill.

The cat beats me to it.  It jumps on the guys head and digs its claws into flesh, arches its back, and hisses at me.

The guy freaks.  He jumps up from Gwen's snatch, screaming and turning in circles.

The cat digs in more, keeping itself from flying off.

The guy screams louder.  He runs around the room, begging for help.

Gwen rushes to his side; skirt still hiked up over her naked ass, and coaxes the cat off his head.

I can't stop laughing.

Blood runs down the guy's face in little streams.  The cat sits in Gwen's arms, still staring at me.

"I'm out of here," he says.

"Come on, let me help you clean up," Gwen says.

The guy shakes his head and leaves.

I smile and say, "I think we should talk about this."

But Gwen doesn't look at me.  She drops the cat and heads toward the bedroom, her skirt still hiked over her ass.

"Why don't you fix your skirt at least?"

Gwen ignores me.  What a surprise.

THURSDAY

God, it's hot.

Gwen has the heat blasting again.  She's already up, in the shower.

I get up and walk into the bathroom, sweat oozing out of my pores.

The bathroom is a steam bath.  Gwen stands in front of the sink running a towel through her hair.

I don't say anything.  Instead, I take my finger and write into the fogged-over mirror.

Gwen stares as I write, "Talk to me."

Finally, I get a reaction.  Although I don't know why she would stare.  It's a pretty simple request.

Just when I think I've broken through her wall of silence, Gwen flees from the bathroom.  Guess a stare is all I'll get today.

FRIDAY

Gwen brings her asshole friends over again.  But this time they don't drink wine and chat.  They light candles and sit around a table.

Some old bag sits in the middle.  They hold hands and chant gibberish.

I stand in the corner, watching.  No one says a damn thing to me.  All on the same page as Gwen.

"Is Randy there?" the old woman says.

Is this a joke?

"Yes, I'm right here."

"He says he's here," the old woman tells everyone else around the table.

They all nod excitedly.

I swear Gwen knows no bounds.

"Yeah, I'm here," I say.  "I'm always here.  Can we stop playing games?"

The old woman repeats what I say.  Everyone seems nervous.

"What games?" the old woman asks.

"Why Gwen blasts the heat?  Why she screws some guy in front of me?  Why she ignores me while I jerk-off?"

The old woman doesn't repeat any of this.

"Why doesn't she talk to me?" I yell.

The old woman repeats this.

A few moments later, the old woman says, "Randy, you're dead.  You killed yourself a year ago."

Gwen wins again.

SATURDAY

So I'm dead.  Apparently, I killed myself a year ago.  Hanged myself in the basement.

This all came out at the séance last night.  Gwen said she found me down there.  Told me I'd been depressed for months, unable to write, unable to perform sexually.

How low do you have to be to try and convince your significant other they're dead?

Bitch.

Like I'd ever kill myself.  Or ever had problems with sex.  Just have had a problem rubbing one out lately.

I told the old lady to stick it up her ass.  That didn't go over too well.  Gwen packed up her bags and left.  Didn't say one word to me on the way out.  Silent treatment to the very end.

ONE WEEK LATER

Gwen stopped by today.  I didn't try to talk to her.

She left a picture on the kitchen table and walked out.  It shows Gwen standing next to a tombstone with my name on it.

The woman knows no bounds.

I'm going to win.  Just have to be patient.  Porn will help.  Maybe Jill will want to talk about the rising value of zinc.

TWO WEEKS LATER

Not dead.  Everyone thinks so but not.

Other people see, though.  Force them to acknowledge.  Outside, they walk around with their mouths open, looking at the ground while listening to Ipods, tuning out the world.

Stop them.  Interrupt their methadone dazes.  Jump in their faces and scream "Not dead!" or "Fuck Gwen!"  They shriek and run away.

Gwen would say they run because they see a ghost manifesting or some bullshit like that.

Alive, baby.  And can prove it.

Sitting at the kitchen table, lay my left hand across the cutting board and lift the cleaver with right.

"Not dead.  If dead, this won't hurt."

Hesitate.  Not dead and this will hurt like a sonofabitch.  But have to prove it, have to show Gwen still here.  Still alive.

Swing the cleaver down.

Fuuuucccckkkk!

Collapse to the floor, cradling stump to chest, blinking the spraying blood out of eyes.

Not dead.

Smile.  Knew it.  Fuck Gwen.

TWO HOURS LATER

Blink.  Hear something.

Door?

Footsteps.

Blink more.  Cold.  Weak.

"Finally."

Gwen's voice.  Far away.  Like underwater.

Footsteps.

"Adios, mother fucker."  Gwen.  Voice underwater.  Slow-motion.

Door closes.

She acknowledged.  Not dead.

Ha!  Told you so.

Cold.  Shiver.  Feel empty.

RINGS

Inigo switched the flame thrower on and pointed the nozzle at his best friend.

"I'm not infected," Claude said.

"You know you are."

Inigo had noticed the rings while the two walked home after working the second shift, appearing under Claude's jaw and around his ears like the fingerprints of God.  They rose and swelled fast, only taking seconds to turn the skin almost crimson.  Inigo could see them now, advancing to the next stage, spreading down his friend's neck toward his Central Nervous System. 

"Inigo."  Claude's voice sounded weak and garbled, the bile already starting to overload his digestive system.  "There's no gun.  Don't burn me alive."

Someone had stolen the suicide gun.  Only a dangling lanyard remained, lying limp against the side of the Cleansing Station.  Claude would not get the option every other infected person got, and every other infected person chose.  After all the people Inigo had burned, his best friend would be the first one still alive when he shot the flame.

"You'll be contagious soon."  Only a matter of minutes.  Then it would go airborne.

Claude dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together, praying to his friend.  "Please, I beg you, as your friend, don't do this."

"I have to."

Eight months since the first reported infection.  Inigo had watched all of his loved ones die except his daughter.  He'd shown no symptoms and neither had Sarah.

And neither had Claude until now.

"Let me go.  I'll go to the mountains.  No one lives up there anymore.  I'll die alone.  Just don't burn me."

"It's the only thing that kills it.  I'm sorry."

Inigo had knocked Claude to the ground and dragged him to the closest Cleansing Station as soon as he saw the rings.  The government hadn't found a way to diagnose the disease so quarantine didn't work, not to mention it spread and went airborne too fast.  The only thing the government had found to treat and kill the infection was fire.  It didn't take long for the government to authorize the erection of the Stations, making it every citizen's duty to enforce the Purity Law.

"Please, Inigo."

"Good-bye, Claude.  I am sorry."

The flame erupted from the nozzle and engulfed Claude before he could scream.  Fire danced on him as he rolled back and forth and then stopped, the flames consuming the fleshy heap.  The scent of scorched tissue and hair filled the city square around them.  Pedestrians did not stop to watch, moving by and allowing Claude to die without the gawking eyes of a mob.

Inigo cut-off the flame thrower.  He looked over the charred corpse and smelled its burned flesh rising on smoke like an evil dream and said goodbye to his friend.  He turned and left Claude to lounge one last time in the California sun before the Body Collectors picked him up for proper disposal.

*  *  *  *  *

Sarah slept on the couch.  Inigo looked down at her, studying the skin around her ears and under her jaw, expecting to find the rings as he had on Claude and thankfully didn't.  If the virus had evolved, had found a way to penetrate the immune systems of those it had yet to infect, he could only assume he and Sarah would soon face the flame.

Maybe everyone would.

Inigo turned on the news and expected to hear reports of fresh outbreaks, a mutating virus, and a concerned government which still hadn't found a vaccine.  Instead, the reporter talked about global peace talks, as if the virus was a thing of the past, a dark spot on the history of mankind.

How many had died?  The figures had never officially been released but the rumor was a full quarter of the world's population had perished.  Inigo glanced at Sarah, sleeping peacefully; too young to understand everything which happened but smart enough to know nothing could really be done and decided not to worry.  Even when Inigo had to tell her mommy wouldn't be coming home again, Sarah accepted it faster than he could have ever imagined.

"We'll see her again in heaven," she had said, her face doused with tears, and went to her room to pray.  "I'll say hi to mommy for you."

Inigo cried on rare occasions, didn't even shed a tear when he incinerated his wife, but Sarah's blunt honesty and innocence had forced him to retreat to the bathroom.

As he looked at her now, he said a small prayer asking God to spare her from what happened to Claude.  Spare her the fire, dear Lord, he thought.

He didn't notice when Sarah rubbed her eyes and sat up.  "Hello, daddy."

"Hello, sweetie.  How was your nap?"

Sarah pushed off the couch and walked over to him, sinking to the carpet and wrapping her five-year-old arms around his shins.  "I dreamed about you."

"Did you?  Anything good?"

"We were swimming at the beach."

"Were we?"

"Yes we were.  Do you think we can go to the beach some time?"

"Sure."  Inigo patted Sarah on the head.  "Some time soon, we'll go."

Sarah increased her embrace of his shins.  Nothing else was said for a few minutes.  Inigo basked in Sarah's simple joy and, for a second, forgot about everything else.

"How was work?"

Sarah's question snapped Inigo back to the brutal reality of the present.  He thought of Claude, the rings, and the smoking corpse.  Not one after the other.  Instead, the images blended together in his memory like an obscene and impossible photograph.

"It was work," Inigo said and left it at that.

*  *  *  *  *

Inigo flipped up his welding helmet and looked over the seam he'd just finished.  The last few inches had marked the completion of another Submersible Urn.  A professional name for a vessel designed for nothing more than a way to sink the ashes of the diseased to the bottom of the sea.

He'd helped build well over fifty of the large orbs designed to protect humanity.  Yes, fire killed the virus.  But the government decided burying the ashes didn't provide enough of a buffer from possible mutation or reintroduction to the human host.  So, sinking the big piles of human remains in sea seemed the best alternative.  And that's all Inigo and the other shipyard workers had worked on since the virus had come on the scene.

The shift whistle blew and Inigo sighed.  Another day done.

Twenty minutes later, he walked through the front door to find Sarah standing in the vestibule of their condo, her face beaming, waiving at him as he shut the door behind him.

"How was work, daddy?"

"Good, sweetie."

He draped his right arm across her shoulders.

"When do you think we can go to the beach?"

Inigo smiled.  He looked down at Sarah, her head cradled up toward his grinning mouth, and his heart dissolved into a rancid dew.  Red circles, wicked rings, gazed up at him from underneath her jaw.

He froze, grabbed her by the chin, and turned her head.  He pushed her hair out of the way and she cried at his sudden, panicked, and violent movements, as he folded her ear back to find another ring greeting him.

"What?" Sarah's voice full of fear.

Inigo swallowed and released his little girl.  His eyes sat on her, wondering what to do, and knowing no other choice existed.

He cradled her into his arms and rushed her out of the condo.  Got to get her out of the city.  To the mountains.  Somewhere safe.  Somewhere no one would burn her.

"Daddy, what are you doing?"

"We're going to the beach, sweetie."  Lying was the only thing that made sense right now.

"We are?"

"You betcha.  Just like you wanted."

Inigo moved into the elevator, Sarah's head pressed to his chest, trying to shield the rings so no one would notice.

"Why is your heart beating so fast?" Sarah said.

Inigo wiped sweat from his face.  "I'm just excited because we're going to the beach."

The elevator doors opened and Inigo ran through the main lobby and out the front doors into a sea of sepia sunlight.  His head swiveled left and right, expecting to see people staring at him but no one paid any attention.

Need to get out of the city, he thought.  No car.  How?  Steal one.

Inigo ran toward a car parked on the side of the road.

"Daddy, I don't feel good," Sarah said, her voice bubbling with the bile filling her throat.  "It's hard to breath."

Inigo looked down at his daughter.  The rings were spreading.  Not much longer before it went airborne.