But I’m a’gonna kill ya. Mark my words.”
Only the soft rustling of the boughs overhead answered Earl’s calls. They swished against one another in a wind that almost seemed afraid to drift down to ground level where the red-faced man huffed through the snow. The pine needles were covered with snow and the gentle movement made flakes drift down from the canopy overhead as if flurries were starting up again.
“You hear me? Come out now and I’ll make sure my brother doesn’t make that whore of yours suffer to much. Daryl likes those dark haired ladies. He could have himself a real good time with the likes of her. Unless, that is, I stop him.”
Earl knew he would never catch up with the man if Matt kept running. The act of walking and yelling at the same time was already making him winded and, after all the activity of the previous night, his muscles were as sore as if he’d been cutting grass for three days straight. In the same light, however, his quarry couldn’t keep up forever either. Sooner or later, a stitch would develop in the man’s side. His lungs would feel like they were on fire with every breath, just as Earl’s did now, and he’d be forced to slow his pace. The secret was to keep after him just quickly enough that once Matt’s initial burst of adrenaline started to fade Earl would begin closing the gap. Besides that, the heavyset man knew this forest. He’d spent countless hours scampering through them as a child, had poached game in them ever since he was big enough not to be knocked on his ass by the kick of a rifle; they were just as much his home as the old farmhouse with its peeling paint and rusty gutters.
So he’d save his breath and stop hurling threats to the uncaring pines. He’d follow the footprints in the snow with strides so long that he probably looked like a Sasquatch from a distance. And, when he finally closed in on the tired and hopelessly lost outsider… well, then the fun would really begin.
“This is for you, Mama.” He whispered. “This is for you.”
Matt skipped through the forest as if he were playing a game instead of being stalked by a cold-blooded killer. Every so often, he’d leap into the air and twirl around, kicking little puffs of snow out from under his heels. Even the cold didn’t bother him that much. His jacket kept the worst of it at bay; and any chill that managed to make it through the quilted lining was quickly defeated by the excitement that warmed his veins.
It was much quieter now that Earl had stopped trying to sound like a bad ass from some cheesy action film. Every so often, he’d hear some unseen animal crash through the underbrush and, once or twice, he’d even though he’d heard the distant chuffing of a deer.
The trees overhead were clustered so thickly together that the woods were almost in a perpetual state of twilight. He could see well enough for fifty yards ahead or so, but after that it grew progressively darker. However, that darkness seemed to be perpetually just out of reach… as if it were matching his pace and racing away from him as quickly as he could approach it. Which was fine by him. Chasing the darkness was something of a hobby… and one which he’d been doing his entire life.
The smell pine scent, the evergreens with their tall, straight trunks, and the crunch and swish of his feet passing through snow: it all made him feel as if he were nearly a decade younger. It was like he were that pimply faced fourteen year old boy again being taken to his father’s cabin for his first hunting trip.
He’d prepared for that expedition all summer long, shooting the thirty-ought-six so often that his right shoulder was perpetually bruised from the recoil and gunpowder clung to his hair and clothes like cologne. Their backyard had sparkled with shattered beer bottles and tin cans with star-shaped holes blasted into their sides. And he’d become quite the marksman. At first it had only been because he liked the way his father would rustle his hair and beam down at him every time his bullet found its mark. He’d liked the praise heaped upon him from this normally cold and distant man, had sought it as eagerly as a puppy will seek a scratch on the belly. But, over time, he’d come to take a certain pride in his skill that had nothing to do with his old man.
The secret was in pretending that the bottles were the heads of all the kids who’d ever pushed him in the playground. The bullies who’d flicked his ass with wet towels in the locker room. That garlic-smelling, fat ass bastard, Mr. French, who’d kept him after class in second grade to play the petting game. All the cute girls who’d laughed at him and made him feel like he was no better than the gum they chewed up and spit into the dirt. Even his own father for that one time Matt had came home early until to find the old man thrusting into some woman half his age who was bound and gagged just like in the magazines he’d found stashed under his old man’s bed. Matt had been beaten so badly that he could barely move for a week after and, even then, he could still hear his father’s seething voice whispering in the darkness of memory: you tell anyone about this and I swear to God no one will ever find your body. I’ll tell them you ran away, that you’d been threatening to for weeks. Not that anyone would miss you anyway….
Matt’s father had been almost like a cruel god. On one level, he hated the old man so badly that it sometimes felt as if his guts had twisted themselves into knots. He fantasized about beating the man down with his Louisville slugger, of seeing him cry and beg for mercy. But, on the other hand, he yearned for those rare moments when he’d see pride glimmer in his dad’s eyes or when his large hand would clap Matt on the back as if to say “that’s my boy.” They were fleeting, but there were a handful of times when Matt had honestly felt like he had a real father.
And that initial hunting trip had been one of them. He could still remember watching the redhead zig-zag through the snow through the scope on his rifle. The dimpled skin on her bare chest, the way she’d stumble and fall, and how her bush would be clumped with tiny snowballs when she’d scramble back to her feet. His father’s voice whispering in his ear….
“It’s time to become a man now, Matt.”
With his dad, it had always been redheads and, though it could have just been a trick of memory, it seemed to Matt now as if they had all bore a striking resemblance to the pretty young woman smiling from the pictures on the mantle. The mother he’d never known. But none of them had been quite as exhilarating as the first.
He remembered standing over her and watching as steam curled from the crimson stained snow. How motionless and perfect she was in death…. Her blue eyes had stared up at a sky that matched their color exactly, unblinking and free from all the worries and pain and heartaches that accompanied breathing. Almost as if she were watching her soul float into the sky like a balloon that had slipped from her grasp.
His father had whooped and cackled, had scooped the frail boy into his arms, and kissed him on the forehead so wetly that it later formed a thin layer of ice. But, at that precise moment, Matt knew what it meant to bask in the approval he had so desperately chased after all his life. With his father’s arm draped over his shoulder and a dead woman at his feet, it almost seemed as if the kidnapped hooker’s soul had been consumed by his own as thoroughly as scavengers would later devour the carcass. He felt stronger and more in control than he ever had. No more was he a confused and frightened child bobbing on the waves of doubt and uncertainty; no longer would he look at other people and struggle to figure out what made them so much better than him, what magic piece they possessed in jigsaw puzzle of existence that he lacked. For he then knew the truth: all of those people with their upturned noses and downcast eyes… they were nothing more than cattle awaiting slaughter. Nothing more than sustenance for a predator that loomed over them from the next link in the foodchain. And each and every one of them was his for the taking.
With his mind firmly back in the present, Matt glanced over his shoulder to see is he could spot the plodding Neanderthal through the thick cover of trees. His gaze was met with nothing more than a pair of birds hopping from branch to branch and his own footsteps trailing back into the depths of the forest. Frowning, he scratched his chin for a moment as he thought.
Maybe this oaf was smarter than Matt had given him credit for. As he’d thought about his father, he’d purposefully slowed his pace to the point that ice could have almost melted more quickly. Driven on by anger and adrenaline, the overweight beast should have at least been close enough by now to be glimpsed as a silhouette moving through the bushes and trunks . But there was nothing.
Had his pursuer changed tactics then? Perhaps instead of blindly following wherever the tracks led him, he was circling around and planning to cut Matt off at some point further into the woods. He hadn’t seemed too much brighter than the skinny one, but there was the chance that he was operating off pure instinct now and allowing his actions to be controlled by a much more primal portion of the brain.
It would be better to be safe than sorry, as Mona always said; he’d adapt his own tactics, as well. Change his initial plan into something that would work no matter what situation presented itself. On the off chance that fat behemoth was more cagey than at first he’d seemed, Matt would have to improvise, adapt, and overcome….
That thought brought a smile to his face as he removed the object that was slung over his shoulder and scouted his surroundings with eyes that noted every detail with microscopic clarity. He could feel the excitement tingle his arms and legs, could smell every scent on the crisp air as clearly as if he’d been born a wolf, and hear the
