After Midnight

“What’d he do to you?”

“We don’t have time. Come on, Alice. If he wakes up…”

“Does he have a gun?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did he get you?”

“He jumped me from behind. I’ll tell you everything later, okay? We haven’t got time for this. You’ve gotta untie me. Please!”

“Shhh. Raise your voice, and you’ll wake him up.”

“Maybe I should,” she blurted. “Maybe I will! Stop screwing around and get me down from here!”

“Shut up!”

“Get me down!”

I clamped her left nipple between my thumb and forefinger and twisted it. She flinched and writhed. Breath hissed out around her teeth. “Just shut up,” I told her.

She jerked her head up and down.

“Now, tell me about our friend in the tent. I take it he’s not Tony.”

“No,” she said, and panted for air.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does he look like?”

“Big.”

“Big? What’s big?”

“He is.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know. Don’t just keep…Do you want him to catch us?”

“He doesn’t scare me,” I said.

“Then you’re dumber than you look.”

I gave her a very hard pinch and twist. She cried out and squirmed. Then, gasping for air, she blurted, “You stupid bitch, now you’ve done it. He’s gonna come out!”

“I’m trembling.”

“You oughta be! We’ll be next.”

“Huh?”

“He’s got a body in the tent with him. Some dead woman. He eats her.”

“What?”

“He eats a dead woman in his tent!”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

But I didn’t have time to give it much thought, because I heard the tent flaps whap open behind me.

Letting go of Judy, I spun around. The weight of the pistol slapped my left thigh. A good thing, since it reminded me that I had it in the wrong pocket.

I went for it left-handed as this guy crawled out of the tent.

In spite of Judy’s description, I still expected him to be my prowler.

But he wasn’t.

My prowler was sleek and handsome.

Not a fat, bald, drooling slob.

He really was drooling, too. Slobbering all over the place as he struggled to his feet.

Grunting.

Naked.

Filthy with old blood that looked brown and crusty.

Coated with curly, filthy hair all the way down from his shoulders to his feet.

Only one part wasn’t hairy. It jutted out in front of him, so big he was getting drool on it.

He lumbered toward me, hunched over, his arms outspread as if he wanted to give me a bear hug. But he had a knife in one hand, a hatchet in the other.

No kidding.

They didn’t look any too clean, either.

He grunted and laughed as he picked up some speed and charged at me.

You’ve gotta be kidding!

I had this urge to laugh. But what came out was a scream. Behind me, Judy screamed, too.

This might’ve been hilarious in a movie.

I mean, the guy was such a monstrosity! It crossed my mind that all this was some sort of a gag. But I figured it must be real.

I forced my eyes away from him just long enough to glimpse a shadowy body inside his tent. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. And it looked dead, to me.

I started firing.

Better late than never. The deal is, I’d had a little trouble with the pistol. I began to go for it when the guy first came crawling out of the tent. But it was down at the bottom of my pocket, and I had to drag it out with my left hand. I’m a righty. So after I got the pistol out, I spent a few moments switching it to my right hand. Only after that did I start pumping bullets into him.

I pulled the trigger fast.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

But he didn’t go down.

He was backlit by the fire, so I couldn’t see where I was hitting him. I had to be hitting him, though. I’m an okay shot and this was close range and he was a large target charging straight at me. How could I miss a thing like that?

I couldn’t, that’s how.

I was hitting him, all right. But the little .22s weren’t doing the job.

In another second, he’d be on me. I had Judy at my back, so I dodged sideways, holding fire. He tried to follow me, but he was too big and clumsy. He couldn’t change course in time.

Judy kicked out at him. She was probably trying for his nuts. I heard the smack sound of her bare foot meeting his skin, but he didn’t cry out or drop.

He plowed into her.

His body slammed against Judy and crashed through her, knocking a grunt out of her as he sent her flying backward and upward, twisting at the end of her rope. Stumbling past where she’d been, he managed to turn around and start coming after me again.

Judy came swinging toward his back like Tarzan on the attack. But I don’t think she meant to do it. She was at the mercy of the rope and the whims of motion.

She meant what came next, though.

As the guy staggered toward me, Judy raised a slim bare leg and kicked him in the back of his head. She rebounded away from him, spinning wildly.

He grunted, stumbled forward and fell to his knees.

I ran up to him, fired a shot into the top of his shiny head, then pranced backward out of reach, not sure what to expect.

What I hoped was that he’d drop like a sledge-hammered bull.

But instead, he squealed and started crawling forward, trying to get up.

I glanced at the pistol. If I’d been out of ammo, the slide would’ve been locked back. It was forward. Which meant I had at least one more round.

There might be a couple, but I could only count on one.

So I wasn’t eager to use it.

As he stumbled to his feet, I hurried around behind the campfire. He lurched toward me, hunched over, arms