He remembered that girl for a moment, and a strange, terrifying image crept into his mind, the flash of a nightmare.
“Jesus, she did a number on you or what?” Gene was awake, lying on his bed with his belly spilling out onto the mattress, staring at his back.
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look at your back in the mirror.”
Jonathan walked to the mirror and twisted his body so he could view his back. Five bloodied streaks went across his spine.
Gene walked over to examine the scratches more closely. “Those will heal up in a week. Just keep Mary away.” Then Gene shoved him. “Last piece of strange you’re ever gonna taste, huh?”
They met Conner and Michael in the parking lot, both bleary-eyed and largely silent. “How ’bout we never do that again?” Conner said, attempting to break the silence.
“That’s what we always say after a night out,” Gene said. He cracked a beer. “Hair of the dog, boys!” He handed a Budweiser to Jonathan. His head was starting to hurt with the onset of a hangover.
“Fuck it,” Jonathan said and took a drink.
They pulled into Pasternak that afternoon. There was a dull, blue gloom hanging over the town as if snow was about to fall. Pasternak was a brief Main Street of brick facades, each a couple of stories high with window shops that advertised power equipment and handmade dresses. The main strip was surrounded by cheap bungalows, originally built to house factory workers during the 1940s war manufacturing boom. Now, it was one of those dying places where children moved out, eager to escape the boredom and the impending sense of doom, and the remaining residents were willing to embrace their oncoming death, easing the disquiet with booze and cheap television. The nearest supermarket was a town away and accessible only by interstate. There was a Sam’s Club that doubled as a liquor store, grocery and pharmacy. They stopped and loaded up on beer and liquor, food for sandwiches and snacks with the idea they’d be eating strips of meat from their kills and fish caught in the creek that flowed through the center of Coombs’ Gulch. Bill Flood owned the cabin at the edge of the Gulch and had an apartment above a small diner on Main Street.
Bill Flood was one of those guys who aged but never died. His skin sagged heavy off his face, and his eyes seemed to look past whoever he was talking to, out into the oncoming future. He didn’t even say hello when they arrived at his front door, but just nodded and said, “I’ll get my things.” His big frame stooped at the neck, his arms flapped back and forth with his stride, his hands were like the tips of wings. He drove his pickup truck, and Jonathan and the brothers followed him as they dipped into the mountains, the way a boat might drop below the surface of the sea during a storm. They drove north for forty-five minutes on broken back roads that wound snakelike through the mountains. Finally, they turned down a dirt road at a small opening between the silent rock bluffs. They bounced and jostled in Conner’s SUV, beer bottles crashing together. It was another twenty minutes down the dirt path.
“Are we sure there’s even a cabin out here or has the old guy just lost it?” Gene said.
“Middle of nowhere, boys,” Conner said. “You can forget about civilization out here. No grocery stores, phones, nothing but trees and hills.” And that was the point: true hunters living off what they caught, away from all the bullshit of modern life. Conner gloried in it.
The cabin was larger than they had expected, a welcome surprise. It was more of a house with two floors, dormer windows looking out into the trees like a pair of eyes, three bedrooms, a front porch with wicker furniture and a barn in the back with a massive firepit.
Bill got out of his truck and flapped his arms to the front door on pure autopilot, his mind a million miles away.
Jonathan looked at the forest surrounding them. The trees were truly dense here, black-and-white slash marks that built up layer on layer until fifty feet out was just a solid wall of wood. The air was cold and thin, making Jonathan feel as if he were trying to breathe in space.
“This is a big place,” Conner said to Bill. “You don’t live here instead of in town?”
Bill didn’t even stop walking to and fro, doing whatever he felt was necessary for their stay. “Too far from town for my age,” he said. “I can’t be hauling food and everything out here.” He stopped for a moment and looked at the four of them. “You boys be careful out here. One of you gets hurt and there ain’t no one else can help you. Nearest hospital is about a two-hour drive from here. Your nearest neighbor is over that ridge of mountains.” He pointed to some peaks that marked the eastern ridgeline of Coombs’ Gulch. “Had a couple guys up here once; one of ’em fell out of his tree stand, broke his leg. Damn near had gangrene by the time they got him to the hospital.”
The inside of the cabin glowed dull with wood. Dust swirled in sunlight that streaked through old, drafty windows. The furniture was circa 1970s, old couches that itched your skin, a table and chairs probably picked up at a garage sale and
