like a blind beggar searching for a dropped quarter.
He found the batteries and fought another dark struggle with the plastic wrap and another getting them into the flashlight, but still it wouldn’t light. He took the batteries out and reversed them. Still no light. He slumped over and started to fall, but he threw out his hands and held on to the car for support.
He stayed like that, fighting nausea and trying to hold down the vomit that wanted to come. He lost the battle and threw up. His stomach muscles clenched as great gobs of viscous vomit seemed to tear his insides apart. He fought for air, wanting it to stop, hoping it would stop, but still he heaved, spewing out the contents of his stomach and continuing on, dry heaving.
Finally it stopped, leaving him gasping for air, his body demanding oxygen. He used the car for support, bending over the right front fender, holding on to good old Power Glide. He took deep breaths, the way he’d seen Glenna do when she was doing her yoga exercises and after a few minutes he felt better.
He stood up, backed away from the car, faced into a cool breeze, forced his shoulders back and took one last, deep breath. The wind cooled his face. He felt better, less drunk and he wanted a cigarette. The stale Marlboros were in the glove box.
He slid into the passenger seat, popped the glovebox, grabbed the cigarettes and his gold Zippo. Normally he didn’t smoke in the car, but it was his rule and he felt like breaking it. He flipped a smoke into his mouth and flicked the lighter.
He inhaled deeply, sat back and closed his eyes. What was he doing out here in the middle of the night? By now Kohler had surely called the sheriff. If he was caught out here like this, it wouldn’t be hard for even the most incompetent of small town cops to stick him with the crime. It was stupid for him to have broken in that way. Even dumber to go at the video and sound equipment with the ax. It was a weakness, that kind of stuff made him go out of control.
He took another drag, held the tobacco in his lungs, exhaled the blue smoke, and didn’t feel any better. The cigarette wasn’t any help. He stubbed it out.
He should go back to the motel. Shower and sleep it off. He almost started the car to do just that, but as he was about to crank the ignition a picture of Glenna flashed through his mind and he knew he wasn’t going back to the motel. He cursed himself for drinking when his daughter was in danger, but he was confident he had purged himself from the worst of the alcohol’s effects. He got out of the car.
The dark clung to him like a second skin, blocking his vision and chilling his soul. There was just enough light for him to see the road at his feet and two arm lengths ahead, not any more. A good boy scout would have checked the flashlight and made sure it worked before embarking on such a fool’s errand, but boy scouts didn’t go on fools errands. A cop might-fathers do.
Clutching the carbine, holding it in front of himself, at the ready, he started his trek toward the gray house. He had almost made the twenty feet up to the road, when he heard the sound. A movement in the brush. He stopped and listened, more sober by the second. But he heard only silence.
He started again, eyes down, on the dirt road. He let out a sigh of relief when he reached the pavement. Easy sailing now.
A deep throated growl came from up ahead, blocking his way. Washington stopped, moving his eyes off the road, willing them to reach out through the night and bring him a picture of whatever was blocking his path, but the night armor was too strong for his vision’s arrows. Something threatening was there and he might as well have been blind.
He stopped again, tuned his ears to the dark as he chambered a round. He pointed the carbine ahead, where he thought the sound had come from, and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot ripped through the silent night followed by an agonizing howl, then by the sound of something thrashing through the thick brush, scraping and tearing along the ground, bellowing as it fled away from Washington. And the night went silent again and as if nothing had happened, he forced his eyes down to the paved road and continued his trek. Kohler’s place was a quarter mile away and at the rate he was going, it would be dawn before he arrived at the thicket.
Watch dog, wild dog, child’s pet or bear, he didn’t know or care what it was he’d shot. His only thought was of Glenna. If he wanted to get her back, he would have to be at Kohler’s when she arrived with Jim Monday. He had delayed too long already. His resolve was firm. Nothing was going to stand in his way, not animal, nor man, but his resolve was quickly tested. He heard something twisting and turning in the brush and it was no longer tearing away from him in desperate flight. It was moving toward him with deliberate caution.
He put his nose in the wind. The thing coming for him had a smell all too familiar. He had been assaulted by it before, once following a freeway accident, once when he helped a fireman drag a burning woman from a blazing building. It was impossible to guard against. There was no protection from the smell of burning flesh. This thing coming for him was no dog, or bear.
He sensed that it was hugging the ground, forcing the brush aside like some kind of great snake. He used his ears, forced himself to concentrate on the sound and not the odor, which threatened to make him sick all over again. He was alert now, the adrenaline forcing all effects of the alcohol away. And in his new state of awareness, he reasoned that the thing was using the odor to misdirect him. Odor is carried with the breeze which twists and turns through the woods. It lies. He had to depend on his ears, they would give him the animal’s true position.
He listened as it drew closer, clawing and scratching on the ground. He closed his eyes and let the sense of sound take over. Again he used his instincts and fired into the night. And again the thing screeched, thrashed and moved away. Two shots and two hits, but this time it didn’t move as far. It hissed, like a snake hisses, but sounded more like a giant boiler releasing pent up steam, and he was overpowered with the pungent burning smell. He was tempted to shoot again, but he held his fire. He was a veteran and he wanted to make every shot count.
Something in the back reaches of his mind said run, but somehow Washington knew to run was to die. He waited, motionless. And it moved in closer, stalking him. It might be tough, Hugh thought, but it couldn’t be silent. He waited till he heard it leave the brush. It’s on the road. It thinks I can’t hear if it advances along the blacktop, but it’s wrong, I can. The thing was unable to mask the sound of its claws sliding on the smooth road and Hugh’s excellent hearing guided the direction of his fire like radio guided lasers.
Five quick rounds filled the night like explosions and the roar of the beast followed like an erupting volcano. Hugh fired the last three rounds of the ten round clip, ejected, jammed in the fresh clip and, while the animal still roared, he fired five more shots into the screams, still failing to silence the howling beast.
Fighting temptation he held his fire. The animal was directly in front of him, raging and screeching, clawing and scratching, but it wasn’t getting any closer. He shot his hands into his pocket and came out with the gold Zippo. He flicked it and for a flash of a second saw the thing that had been stalking him.
Big, reptilian, cringing from the Zippo’s light, bleeding from scores of wounds, foaming at the mouth, a baseball-sized eye on both sides of its lizard-like head, eyes glowing yellow against the Zippo’s flame. It hissed foam and steam at the light and moved away, slinking on its belly, backwards, away from the fire.
Holding the Zippo in his left hand with his arm extended forward, Hugh tucked the carbine into his side and fired the last five shots into the head of the beast. All direct hits, causing it to spasm and jerk with each shot. The last shot jerked it onto its back, but it quickly righted itself and roared, blaring like an elephant, showing Hugh the hatred in its flaming yellow eyes, daring him to put out the flame.
Hugh dropped the carbine, grabbed his pistol from the shoulder holster, and advanced on the reptile.
“ You’re going to eat shit, motherfucker.”
Badly wounded, it tried to back away from the advancing human with the fire. It was confused. Humans always ran. They were prey. Prey didn’t fight back and prey never attacked. But this human was something new. It was changing the rules. And, having never been hunted, the beast didn’t know what to do. It had never run from prey. But this wasn’t prey anymore. This was something different. This was a hunter.
It opened its wide mouth, showing jagged teeth, then growled, hissing blue steam into the cool night. This never failed to frighten humans, usually paralyzing them with fear. But the prey, that was no longer prey, extended an arm, and flame leapt out from the human’s hand, and great pain flashed in its throat as three quick explosions smashed into its mouth.
It hissed again, gurgling blood. If only the human would drop the fire it could attack, but the arm that dealt pain stiffened and the reptile backed off as the arm jerked and something smashed into its left eye making everything on its left side go dark. It turned, and for the first time in its long life, it fled.
