A Time of Predators

Curt touched the sergeant-major on the shoulder and slid away toward the sentry without further signal. He moved silently and without haste, his mind safely blank, concentrating only on the red glow as the sentry drew on his cigarette again.

Eight yards to go. In the clear desert air he could smell the burning tobacco. Five yards. The knife was in his right hand, point forward, guard against the tip of his thumb and edge of his forefinger.

The glowing dot moved erratically, then showered sparks in being snubbed out against the stock of the sentry’s rifle. Curt, motionless, now could see his dim silhouette. The sentry sighed, took his rifle from his shoulder, grounded the butt in the sand by his right boot, and muttered something under his breath in German. Curt went in fast under the cover of the man’s own movements.

His left hand closed over mouth and nose and pulled up and to the left, fingers digging into the flesh. He could feel the hard line of jawbone under his third finger; the edge of his thumb was pressed deeply against the sentry’s left eyeball, so he could feel the frantic rolling beneath the shielding lid. His legs, intertwined with the sentry’s, upset their balance so they started down.

The sentry instinctively put out his hands to break the fall, and Curt put his knife in. It went with a terrible ease, to the guard, with a slight ripping noise as it tore the shirt. All according to the Manual.

But then the sentry made a muffled grating noise, all of his scream that got through Curt’s fingers. He tried to bite, butt, jerk his face free from Curt’s terrible clutching strength. The body under Curt tensed to iron, trembled like a retriever coming from an icy lake. The sentry dug in toes, fingers, reached far above his head, dragged their coupled bodies forward even through the yielding sand.

Finally the rock-hard, straining muscles went flaccid. The toes stopped digging, the clenched hands opened. His strap hadn’t been fastened, so his helmet had flipped off, and Curt’s jaw was gouged hard against the short-clipped hair. The breathing stopped below him, but Curt didn’t move. He listened as the rest of the band fanned out across the airfield, but his moment of fierce exultation had turned to lassitude, to a drained, almost sick feeling.

Five minutes passed.

He had been nearly asleep. He rolled off Paula’s nude, sated body in the dark, then groped back again toward heavy melon of breast, silken hollow of hip, warm swell of pubic mound.

“Paula!” he whispered softly.

She didn’t move, playing dead. Curt chuckled and reached across to her far shoulder, tipped her toward him.

Her head flopped solidly on the pillow and she stared at him in the semi-dark, slack-jawed, with the sentry’s dead sand-gritted eyes.

Curt uttered a hoarse, jaw-creaking shriek of terror, his eyes strained so wide open that the whites showed all the way around. He hurled himself back, twisting in midair, and struck the varnished hardwood floor of the study with his chin, hard enough to jar his teeth.

He sprawled there for a moment in his pajama pants, then rolled over and sat up. His eyes still were wild and his jaw ached. A shudder of revulsion passed through him: he still had an erection.

Not bothering with a light, he staggered down the hall to the bathroom and threw cold water into his face. His luminous watch showed it was just a little after four. Monday morning. He straightened up from the washbasin, cold water dripping down his chest.

He knew it then, for the first time, with an icy certainty.

He was going to find the boys who had raped Paula. Find them, break them, physically and spiritually. Make them crawl and grovel, mew with terror and pain. If the law couldn’t touch them, he would be his own predator. Why would he do it, for himself or Paula? Who could unscramble it? Who cared? To hell with motivations.

He padded down the hall, opened the door, was halfway into the bedroom before he realized where he was. It was the first time he had entered the room, except to move his clothes, since the night of Paula’s death. The cleaning lady kept it tidy, the king-size bed made up.

Curt didn’t even pause. He crossed the room, tossed back the spread, climbed between the sheets. Could his continuing agony of spirit merely have been an agony of indecision? He didn’t know; but he slept right through until nine o’clock.

Okay, you want them. You’ve made your decision. Now where do you start?

Sixteenth Avenue was in the old section of town near the tracks, two miles north of the business district. The street was straight, not curving; the curbs were high, angular, not shallow dips for the convenience of trike-trundling kids. Two-storied houses: prewar, Midwestern in flavor. On these streets it still might have been 1938.