A Time of Predators

Heavy stared at him with piggish eyes, and then gave a great raucous belch. His cheeks were pouched with half-chewed bread; the white melting fat of the corned beef ran down his chins. Around his mouthful he managed, “Ca... do it, Jul... Ri... gotta wait...”

“Empty your mouth, for Chris’ sake, you pig!” stormed Julio.

Heavy chewed, swallowed, belched. “Rick says we gotta wait.” He shot a look over at Rick, who had Paula’s suicide note open in his lap again. “I ain’t chicken, no matter what anybody says, but I ain’t dumb, either. The Triumph’s screwed up, an’ I bet the Chevy is, too, and I ain’t about to try an’ fix ’em in the dark. So we can’t get outta here: so what’s the use of goin’ outside?”

Julio began pacing, roaming the room like a caged animal, quivering each time that another of Champ’s screams tore at his nerves. A flash of hatred almost palpable in intensity shot through him. Halstead had done that to Champ; had done something to Rick, changed him some way so they were stuck in here, while outside, Champ...

What had happened to Rick? To all of them? Rick wasn’t yellow like Heavy, but tonight he had just sort of flipped. Sat there staring at the dead woman’s note to her husband. Julio checked in his pacing. Rick’s face that morning when he had turned Debbie over to them — maybe that had started it. Or maybe it had started months ago, with Rockwell. Then they had been a group, a unit, a whole bigger and stronger than all its parts. But Rockwell, and then Paula Halstead, and Debbie, and...

It was like being on one of those fun-house things that go around and around, faster and faster, and no matter how you try to hang on to one another in the middle of it, you are finally flung off, sliding and clutching impotently, to the periphery.

He had to get out of here. He stopped in front of Rick.

“You sit there and swing your leg and pretend to yourself that you are not afraid. But you are. You are even afraid to shoot.” He turned and walked unsteadily to the kitchen door, where he paused and looked back. “Even me. Even in the back.”

He turned deliberately, and went across the kitchen toward the back door. Face white, lips bloodless, Rick slowly lowered the gun butt back to his knee again. His left leg began a slight uncontrollable twitching.

Heavy reached for another sandwich.

The moon was lower and the fog banks were building up to engulf it; in the air was a bone-deep chill which helped steady Julio. He had expected a slug in the back, he really had, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Funny, he felt almost sad about Rick. For this, they were all destroyed. Now that it was too late, he knew that if they had stopped, before any particular piece of violence, they could have ended it. But they had gone on, and now it was too late. For them. For Debbie. For Paula Halstead and Harold Rockwell. For Champ.

Champ cried again, with a broken gagging note like the sound of some animal or something in those doggy jungle movies on TV. Julio left the shadows of the house, walked out across the open toward the base of the bluffs where he knew he would find poor, dumb, busted-up Champ. But not Halstead. That bastard would be long gone.

But as he came under the bushes he heard a voice speaking a bare five yards away. Halstead! Trapped here, under the cliffs! Julio went into a tense crouch, switchblade suddenly open in his hand, and went on.

“Easy, son,” Curt was saying in the voice of a man gentling a horse. “I had a tough time getting down from that cliff. Now I—”

Julio went in like a ferret from behind, his knife sweeping up in a short vicious loop at Curt’s kidneys. But he was too eager, or he uttered a sound of anticipation, or the failing moonlight was deceptive. Curt rolled forward and up and around, facing him, and Julio’s blade stabbed only air.

But Halstead still was trapped in this small clearing, and Julio’s teeth showed in a grin by the dim, filtered moonlight. He began sliding forward.

Curt spoke in a voice oddly steady. “Your friend is very badly hurt. I think his back is broken. But he may survive if I can get help here in time. Let’s—”

Julio laughed outright. Afraid of the steel, Halstead was; truly, the knife made a giant of him who had it. Champ, on the ground two yards away, moaned fitfully. A ragged wasp of cloud deadened the moonlight even more. Julio heard Champ, had heard Curt’s words, but none of it was even registering. All that registered was that Curt was still backing away from him, and to Julio, that meant fear.

“I am going to kill you,” Julio hissed.

A change took place in the grease-smeared face facing him, but it was not the change he had expected. Tenor did not enter it, but instead a... well, almost a sort of pleasure. Halstead’s right hand went behind him, reappeared with a deadly-looking twin-edged blade, dull black so it caught no moonlight.

“Don’t try it, son. I forgot about it with your friend here, up on the cliff, but I was fighting with this knife before you were born.”