C. Box - Savage Run

“You must be Stewie Woods,” Joe said, looking over to the man who had helped him inside the cabin.

“And you aren’t Mary Harris,” Stewie said.

“I’m her husband,” Joe said, glaring at Stewie’s disfigured face. Now was not the time to punch him in the nose, Joe thought. “Her name’s Marybeth Pickett.”

Stewie wheezed. “You’re a game warden.”

“Right.”

“Do you know how many there are out there shooting at us?” Stewie asked with remarkable calmness.

“One older man in a black Ford pickup. He’s got a hell of a rifle and he knows what he’s doing.”

“Look what he did to John Coble,” Stewie gestured to the table above them. For the first time, Joe noticed the two boots that hung suspended from the edge of the table and a single still arm that dropped over the side. A stream of dark blood as thick as chocolate syrup strung from the table to a growing pool on the floor.

“Is he-”

“He’s dead,” Stewie said. Britney Earthshare had now crawled over to join them on the floor. Her face was a mask of revulsion and frozen shock. Joe sympathized. He couldn’t yet grasp the magnitude and danger of the situation he was in.

“Do you have any weapons in the cabin?” Joe asked them both.

“No, but Coble has a pistol with him,” said Stewie.

“Get it,” Joe commanded. “Can you shoot a gun?”

“Of course,” Stewie said. “I’m from Wyoming.”

Stewie rolled toward the table and began to rise up. As he did, the kitchen window imploded with the force of another bullet and threw shards of glass skittering across the floor. Stewie dropped to a sprawl, his attitude accusatory toward Joe.

“Forget that! ” Stewie yelled.

“What about you, Britney?” Joe asked. She was closer to Coble.

“I will not touch a gun.”

Joe cursed. They were useless.

Joe’s mind raced as he lay there, his cheek pressed to the rough wood. Stewie was a few feet away, and despite the immediacy and danger of the situation, he couldn’t help staring. Stewie, Joe thought, was hideous. Seen in the dusty rods of light from the bullet holes in the walls, Stewie’s face looked as if it were made of wet papier-mache that had been raked from top to bottom with a gardening claw and allowed to dry. His mouth was misshapen and exaggerated, capable of making a perfect inverted U when Stewie was angry, like he was now. His mouth looked like a child’s drawing of a sad face.

Under Stewie’s rough, loose clothes, it was obvious that he had been bigger but had recently lost most of his muscle tone. Skin sagged on big bones. His left arm was limp and thin. Stewie’s fingernails and toenails needed trimming, and a beard, once full and red, was now pink and wispy. The hair on his head grew in patches, like putting greens on a desert golf course.

Joe, however, pulled his attention away from Stewie as he realized that the gunshots had suddenly stopped. Joe guessed that the shooter was reloading. He reached down to make sure his.357 was still in his holster and was relieved to find it was. Unfortunately, Joe was a notoriously bad shot, and he knew that it would be close to impossible for him to hit the shooter at this distance.

The shots resumed, but inside the cabin nothing happened. The shooter had shifted targets. Joe heard a faraway shattering of glass, and a metallic clang from the impact of a bullet.

“He found my truck,” Joe spat.

He remembered that his shotgun was in the saddle scabbard. On his knees and elbows he scrambled toward the open door.

“Where are you going?” Britney asked hysterically. “Are you leaving us?”

“Try to calm down, Britney,” Stewie implored.

Joe crawled to the side of the doorframe and cautiously leaned forward. His face and head felt stunningly exposed when he peered outside. He wondered if he would hear the bullet before it hit him.

Joe was practically useless as well. The shooter was over 1,500 yards away on the other mountain. Joe’s.357 Magnum was not capable of even half of that range. The fat, heavy bullets he fired would fall short at about the distance of the road.

Lizzie wasn’t where she had fallen, but Joe spotted her further down the meadow. She stood in a pool of shadow just inside the treeline. His saddle had come loose and hung upside down beneath her belly. She took a step, faltered, and stopped. She stood stiffly. He could see that the bullet had shattered her right rear leg. Her leg, from her hock down, hung like a broken branch.

Suddenly, there was a puff of dust and hair from her shoulder and the horse jerked and buckled into the summer grass as the reverberating sound of shot rolled across the valley.

That son of a bitch, Joe thought. That son of a bitch killed Lizzie!

Joe suddenly scuttled back as another.308 bullet blew a football-sized chunk out of the doorframe dirctly above where his head had been.

“Jesus Christ!” Stewie bellowed.

Joe knew his face was white and contorted with fear-he could feel his own skin pulling across his skull-when he joined Stewie and Britney Earthshare under the table. His voice choked as he asked them if there was another way out of the cabin.

Stewie said there was a side door but that Charlie Tibbs could probably see them if they went out that way.

“There’s a window in the bedroom,” Britney said, her teeth chattering as if the temperature were subzero.

They crawled across the floor of the cabin toward the bedroom over shards of glass, splinters of wood, and congealing globules of blood and tissue. A bullet tore through the wall a foot above floor level and smashed into the base of the stove where Britney had huddled just a few minutes ago. Joe felt the cabin shudder with the impact.

In the bedroom, Joe ripped the curtains and rod off of the only window and shoved it open. It faced the back of the cabin, away from where Charlie Tibbs was positioned on the mountain.

Britney was trembling beneath her T-shirt as Joe helped her out the window. There was a five-foot drop, and she landed awkwardly but recovered. Stewie sat on the sill and grunted, trying to fit his broad shoulders through the frame.

“I’m stuck, dammit,” he complained.

With the heel of his hand, Joe thumped Stewie’s left shoulder, forcing him through. Stewie dropped to the ground and landed gracefully.

A sound like a cymbal crashed in the main room as a bullet tore through the wall and hit a cast-iron skillet hanging above the stove.

Joe dropped through the window and his boots stuck fast to the soft earth covered with pine needles.

“Which way?” Britney asked.

“North.” Joe pointed into the timber. “Keep the cabin between us and the shooter. Stay in the trees and don’t look back until we’re over the top of the mountain.”

“I was really looking forward to seeing Mary,” Stewie said. “What a shitty day this has turned out to be.”

Joe wheeled and hit Stewie square in the nose. Stewie lost his footing and sat down.

Stewie reached up and covered his nose with his hand, then looked at the smear of blood in his palm. He glared at Joe with his one good eye.

“Enough about my wife.” Joe commanded, shaking his hand that stung from the blow.

Britney ran to Stewie and helped him to his feet. Stewie rose with a twisted, manic grin that looked almost cartoonish.

“The man who is shooting at us,” Joe asked, “do you know who he is?”

Stewie nodded, still rubbing his nose. “His name is Charlie Tibbs.”

“Charlie Tibbs?” Joe repeated. “Oh, shit.” Joe had heard of Tibbs. He hadn’t realized the legendary stock detective was still working.

“Okay,” Stewie said, shaking his head with bemused disbelief. “Let’s resume fleeing now.”