Matt Hilton - Dead Men's Harvest

‘Maybe. But we’re alike in so many other ways.’

‘I’m nothing like you are, you murderous bastard.’

‘Sigmund Petoskey. Kurt Hendrickson. Need I continue the list?’

‘They deserved everything they got.’

‘Where’s the difference? You enjoy killing, I enjoy killing. There’s this Hemingway quote I’m fond of. It goes something like, “Those who’ve hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else.” That’s us, Hunter. We’re both hunters of armed men. We are alike.’

‘No, Cain.’ I shook my head. ‘You don’t care if they’re armed. You hunt anyone… including defenceless women.’

Cain’s gaze slipped to the rail. ‘Aah, I see now why you’re pissed with me. But I had nothing to do with that. Jennifer chose her fate. She jumped overboard, I didn’t push her. You can’t blame me for that.’

‘I can,’ I said. ‘And I will. Now drop the knife.’

He dropped the Tanto.

‘And any others you’re carrying.’ I wiggled the gun barrel to show him I wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘Take it real easy, Cain. The rain’s making my finger a little slippery on this trigger.’

He sighed, then dug in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a Stanley knife. He tossed it away from him.

‘Anything else?’

He shook his head. ‘You can search me if you want.’

‘Isn’t going to happen, Cain.’

‘So you’re just going to execute me? Just like that?’

‘Yes.’

I held the gun steady, aiming for the point directly between his eyes. Give him his due, he wasn’t a coward like many notorious killers turn out. He didn’t flinch, just stood there. Maybe I’d been correct: what did a man whose spirit had already been slain have to fear? I drew the moment out, and finally I noted his gaze slip slightly.

‘So what are you waiting for?’

‘Before I kill you I want to tell you something you might not want to hear.’

‘Oh, God! Save me the sermon, will ya!’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to play psychiatrist. You’re a sick-headed bastard, we know that already.’

Cain snorted, but the derision was tinged with humour.

‘John’s dead,’ I stated.

The words sounded wrong even to my own ears. But it explained Walter’s reticence every time my brother’s name was mentioned, and why John hadn’t come to bait a trap as I’d requested. I’d denied what common sense had been telling me all along, but to voice those thoughts was still an alien sensation.

‘Liar. I’ve been speaking with your old pal, Walter Conrad. He told me that John was on his way.’

‘He was lying to you, Cain. The way he’s lied to me since Jubal’s Hollow. You remember what you did to my brother there? How could he survive that?’

‘The medics saved him, the way they saved me.’

‘So why isn’t he here?’

‘Because Conrad sent you instead.’

‘We’ve both been played along. John’s dead.’

‘You’re only saying that so that I stop chasing him.’

‘No, Cain,’ I corrected him. ‘That isn’t necessary. Not when I’m going to kill you. I’m telling you so that you realise what a total fuck-up all of this has been. You’ve been chasing a trophy that you’ll never get your hands on. All the pain, all the suffering that everyone has gone through, it’s been for nothing.’

‘Lies.’

‘Truth,’ I countered. ‘You’re going to Hell with the knowledge that you’ll never get to John. You already missed your opportunity.’

‘Nooooo…’

Everything about him changed in that instant. His shoulders rounded, his head dipped, and he flicked out with his right arm. From his sleeve projected the item I was certain he’d disclose at this last moment. The fiendish bastard had been busy during his downtime aboard the ship, whittling and paring the rib bone taken from the ship’s captain. Cain had planned to spear me with it, the way I’d rammed a rib bone through his trachea back at Jubal’s Hollow. Well, I’d also something to pay him back for: my brother.

I allowed him a moment, and he took it. He launched himself at me.

Calmly, I shot him.

His forearm was shattered, and the horrifying weapon went spinning across the deck alongside chunks of his arm.

Cain kept on coming, teeth bared like a wild beast’s.

I shot him again, this time through his left thigh.

He staggered against the rail. Clawed hands held him upright. He twisted to look at me, his eyes squinting as I shoved the gun away, replacing it with the Bowie knife I’d jammed down my belt. I thought it only just that I use his own weapon to punish him. He watched me load up like a javelin thrower, and barely reacted as I swiped the blade across his face with all the power I could muster. His jaw shattered under the force, and he stood there with a glazed expression, blood spewing from the open wound. He tried to say something, but it was difficult speaking with a mouthful of broken teeth and blood frothing between his lips.

‘Save the sermon,’ I taunted, and backhanded the knife across his chest.

His jaw was opened up, his chest gushing, but still he was alive. Good, because I’d intended that the slashes of the knife were debilitating without taking his life. The knife was his weapon, mine was the SIG. I lifted it. ‘This is for John, you piece of shit.’

I aimed directly between his eyes.

I fired and his skull snapped backwards, and his body went with it. He collapsed over the rail, then very, very slowly his weight eased forward and he slipped over the side and into the night. Over the roaring wind, I heard the slap of his body as he smacked the waves.

Normally I feel no satisfaction in killing.

But Cain had been right about one thing. There was nothing in the world like the hunting of armed men like him. I cared for nothing else than to see them dead. A long time ago Tubal Cain had been slain in the spirit; now he’d been slain in the flesh and I couldn’t have been happier.

I stood alongside the railing where he’d gone over, watching the pale blur of his corpse as it rode the pitch-black tide. Within seconds, a wave rolled him over on to his back, and he sunk beneath the surface, his wide open eyes staring accusingly at me. They were like they’d always been: dead and soulless.

Hartlaub was my first priority. I unhooked him from the winch and laid him out on the deck, away from the other dead men. His eyelids had peeled apart, and I gently pressed them shut with the pads of my thumbs. All the while, I listened for anything that would warn me of an impending attacker. As far as I could tell, though, everyone here was dead, and the Queen Sofia was indeed a ghost ship. Looking down on the dead agent’s face, I whispered my stepfather’s wise words, ‘Mocking is catching, Hartlaub.’

They weren’t exactly true. Hartlaub hadn’t invited bad luck, it had been forced on him the moment he’d turned up at Imogen’s house in Maine. From that time on his days had been numbered. It’s what came of being dragged along in my undertow.

I loaded him into the lifeboat and set the winch-motors running so that it was lowered to the sea. The fury of the storm had passed by then, and the boat only made a faint knocking sound against the hull of the ship. I went down a rope ladder. Before I could start the outboard, a different engine roared and from around the stern of the Queen Sofia came another vessel. It was low in the water, with inflatable cushions and a single cabin perched near the front.

‘Hunter! Over here, buddy!’

I recognised Terry’s voice. I stood up in the lifeboat and watched as he steered the inflatable boat towards me. Someone was at the prow; at first I thought it was Lassiter, but then I noted there were two heads watching from inside the illuminated cabin.