Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

They had Shad cut off on this side of the creek channel, so he couldn’t circle back and return to the snake town even if he wanted to. Find that old-timer who kept asking him how his day was, pop the geezer in the chin and ransack his closet until he found a revolver.

No, Shad was on his own.

They saw the bottle floating away in the brook and didn’t know what to make of it. Shad was a touch surprised when he heard their clipped, formal conversation. They were discussing soil degradation, water erosion, organic content, and nutrient cycling in the area. All this just looking at the ground. Pointing here and there, seeing footprints, coming on slow and relentless.

Last night, he’d thought they’d been polite but a little ignorant, but they were much sharper than that. Worse, they were proving they were patient and in no hurry to make a mistake. Shad wasn’t going to last long out here with them following, and he couldn’t outrun them. He had to make a play and do it fast.

Those movies he’d watched with Jeffie O’Rourke always had the Southern boy checking all the angles, knowing where the perfect spot for an ambush would be. He’d tie a handful of leaves to his back with a vine and become invisible, maybe walk backwards in his own tracks to fake out the cops. All these little tricks to show how much smarter he was than them.

Shad had never felt so stupid in his life. He thought about what his father had told him. How if he had to take a life to save his own, he should.

For a guy who’d survived two years in the can, and being out here with a couple of huckleberries ready to shoot him for something he didn’t do, you would’ve thought it would be easy, killing somebody.

He used to see the faces of murderers on C-Block, the way their eyes would roll back in their heads with delight when they plunged the shiv in. One inch, two, then even farther, and still shoving deeper until it nicked bone and got stuck in the muscles and they couldn’t pull it out again.

They made it seem so effortless and fun, like it meant nothing more than a quick, fierce lay. But he wasn’t built like that. The very idea of it, even now, made him snort with fear.

When you couldn’t run away, you had to run forward.

The only chance he had was to wait here for the Weggs to step up the embankment, and when they got to the top, he’d launch himself. He didn’t know how to take down two men with weapons, but there wasn’t any choice anymore. He had to make the suicide play.

They were talking about the beer bottle now, wondering where it had come from, what it meant, if this was further proof of a widening sphere of pollution. They moved up the hill toward where Shad waited beneath the brush.

His vision flared red and black. He felt the hills thinking about him again, agitated and somehow even fidgeting, wheeling toward him. But it was different now. The anxiety of the land had a loving quality to it, he sensed, like a parent pacing around the kitchen at midnight, waiting for a teenager to come home. The undercurrent of the world reached for him, apologetic in a steely inflexible way, as if sorry for the trials it forced others to endure and remorseful for its needs.

The Weggs reached the top of the slope and Shad stood up from behind the bushes and pounced. You didn’t get much dumber than this.

He clamped one hand around Howell Wegg’s throat. Swung wide with his other arm and knocked the shotgun aside, pointing it down toward Hart’s crotch.

The plan-such as it was-depended on whether Hart Wegg flinched at having a shotgun aimed at his nuts. If he did, Shad had another second to work on things. If not, Hart would just fire his rifle into Shad’s head and that would be the end of it.

Adept and effective, but only a man like any other, Hart Wegg tightened up, did a little hop, and twisted aside to save his dick. Shad let go of the shotgun but not Howell’s throat, reached out and put his free hand on Hart’s chest and shoved. Off-balance like that, Hart Wegg teetered on the rim of the embankment for an instant before he went over backwards and rolled down through the cedar and brush until he was out of sight.

Strangling a man was goddamn tough, but using your thumbs to press in on the Adam’s apple made it a lot easier. None of that trying to choke a guy where the muscles and tendons were rigid and well developed. Shad got in close, leaned his hip forward tying up Howell so he couldn’t move or drop. Howell brought the shotgun around once more, trying to slam the barrel of it hard against Shad’s arms and break his grip, but Shad wouldn’t let go.

Jesus, he thought, this is it, I’m actually going to kill a man now.

“Win what?” Shad asked, because his thoughts were all over the fucking place.

Howell’s terrified eyes spurted tears that ran into his patchy beard. Hart would be along any second. Shad didn’t have much time, he had to get the shotgun. He let loose with a shout and exerted himself even more, wondering what price would be on him now for doing this thing with his own hands.

He felt the cartilage beginning to slip beneath the pressure. Howell felt it too and his eyes lit with an anguished, living panic as he realized he was seconds away from having his windpipe crushed. He tried to slip the shotgun barrel closer to Shad’s face, on a poor angle, hoping to get a shot off. Shad pushed harder and Howell Wegg’s throat collapsed.

Hart must’ve had a pretty good view of it all because he let out a shriek from below. He couldn’t fire the rifle because Shad had Howell’s slumping body propped up in front of him. A final wheezing rustle passed into the November air and Shad took the shotgun from Howell’s dying hand, turned, and ran.

HART WEGG WOULDN’T COME UP THE SAME EMBANKMENT. He’d circle tight, probably around the Catawba and slip through the woods on Shad’s left, keep no more than twenty or thirty yards off. Maybe. It didn’t matter. You couldn’t fake your way through something like this. Shad didn’t have the know-how to set an ambush or build a roost and dig in to wait. He was back to running his ass off.

Shit, extra shells. He should’ve checked Howell’s pockets. Why is it you’re so smart ten seconds too late for it to do you any good?

Somber, writhing clouds covered the sky, and the sun cowered behind the hills. Crimson light spurted distantly and leaked off in an arcing swirl like a cut carotid.

Rain started to come down again and he kept his stride as best as he could over the rough landscape. The pain slowed him some but he was working past it. He wasn’t graceful but holding the shotgun somehow helped. Carrying it gave him a subtle reassurance, the heft and weight of it connecting him to the world.

Shad continued stumbling through the woods, branches clawing at his forehead and adding to his gashes. He wouldn’t go easy, and that resistance might help keep him from going at all.

Just as Dave Fox had predicted, Shad had done little besides cause himself a lot of pain.

Soon the hitch in his side got worse and the rage deserted him, leaving only a void in the center of his chest. He bounced into jagged, rotting maple tree trunks, snarled bramble vines, red chokeberry, and wild indigo. He didn’t know how many miles he’d covered or where he might be, or whether he’d done anything besides go in one absurd loop back to where he’d started.

Whenever he came to a bank of rock that he couldn’t see over, he had to pause and check, for fear of going right over Jonah Ridge. At least then he’d die closer to home.

And as he came around through another grove of catclaw and sticker bushes the land broke wide in a series of hillocks, with the thick and menacing stands of virgin pine leading into a bleak forest of darkness that spread for miles. He slowed, stopped, and slid to his knees.