Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

Mallon kept moving his gaze from one to another, but seeing nobody come out, then turning around to look at the main lodge, where the shades still covered the windows. Maybe he could get down there, past the lighted area, and reach his car. But then he saw the shade of a window at the near end of the main lodge pushed aside, and half of a face-one eye, part of a nose and mouth-appeared, then vanished. There were quick dark shadows behind the window shade a moment later: the man was resting a rifle on the windowsill, searching for a target. Mallon aimed his rifle so he could see through the telescopic sight, and held himself still. The shade came up quickly, and Mallon could see two heads, figures in dark clothes, leaning toward the window to see what was happening. Behind them there was more movement.

Mallon tried to interpret what he saw. After a moment, he knew. They were scurrying around arming themselves, preparing to slip out into the dark to come for Mallon. The one with the rifle was going to cover them, wait for Mallon to shoot, and then fire at his muzzle flash. Mallon had to try to keep them inside, where they couldn’t get to him. He steadied his aim, took two deep breaths to clear his lungs of the carbon dioxide that would make his hands shake, and squeezed the trigger.

The bang of the rifle’s report tore the air; the recoil made the stock brush his cheek, kicked his shoulder, and raised the barrel. He lost his aim for a moment, but he brought the barrel down and cycled the bolt to chamber another round.

The window was empty again, but he believed he had hit the man. The others, he decided, must be cowering somewhere out of sight. Tonight, ducking down below or beside the window was not going to be an effective tactic. Mallon was aware that if the construction of the main lodge was anything like what he had seen in the cabins, the wall would not even slow a rifle bullet appreciably. His second shot had brought back to him the familiar feel, sound, and smell of a rifle, and he was more comfortable as he aimed to the right of the window frame and a foot above the floor, and fired again. He had no idea whether the shot hit flesh, but he knew there were still no heads up.

He fired his fourth shot, then removed the box magazine and pushed bullets from his pocket into it. He kept watching the doors and the row of windows along the side. The people inside should be trying to scatter into the darkness, he thought. They should be trying to spot his muzzle flash, so they could aim at it and kill him. He clicked the magazine back into the rifle, then used his night scope to scan the ground near the lodge and the woods beyond it. There were still no human beings visible, but he knew they must be watching for his muzzle flashes to find him, so it was time to move. He raised the rifle again and fired a round through the wall high on the left side, trying to place it near the front door to keep them in.

He ran as hard as he could into the woods to make his way up the slope of the hill without being in the open, where he might be seen in the moonlight. He reached the trees, then stopped to reload and fired another round through the back of the building, turned, and continued uphill, just inside the line of trees. It was difficult to run up the hill as quickly as he wanted to, and after another two hundred yards his chest was heaving, and there was a burning sensation in his lungs. He knelt down, fired two more shots at the building, and ran again.

Mallon reached the crest of the hill, flopped down on the grass behind the bush where he had left his second rifle and his lantern, and raised his night-vision scope to his eye. There was no human figure outside the main lodge. Mallon looked at the window. He was much farther away now, but his higher vantage let him see the legs of the first man he had shot, still lying on the floor.

Mallon concluded that he must be dead. He tried to decode what he was feeling about it. For a second, he was almost fooled into imagining that what he felt must be remorse. Then he realized that it was something else: simple distaste for killing. He felt angry that he had needed to do this, that his life had come to this. He cycled the bolt of his second rifle, switched the safety off so he could lift it quickly and fire, then took the magazine out of his first rifle and began to reload it.

Spangler lay on the hardwood floor of the lodge, his eyes and mouth open in a pantomime of amazement. The blood now pooled from above his shoulders to his ankles, still spreading like a cape. After the third or fourth shot had screamed through the wall, somebody had turned the light off, but Emily could still see him. She sat on the floor, her back to the front wall and her shoulder edged against the couch so the bullets weren’t likely to plow the length of it and reach her. She was shaking, and when she turned her head she could feel bits of broken glass falling from her hair.

Emily could not stop looking over at Spangler. From here she could stare past him out the window, but then her eyes would flick downward, because something about the darkness or her terror had made her think she had seen him move. He had not moved. She had been on a lot of hunts now, and she should have known right away that Paul was dead, without anyone telling her. The first bullet had taken him.

At the sound of the first couple of shots, people had jumped. A few had even drawn guns. After a few moments, Paul Spangler had crawled to the window and looked out. Parish had handed Spangler a rifle and said, “Paul, see if you can spot him. Everyone else, get ready to go outside.”

At first, she had thought she’d heard the snap of the shade rolling up and hitting the window. It had been the sound of the single bullet popping the glass. Then there had been the distant pow of the shot. In the sudden silence, Emily had turned and looked at Spangler. The bullet had hit him in the chest. The blood that leaked out on the floor was bright red, like paint. It was coming out so fast. Couldn’t somebody stop it? How could they leave him lying alone on his back like that? She pointed, and called to Debbie, to Parish, to Mary, “Help him! He’s been shot!”

Mary was crawling along the wall toward the other end of the building, but she stopped and frowned in Emily’s direction. “He’s dead, honey. Don’t you see that?” Then she moved on.

A moment later, the shots had begun again, and she’d realized that Mary had taken cover because she must have known they were coming. When the next one simply popped through the wall, Emily at first thought she must be misinterpreting the sight and sound-that something else was happening. But somebody was out there with a rifle, and these flimsy wooden walls stopped nothing.

Tonight was partly her fault. She knew this debacle had been caused by her self-indulgence and lack of discipline on the day she had gone out with David Altberg to kill Mallon. She should have fought him for Altberg’s gun, and killed him on the spot. Even if she had not done that, she should have insisted on killing Mallon that night. She stared at Spangler’s ruined body and began to be angry at Parish. How could he have been so wrong? There was absolutely no excuse for picking a target and arranging a hunt and then having the target start shooting the staff. It was ridiculous. She had begun to compose what she was going to say to Parish.

Two more rounds had pounded through the wooden wall. She knew that one hit the couch she was hiding behind, because she felt the vibration where her right arm touched it. This building was no protection: it was a sham, a picture of what safety was supposed to look like. Parish was responsible for that, too.

She looked around for him. Then the shots started again. Each time she heard the bullet punch through the wooden wall and slam into the floor, or hit a metal fixture and ricochet crazily into another wall, she jumped, and remained stiff and trembling. She knew reacting was ridiculous: before her nerves could make her muscles contract, before her brain even received the message that there was a shot, the bullet had already burrowed into something, and the danger was over.