Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Not yet.

He started off again, still struggling to get some traction and gulping for air. By two dozen paces, he sobbed every time he exhaled, his chest burning as it heaved in and out. He continued on, choking, gasping, weak with fear, but halfway to cover. Once in the trees, he’d at least have a chance to dodge a bullet.

His feet slipped again. He pitched face first to the ground. Bits of slush filled his mouth, stuffed his nose, and dripped off his glasses. He spit and wiped his lenses so he could see. Panting fast and loud, he rose, then stumbled ahead. The shouts from behind grew louder.

“Stop!”

“We just want to talk with you.”

“Come here.”

He turned his head, straining to see where they were, but could only make out watery shadows.

He moved faster now, taking longer strides, the extra effort exacting its toll. Fatigue seared the front of his thighs until he could barely lift them. The incline steepened, doubling his workload.

He never once wondered why his pursuers were after him. Gay-bashers were a constant threat anywhere. Someone in town probably told these clowns about “the queer” living on Route 9, and this was some sick fuck’s idea of how to end the hunting season. But how far would they take it? That was the life-or-death question. That they had guns didn’t look good.

The shouts grew closer.

A tightness ripped through his chest.

“Oh, God, no,” he whimpered.

By the time he reached the forest’s edge he felt squeezed in a vise from the neck down and was staggering, his torso heaving, his heart hammering the inside of his ribs. He ducked behind the first tree he fell against and doubled over to get his breath, at the same time trying to make out the men.

A collective smudge jogged toward him through the gloom, at thirty yards and closing. He took extra big lungfuls of the cold, but couldn’t relieve the smothering sensation. Waves of nausea lapped at the back of his throat, and cold sweat soaked his shirt.

Something zinged by his ear and embedded itself in the bark above his head with a loud thwack .

No question now, this pack was out for slaughter.

He pushed off from the trunk he’d been leaning against and lurched deeper into the woods.

Angry cries ordered him to halt.

Panic drove him. He repeatedly churned up muddy snow, getting nowhere; the clamp that had locked around his chest grew tighter. Yet he fought to move forward, crawling and pulling himself along, grasping at any root or bush to get a handhold.

“Give it up, asshole!” More bullets hit the snow around him.

He knew he was doomed, but his instinct to survive wouldn’t let him yield. Even as they encircled him, stood over him, taunted and goaded him, he writhed to gain a few inches, to breathe a few more breaths.

“Hey, he don’t look so good.”

“Maybe he’s having a heart attack.”

The pain grew as if his heart were ballooning out of his chest, ready to burst, and the agony became unbearable. Yet he could still see their boots at his head, hear their voices.

“This is better than any accidental fire.”

“He won’t have a mark on him.”

“I better go back and reconnect his phone line. The snow will cover the tracks. Nobody will even know we’ve been here, let alone look for bullets.”

Why didn’t they kill him? Have done with it. He found himself begging that they end it. But as he tried to speak, his lips, embedded in snow, barely moved, and he had to lick them free.

“Hey, he’s trying to say something.”

One of the men bent down, removing a ski mask and placing his ear near Victor’s mouth. “Wants us to finish him off,” he announced after listening to his whispers.

“Give him your cock to suck. That ought to do it,” one of them added.

More cackling came from above as the kneeling man slowly got back on his feet. “I’ll give you a gun barrel to suck on, you make another crack like that,” he said, obviously not amused.

Victor hadn’t the breath to cry or the strength to budge. Sinking into a delirium of pain and asphyxia, his mind still flickered with life, firing out fragments of thought, the last dispatches of a dying brain.

They weren’t gay-bashers. Hadn’t once called him a fag.

He’d spent a lifetime dealing with that kind of insane fury. These men were more callous and calculating.

So why were they here to kill him?

Because he’d discovered the secret?

But how could they know? He hadn’t told anyone yet. Only left a message on Mark’s answering machine, saying to call him, that he had the answer.

His mind downshifted again, losing the function of logic forever. Only memories swept through his neurons now, unlocked from one cell after another as they winked out.

The aroma of turkey greeted them when Mark opened the front door.

Lucy busied herself with the bird while he stoked the woodstove and opened a bottle of white wine he’d put in the refrigerator before they left.

“It’ll be another twenty minutes,” she announced, holding out a pair of beautifully tapered glasses she’d gotten out of the china cupboard.

He filled them, then raised his in a toast. “Here’s to the first Thanksgiving dinner I’ve had at home in years,” he said, determined not to let his state of mind ruin her efforts at providing a nice evening.

She smiled and curled up in the captain’s chair at the head of the table. She seemed to like that spot. After a few sips of her drink, she said, “Was it your plan to stir up a hornet’s nest tonight, or did those people really get under your skin?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. “Bit of both, I guess. Mostly I’m frustrated at how Braden has outfinessed every official attempt to get at Chaz since ‘seventy-four, mine included. And all that politeness as he pulls it off, I just couldn’t take it – wanted to throw it back in his face. At least now I’ve made the smooth-talking son of a bitch take his fight with me out in the open.”

“You did that all right.”

Not to mention he’d also assured any attempt by that same son of a bitch to drag Cam Roper’s name through the mud would now look like payback. “For what good it will get me,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re no further ahead in what we know.”

She watched him across the top of her glass. “But there’s more than that bugging you.”

Dammit, didn’t she realize he really didn’t want to have this conversation. “Look, Lucy, like I said, the place revived a lot of personal issues for me. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” He’d sounded far testier than he intended. At least she’d get the point and back off.

To his surprise she laughed, reached across the table, and patted his hand. “Looks to me like it’s you who can’t just leave it at that, judging by the way the Braden bunch gets to you.”

She managed to make them sound like a cross between a popular TV family and a gang of outlaws. It was his turn to laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to take your head off.”

“Purely understandable.” She took another sip of her wine. “My brothers say I’m like a tank when it comes to butting into their private business. Though I am a good listener, and you could do worse than talking to me about that kind of stuff. Believe me, I’m an expert on how the past can come out of nowhere and bite you on the bum.”

She didn’t offer to elaborate, and he didn’t ask, welcoming the light mood she’d created. To his surprise she sustained it throughout the meal and the rest of the evening, engaging him in a relaxed easy exchange of anecdotes about medical school, residencies, and the slapstick side of life and death as it’s sometime seen from inside a white coat.