Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

Kelly was squirming on the ground. Sean grunted. The least Michael could do was finish it. It was the merciful thing to do. He was tempted to do it himself, but the illusion had to be sustained. Michael needed to think he had won.

The wood exploded over Kelly’s head, but this time Sean was ready for it. He winced but kept his scope steady on her. She squirmed, almost as if she were trying to turn around. Sean whispered for Michael to just end it already. She had suffered enough. When her back popped and blood shot into the air, he knew Michael had done it. Her limbs flopped and sank to the ground, lifeless.

Sean waited, releasing a sigh. He scarcely had the will to look at Kelly’s body, but he forced himself to. Told himself that it was for the best. That she would not have made it anyway.

The most dangerous part of his plan was now in play. There was no guessing what Michael would do. He might stick around inside, or he might venture out to check the body. There was no way of knowing. If Sean barged inside, Michael might be waiting with an ambush. If he stayed outside too long, he could freeze.

He stayed put. It seemed like the best idea. He waited, listening for the garage door to open and Michael to walk out onto the charcoal snow. He wouldn’t even know what hit him. Before he even made it to the body, he would be dead.

Minutes passed. It became increasingly likely in Sean’s mind that he would have to kill Michael inside. He weighed the options. Sure, it meant another bloodstain on his carpet, but he could live with that. His family would finally be safe. Their future would be secure.

His joints cracked as he rose from his position. He got up but heard something. He paused, listening, sinking back behind the fallen log, Michael’s shape creeping closer toward Kelly’s body in the corner of his eye. Sean set his rifle back into position.

Michael’s pace was glacial. Sean would have it done before he ever reached his wife’s body. He looked down the scope and put the crosshair onto Michael’s side. Michael just needed to angle a bit more toward the chopping block and Sean would have a clean shot. Michael did as Sean had expected. He turned toward Kelly’s body and picked up his pace, holding the shotgun from the living room. Almost to the body.

Sean held his breath to steady his shot. None of his nerves fired. His mind was relaxed.

“Michael!”

Elise. Somewhere inside.

He lifted his eyes and brought them back to the scope, grunting soft and low. Michael reached down toward the body. Sean gritted his teeth and lined up the shot.

“Michael, where’s Kelly?”

Michael pulled his wife’s shoulder, her body rolling to the side. He screamed and dropped to his knees. Sean lost the shot. The shotgun tumbled to the side, and Michael wrapped his hands around the back of his head and then grabbed at his wife’s body, shaking it and crying out her name. Sean tried to keep his bead steady, but Michael picked her up into his arms and rocked her back and forth, his movement erratic. When Michael finally paused, Sean squeezed the trigger.

Michael fell like he had been hit with a wrecking ball. Sean jumped over the log, keeping his rifle level with the ground, crunching the deep snow around him. There were only thirty yards between them. His steps were large. He came upon Michael, wiggling around on his back, blood pumping out of his upper abdomen, gasping.

Michael reached out for the shotgun next to him.

Sean said, “I took the powder out of the shells weeks ago. Save your energy.”

Michael’s hand gripped at the snow, and he yelled, either in pain or frustration. Sean didn’t know. “You son of a bitch,” Michael said in between gasping breaths. “You killed her.”

“I killed her?” Sean said, standing over him.

“You motherfucker,” he cried.

Sean said nothing.

“You, you motherf—” he said and coughed up blood.

“What did you think would happen? Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know what you were planning?”

“You killed her.”

“I wish it hadn’t gone down this way.”

“How could—? Oh, God.”

Sean looked out into the woods and then back to Michael. “You never understood how this was all going to play out. You thought you could make a clever little plan and that it’d be enough.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?”

“With me?” Sean said, leaning down and putting the strap of his rifle around his shoulder. He reached around his belt and slid his pistol out, setting his other hand on Michael’s heaving chest. “I just figured it out before you did, Michael. Before anyone did. When God has abandoned everything—there’s just survival. The only thing that matters is keeping what I care about alive.” Sean stood up and aimed the pistol at Michael’s chest, right above his heart. “And today, I’m making sure that happens.”

He squeezed the trigger, and it was done. Finally done. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat, looking between the two bodies. Thought of the months of food he had bought his family. It wasn’t for nothing.

He turned toward the garage to see his wife on her knees in the doorway, hand clasped over her mouth. He had thought she was still inside.

She would understand one day, he thought. Not right then, but one day. She would see he wasn’t a monster. In time, she would see. And even if she didn’t, she would come to understand. The human heart was like that.

So easily convinced.

ELISE STUMBLED BACK into the living room, collapsing to her knees, reaching out for anything to stabilize herself. Her vision blurred as if her eyes were going cross.

He killed them. Both of them. She grabbed her chest. The image replayed: her brother flipping over his dead wife.

He killed them both.

He murdered them.

At any moment, he would bust through the door with his rifle, take aim at her, and cover the carpet with her brains. Now hyperventilating, she crawled forward on her hands and knees.

Her son stood in the center of the room, still in his pajamas. He was such a small kid—tiny for his age, really. He didn’t deserve to die. Not without the opportunity to grow up. Not at the hands of his own father.

Not like Molly.

She scurried to him, taking his small hands into hers, whispering, “Sweetie, I need you to listen to me.”

“What’s going on?”

“There’s just some issues we need to work out. Grown-up things.”

“What happened with Uncle Mike?”

“Sweetheart, you need to listen to me very carefully, okay?”

He nodded.

She thrust a thick blanket into his arms. “We’re going to play a game. You go upstairs and hide anywhere you want. And hide really good. Do your best, okay? And don’t come out unless I come get you.”

“You’re scaring me.”

She cupped his face and kissed his forehead. “Don’t be scared. Just go. Go right now.”

Aidan nodded and went. He looked back at his mother, and she motioned for him to get going.

Her thoughts flashed back to what Michael had said—his warnings. The warnings she didn’t heed. She tried to control her breathing. Aidan’s feet disappeared above the plane of the ceiling when she heard the garage door, loud and clunky, shift open. She yelped, twisting around, sitting on the floor, resting her back against the broadside of the couch.

“Calm down,” her husband’s stern voice said.

Her hands shot into the air. Sean came out into the living room. He had shed his coat and most of his ashen clothes, but a few specks of blood dotted his face. “Put your hands down. I don’t have a gun,” he said.