Richard Matheson - Hunted Past Reason

Instant kill . The words were sickening to him. Still, there was no other choice. He was too weak to move out quickly. It was self-defense: kill or be killed. Not just for himself. It was to protect Marian from Doug’s deranged plan. That was what he had to do; no choice. No choice whatever.

Blanking his mind, he kept looking until he’d found a fallen tree, a small branch jutting up from its surface. Slowly, grimacing at the weakness in his arm, he began to hack and saw away at the base of the branch. Doug had been right. His knife seemed almost worthless. He wished to God he had a golak too. With a few hard strokes, the branch would be off. Hell, the thought occurred. If he had a golak, he wouldn’t need the cudgel. He could drive the golak blade across Doug’s face, plunge it into his chest. Involuntarily, he found the vision deeply shocking. No choice , Bob, he commanded himself. No choice at all .

It took him more than fifteen minutes to cut the branch loose and shorten it into a cudgel about two and a half feet long.

That done, he sat on the fallen trunk of the tree and, for a short while, examined his improvised club.

It was about three inches thick. The bottom half, the part he’d hold, was straight for almost a foot and a half. The upper half twisted sideways, small stumps jutting out from it. He touched the ends of the stumps with his right index finger. They all felt sharp to the touch. Again involuntarily, he visualized the stumped end of the cudgel hitting Doug’s face, digging into his cheek, perhaps gouging out one or both of his eyes.

He clenched his teeth and willed away the image. No choice, he told himself again and again. No choice .

He examined the cudgel for almost ten minutes before realizing that his plan had gone no further than the preparation of the club and the vague idea of him stepping out from behind a tree and smashing Doug across the face with it.

Idly, he plucked loose three small dead leaves from the upper half of the club. How much time had he used now to prepare it? He looked at his wristwatch. He’d wasted— utilized! he berated himself—almost twenty minutes now. If Doug had told him the truth, he’d have to wait in hiding for more than two hours.

Doubts began to pile up in his brain. What made him assume that Doug would come this way? What if he hid behind a tree in waiting only to have Doug bypass him by a hundred yards, two hundred? Then his plan was worthless.

Worse, what if Doug did come by this way but from a different angle? He might very easily spot him hiding behind a tree, casually notch an arrow into his bow, and let it fly. He wouldn’t have to be anywhere near Bob to kill him.

Worse still, what if Doug’s plan was to bypass him anyway, hurry on to the cabin, play out his lachrymose scene for Marian, and talk her into driving away with him to find the nearest ranger or sheriff’s station? By the time he reached the cabin—presuming he’d reach it at all, Marian could be gone. How could he conceivably make his way out of the forest to find help? He’d end up hopelessly lost, finished. In his condition, he couldn’t possibly endure another extended hike through the forest. Lost—or killed by some wild animal—he’d die knowing that Marian was now the unwitting victim to Doug’s ungodly plot.

The more he examined the possibilities, the less sense his plan made to him. Doug was too skilled to be caught by surprise, and he might never even see Doug. No, it made no sense, no sense at all. To wait here, lurking behind a tree, his only chance the improbable appearance of Doug in such a convenient way that he could jump out at him and smash the club across his face. Jesus Christ, Hansen, he scorned himself. Great plan. He was sure to fail the attempt, lose everything, his wife, his children, his life. You’re out of your mind, he told himself. Absolutely out of your mind. There was only one hope he had. To reach Marian before Doug could overtake him. That was it . As weak and physically depleted as he was, it was his only hope.

He scowled at his own unthinking gullibility and looked at the compass Doug had given him. Doug had told him that the cabin was on a magnetic bearing of forty degrees from where they were standing. He had turned the compass housing to the forty-degree bearing, then turned the entire compass until the red end of the needle was lined up with the N arrow on the bottom of the circular housing.

“Now you’re oriented,” Doug had told him as though lecturing a student on some casual direction-finding problem. “Just turn the compass until the red end of the needle is pointing north, then turn the base plate until the direction-of-travel needle points toward a forty-degree bearing—got it?”

Bob turned the compass until the needle was pointing at N on the compass. He was off the mark by twenty degrees. Turning, he pointed himself in the corrected direction. What was it Doug had said, trying to be “so helpful”—something about picking out a distant landmark. Looking up, he saw a mountain peak on approximately the forty-degree bearing; maybe it was forty-five. He could adjust to that.

Nodding to himself in satisfaction (oh, now you’re an official backpacker, his brain mocked him), he started walking again.

Was it possible that Doug had lied to him completely about the bearing to follow to reach the cabin? That he was actually sending him into untraveled forest, planning on him getting lost, dying of thirst or hunger, maybe even being killed by a wild animal? The idea made him ill.

No, he told himself then. No, he wouldn’t do that. What if he goes right to the cabin and tells his story and I survive and show up? That would be too much of a risk. He has to kill me, he realized. There was no other way.

At first, he thought it was the idea of Doug sending him into impenetrable wilderness that was making his stomach churn. Then he realized—“wonder of wonders,” he muttered—that he had to move his bowels.

He did what Doug had suggested (well, he’s done that much for me anyway, the bizarre thought occurred) finding a fallen log and sitting on it, hovering his rear end over the ground.

It was hardly the best bowel movement he’d ever had but he groaned and sighed in relief as he emptied his bowels. In a few minutes, he sat motionless, smiling despite the dire circumstance he was in. He listened to the faint soughing of the wind in the high trees, admired the colors of the leaves, the massive silence of the forest.

The momentary pleasure ended as he wiped himself, seeing the bright blood on the tissue. “Bastard,” he muttered. “Son of a bitch.” He sighed wearily. A far remove from metaphysical reflection, he thought. Hanging off a log, wiping blood from my ass.

He looked at his watch as he kept moving, managing to achieve a certain rhythm and timing to his strides. He’d been gone more than two hours now. If Doug had been honest about the “rules” of his lunatic game, he’d be starting after Bob in less than fifty minutes. He visualized Doug, smiling excitedly to himself, lunging into the forest, intent on his prey. How would he know which direction to take? Had he backpacked here often enough that he had a built-in compass in his brain? Bob didn’t know. All he did know was that Doug would be on the move with a zeal that was near crazed.

He was sure of that.

Still, he thought, Doug couldn’t have been planning on this right from the start. Why impart any woodlore at all if he intended killing Bob from the very beginning? No, the anger and resentment had built up in the last two days. Now it had crested and erupted like a mental volcano.

When? he thought as he walked steadily. When had it all begun? What had he said to generate this madness in Doug’s mind? Was it any one thing he’d said? Or was Doug primed for this from the beginning, needing only constant exposure to Bob’s thoughts and words to be aroused to murderous rage? And it was rage. Doug could act as “cool” as he wished—but flowing under his mock-amused behavior had to be raw, untrammeled rage, which now was out and flourishing.