Hunted Past Reason (22 page)

"So when do you want to leave?" Doug asked. "You want a little more to eat first? A cup or two of coffee to brace you? Name it, Bobby boy, you've got it."

Bob didn't speak. Doug's features tightened. "Well?" he said.

Another few moments of silence.

"When do you want to leave?" Doug demanded.

"Never."

Doug looked honestly taken back. "What?" he asked.

"You seem to forget," Bob told him. "You've picked the wrong guy . . .
Douglas
. Your threat to kill me doesn't mean a thing to me. Remember me? I'm the guy who's not afraid of death."

He managed a chuckle. "You look confounded," he said, almost amused.

Doug was expressionless for several seconds. Then he said, "Let me get this straight— as they say in the beginning of every stupid letter to the editor . . . if I were to pick up my golak now and make a move toward you, you wouldn't do a thing about it?"

"I didn't say that," Bob responded. "If you make a move toward me, I'd defend myself— and hurt you any way I could. Kill you if I could."

Doug seemed to brush that possibility aside as not worth consideration. "You mean, if I picked up my bow and put an arrow in it and said I was going to shoot it straight into your heart, you'd let me? You wouldn't say, okay, I'll take the head start, just don't kill me?"

Bob only gazed at him. Odd, he thought, that at this moment of complete vulnerability to Doug, he felt, somehow, superior to him.

"You've already done your worst," he said. "Kill me if it pleases you. My soul will just move on. Yours will enter an eternal night." He finished almost fiercely.

"Oh, dear," Doug said. "You know, I think you really mean what you say. You're
not
afraid of dying. I could make you hurt, give you lots of pain— but eventually you'd die and I'd lose my game."

"I'm sorry if I'm ruining your day," Bob told him with an icy tone.

"Oh, you're not, you're not," Doug said. "Because you've overlooked a key part of our little game."

He smiled at Bob, obviously waiting for him to ask, What part? Bob wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"Okay, I guess I'll have to satisfy your unspoken curiosity," Doug said. Bob felt a coldness on his back that made him shiver.

"The key part of our little game, audience?" Doug said as though he were a game-show host. A pause. His smile was almost merry. "Right!" he said. "The key part of our little game is— Marian!"

Bob seemed to feel every muscle in his body becoming taut. He looked at Doug with hatred. "What are you planning to do?" he asked in a low, trembling voice. "Rape her? Hurt her?"

"Oh, no." Doug sounded as though the question had hurt his feelings. "No, not at all. I wouldn't hurt Marian. I like Marian." His smile grew venomous. "You might say that I
love
her."

Despite the golak, Bob could barely restrain himself from lunging forward and grabbing Doug by the throat. Only at the last second, did his mind warn him: You can't help her if you're dead.

"You see, I have a much more interesting scenario in mind," Doug went on. "You might say"— he grinned— "the performance of my life."

"What do you mean?" He had to know, immediately. Even if he had to ask.

"Well, here's the plot," Doug said as though he were making a story pitch to a producer. "I catch you— as I will, of course. I kill you— as I will, of course. I cut you into pieces and bury them far apart from each other. Some parts may be dug up by a bear and eaten. That would only enhance the plot, you see, because, later on, they might find a leg bone or an arm bone or something. I hightail it to the cabin; I can make it in a day if I really rush, get there by late tonight." He smiled again as though looking for Bob's approval of the clever plot he'd created.

"Now," he said, holding up the index finger of his right hand, "comes the good part. The Academy Award part. I show up at the cabin in a state of near hysteria. I cry, I groan, I blame myself for everything. You went out in the dark to go to the bathroom and I never saw you again. I should have gone
with
you. I searched everywhere but couldn't find a sign of you. A bear or a mountain lion must have gotten you. We'll call the forest rangers and initiate a search— I won't tell them where we were, of course, I'll take them someplace else. I'll keep on crying, sobbing, not too much of course, just enough to be convincing. Oscar-caliber, believe me." He leaned forward, looking fascinated. "They never find your remains, of course. Finally, I drive Marian home. I stay with her to comfort her. I'm always with her. She can lean on me, trust me. I'm a damn good actor, maybe you don't know that. She'll buy it; she'll be totally convinced that I've been traumatized. I was supposed to take care of you and I didn't do my job. I'll cry some more. I'll drink, she'll drink. I'll be the— what's the fucking word?— oh, yes, I'll be the epitome of caring, the fucking quintessence— ooh, I got that right away— the quintessence— love that word— the
quintessence
of compassion. In time, Marian will come to depend on me, to need me, to— dare I speak the word?— to love me. We'll get married—" His eyelids lowered halfway, his smile gone sardonic. "And I'll fuck her asshole legally. Won't that be a gas?"

Bob was unable to speak. He could only stare at Doug, believing himself to be in the presence of a madman. A madman he had to kill, somehow, someway.

Finally, Doug spoke.

"That puts a slightly different complexion on the game, doesn't it, Bobby boy?" he said. "Still want me to kill you now?"

The murderous fury he'd felt while Doug was sodomizing him erupted so suddenly that the words spewed forth without thought.
"You miserable son of a bitch!"

Before the sentence was finished he'd lunged to his feet and flung himself at Doug, hitting him so fast and hard that Doug, completely caught off guard, was unable to grab the golak from his lap.

Knocking Doug back with the impetus of his charge, Bob started pounding at his face as hard as he could. Doug raised his arms to block the punches but couldn't prevent some of them from driving into his cheeks, his eyes, his mouth.
"Damn!"
he snarled.

Bob couldn't speak. Fueled by his rage, he only wanted to keep hitting Doug, pounding him unconscious, killing him if necessary. Thought was gone. He could only concentrate on one thing: stopping Doug,
now
. It gave him a wild, perverse pleasure to see the look of startled amazement on Doug's face, hear the muffled flooding of curses from him.
Hit
him,
hit
him! The words were shouted in his brain by a voice he'd never heard before.

Then Doug's knee was driven up into his groin and, with an instant flare of pain, the fight was ended. Rolling on his side with a groaning cry Bob drew up his legs with convulsive suddenness and, abruptly, lay in a taut fetal position, unable to catch his breath, eyes slitted, teeth bared in a grimace of agony. Vision blurred, he watched Doug stagger to his feet. "Motherfucker," he was mumbling. "Mother
fucker
."

Now Doug loomed over him, nose bleeding, cheeks bruised, an expression of demented malice on his face. "You bastard," he muttered, "you dumb fucking bastard." Bob watched his right arm raise up, the golak clutched in his hand.
"Now you die."

Bob closed his eyes, tensed for the violent stroke of the golak that would end his life.
Protect Marian
, he thought, having no idea to whom the plea was being sent.
Please protect her!

When the blow from the golak didn't come, he opened his eyes and looked up in pained curiosity.

"Oh, no," Doug was saying. "No. Too easy, motherfucker. You are going to die but not this easy, not this easy. Oh, no, not this easy, motherfucker, not this easy."

Reaching down, he grabbed Bob by the hair with his left hand and yanked him to his feet. Before he was up, Doug had reared back his right fist and driven it as hard as he could into Bob's jaw.

Bob reeled back and fell, collapsing to the ground, darkness flooding across his brain. He felt Doug drag him up by the left arm and drive another violent blow to his abdomen. As he doubled over, gagging, Doug jarred him erect with an uppercut to his jaw. Now the darkness was almost complete. He felt himself sinking into it, his face and body almost numbed by pain. As though through a film he saw Doug's face, his twisted look of fury. Then, unexpectedly, somehow more horrible than the expression of malevolence, a smile of fierce pleasure.

"Now the game begins," he said.

He let go of Bob who crumpled to the ground, legs drawn up again, soft groans of pain filling his throat.

"You hear me, Bobby boy?" Doug asked. He sounded almost happy.
"Now the game begins."

1:48 PM

He had to stop and rest for a while. He'd been trying to walk rapidly, sometimes trot, but he simply couldn't manage it. The backpack was considerably lighter— just the bare minimum of equipment and supplies to keep him going— but it still dragged at his back; and his body and head still ached where Doug had punched him so sadistically.

Taking off his pack, he lay down on his back and started doing stretching exercises he hadn't done in years— pelvic thrusts, raising his legs one at a time, then both together, drawing up his knees. He groaned in misery as he exercised. How the hell am I going to make this? he wondered. Doug was fit and strong; he was unfit and covered with pains and aches. For a while, a rush of despair engulfed him. It was hopeless. He was kidding himself. Outrun Doug? Nothing in the world seemed less possible to him at the moment.

His legs fell heavily to the ground and he groaned, partially in pain, mostly in despondent recognition. There was just no way—

"Shut up!" he ordered himself. He had to survive— for Marian's sake if not his own. Doug's diabolical scenario must never take place. Never.

He looked at his wristwatch. He'd been gone a little more than an hour now. Would Doug really wait three hours before following him? Or had that been a cruel joke?

He jerked his head around, hearing a noise to his left, a crackling sound. Was Doug already here? He sat up fast, wincing at the pain it caused. Listening intently, he sat without moving.

Then he thought, no, Doug wouldn't make any noise. He'd come stealing up like an Indian tracking prey. He'd never hear a sound. The first thing he'd know Doug's presence would be the whistling streak of an arrow and the final pain of it burying itself in his back— or his chest, depending on which way he was facing.

For several minutes, he tried to convince himself that Doug wouldn't actually stoop to murder. The rape he understood— to agonize and humiliate him. But actually kill him? Surely, Doug had no such intention.

He scowled at his Pollyanna figment. Doug would kill him all right. He said he would, and if he caught up, that was exactly what he'd do.

He groaned again as he stood. I am in such miserable shape, he thought disgustedly; a regular goddamn athlete.

"Well, what do you expect?" he assailed himself. "You hadn't planned on being chased by a homicidal maniac." The remark made him grunt with a humorless smile. If I wrote this in a spec script, they'd throw me out of the office.

But it was really happening, that was the rub. Truth really
is
stranger than fiction, he thought. As far-fetched as it was in a creative way, it was darkly, horribly true. It was happening. The man who was going to take him on a pleasant research backpacking hike was now intending to murder him. Cut me up in pieces for Christ's sake! he thought. He
is
a fucking maniac. He
is
.

He pressed down gingerly on his right foot. The blister was still there, probably broken open by now. He'd have to put a clean bandage on it later. Sure, he thought in bitter amusement. Got to protect yourself from that lethal blister.

He put on his pack again, took a drink from his water bottle, and started off. Was he going to have enough water to last him? He couldn't ration it too much; Doug had made that point clear enough. But was he going to run across drinkable water? That Doug hadn't told him as he'd left.

"Much he cares," Bob muttered as he tried to walk in long, even strides.

He stopped walking suddenly. He'd never manage to outrun Doug and there was only one alternative.

He had to lay in wait for Doug, attack him somehow, kill him. It was the only possibility. He felt too weak and sick to outdistance Doug's pursuit.

But how? he asked himself.
How?

Again, there was only one possibility.

Taking off his backpack, he pulled out his hunting knife and looked around for a branch thin enough for him to cut into a cudgel he could hit Doug in the face with, lunging out from behind a tree.

As he searched, he considered the possibility of improvising a spear with the knife and a branch, fastening the knife to the branch with shoelaces. Immediately, he discarded the notion. What if the knife wasn't fastened to the branch tightly enough, slipping off or, at best, shifting to one side as he tried to drive it into Doug's chest. No, a cudgel was the only way. Smashing Doug across the face. A lunge from behind a tree and smashing him across the bridge of the nose, trying for an instant kill.

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
.