Hunters (35 page)

"Jesus, all right..." He set his weapon down
in the snow, picked up the box, and slipped off a glove. Then he
dug a small screwdriver out of his pocket, snapped open the plastic
box, and detached a wire from inside. "There, see?" He held out the
box to her. "Look!" He pressed the button, and she winced, but
nothing happened. "No boom, just click." He set the detonator box
back down in the hollow he had cleared, picked up the Ingram, and
brushed the snow from it. "Now let's visit our friends."

As they walked back to the cabin, Jean said,
"He gave himself up to us. I told him we'd let the woman go."

"Shithead'll believe anything, won't he?"

"He doesn't have much choice."

Michael and Sam had marched Craig and his
woman back into the cabin, and Chuck and Jean followed, closing the
door behind them. "Cozy," Chuck said. "First time we've been warm
in hours."

Craig and his woman stood by the fireplace,
their hands by their sides. A big black dog stood in the kitchen
doorway, tail wagging, tongue panting, eyeing the proceedings.
Chuck immediately got on his haunches, his gun across his lap, and
clapped his hands. The dog came over, his tail pumping even
faster.

"Good boy, all right!" Chuck said. "What's
his name?"

"Pinchot," Ned Craig said.

"Okay, Pinchot, howza boy? Hey, you're a good
fella, aren't you? You're no attack doggie, no..." Chuck rubbed the
dog's head and ears, and Pinchot slobbered ecstatically. "Hey,
Craig," Chuck said, "I don't think old Lassie here's gonna come to
your rescue."

"Just don't hurt him," Craig said softly.

"Hey, we
like
animals," Chuck replied.
"It's people who're shit."

Craig slowly looked at the four of them in
turn. "Yeah," he said softly.

"Ooo," Chuck said, standing up and holding
his Ingram again. "Ironic. I liked that. Clint Eastwood couldn't've
done it better."

"Enough bullshit," Jean said. "You know why
we're here."

"To kill me," Craig said.

"To
execute
you."

"No. Murder," Craig said. "The same way you
murdered those others."

Jean tossed her head and looked at Craig
haughtily. She was a good looking woman, Chuck had to give her
that. "Those were executions too," she said. "But we don't have to
justify our actions to you. All we have to do is kill you."

"You promised you'd let her live," Craig
said. The woman whose hand he held was no spring chicken, but she
was a looker too. Not in the way Jean was, but in a more
countrified, woman-next-door way, kind of like the horny farm wife
in that sappy bestseller that Sam had insisted he read. She told
him it had made her cry, but Chuck had thought it was horseshit. He
didn't go to the movie with her, even though big Clint was in
it.

"We'll let her live," Jean said, "as long as
you cooperate. You face your execution like a
man
..." The
word was heavy with sarcasm. "...and we'll go away and leave her
here. But you give us any trouble, or try to escape, and we'll kill
her first, I promise you that."

The woman's chin was trembling, but she
wasn't crying. Instead she was looking at them with even more
hatred than Craig showed. Maybe that was because she wasn't
planning to die, but Chuck knew that Jean would never let her live.
In fact, he was surprised that Jeannie wasn't torturing the woman
right now to make Craig's agony worse. It was okay with Chuck.
Maybe he could get Jean to let Sam and him alone with the woman in
the cabin after Craig was dead. That would be pretty entertaining,
and a nice way to cool down after Craig and the tower.

"Let's do it then," Craig said. "Shoot me and
get it over with. That's what you do, isn't it?"

"No," Jean said. "We have something special
in mind for you. We
hang
murderers, Craig."

Chuck thought that shook the guy. That sturdy
jaw of his trembled a little, and his frown grew deeper. Chuck
didn't blame him. Pretty damn ugly way to die.

"Please," the woman said, "don't do this. Ned
didn't do anything that anyone else wouldn't have done. Your friend
tried to
kill
him."

"Then he should have let himself be killed,"
said Jean. "Because he's going to die anyway, and it would have
saved us all a lot of trouble."

"Hey, lady," said Chuck. "I don't think we've
been introduced." She just stared at him like he was a slug. "I
mean, you got a name?"

She swallowed hard before she said it.
"Megan." Her voice was harsh and dry.

"Well, howdy, Megan, glad to meetcha. I'm Chuck. And
this is Sam, Michael, and Jean." He grinned at Jean. "So we gonna
hang this prick boyfriend of hers now?"

N
ed Craig felt
detached from what was happening to him, as though it weren't
really happening at all, as though it were a dream or a movie he
was watching. Things like this didn't happen. Or at least they
weren't
supposed
to happen.

But then people weren't supposed to get mowed
down by crazies with automatics in subway cars. Little children in
day care centers weren't supposed to get blown up because some nut
hated his own government. And human beings weren't supposed to
murder, gut, and skin other human beings because they disapproved
of hunting. Still, these things happened. And if you were in the
wrong place at the wrong time, they happened to you.

The big man named Chuck had held a gun on him
while the younger of the two women had tied his hands behind him.
She had removed his remaining glove and pulled the rope painfully
tight, but Ned had tried to flex his wrists as much as he could
against the pressure, and when she was finished he found that there
was some slack. He didn't know what good his getting loose would
do, but at least it might become an option, depending on how they
played it.

But then he told himself that his only option
was death. If that was the only way he could ensure Megan's
survival, then he would die. At least his death would have some
purpose, if she lived.

If
he could trust them.

He wondered why Chuck would have introduced
them all by name if they intended to release Megan. Maybe they just
didn't care, figuring that the police would eventually find out who
they were. Or maybe those weren't their real names at all. Or maybe
they planned to kill her after all.

"All right," said the older woman. "Let's
go."

Chuck got behind him and prodded the barrel
of his pistol into Ned's back. "Where?" Ned asked as he walked
toward the door.

"The tower," Jean said.

The tower.

That was it then. They would take him to the
top of the tower, tie a rope around his neck, and push him or make
him jump off.

Oh my sweet bleeding Christ, Ned thought. Of
all the ways to die, they would make him climb up the icy steps of
the tower first, his hands tied behind him. He thought he would die
a hundred times before he even got to the top.

Or maybe he wouldn't last that long. Maybe he
would slip and, unable to grab anything to save himself, fall all
the way to the bottom.

He would rather hang.

The cold battered him as he stepped through
the door. The wind and snow had not diminished, but increased. The
flakes were so big that it seemed as though sheets of tissue were
falling through the night air, the wind whipping them about and
shredding them. He felt them sticking, cold and wet, to his hair
and face.

The wind was beyond howling now. It shrieked,
driving the cold and snow into his ears so that he scarcely heard
Chuck telling the girl named Sam to get the rope, or Jean saying
something else. They kept walking, the gale pushing them toward the
tower at the cliff's edge, Pinchot preceding them, barreling
through the snow with gusto.

"Dog's anxious too! You're gonna swing real
nice in this wind, Ned!" Chuck said, then laughed.

Ned glanced back and saw that Jean and Megan
were walking behind them, Jean holding her pistol on Megan. It was
a lighter weapon, a semi-automatic, Ned thought, probably a .38. No
match for the machine pistol held on him, but more than able to
kill with a single bullet.

The other two, Michael and Sam, were at the
snowmobiles. Sam was getting a coil of rope, and Michael had
started the engine of one of the machines and turned it to face the
tower. When Ned looked again, the man was loosely piling snow
around the front of it, then tugging at the machine. Finally Ned
realized why.

He, or Jean, more likely, wanted the powerful
light from the snowmobile to shine upwards and illuminate the
tower, so that they could see Ned's fatal plunge. As they slowly
neared the tower, the light crept up the structure until it touched
the cab high above. Ned looked back and saw the vehicle propped at
a near seventy degree angle. Then he saw Michael get to work
positioning the second machine as well.

When he looked back down he saw that they
were approaching a hollow in the snow, and felt a hand on his
shoulder. He stopped obediently. "I gotta share this with you,
Ned," Chuck said.

"Keep moving," Jean said.

"No no, I want old Ned to appreciate this. I
got this baby wired, Ned. Charges at the base. Plastic. And after
we stretch your neck, I'm gonna set it off. And if it does what I
think it's gonna, you and the old tower are gonna be in a lot of
little pieces at the bottom of the cliff. Just thought you might
like to know you'll be going out with a bang." Chuck laughed, then
shook his head. "I'm sorry, man, that really sucked. Let's go."

He dug Ned in the back with the barrel of the
gun, and Ned moved on. He nearly stopped when he heard what he
thought was a little cry. It might have been Megan, but it might
just as easily have been a trick of the wind.

They stopped at the base of the tower and
waited until Michael and Sam joined them. Sam handed the coil of
rope to Chuck. "Don't trip," she said.

"Nah, don't worry. If I do, it's likely my
finger'll tighten, and then I'd shoot old Ned in the back, and we
don't want
that
to happen."

Ned put his neck back slowly and looked up.
The lights from the two snowmobiles cut a dazzling shaft through
the snow and the night. The flakes whirled through it like frantic
birds. Hardly any of the tower's metal was visible. Where it was
not white with clinging snow, it was coated with ice that made it
sparkle like crystal.

"I can't climb it with my hands tied," Ned
said. "It's icy. And the wind's blowing too hard. I need to use my
hands."

"I don't think so," said Jean.

"I'll fall. I'll slip and I'll fall."

Jean got in front of Ned so that she could
look into his face. "No, Craig. You won't fall. You won't cheat me
out of seeing you hang. Because if you fall, you know what will
happen? I'll put a bullet in your woman, Craig. I'll kill her. Just
like that. Before you even hit the ground. So whatever you do,
Craig, don't you fall."

Ned didn't remember ever hating anyone so
much before. The woman's eyes were cold and crazy and scary, and
Ned knew she would do exactly what she said. After what he had seen
at Camp Kessler, he knew that any one of them was capable of
anything.

He didn't look away from her searing glance.
He only nodded, and looked at the stairs.

"Hang on to old Pinchot there," Chuck told
Sam, who knelt by the happy dog and slipped a hand through his
collar. "Gonna be enough traffic on those stairs as it is. Well,
after you, Neddie," Chuck said, shouldering the hanging rope and
gesturing with his weapon.

Ned tried hard not to think about what he was
doing. If he let it, climbing the stairs would terrify him far more
than the prospect of hanging.

He took the first step, and felt the snow
compress beneath his feet. Then the second. And the third. A blast
of chill wind shook him for a moment, and in a sudden blaze of
panic he wondered what it would be like at the top, nearly a
hundred feet above, up there in the teeth of the storm. He pushed
the thought away and kept walking.

To keep from thinking about what he was
doing, he worked at his bonds, turning and twisting his wrists as
he climbed. He was afraid that Chuck would notice, but the man did
not reprimand him, so he continued whenever he could.

He quickly found, however, that most of his
effort went into remaining erect. Ned had not realized how much he
depended on his hands and arms for balance. He felt like a board
with legs, swaying one way and then another as he made the dizzying
ascent. Behind him, Chuck's patter never stopped.

"Ooo, Neddie, I'm getting a
nose
bleed...I'm a-
skeered
of heights, how 'bout
you?...Don't look down, buddy, you don't wanta fall...then your
lady friend'd bite a bullet, wouldn't she?" Mercifully the wind was
so loud that half of Chuck's words were swept away by it.

A third of the way up, Ned became aware of a
different texture beneath his feet. The snow no longer crunched.
Instead it was like stepping on smooth, slick metal, and he knew
that the rest of the climb would be on ice. Chuck noticed it too.
"Gettin' a little slick, huh, Neddie?"

Ned didn't answer. It took all his
concentration to keep from being swept over. He hugged the leeward
side of the rail, keeping his body firmly against it so that the
wind could not blow him across the steps. When he crossed a landing
and started up a flight in the opposite direction, he went as
quickly as he could until the comforting rail was at his side
again.

Still, for all his care, the wind staggered
him several times, making him come to a half crouch before starting
again. Once, when he stumbled near the top, he found himself
looking down. The white earth, the dark blots that were four people
below, one of whom was Megan, seemed viewed through a shower of
black sparks, the snow falling away from him, toward the lights on
the ground.