Off Season - Jack Ketchum [31]
The man had selected his weapons from the inner room, and now he strapped a thick leather belt, green with mold, around his waist, and slipped one long hunting knife into either side. He patted his belly. Ready.
The man behind him was much smaller, thin and wiry, with sunken cheeks and a sparse beard. His chin was weak and his lips thick and flabby, and his mouth hung perpetually open. Like the man beside the fire, his hair was long, a bit thinner than his brother’s but just as wild and oily. His own eyes were dim now. The small pig eyes could only blaze when something bled or died.
Beneath the faded gray pants he carried a razorsharp fold-out knife, strapped next to his penis. He liked the way it felt there. Around his neck, dangling beneath the soiled blue sweatshirt, was a thin silver crucifix. The man did not know what it was; only that it set him apart from the other men, who wore nothing they did not need to wear.
He, too, had selected a pair of knives from the pile. Now he moved eagerly to the first man by the fire and handed one of the knives to him, grinning so that his face seemed to furrow and crack, revealing soft, bad teeth green with slime. Behind him the children shifted excitedly, their minds stirring with vague memories of hiding in bushes by the deserted roadside, watching these men trap and kill.
The man in red finished with his boots. “There are three men now,” he said to the others, “and three women.” At the sound of his voice echoing in the still air of the cave the women gathered around him. His brothers whooped with surprise and laughter.
The man nodded. He turned to the women.
“Call the children,” he said. “First we eat.”
The big man smiled. He pulled one of the halfcooked sausages from the fire and plunged it, steaming, into his mouth. It popped between his teeth and fat streamed down his chin onto his naked chest.
The fat woman in the dress that was nothing but a sack pushed aside the deerskin at the entrance to the cave and walked outside. The night blew softly across her scarred and sallow face. At her feet she saw a small pile of tiny bones and feathers, shaped into a pyramid.
The children.
She kicked it aside. She put her hands to her mouth and inside the cave they heard her calling. To any ears but their own it would have been the voice of a seagull, strident in the wind.
A few moments later seven children filed up the mountainside, the smaller ones crawling like foxes on all fours. Like her mother, the eldest girl among them was pregnant by one of the men or the older boys, she did not know which. She was slower than the rest and, panting, brought up the rear.
It was dark now and the moon was high and brilliant. They smelled the food inside the cave, and their bellies began to churn in hunger. There would be a feast tonight. It was a season of plenty, they had heard the elders say, and their bellies would be full to bursting for weeks to come. They scrambled greedily over the rocks, with no mind for their scrapes or bruises. They climbed toward the scent of flesh thick on the night air. Toward the kill.
11:30 P.M.
For the first time in ages Nick was jealous again. The feeling was like an old friend he hardly recognized and in whose presence he was bored and uncomfortable. Bored with himself, uncomfortable with Laura. It had always focused on Carla, his jealousy. He’d never felt it before her, and never since. But now she was in the living room getting ready to go to bed, and he felt it flare again. He could hear them arranging the pullout couch, talking and laughing. He could hear the clatter of Jim’s belt buckle on the floor. There were similar sounds coming from Dan and Marjie’s room, but he paid those no attention. He was not aware of them at all. His attention was where it wanted to be and all of it was focused on the living room. He removed his glasses and put them on the night table beside him.
He lay in bed watching Laura strip off her clothes and place them carefully on a chair. He felt a faint warming in his loins as her breasts fell away from