Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [53]
“Come on, Scooter. Let’s just get back on the mountain, okay?”
With great deliberation Scooter followed Muldaur off the outcropping until he reached the main part of the mountain, while Zak remained on the plateau. “Why would I come up here with one of my best friends and then knock him off?” Scooter said. “I mean, you guys are both cracked if you think anybody’s going to buy that.”
“It was an accident,” Zak said. “But you bumped him. That’s how it happened.”
“And I say I watched you two push my friend off.”
“That’s a load of crap, and you know it.”
Zak and Muldaur followed Scooter through the camp past Stephens, Morse, and Giancarlo, who were out of their sleeping bags but moving in their own respective morning stupors. It was clear none of them knew what was going on.
“We’re going to get even with you motherfuckers,” Scooter shouted when he reached the road. “We’re going to come back and we’re going to kill all you motherfuckers! Every damn one of you.”
Zak was trying to think of a way to convince Scooter that his version of the accident was wrong when somebody began shooting at them from down the road.
23
Kasey felt numb from the event he’d just witnessed, the distance itself making it surreal. At first he could not feel it, and then when it finally and truly struck him that Chuck was dead, he could only think he should be feeling more. It didn’t help that he had so much beer in him or that he’d only had a couple hours of sleep. He’d seen Chuck waving his arms frantically and falling backward, and while he was watching it had sent an electric current down his spine, but now, aside from Jennifer’s wailing, it felt more like an elaborate practical joke of the type both Finnigans were famous for.
He’d been fiddling with the focus on the binoculars at the crucial moment it started, so it was all foggier than it might have been. In the beginning he thought Polanski was in trouble, because Scooter and Chuck were advancing on him, Polanski with no place to go, and then he saw Scooter try to grab Polanski so he could break his arm, and then Chuck was in the mix and the bodies all became a tangle. With all the arm waving, it might have been that Chuck had been stepping forward to help Polanski. Chuck, despite his occasional steroid rages, had a streak of kindness in him, and it might have come to the fore in time to get him killed.
It the middle of it all the retard ran at the three men, and then Chuck was tumbling and Jenn was screaming in his ears. Afterward, she stood up, having wet her shorts, and sobbed as she ran back through the camp. Oddly, wetting her pants was the last thing Kasey expected. She was always so in control.
“Holy smokes,” said Roger Bloomquist. “Is he dead? Do you think?”
“No,” Kasey said, irritated. “He’s going to get up in a minute and come up here and ask where breakfast is.”
“What are you guys talking about?” asked Ryan Perry, who had just shown up. “What happened? What’s wrong with Jennifer?” He was blinking rapidly.
“Didn’t you see?” Kasey asked.
“I can’t see much of anything until I get my contacts in.”
“Chuck fell off the bluff,” said Bloomquist. “He was with Scooter and then he fell off.”
“Is he hurt?”
“There’s no hurt about it,” said Kasey, walking away through the scraggly fir trees. “He’s broken all to hell.”
For reasons he couldn’t put into words, Kasey grabbed the .30-30 out of Chuck’s truck and continued through camp to the side of the road, waiting for Scooter to return. The three of them were talking about going up the hill to confront the cyclists when Scooter stumbled into sight, falling to his hands and knees in the road. An angry-looking Hugh came running out onto the road behind him. It was pretty obvious that Hugh was chasing Scooter. Almost without thinking, Kasey waited until there was some distance between the two men and