Red - Jack Ketchum [8]
Suddenly the cave erupts in gunfire. First Stolen spins away. Somewhere a woman screams. Another woman presses the face of one of the Twins into the fire and he screeches as his face is burned away and she can hear the sizzle of him amid flying crackling sparks and flames. Then more gunfire, more screaming, groans and the rattle of chains.
Inside this new cave, alone, The Woman’s fingers knead her wounds until they bleed.
In her dream it is quiet again. She is surrounded by the dead.
Even the baby now is silent in its bag. She takes it down and lays it on a blanket by the dying embers of the fire and peels the bag away. The baby’s eyes are wide so she closes them. She wraps it in the blanket against the morning chill and places a single grey gull’s feather on its breast.
In her new cave her hand goes slack at her side. She sleeps.
FOUR
An hour and a half before dawn Cleek sat showered and shaved and fully dressed at the kitchen table, working on the rifle. He oiled it carefully — and sparingly. Too much oil and a Canadian Whitetail could smell you coming a mile away. The rifle was a total honey, a Remington 700, bolt action, with an ergonomically contoured classic walnut stock and textured grip, a raised cheek piece for rapid scope-to-eye alignment, fitted with a 3X9 Leupold scope. It took a 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge. He could blast a woodchuck all to hell at three hundred yards with one of those babies. And had.
At three grand it was a bargain.
Belle was at the coffeemaker, pouring. She brought them each a second cup. Black for him. For her, cream and sugar. She sat down and sighed.
“You hear Peg last night?” she said.
“Yep.”
“Sick as a dog, Chris.”
“I know. Speaking of dogs. You feed them?”
“It’s Brian’s turn. The dogs can wait.”
He put down the brush and sipped his coffee. A good Jamaican blend they sold down at Kristy’s, thirty dollars a pound, ground for paper. He lit a Winston and sat back in his chair.
“Peg’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
She looked at him with that look she had. She’d gotten that look directly from her mother. There’s a saying, you want to know the kind of woman you’re marrying? Check out the mother. Over the years he’d found that to be more true than not. Her mother had this expression she wore that was half worry and half concentration. Like she had some math problem in front of her and wasn’t so sure of her equations.
They sipped their coffee in silence.
He finished his cigarette and drained his coffee and packed away the cleaning gear in his Otis kit — rods, brushes, flannel patches, each in its place. Zippered up, it was about the size of his hand. But then he had big hands. He slipped the Remington into its nylon camouflage floating case and zippered that too.
“I’m gone,” he said. He stood up from the table, shouldered the rifle and clipped the kit to his belt. “Wish me luck, hon.”
“Luck,” she said. “You want a thermos?”
“Nah. I’m floating already.”
And then he was out the door. He closed it quietly behind him so as not to wake the dogs out in the barn in front and crossed the yard to the Escalade parked beside Belle‘s little blue Toyota. It was still a bit chilly in the damp night air but the day promised to be a warm one. The sky was clear and full of stars. He caught the paper-and-wood smoke smell off the burn barrel. He didn’t want it on him.
He slipped into the Escalade and slammed the door.
Let the dogs go crazy now. He wasn’t there and it was almost dawn.
~ * ~
Four hours later he was sitting on a rock on a hillside overlooking the wild blueberry patch where last Autumn he’d bagged a six-point whitetail buck. He was upwind, surrounded by scrub and pine. It had been a long climb and then a long wait. And so far, nothing. He’d gone through half a pack of Winstons. Two strips of beef jerky and a packet of salted peanuts. He’d resisted the Cutty in his canteen and stuck with bottled water. But maybe it was time to move on.
He took one last scan through the Leupold. All he saw were a pair of black-backed gulls headed for the shoreline about a mile