After Midnight

22
HERE COMES TROUBLE

“Okay,” I said. But was she serious? She sure sounded serious, all right. Not only about doing “anything” for me, but about her memories of what had happened to her.
Her lack of memories.
But what if she was lying?
What if she remembered everything?
“What’s wrong?” Judy whispered.
“Huh?”
“You’re suddenly…all tense. I can feel it.”
“It’s the knot,” I said. “It’s too tight.” Shaking my head, I let go of the rope. I put my arms around her.
“Are you quitting?” she asked. She sounded scared like a little kid in the dark.
“No. No way. I’ll never quit on you. I just have to figure out another way.”
“What about the other end of the rope?” she asked. “He tied it to a tree behind me.” She went rigid. I suddenly knew exactly what she’d meant about me going all tense. She felt as if a live current had zipped through her body. But hardly missing a beat, she said, “Maybe it’ll be easier. Why don’t you go over and give it a try?”
“You did see him,” I said, letting go of her and taking a step backward.
She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone. All I know is that it’s tied to a tree back there. I didn’t see who did it, or when, or anything. I turned around and saw it there, that’s all.”
“What are you so nervous about?”
“What do you think? Jeez, Alice. If we don’t get out of here, that guy’s gonna come out of his tent and kill both of us.”
“Is he?”
“Yes! What do you think is going on?”
I put my hands on her sides and said, “Why don’t you tell me?”
She stared into my eyes. She was breathing hard again, her ribs rising and falling under my open hands. I could feel tremors running through her.
“Do you think I did this to myself?” she whispered.
“No, of course not. But I think you know more than you’re telling me.”
“Look, just get me down. Please. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care what you did. I just want down from here before he…”
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “The truth shall set thee free.”
“You shot me. Okay? Then you put me up on the picnic table and…I don’t know what. You were doing stuff to me. And then you went at me with a stick or something. I think you knocked me out with it. When I woke up, you were gone. So I climbed off the table and hid in the bushes. And then later I ran for my life. I kept running till he caught me. Now will you get me down from here? Please? I don’t know why you did any of that stuff, and I don’t care. I’ll never tell anyone. I promise. It’s just between you and me, okay? Just get me out of here.”
“You lied about everything,” I muttered. My fingers ached from digging into her ribcage, but I didn’t let go.
“I meant it about owing you,” she said. “I meant that. Get me out of here and I’ll do anything for you. I’ll give you all my money, everything I own. I’ll go with you. I’ll live with you. I’ll be your slave. I’ll be your lover. Whatever you want. Anything. Just get me out of here.”
“What makes you think I want any of that?” I asked.
“Don’t you?” It sounded more like a challenge than a question.
“I’d like to have the truth,” I said. “How’s that? How about the truth right now?”
“Like what?”
“What about this guy?” I asked. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. He’s horrible.”
“More horrible than me?”
“You’re not so bad. When you’re not trying to kill me.”
“Haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“Just get me away from him. Please. I’ll never tell on you. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Nobody keeps their word anymore.”
“I do.”
“That’s a good one, coming from a liar.”
“I’m telling the truth now,” she said. “If you get me away from this guy, you’ll never regret it. I’ll never do anything to hurt you. Never. I’ll never say a word against you. I’ll lie for you. I’ll take blame. I’ll do whatever it takes. I swear to God.”
“What’d he do to you?”
“We don’t have time. Come on, Alice. If he wakes up…”
“Does he have a gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did he get you?”
“He jumped me from behind. I’ll tell you everything later, okay? We haven’t got time for this. You’ve gotta untie me. Please!”
“Shhh. Raise your voice, and you’ll wake him up.”
“Maybe I should,” she blurted. “Maybe I will! Stop screwing around and get me down from here!”
“Shut up!”
“Get me down!”
I clamped her left nipple between my thumb and forefinger and twisted it. She flinched and writhed. Breath hissed out around her teeth. “Just shut up,” I told her.
She jerked her head up and down.
“Now, tell me about our friend in the tent. I take it he’s not Tony.”
“No,” she said, and panted for air.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does he look like?”
“Big.”
“Big? What’s big?”
“He is.”
“How big?”
“I don’t know. Don’t just keep…Do you want him to catch us?”
“He doesn’t scare me,” I said.
“Then you’re dumber than you look.”
I gave her a very hard pinch and twist. She cried out and squirmed. Then, gasping for air, she blurted, “You stupid bitch, now you’ve done it. He’s gonna come out!”
“I’m trembling.”
“You oughta be! We’ll be next.”
“Huh?”
“He’s got a body in the tent with him. Some dead woman. He eats her.”
“What?”
“He eats a dead woman in his tent!”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
But I didn’t have time to give it much thought, because I heard the tent flaps whap open behind me.
Letting go of Judy, I spun around. The weight of the pistol slapped my left thigh. A good thing, since it reminded me that I had it in the wrong pocket.
I went for it left-handed as this guy crawled out of the tent.
In spite of Judy’s description, I still expected him to be my prowler.
But he wasn’t.
My prowler was sleek and handsome.
Not a fat, bald, drooling slob.
He really was drooling, too. Slobbering all over the place as he struggled to his feet.
Grunting.
Naked.
Filthy with old blood that looked brown and crusty.
Coated with curly, filthy hair all the way down from his shoulders to his feet.
Only one part wasn’t hairy. It jutted out in front of him, so big he was getting drool on it.
He lumbered toward me, hunched over, his arms outspread as if he wanted to give me a bear hug. But he had a knife in one hand, a hatchet in the other.
No kidding.
They didn’t look any too clean, either.
He grunted and laughed as he picked up some speed and charged at me.
You’ve gotta be kidding!
I had this urge to laugh. But what came out was a scream. Behind me, Judy screamed, too.
This might’ve been hilarious in a movie.
I mean, the guy was such a monstrosity! It crossed my mind that all this was some sort of a gag. But I figured it must be real.
I forced my eyes away from him just long enough to glimpse a shadowy body inside his tent. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. And it looked dead, to me.
I started firing.
Better late than never. The deal is, I’d had a little trouble with the pistol. I began to go for it when the guy first came crawling out of the tent. But it was down at the bottom of my pocket, and I had to drag it out with my left hand. I’m a righty. So after I got the pistol out, I spent a few moments switching it to my right hand. Only after that did I start pumping bullets into him.
I pulled the trigger fast.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
But he didn’t go down.
He was backlit by the fire, so I couldn’t see where I was hitting him. I had to be hitting him, though. I’m an okay shot and this was close range and he was a large target charging straight at me. How could I miss a thing like that?
I couldn’t, that’s how.
I was hitting him, all right. But the little .22s weren’t doing the job.
In another second, he’d be on me. I had Judy at my back, so I dodged sideways, holding fire. He tried to follow me, but he was too big and clumsy. He couldn’t change course in time.
Judy kicked out at him. She was probably trying for his nuts. I heard the smack sound of her bare foot meeting his skin, but he didn’t cry out or drop.
He plowed into her.
His body slammed against Judy and crashed through her, knocking a grunt out of her as he sent her flying backward and upward, twisting at the end of her rope. Stumbling past where she’d been, he managed to turn around and start coming after me again.
Judy came swinging toward his back like Tarzan on the attack. But I don’t think she meant to do it. She was at the mercy of the rope and the whims of motion.
She meant what came next, though.
As the guy staggered toward me, Judy raised a slim bare leg and kicked him in the back of his head. She rebounded away from him, spinning wildly.
He grunted, stumbled forward and fell to his knees.
I ran up to him, fired a shot into the top of his shiny head, then pranced backward out of reach, not sure what to expect.
What I hoped was that he’d drop like a sledge-hammered bull.
But instead, he squealed and started crawling forward, trying to get up.
I glanced at the pistol. If I’d been out of ammo, the slide would’ve been locked back. It was forward. Which meant I had at least one more round.
There might be a couple, but I could only count on one.
So I wasn’t eager to use it.
As he stumbled to his feet, I hurried around behind the campfire. He lurched toward me, hunched over, arms out like before as if he wanted to give me a big, friendly hug. He still had the knife in one hand and the hatchet in the other.
By now, he had a face of blood from my shot to his head. The rest of his body was a mess, too. A worse mess than before. Now, it wasn’t just the woman’s old, dry blood. It was his blood, too, and plenty of it. It was pouring out of four or five holes in his chest and belly.
Have you ever seen those cartoons where a character gets all shot up, then drinks a glass of water and suddenly he’s squirting out of every hole?
It was like that.
Except these holes weren’t really squirting. They were flowing like garden hoses when the water is just barely turned on.
A guy shot up like that shouldn’t have still been coming at me. And he certainly shouldn’t still have a hard-on. What kind of a freak was he?
“You’re dead!” I shouted as he lumbered closer. “Fall down, you motherf*cking idiot! Don’t you know when you’re dead?”
He raised his head slowly and grinned at me.
What a nice thing. What lovely teeth. Brown and crooked. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks, but I thought I could see shreds of flesh caught between some of them.
I gagged.
He stopped just on the other side of the fire. Still grinning, he drew back his right arm. He was getting ready to throw the hatchet at me.
I stuck my own right arm straight out over the fire, shouted, “Eat this!” and fired.
Instead of going into his open mouth the way I wanted, my bullet slashed his right cheek open and punched a hole through his earlobe.
My slide locked back.
I gasped, “Shit!”
He hurled the hatchet. It flew at me over the fire, tumbling, coming straight for my face.
I dodged it. The damn thing came so close that I felt a gust of air against my left cheek. And I’d lurched sideways too fast. I stumbled, trying to stay on my feet. Then I fell.
The bastard cried out, “Ah-ha!”
He thought he had me.
As he staggered his way around the fire, I rolled over, got to my hands and knees, and tried to scurry up. My feet slipped on the dewy grass. I fell and banged my knees, and he gained on me.
“Get away from me!” I yelled.
He grunted and kept coming.
He was almost on me by the time I made it up and launched myself out of reach.
“Thata girl!” Judy cried out.
Cheering me on from the sidelines.
“Get his ax!” she yelled.
I’d already thought of that.
I’d already spotted it, too. The hatchet lay flat on the ground about fifteen feet beyond where I’d been standing before my fall.
I could get to it, but I needed a lead. I’d have to swoop down and snatch it up. Without a good lead, he might end up on my back.
“Die, you bastard!” I yelled as I ran.
He giggled. Giggled! Do you believe it?
Maybe he had a right to giggle. He’d taken all the bullets I could throw at him. Now, he was only a few strides behind me. He’d be on top of me if I slowed down to pick up the hatchet. And he’d probably plunge his knife into my back.
So I didn’t slow down, I dived. Slamming the dewy grass, I slid on my chest and belly, my arms reaching out ahead of me. In mid-slide, I grabbed the hatchet with my right hand. As I skidded to a stop, I flipped onto my back.
Grinning, the big boy sank to his knees in the grass just beyond my feet.
He clamped the knife between his teeth, then leaned forward and clutched my ankles. Grunting, he jerked them apart. He started pulling me toward him.
I don’t know what the hell he thought he was doing.
Well, maybe he wanted to pull me closer in order to work some sort of mischief on me. If you can call rape and murder mischief, which I’m not sure would be proper.
Anyway, he obviously wasn’t thinking straight.
How could he, with all those bullets in him?
I slid toward him on the seat of my cut-offs. He kept forcing my legs farther apart as if he wanted to dive between them. Judy dangled in silence from her limb.
When he dragged me close enough, I raised the hatchet high and swung it down with all my might. It got him in the back of the head.
WHUNK!
Chopped him deep, the hatchet busting through his skull and into the mush underneath. Blood and stuff flew up, glistening in the firelight.
He grunted.
He farted.
Then he plunged forward.
Like he had it all planned to land on top of me and pin me down, crush me, suffocate me, kill me with his corpse.
I jerked the hatchet, trying to turn him away. With a slurp, it jumped out of his head and I was left holding it. Before I could scoot out of the way, he bumped me in the stomach. Then his head slid lower as if he wanted to shove it down the front of my cut-offs. It was too big to fit in, though. So it stayed outside. The next thing I knew, it was shoving at my crotch. As he kept on falling, his head acted like a plow and pushed me ahead of him.
By the time he’d finished, I was in the clear.