little silver fillings in his teeth. His body went back, following the shock to his neck. He stumbled backward a few steps, the hole in the center of his forehead running crimson and his brains scattered on the ground behind him. His eyelids fluttered, and his face looked to Mary as if the boy were about to sneeze. He made a strangled little squeak, squirrellike, and then he fell on his back amid the detritus of winter. His legs trembled a few times, as if he were trying to stand up again. He died with his eyes and mouth open and the sun on his face. Mary stood over him until his lungs had stopped hitching. There was no use trying to drag the body away to hide it. She swept her gaze back and forth through the woods, her senses questing for sound and movement. The gunshot had scared the birds away, and the only noises were her heartbeat and blood trickling in the leaves. Satisfied that no one else was anywhere around, she turned away from the corpse and pushed back through the thicket again. Once clear of it, she began running in the direction she'd come, the.38 in one hand and the boy-sized rifle clenched in the other.
Her sweat turned cold. What she had just done fell upon her, and it made her stagger. But she regained her balance, her mouth grim-lipped and her eyes fixed toward the distant horizon. It had been his bad karma to cross her path, she thought. It had not been her fault that the boy was there; it was just karma, that's all. The boy was a minor piece of a larger picture, and that was what she had to focus on. His daddy might have wondered why a woman was stalking in the woods with a pistol on a Sunday afternoon. His daddy might have known a pig, or even a federal pig. One telephone call could start the pig machinery, and she'd hidden too long and been too smart to allow that to happen. The boy had to be laid low. Period.
A little whirlpool of anger had opened within her. Damn it! she raged. Shit! Why had that damned boy been there? It was a test, she thought. A karmic test. You fall down, and you stand up again. You keep going no matter what. She wished it were springtime, and that there were flowers in the woods. If there were flowers in the woods, she would've put one in the dead boy's hand.
She knew why she had killed him. Of course she did. The boy had seen Mary Terror without her mask. That was reason enough for execution.
She couldn't make it on the run all the way back to her truck. She walked the last three hundred yards, her lungs rasping and her sweatsuit soaked. She leaned the rifle against the seat and put the handgun on the floorboard beneath her legs. There were the marks of other tires in the dirt, so she didn't have to worry about brushing out the tracks. The pigs might get a footprint or two, but so what? They'd think it was a man's footprints. She started the engine, backed off the logging road to the paved highway where a sign said NO DUMPING and litter was everywhere. Then Mary drove home, knowing she had a lot of training to do but confident that she had not lost her touch.
2
A Friend's Message
LAURA SLID THE TOP DRAWER OF DOUG'S DRESSER OPEN, LIFTED up his sweaters, and looked at the gun.
It was an ugly thing. A Charter Arms.32 automatic, black metal with a black grip. Doug had shown her how it worked: the little metal thingamajig that held the seven bullets — the magazine clip, Doug had said — fit up into the grip, and you had to push the safety hickey with your thumb to engage the firing dololley. There was a box of extra clips, with the words Fast Loading and Rugged Construction on it. The gun was unloaded at the moment; a clip of bullets lay next to it. Laura touched the automatic's grainy grip. The gun smelted faintly of oil, and she worried that the oil would leak onto Doug's sweaters. She ran her fingers over the cool metal. It was a dangerous, evil-looking beast, and Laura saw how men could become fascinated by guns: there was power in it, waiting to be released.
She
Her sweat turned cold. What she had just done fell upon her, and it made her stagger. But she regained her balance, her mouth grim-lipped and her eyes fixed toward the distant horizon. It had been his bad karma to cross her path, she thought. It had not been her fault that the boy was there; it was just karma, that's all. The boy was a minor piece of a larger picture, and that was what she had to focus on. His daddy might have wondered why a woman was stalking in the woods with a pistol on a Sunday afternoon. His daddy might have known a pig, or even a federal pig. One telephone call could start the pig machinery, and she'd hidden too long and been too smart to allow that to happen. The boy had to be laid low. Period.
A little whirlpool of anger had opened within her. Damn it! she raged. Shit! Why had that damned boy been there? It was a test, she thought. A karmic test. You fall down, and you stand up again. You keep going no matter what. She wished it were springtime, and that there were flowers in the woods. If there were flowers in the woods, she would've put one in the dead boy's hand.
She knew why she had killed him. Of course she did. The boy had seen Mary Terror without her mask. That was reason enough for execution.
She couldn't make it on the run all the way back to her truck. She walked the last three hundred yards, her lungs rasping and her sweatsuit soaked. She leaned the rifle against the seat and put the handgun on the floorboard beneath her legs. There were the marks of other tires in the dirt, so she didn't have to worry about brushing out the tracks. The pigs might get a footprint or two, but so what? They'd think it was a man's footprints. She started the engine, backed off the logging road to the paved highway where a sign said NO DUMPING and litter was everywhere. Then Mary drove home, knowing she had a lot of training to do but confident that she had not lost her touch.
2
A Friend's Message
LAURA SLID THE TOP DRAWER OF DOUG'S DRESSER OPEN, LIFTED up his sweaters, and looked at the gun.
It was an ugly thing. A Charter Arms.32 automatic, black metal with a black grip. Doug had shown her how it worked: the little metal thingamajig that held the seven bullets — the magazine clip, Doug had said — fit up into the grip, and you had to push the safety hickey with your thumb to engage the firing dololley. There was a box of extra clips, with the words Fast Loading and Rugged Construction on it. The gun was unloaded at the moment; a clip of bullets lay next to it. Laura touched the automatic's grainy grip. The gun smelted faintly of oil, and she worried that the oil would leak onto Doug's sweaters. She ran her fingers over the cool metal. It was a dangerous, evil-looking beast, and Laura saw how men could become fascinated by guns: there was power in it, waiting to be released.
She
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