New Fears 2: Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

PIGS DON’T SQUEAL IN TIGERTOWN Bracken MacLeod

FRIDAY

The muzzle flash lit up Raymond’s mouth and nose like that jack-o’-lantern trick kids play with a lit match behind their teeth. Light spilled out from his lips and nostrils and it all seemed like a joke in the half second between him pulling the trigger and the top of his head spreading against the dusky wallpaper like a red fireworks fountain bought from a plywood shed on the roadside. Except, instead of sparks, his head showered blood and brains and bone around the room. Just like the Fourth of July, the air smelled of smoke and sulphur and the scents of bodies too long in the sun waiting for dusk to come.

The second before Raymond stuck the pistol in his mouth, he said, “Nature don’t give a shit about fairness.” Immediately before that he’d said, “Fuck you and fuck the Dead Soldiers too.” Before Orrin had thought to warn Raymond about watching what he said, his heart skipped a beat and he’d told the man that if he didn’t want to have it shoved up his ass, he needed to put that gun away. And prior to that, he told Raymond that if he thought the motorcycle club was being unfair about his debt, he could take it up with the club president, Bunker. All those seconds in time, from Orrin banging on the door, to the creaking of his Chippewa boots on the steps, and the rumble of his 2,294cc engine at the end of the driveway to Tigertown were gone in silence, as though they never existed—just like the back of Raymond’s head and his memories and all of his dreams. And all that remained was the thrum of Orrin’s heart and the ring of his concussed eardrums.

Before he’d driven his Triumph under the WELCOME TO TIGERTOWN sign hanging from a gallows arm over the access road entrance, he’d read the hand-painted markers along the side of the state highway spaced out like old Burma Shave ads.

Even though he’d seen them on his other visits to Raymond and his old lady, there was something about the visual rhythm of them passing by as he sped up the road, throbbing in his eyes like a dull strobe. They commanded his attention and he read each one of them every single time, as if the visit before and the one before that and the third and second and first didn’t matter. He needed reminding. Yes, this way to Tigertown. The memories will last.

Before he took the turn for Route 30, Orrin glanced at the plywood board affixed with rusted baling wire to the EXIT 42 marker that read:

Before that were the entrance ramp and the city streets in Bannock Falls and the driveway of the Dead Soldiers MC clubhouse. Setting all these future memories in motion was President Bunker sitting on a barstool smoking an American Spirit unfiltered and saying, “You tell him, if he couldn’t afford the interest, he never shoulda taken out the loan.”

The movement of time seemed to still while Orrin existed in a ghost world of memories. If he hadn’t bought his first bike, if he hadn’t met “Demon” Langan in The Rising Phoenix bar, if he hadn’t become a Prospect and earned his rocker patches, if he hadn’t been loyal and dependable and stood for the vote to be Sergeant at Arms, if he hadn’t had the day off of work and gone into the clubhouse for a whiskey and a few laughs, everything might’ve turned out differently.

If.

But none of that had gone differently. These were the choices he’d made. The collection of decisions that brought him to the present moment where he sat in a straight-backed chair in a rundown ex-farmhouse turned roadside attraction halfway to Vulcan Hot Springs trying not to puke at the sight of brains and the smell of blood and gun smoke.

The distant clack of the hand cannon dropping onto the glass table top, and the sharp crack of it giving way and spilling hot steel and shards into the floor below set time moving forward again. Reality surged into motion and flowed around Orrin as his legs spasmed straight, trying to propel him away from the blast that was already long gone. His chair tipped and he went over, falling backwards, sprawling gracelessly on his back as the ancient boxy television on the entertainment centre behind him wobbled and threatened to mash his own brains into the deep-pile carpet.

Orrin scrambled to his feet, his head swimming and lungs struggling for fresh air while all he breathed was the stench of the piss and shit filling Raymond’s Wranglers intermingling with the other odours of squalor. He bent down and put his hands on his knees, panting, trying to slow the beat of his heart. He was fluent in the language of violence—it had been taught to him early—but ever since his fourteenth year when he grew taller than his old man, it had always been uttered in his voice. He guided the hand that determined when and where and how that language was recorded and what message was sent. He’d done terrible things to living men before, but he’d never seen anyone blow his own head off. That troubled him in a deep place he didn’t know existed until now. A place of uncertainty and loss of control. Writ on the wall in front of him was an accusation in someone else’s script, an indictment he couldn’t answer, but one he might be held to account for anyway. His command over the situation had been wrenched away, and he couldn’t see what was coming next any better than Raymond could see anything anymore.

It was time to go.

He tugged his riding gloves up tighter, assuring himself he was still wearing them and didn’t have to wipe any fingerprints off of the chair or the doorknobs. His hearing slowly came back to life and he heard the ambient sounds of a house return. The refrigerator was running. A fan in the window struggled to move the summer heat around. He was repeating, “Aw fuck, aw fuck, aw fuck,” and hadn’t noticed that he’d been speaking until that moment. He backed up and pawed blindly at the door handle, unwilling to turn his back on the corpse, knowing it couldn’t get up to follow him, but still too unnerved to look away. The latch clicked and released and he pulled the door open and pushed against the screen with his ass. The hinges shrieked, and behind him he heard a low huff and growl.

He turned and saw the thing a hundred yards away, sniffing at the seat of his bike. He owned the largest, loudest motorcycle in the club. His brothers joked about it, asking if Triple A would send a crane to help him pick it up if it got knocked over in the parking lot. But the thing standing next to it, the tiger, was bigger than the bike.

The screen door slammed shut behind him with a loud bang. The animal raised its massive head and looked at him, its eyes full of intelligence and intention. It opened its mouth and growled. Since the club had discovered Tigertown, seeing big cats was as common for Orrin as spying cows in fields along the highway. But, unlike a cow, he’d never seen a tiger with nothing in between him and it but distance. And that’s all that separated them now: a frighteningly short distance. No cage, no moat. Just open space.

He grasped at the door, desperate to rejoin a dead man and get back inside. Behind him, he heard the footfalls of a perfect predator making short work of maybe twenty-five yards. Fifteen. Five. The screen swung open, and Orrin leaped into the house, flinging the solid front door shut behind him. It slammed as he heard the beast land on the porch, yowling its frustration. He threw his back against the wood and twisted the deadbolt, squinting his eyes shut, waiting for the feeling of the door and six hundred pounds of hungry beast falling on top of him. Instead, he heard the creature pacing back and forth on the boards outside. It roared. The sound scared Orrin worse than the report of Raymond’s forty-five, worse than anything he’d ever heard.

He jerked his pistol out of its holster, aiming it at the door with a quivering hand. For the first time in his life, it felt perfectly impotent in his grip. He hadn’t had a chance to draw it when Raymond had pulled his piece from between the sofa cushions.

Worthless then.

And the tiger between him and his bike was waiting on the other side of a door without a window. He couldn’t see it to even try to get a shot off.

Worthless now.

He stepped away from the door, crouched low, and crept to the window to get a look out onto the deck. Though he couldn’t see the tiger, he could hear it walking away from him on the creaky boards. He imagined it was searching for another way in. It roared again, and Orrin’s pulse thrummed in his ears both faster and louder.

He had no idea if his piece even packed the kind of punch to kill a tiger. The thought of such a thing had never even occurred to him; his handgun was made for killing men. To him, tigers were the sort of animal that seemed untouchable. Like some kind of creature from myth that existed in the liminal spaces between light and dark and only stepped out to take what they wanted. Of course he knew they weren’t mythical creatures. He’d seen them often enough right here in Tigertown.

Orrin had toured the “zoo” with the rest of the Dead Soldiers a couple of times. The cages were made of chicken wire stretched around scrap wood from pallets and who knew what else. He assumed, like everyone else, that the cages, however ramshackle they appeared, were sturdy and secure. He’d thought, Raymond and Val wouldn’t live here if they weren’t. Right? But then, he knew people who did stupid, self-destructive shit all the time. They rode in the rain, they shot smack, they borrowed money from the Dead Soldiers, and they visited places like Tigertown off of Route 30, halfway to Vulcan Hot Springs. Of course one of the cats had broken free; it was an inevitability. And it was his bad luck that he happened to be here when it happened. Not luck. Bunker. Bunker had sent him instead of coming himself because he wanted to send Raymond a message. I don’t come when you call, like a dog.

The sound of the big cat’s steps on the porch grew louder, and for a brief moment, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of an orange-and-black blur in the window. He aimed, and it was gone. He thought maybe if he went upstairs, he could lean out and try to get it from above, taking his shots from a safe position. He reckoned, whether or not his piece was capable of killing one, a mag full of nine mil rounds would discourage it at least—but only if he could hit it. His hand was shaking so badly he was uncertain he could even hit the door right in front of him. His gaze returned to Raymond’s gun resting in the mess of glass on the carpet. It held fewer rounds, but packed a bigger punch. If he could kill the thing with five bullets, then he could put the piece back where he found it, and maybe it’d look like Raymond had greased himself in despair over having to off one of his precious cats. He slipped his own pistol back into its holster and reached through the chrome table frame to pick up the Taurus revolver. It felt better, heavier, in his hand. He tightened his grip and walked out of the front room.

But before that.

TUESDAY

The Fort Basin County Sheriff parked her truck in the driveway a few yards from the front door and killed the engine. She sat for a moment, listening, waiting for the proprietor to come out like he always did when someone first arrived at Tigertown, waving like an idiot and welcoming them to “The best safari this far from Darkest Africa!” Pat had brought her kids here once and instantly regretted it when she saw the condition of the cages holding the animals. They were cramped and ramshackle and, worst of all, filthy. She led her boys through the tour, pretending everything was all right, but feeling fearful and increasingly angry at the people who kept the animals in these conditions. Before that, the kids had been so excited to see tigers they’d practically jumped out of the car and run up ahead as she eased up the driveway, afraid of hitting another visitor or wrecking the already struggling suspension on the deep frost heaves and ruts in the road. Kyle and Patrick had seen big cats before at the Salt Lake City Zoo, but they’d heard stories from their friends about this place. About how close you could get. About how many tigers there were. They were as excited as she’d ever seen them, and couldn’t turn around without losing the little credibility she worked to establish with young boys embarrassed to have a cop for a mom. They were good kids, though, and were as disappointed and disgusted at the state of the place as she was.

Now, she held the papers in her hand and felt a tinge of satisfaction at the idea that she was starting something that might lead to better lives for the animals behind the house. She pushed open the truck door. It creaked loudly on rusting hinges and she winced. While the city PD an hour up the highway was getting all sorts of secondhand military equipment from the Feds, the County still had her rolling around in an old Bronco with a hundred and fifty thousand miles and a rebuilt engine. She left the door hanging open and crunched through the gravel on the way to the front porch. Before she got to the steps, Raymond burst out the front door, tucking in his denim shirt and looking like he had just woken up. Pat checked her watch. A quarter to eleven.

Raymond nodded at her with his chin and spat on the porch. “What’re ya’ after, Officer?”

“That’s Sheriff Trudell, Mr Pawlaczuk. I’m here on official business.”

“Mr Pawlaczuk?” Raymond said his own name with contempt, as if being called anything other than Raymond was an insult to his age. Pat herself did the same thing anytime someone called her Mrs Trudell. She’d reply with a folksy, Aw hell. My grandmother is Mrs Trudell. I’m Patricia. Pat for short. Her grandmother was now twenty years in the ground, and Pat was in her late forties. There was no arguing she wasn’t the elder Trudell woman in Fort Basin County. On top of it, her husband had died more than five years ago in Afghanistan. She wasn’t Mrs Anyone. All her affectations of youth were falling away with the passing days. Still, Raymond had at least twenty years on her. Maybe more.

She held the twin envelopes out. He refused to reach for them or even come down the steps. She took a step up onto the first riser. “That’s just far enough, Sheriff. Whatcha got there?”

“An order to cease and desist all operations on this… animal preserve, and a notice of foreclosure from the county. This zoo is operating illegally without permits or any of the licensure a man’d need to keep exotic animals. The conditions are a violation of county and state health requirements for both humans and livestock. And the county had condemned this house as well.” She failed at suppressing a smile. “You’re out, Raymond. We’re closing you down.”

FRIDAY

The stench grew stronger as he made his way deeper into the house. Competing smells of unwashed dishes and old garbage hovered on top of the scent of wild animal seeping in from outside. Just standing in this place made Orrin feel filthy.

Turning the corner on his way to the stairs, he passed the kitchen and half expected to see an orange-and-black monster sitting at the dinner table, licking its lips, wearing a barbecue bib, with a knife and fork clutched in its paws. Instead, all he saw was last night’s dishes and a pile of junk mail on the table. Beyond that, the back door. He crossed the room and checked the lock. He knew a tiger couldn’t turn a knob, but still, it made him feel slightly better to know the deadbolt was thrown.

The oppressive heat muddied his already jangled thoughts. He stared out the window in the kitchen door, and tried to remember the layout of the property, wondering if there was a way to flank the animal the long way around and get to his bike. While he’d toured the “zoo” a few times, it had been with his brothers along, distracting him. They’d laughed and talked shit and paid no attention to anything around them because they were the Dead Soldiers and the world stepped aside when they rode or strode through. Exit strategies and future plans weren’t anything they bothered with. A man, especially a Dead Soldier, walked out the same door he walked in. Except, Orrin was merely a man. And— one percenter or not—he couldn’t outfight a fucking tiger. His bike was parked in front, and that was his only way out. He had to outsmart the animal.

He went back out of the kitchen and found the stairs to the second floor. He took them three at a time. Somehow, it smelled worse upstairs than down. He approached the door on the south-facing side of the hallway. It was closed. His hand hovered by the knob as he imagined Raymond’s old lady, Val, waiting inside with a shotgun in her lap ready to cut him in half, leaving him to die like his father, bleeding out on the floor of a strange woman’s bedroom. He assured himself that Val wasn’t on the other side. If she was, she would’ve come running when Raymond checked out. He reached for the knob, and as soon as he cracked the door, he knew she was right where he feared he’d find her. Except, instead of sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him with a twelve-gauge, she was laid out, arms folded across her chest, face pale, a dark red stain under her hands. The high-pitched drone of flies buzzing in the room was maddening. He steadied himself against the doorjamb and tried to breathe, but the smell of her invaded his nostrils, made him feel like smothering, like he was being drowned in filth. He breathed her in and gagged. How long had she been lying there dead, waiting to be found? How long had Raymond been planning this?

Orrin recalled Bunker telling him to go to Tigertown. “That fucker Raymond’s been calling for two goddamn days,” he’d said. “You go find out what the fuck he wants and give him a reminder that he doesn’t get to demand a meet with me. I’ll talk to him when I want, not when he fuckin’ feels like it.”

Two days. She’s been in here two days.

Summer in Tigertown stank. The heat baked the dry dirt outside like a kiln and the smell of sun-cooked tiger piss hovered, pungent, in the air. And under that, there was rot. Raymond and Val tossed sides of beef, whole chickens, pigs and whatever else they could get their hands on into the cages to keep a dozen big cats alive. But they didn’t pick up after them, and whatever the cats didn’t eat sat in the sun, swarmed by flies and growing ever rank with decay. Compared to the bedroom, though, the cages smelled like the Yankee Candle shop in the mall.

Orrin put a hand over his mouth. The effect was minimal, merely adding a hint of leather to the fetor of the room. He pressed harder with the back of his glove, held his gorge, and staggered toward the window next to the bed.

The window fought him as he tried to yank it open with his left hand. The frame was old and neglected and it got stuck at an odd angle halfway open. He wanted to smash it. The sound of recalcitrant things breaking was often how Orrin measured compliance. Wood, glass… bones. But shattering the window wasn’t going to help him get away without leaving a trace. When the police finally showed up, he didn’t want them to find any sign the Dead Soldiers had been here. He put the pistol on the sill, held his breath, and slid the window down before lifting it open again more gently with both hands. This time it rose without sticking. He pushed the screen out, letting it clatter to the ground, leaned through and took a deep breath of merely distasteful air.

He looked down and muttered, “Fuuuck me.” The eaves below the window blocked his view of the porch and the tiger. He couldn’t hear it anymore either. Had it just stopped moving or had it moved on? He’d half expected to see it react to the falling screen, but it wasn’t a housecat. He didn’t figure he was about to distract it with a ball of yarn or a laser pointer.

In the distance, his motorcycle gleamed in the sunlight like an oasis. Shimmering in the hot air distortion as if it would vanish if he got too close. While the path from the house to his Triumph looked clear from up where he stood, he knew that was the real illusion.

Then he saw it.

The animal was stalking away from the house into the tall weeds on the other side of his bike. He watched it turn and crouch down. A shiver passed through Orrin as he realized the thing was lying in wait for him. Hunting. But the cat’s pelt was brighter than the dry brush in which it hid. He had it dead to rights.

He knelt down in front of the open window and took aim. His hand trembled with adrenaline and the unfamiliar weight of Raymond’s hand-cannon. The thing wasn’t right below him anymore. At this distance, he’d be better off trying to get the shot with a deer rifle. Raymond almost definitely had a thirty-aught somewhere in the house. He knew the old bastard had to be poaching deer to feed the cats. There was no way he could afford to buy enough meat from the butcher for his zoo. Not the way he kept coming to the Dead Soldiers for money. But Orrin had the tiger in his sights right now and didn’t want to risk losing that advantage while he went looking for a better weapon. He aimed, let out a slow breath, and squeezed the trigger.

The report of the gun deadened his ears. The fucking thing was loud. His own pistol made demure little pop pop pops compared to this one.

A small cloud of dust kicked up from the ground where the slug hit yards away from his target. He blinked in the bright daylight and tried to re-aim, but couldn’t see where the tiger had gone. It moved so fast. And now, instead of knowing where it was, he was blind to it again. I should’ve waited. Fucking stupid. If he’d had any illusion about what his role in predator and prey was, it was dispelled.

He stared at his bike. He reckoned the distance between the front door and his ride wasn’t one he could cross before the tiger cut him off. Even though the animal was probably half-starved from its keepers’ neglect, it could see, hear, run and kill better than he could on his very best day. The damn thing had almost got him when all he was sprinting for was the door at his ass. He had to find the rifle. He needed more power, and a scope. Hunt it like they did in Africa or India or whereeverthefuck a tiger like that was from. He ducked inside and immediately wanted back out again.

Orrin breathed through his mouth, trying not to smell the rot breaking down Val’s body. She smelled worse than the carcasses they threw in the animals’ cages. Of course she did. She was whole, guts and all. She was human.

That was his way out.

But before that.

TUESDAY

Raymond asked, “So, you’re the lawyer for the county now too?”

“Nosir. I’m just doing my job. You asked and I told you. And since you’re here looking me face to face, it doesn’t matter if I put these in your hand or toss ’em at your feet. You been duly served as I see it.” She held the papers out and waited another couple of seconds. Raymond reached over and snatched them out of her hand with a sound like “Fuck you” beneath the rattle of the envelopes, but definitely not a clear “Fuck you,” or else Pat would have been inclined to take another step or two up onto the porch after him.

“Unconstitutional!” he shouted. “It’s my goddamned property, and I can do what I want with it.”

“Tell it to the judge. Afternoon, Raymond.” Pat didn’t need to stick around to watch him open the envelope. She’d done her duty. Though she wanted the extra pleasure of seeing the results of her effort play out on his face, it would only aggravate him more to linger. Her job was to deescalate conflict. So, she tipped her hat and turned to leave. Pat stepped down and started back toward her truck. She heard the sound of paper being balled up, but didn’t care. If Raymond ignored the summons and they issued a bench warrant for his arrest, all the better. She’d be happy to come out again and gaffle him up personally. She’d even do it on her day off. Hell’s sake, she’d do it on Christmas if it meant shuttering Tigertown for good. It wasn’t until she heard the sound of something hard sliding against leather that she realized she shouldn’t have turned her back on the man. She spun around, flipping the leather tab off the hammer of her revolver and tried to draw. The bullet from Raymond’s gun caught her in the thigh and sent her sprawling. She lost hold of her gun and it bounced out of her hand and slid away in the dirt. Heavy footsteps raced toward her as she tried to scramble for it. But the broken bone and screaming hole in the back of her leg kept her from reaching it in time. A shadow fell on her and she turned over, holding up her hands.

Raymond loomed over her, his expression dark and angry. He hadn’t had time to regret what he’d done yet, but it would come. His face would change when he realized what a terrible mistake this was.

“It’s a fucking injustice and I won’t stand for it. This is my property and this is still America.”

“S-stop. Stop this. The D-deputy Sheriff knows I’m here. Everyone… knows. Th-this is… is official business. It’s not personal,” she lied. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming out to Tigertown. She’d seen the envelopes awaiting service and, instead of handing them on to her deputy, had taken them herself. She wanted to see his expression when she served him. Because it was personal.

Raymond’s face fell. Fury changed to fear and the realization that he’d just lost everything. His house, his farm, the cats, and now his freedom. Maybe, eventually, his life at the end of a needle. No matter what, he was going away. Pat felt a hint of satisfaction at the idea of it. But while the day was hot, she was starting to feel cold and tired and satisfaction soon became fear and realization. Oh, shit. I’m bleeding out.

She tried to reach for the radio transmitter on her epaulette. Raymond stepped on her arm and bore down. It hurt less than her leg, but still, it hurt goddamn bad. She couldn’t help it and cried out in a way she never had done on the job. The only female sheriff in all the state’s forty-six counties, she didn’t have the luxury of a high-pitched cry. In her own ears, she sounded like one of her sons. The seven-year-old had a way of keening high at his hurts. Pat thought she sounded like him just then.

She thought of her sons.

Raymond reached down and yanked the transmitter cable out of her radio. He took the whole thing and threw it back up toward the porch. It squawked once and was silent. “Pigs don’t squeal in Tigertown, Sheriff. It gets the cats too excited.”

FRIDAY

Orrin found the gun locker in a room downstairs. It might have been a dining room once, some place for the family that built this house to gather at the end of a long day of honest work and eat together. Orrin knew hard work, though he wasn’t sure he could call much of it honest. And if his family had ever taken a meal together, it was before he was old enough to hold on to such a memory. In the corner stood an oak gun cabinet like the one his grandfather had owned. The glass door and tiny lock wouldn’t keep anyone from getting their hands on anything inside—it wasn’t a safe, it was a china hutch for rifles. And Raymond had a collection. Any other time, Orrin would be considering taking the lot of them home with him. There was a pump shotgun, a pair of .22 calibre rifles, and exactly what he was looking for: a Remington bolt-action .30-06 with a scope. He tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. He grabbed the thirty-aught and considered taking the shotgun as well. He could only fire one rifle at a time, though, and if his plan worked, he wouldn’t need the shotgun at all. Still, while he’d have to leave the deer rifle behind to make it look like Raymond had put down the cat before taking himself out, the Mossberg was going to be Orrin’s reward for having to endure this mess of shit.

He pulled out the drawer underneath the cabinet. Boxes of ammunition were stacked neatly inside. It seemed to him the only space in the house that had any order. He dug through until he found the right calibre and took the box. He loaded four long rounds into the rifle, stuffed the remainder, still in the box, into his jacket pocket and returned upstairs.

His stomach did a hard flip in the doorway to the bedroom and he gagged again. Time in the house wasn’t doing anything to help him get used to the smell. He set the rifle by the door and shrugged out of his leather jacket, letting it drop to the floor. The buckle on the kidney belt made a loud clank as it hit the hardwood and he flinched a little. He pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his face the way he’d seen kids playing in his neighbourhood do, pretending to be ninjas. He tied the short sleeves behind his head. The shirt was sweaty and smelled like his body odour and engine grease. Though the house was stifling and breathing through the cloth only made him feel hotter, the smell of it was soothing in its familiarity. Those were the aromas of sitting in his garage working on his bike, smoking a little weed and drinking a beer. They were the smells of normality and peace. Still, there was much more than a hint of Val’s stench getting through. He’d heard stories of how the smell of a dead body never came out of things. That you could smell it in a house for years afterward. He could burn his clothes and buy himself brand new ones, all except for the denim cut-off jacket he wore over his leathers—his kutte. He couldn’t replace that or the club patches sewn on it. He’d slice off the tattoo over his heart and throw that in the fire first. His kutte was therefore destined to always stink. If he survived this, he’d happily smell like a corpse. But first he needed to get out with both it and his skin intact.

Orrin took a deep breath through his mouth and approached the bed. Val’s skin was grey and mottled with long purple streaks, like her veins were swollen with dark ink. Her lips were the same purple and starting to blacken on the inside. Touching her felt like a very bad idea, even with his gloves on. As if death itself might rub off onto him. Bacteria was eating her up from the inside. He knew it couldn’t hurt him. He could wash up and everything would be fine. Still, he felt a powerful repulsion at the idea of getting too close to her, like the prehistoric fear of death he’d inherited from his most distant ancestor, calling out to him from across millennia: this is unclean. This is a bad thing. But he couldn’t listen to that voice. Moving Val was the only plan he’d come up with, and nothing else was springing to mind.

He grabbed her wrist and yanked. He’d expected her to be stiff with rigor mortis, but she wasn’t. Her body was loose, and he pulled harder than he meant to, jerking her to the edge of the mattress. Moving her made the smell worse and a wave of stench hit him like a fist even through the shirt covering his face. He looked at the mattress where she had been, and though there was an indentation, there was no bloodstain. The bullet that killed her hadn’t exited out her back. He was thankful for small miracles. He bent over, slid an arm behind her shoulders, the other under her knees, and lifted her off the mattress. She was skinny and light, though her limp body was uncooperative. He had to hold her tightly and close. She was dressed for summer in a crop top and a pair of shorts. The feel of her cool skin against his naked belly made him feel ill. He hadn’t thought to put his coat back on and zip it up, and now it was too late. They were skin to skin, and he didn’t want to prolong it. He kept breathing through his mouth and walked out of the room holding the dead woman.

He carried her down the stairs and into the front room where her old man still sat cooling on the sofa. Orrin felt angry and wanted to kick the shit out of the fucker. Even if he was dead and couldn’t feel it, at least he’d know Raymond was getting the beating he deserved. He left the dead man alone and looked outside. There was no sign of the tiger that he could see. Just the porch and the drive and his bike.

At the door, he dipped down like he was curtsying to twist the deadbolt latch. Val’s head lolled around and he reflexively squeezed tighter to keep from dropping her. Like it would matter if he did. The feeling of her body giving in his arms broke him a little. She was soft and felt like a person. There was something wet on his arm. He tried not to think about it. Pulling the door open, he waited for a second, ready to kick it closed if he saw the blur of a big cat racing toward him. When nothing came running out of the weeds, he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and pushed at the screen door with Val’s hip. It opened with a pop and a loud creak. He stepped outside.

The stairs groaned beneath his weight as he descended. The sound made his back tense and his heart beat a little quicker. At the bottom, he stopped and listened. He couldn’t hear much above the breeze and his own breathing in the makeshift mask. He hazarded a glance back at the porch. Though there hadn’t been anything there a moment ago, he wanted—needed—to be certain he could get back inside. It was one thing to run a few feet into the house, but if it cut him off and he had to run the other direction, it was all over. It was a comfort to see nothing in between him and the front door. He took a few more steps out into the open and knelt down to lay her body in the dirt. He looked over his shoulder at the window to the second-storey bedroom. Crouched where he was, the window was clear of the eaves. Good enough.

Sunlight glinted off the rear-view mirror of his motorcycle, and with no sign of the animal around, the urge to sprint toward it pulled at him like a hook in his flesh. But my fuckin’ kutte’s in the house. Orrin chided himself for leaving it behind. Stress and fear were going to kill him as sure as an escaped tiger. He needed to get his shit together if he wanted to ride away from this place.

He stood and began walking quietly, but quickly, back to the house. Behind him he heard the rustle of the tall weeds. It might have been the breeze. Or it might have been a beast. Either way, his bladder almost let go and he sprinted for the front door.

He leaped up the stairs, nearly falling as he cleared the bottom four, but not the last two. He scrambled across the deck and ripped open the screen. It banged against the side of the house, and Orrin was inside and slamming the front door before the screen swung back into place.

“FUCK! YOU!” he screamed, ashamed at his naked terror. He shook and slammed a fist into the door. Pain reached up from his knuckles into his wrist, but he didn’t care, and he punched it again, shouting out his frustration. Taking a deep breath, he looked at his hand while he flexed it. It wasn’t broken. Sprained maybe, but as long as he could hold a throttle it’d be fine. More importantly, he felt sure he could still pull a trigger.

A soft sliding sound and a muted thump made Orrin jump again. He spun around, arms up in front of his face.

Raymond’s corpse had slumped over on the sofa. Whether it had been the reverberations of Orrin’s violence or simply gravity, the result was the same: Orrin’s chest felt tight and he was breathless. His vision blurred as he tried to keep from hyperventilating. “I hope you’re sweating in Hell, motherfucker!” he hissed from between clenched teeth. He went to the window and looked outside. If the tiger had been behind him, it wasn’t there now. He was beginning to feel like the animal was a dream. Raymond had drugged him somehow and he was hallucinating everything. Except, he could see Val out there dead in the road, and Raymond was spilling what was left of his brains onto the couch behind him. And this was still Tigertown. He wasn’t hallucinating. Somewhere out there, death was waiting, tooth and claw.

He stumbled into the kitchen and searched the cupboards until he finally found what he wanted in the one above the refrigerator. A big plastic jug of tequila stood next to a smaller bottle of cheap margarita mix with a woman wearing fruit on her head on the label. He grabbed the tequila, twisted off the cap, and took a healthy couple of gulps to settle his nerves. He forced himself to stop, replaced the cap and then the bottle. Just enough to give him the Dutch courage he needed.

He stomped upstairs, snatching his jacket off the floor and slinging it on without untying the T-shirt from around his face. He grabbed the rifle and went to wait at the window.

Earlier.

WEDNESDAY

Val stood in the doorway watching Raymond pull his stained shirt up over his head. He dropped it on the floor. She picked it up to throw in the fire pit along with the Sheriff’s uniform. “Did you get through? Did you try calling again?”

He shook his head. “Nope. They ain’t answerin’. I can’t imagine what the Soldiers can do to help, anyways. With what we already owe ’em too? There’s nothin’ in it for them.”

“Horseshit. They won’t get any of their money if we go to jail. Cats’re already takin’ care of the bitch. We throw this in the burn pit with her uniform,” she said, holding up his shirt, “and all we got left to do is get rid of the truck in the barn. Choppin’ a truck is the least bad thing those sons a bitches get up to. It don’t cost them a thing.”

Raymond stepped out of his pants. His tight, off-white underwear sagged off of a skinny ass that was twenty-five years past firmness. He looked at his wife with tired eyes and said, “We’re fucked up way past fixin’. You ought to pack a bag and go. I reckon they’ll be out tomorrow at the latest lookin’ for her. I’ll say you went to see your sister up in Mercy Lake and you weren’t here when she came by to give me the papers. Takes a whole day to get there, so nobody’ll be able to say for sure just when you hit the road. Evelyn’ll vouch for you.”

“And what are you going to do?” Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. “You’re not gonna…”

“Go grab your bag.” He stepped into a pair of jeans he pulled off the top of the overflowing hamper. “Pack up what you need and get on the road. No sense in both of us getting caught up in this.”

Val didn’t say anything as he walked out of the room. She didn’t ask him to come back, or offer a better plan. She just let him go.

When he returned, she had the bag on the bed and was stuffing clothes into it. She looked up from what she was doing. Her brow knitted as she saw the gun in his hand. “Are they here already?”

He raised the pistol and fired.

FRIDAY

Sweat moistened the shirt on his head, but the cloth kept it from dripping in his eyes while he watched the road. He’d scanned the weeds and the far edges of the property with the rifle scope, but he wasn’t catching sight of the tiger. He’d thought for certain Val’s body and the promise of an easy meal would lure it out, but it had been forty minutes and it hadn’t taken the bait. He wondered whether it had wandered off, looking for other prey. There was no shortage of horses and cattle in the countryside around the county. Sheep and a few alpacas too. He decided he’d give it another twenty minutes, and then he was going to try sneaking out to get away. And then he saw it.

It was stalking around the opposite side of the house by the barn, instead of where he’d seen it when he tried to take the shot with the pistol. His heart thumped harder at the sight of it. The thing was big and moved like liquid. It was beautiful and terrifying. A perfect thing. He almost regretted having to kill it.

The tiger slowed its pace and lowered its head as it came closer to Val’s body, sniffing at her. Orrin centred the crosshairs on the top of its skull and waited.

What are you waiting for? Dig in.

The animal looked around as if it was trying to figure out where Val had come from. It reached out with a paw and grabbed at her. Val’s body jerked like it was a child’s doll and the tiger bit down on her neck and quickly started to drag her back the way it had come. At the edge of the road near the weeds, it plopped down and tore off a long strip of her flesh.

Bile burbled up Orrin’s throat, stinging and threatening to choke him.

He swallowed, re-aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

The sound in the bedroom was deafening and he thought he might have let out a yelp of pain, though he didn’t hear it if he did. His ears were dead and ringing; his head hurt a little. He pushed past all of that to pull back on the bolt handle and eject the spent casing. He shoved the bolt back into place and chambered a new round. Through the scope he saw the tiger lying next to Val. A pool of dark blood was spreading from its skull and muddying up the dirt. He contemplated putting another round in it, but deaf or not, the rifle was loud, and he didn’t want to risk attracting any more attention than that shot might’ve already. Even this far out in the boonies people didn’t like hearing rifle reports near where their kids got off the bus, or where they were grazing their livestock.

He stood up and shook out his legs. His knees and his fist ached. The ride home was going to be long. But it didn’t matter. It was going to be the best ride of his life. He’d just killed a fucking tiger. None of his brothers were ever going to be able to top that no matter how many points the next buck had. He just had to trade rifles and he could get on his way.

Earlier in the day.

FRIDAY

Raymond ran out the back as soon as he heard the motorcycle pulling up the drive. He’d just about given up hope that Bunker was coming. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and looked at his zoo. He thought that he’d miss his cats. But then, probably not.

“Time to raise hell.”

FRIDAY

Orrin stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind him and took a deep breath of fresh air. He walked down the steps, not looking over at where he’d shot the tiger. He’d made sure it was dead before he came down from his roost. He’d put the rifle back in the gun cabinet and took the Mossberg along with the ammo. It wouldn’t do for the cops to find shells for a shotgun that wasn’t in the house. He wrapped the box of shells in his T-shirt and stuffed that into his saddlebag. The shotgun he tied to the side of the bike with bungee cords. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d get him home.

He swung a leg over the bike and turned the key. The engine roared to life and he twisted the throttle. His hearing was coming back slowly, but it was still muffled. Between that and his pipes, he never heard the animal behind him.

When it pulled him off the seat into the tall grass he had no idea what was happening until he was already on his back. Everything was a blur. He felt claws puncturing his jacket and his flesh underneath. He felt its hot breath, and then the thing’s teeth biting down on his neck. Orrin wanted to reach for his pistol, but it was under him in the holster at the small of his back. He beat uselessly against the animal with his fists. He struggled and kicked but the tiger knelt down on its elbows and held him there. He tried to gasp for breath, but the jaws holding him were tight and he couldn’t breathe.

He felt a hard tug at his leg and a searing pain as his leathers ripped open and a long muscle tore away from his bone. Another tug. The tiger that had taken him down tightened its hold on his neck. The sound of his spine breaking echoed inside his own skull like when he’d bite down on a piece of gristle. It was a vibration from inside his body, not a sound outside.

The bright day grew dim, even though the sun wouldn’t be going down for hours. And he slipped away while the other hungry tigers ate him, leaving nothing left in his life to come.

Before that, he had been a man who would have liked to have taken a last ride.

Long before that, he had been a boy who loved his bicycle, and the feeling like flying when he rode it down the tall hill behind his house and took his hands off the handlebars.

And earlier still, he was a child and occasionally his mother held him and whispered to him, her breath tickling his ear like a warm bourbon breeze.

And before that, he wasn’t yet born and was exactly like he was now.

Gone in silence, as though he never existed.