The Comfort of Black (20 page)

Hannah knew the first thing she had to do was move his shotgun out of reach, and as little as she wanted to get anywhere near Grizzly she ran around the front of the car, around Black's still body, until she reached Grizzly's weapon. She picked it up and threw it as far as she could, realizing as it was in mid-air that it might fire and kill her as it landed. But it crashed to the dirt fifteen feet away with no more than a soft thud.

Grizzly didn't even seem to notice her. He was on his back, focused on the hole in his stomach and the spreading pool of blood gurgling up through his dirty flannel shirt. Hannah took a few steps back, keeping her gun aimed at him the entire time.

“You…you fuggin' shot me.” His voice was strained and he did a half-crunch, attempting to look at his wound, but the pain overtook him and his head collapsed back onto the hard dirt with a thud.

Hannah felt nothing for him. Felt nothing for what she had done. Maybe it was shock, but she didn't think so. This man just took the punishment for everyone who had fucked up her life in the last week. And even though her body shook with adrenaline and fear, she didn't feel guilty. In fact, she even felt a little good.

She looked up and down the dirt road, which twisted out of view not too far in the distance in both directions. She didn't get the sense the road was traveled much, but who knew? Grizzly had heard the gunshots, so he couldn't have been too far away. Was he hunting? Was there a house or cabin close by?

Black was still passed out and Grizzly writhed in the dirt, his moans morphing into agonizing, gurgling howls. Blood now spilled up and over his massive gut and into the dirt, rendering it into a red clay. She had to get the hell out of there, but what did she leave behind? Did she leave Black? Did she leave Grizzly wounded but alive?

Fuggin' cunt whore
, she heard. Hannah looked down at the man she'd shot. Blood bubbled from his nose, streaking the
brown and white bush of his wildly ungroomed moustache. He wheezed as he spoke, each word sounding like it caused more pain than the previous one, making what he had to say seemingly the most important thing he'd ever uttered. “I'll cut your goddamn tits off.”

A scene unfolded in Hannah's mind. She saw herself leaving in Black's car, leaving the two men on the road. Someone comes along soon after—most likely one of Grizzly's kind. Maybe even a relative. A brother, perhaps. Grizzly is still alive, and his brother loads his kin and Black into his truck. The brother ties up Black while he takes Grizzly to the hospital. They call the gunshot an accident, but the truth is they don't involve the police because they want to take care of things their way. Mountain justice. Back at their ramshackle cabin, the two brothers decide the best way to hunt down Hannah is through Black. They take turns on him, taking not hours but days. They slowly destroy his hands, his feet, his teeth, ears, maybe even an eye. Piece by piece, until Black tells them everything he knows about Hannah. Finally they put him out of his misery, slicing his throat as they would a wild pig. They dump Black's mutilated body deep into the woods before setting out in their truck. They have a new purpose in their shitty lives. Finding this woman named Hannah. And when they do…

Two things were very clear as Hannah decided what to do next. One, she had to take Black with her.

Two, Grizzly had to die.

Hannah walked closer to Grizzly, cautiously, using the kind of slow, small steps associated with someone approaching a closet door in a horror movie. But she needed to be closer to him. She needed to do this right. One shot. Like putting a deer hit by a car out of misery.

She tried to steady her hand as she pointed the gun at his head. Grizzly looked up at her—eyes squinting beneath squirrel-tail eyebrows—and jerked his head from side to side. Hannah knew she could not close her eyes this time. Shooting at Black was a reaction. Shooting this man now was something different. It was an execution, and if she was going to do it she would not close her eyes. She would not squirm as if stepping on a spider. She would aim, pull the trigger, and make sure he died. He would have raped her. He probably would have killed her afterwards. If she let him live, he might be able to find her. So now he was going to die, and even though the man was deserving of it, she was going to respect his life enough to keep her eyes open as the bullet shattered his skull.

Hannah sucked in a breath and wiped sweat from her forehead with her arm. The wind kicked up just a touch, enough to swirl a few strands of her black hair around her face. She raised the gun a few inches, lining up his skull through the notch of the sight.

“No,” he said. It seemed the only thing he could say through the pain, and he repeated it over and over.
No. No. No
.

Her finger tickled the trigger.
Just pull it, Hannah. Pull the trigger and get the hell out of there
.

“No…” Head thrashing. Body twitching. He first tried to push back, his heels digging into the dirt and then slipping, but he was unable to move more than a couple inches.

Then he did the only other thing anyone in that situation could do to avoid death. Hannah should have seen it coming. She should have remembered how fast this man was, but she assumed his wound had incapacitated him.

Grizzly attacked.

Hannah saw his arm swipe toward her, and what she thought was his attempt to use momentum to push away from her instead became a python grip on her ankle. He squeezed like a monster grabbing a child's ankle from beneath a bed. And before she could shoot, Grizzly yanked her leg hard enough to topple her over.

Hannah fell hard, her tailbone slamming into the cold dirt. Tears welled in her eyes, the instantaneous reaction to searing physical pain. Her legs fell over his stomach, and she brought her left heel down onto his wound, not so much as a defensive move but a simple attempt to try to get up.

Grizzly howled and finally rolled to his side, toward her, pushing her legs back into her chest. And then he was on top of her. Just like that, with the same speed and agility he had shown in hitting Black. His weight pushed the air from her lungs and, as she looked up at him, she knew she was in trouble. This wasn't a man attacking her. He truly was a wounded bear, filled with the strength of every chemical flooding his body begging him to survive. His face was contorted with rage, spit hanging from his lower lip, a reddish white ooze threatening to fall in her eye.

Hannah tried to point the gun at him, managing to bring her arm up only a few inches before Grizzly slammed his massive fist into the left side of her face.

With the impact, nothing seemed to work anymore. Not her arms, her legs, not even her ability to move any part of her or make any sound. The only thing that worked in her body
was her nerve endings, which filled her brain with the notion of unbelievable pain. Her right cheek dull and flat against the ground, her left cheek on fire, a vision of a dirt road and trees in the distance. She heard him above her, grunting, growling. His weight crushed her, and as she tried to wriggle out from beneath him he pushed his palms into her shoulders, grinding her into the soil.

She felt wetness on the left side of her face, the side that seemed to have collapsed into itself, the side with the eye that would not open. Either it was her own blood or Grizzly's spit.

“If I'm gonna die,” he said, “I'm taking you with me.”

Suddenly the bulk of his weight was off her, though the pressure around her hips suggested he was straddling her waist.

This was how she was going to die. Hannah hoped it would be quick. Hoped his wound was too debilitating for him to do anything else but smash a rock into her head, bringing her quickly to an end.

She felt her fingers twitching outwards, seeking the gun, like a spider in a sink searching for something to cling to. But there was nothing. Only tiny pebbles and the sensation of dirt packing up beneath her nails.

She gave one last burst of effort, one last struggle, but it didn't matter. It was as if she was trapped under a fallen tree. She swiped her arm up toward her assailant and her fist landed against his flannelled torso with a soft thud. He didn't make a sound as she hit him.

Then Hannah felt the weight of his hand on her face, grabbing, squeezing. The pain seared through the nerves damaged by his knuckles, and she felt her head turning in his meaty paw.
He's snapping my neck. He's going to twist my head right off
. Her neck tightened reflexively and a spike of nausea shot through her core. The idea of her head turning until her neck simply cracked was unimaginable, but now it was happening.

fuck fuck fuck oh God

But Grizzly wasn't breaking her neck. He was lifting her head off the ground so Hannah could look up at him.

She saw nothing out of her left eye. Out her right she saw Grizzly staring down at her, smiling for a moment before succumbing to a bloody, hacking cough. Tendrils of thick, red saliva wormed from his lower lip, one of them breaking off and dropping onto her chin. Now he didn't seem as much of a grizzly as a bulldog, wide jowls wet in anticipation of a kill.

“Need…need to look at me when I kill you,” he said, struggling through his words. He straightened and grabbed his gut, grimaced through the pain. “Fuckin' cunt.
I'm gonna choke you out, and you're gonna smell my breath as you die.”

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, and the smile was back. “
Hell
yes.”

Hannah lifted her head and spat at his face. The small glob she could manage landed on his neck. “Then just fucking do it already,” she said. “And then I hope you bleed out, you pig.” She swiped at him again, and this time he caught her wrist and squeezed.

Kill the pig. Slice her throat
.

“Crazy bitch,” he said. He took her wrist and pinned it beneath his knee. Her only free limb was her left arm, and she landed a feeble punch on the side of his head as he leaned forward. He smiled as he put his fingers around her throat, his yellowed teeth crooked like tombstones in a ghost-town cemetery. The pressure from his hands increased, but slowly, a pound at a time. He wasn't strangling her with hate, but with studied practice. He peered down at her and stared into her face with wonder. Hannah could still breathe, but she was only a few exhales away from not being able to inhale again.

“Keep your eyes open,” he said. “I want to see them turn.”

She
could
smell his breath, just as he had promised. Rotten breath, the smell of tangy decay. If only he could smother instead of choke her, Hannah could at least escape this one last humiliation.

“Fuck you,” she managed, before she could no longer breathe. She was now underwater with the surface just out of reach.
Close your eyes, Hannah. Close your eyes and let go. Be at peace. Don't feel the pain, but anticipate what's next
.

Hannah closed her eyes, but instead of peace she only heard Billy, who haunted her even in her moment of death. The one moment that she should truly own for herself, he was there.

Ain't nothin' waiting for you after death, Hannie. Don't be stupid. What was you before you were born? Not a thing. That's how death is. Not a thing. In fact, that pretty much sums you up, don't it? You're not a thing. Not at all
.

All she could do was try to shut out his voice and hope for it to be over quickly. She felt her body temperature rise as her pulse quickened. Panic set in with every second she didn't breathe, which made her body fight for breath more violently. Her body spasmed. Muscles shuddered. Adrenaline surged. Reflexes took over. She heard herself gagging, felt the pressure on her neck, the sense her throat was going to simply cave in on itself. Liquid squeezed through her closed eyelids, either tears or blood.
Seconds
, she thought.
A few more seconds, and then peace. Just a few more…

A brightness flashed beneath the lids of her eyes, a scream tore through her brain, and then there was a sudden lifting. A sense of comfort, of lessening pain. The pain was still there, but the immediacy of it was gone.

No more pressure on her throat. No more stench of animal breath. Yet still the weight on her hips and thighs.

Hannah felt air rush down her windpipe, cold and thin, filling her empty lungs. She gasped at the suddenness of it all, almost gagging. The gasping turned to coughing, which in turn flared the pain on the left side of her face.

If I'm dead, this fucking sucks
.

Hannah opened her eyes. Grizzly remained straddled on top of her but he was now sitting upright, his hands held loosely in the air, fingers arched toward the sky. He was staring at the barrel
of a shotgun that was leveled directly over Hannah's head. The end of the barrel was less than a foot away from Grizzly's face.

Black's hands were tightly wrapped around the stock of the shotgun, his finger on the trigger. He remained on his knees, wobbling slightly, as if the world were trying to twist beneath him. A massive, red welt—the distinct outline of the butt of the shotgun visible—covered most of his forehead.

“Take it easy there, hero,” Grizzly wheezed.

Black pulled the trigger.

The shotgun roared and Grizzly's face exploded like a water balloon, bursting into a wet, red mist. His body rose from the impact of the buckshot, lifting off Hannah and collapsing on the dirt in front of her feet. Hannah pushed herself up to her elbows and stared at what was left of the man who almost killed her. She felt bile rise in her throat at the sight of bits of gray matter and skull scattered along the road. She turned to Black.

“You…” Her throat burned. “You could have hit me,” she rasped.

Black struggled to his feet. “Again, a ‘thank you' would be nice.”

She rubbed her neck, which felt like it had just been released from a noose. “I didn't need to be…”
Jesus, Hannah, really? You didn't need saving?
She looked at the ground. “Thank you.”