Bad Men

She opened her door, then Da

“No, Mommy, I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry, Da

She held him in her arms and started to run.

It was Shepherd who went astray first. He was bringing up the rear, the bulk of Dexter like a great black bear before him. The shapes in the forest had u

“Could be locals on their way to help at the fire,” he said. “We can take care of them at the house, or avoid them. Doesn’t matter.”

Shepherd didn’t think it would be that simple. They looked almost like men, but Shepherd could have sworn that they were wearing furs, and even out here people had probably given up on furs a long time ago.

As they continued along the trail, Shepherd spent more and more time looking behind him, or to either side, and less time trying to keep Dexter in sight. The snow grew thicker and the bear shape ahead grew fainter, distinguishable only from the trunks of the trees by its movement. Shepherd stumbled on a hidden stone and landed on his hands and knees in the snow. When he stood up, there was no one in front of him, and the trail was gone.

“Shit,” he said. He put his hands to his mouth and whistled, then waited. There was no response. He whistled again, then tried calling. He didn’t care about the barely glimpsed figures now. He had a gun and anybody who was out here with them would have to be crazier than-

Than Moloch, he heard himself finish. Because Moloch was crazy. They all knew it, even if none of them had the guts to say it out loud. This obsession with the woman had led them into alien territory during just about the worst snowstorm that Shepherd had ever encountered. What they had here was a full-on blizzard, with Shepherd now stuck on his lonesome in the heart of it, and he was one hundred percent pissed at this turn of events. He had come for the promise of easy money, the lure of $100,000 for a couple of days’ work. That money could buy him a lot: a small house somewhere cheap and quiet, maybe a share in a business. Like Dexter and Braun, Shepherd was tired. He’d done time, and as you got older, jail time aged you faster. Even as the years inside passed slowly, infinitesimally slowly, the aging process seemed to accelerate. Dexter had seen young men come out old from a nickel stretch, and older men come out dying after a dime. Shepherd wasn’t sure that he could survive another spell inside. This was to have been his final gamble, Dexter’s and Braun’s too, he guessed, except that Dexter had changed since they’d last met. Now he spent his spare time staring into space or watching those damn DVDs in which everybody went down in a blaze of glory at the end. Dexter had given up hope, and now Shepherd wasn’t sure that he was any saner than Moloch. His was just a better organized form of insanity.

Shepherd looked at the compass on his watch. If he headed northeast, back the way they had come, he could find the road and then follow it to the boat. The way things were going, that boat was going to be a regular hot spot for lost men. He made one last effort to summon the others, then turned around and headed back toward the sea.

Dexter noticed Shepherd’s absence first, but the wind had found renewed force and was now howling into their faces. When he opened his mouth to speak, snowflakes began to colonize it like bugs on a summer’s day.

“Hey!” he shouted. Moloch and Scarfe paused.

“Shepherd ain’t back there.”

Moloch, buffeted by the wind, the snow thick around his boots, joined Dexter.” How long?”

“I don’t know. I checked just now and he was gone.”

Scarfe joined them, placed his fingers to his lips, and whistled. The sound was loud and shrill, even allowing for the dampening effect of the falling snow. There was no reply. Dexter leaned close to Moloch’s ear.

“This is turning to shit.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“Go back.”

“No.”

“We’re down to three men and we got no means of communication. I say we head back to the boat and wait this thing out.”

“Then what? You think they won’t clear the roads come morning?”

“First light, man. First light and we can do this thing, be gone before the people on the island start making breakfast.”

“She knows we’re here. First light, she’ll be gone. Worse, maybe she’ll figure that the best thing to do is to come clean with the cops. She does that, my friend, and we are royally fucked. We go on.”

“Listen-”

Moloch shoved him hard.

“We go on! The bitch is ru

It didn’t take Shepherd long to figure out that he was lost. After all, the forest should have been thi

He leaned against a tree trunk, took out his Zippo and lit up, keeping the cigarette shielded in his palm. He took a long drag, closed his eyes, then released the smoke through his nostrils.

When he opened his eyes, there were three men moving through the forest about fifty feet ahead of him. Shepherd whistled loudly but they didn’t respond, so he flicked the butt into the snow and started to go after them. He had closed the gap by about twenty feet when the man bringing up the rear turned around.

It wasn’t Dexter.

First of all, Dex had been wearing a black jacket and green combat pants. This guy was wearing some kind of hooded arrangement made from skins and fur. His face wasn’t visible beneath the hood. When he stopped, the other men paused too, and all three of them stared back at Shepherd.

Then the man bringing up the rear raised his weapon, and even through the snow Shepherd could see that it was an old, old gun, a muzzle loader.

Shepherd dived for cover as the gun flashed and smoke rose and a noise like ca

Shepherd aimed his own weapon and fired two shots. He didn’t give a damn about the need for silence or for concealment of their presence. Right now, his need was to survive. Shepherd saw one of the men rise and he fired again, the shot tearing through the layer of furs, and watched with satisfaction as he went down.

And rose again.

“No way,” said Shepherd. “That’s not possible.”

They were surrounding him. He could see one of them trying to flank him, to get behind him and cut off his retreat. Shepherd retreated, firing as he went, using the trees for cover. Twice he heard the great eruptions of the muzzle loaders, and one shot came so close that he felt its heat against his cheek as it passed.

He had been backing away for about a hundred feet when he found himself in the clearing. To his rear were a number of rough-hewn houses built from tree trunks. There were six or seven in all. In the doorway of one he spied a woman’s body, naked from the waist down. There was blood on her face and neck. Other bodies lay nearby, in various states of undress and mutilation. He could smell burning.