Winter Study

Bob.

He was still sitting, head atilt, mouth agape, a mute old hound trying to bay at the moon. A

Her shout roused Bob. He rolled onto all fours and swayed back and forth, his eyes never leaving her. For an instant, she thought he was going to charge like a grizzly, and the fear of being torn apart by teeth made for grinding corn sent a jolt of fear through her that brought the bile to her throat. His eyes focused, and he pulled himself to a standing position, using the tree he’d been taking advantage of since he’d fled the cliff’s edge. Upright, he looked no less like a grizzly and no more like a man.

Blinking the image away, A

Bob Menechi

“Give me a hand up, if you would, Bob,” A

A

“Easy, easy, Bob,” A

Fighting a revulsion that made the pain pale by comparison, A

His big hands crawled over her body, pulling at her clothes. Then he stepped back and shoved her hard in the chest. A

He held up a rectangle of black and waggled it back and forth. He’d been frisking her for her radio. As she watched, he carried it to the cliff edge and threw it over.

She didn’t ask what he was doing. She had a bad feeling; she knew. He plucked the skis out of the snow one by one, then the poles. They followed the radio over the escarpment.

Displaying the same ease with which he’d lifted her, Bob set the snowmobile to rights. The key was still in the ignition.

“You scared?” he asked.

“Pardon?” A

“You heard me,” he said. He threw a leg over the seat of the snow-mobile and reached for the ignition key.

“Yeah,” A

He sat back and smiled. She couldn’t remember seeing a smile uncoil as slowly as Bob’s did. It came over the lower half of his face, then rose to his eyes in the malicious sunrise of the day of Armageddon.

“You and Robin thought it was pretty fu

A

“Smirk,” A

“I think it’s pretty fu

A

“Maybe a ride back to the bunkhouse. Maybe nothing.”

“Deal,” she said. “I’m only going to do it once. Get your fat ass over where you can get a good look,” she said nastily. The insult moved him off the machine. A

“Women want balls now, that it? Fast-tracked into jobs you can’t handle. Scraping babies out of your cunts because you fuck everything that moves and don’t want to be mamas. You don’t want to wear the pants. No, that’s not good enough for you, is it? You want to have the cock. No more pretend. No more strapping it on and fucking your girlfriends. A real cock. You think you can take it right off a man, don’t you?”

Bob was working up a good head of steam. The euphoria of the cat tranquilizer was double-edged, and the dark side was rising. He stopped eight or ten feet from her.

Too far.

“Well, I wouldn’t take yours,” A

Bob stepped into her, almost straddling her. He grabbed her hood and jerked her head up. His fist went back.

And A

Bob backhanded her. As easily as a grown man would throw a cat off, Bob knocked her off him. One hand still on his privates, he crawled away. Confused by the ketamine and the sudden assault, he took a minute or more to get his bearings. Then he stood and went back to the snowmobile. From beneath the seat, he took out a spa

“Bob, you’re not guilty of murder, but you kill me and you will be,” A

“I’m not going to kill you. You’re going to have an accident.” He grabbed her right boot, jerked it off and pulled her sock down. Holding the bare foot against the snow-covered rock, he smashed her ankle bone with the wrench.

Through the haze of misery that followed, A

Winter was going to do Bob’s dirty work for him.