The Reapers

“Shit!” said Angel, as his foot caught on a cleft in the ground and sent him stumbling forward and to his left. Louis was beside him, and paused momentarily, but Angel didn’t fall. A spray of grass and dirt erupted from the ground slightly forward and to the right of where Angel now stood, even as he regained his balance and they continued ru

Angel looked to his left, but Louis wasn’t there.

“Hey,” he shouted. “You okay?”

There was no reply.

“Hey,” he called again, frightened now. “Louis?”

But there was only silence. Angel didn’t move. He had to find out where Louis was, but to do that would mean peering out from behind the tree, and if the shooter knew where he was, and was sighted on the tree, then he would end up dead. But he had to know what, if anything, had befallen his partner. He flattened himself as close to the ground as he could without exposing his legs to sight, began counting to three in his head, then at two decided to hell with it and risked a quick glance around the base of the tree.

Two things happened. The first was that he saw Louis lying on his side just beneath the lip of the small rise that descended toward the wood. He wasn’t moving. The second thing that happened was a bullet striking the tree trunk and sending splinters into Angel’s cheek, forcing him to retract his head quickly before another shot cured him of concerns about Louis, and splinters, and anything else in this life.

He was unarmed, the man who mattered most to him in the world was lying injured or dead and he couldn’t reach him, and someone had him under his gun. Angel had a pretty good idea who that person was: Bliss. For the first time in many years, Angel began to despair.

It had been a lucky shot, but Bliss was not averse to taking such chances when they were offered. The natural movement of his weapon, combined with Louis’s own momentum, had brought him into Bliss’s sight, and he had taken the shot. He had seen the tall black figure’s legs intertwine and had watched him fall, but then had lost him to view because of the incline of the land. He couldn’t be sure where the shot had hit. He suspected it was the upper back, right side, away from the heart. Louis would be wounded, perhaps mortally, but he would not yet be dead.

He had to be sure. He had made two promises to Leehagen. The first was that Louis would die on his land, that his blood would soak into the old man’s soil. The second was that he would bring him Louis’s head as a trophy. The second promise had been made reluctantly. It smacked of excess to Bliss. It was curious that Hoyle had asked him to do the same with Kandic, the man who had been sent to kill him and whose eventual dispatch had been Bliss’s first job after coming out of retirement. Decapitating him hadn’t bothered Bliss particularly, although it was harder, and messier, than anticipated, and he had no desire to make a habit of it. He also recognized that a personal element had crept into all of his kills: he was now the mirror image of the man he had once been, no longer distant from those he dispatched. In one way, it added an edge to all that he did, even as it made him more vulnerable in another. The best killers were passionless, just as he himself had once been. Anything else was weakness.

But Bliss also realized that he was creating his own mythology. Kandic, Billy Boy, and now Louis-they would be his legacy. He was Bliss, the killer of killers, the most lethal of his kind. He would be remembered after he was gone. There would never be another like him.

But it was time to be done with the task at hand. Louis had been armed. Bliss had glimpsed the gun in his hands. He did not know about the other, the one called Angel, but he had seen no weapon. Bliss suspected that the smaller man would be reluctant to move for fear of taking a bullet. If he acted quickly, Bliss could cover much of the ground between them, shift position to give him a better shot at Angel, and then finish off Louis.

Bliss shifted his weapon and closed in.

“So which way did they go?” asked Willie.

He and the Detective were standing upwind of the smoke. Behind them, the Fulcis were moving the Toyota so that the way would be clear for them if they decided to continue on their current road. Jackie Garner was admiring the destruction wrought upon the grain store. Jackie liked things that exploded.

“It would make sense for them to get as far away from here as possible,” said the Detective. “But then we’re talking about Angel and Louis, and sometimes what makes sense is not what they’re inclined to do. They came here to kill Leehagen. It could be that none of this has changed their minds. Knowing them, it might have made them more determined. They’ll stay off the roads for fear of being seen, so my guess is that they’ll be heading for the main house.”

At that moment, they heard the first shot.

“Over there!” shouted Jackie, pointing over Willie’s shoulder. West, Willie thought, just like the man said.

Two more shots followed in close succession. The Detective was already ru

“Jackie, you and the brothers take the truck,” he said. “Follow the road. Try to find a way to get there quickly. Willie and I will go on foot, in case you strike out.”

He looked at Willie. “You okay with that?”

Willie nodded, although he wasn’t sure what appealed to him less: the thought that he now had to run, or the possibility that he might have to use his gun again once he stopped ru

It was the damp that finally forced Angel to move. Such a small thing, such a minor discomfort in light of all that had befallen them that day, yet there it was. The dampness was causing him to itch and chafe. He shifted his lower body, trying to loosen his trousers, but it was no good.

“Louis?” he called again, but as before only silence greeted him. There was a warm sensation behind his eyes, and his throat burned. He was, he knew, already grieving, but if he were to allow grief to overcome him then all would be lost. He had to hold himself together. Louis might only be injured. There was still hope.

He considered his situation. There were two possibilities. The first was that Bliss had chosen to remain in place, hoping to get a clear shot at either Angel or Louis. But Louis was out of sight, and Louis, Angel knew, was Bliss’s primary target. Angel only mattered insofar as he might interfere with Bliss’s attempts to finish him off. From his original firing position, Bliss must have been unable to see Louis once he had fallen, otherwise he would have fired upon him again. He couldn’t have been sure that the shot that hit him was a fatal one.

Which raised the second, and more likely, possibility: that Bliss was approaching, moving in on the two men to ensure that the job was completed to his satisfaction. If that was the case, then Angel might be able to break cover without being hit. It was a gamble, though, and while Angel had worked hard to cultivate a number of vices, gambling was not one of them. Even throwing away fifty bucks once at Sarasota Springs had plunged him into a depression that lasted a week. Then again, were he to lose his life now it was unlikely that he would have much time to regret his final decision, and if he stayed where he was then he, and Louis, would certainly die, if the latter was not dead already, and that was a prospect that Angel, for the present, refused to countenance.