Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (the false prince series txt) 📗

along the gray marsh grass. Slowly, his body began to cool and a sheet of sweat turned icy across his chest and a curl of steam rose from his bare throat and he inhaled the happy scent of crushed berries. He whispered: “Jesse.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 63

Then the rabbit-assed squirrel bolted again, marking Bud’s progress through the thicket across the ravine.

Friend’s wife. Technically. Bargaining now. Bud didn’t really love her anyway.

He strained his eyes to see through the filmy light. Everything was flat. The shadows without edge. Hard to see.

He shifted the rifle and blew into the peep sight to make sure it was free of snow. Then he flexed his fingers in the soft deerskin glove shells, switched off the safety, tested the trigger pull, flipped back to safe. With the stock snug to his shoulder, he rested his cheek along the smooth walnut. Last time he’d fired a rifle it was dirty black plastic itching his cheek, stinking of sweat and mosquito repellent and it’d been 100 degrees in the shade

Now what? That was Chris—but why was he down at the bottom of the ravine, stepping out of the thick stuff by the swamp. Too far down. C’mon guys, get some cover. Almost light.

Times like this it was hard to believe Bud had been a marine on another ridge years ago. A spiky, laterite, red dirt ridge that had been fertilized with napalm and twisted down from the Annamite Cordillera below the DMZ in Vietnam. Harry had read the citation.

Bud had stayed behind with the machine gun to cover the retreat of his platoon so they could get to better ground. Held off a North Vietnamese flanking attack for crucial minutes, like Chamberlain on Little Round Top. Saved his whole company.

The first trickle of true remorse seeped over him. Friends were the people you lied for, who you didn’t steal from.

A panorama of memory nailed down the slow stain of guilt. Spring 1971. The big Vietnam Veterans Against the War demonstration in Washington, D.C.:

Harry and Bud, holding hands, stepped forward when their time came in the long line of veterans who were tossing back their medals and moved up to the pig wire Nixon had strung across the Capitol steps to keep them away from their government and flung their Purple Hearts and a jackal pack of reporters and photographers scrambled across the steps to

64 / CHUCK LOGAN

drool at the twinkling stars and hearts that showered down on the cold marble and Bud and Harry charged the fence and started to scale it, shaking with a holy rage.

Almost sun up. Noble memories didn’t help. He was alone in all of God’s nature with a dirty movie in his head. Only sin there was: letting a buddy down.

Bud was moving down the ravine and Chris was starting to climb to meet him. Now what the fuck were they doing, maneuvering?

Maybe they spotted something. Harry stood up on tiptoe, but the ground was tricky where Bud and Chris approached each other and the edge of the ridge and brush blocked his line of sight.

A puff of snow fell from a pine bough and slapped his face. His ears rang. Too long in the city. The sheer quiet made him nervous and he glanced from side to side in an effort to locate its source.

Muffled voices, but angry. An argument. What the hell now?

Harry tensed up on the balls of his feet.

“Why you ungrateful little shit!” Bud’s bellow shook the trees as a blur of orange jackets collided in the thicket. Christ, they were fighting.

The two spaced rifle shots blew a hole in the pastel dawn and the day gushed out at red combat speed and Harry vaulted from the stand and was in midair when Bud screamed and his senses—razor sensitive from Jesse—flicked toward the sound of mortal terror like a school of sharks.

He thumbed off the safety as he hit the snow in a dead run for the edge of the ridge with his rifle held at high port.

11

There was time.

Harry on the ridge, synapses popping like firecrackers.

Real close. But time. Ninety yards down the slope, Chris’s hand shook frantically, struggling with his rifle bolt. Trying to clear a jam.

HUNTER’S MOON / 65

Bud flopped, tangled in his long snowshoes with blood running Day-Glo bright and wet on his orange jacket, his hands, and spattered in the snow. His red hand strained toward where his rifle was buried, only the stock showing. Out of reach.

Harry saw it etched with eyes rinsed from the sprint through the adrenaline shower; prisoner to action, his reflexes decided between two runaway heartbeats.

A high nasal squeal came from Bud’s throat as he tried to claw his way into a tangle of jackpine, away from Chris and the echo of the shots that still thrashed the air like a barbed cordite whip.

And then Chris’s manic fingers stopped fumbling. His hand shot forward on the bolt and locked it down.

“One!” screamed Chris as he raised the rifle and curled his finger around the trigger.

And the high-resolution shit roared a million miles a second and the sting that turned his blood to burning needless had already shaved a hair off the split second…

“Two!” A flash from the white of Chris’s right eye. Saw Harry—a chance. No. The rifle never moved off Bud. Eye back to scope, aiming. Only 30 feet to his crawling, flopping target. Couldn’t miss.

Bud was a blur outside the indifferent steel ring of the peep sight.

Maybe he looked up. Couldn’t tell. Downhill, don’t overshoot…It was happening.

“Three!” Chris’s scream blended into the crack of a rifle shot and bark snapped from a tree trunk a foot from Bud’s head where Chris’s shot went wild when Harry took him low in his right armpit and he twirled like a string-cut marionette and time still spread out, jeweled and as perversely beautiful as a peacock fan.

Yes!

Harry watched over his sights as Chris’s hat and rifle flew away and his long hair swirled and his