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

arms flapped out and his hands and fingers reached.

As he spun, Harry could see the expression on his face—

66 / CHUCK LOGAN

not the eyes, too far—but Chris’s mouth gaped in a stricken circle and his cheeks contorted in a mask of surprise. He was dead as he made the last quarter-turn of a clumsy snowshoe pirouette and pitched, arms outstretched, into the thorny branches of prickly gooseberry bramble bush.

Harry watched a clump of snow collapse from the shivering brambles as he came down the slope, swiftly working the bolt, mashing another round into the chamber. Chris’s body trembled and Harry’s rifle came up. Wary. Ready. Just the bush shaking. But Harry came forward cautiously, covering the prone form.

“Oh my God!” Bud’s scream let time out of its cage.

No movement from the bush. He dropped the rifle. Running now through the deep snow. Down. Down. Stumbling in the muskeg at the bottom of the ravine. Pine crowns whirled overhead.

Out of time. And now Harry desperately wanted time. Time to talk. Time to reason. Time to make it better. Fear and shock closed in and a ragged crimson tunnel squeezed his vision. The sun poked through the clouds and the snow glittered brilliant and was blinding except for the red stain that led to Bud.

Bud’s face was cold in the hot snow, the texture of gray congealed grease going into shock.

“There’s pieces of him…” gasped Bud, hyperventilating, staring, wide-eyed. “Pieces of him…” His bluish lips were stringy, dribbling blood, bitten through and pulled tight across the chattering red-stained Chiclets of his teeth.

“Don’t look,” panted Harry as he dropped beside Bud. Soft-nosed hunting bullets didn’t make clean holes coming out. Harry’s hands tore at Bud’s jacket. The damn zipper stuck. Harry pulled out his knife and hacked.

“His eyes…” gasped Bud.

“Calm down, damnit.” Fear was very detailed in Harry’s hoarse voice.

“His eyes…close his eyes,” whispered Bud.

“What?” Harry turned. Chris’s face had come to rest on its HUNTER’S MOON / 67

side. The dark eyes were wide open, staring at them. One eyelid hooked on a thorn.

Trembling, Harry hacked harder at Bud’s coat—destroyed the zipper, ignored Bud’s cries—yanked it off and threw it at the thorn bush. The bloody coat covered the eyes.

“I…I was trying to…get his gun away and—” panted Bud.

“He fucking tried to kill you, man!” snarled Harry. He was thinking with his hands and his anger masked a terror that he was about to reach into blasted intestines and the half-digested slop of Jesse’s breakfast and stomach acid. God, if he’s gut shot, what do I do?

Bud’s sticky red hands seized at Harry’s collar. “Did you have to…have to—?”

Roughly, Harry rolled Bud on his side, slashed through two hundred dollars worth of Gore-Tex trousers and exposed the quivering flab of his flank.

“Ow,” moaned Bud as Harry squeegeed blood away with his palm.

A small entrance wound puckered in Bud’s left-side love handle, rouged with powder burn. In back, a bigger ragged wound bubbled where the bullet came out in curls of yellow fat that peeled back around the ripped skin. Lucky. Nothing like the hole in the kid.

“Blubber saved your ass,” said Harry, relieved, jerking off his pack, thankful that he’d brought the first-aid kit. Efficiently he took out sterile pads, gauze, tape.

“Is…is he…is he?” Bud reared, gasped.

Harry slapped him hard across the face. “Shut your mouth. Breath through your nose. Do it! All that bullet did was blow a thousand calories outta your spare tire, but shock could kill you, so calm the fuck down!”

“But you… killed him,” groaned Bud.

“I fucking know that!” Harry shouted. He dropped the dressing and pounded his thighs with his fists. Seeing Bud’s eyes go even wider into shock at his tantrum, he controlled himself and willed his hands to stop shaking as he washed the blood away with snow.

Still a lot of blood. Lot of capillaries

68 / CHUCK LOGAN

to feed all that fat. Bud screamed when Harry splashed some iodine on his wound.

Quickly Harry taped on a compress, then he unlaced Bud’s boots and removed his own parka and covered Bud with it. He stood up and lit a cigarette to calm himself and took a quick inventory. Clear the airway. Stop the bleeding. Treat for shock.

Steam came off him in waves. He was still on fire with adrenaline.

His eyes stopped on his rifle, half buried in the snow.

“Don’t touch anything,” he told Bud.

“What? What?” Bud shook, his eyes welled up.

“There’ll be cops. Don’t touch anything,” said Harry.

“If only I coulda talked to him! I was trying to talk to him,” Bud stammered.

“Get your head outta your ass,” Harry shouted, annoyed. “What happened, Bud? What happened?”

“He said if I ratted him out he’d kill me, I tried to get to him but the little shit shot me.” Bud blinked several times and shuddered.

Harry knelt, took off his wool cap, pulled it over Bud’s wild hair.

He stroked Bud’s face and said, “You’re all right. Just…calm down.”

“I’m not all right,” Bud heaved and began to cry. “It’s all fucked up.”

Harry gritted his teeth and held him in his arms as sobs wracked Bud’s thick body. “It’s all right, give it all to me,” he mumbled. What I do. How I keep going when the air is made of tears. Grow gills.

Do my fucking job.

Suddenly, fiercely, Bud flung his arms around Harry’s neck and clung in a spasm of fear. As Harry struggled to quiet him, he felt Bud’s torn lips streak his own, tasting of hot, wet, dirty pennies.

Bud’s mouth worked, pronouncing some silent word as pain and tenderness and relief made a bloody sponge of his face. Harry noticed the salt-and-pepper bruise along Bud’s forehead. Another powder burn that turned the freckles black.

HUNTER’S MOON / 69

He leaned forward to hear and Bud’s sour, harsh breath bussed his ear and tears carved crooked salty channels down Bud’s dirty Kabuki face as he gathered himself and gasped, “You saved my life.”

“No shit,” said Harry. He was numb. Times like this you had to keep it real simple. No wasted