I said, “Ray Jerrold-you see him in the past few minutes?”
“Yeah, not long ago,” Talesco said. “Looked like he was going hunting.”
“What?”
“He had a shotgun with him.”
Harry made a sound between his teeth.
Talesco said, scowling, “Hey, what the hell is-?”
He did not finish the sentence; he did not finish it because in that same instant there was a sudden low booming explosion, a sound so ominous on the dead-still air that my skin crawled and my stomach heaved in convulsive reaction.
And I was running again, without thinking, just running up the path full speed while I dragged the rifle up across my chest. I could hear Harry at my heels, Knox and Talesco pounding after us. We raced past my cabin, raced through the woods toward Cabin Two; my ears strained for more sounds, something to give me an idea of what to expect, but it was quiet again, a quiet so intense it was like a scream just beyond the range of human hearing.
The moment I ran around a hook in the path and saw Cody's cabin, I could also see two people standing off to one side of it at the rear, looking up along a steep incline to the near side. It was Cody and Mrs. Jerrold, and they were just standing there, the kid with a drink in his hand, neither of them looking frightened or excited-just curious, a little confused.
They either heard or saw us corning, and turned. Cody said, “You hear that noise? It-” He stopped short, staring at the rifle in my hands, at my face, as I barreled up to him.
I said, “It came from up that slope?”
Cody blinked at me. Harry was there now, and Talesco and Knox: all of us grouped on the grass, tension crackling among us as tangibly as raw electricity.
“Where did it come from, damn you!”
Mrs. Jerrold's face had gone suddenly pale, and there was the beginnings of fright in her eyes. She said, “Up there, yes, it came from up there,” and pointed at the incline.
I ran up the slope, shoving my way through underbrush, trampling a high patch of ferns, holding the rifle up and ready; the rest of them followed. Two-thirds of the way up, I could see a small flattened-out area, a kind of curving glade surrounded by the high boughs of spruce and lodgepole pine. It was dark in there, but you could see well enough.
Yeah, you could see well enough.
I stopped at the edge of the glade-stopped and turned, looking for Mrs. Jerrold, reaching for her when I realized she was close by. But I was too late; she had gotten to where she could see what lay in there. She made a horrified whimpering noise, and her eyes rolled up and she staggered, started to go down. Harry caught her, turned her immediately and pulled her away down the slope.
Cody and Knox and Talesco and I stared mutely at what was left of Ray Jerrold. He lay stiffly on his back, arms flung out; his face and head and the entire upper third of his body were covered with black scorch marks and ribbons of blood, and the head itself was nearly severed. Beside him on the grass was the shotgun he had been carrying the first time I'd seen him, its barrel curled back into blackened strips. The air was foul with the stench of cordite, of charred metal.
Beside me Knox said softly, “Blowback.”
“Yeah,” I said. Blowback is what happens when somebody fires a weapon like Jerrold's with a solid blockage of the barrel. The unreleased load causes the thing to explode, splitting and peeling the barrel, and the shooter takes the full charge in his face and upper body. It happens to hunters sometimes, when they're not careful and they let the muzzle nose down into thick mud or clay. The stuff dries and expands and seals the barrel: blowback.
There might have been a certain terrible irony in the way Jerrold had died, but if there was, I could not pursue it now. The anger had drained out of me, and I felt empty, a little sick; fatigue was seeping into every corner of my body. I could not seem to think clearly any longer.
Cody, standing white-faced on my left, made a gagging sound and jerked his head away. He said in a shrill, shaken voice, “What… what was he doing up here? What was he going to shoot up here?”
I looked at him, and then I looked down the incline, gauging a trajectory from where Jerrold lay. You could see the backside of Cody's cabin without obstruction, less than forty yards away, and there were two chairs set up there in the shade of a young oak.
He followed my gaze. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, as if it were undergoing some sort of paroxysm. “Angela and me?” he said disbelievingly. “He was shooting at us, at me? ”
I did not say anything.
“No,” Cody said. “No, listen…”
But I did not listen. I spun around and shoved past him and made my way down the slope. When I got around to the front of the cabin, I saw that Harry was sitting there on the steps, one arm draped awkwardly around Angela Jerrold's shoulders. She was sobbing in a broken way, and she did not look beautiful or alluring any more, not any more. I had no sympathy for her; it was what she was, to a greater or lesser degree, that had been the catalyst for all this blood and pain and horror.