Orrin took a deep breath through his mouth and approached the bed. Val’s skin was grey and mottled with long purple streaks, like her veins were swollen with dark ink. Her lips were the same purple and starting to blacken on the inside. Touching her felt like a very bad idea, even with his gloves on. As if death itself might rub off onto him. Bacteria was eating her up from the inside. He knew it couldn’t hurt him. He could wash up and everything would be fine. Still, he felt a powerful repulsion at the idea of getting too close to her, like the prehistoric fear of death he’d inherited from his most distant ancestor, calling out to him from across millennia: this is unclean. This is a bad thing. But he couldn’t listen to that voice. Moving Val was the only plan he’d come up with, and nothing else was springing to mind.
He grabbed her wrist and yanked. He’d expected her to be stiff with rigor mortis, but she wasn’t. Her body was loose, and he pulled harder than he meant to, jerking her to the edge of the mattress. Moving her made the smell worse and a wave of stench hit him like a fist even through the shirt covering his face. He looked at the mattress where she had been, and though there was an indentation, there was no bloodstain. The bullet that killed her hadn’t exited out her back. He was thankful for small miracles. He bent over, slid an arm behind her shoulders, the other under her knees, and lifted her off the mattress. She was skinny and light, though her limp body was uncooperative. He had to hold her tightly and close. She was dressed for summer in a crop top and a pair of shorts. The feel of her cool skin against his naked belly made him feel ill. He hadn’t thought to put his coat back on and zip it up, and now it was too late. They were skin to skin, and he didn’t want to prolong it. He kept breathing through his mouth and walked out of the room holding the dead woman.
He carried her down the stairs and into the front room where her old man still sat cooling on the sofa. Orrin felt angry and wanted to kick the shit out of the fucker. Even if he was dead and couldn’t feel it, at least he’d know Raymond was getting the beating he deserved. He left the dead man alone and looked outside. There was no sign of the tiger that he could see. Just the porch and the drive and his bike.
At the door, he dipped down like he was curtsying to twist the deadbolt latch. Val’s head lolled around and he reflexively squeezed tighter to keep from dropping her. Like it would matter if he did. The feeling of her body giving in his arms broke him a little. She was soft and felt like a person. There was something wet on his arm. He tried not to think about it. Pulling the door open, he waited for a second, ready to kick it closed if he saw the blur of a big cat racing toward him. When nothing came running out of the weeds, he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and pushed at the screen door with Val’s hip. It opened with a pop and a loud creak. He stepped outside.
The stairs groaned beneath his weight as he descended. The sound made his back tense and his heart beat a little quicker. At the bottom, he stopped and listened. He couldn’t hear much above the breeze and his own breathing in the makeshift mask. He hazarded a glance back at the porch. Though there hadn’t been anything there a moment ago, he wanted—needed—to be certain he could get back inside. It was one thing to run a few feet into the house, but if it cut him off and he had to run the other direction, it was all over. It was a comfort to see nothing in between him and the front door. He took a few more steps out into the open and knelt down to lay her body in the dirt. He looked over his shoulder at the window to the second-storey bedroom. Crouched where he was, the window was clear of the eaves. Good enough.
Sunlight glinted off the rear-view mirror of his motorcycle, and with no sign of the animal around, the urge to sprint toward it pulled at him like a hook in his flesh. But my fuckin’ kutte’s in the house. Orrin chided himself for leaving it behind. Stress and fear were going to kill him as sure as an escaped tiger. He needed to get his shit together if he wanted to ride away from this place.
He stood and began walking quietly, but quickly, back to the house. Behind him he heard the rustle of the tall weeds. It might have been the breeze. Or it might have been a beast. Either way, his bladder almost let go and he sprinted for the front door.
He leaped up the stairs, nearly falling as he cleared the bottom four, but not the last two. He scrambled across the deck and ripped open the screen. It banged against the side of the house, and Orrin was inside and slamming the front door before the screen swung back into place.
“FUCK! YOU!” he screamed, ashamed at his naked terror. He shook and slammed a fist into the door. Pain reached up from his knuckles into his wrist, but he didn’t care, and he punched it again, shouting out his frustration. Taking a deep breath, he looked at his hand while he flexed it. It wasn’t broken. Sprained maybe, but as long as he could hold a throttle it’d be fine. More importantly, he felt sure he could still pull a trigger.
A soft sliding sound and a muted thump made Orrin jump again. He spun around, arms up in front of his face.
Raymond’s corpse had slumped over on the sofa. Whether it had been the reverberations of Orrin’s violence or simply gravity, the result was the same: Orrin’s chest felt tight and he was breathless. His vision blurred as he tried to keep from hyperventilating. “I hope you’re sweating in Hell, motherfucker!” he hissed from between clenched teeth. He went to the window and looked outside. If the tiger had been behind him, it wasn’t there now. He was beginning to feel like the animal was a dream. Raymond had drugged him somehow and he was hallucinating everything. Except, he could see Val out there dead in the road, and Raymond was spilling what was left of his brains onto the couch behind him. And this was still Tigertown. He wasn’t hallucinating. Somewhere out there, death was waiting, tooth and claw.
He stumbled into the kitchen and searched the cupboards until he finally found what he wanted in the one above the refrigerator. A big plastic jug of tequila stood next to a smaller bottle of cheap margarita mix with a woman wearing fruit on her head on the label. He grabbed the tequila, twisted off the cap, and took a healthy couple of gulps to settle his nerves. He forced himself to stop, replaced the cap and then the bottle. Just enough to give him the Dutch courage he needed.
He stomped upstairs, snatching his jacket off the floor and slinging it on without untying the T-shirt from around his face. He grabbed the rifle and went to wait at the window.
Earlier.
WEDNESDAY
Val stood in the doorway watching Raymond pull his stained shirt up over his head. He dropped it on the floor. She picked it up to throw in the fire pit along with the Sheriff’s uniform. “Did you get through? Did you try calling again?”
He shook his head. “Nope. They ain’t answerin’. I can’t imagine what the Soldiers can do to help, anyways. With what we already owe ’em too? There’s nothin’ in it for them.”
“Horseshit. They won’t get any of their money if we go to jail. Cats’re already takin’ care of the bitch. We throw this in the burn pit with her uniform,” she said, holding up his shirt, “and all we got left to do is get rid of the truck in the barn. Choppin’ a truck is the least bad thing those sons a bitches get up to. It don’t cost them a thing.”