Hunting Season: A Love Story Read online

  She nodded, teeth chattering, looking like she wanted to believe him.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Ray let her go and looked around, his lips thinning as he considered their options. “I’ve got butcher paper, tons of plastic wrap. We can keep ourselves warm if we have to until someone comes.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” Ariana turned in slow circles, hugging herself close, eyes wild. “I can’t do this.”

  Ray crossed his arms, leaning back against the butcher block. “I don’t want to be stuck in here with you either.”

  She stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve been coming in here for what? Ten, fifteen years?” He asked the question, but they both knew just how long it had been. “Most days, you don’t even look at me. Don’t ever speak to me. I’m just another one of your hired help.”

  “No. That’s not it. You...it’s you who—”

  “What?” Ray stepped in a little closer. “You want to blame me for something?”

  “I thought you hated me.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t rush to say I’m wrong or anything.”

  “Why would I hate you?” Ray asked.

  “I think you know.”

  “I’ve never hated you, Ariana. Not ever.” He shook his head. “Not even on the day I saw your engagement announcement.”

  Ariana looked at the floor. “I was eighteen, Ray,” she said softly. “I was a kid.”

  “So was I.”

  Ariana looked away and shivered, hugging herself, focusing again on the door. “There’s really no way out of here?”

  “That’s my girl, always looking for a way out.”

  “Your girl?” Ariana’s eyebrow went up, but so did the corner of her mouth, almost a smile.

  “Trust me, there’s no way out.” Ray looked at the vents again. “Besides the door, that’s it, and you’re right—even you couldn’t fit through those.”

  “What about this other door?” Ariana avoided the butcher block as she went around Ray, heading for the back of the cooler. There were four hanging deer carcasses on hooks on one side of the freezer, their dead eyes filmy and vacant. The other side was lined with sides of beef, the ribs stark white curves of bone.

  Ray grabbed her arm, yanking her back. “That’s not an exit.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “Just more freezer.” He steered her away, back toward the butcher block.

  “I’m cold.”

  “Here.” Ray grabbed an old Carhart coat off a hook and put it around her shoulders.

  Ariana eased down against the wall and Ray sat beside her.

  “There is a bright side,” he said.

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I keep the temperature at a steady thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “So?”

  “That means it’s warmer in here than outside.”

  Ariana laughed. “You always were an optimist. Remember what I used to call you?”

  “Mr. Sunshine.” Ray actually blushed.

  “You were my happy golden boy. It’s funny. When I think of you back then, in high school I mean...when I picture you it’s always with that big shit-eating grin on your face.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think you still thought of me.”

  “How could you say that?”

  Ray shrugged.

  “Those were such sweet times, Ray. Perfect times. That feeling that we could do anything we wanted. I felt...weightless. Sometimes, I think about them, and I can’t even breathe.”

  “I probably shouldn’t say this but... well the only thing I ever really wanted in my whole life was you.”

  She nudged him gently with her shoulder.

  “It’s true. I was only ever happy because of you. You made my life worth living. Made me feel there was something more than just...this.” He gestured to the chorus of carcasses hanging all around them.

  “My life hasn’t exactly been a work of art.”

  “If I’d had the guts to come after you...” He hesitated, swallowed. “What would you have said?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know, Ray. You and I...we didn’t really turn into people who take what they want, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  Someone knocked on the freezer door—a slow, heavy pounding.

  Ariana jumped up and ran to it.

  “Help! We’re in here! Open up!”

  The pounding continued, but something was wrong. It wasn’t coming from the door that led out into the shop. Someone was knocking on the inside of the other door, the one that led to more freezer.

  Ariana looked at Ray. “Who’s in there?”

  “Sometimes a hunter brings in a kill, and it’s not quite as dead as it looks.” He stood as Ariana moved toward the other door.

  “You’re telling me there’s a live deer in there?”

  “It happens.” Ray took two strides, bringing him around the table, standing between Ariana and the door. “Best just to leave it.”

  “What if it’s hurt?”

  Ray snorted. “It’s just meat, Ariana.”

  “Well, shouldn’t we put it out of its misery or something?”

  “Ever been kicked by a big buck?” he asked. “Blow to the head could kill a man.”

  The pounding continued, steady, rhythmic, loud. And then there was a scream, high-pitched and keening.

  “What the hell?” Ray exclaimed.

  Startled, they both turned to face the door, Ariana staring at Ray with wide eyes.

  “That doesn’t sound like a deer,” she whispered. “What else could it be?”

  He shrugged. “They make all sorts of noises in their death throes.”

  “I’ve lived with hunters all my life. I know what a dying deer sounds like.” She cocked her head at the silence.

  Then the pounding came again, frantic this time, along with that guttural scream.

  “We have to do something!” The door had the same latch as the one outside. Ariana grabbed it and pulled.

  “Don’t!” But Ray was too late.

  What spilled out made her scream and stumble back, tripping over her boots and sprawling into Ray, who instinctively moved to break her fall. He managed to catch her, his arms going around her waist, turning her away from the door.

  The man who burst into the freezer swung wildly at the air with both fists, his mouth open in a scream, only what was coming out wasn’t a scream exactly, but more of a wordless croak. His face bloomed with red that dripped down his chin and neck and chest like a bloody bib.

  Ray pushed Ariana into a corner, out of the way, and turned to face the man.

  He was dressed in bright hunter orange, the luminescent color blinding under the bare fluorescents. They both reached for it at the same time—a cleaver buried in the butcher block amid the bloody mass of meat—and the hunter grabbed it first.

  “Ray!” Ariana screamed a warning as the cleaver came down in his direction. “He’s going to kill us!”

  “No he isn’t.” Ray was breathing hard, but he sounded calm, stepping between the man and Ariana, surprisingly light on his feet, his gaze never leaving the cleaver in the man’s hand. “Stay back!”

  Ariana did as she was told, shrinking against a side of beef, cradled by rib bones, trying to make herself as small as possible, overpowered by the smell of meat and her own fear.

  “Come on.” Ray gestured, urging the hunter to make a move. The man stood with a deer carcass at his back, the cleaver brandished head-high, his gaze moving wildly from Ray to Ariana.

  The hunter took two steps around the butcher block, his eyes on Ariana. He said something unintelligible, snarling, and she whimpered and moved instinctively toward the door. The hunter fixated on her as she edged toward freedom, his eyes bright in his bloodied face, the cleaver still raised, menacing.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Ray said, lunging
first, his long arms, so beneficial in his basketball days, not failing him, even over the length of the butcher block. He grabbed the collar of the hunter’s coat as the man dove at Ariana, yanking him backward, the weapon coming down, slicing at air and the rubber flaps on the door. The cleaver squealed, gouging the inside of the door all the way to the floor.

  The man howled in frustration, twisting and waving his weapon wildly, the motion enough to loosen his coat—and Ray’s grip. The hunter regained his feet, growling at Ariana where she cowered against the inside of the freezer door.

  “Please!” she pleaded, looking back at Ray, who was already striding toward them both.

  “Get away from my girl!” Ray snarled, this time grabbing the man by his hair.

  The hunter swung blindly, the cleaver taking a chunk of metal out of the wall next to Ariana’s head. Ray grabbed the man’s forearm, squeezing, but the weapon didn’t fall.

  “Ray! Look out!” Ariana shouted another warning, this time saving Ray’s life—or at least his eyesight—by inches. The hunter now wielded a butcher knife in his other hand, procured from the mass of meat on the butcher block.

  Ray grabbed the man’s second wrist, using all of his strength to turn it inward, toward the man’s body, pointing the knife at the hunter’s belly. Before it reached its target, the man let go and the blade clattered to the cement floor.

  But he still had the other cleaver. Both men panted, sweating even in the chilled air, their breath turning to steam as they struggled.

  Ariana’s eyes fell on something hanging from a nail on the wall beside the freezer—it looked like a meat tenderizer, although it was far bigger than anything in her kitchen. She took it off the nail. It had an impressive heft. Squeezing the rubber grip with both hands, she edged toward Ray and the hunter, both still on their feet and bent over, fighting for possession of the second cleaver.

  With sudden, surprising strength, the hunter shoved Ray back, standing in the center of the freezer now with a clean grip on the cleaver.

  As he turned to face Ariana and the locked exit, she was already swinging—a downward strike that buried the tiny pyramids of metal on the tenderizing surface a half-inch into the man’s forehead.

  The hunter stood for a moment with his head cocked, staring at Ariana as if trying to understand something beyond his comprehension.

  The perfect square on the man’s forehead was a deep purple, now turning magenta as the blood began to bubble out of the impression.

  She didn’t even see Ray lift the cleaver off the floor.

  One hard swing into his neck cut loose an ungodly amount of bright arterial red that sprayed everything like a cracked aerosol can.

  The hunter’s knees buckled and he went down hard.

  Ariana stared at the rich, red pool of blood expanding all around him.

  She and Ray both breathing hard.

  She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.

  She motioned to the dead man. “He would’ve killed you.”

  “Or Luke. I bet he slipped in over the lunch hour. He’d probably planned to hide back there until the shop closed. Kill us after hours in the quiet of the freezer. When the door’s shut, you can’t hear anything. It’s pretty much soundproofed. Perfect place to kill someone when you think about it. “

  “I don’t recognize him.” Ariana knelt down beside the dead man.

  “Me neither.”

  “Ray?” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked closer. “His mouth.”

  “You shouldn’t touch him.”

  And she didn’t want to, but her curiosity got the better of her.

  She pried open the man’s jaw and winced.

  “Ariana.”

  “Oh God.” She looked up at Ray. “His tongue is gone. Why would his tongue be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ariana struggled to her feet.

  She was three steps from the open door to the back freezer when Ray grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t go in there,” he said.

  “What was this guy doing in your freezer?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Ray pulled her in close.

  “What did you do, Ray?”

  He was still holding the cleaver.

  She was still holding the tenderizer.

  “What did you do?”

  “I...”

  “What, Ray?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  She jerked out of his grip and he let her go, saying, “Guess it doesn’t really matter now.”

  She stood in the threshold of the back freezer, pushing away the rubber flaps and groping for the light switch.

  Found it, flicked it, and as the fluorescents crackled to life, she closed her eyes.

  “Oh, Ray.”

  A headless body swung from a meat hook in the corner of the room.

  A severed leg rested on a tall wooden block, cleanly separated at the joint, a knife embedded above the knee, as if the butcher had been interrupted and had stuck it in there to keep his place.

  The thigh was thick, meaty—and hairy—a man’s leg.

  That was the only hint that what had been there was once human. Otherwise, it was just meat lining the counter in the corner, sitting in Styrofoam and wrapped in plastic. Cutlets, rump steaks, hand-packed sausages.

  Ariana said, “Please tell me you aren’t selling this stuff.”

  “Never to you.”

  Ray’s equipment might have been old, but his ways were clean and meticulous. The bodies had been butchered with horrible precision, skinned, cut up and processed like so many of the animals these hunters had brought to the shop.

  Ariana turned around and faced him. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “I don’t know. Years.”

  Ariana closed the freezer door.

  Ray sighed and eased down slowly onto the floor, as if he could no longer support the weight of everything. He put his head between his knees. She couldn’t hear him crying, only saw the slight movements of his shoulders jerking up and down. He shook his head, saying softly, “I don’t know how. I don’t know how.”

  “How what, Ray?”

  Ariana sat down beside him.

  She put her arm around him.

  “Every time some trophy hunter from some other place showed up...”

  “It what? Reminded you of Bud?”

  “That man took everything from me. And I just...couldn’t help it.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  He shook his head.

  “I want to show you something, Ray.”

  The game bag they had hauled in together was just within reach. She tugged it several inches closer and loosened the drawstring.

  “I think our luck is finally going to change.”

  “Oh, now you’re the optimist?”

  “It’s gonna be better from here on out,” she said. “For both us. You don’t have to keep killing him over and over.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Ariana reached into the game bag, pulled it out, and set it in Ray’s lap.

  For a moment, he was speechless, and when he finally found his voice, it quivered.

  “What did you do, Ariana?” He touched her hand. “What did you do?”

  “Life is so hard. Things. They just...”

  “Change you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is this really happening?” he asked.

  “Yes, Ray, it’s really happening. After all these years.”

  She put her head on his shoulder and for a long time they just sat there together in the freezer, staring at Bud’s severed head.

  “I have one more thing to tell you,” she said, reaching into her pocket.

  “What my love?”

  She pulled out his grandmother’s wedding ring and slid it onto her finger.