“You mean down or dead?” Girdler shouted back.

“Down.”

Having smelled horse sweat, the lionesses had finally opened their eyes.

“Done. I got a fifty on this horse going a full minute and half on all four feet.”

“Okay then. Do it.”

Sarah danced back and forth, looking for a clear way out, her movements growing increasingly sharper, more frantic.

“Open her up,” Sturm shouted. “My girls got to eat.”

Frank grabbed the metal, still warm from the heat of the day, pushed down and pulled back. The cats took a quick glance at each other and the rest of their cage and watched that horseflesh kick at the dust in the white hot glare of the lights. They slowly curled apart and slunk along opposite walls toward the open gate.

“When are we starting the clock?” Girdler asked.

“It’s already started,” Sturm said.

“What’s the time?”

“Where’s your watch?” Sturm held up a stopwatch. “By my count, it’s already fourteen seconds gone.”

“Well all right then,” Girdler said, checking his wristwatch. He’d been wearing it so long hair had grown up through the various holes and cracks in the leather band.

The lionesses watched the men at the fence closely.

Sarah kicked out, over and over. White lather from between her hind legs landed in the dust.

The cats’ wide noses, those flat cliffs of finely etched black leather, flared open, vacuuming the scent, bolting it directly into the very core of their predatory souls.

When it happened, nearly forty-two seconds after Sturm started his watch, it happened fast. The lionesses hit the gate together, then split apart, bounding at Sarah from both sides. She turned to face Lady on the left side, kicking wildly at Princess, who leapt completely above the flailing back hooves, sinking her claws into the horse’s back haunches, plunging great furrows into the old muscle, hanging there, letting the blood wash over the massive paws, snapping at the mane.

Lady went to the left, avoiding the bicycling front hooves, and as Princess hit Sarah from behind, Lady went for the throat. Her teeth snapped shut on Sarah’s windpipe. A smaller animal would have been killed instantly, but Sarah was over eight hundred pounds heavier than any bush antelope; her spinal cord was still intact. Lady swung from Sarah’s neck, dragging the horse down. The lioness’ teeth tore out Sarah’s right artery, and the horse went down, kicking and spraying blood.

The men cheered as Frank watched the fine dust sift over his boots.

“I got fifty-six seconds here,” Sturm said. Everybody else chimed in their times, but nobody had over a minute.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

The next morning, the heat was somehow worse in town, as if all the pavement, bricks, cinderblocks, and concrete, having absorbed so much for so long, were now more like hot coals, radiating a much deeper and stronger heat back out into the sunshine.

Frank kicked himself for forgetting his sunglasses back at the vet hospital. The last few days, in the full sunlight, he would have to shake his head once in a while, because his eyes would lose focus, and eventually everything in his vision would shatter in a blinding white light, and when the world refocused, the light was reversed, as if he was looking at a photo negative. The colors shimmered and melted into switching, like getting stuck between channels on the hotel televisions. So he’d shake his head until the picture snapped back into full color, keeping the lights and darks in the right places.

* * * * *

Theo rolled Sturm’s pickup out of an alley running parallel to Main Street, behind the Holiday Market and it’s empty parking lot. He went painfully slow, just threw it in drive and didn’t touch the gas. He turned into the street, moving slower than most people walk. Of course, the street was empty. Except for the engine, and Chuck’s unrelenting conversation, the town was silent.

Chuck said, “I’m at this truck stop down in Reno, empty as all hell, sitting at the bar, chatting with the waitress. She was interested, I know she was, ’cause she got me a chicken fried steak and eggs for half the price. And I’m eating, and getting’ cozy with her, when this guy walks in and sits down right next to me. Place is empty, but he has to fucking sit next to me.”

Frank and Chuck rode back on the tailgate. Chuck’s legs swung aimlessly back and forth under the truck. Frank’s long legs would have been dragged along, so he was kind of walking along with the truck, taking long strides backwards. He took a long drink, then passed Chuck his flask.

Chuck took it, saying, “And I swear to God, I can see him in the mirror right? So in the mirror, he looks kinda’ sick, but that’s all, and when I turn to look at him, half his head is gone, from the nose on over, just gone.” He slapped his palms together to suggest skipping a rock over water. “And I look back to the mirror, and he looks…well, not fine, no, but at least his head is all there.”

A horse lead line was attached to the bumper. Fifteen feet down, at the other end of the line, was a ewe, dreadlocks of dry mud underneath, legs caked in gray mud, shuffling along, like a wobbly toy being pulled by a string.

Theo rolled across the crosswalk and into the Main Street intersection.

Chuck talked over the diesel engine. “And he turned to look at me, with that one eye left, and he said, ‘Don. Don.’ Then he got up and left.”

“Why?” Frank was bored shitless, wondering when the hell Chuck would get to the point and take a drink. Then maybe he’d give the flask back.

“Why? Fuck, you listening to me? The ghost, man. What are we drinking here? What the hell’s in this?” He shook the flask, spilling some of the whiskey. “You think I can get another injection of that shit? Haven’t felt that good in…ever.”

“I would. I mean, I’d like to. I would. But I can’t afford it.”

Chuck laughed. “Well. How much does this stuff cost?”

“I’m not sure. But I can find out.”

“You got more back at the office, right? You know, any tiny bit. Hell, it don’t take much. I can afford it. Hell yes—I can pay you! Jesus, don’t worry about that. I got paid. So I got it.” Chuck pulled a lump from his jeans and gave Frank a flash of his money, a good thick, tight roll of bills over three inches thick.

They rolled across Main Street. Frank was too busy looking at the pavement, pretending to remember how much he should charge, seeing that fat roll of cash in his mind, wondering when in the hell Sturm had seen fit to pay some employees and not others and barely trying to not listen to the voice raising the possibility of simply killing Chuck and that cash would be his.

So he didn’t notice the school bus, farther down. Sturm, Theo, Girdler, one of the Glouck boys, and The Assholes stood in front of the bus, lined up along the crosswalk.

Everyone had a rifle.

* * * * *

Frank said, “Five hundred dollars. That’ll buy you a damn good buzz tonight.”

“You got it.” Chuck peeled off five bills and slapped them into Frank’s hand, as the pickup finally rolled through the opposite crosswalk.

As the sheep crossed the center traffic line, the crack of a single rifle knocked Frank’s eyes into the swirling photo negative mode again.

The sheep was yanked off its feet and to the side, as if a giant invisible hook came out of the sky and caught it just behind the shoulder blades, catching on the bones and slamming it at the ground.

A cheer went up. Sturm raised his rifle.

Frank was so shocked he stood up, eyes locked on the dead sheep, nearly black in his eyes, now being pulled along by the lead line. The pickup rolled out from underneath him, unfelt and unheard. He suddenly looked up, and seeing the hunters aligned along the crosswalk, connections were made. He figured out that someone, probably Sturm, had shot the ewe. He went to sit back on the tailgate and fell on his ass.