The hunters roared.

Theo hit the gas, and tried to drag the corpse into Frank.

Frank jumped up and hopped over the sheep as it slid underneath him, painting the street like a sponge soaked in blood. Frank dusted himself off, and waved back at the hunters. Theo turned in a big circle, dragging the ewe around Frank, pounding on the roof, honking the horn, and generally having himself a good time. Chuck clutched at his belly, laughing all the while, his head swiveling around like a half deflated balloon of casing atop a sausage as he squinted through tears at Frank. “Sorry man, but that…that was fucking funny shit right there.”

Theo turned around and stopped. Chuck jumped off, shaking his head and giggling. He unbuckled the dog collar and joined Frank back on the tailgate. Theo took off, leaving the dead ewe in the middle of the side street.

Riding the tailgate back, Frank’s smile was more or less in place. After a while, he thought that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been pretty funny. And it wasn’t too long before he thought the whole thing was pretty funny, until they turned back into the alley.

He’d forgotten about the rest of the sheep. Twenty-five or thirty of them clung together like wet oatmeal, in the shade behind the supermarket. The fence was simply a roll of chicken wire stretched from the back wall out and around two dumpsters, forming a square.

Theo kept the pickup moving until Chuck was level with the corner of the fence. He jumped off, went up to the wall, and unhooked one end of the chicken wire. He grabbed a sheep, another ewe, by one ear, and threw the collar over her neck. He let go of the ear and grabbed the other end of the collar before the ewe could back away. He cinched it tight, buckled it, and dragged it out of the pen.

* * * * *

And that’s how it went. Theo would drive slowly out across Main Street, towing a sheep, and somebody down by the bus would be shooting like hell. Sometimes the shots would kill the sheep instantly, blasting it sideways two or three feet. By early afternoon, there was a thick trail of clotted gore the color of crushed pomegranates, covered in flies. Blood sizzled on the pavement, scarred with hundreds, maybe thousands of bullet strikes. The air smelled of blood and gunpowder.

For three hours, in the worst of the early afternoon, even the flies wouldn’t go out into the sun. They would cluster in curious stripes along thin strips of shadow that marked each tree limb, eating, shitting, fucking, and marching forward through the gore with the relentless snail’s pace of the sun.

Sometimes the shots weren’t even close, and Sturm had to step in and kill the ewe before it crossed Main Street completely.

Sometimes they’d blow the ewe’s head off and the collar would slip through the ruined skull and skitter along the sticky asphalt like a child’s pretend pet. Theo would stop the truck, back up, and Frank and Chuck would have to wrap the collar around part of the carcass, so they could keep dragging it along, and let the shooter continue blasting away at the target.

When this happened, it was really a two-man job. Most of the time, the neck was useless. Once in a while, if the sheep was skinny, they could buckle the collar in the hollow over the spine just in front of the back hips. That didn’t happen often. Instead, Frank usually had to lift the sheep by the front legs, while Chuck hacked away at the tendons and ligaments where those back hips were connected to the spine, slashing his way into the sheep so he could sink the collar deep into the wound, around the hips of the sheep and buckle it securely.

Frank always got nervous during these times, standing out in the street, hoisting the dead target, right in the middle of the shooting range. The shooters were undoubtedly drinking heavily, and you never knew when some drunk sonofabitch might just decide to take a shot at the sheep when Frank had it in the air, just for fun. The sun hammered down like a blunt nail into his eyes. Sometimes, when Frank’s eyes would blink over into seeing negatives, the blood looked like semen.

* * * * *

By noon the pile of sheep was as big as one of the dumpsters back at the sheep pen. By two, at the end of it, the pile nearly covered the street. Theo had to drive up onto the sidewalk, just to get around it. And they worked for hour upon hour in the blood and bullets and live and dead sheep.

Blue smoke rose above the town like smog.

Until finally, the last sheep was pulled slowly across Main Street. Theo must have been on his walkie-talkie, because everyone unloaded on the ewe. It exploded in a bright red mass of blood, bones, wool, innards, and brains. The collar slipped away, caught one of the front legs, and dragged what was left of the carcass away like a half digested bird skeleton through cat vomit.

Theo killed the engine and silence bloomed again. Frank and Chuck sat on the tailgate, staring dully at the pavement. Neither moved. The blood had crusted into a color of crushed red peppers on their clothes and skin, as if they’d been at ground zero inside a slaughterhouse, The flask had been empty for hours.

The hunters stowed their rifles back into the cases and ambled slowly down Main Street, rubbing their shoulders, talking loud over the ringing in their ears, and kicking the spent shell casings, which littered the ground like confetti after a ticker-tape parade.

Everybody was pleased as punch.

* * * * *

“Fine job, boys. Fine, fine job. I’d say our guns are good and sighted in,” Sturm said. Frank didn’t care if he was supposed to say something or not, or even if Sturm was talking to him and Chuck or the hunters or the sheep. All Frank wanted was to get back to the vet office, where he could wash the blood off and crack open a fresh bottle of rum. He practiced his smile amidst all the back slapping and yelling and joking but, really, he just wanted out of his clothes, out of his skin.

“Gentlemen,” Sturm called out. “Lunch is two blocks west. And beer.” He was slurring his words, but Frank didn’t think Sturm was drunk. Not yet anyway. This was different. Frank wondered if the tumor was doing the talking like the day when Sturm faced the lioness.

Frank shook the last guy’s hand and found Sturm waiting for him and Chuck and Theo. “Superb work, gentlemen. Simply goddamn superb.” He speech sounded normal, and Frank wondered if the suddenly dead tongue would come back. “You boys come on back and eat ‘til you bust, got it?” Sturm surprised Frank by tossing a bottle of Jack Daniels at him. Chuck got a bottle too.

“Well then. Get going, you two. You earned it, by God,” Sturm said, eyeing the vast pile of corpses. “Theo. Like a word with you.” Sturm went around the pickup and climbed into the front seat with Theo. Chuck was already halfway down the block, heading for the food.

Frank scratched at the blood and blisters on his head and followed.

* * * * *

The Gloucks arranged tables along Third Street, bordering the east side of the park, in order to catch the afternoon shade. They loaded the tables with sliced meat and long loaves of bread. Steak cut French fries with the skins still on. There was a whole table devoted to BBQ sauces alone, at least forty or fifty of ’em. Giant tubs of mayonnaise and mustard and ketchup, all soaking in ice. They’d raided the grocery stores down in Redding armed with several thousand dollars and damned near cleared the first few out.

It looked to Frank like they were prepared for more people, a lot more.

Everything sat in rapidly melting ice—The family had gone to the local supermarket for only two things during the chicken wire fence construction; the ice machine and horizontal freezer. It had taken the entire family to accomplish this, but now they had the ice machine running nonstop, filling it with water from the garden hose.