The Hunted

“This ain’t gonna end the way you think, Reed!” Warren, the bounty hunter, yelled loud enough to be heard over the wind as it forced the sand and dust into a lover’s dance. Reed wasn’t much of a talker and preferred to go rather than show. He also knew he wouldn’t have the luxury of being invisible to these imbeciles much longer.

So he lifted the bottom corner of one of the cardboard flaps he had taped over each of the upstairs windows, this one being in the bedroom on the left at the end of the upstairs hallway. Until today, it may have been used as an office. Reed didn’t know whose house this was, just that he had put a lot of work into over the last few weeks, and it was about to pay off. Reed snuck a look out the window that overlooked the front of the house and made out the shapes of ten bounty hunters, the two in the center being on what looked like horseback through all the sand and dirt, Reed knew better. They were bulls. Bulls for christ’s sake. Drugged or tamed or what have you. Riding around striking fear into the hearts of man and so on. They were about 30 feet from where Reed stalked on the second floor and he knew he could take one of them down from the window before they made his location. Reed decided to take out the second bull rider that sat mounted next to the over-confident, loud-mouthed Warren and lined up the barrel of his revolver with the open space in the window.

“This is your last cha---” Warren started to say before Reed squeezed the trigger of his revolver. The explosion from the gun seemed to distort the sound of the gusting wind, causing a warbling drone to ring through the air as the massive sound wave slammed through the whipping dirt and sand.

Reed didn’t see the rider hit the ground after the bullet carried him backwards off his mount because he started fleeing from the room as soon as his trigger finger relaxed. He knew it would be reduced to shattered wood and broken glass just seconds after his shot rang out, maybe less. Even so, Reed thought he heard the hunter’s body thump into the ground before:

“2nd floor, right window!” yelled by one of the hunters on foot at the same time he heard the pissed off bull let out a scream before crashing into the ground floor of the house and proceeding to bounce around the entryway hall and dining room, destroying everything in its path. At the same time the bull entered the house, so did the shitstorm of bullets now being fired into the upstairs office where Reed took his first shot of the day.

The first thing Reed did as the men outside tore the upstairs room to shreds was descend four stairs, just enough to see the bull bouncing around downstairs like a pissed off pinball and fired three quick shots into the beast, first slowing it, then stopping it completely before it crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

Reed ran back up the staircase, immediately dipping into the bedroom at the top left of the stairs. He hopped over the bear-trap, engaged and waiting in the middle of the bedroom floor and ducked into the closet, picking up the metal garbage can lid he had left there and hiding inside. When he heard the first batch of footsteps nearing the top of the staircase, he threw the metal lid out of the closet and into the room. At first, the wobbly metallic crash landing of the lid silenced the footsteps as the men focused their attention on the room.

Reed didn’t look as the men entered the room but only listened from his place in the closet for his time to move. The approach was cut off by the sound of the bear trap engaging and snapping shut on the unlucky hunter's shin bone, ending the footsteps like a punctuation mark and giving way to a tortured scream of agony from the snared predator. The sound of the screaming was the next to be cut off when the chain attached to the bear trap was yanked hard to the left, pulling the man off his feet and jerking him harshly across the floor as Reed’s trap - perhaps one of his favorites - engaged. The chain fed through the bedroom wall, attached to a weighted pulley system outside that he rigged to fall when the trap snapped shut.

While the man in the doorway watched in shock and rapidly sharpening fear as his partner was yanked across the hardwood floor, Reed sprung out from inside the closet with a blurred speed that might have seemed impossible to the men had they had the chance to see it. He filled the room with the sound of a deafening explosion as his revolvers erupted less than a half second apart, first in his right hand, then his left. Before the man in the doorway could react, the top of his head disintegrated in a spray of hair and blood and bone, painting the wall behind him in a liquid smack as it connected with the drywall. At almost the same time, the second slug caved in the face of the man that stepped in the trap, leaving only a mangled mess of blood and teeth in its wake. The trap had pulled him five feet across the floor before the force of the yanking chain tore through the wound inflicted by the metal teeth, leaving a trail of blood on the floor between the severed body part and its previous owner.

Three down. Seven to go.

Reed ducked back into the closet and started heading into the final bedroom of the house through a hole in the closet that he painstakingly bashed out over the last few weeks. Reed’s pursuers thought they caught him with his pants down, putting the hooves to him and chasing him to some random old house in the desert for some desperate last stand. The truth was there was nothing random about it. Reed spent too many hours rigging the house to be his ally in the fight and led them there like dying horses to water. And now they were gonna drink.

Before Reed got through the hole in the closet wall and onto the next part of his house of horrors, his attention was pulled back to the room he just left when both windows exploded inward, the top rungs of two ladder’s jutting through the shattered window panes. Both ladders shook with growing intensity as two more goons made their way up the side of the house.

The first one entered through the far window getting only his head into the room before Reed sent a bullet through his cheekbone and his body bouncing back down the ladder into the dirt.

Reed raised his weapon again, expecting a repeat shot into the coming hunter’s face as he entered the window - no need to get flashy after all - when a shot rang out from the doorway of the bedroom. It felt as though a flaming cannonball slammed into his left shoulder as a bullet ripped through the muscle and tissue beneath Reed’s collarbone. Even as the momentum from the slug knocked him off kilter, he was able to squeeze the trigger under his right index finger and send the surprise gunman in the doorway up and off his feet with a spreading bloodstain forming on his chest.

Reed, who hadn’t forgotten about the second man climbing the ladder, ducked quickly back into the closet and pressed his back against the far wall near the cut out leading to the next room trying to steady his breathing against the pain and adrenaline coursing through his body. As the man stepped off the ladder, Reed closed his eyes and focused hard on the sound of the footsteps coming from behind the wall to his left, remembering the sound of each creaking floorboard that he had studied in preparation for something like this. All it took was one specific familiar, high pitched moan from one of the aged floorboards as it was pressed down upon by the approaching assailant’s boot and Reed’s hand shot up as if guided by pure instinct and sent a bullet through the closet wall and into the man behind it.

Six down. Four to go.

He took one more breath when he heard the body thud onto the floor and ducked into the next room. The last room. He noted the sound of the ladders being climbed once again as he made his way to the window, this one overlooking the front of the house on the right side. Reed quickly and carefully peeled back the corner of the cardboard placed over the window, peeking through and making sure there were no more bounty hunters remaining out front before tearing the cardboard down and letting the light from behind the dust storm outside into the room. He grabbed the machete he had placed on the window sill and was opening the window when he heard the sound of the hunter’s boots stepping off the ladders and onto the floorboards, shattered glass crunching under their weight. Reed didn’t hear any fearful reactions coming from the intruders at the sight of their creatively mutilated partners that now filled the bedroom and assumed that Warren was saving the real hard cases for the end.

Reed got himself the rest of the way out of the window and onto the roof, moving a bit slower than usual due to the bullet wound in his shoulder but not quite feeling all the pain yet as the adrenaline poured into his bloodstream. He reached his right arm back through the window, machete in hand and watched as the seventh bounty hunter came into sight. In one swipe, Reed cut a rope that he secured to the wall near the window, sending a bucket of gasoline suspended over the doorway free falling onto the head and soaking the area surrounding the fearless hunter. Even as the bucket fell, Reed’s zippo lighter was already flying through the air, connecting with the hunter at the same time as the gas and sending a wave of fire shooting across his body in every direction. Within two seconds, the floor and gunman were engulfed in flames and his fearless facade melted away like ice cream in a frying pan. He dropped his weapon and started to flail rapidly around the room, pleading with his partner behind him for salvation that he could not provide.

Reed was already at the edge of the roof and preparing to lower himself to the ground when the frantic voices of both men inside gave way to the sound of roaring flames and nothing more.

Eight down. Two to go.

Reed could hear the house starting to succumb to the spreading fire even from the ground as he prepared to sneak across the porch. The plan wasn’t quite as safe as the rest had been that day, but he simply didn’t have much more to work with. So he would sneak back into the house and flank them on the bottom floor. And if that didn’t work, he’d shoot em’ however else he could. But when Reed rounded the corner toward the porch, he saw Warren standing in the distance in front of the house. He just started toward him when he noticed another shape on the ground near their leader’s feet.

On the ground lay Warren’s last hunter, face down with a hole dead center in his back.

“Tried to run, did he?” Reed asked, smiling.

“That he did, pard.” Warren said back, his hand already hovering over his side holster. “What do you say we settle this thing, once and for--”

His words were cut off as his body flew backwards, blood trailing from his chest. Reed was done with theatrics for the day.

Reed fell to his knees and exhaled for a long time. His breath only caught again when he looked up and made out a shape behind the receding dust clouds. A fucking bull.

The beast took off toward Reed as he remained kneeling in the dirt. Having resigned himself to hanging up his hat for the day, he smiled as the beast charged in his direction, unsure if it was coming toward him or trying to speed past after being freed from it’s captor. A smile spread on Reed’s face at the same time his eyes closed against the sun as he waited for whatever was to come.

10 down. Game over.