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extensive study of serial killers, so that he knows what the police and
FBI will expect him to do. He's much more clever than they, of course.)
He strikes three times. The last one is particularly horrible, a trick he
got from a book about the Inquisition. He's stopped a young female
jogger, punched her senseless, and driven her deep into an abandoned
turpentine forest. He ties her to a tree, naked, her wrists and
crossed ankles duct-taped to tree limbs and trunk in a crucifixion pose, and
when she wakes up he takes a scalpel and makes a small incision in her lower
abdomen. He carefully slices through the layers of muscle and the tough
peritoneum, and eases out a couple of inches of gut. Then he goes back to the
van to fetch a cage that holds a whining, starving mongrel. He records her
begging and hysteria for a while and then holds the cage up to her
abdomen and opens it. The dog snatches its food and runs away,
unraveling her.
He follows the dog to where it sits feasting and clubs it to death. Then he
returns and videotapes the woman's face, staring at what has
happened, until the life leaves her eyes.
For the first time, he leaves all the body there. The scene has a kind of
perfect terrible beauty. His freezers are full anyhow, and he wants to see
what the newspapers will say.
He always alternates boy, girl, boy, girl. Who will be the lucky boy?
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***
Ron Spencer has fallen into a routine that is not unpleasant. He pedals thirty
to fifty miles a day, stopping in motels when he can, campgrounds otherwise.
He stays in touch with Kellerman by cellular phone, calling every day
at five. He doesn't dare forget to call: if Kellerman hasn't heard from him by
5:30, he'll call the state and local police and FBI. There's a signal
generator under his bicycle seat that will lead them straight to him, and
presumably Hunter or some other foul player.
For the past several weeks, he hasn't been riding alone. He met an
attractive woman a few years his senior who was also biking
coast-to-coast, and they hit it off. When she asked whether they could ride
together for a while, he considered refusing, or saying yes and pretending to
be just another biker, but then after some awkwardness he explained to her the
odd and probably dangerous quest he was on. He doesn't want to endanger her.
She counters that she would be in a lot more danger alone.
In fact, she's the first sole female rider he's seen on the road, with all the
media play about Hunter. At first, he even suspects her of being the killer.
Their relationship is friendly but platonic. Linda's not looking for
a man, she says. That's okay with Ron, still hurting from his own betrayal.
He doesn't need a relationship, though he wouldn't turn down some
friendly sex; Linda implies that she's lesbian but deflects any
direct queries.
Linda's a good bicyclist, but Ron is a lot better. He pokes along with her
most of the time, but periodically says bye and sprints ahead for a mile or
two, getting some real exercise. It also gives them each a few minutes of
privacy for "using the bushes."
***
This afternoon, Hunter is using a ploy that has worked in the
past, pretending to be fixing a tire. He's so huge and obviously
helpless that people will stop and offer aid.
Ron is cranking along, sprinting about a mile ahead of Linda, and
almost stops, but then decides to play it safe. He doesn't really want
to confront Hunter, and this guy looks like one of the two suspects. (The FBI
is looking for the Thin Man and the Fat Man, from two possible
eyewitnesses.) As he passes, though, Hunter jams a tire iron into his front
wheel spokes. Ron cartwheels and is knocked unconscious, his helmet
shattered.
Hunter finds the gun and P.I. license and gets suspicious. Instead
of killing him, he ties and gags him and throws him and his bike into
the back of the van, and drives back to Georgia.
But Linda has come around a distant curve just in time to see the huge man
tossing Ron's bike into the van. She's can't see the license number, but
can tell from the peach color that it's from Georgia, and she can
describe the van. She pedals like mad; it's at least an hour to
the next small town.
Safe in his isolation, Hunter manacles Ron and tries to find out what's going
on. He inspects the bicycle and finds the bug, which he triumphantly
smashes in front of Ron.
In the process of wheedling and posturing and torturing, he reveals his
True Identity. He shows Ron the freezers full of food and cooks him up a nice
chop.
While all this is going on, Linda is trying to make some cracker police
officer take her seriously. She tries to reach Kellerman, but he
has an unlisted number. The FBI puts her on hold.
Of course once the tension is stretched to the breaking point, the cops come
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boiling out of the woods. Hunter is so huge he absorbs about twenty bullets
before he falls down dead.
***
Epilogue
The coroner of Illsworth County, Georgia, has done hundreds of
autopsies, but never one of such a huge person, and he's not
looking forward to it. Mountains of messy fat to slice through before you get
to the organs. But he prepares the body and makes his first
incision. Then he staggers back, dropping the scalpel.
Inside, there's no fat, and not a single organ he can identify. Some of
them are shiny metal.
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From "Red Shift" edited by Al Sarrantonio
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