She flashed on an obscure image, seaweed in the tide that became a woman’s face. “I know about… that part of it.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. What I do at the end is merely symbolic, a kind of private ritual. Primitives take scalps or heads. But what they’re after is the soul. So am 1.”
It was hard to think of something to say. “I never thought of you as religious,” she ventured.
“Oh, I’m not. Not in the least. There is no ghost in the machine. We’re chemicals, nothing more. Mere vectors for our genetic endowments. The whole glorious human animal is only a Rube Goldberg contraption, jury-rigged by natural selection to dump our complement of DNA into the gene pool. We exist to fuck and die.”
“Then I’m not sure where the soul comes in.”
“Soul — well, perhaps it’s a misleading term. Think of it this way, Kaylie. A human being is an onion, layer upon layer. Social norms and religious archetypes, shame and guilt, repression and evasion, personae we adopt and discard as mood or moment dictates. Peel the onion, strip off the mask, and what’s left is the naked essence. What’s left is what is real.”
Anger stirred in her, pushing back fear. “You keep calling me Kaylie. It’s not my name. Not anymore.”
“Isn’t it?” Somehow, though she couldn’t see him, she could feel his slow, cool smile. “Well, that’s one more layer of illusion I intend to peel away.”
The Lexus slowed. Stopped. The engine clicked off.
“We’ve arrived,” Cray said. “Now the real fun begins.”
Unexpectedly she felt him lean close to her, and her vision returned as the blindfold was pulled away.
She blinked at the surprise of light and color. Cray had left the key in the ignition, the high beams on. Long rays of halogen light fanned across an oval of dirt, the cul-de-sac at the end of the road.
There was nothing beyond it but the land’s flatness and spiny humps of cacti and, here and there, tall saguaros like scarecrows in a field.
“Take a good look,” Cray whispered. “It’s your final resting place. The end of all your journeying, at last.” He smiled. “What are you thinking? Perhaps that you stayed hidden for twelve years, and you could have gone on hiding?”
“Something like that.”
“And now you’re going to die. But perhaps not.”
She was sure he wanted to see an uplift of hope in her face. She wouldn’t give it to him. She merely narrowed her gaze and waited.
“I’m giving you a chance. The same chance I gave the others.”
“It didn’t do them any good.”
“Maybe you’ll be lucky. You’re due for some luck in your life, aren’t you?”
“Overdue,” she said, her voice low.
“All right, then. You have miles of open space. No houses or roads nearby. A wilderness, and do you know how many small animals are being hunted in this wilderness tonight? You’ll be one of them. You’re prey. And you know what I am.”
She looked around her, taking in the emptiness of a place without lights or people or doors to lock and hide behind.
“You’ll have a fifteen-minute head start. I promise not to watch you when you go. I’ll pick up your trail, and hunt you down, if I can. I use no special technology, only a pistol, and it’s not even equipped with a night-vision scope. And you should know that I will shoot to wound, not kill. The killing is done with a knife. The last thing I’ll do is take your face. I get to keep that, as my trophy. And, by the way, I carry smelling salts, which sometimes prove necessary. You’ll be alive and conscious right to the end. That’s the game I play. The game I’ve played for more than twelve years.”
She registered the words. She knew all of it was true, and it would really happen to her. She would be hunted like an animal, and she would die in pain, and there was no hope for her.
“Why?” she asked.
On his face she saw a flicker of surprise, and she knew that none of the others had thought of asking that particular question.
He was silent for a moment. Perhaps he would not answer. Then she realized that he was gathering his thoughts, like a conscientious teacher composing the clearest possible reply.
“Because this is life,” he said simply. “Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. All our most powerful emotions are reducible to the instinctive responses of animals in the fight for life. Anger pumps us up for battle. Fear sharpens our reflexes and perceptions. Have you noticed how preternaturally alert you are right now? And love, the poets’ favorite, is only an expression of the need to find safety in communal ties. Burrowing animals — that’s all most of us are. And then there are a few who do not choose to burrow and hide. It’s one or the other, predator or prey.”
“There’s more to life than that.”
“Really? Has there been more to your life for these past twelve years? Haven’t you been running, hiding? Doesn’t your heart beat faster when a siren goes off or there’s a knock at your door? No wonder you like that silly book, Watership Down. What are you, if not a timid rabbit in her hutch?”
“Do you talk to all of them like this?”
“No. Never. You’re the first. I thought you might understand.”
“You were wrong.”
“Evidently.” Cray frowned, and though it was crazy, for a moment Elizabeth felt certain she had disappointed him somehow. “Well, let’s get started.”
He unlocked her door with the power button on his console, then left the car and walked around to the passenger side. She watched as he passed through the high beams, every detail of his features and form jumping into sudden clarity, then melting into a blur of shadow once more. He was careful to avert his face from the light, and she knew why, of course.
He was protecting his night vision. He would need it for the hunt.
She looked down at her purse, tantalizingly near. The clasp was still secure. Cray must not have looked inside.
He wouldn’t know about the gun. The gun that was so close…
Again she tugged at the sleeves, but her efforts only pulled the knot tighter.
Then her door swung open, and Cray leaned in, his face inches from her own.
Reflexively she drew back. She could see flecks of amber in his gray-green eyes, his nostrils flaring with an intake of breath. He was clean-shaven, but a ghost of beard stubble was materializing on his lean cheeks and narrow, angular chin.
The gun was in his hand again. She studied it — a large, black, dangerous thing, unpredictable as a snake. The gun he would hunt her with.
Shoot to wound, he had said, not kill.
She had never been wounded by a bullet. Distantly she wondered how it would feel.
“It’s a nine-millimeter Glock,” Cray said, “if that means anything to you.”
“Not a lot.”
“I’m going to hold this gun to your head, Elizabeth, or Kaylie, or whoever you think you are.”
The muzzle touched her forehead. She had expected it to be cold, but Cray must have worn it close to his body, and his own heat had warmed it.