Four Live Rounds by Blake Crouch Page A

man’s time, and if
it hadn’t been me, it’d a been—”
    A shotgun blast exploded in the forest,
trailed by a shout of unabashed joy.
    Marion struggled up off the ground. “Son of a
bitch hit somethin.”
    Oatha felt the excitement bloom in his gut,
Marion already on his feet, lumbering out of the shelter.
    Nathan hollering, “Boys, come look at this!
Shot us a elk!”
    It required immense effort for Oatha to sit
up, and he had to employ a spruce branch to leverage himself out of
the dirt onto his feet.
    Marion yelling, “I could kiss you, Nathan,
tongue and all!”
    Oatha limped out of the shelter as fast as he
could manage into sunlight that passed blindingly sharp through the
dead trees, Marion twenty yards away, moving with considerable
speed though the spruce, Oatha following as fast as he could,
shoots of pain riding up his legs, the muscle atrophied, already
wearing away.
    There was Nathan in the distance, standing
with the shotgun beside a scrawny aspen, its bark chewed up, near
cut in two by buckshot, Oatha scanning the woods for the fallen elk
as Nathan raised his shotgun.
    Marion’s head disappeared in a red mist and
the rest of his body collided into a tree and pitched back as Oatha
ducked behind a spruce, the trunk too small to shield him from a
spray of buckshot, figuring if it came, he’d catch a pellet or two
at the least.
    “The hell you doin, Nathan?”
    “Livin, brother. Livin.”
    “You mean to kill me, too?”
    “I mean for us to eat this fat son of a
bitch, get back to civilization.”
    Oatha peered through the branches, saw that
Nathan was still standing above Marion’s headless frame, the breech
of the shotgun broken over his forearm.
    “Why you reloadin then?” Oatha shouted. He
didn’t own a gun anymore, hadn’t in three decades, but Marion’s was
sitting next to the snowbank inside the shelter—a Navy—and he had
to bet it was loaded.
    “‘Cause I don’t know if you the type a man to
go along with somethin like this.”
    Nathan was fishing in the pocket of his
oilskin slicker, pulled out a pair of shells, Oatha thinking if
there was ever a time to make a break for it, this was it.
    “Don’t misunderstand me,” Nathan said. “I
kilt him out a pure necessity. Was you the fat fuck, I’d a cut your
throat long ago.”
    “There ain’t no level a hunger make me eat
the flesh of another man.”
    “I understand,” Nathan said, sliding shells
into the chambers, snapping closed the breech.
    Oatha started back for the shelter, his boots
sinking two feet in the slushy snow with every step.
    He heard the report before he registered the
blood running down his back, colder than iron as it flowed under
his waistband, a rush of pure animal panic flooding through
him.
    By the time he reached the shelter, Oatha’s
shoulder was aflame and he could barely move his arm to break
through the wall of snow, though with the adrenalized bolster of
sudden strength, the accompanying pain was a slight
distraction.
    He fell through under the canvas as the
crunch of Nathan’s footfalls approached, scrabbling through the
dirt and snow for Marion’s revolver.
    The Colt lay under a threadbare Navajo
blanket, and as Oatha got his hands around the steel, he realized
the vulnerability of his position, urging himself to settle down
even as his hands trembled.
    Nathan’s footsteps had gone silent.
    Oatha sat in the dirt floor, straining to
listen, no sound but the trees creaking in the wind, his pulse
vibrating his ear drums.
    “They’s still time,” Nathan said. He was
close, his voice passing muffled through the snowbank, Oatha unable
to pinpoint his exact location.
    “For what?” Oatha asked.
    “You to come to your senses, see there ain’t
no way out a this pinch except you help yourself to a little
Marion. You wanna live, don’t you?”
    “Not to the detriment a my conscience.”
    “Tell you what…the one time in your pathetic
life you decide not to be a coward, and it’s gonna get