The Headhunter (Shorting the Undead & Other Horrors) by Saul Tanpepper Page A

consequences, if he let himself cry out, were…. Well, he tried not to think about them.
    Not until I am avenged, darling.
    A noisy clatter rose from the people on the sunburned sidewalk below him, from the machines, their feckless routines. Like anything made any difference now. The noise drifted up to him in beckoning waves. A scream would certainly be noticed, would draw the wrong sorts to his door. Angry men who killed recklessly and for no other reason than fear of what they did not understand.
    When it was nearly noon, he’d gotten up to tug the curtains closed. He was careful not to be seen through the cracked glass. Heat radiated in, clawing at his already parched skin. After so many nights, the light was like acid to his eyes. The flimsy curtains muted the images below him, turned them into phantoms flitting around. For an hour or so he’d stood there, motionless, mesmerized, stoic, watching the shapes of the people who dared venture out while the sun was still up.
    Did they really believe they were safe down there?
    He considered the question while his stomach rebelled from his miserable breakfast. A memory brushed up against his mind like a tide seducing the shore. He and Karen, at one of the local cafés downtown, laughing, enjoying a ham and cheese panini. A memory from before the Uprising. When life had been…normal. He knew what the memory meant. It meant the monster would soon follow, the monster and memories of its taking Karen.
    He tried to think of other things, but images came unbidden, uninvited and yet welcomed: Karen’s happy smile; the sound of her voice; the smell of her skin; the soft, delicious moans of their lovemaking….
    And then, just as he’d expected—and yet could never prepare for—there was the face of her attacker, rising up out of the ground like a spectral mist, taking his Karen from him for the thousandth time. He could almost hear her pleading with him as she lay dying. Her voice growing dimmer. The sound of his own footsteps as he’d run off like a coward.
    He winced from the memory, the pain of the memory. He groaned, low and to himself, doubling over in anguish, letting it run its course through him like some malarial fever. He knew that when it finally passed, he would pine deliriously for its return. Excruciating as it was, the pain somehow made him feel more alive than he had in a long time.
    I will find you, he’d promised. And he had, hadn’t he? He’d found her once.
    But then she’d been taken away from him again.
    So, standing there at the window, he’d renewed his vow to kill the monster—to kill all of them—no matter how long it took. He’d kill them as mercilessly as it had taken the life of his beloved wife.
    And then, maybe he’d finally be able to sleep.
    He’d torn himself from the window and fallen back onto the couch, where the twitch in his face resumed its tiresome harassment.
    With a deep sigh, almost a moan, he slipped each leg into his pants, zipped the zipper, secured the belt. His clumsy fingers, stiffened by the heat and the dryness of the day, stumbled over the clasp until, finally, the thing was done. The darkness had deepened considerably by then. He found his shirt and draped it over his shoulders. The front was stiff as cardboard, as were the collar and one sleeve. He felt his skin drawing away from it in revulsion. Some hunters got used to the gore; he never did.
    Tomorrow , the voice persisted.
    Tomorrow, he agreed. He’d wash everything tomorrow. The stains wouldn’t come completely out, nor would the stench their blood left behind, but at least he wouldn’t have to feel it against his skin.
    He settled once more onto the couch, sinking deeply into it for the springs were old and cheap and had been sorely abused in another lifetime. His hunting boots were similarly stained and just as putrid as the rest of his clothes, though that mattered little to him. They were boots, after all, meant for such abuse. There are many things