I Am Death

Eighty-two

Hunter had been driving for almost an hour when he finally spotted the tiny dirt path hidden between bushes to the left of the road he was on. With no signs, no indications of any sort and no illumination whatsoever, even someone who’d been looking for it, like Hunter had, could’ve easily missed it. Like Hunter had. He had driven back and forth along that same stretch of road twice before he at last saw the gap between the bushes.

He stopped and directed his headlights toward it.

‘Is that it?’ he asked himself, leaning forward against the steering wheel. ‘It must be. There’s nothing else out here.’

He left the road and his car disappeared between the bushes as if it’d been swallowed by the night.

The uneven path was full of bumps and holes and that, together with pitch-black darkness, forced Hunter to slow down to a tense crawl. After about three quarters of a mile and two bends, one left, one right, the shrubs and bushes that lined the sides of the dirt road became less dense, giving way to endless fields of nothing at all except dirt, foxtail cactuses and desert marigolds.

Hunter drove on, being as careful as he could to avoid the larger potholes. The smaller ones were inevitable. They practically were the road.

After another half a mile, the road bent left again before going up a small hill. As Hunter drove down the other side, the vegetation changed again. The marigolds were swapped for Joshua trees and desert willows. Dirt and foxtail cactuses were still everywhere. As Hunter drove around a denser concentration of cactuses, he thought he spotted something in the distance. Some sort of massive shadow. He immediately brought his car to a full stop and switched off the head-lights. Reaching for the pair of binoculars he always kept inside his glove compartment, he stepped out of the car.

As luck would have it, it was a cloudy, moonless night. No stars were visible either, which made it all way too dark for him to be able to see anything from where he stood. Looking for higher ground, Hunter climbed up on to the hood of his car, then on to its roof.

Still he saw nothing.

He needed to get closer.

Hunter got back into his Buick and, keeping the head-lights turned off, began moving again, this time even slower than before. He drove for another quarter of a mile before stopping, climbing on to his car and scanning the terrain before him as carefully as he could.

Nothing to his right.

Nothing directly in front of him.

Nothing to his... wait. He paused, leaned forward. There it was. Way up ahead and slightly to his left.