Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 1)

“You bet.”

Leaving Orson’s vacant eyes open, Percy took his shotgun as he followed me through the obliterated door, back out into the snow. He yelled something about my friend, but my panting drowned his voice, and I didn’t stop to ask what he’d said. My shoulder burned now.

A snowmobile idled in front of the cabin. When I reached the front porch, I glanced back and saw that Percy lagged fifteen feet behind, holding his side with his left hand, the shotgun in his right.

Upon entering the cabin, I closed the door behind me. In the perfect gloom, I could see nothing. Neither will Percy. I peered out the window, watched Percy wading through the snow, his body illuminated by the snowmobile’s single headlight. Receding into the shadows so he wouldn’t see me, I thought, I’ll just knock him unconscious. There’s food here, and he isn’t badly injured. Someone will come for him. There’s no other way. His boots thumped up the steps.

I inched back toward the hinges of the door so I’d be behind him when he entered.

“Dave!” he yelled as the front door swung open. “What was you saying about—”

Ammonia.

Warm breath misted the nape of my neck.

I turned and faced Luther, smiling in the darkness.

LUTHER greets the morning with a smile.

Climbing out of bed, he dons jeans and two sweaters and walks into the living room, smiling at Percy’s frozen burgundy puddle on the stone.

While the coffee brews, he steps out onto the front porch. Large snowflakes drift lackadaisically down from the overcast sky.

“Howdy, boys.”

Orson and Percy don’t answer. They sit in their rocking chairs on opposite sides of the door, still as sculptures, their open, unblinking eyes staring into the desert, into nothing. They’re upset with him because he made them stay out all night in the cold.

Sitting down on the steps, he listens but doesn’t hear it yet. That’s all right, though. It’s only 10:45. He is not anxious. Beyond the shed, a brown speck darts through the snow—a coyote, foraging. It woke him last night, crooning to the moon.

He hears an infinitesimal drone. Standing up leisurely, he stretches his arms above his head and fetches Percy’s twelve-gauge from the breakfast table. Setting it beside him on the front porch, he sits back down on the steps to wait.

The snowmobile streaks across the desert, a black dot skimming the snow.

Percy’s wife pulls up on her SnowKat and parks beside her late husband’s snowmobile. In her umber bib and black parka, she removes her helmet and dismounts, the snow rising above her waist. Her face is robust and wizened like Percy’s, and her hair sweeps long and gray behind her shoulders. She smiles at Luther and leans against the SnowKat to catch her breath. He can see two cabins in her sunglasses.

“Hi, there,” he says, chipper. “Pam, is it?”

“Yep.”

“It was kind of Percy to bring me over here last night. I was very worried about my friends getting stranded in the storm.”

“Well, I appreciate you boys keeping him company last night. I brought your toolbox, Percy, so maybe we can fix your Kat good enough to get home. I always told him I’d kick the shit out of him if he left without a cell. What do you say there, Perce?” She glances at her husband, on Luther’s left.

“You report him missing to anyone?” Luther asks, staving off another wave of light-headedness. Pam steps forward, her head curiously tilted at her husband. Luther takes two shells of double-aught buckshot from his pocket.

“Not since I got you on the horn,” she says, but she’s not looking at him. “Hey, Percy!” She removes her sunglasses, squints at her husband, then at Luther, befuddled. Blood runs over the tip of Luther’s left boot into the snow. “The hell’s wrong with him?”

“Oh, he’s dead.”

She smiles, as though Luther’d made a joke, and comes a step closer. When she sees Percy’s throat, she looks at Luther, then at Orson, and screams. A raven launches out of the snow beside the shed, croaking bitterly. Pam turns and bounds back toward the SnowKat.

Luther breaks the breech of the shotgun and slides the shells home.

Three hours later, he unwinds on the front porch, sipping from a mug of black coffee. He is not void of kindness. He has allowed Pam and Percy to sit side by side, and even arranged Pam’s hand to rest in her husband’s lap. They will freeze together. That is not altogether unromantic.

“I’m going to bring you guys a new friend,” he says. “How would you like that?” He looks over at Orson and slaps him on the back, an arctic slab of stone. “Don’t talk much, do you?” Luther guffaws.

He believes now that he is the perfection of Orson, and he burns with ecstasy.

A new thread of warm blood runs down his inner thigh.…

Luther revives on his back, staring up into the ceiling of the covered porch, the spilt coffee already iced into the wool of his sweater. He sits up. The clouds are gone, the sun low in the sky, half-obscured behind that distant white bluff. Tingling specks of black have infiltrated his vision—particles of dying that will soon overtake him. A small blood puddle has frozen on the wood beneath his feet, rosy in the petering sun. He is blisteringly cold. The pain is back, but he does not respond to discomfort in the whimpering, human fashion. He is indomitable, though he should depart soon if he intends to survive the bullet Andrew Thomas put inside him.

He stands, takes up the shotgun, and staggers back into the cabin. At the end of the hallway, he unlocks the door of the guest room and kicks it open.

Andrew Thomas lies motionless on the bed.

“Get up,” Luther says. He hasn’t entered the room since the previous night, when he dragged Andrew inside. With a pained exhalation, Andrew struggles to sit up against the logs. The quilt still wrapped around his shoulders, he shivers, his breath steaming.

“Come with me,” Luther says.

Andrew looks up at him, vanquished. “I heard the shotgun. Are they all dead?”

“Come with me.”

Orson’s brother looks down at the floor, tears filling his eyes. “Just kill me.”

Luther falters. Lurching into the wall, blood dripping from the hem of his blue jeans, he tries to take aim. But the shotgun slips from his hands and he slumps down upon the stone.

I lift the shotgun from the floor and touch my finger to one of the triggers. When I place the barrel against Luther’s chest, I can taste the madness, and my God it’s sweet. I want to squeeze the trigger, feel the shotgun buck against my shoulder, and watch him bleed out on the stone. In short, I ache to kill him, which is precisely why I don’t.