ground.
Wyler turned around, “It’s James, not Jamie.” The wounded man looked up as he pulled himself along the floor with his hands “It’s nothing personal,” Wyler said, “I found my shot and I’m taking it.”
Agata stopped running and watched, but made no sound at Wyler’s choice. The metal door down the hall snapped open and the large feline sprinted toward them. It got close to the fallen hunter and slowed down. Meandering slowly toward Aldridge, it began to make its noise. The soft rattle, part snake, part purr, thumped out of fleshy openings in its fur. It sniffed the fallen man and then leapt at him with wide jaws. A snap of its mighty neck and Aldridge was as lifeless as the surroundings.
With the cat preoccupied, Wyler stepped out of the darkness with his AK and began to pour out on the cat. The light flashed in the room and the animal dropped back in a hissing lump before it too stopped breathing.
Agata stepped out from behind an upturned table and came to Wyler’s side. Despite the dead animal and their desecrated companion, she was eerily calm. Wyler himself was still fighting to keep up with his lurching lungs.
“I guessed wrong,” Agata said, “it wasn’t the beasts or the savages that took care of Aldridge. It was you that killed him.” She slipped her hand around his arm and smiled her sinful smile. “It really is a pretty cat.”
***
The next morning Wyler sat comfortably in the soft leather seat, listening to the blades of the helicopter slicing the air above. As he looked out over the charred wastes disappearing below, he picked up the photograph that had been resting on his knee. The black and white picture was given to him by Steve, taken as soon as the guide had found them again. Wyler looked down at the still shot of himself, kneeling in victory with the head of the dead rattle cat set across his knee and his automatic rifle held at his side. Aldridge’s body was just visible in the background. The picture was the part of the trophy he got to take home with him; a solid moment of glory frozen in time.
We now know what kind of survivor you are, Steve had told him then; the surprisingly vicious kind.
END
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