The sun was dying, falling desperately behind the canyons. The cool sky was alight with fire, and the earth-doomed god’s last bloody rays illuminated a rugged, bearded hunter cruising along a deserted highway on a retired motorcycle, his long coat flapping behind him like the leathery wings of some lethal night creature. Hatred was in his heart, and dead, lost things crawled through his mind. This hunter had had a name once. But it had been lost, taken. His soul had passed through fire, and it had emerged strange and unfamiliar. But he had survived. And as the road grinded on beneath him, he knew he was justice itself. He was Ulysses returning home, he was the angel of death summoned from hellfire to consume nations. Vengeance, elemental and pure, surged through his soul. His soul, where the wolf growled.
The hunter dismounted and walked the old motorcycle up a gravel lane, and parked it outside of a motel on the edge of town. His target was there, in the town, hiding within the humming city lights. His target was cunning. He would be prepared, have taken precautions. Both of them, predator and prey, were veterans of this ancestral game.
Before sleeping in his decaying motel room, the hunter sat on the stiff bed and sorted through the contents of the faded backpack he carried. A box of disposable blue latex gloves, a pair of pocket binoculars, a set of kitchen knives, a roll of bandages, a change of clothes, a laptop, and, underneath all this, a double-barreled shotgun. The stock had been removed and the twin barrels had been sawed down to size, so that the entire weapon was only two feet in length. Resting next to the shotgun was a compact Colt handgun. The hunter checked and cleaned both weapons. When he was satisfied, he put the shotgun back in the backpack and kept the pistol. He pushed the backpack under the bed and slid the pistol under the dusty pillow. Fully dressed, he eased himself into the bed and lay staring at the dark ceiling for hours, and after a while he fell asleep.
He awoke in the night, and the wolf was gone and he was afraid. He heard the soft wind and an achingly beautiful voice spoke to him in the dark.
“I’m here, daddy.”
He was so afraid in the dark, but still he whispered back.
“I know.”
“Always.”
“Yes.”
“You have to go home, daddy.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“You have to. He’s just a man.”
“He’s a monster. He’s responsible.”
“He’s not. He’s not and you know it.”
“He killed you and I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to leave. I’m not coming back. I’m sorry.”
“Stop lying, daddy. You said it was wrong.”
“I meant it. And I mean it now. I’m leaving it all behind and I mean to never go back, but first I have to kill him. And then I can move on. I’m going to forget you and I’m sorry but I can’t live that way.”
“You said you’d never leave me. Never leave me.”
“Oh God, stop it, I’m sorry, don’t you see but I can’t go on like this every night, I have to finish it.”
“Don’t leave me, daddy. Please don’t. Choose me, daddy. Not him. He’s just a man”.
“I want to, oh Christ I want to but I have to survive and I can’t do it like this, not like this.”
He was frantic now, and the tears streamed down his face and soaked the pillow and dripped onto the pistol. He heard her beautiful soft cry in his head and then the soft wind blew and he knew she was gone. And in the silence his broken voice, “Oh God oh dear God please oh please, God, let me die, oh God kill me now. If I have ever done anything right in my life repay me now and end this, I’m begging you.”
Silence.
He sobbed into his soaking pillow, and after awhile he stopped, and after a little while longer he slept. In the morning he cleaned the pistol and loaded the shotgun and slung the backpack over his shoulder and rode his motorcycle into town.
When he arrived in the town he began his search. He found a payphone and he used it to call local hotels. He knew his target’s name and he asked for him, saying he was an old friend looking to meet up. This was all true, and so no one suspected otherwise. In a few hours he had found the hotel. He left the motorcycle behind because it drew too much attention. It was nearing noon and the sky was bright and hard and the searing sun had returned. Against all odds, the dazzling deity had risen from the dead. As the hunter walked and thought this, the wolf raised its scarred head from sleep and rumbled in its throat. A deep, primeval sound of admiration. For the wolf was a monster against the odds, and perhaps that was why it slumbered now.
The hunter stopped to find his destination looming above him. The hotel was expensive, in the heart of the small downtown area, and surrounded at all times by the corpulent crowds. His prey had been clever. Here, at the pulse of the city network, was the worst possible location for murder. The hunter stood on the sidewalk in thought. He would watch the area for signs of his target, and look for an opening. He smiled, and hoped this last kill would prove a challenge. He thought it would be fitting. The wolf agreed.
The hunter set himself up in an adjacent hotel across the street, and watched from his window with the pocket binoculars. It wasn’t until dusk that he saw his target. The man, the monster, emerged from within the depths of the double doors out front and began making his way around the back of the hotel. The hunter watched as his mark strolled to a smaller parking lot, noticeably free of bystanders. He strode to a car, opened the door and rummaged inside. After a few minutes of poking around in the back seat, the target straightened up and entered the hotel by means of an inconspicuous back door. The hunter looked up from the binoculars and saw that it was almost dark and that the crowds were thinning. But they would be back, perhaps within the hour, to feed on the raucous energy of the night. He had to move fast. His target had simplified things considerably, giving him access to his vehicle and an entryway. The hunter would take advantage of both. He opened his backpack, replaced the binoculars and pulled out a pair of disposable latex gloves. He snapped them on, and retrieved a three inch kitchen knife from the set. He placed this, along with the handgun in the waistband of his jeans. He took the shotgun out last and held it so that it was hidden under his duster coat.
The hunter hurried down a stairwell and out into the cool night. He crossed the vacant street and made his way to the weed-cracked tarmac of the parking lot. It took him almost a second to realize that the car was gone. He froze, letting the shotgun hang at his side. Then he heard the metallic click, echoing in the empty evening. He thought that there was almost no point in moving, that the bullet was probably already on its way, that it was foolish to fight. The wolf snorted in disgust and pushed the hunter into a headlong dive. He felt the concrete shudder beneath his feet, and heard the bellowing report. He came up on one knee, and caught a glimpse of flashing silver three stories up. He swung the shotgun around and sprayed the window with a shot of molten lead straight from hell. Splinters plumed from a thousand tiny holes and rained to the ground as the hunter scrambled to his feet, leveling the shotgun at the wounded window. Nothing moved as the gunshots bounced off each other and vanished into the coming night. After awhile he lowered the gun, and after a while longer he went cautiously to the door and turned the knob. Unlocked. He had only one shot in the right barrel of the shotgun and so he took out the pistol and held it ready at his side. Slowly, he entered the hotel and made his way up the dim stairwell to the third floor. He found the room that had held his target, and he entered, sweeping the room with the shotgun. It was a bathroom, and it was empty save for wooden debris, powdered glass, and a considerable amount of blood. There was no trail. His target had been smarter and faster than he had ever anticipated. He had only had half a minute to move the car, so the vehicle couldn’t be far. Could he find it? He could. And a little while later, he did find it, parked down the street. Sirens were wailing in the night as the hunter approached it. He hurriedly picked the lock on the trunk, and flipped it open. Empty. He fished his phone out of his pocket and placed it in the dark corner of the compartment. Satisfied that the night had not been a complete waste, he walked back across town and found his motorcycle and rode back to the motel.
At the motel he set up his laptop on the bedside table. In the morning he would check the GPS location of his phone, and he would find his target and he would run him to the ground and he would not lose him again. He washed his hair and beard and then he went to bed.
He awoke again in the night, alone, and his scrabbling fingers crawled under his shirt and found his beating heart.
Alive. Still alive.
This night he was haunted by the worst of demons. A memory. Like a dream but terrible and real and alive. The images leapt unbidden into his mind. The man and his daughter, making a card together, a card for something, a thank-you card or a birthday card; he couldn’t remember. But the card was paper, and the paper sliced her finger in a thin red line. He had grabbed the finger, and he was so afraid, too afraid to let the finger go, so he dragged her to the medicine cabinet and wrapped the finger in heavy swathes of bandage and made her take her tablets. He had been so afraid.
“You see, daddy? It wasn’t him. It was the blood. No clotting, remember? You told me I could die from a paper cut. But I wasn’t scared. You were scared for both of us. You were always so careful. And one day—“
“Stop it, oh please, stop it, I—“
“You have to remember daddy, otherwise you’ll never go home. One day I cut my finger bad while you were with him, that man, and you were arguing and yelling so loud. And I was scared then. You were so loud daddy. I needed your help, to take the lid of the bottle for the medicine. You couldn’t hear me and I was scared to see you so angry. And I—“
“I know what happened, I know, I know, but I don’t want to.”
“You have to. You see, it wasn’t him, anymore than it was you.”
“O God, it was me, it was me and it was him and we’re both damned and I’m going to make sure of it.”
“You can survive. You can survive anything. I know you can.”

In the morning he checked his laptop and saw that the monster was not far, driving along an interstate. He could catch up. And then he would end them both. He had heard that a wolf’s survival instinct was so strong that it would gnaw its own paw off to survive a trap. But could it gnaw out its own heart? He knew now that it couldn’t. They would both burn.
He found the monster at a gas station off the interstate. He coasted his motorcycle to a stop and then the monster saw him and ran. The hunter revved the motorcycle and the devil himself squealed out onto the highway, and the hunter gave grim chase. He had the shotgun in his coat and he whipped it out as he screamed along the road and he blew out one of Satan’s tires and watched as the car skidded to a halt. He fired the shotgun again at the door just as it opened and it thudded shut again. He dismounted the bike and sent the empty shotgun clattering across the pavement. Drawing the pistol, he advanced, and fired into the car three times. He kicked open the perforated metal door and saw the thing, bloody and moaning inside. Aiming, the pistol, he searched his soul for any reason not to do it. Any reason at all to turn back. He saw where that would lead him, an impossible, broken life of torturous nights and meaningless awakenings. How could he survive? He closed his eyes and summed up all his courage and for a moment envisioned that life as a possibility. Suddenly, the wolf perked up its ears and gave a low, rumbling, primeval growl. Its eyes flashed with impunity, and fire leapt in his soul. The wolf, the greatest warrior, the purest survivor, raised its hackles and snarled in defiance at the feeble limits he had placed on himself. And the man holding the pistol knew that he would take this impossible path, because he was the wolf, and his daughter had known it. They would survive together.