Live Kill by Kenny Torrella
“It was a cheap shot, but no damage to your vitals”
Fiction by Kenny Torrella
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You want to have a good remote hunt? You need a good video feed. If it’s just rained, water droplets blur the camera lens and the deer look further away. That’s not good for your aim. You can’t see crap when it snows. As rare as that may be in south Texas, it does happen.
“Snowed once in ‘89, and once this February, right after I started Live Kill Incorporated,” Tim said, when I signed up to hunt with him.
In fact, just last week a little hurricane rolled in from the gulf and up through Galveston. The wind knocked the camera over right as I was ready to click and shoot a young whitetail doe. No lie.
But by the grace of God, the video feed of the hunting yard is clear today. That doe’s been darting around Tim’s decorations -- if you can call them that -- like they’re traffic cones. The rusted-out cars, the stacked firewood, the decoy stuffed raccoons on top of garbage cans. And in the twenty minutes I’ve been logged in for the hunt, I've twice watched her run the dirt trail: a single-lane loop she’s carved out for herself with the pounding of her thick hooves.
But I don’t want her. I want her man, the big buck with twisted antlers, pointing in all cardinal directions.
He’s here somewhere. There’s no way out of the hunting yard because, did you know, deer can jump “higher than the Alamo,” according to Tim. So, he erected a shitty fence of chicken wire tacked onto poles, and draped camouflage sheets over them. He even spray-painted “Don’t Mess with Texas” on one. As much as it’s an eyesore, it’s effective: “None of these fuckers have tried to escape since,” he said.
I don’t blame them for trying. After discharge from active duty, I was counseled on the phantom limbs I might experience, as well as the lack of discipline in the civilian world, but nobody prepared me for the sheer boredom of the injured and confined, especially in a place like Shelbyville, Tennessee. Our claim to fame? In 2003, Reba McEntire wrote a song about us; it’s called “Ghost Town.” I did escape, and I still got hurt.
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Sometimes old friends from back at the base still call and tease. Anthony will start things out and say something like, “Hannah, we wish we were out of this fuckin' desert like you, stateside and everything paid for.” When I can hear them all laugh, I know Anthony has me on speakerphone.
“Shit, that’s a good one," I might say. "You try putting pantyhose onto one leg with one arm. All the money in the world couldn’t help you do it, Anthony. You probably couldn’t do it with two arms, dumbass.”
Anthony and I had watched jackals roam that desert. Through our scopes, before reveille, before sun up even, we drank coffee and watched them hunt for rodents.
“I’ve read that jackals mate for life, but they don’t travel in packs, which is stupid,” Anthony had whispered one morning. Stupid, just like these deer, I now think. I remember this because he had said it, and then he got up for more coffee. There was the silence of the desert, and the base after lights out. Then there was a boom, and then nothingness.
The following morning, well after reveille, I woke up and was told this: we were lucky. The dogs used to sniff out such bombs had been fast asleep, but it was set off too far away to do any real damage to the base.
"Shrapnel,” the doctor said, moving his pointer finger to where one of my arms, and then to where one of my legs should’ve been. “It was a cheap shot, but no damage to your vitals,” he said, and smiled. “So, your friend mentioned you were watching coyotes?"
Too weak to talk, I blinked.
"Anyways,” the doctor said, “he's here.”
The doctor walked to the door and motioned for Anthony to come in.
“What’s up, peg leg?” he asked, peering down at me, giddy to see his friend both alive and in pain.
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Leaning forward in the wheelchair, I take off my glasses and squint at the screen, moving the mouse around to find the buck. Searching, seek and destroy, as Metallica says, pounding away on the stereo.
I find him in the high grass, squatting to piss. After he finishes I place the crosshairs on him and click twice.
After the 2nd click, the computer locks into the shot. It goes something like this: the click travels from my computer, via underground wires -- or maybe satellites? -- to a router. It then links up with Tim’s computer, which controls a mounted Springfield .30-06 in the hunting yard. When the click reaches the gun, the gun fires. Easy.
A message pops up: Fatality Not Found.
The message fades and the buck bolts to the back of the property with a trail of blood gushing from his right foreleg. He makes it 50 yards and slows down to lie next to the Dallas Cowboys pinball machine. I throw the crosshairs back on him to finish the job -- this time the heart -- but then the cursor locks in place and Tim appears.
Tapping my fingers on the desk, the song goes on: There is no escape and that’s for sure, James Hetfield screams. This is the end.
Tim tiptoes up to the buck from behind. Does his shadow spook the buck? Does it fire off instincts that fail to launch due to the broken, bleeding foreleg. Instincts that otherwise would’ve sent him into a sprint toward his girl? There’s no raised tail, no guttural sound for such a mature buck. No stomp to alert the others. He really is far gone, and the song playing behind me is almost over now: Don’t try running away ‘cause you’re the one we will find.
The video feed is still clear. I zoom in to see the buck panting, which could easily be mistaken for a smile, just like when a dog pants.
There’s a silence there in the yard; far away from the whir of my computer, and the beating of the drums, and the crunching of the guitars. That must tell him what comes next. The buck turns around and looks up at Tim who stops, aims, and fires into the back of the buck’s neck to ensure the antlers remain intact.
The sound of the gunshot raises the doe from her rest and she runs laps around the decorations even faster than before, with just enough grace to stay in her lane.
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Header image courtesy of photographer Chona Kasinger. See the complete photo suite on NAILED, here.
Kenny Torrella is new to fiction writing but is a longtime ghost-writer in the non-profit sector. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his girlfriend and a wonderful dog named Rihana.