The Walrus of Death: A Short Story by Steeven R. Orr Read Free Book Online Page A

The Walrus had dropped me just inside the front door, so the deadbolt was within reach. I engaged the bolt with a quick flick and staggered toward the hallway. The lock wouldn’t stop the Walrus, I knew that, but it may slow him down for a moment or two. I imagined that it would take at least twenty to thirty seconds for that brain of his to process the confusion that would slide over him when he found the door locked.
    I moved haltingly down the hallway with a lot of starts and stops, like a zombie two years into the apocalypse. But with each step, I moved a little faster. I had to assume that my Peacemakers were still sitting on my desk back at the office, but they weren’t the only shooters I owned. My rifle was still in my room, resting comfortably in the trunk at the foot of my bed. I’d neared the end of the hall when I heard my front door being ripped from its hinges.
    “Oklahoma!” the Walrus roared from the front room.
    But he was too late. I’d made it. I could feel, more than hear, the Walrus thundering down the hall to me, but by the time he got to my room, I’d snatched up my rifle, a belt of cartridges, and had slid out my bedroom window.

THE FOOL ON THE HILL
    I DON’T MUCH LIKE running from a fight. It burns in my craw something fierce. But though I would never be mistaken for a learned man, I ain’t stupid. I know that I would be no match against the Walrus using just my fists and wits. It’s why I grabbed the rifle. Yet, once I had the rifle and ammunition, I still ran. I ran like the wind – well, like the wind if it had been healing from a broken spine. I ain’t no coward, but if you’re gonna fight someone, make sure you pick where you do that fighting. I read that somewhere. Might’a been a Spider-Man comic. I ain’t too sure.
    My home is an earth berm home built into the side of a hill. This meant that the entire back half of the single level house was underground with a modest-sized hill looming up behind it. Once I was out of the window and onto the front lawn, I hobbled around to the back of the house, running as quickly as I could across the back yard, up the hill, and into the dense clump of woods that stretched back for a few miles out behind the house. Under the cover of the trees I fell to the ground, lying on my back and breathing heavily as I loaded the Winchester.
    I slid the last cartridge into the rifle when I heard the unmistakable sound of a walrus crashing through a bedroom window — my bedroom window. So far, everything had gone according to plan, but success hinged on the hope that the Walrus would follow me. The plan was to hide here among the trees on the hill and wait for the Walrus to peek his ugly face around the back of the house. Then I’d shoot him. Not actually in the face, mind you. I wasn’t out to kill him — I wanted to — but I figured it’d be best to let the law handle this one. If he forced the issue, then I’d have no other choice. Otherwise I figured on winging him a bit. Maybe I’d go for the knee and put him down long enough to get the boys in khaki out here to lock the thing up — for good this time.
    It all depended on the Walrus doing what I wanted him to do, which was follow me west behind the house.
    As I’ve said, I live in the country a few miles north of town. Based on what was around the house, geographically speaking, the plan put a lot of dependence on the landscape itself guiding the Walrus in my direction.
    I mean, when you think about it, I could have jumped out the window and continued east across the front yard and away from the house, but my front yard looked out toward a few hundred acres of cornfield, which at the moment sat unplanted, empty, and flat. Had I gone that way I’d have stood out among the nothingness like a lone figure streaking through an open field fleeing from a walrus a in a suit, so east was out.
    To the south was the Kansas River, and beyond that, Eudora. I wouldn’t get too far fleeing in that