Worse Than Death — WIP

Charles Dexter walked behind the Mayor and loaded his shotgun.

“Think we’ll find anything?” the Mayor asked.

“Not if you keep making all that noise,” Dexter answered.

He walked with a swagger, hiking boots swishing through the fallen leaves in the wake of the trail forged by the shorter man huffing in front of him.

“It’s a long walk,” the Mayor complained with a jovial grin.

He was a short man and wide, a high school football star turned car dealer turned Mayor and Charles Dexter had been a business associate of his for over a dozen years. His football days were far behind him, and he shuffled with the weight of an extra one hundred pounds on his bones.

Pudgy fingers gripped a double barreled shotgun that he carried with a lazy grace.

Dexter pumped the action on his twelve-guage and pointed it at the trees.

“All the squirrels hear you coming, JD,” he said. “We’re just chasing them deeper into the woods.”

They reached a narrow path to a ridgeline that cut through the forest.

“What do you think?” JD asked Dexter as he stared up the twenty foot hill.

“I think if we get up there, we can see the squirrels at eye level.”

JD studied the treetops that lined up with the ridge and huffed.

“I think you’re right.”