The shot missed Calvin Jenkins, but he heard a flat smack as the projectile struck fir bark about six inches from his right ear.

That fuckin' asshole Helprin!

Tried to shoot him right inna fuckin' head, man!

Jenkins had only a vague idea of the shot's origin and, without sticking his head around the tree and probably collecting one square between the horns, only an equally vague notion of where Helprin was now. The bastard would certainly have moved right after firing, but which way? The only thing certain was that Helprin had gotten above him on the steep mountain slope. And shooting down gave the bastard a definite advantage.

Feeling a sneeze coming on, Jenkins pinched his nostrils till his eyes watered. It didn't work. In a moment he was wracked by several huge, strangled chuffs. Despite holding his nose till his eyes bulged, sneezing made considerable noise. A fact that Helprin's mocking voice quickly made clear.

"Ohhh Caalvin.... I hear youuu," he sang.

The dense forest acted like sound distortion panels in a fun house.

Jesus, where was that bastard?

Trying not to even breathe hard because Helprin had ears like a fuckin' radar, Jenkins spread his legs and braced his back on rough bark, holding his Kingman Spyder in a double-handed grip and resting the long, cold barrel against his cheek just the way Dirty Harry would do it. The Spyder was a beautiful weapon. Single-piece aluminum frame, M-16 grip, light, balanced and accurate.

"Ohhhhh Caaall... vinnnnn..."

He just couldn't be sure where the voice was coming from. Maybe it was directly up slope. Right where that little tree was growing on that rotten stump. The one with the huge bracket fungi all over it. Jenkins quickly stuck his Spyder around the trunk and fired a blind shot.

"I'm hit!" he heard Helprin scream, "Oh, fuck! Got me, man. Oh, Jesus, right inna fuckin' guts! Ohhhh..."

Yeah, right.

Jenkins hadn't gotten this far in life by being that stupid.

He began a crab-walk down the steep slope, digging boot heels into forest detritus and carefully keeping the fir between himself and where he thought Helprin was. God help him if he were wrong. He had to find better cover. Here the tree trunks were fairly far apart and the dry forest floor, covered in a thick layer of dirt, rotted wood and evergreen needles, supported only an occasional berry bush. A lousy berry bush would never protect him from Helprin's unerring aim.

Fresh trickles of sweat ran down Jenkins' face and he wiped with his sleeve as he worked his way along, scraping his back on tree trunks, slipping and skidding on dead needles, praying his camouflage T-shirt and pants would conceal him. And knowing they wouldn't because there was no thick underbrush. His lungs were burning and knees trembled with fatigue and fear. He knew there was very little time left. Above him on the slope came the sharp crack of a dry branch breaking underfoot.

Helprin!

The fucker was closer than he'd thought. A lot closer!

Below, about 30 feet away through the trees, he saw the brilliant, sunlit green of what looked like a meadow on a small rock shelf projecting from the steep mountain side. He slipped around another tree, then hopped sideways down about 10 feet of slope. Now he could see trees thinning out ahead and, better, the luxuriant green of salal covering the open area.

Once he got into that shit, man, Helprin could fuck himself!

There was a sudden crackling of breaking branches, the soft thud of a body hitting the ground and a muffled curse from only a few feet away in the jungle of tree trunks. In his peripheral vision, Jenkins saw a brand new Doc Martens poking from behind the tree he'd left just a few seconds before and realized that Helprin had been right on top of him. Probably aiming a fatal shot when he fell on his ass.

Abandoning all attempts at stealth, Jenkins took off, crashing and floundering towards the meadow without the slightest plan but keenly alert to suggestions from geography. Maybe he could cut across and take cover on the far side. If Helprin were stupid enough, he'd follow into the open and right into Jenkins' sights. He'd have the bastard. But Jenkins wasn't at all sanguine about pulling the trigger on Helprin. The swine had been in his sights about a half hour earlier. Had a perfect shot right between Helprin's shoulder blades, but he'd deliberately fired wide.

Helprin was a nasty turd at the best of times and he'd be a good deal nastier if you shot him.

As he bounded through dense salal, Jenkins saw several boulders protruding from lush green foliage like tops of granite toadstools baking in summer heat. There was a particularly large one just about in the middle of the meadow, and that became his goal. He flailed and floundered, wrenching his feet through tangled vines, pouring sweat and gulping clear mountain air in great, searing gasps. Behind him, he could hear Helprin thrashing through underbrush.

It was going to be close, man, really close. There was no time to go around the rock. He'd have to go over it. Jesus, was it ever going to be close!

He scrambled onto the rock, its sun-baked surface almost burning the palm of his left hand, holding his weapon in his right. His only real hope was to dive off the rock on the far side and take cover, but he couldn't help himself. He just had to know where Helprin was. At the far edge, with safety just a few feet away, Jenkins spun, crouching and looking for a shot. Just in time to see Helprin, up to his ass in salal, raise his own Spyder and hear the bastard yell "Die, you fucker!" even as he pulled the trigger.

The shot hit Jenkins full in the chest with numbing force. His boot slid on rock and he teetered for a moment, arms windmilling, then plummeted some six feet in to a dense bed of salal. Vines acted like a spring-loaded mattress, cushioning his fall so well he barely felt his back touch ground. He lay there as dust, leaves and insects swirled, marveling that the fall hadn't hurt and looking at the large, bright red splatter on his chest.

No question, he was done for.

It was a kill for Helprin.

He stared into the blue vault. It was poetic to spend your last moments on earth gazing into the heavens. A warrior fallen in mortal combat. He fancied he could hear a chorus of angels in fleecy cotton clouds and almost wished he could remember that fuckin' poem he was supposed to have learned in school. Something about poppies in some fuckin' field. Deep inside his fatally damaged body, muscle tissue would be shredded and ruptured vessels would be spilling blood into his chest cavity.

There'd probably be shattered bone stickin' out all over the fuckin' place.

Soon he would feel his legs and arms grow cold. A tremendous lassitude would come over him. Then that white tunnel would form, just like in the movie Ghost. Yeah, he'd get the white tunnel, not them black fuckers comin' up outa' the fuckin' ground. He concentrated on seeing the sparkling white mist gathering above him.

Instead, there was a scraping of boots and Helprin towered against the azure sky.

"Got you, fucker," Helprin said, sneering in triumph and picking at a large zit on his chin, "I seen it."

"Yeah, fuck you, Helprin," Jenkins said.

It was okay to say "fuck you" to Matt at times like this. Times when he'd just shot your ass again and was feeling pretty good about his inner child.

Jenkins took a handkerchief out and wiped the worst of it off his chest. Then he shoved his paint ball gun into his makeshift holster and rolled over. He was on the point of getting to hands and knees when his gaze penetrated tangled, leafy ground cover.

He couldn't believe what was less than six inches from his nose.

It lay facing him, tipped to one side and half-buried, yellowed with age, spotted with moss and so infused with salal it seemed part of the living landscape.

Jenkins' eyes opened so wide they ached as they met gaping, empty eye sockets.

A human skull!

Jenkins' stomach suddenly turned to mush and he nearly peed himself. In fact, there was just a tiny spurt.

"Holy fuck" he shouted, backing up on hands and knees. "Holy fuck!"

"What's wrong with you, you pussy?" Helprin asked, holstering his own gun. "I gotcha again. Big fuckin' deal. I always getcha. I'm the fuckin' best there is, man."

Actually he wasn't sure of that one. The paint ball guns were a recent acquisition from a sporting goods shop in Seattle, and the two hadn't had a lot of experience with them. It didn't look like they'd get much, either, because they were quickly running out of paint balls and CO2 bottles. It hadn't been a very selective shopping excursion, since a store guy or some fuckin' thing showed up right in the middle of it. They'd been forced to just grab whatever came to hand before leaving at a high rate of speed though the storage room window. Helprin had paint balls and gas bottles on his wish list for the next nocturnal shopping trip, but he wasn't sanguine about finding any. There certainly hadn't been any in the prior three stores they'd visited.

"There's a fuckin' skull down here, man!" Jenkins squeaked.

"Oh, yeah, right," Helprin sneered. "C'mon, let's go again. I'll give ya a head start. Count to a hunnert."

"No, I'm fuckin' serious, man," Jenkins squeaked, still peering into gaping eye sockets, though from a slightly greater distance, "There's a fuckin' skeleton down here."

Helprin brushed a greasy strand of dirty blond hair from his eyes and picked at the zit. This Jenkins kid was a really crazy shit, sometimes. What the fuck kind of trick was this?

"Okay, I'm comin' down," he said at last, "But this better not be a fuckin' trick. You fuckin' shoot me, man..." He left the threat unfinished as he jumped, landing with a crash beside Jenkins, losing balance and sitting down hard in vibrant greenery.

"Fuck," he muttered, getting his feet under him and crouching next to Jenkins. "Okay, asshole, where's the fuckin' skeleton?"

"There, man." Jenkins, hand trembling so badly he just about covered all points of the compass, finally managed to indicate the skull.

"Fuck," Helprin breathed in wonderment. For once Jenkins had been right. There was a fuckin' skeleton down here.

"See?" Jenkins affirmed, "what did I tell you, man? 'S a fuckin' skeleton."

Helprin reached over Jenkins' shoulder and pushed foliage aside. A gold-crowned molar glinted in the sun. Half the left side of the cranium was missing, leaving a gaping hole into the brain case through which salal vines grew.

"Maybe we should take it to the cops?" Jenkins offered.

"Fuck that," Helprin said, digging a package of cigarettes out of his vest pocket, "I ain't tellin' that fuckin' Bentley bitch nothin."

He stood, crossed his arms over his chest the way he fancied made his arms bulge and showed off the SS runes on his left shoulder and barbed wire tattoo that encircled his left biceps, and considered the skull while he lit up. He flexed muscles to make the tattoos stand out, the way he always did when he had some really heavy thinking in store, and inhaled deeply.

"This... is really fuckin' neat, man," he said, after due contemplation, as he exhaled a lung's worth of smoke, "We can take it to the club. Make those assholes pay to see it."

'Those assholes', to Matt Helprin, meant basically anyone who wasn't with him at the time of the reference. He could just see all those assholes lining up to pay him a couple of bucks a throw to look at this fuckin' skull. Maybe they could get some black candles or something and make one of those pentagram things. Make it really spooky.

"Here, get the fuck out of the way," he said, pushing the younger and smaller Jenkins to one side, "I'm gonna dig it out, man. Just get some of these fuckin' vines and shit out of the way."

Squatting and dangling his cigarette from a corner of his mouth, he shoved some of the tangle away, spraying embers as he whistled tunelessly through a gap in his front teeth. It was not one of his more endearing habits. Helprin actually had a number of habits that weren't particularly endearing.

"Just gotta get this shit out of the way, man," he muttered, sweeping another vine to one side and, in the process, uncovering a tiny cave created by the rock overhang.

To Jenkins, dabbing at the paint splat in the middle of his best T-shirt, the one that had "USMC" stenciled on the front, and anxiously wondering how long it would take the wet spot in his pants to dry out, it looked almost as though Matt Helprin had been shot. His lanky body jerked in shock, then shuddered and became very still.

"What, man?" Jenkins squeaked nervously, "what's the fuckin' matter?"

Helprin stayed rooted to the spot, staring fixedly at something under the rock.

"Matt?" Jenkins said, trying to control his racing heartbeat, "H-Hey, man, what the fuck? What the fuck?"

"Oh, fuck," Helprin breathed at last, turning to look at Jenkins. Jenkins, noting that Helprin's normally narrow eyes were now very wide, despite the curl of smoke from his cigarette going in to them, and that all the color had left his companion's face, felt a new thrill of horror. Whatever this was, it wasn't going to be good.

"What the fuck, man?" Jenkins gasped, edging away from Helprin and skull. He caught his heels in vines and sat down hard, getting back to his feet almost before his ass touched the ground. Suddenly all he wanted to do was get the fuck out of here, but horrified fascination held him fast.

"Holy shit," Helprin breathed, his voice suffused with an awe, wonder and terror that Jenkins had never before heard, "You know who this is, man? Do you know who this fuckin' is?"

"W-who?"

"You know, man. You gotta know."

"No, I don't fuckin' know," Jenkins said, in his fear coming as close as he'd ever come to showing exasperation with Helprin.

"It's him."

"Him who?"

"Mailman Mel."

Nothing actually happened when the dread name was spoken. No clouds suddenly covered the sun. No streaking bolt of lightning split the heavens, no icy wind sprang up, no demonic laughter echoed through the silent forest. But to the two teenagers, suddenly in the jaws of damnation, the afternoon had become icy and forbidding.

"N-naw," Jenkins managed after a pause to get control of a bladder that seemed to suddenly want nothing more in the world than to turn inside out, "Naw, it ain't, man. It ain't The... The Mailman. It's just some Indian or somethin', man. S-s-some old fuckin' hunter. Prob'ly bin there a hunnert years or somethin'."

"Oh yeah? Whaddaya fuckin' call that?" Helprin said, moving aside and pointing to the little cave. There, shoved into the dry alcove and littered with dead leaves, twigs and dirt of 23 years, was a blue canvas shoulder bag with faded white lettering that read U.S. Postal Service.

Jenkins stared at the old mailbag while his stomach did flip-flops. That nailed the whole thing down. There could be no question.

They had stumbled upon the final resting place of Mailman Mel.

Jenkins never afterwards told anyone, and Helprin uncharacteristically never referred to it, but at that moment, as he gazed into the empty eye sockets of a horrible legend and an icy hand closed around his heart, Jenkins had a somewhat larger urinary mishap.