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about it.
    He
was a short, barrel-chested man, with a full beard.  He had on a pair of heavy
canvas coveralls, glove 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;}
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ears.  More important, he had an “I’ll kill you and eat your liver” look in his
eyes.  He was caught but not defeated, that’s for sure.
    When
I knew my rifle still had his attention, I called out to Gabriel and Anna,
telling them that it was safe to come out.  I still kept my eyes on the pilot,
though.  He could easily have had a pistol hidden on him.  We’d get to that.    
    Anna
came out first.  I saw her peer around the trunk of a large pine, probably
making sure it wasn’t some sort of trick.  She looked at me for a couple of
beats without smiling, (of course she wouldn’t smile) and turned around to
signal Gabriel to stay where he was.  It was when she turned back around that I
saw the pistol in her hand, which explained the two different shots I heard. 
    As
she approached, the pilot looked back over his shoulder at her.  I told her
that I hadn’t searched him yet.  I figured that I would keep my gun on him
while she checked him for another weapon.  At that point, although we weren’t completely
out of danger, my heart rate finally started to settle down, and the shaking of
my knees diminished enough that nobody would notice how scared I had been.
    That’s
when Anna shot him.  She looked back once to make sure Gabriel wasn’t in view and
shot him dead.
    There
was an instant, I’ll bet not much more than a couple of seconds in time, when I
thought nothing, felt nothing, and did nothing.  My eyes just held onto the
view of the red gunk shooting out the far side of his head, the blood spurting
out the near side, and the pilot toppling over.  After that, I guess my brain
and body started working again. 
    Fear,
no doubt, fear I was maybe next on her hit list, caused me to swing my rifle up
and finger the trigger.  By that time, though, her hand and gun had dropped to
her side, and for just a moment, one breath of life, she let me see inside
her.  Her shoulders rolled forward, her head dropped, her eyes closed tight,
and the pain of what she’d done was there.  Then it was gone.  It was just that
fast.  She squared herself away and looked over at me with no residual of
regret.
    “Relax,”
she said.  “It had to be that way.  We couldn’t bring him with us, and he would
have told the others which way we went.  Besides, he would have done the exact
same to you.”  She turned and walked over to the rifle the pilot had dropped
and picked it up.
    I
couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.  That was a life she just took, a real
live person.  He wasn’t an immediate threat.  It was done as casually as
scraping your plate before washing it.  Who can do that?  What human being can
snuff a man one second, suffer her act the next, and be back to business
immediately after.  Who was this woman?
    As
I replay these events in my head, what, now two days later, I have the luxury
of time and circumstance to interject something into this narrative that Claire
Huston wrote in November 2050.  She said, “It’s in our nature that we will
suffer unless we receive our own approval.”   It’s so typically simple of
her, yet so ripe with meaning.  My take not by a long shot.  6it on it is we are basically doomed to be
our own worst critics.  Or less handily, if for whatever reason, expediency,
necessity, even self preservation, we do something that we know is wrong, we
will greatly suffer from the disappointment in ourselves.  I certainly have my own
regrets about things I have done in life, but I can’t even begin to imagine the
amount of pain Anna will suffer for murdering that pilot.
    Enough
of that for now.   I’m too exhausted from the day’s walk, and my brain won’t
have any more of those sort of thoughts, so let me return to the events
following the