Hunters

by Chet Williamson

  Adding to her worries was Sam Rogers, Chuck's friend, who seemed as incendiary as Chuck. Each of them separately was a hair trigger, and together they made up a bomb.

  But it would be all right, she told herself. She could keep both of them in line. She knew that Chuck had the hots for her, and as for Sam, well, you could never tell exactly what Sam wanted.

  In the next room, Chuck Marriner rolled off of Sam Rogers, and let the cool air of the bedroom dry his sweating skin. "Thanks, roomie," he muttered, kissing Sam on the shoulder.

  "Hey, what are roommates for?" Sam said huskily. "Gimme a cigarette." The glow of the lighter revealed Sam's naked body, and Chuck drank in the sight.

  "You are fine," he said, running a hand along the curve of Sam's buttocks.

  "Finer than that bitch we're working for?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I know you got a little thing for her."

  "The ice princess? Maybe, but you know that's just a power trip. Ever meet anybody who didn't want to screw their boss?" They laughed together, though Sam's had an edge to it. "So what we gonna do tomorrow?"

  "What the boss lady said. Hit the woods, do some recon."

  "You gonna do anybody tomorrow?"

  Chuck shook his head. "Nah, we'll play it by the book. But I tell you one thing, ole bud, we're gonna do some doin' before this hunting season's over." He put his hands behind his head and sighed. "And I'm gonna use that plastic too. On something."

  He struck the lighter again, and as the flame leapt up he whispered, "Boom..."

  OPENING DAY

  The clock radio went off at three-thirty. Ned Craig came awake instantly, stretched out an arm, and silenced the whining pedal steel of the country song. For a moment he nestled back down under the comforter, put an arm around Megan, and kissed the soft hair at the back of her neck.

  "Uh-uh..." she muttered.

  "Uh-uh what?"

  "Uh-uh it can't be."

  "It is. Three-thirty, bright and early. Time for good little girls to get up, because you know the hunters already are."

  "Ohhh..." she moaned, thrusting her face into the pillow and pulling the covers over her head.

  "Okay," Ned said, sitting up and putting his feet on the cold floor boards. "Sleep till I get a shower, and then you'll either get up or I'll have to resort to violence."

  That wasn't necessary, since when Ned stepped out of the bathroom he could smell coffee brewing. He should have known she wouldn't stay in bed for long. This was one of the few times during the year when they could actually work together, and she had been looking forward to it. By the time he got dressed in his long johns and official green pants and tan shirt, she had breakfast on the table.

  "Hey, eggs—and bacon," he said, pouring himself coffee. "Where's the usual shredded bran and fruit?"

  "Hunter's breakfast," she said, and he chuckled at the thick muddiness of her voice.

  "Have some more coffee." He filled her cup. "And give me a kiss." He puckered up, but she kissed him on the tip of his nose and took her coffee. She hadn't smiled yet. Unlike him, Megan wasn't a morning person. While he often worked from six in the morning to three in the afternoon, she seldom showed up at the office of the St. Mary's Banner before ten.

  But the day-night thing was the only major difference of opinion they had. He thought for the thousandth time how lucky he was to have found her, especially after everything that both of them had been through.

  He washed and put away the dishes while she showered. Then he put on his insulated vest, winter coat, and blaze orange chest cover. He left his Stetson on the rack and took instead his official winter hat, with the three flaps for warmth. It was supposed to be a cold one today. Finally he strapped on his Ruger .357, hoping that all the kills were clean and he'd have no use for it.

  They went separately, Megan in her car and Ned in his state issued green Blazer with its white roof and red bubble top, and arrived at the main entrance to State Game Lands 25 just before 5:00. The Pumpkin Army, so named for the blaze orange hats and coats they wore, was already mustering. Dozens of cars were parked in the dirt area, and dozens more extended along either side of the road. These would be mostly local hunters, or those who didn't have camps and stayed at motels or tourist homes.

  The lucky ones, those with cabins on state or federal owned lands, were already in the woods. All they had to do was step outside their rustic doors and start shooting if a buck happened by. They could sleep a little later, but even most of them had their favorite spots, high ground where they had built tree stands, or in brush at the bottom of a hollow through which deer passed. Sometimes it took a good hour of walking to get to these long sought for and remote places, so it was safe to assume that most of the people in Elk County were up long before dawn today.

  While Ned said hello to the hunters he knew and checked the licenses of those he did not, Megan went from man to man, note pad in hand, and asked them where they were from, if they had ever hunted Elk County before, and what their wives thought about their getting away to hunt for a few days. There were a few women carrying rifles as well. Their pockets, like their husbands' or boyfriends', were loaded down with sandwiches, toilet paper, small cardboard containers of juice, gutting knives, and ropes to drag out their kill, should they be lucky enough to get one.

  Megan talked to the women more than she did the men, in part because they were more responsive. Most of them seemed nonchalant about entering a typically male world, and Megan relished in their attitudes, jotting down their comments as fast as she could. She quickly decided to slant her story towards them, maybe call it "Women in the Woods," if Tom Hendricks, the editor, approved.

  One by one, sometimes in pairs, the hunters moved into the woods in the gray darkness of early morning, trying to find the right place to stop and wait before the sun rose and the deer started to come out of their night havens. It would be difficult, even with the thousands of acres of hunting land in the county, to claim a place of one's own that would not be shared by other hunters. The blaze orange patches were evidence of the difficulties of solitude and the dangers of crowding.

  Ned and Megan stood there in the chill dawn, his arm around her shoulder, and watched the spots of orange vanish among the trees, cold torches sinking into a brown-black sea. "Well," he said, "I'd better go expose myself to gunfire and mayhem for the next twelve hours. You gonna go back to bed?"

  "No, I think I'll surprise Tom by being at the office when he gets there for a change." She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. "You be careful, okay?"

  "Absolutely. See you tonight."

  After Megan left, Ned unlocked the barrier and drove up the restricted road that led to the heart of the game lands. He passed only a few hunters on the way. Most of them had already taken to the woods. Once, in his headlights, he had seen the golden gleam of deer eyes, and glimpsed the flash of white tail as the animal darted into the covering of trees. Good luck, you poor bastard, he thought. You're gonna need it today.

  Sheldon Lake had read his horoscope when he got up. He couldn't remember exactly what it said now, but it had been something about how today would be a lucky day in unexpected ways.

  He wasn't sure what that meant, but he believed in astrology enough that he really wasn't concerned that the blood tests would show anything bad. After all, his daddy had been as healthy as a horse right up until the day he'd blown his head off with a .12 gauge. And the Christmas card he got from his mama each year proved that she was still alive and kicking. And moving, since the postmark was always different.

  It did seem peculiar, though, that Doctor Barnes had wanted him to come in to the office to give him the results. Peculiar, and a pain in the ass, especially on the first day of deer season. Of course, Sheldon didn't have a license, couldn't get one at all anymore because of what had happened with that prick warden. But that didn't stop him from taking his daddy's old Winchester and going out to Clyde Schwartz's farm.

  Clyde didn't let most f
olks hunt there, but he and Sheldon were old school buddies, and the game wardens hardly ever set foot onto Clyde's land. All you had to do was wait till dusk when the fuzzy bastards wandered into the fields to see what was around to eat, and ka-pwing, venison through the winter. Sheldon had gotten a buck and a doe the year before, butchered them himself, and hadn't had to spend a cent on hamburger at Shop-Rite until the following April.

  Today would work out okay, though. Since everybody wanted off at the pressed metals plant where Sheldon worked, they were paying time and a half on Monday and Tuesday. So Sheldon scored points with the boss for working, got an extra bonus on his paycheck, even with the hour taken off to see the doc, and could still get his deer at Clyde's later in the week.

  He reached down and scratched the itch in his leg through his blue jeans. There were more of those damn sores now, and it was starting to piss him off. He'd gotten some cream from the White Shield, but it didn't do any good. And that, combined with the tired, dopey way he'd been feeling lately, had driven him to the doctor for the first time since he'd gotten a basketball physical in high school. The doc had poked and prodded, taken some pee and some blood, and scraped a little bit of gunk off one of his leg sores. He had noticed another sore on Sheldon's face that Sheldon had thought was just a zit.

  That was all last week. And now here Sheldon was again. He hoped that the whole thing would cost more than a hundred bucks. That way the plant could take care of part of it.

  The door opened and the nurse called Sheldon's name. He tossed down the Field and Stream he was half reading, and followed her back to an examination room. After a few minutes, the doctor came in. He was smiling, but just a little, like it wasn't comfortable on his face, and Sheldon really started to wonder what the hell he had found.

  "Mr. Lake," the doctor said. He called him Mr. Lake now rather than Sheldon. Sheldon liked that. It made him feel like the old man's equal. "I have a personal question for you. Please don't be embarrassed or angry. I'm your doctor, and everything you tell me is confidential, all right?"

  What the hell? "Sure...okay." Sheldon nodded.

  "First off, have you ever had a blood transfusion?"

  "You mean got somebody else's blood? No."

  Doctor Barnes looked down at the clipboard in his hands. "You were in prison for a time, weren't you?"

  "Yeah. Eight months."

  "How long ago?"

  "I been out six years now."

  "While you were in prison...or anytime, for that matter... did you ever have any homosexual relations, or—"

  "What?" Sheldon felt his cheeks start to burn.

  "Or," said Doctor Barnes, holding up his hand, "did you ever use IV drugs? Anything you injected?"

  "No, hell no...and never any...any of that other stuff, either! What the...what are you askin' me that for?" And then Sheldon started to feel very cold, remembering some of the things he had seen on TV, in the news and in movies. He'd never even considered it before. How could something like that happen to him? He wasn't a queer, and the only drugs he used were joints every now and again.

  "I hate to have to tell you this, Mr. Lake, but your blood tests show that...you have acquired immune deficiency syndrome."

  Sheldon spelled it out in his head, but couldn't bring himself to say the word. It was like the floor just opened underneath him and he had fallen into a pool of ice water that burned him as it chilled him. Then he remembered some other bad letters, but not as bad as AIDS, and he had to try three times before he got the words out. "You mean like that...what Magic Johnson got? That HIV?"

  The doctor shook his head sadly. "No. Well, yes, but it's worse than that. HIV is the condition before AIDS. Apparently you've been HIV-positive for some time, because now you have..." He paused for a moment. "You've got fully developed AIDS."

  Sheldon shook his head back and forth, back and forth. "I don't know..." he started to whisper. "I don't know how..." And he didn't. During the eight months he had served in prison, he had fought off the initial advances with such savage success that the queers left him alone. He had his eyes open every minute of the time, and had walked out of prison with his former distrust of homosexuals transformed into an eternal hatred of faggots.

  "I'm sorry. I'm really very sorry, Mr. Lake. But there are medications that can help, and there are support groups."

  "But how?" Sheldon asked, his eyes pleading for an answer.

  Doctor Barnes sighed. "There generally has to be some contact with open wounds and blood or other bodily fluids. Most often it comes from sexual contact or drugs, but there are other ways."

  "Other ways..." Sheldon remembered a night, six years before. "Like...if I had a cut...and got some fag's blood in it?"

  Doctor Barnes looked at him sharply for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. That could do it, I suppose."

  "Even if..." He swallowed heavily. "...if I hit 'im, and cut my hand on his teeth, and, and hit 'im again so that the blood got in the cut? Could that do it?"

  He looked up desperately at the doctor, who now looked less sympathetically at him. "Yes," Doctor Barnes said flatly. "That could do it."

  Unable to meet the doctor's accusing stare, he looked back down at the floor. "Damn it. God damn it."

  "I'm going to refer you to a specialist," Doctor Barnes said as he wrote something on a piece of paper. "In the meantime I'm putting you on some medication that should help your listlessness and something for your Kaposi's sarcoma—that's the sores. Now here's what I want you to do..."

  Sheldon listened dumbly as the doctor went over the dosages and called the specialist in Erie and made an appointment for Friday afternoon. In another few minutes Sheldon was back on the street standing next to his car. For a moment he didn't know why he was there or what he would do next.

  But something automatic took over, and he got in the car and drove to the drug store, where Ed Lawrence filled his prescription. He thought that Ed looked at him a little funny when he read the slip, and later when he handed over the package. It wasn't until he got out on the street that he realized it was because Ed knew damn well what was wrong with him, and it wouldn't be long before Ed started blabbing and everybody would know—

  Oh yeah, Sheldon Lake? He got that AIDS.

  That homo disease?

  Yeah, musta picked it up in the joint, I guess.

  Hell, Sheldon never seemed like a queer to me.

  Never know what people'll do in prison. And he never got married either.

  Point...

  Sheldon slammed his fist down on top of the car, and tried hard not to cry. Then he looked at his fist. It was his damn fists that had gotten him into this in the first place. He knew when it had happened. Six years before, when he got out of prison.

  He had served his full time, and there was no parole, so the first thing he did was go home, get his car back from Clyde, and drive all the way up to Bradford, where nobody knew him from Adam. He got a room at a cheap motel, and went to a bar within walking distance so that he wouldn't have to drive back drunk. The bar was pretty nice, one of those sports bars. They had free baskets of peanuts and pretzels on the bar, and you could just toss the peanut shells on the floor. There were two TV's going, one with baseball, and one with basketball.

  Sheldon watched the basketball. Even though the blacks had taken it over, there was a helluva lot more action than the Pirates game, and he used to play basketball. He kept drinking beers, determined to keep slugging them down until he was wasted, then maybe try and pick up one of the few women in the place.

  He had just downed his eighth draft, and was thinking about the rock hard, weight sculpted faggots in jail who would try and make you blow them just because they could. He hadn't, though. He hadn't touched anybody's dick or let anybody stick it in him or let anybody touch his.

  The first time one of them had tried, Sheldon had cold-cocked him with a vicious right to the temple. Because he was thin and didn't have muscles to compare with their free weight pecs, they'd guessed him for an
easy mark. But they didn't know that his thinness hid muscles like wires, and that tall lankiness disguised a man who would fight to the last to save his butt. And he was quick too. Quicker than any of them. Weight lifting bulked you up, but it slowed you down, and the man who was fastest with a kick or a fist or a shank was the man who walked away.

  "Hey, how ya doin'?" Sheldon looked away from the TV and into the face of a man who wouldn't have lasted a night in prison. He was short and slim, and his face wouldn't have been unpleasant on a woman. His longish hair was combed straight back, and was a yellow color that Sheldon figured must have come out of a bottle. His shirt was open two buttons too far, and his stonewashed jeans were so tight that Sheldon could have seen the shape of his equipment if he cared to look.

  Sheldon nodded at him, but didn't smile. The man, who introduced himself as Terry, started talking about the basketball game and the players. Sheldon said as little as possible. By now he was pretty drunk, and had come to the conclusion that this man was a queer and was trying to pick him up. Twice Terry had put his arm on Sheldon's shoulder, and one time he patted his leg as if to emphasize a point.

  When Sheldon looked around he saw that some of the other men in the bar were looking at him and the queer, and he could swear that they were talking about him, maybe betting to see if he'd leave with this guy Terry or not.

  Goddam fags were the same everywhere, prison or the streets. Works like hell to save his ass, and as soon as he's out another fag starts hitting on him.

  Hitting on him.

  Sheldon turned to Terry and tried to smile. It felt lopsided, but he held it anyway. "Hey," he said. "You wanta leave?"

  "Leave?" Terry said with a look of insincere innocence.

  "Yeah, leave. You wanta go back to my place?"

  Now that he knew he wasn't being told to leave, Terry smiled honestly. "Yeah. I'd like that."

  "You want to, uh, pay for my beers?" Sheldon asked. Might as well get the icing with the cake.

  Terry shrugged. "Sure." He called the bartender over, raised his eyebrows slightly when the man told him Sheldon's total, but paid it with a twenty.