Hunters

by Chet Williamson

  It was getting colder now, and the sky looked threatening. The weather radio out of State College had called for snow in its three-day forecast, possibly starting as early as Wednesday night. They weren't predicting amounts yet, but said the possibility was there for heavy snowfall. That could mean bad news for Ned and the other wardens.

  Ned hadn't been a WCO back in 1978, but Larry had told him about the snowstorm that year. It broke Monday evening, the first day of buck season, and although the radios had warned that it could be a whopper, and state officials told people to get out while they could, a lot of hunters hadn't believed it and stayed in their camps. The smart and lucky ones left that evening before or just after the snow began, and some were able to get out the next morning.

  But a lot of them walked through the two feet of snow that had accumulated by dawn, only to find that their vehicles weren't going anywhere because they and the access roads were covered with a wet, heavy snow. It had been at the height of the CB radio mania, and the local WCO's got dozens of calls from pissed off, stranded hunters demanding that the Game Commission or the Forest Service open the roads immediately, something that was impossible. Most of the WCO's and deputies were snowed in themselves, and the county's plows were already losing the struggle just to keep the main and secondary roads plowed.

  By the time the snow ended early Wednesday morning, it measured three feet deep over most of north central Pennsylvania, and that meant three feet worth of bad news. During the next four days, volunteer snowmobilers drove back through the woods to cabins that were believed to be still occupied, and took the hunters out one at a time. Amazingly enough, though there were several cases of frostbite, there had been only six fatalities, two of which were heart attacks suffered when overweight and under fit men tried to walk out of their camps through the heavy snow. The other four men were found dead in their isolated Moshannon State Forest cabin. Propane from their stove had leaked during the night, and they had all been asphyxiated, something that might have occurred even without the heavy snow.

  Everyone said it was a miracle that no one froze to death, but the State Forest Service and Game Commission sharply criticized those hunters who had not heeded the warnings to leave their camps, and so made the costly and dangerous rescues necessary.

  There hadn't been an incident like it since, but looking up at the gray, glowering sky, Ned wondered if there could be a recurrence this week. He hoped not. Most hunters liked a little snow, since it was easier to spot dark deer against whiteness than against the camouflaging trees. But too much snow would turn a hunter's dream into a WCO's nightmare.

  Ned walked until he came to the two ruts that the Forest Service called a road, and began to follow them south until the woods began to grow less dense. Another half hour of walking brought him to a point he knew to be only a few hundred yards from where his Blazer was parked, along with the cars of the hunters.

  He started to whistle a few notes, then stopped. Even though he was close to the road, some might be still-hunting, that cat-and-mouse method of looking for deer by slowly walking through the woods, then waiting for a long time, walking again, waiting, walking, and waiting. It was a tedious method, but one that many hunters swore by, and though it was likely that the deer had been driven deeper into the forest by the sound of gunshots, there was always the possibility of a hunter who, for health or safety reasons, wanted to stay near civilization badly enough to plant in probably barren ground. Ned would not make their odds even longer by making noise.

  The silence that he wished to grant to others was abruptly scarred by a shrill whistling, like an incredibly fast hornet that whizzed past his head, followed an infinitesimal moment later by the sound of a gunshot. He froze instantly, then realized that he had been shot at, and that he might be shot at again.

  He went down on one knee, teeth clenched, eyes narrowed against the anticipated second shot, but it did not come. A hundred thoughts crowded his mind, most of them having to do with his own death. At any other time, he would have considered the shot accidental, an unavoidable hazard of being in the woods with over a million hunters, a small minority of whom would shoot at anything they saw moving.

  But today, he heard the bark of the shot and felt the angry wake of its passing as revenge for what he had done the day before. He knew with all his pounding heart that he had not been mistaken for a deer, but that he had been targeted. He had become prey.

  Ned also knew that he should hug the dirt and scurry into whatever protecting brush he could find, but a reckless pride would not let him. He had no weapon, and if he were to die, he would die facing his killer, not trying to dig a hole into earth that could not hide him. So he waited and tried to pray.

  But only silence followed. The sound of the shot that had rung so clearly through the forest died away like the sounds of a great buck running fast and far. Ned listened in the growing silence, but heard nothing, not the crackle of boots on dead leaves, nor the apologetic cry of a hunter. There was only the memory of the gunshot ringing in his ears, and the thudding of his heart.

  Ned took a deep breath, stood up in one quick motion, looked to right and left, in front and behind him. There was not a glimpse of movement, of blaze orange flitting through the trees. "Hey," he called, and found the word caught in his throat. He called again, "Hey!," loud enough this time to be heard by someone within range. There was no answer.

  Ned stood for a long time, listening and waiting. But he heard only one shot, and that was from miles away.

  Jumpin' hell, Sheldon Lake thought as he ran almost silently through the woods, clutching his daddy's old .30-06. I almost had him. Ned Craig's head had been lined up perfectly in Sheldon's crosshairs, but he had missed him. On purpose.

  At the last split-second before his finger tightened on the trigger, Sheldon knew that this wasn't the way to do it. It was too late to stop the shot, but it wasn't too late to pull just a bit to the right so that the bullet zinged past Craig's head.

  Craig had gone down so fast that at first Sheldon thought that he had hit him. But then he realized it had been instinct rather than his bullet that had dropped the man, and he knew he had to run. He hadn't seen a sidearm, but WCO's wore their pieces under their coats, and Sheldon didn't want a showdown.

  Especially not now, not after he'd been struck with the tremendous epiphany that had jerked his shot wide. He had been vouchsafed a vision, not the vision of Ned Craig's head flying apart, but of Ned Craig dying as he, Sheldon, might die, had he not already made up his mind to take his daddy's way out.

  No indeed, Mr. Ned Craig, Sheldon thought, trotting through the woods, heading toward his pickup a mile and a half away over on Burdick Road. No quick death for you. Instead you're gonna know what's coming. You're gonna watch for it, and get your tests, and pray to the Lord every time you visit the doctor, and then someday you're gonna be that HIV-positive, and then you'll know yeah, it's coming sure enough. And finally you'll have it, and maybe you'll be man enough to blow your brains out and maybe you won't. Maybe you'll just die slow and painful, the way most of those faggots do. And maybe you got a girlfriend or a wife, and maybe I'll pay her a little visit too. Oh hell yeah, we got a long way to go, you and me, Craig. I'm gonna pay you back good for sending me to prison. Good and long.

  Sheldon didn't know how he was going to do it, but he was going to if he had to die in the attempt. Come hell or high water, he was going to give both Ned Craig and whatever woman he loved AIDS. He was going to do it with his own blood, and he was going to laugh and laugh while he did it.

  Tim Carlton looked up at the sky nervously. He could see little enough of it beyond the tops of the pines, and what he could see he didn't like any better than the surrounding trees that seemed to press in on him.

  Tim was not a hunter, but the senior partner in his Altoona law firm was, a rabid one, and if Tim ever hoped to become a junior partner, he had to at least make a noble effort to kill a deer and show Walter Matthews "what he was made of." It was
n't enough to have the most profitable client list of any of the younger men, he also had to shoot a goddam deer, for crissake.

  Not that he had any compunction about blasting one of the things. If a buck popped up in front of him now, he'd fire away and hope for the best. What he was afraid of was that he was going to spend all week getting his feet frozen traipsing through these stupid woods and never see a thing.

  He had to confess, though, that his feet didn't feel at all cold. Walter had supplied him and the four other attorneys well. The leather-topped, rubber-bottomed boots lined with felt kept his feet toasty without feeling sweaty, and the L. L. Bean jacket, pants, and thermal underwear kept the rest of him warm.

  The only cold parts were his exposed face and his hands, which he kept jammed into his pockets, his rifle wedged under his arm. "Light cotton gloves," Walter had said, "is all you need. Got to be able to pull that trigger when the time comes." Sure. If the time ever came. Walter had painstakingly told the virgins just how they should hunt, moving slowly from spot to spot, then waiting for a deer to show up.

  Tim thought it was like fishing, boring as hell. And it didn't make any sense either. The more ground you covered, the more likely it was you'd eventually run across a buck, right? So instead of still hunting, he practiced what he referred to mentally as hike-hunting, just walking through the woods hoping to finally run across an antlered sonovabitch.

  He just hoped that it didn't snow the way the weathermen said it might. It sounded like it could be a real monster storm if the worst case scenario came true. Tim only liked snow when you could ski in it. Walking miles through it looking for deer sucked royally.

  Skiing. Now there was a thought. Nice sunny slopes, a big warm lodge with a Jacuzzi and a good restaurant, a cozy room with a big fireplace and a sweet young thing who thought a young lawyer would just be the greatest thing in the world to screw. They'd all seen the movie of The Firm, even if they didn't read, and knew that lawyers were the best catch of all these days, now that Bill Gates was hitched. There were still girls who didn't give a damn about sexual harassment, who loved to flirt, who gave as good as they got, and who were capable of giving a helluva lot more.

  But up here in the wilds of Jefferson County? Jesus, the only available girls he'd seen in the bar in Brookville had been pitiful looking things, and invariably the handful of women hunters he had seen had looked like those girls' pinheaded sisters, the kind their families kept chained in the attic and let out only at deer season to fill the larder for the winter.

  And just as that thought crossed his mind to make him snicker and shudder simultaneously, one of the best looking women he had ever seen stepped from out of a tight grove of trees with a white, pearly smile that turned that dark forest into Aspen under the sun. Thank you Jesus, Tim Carlton thought as he smiled back.

  She was just the way Tim liked them, short and petite, with big breasts that even a thick, down-filled jacket couldn't hide. Red hair crept out from under a blaze orange toque, but her skin belied her hair with its bronze, healthy tan, accentuated by the rose in her cheeks. Christ, but weren't tanned redheads just the foxiest things in the world, rare and beautiful?

  She carried a rifle under her arm, so she was a hunter, and that normally would have been a negative. But for some reason Tim felt turned on by even that, as though he had just come across a sexy and spirited tomgirl. And hell, if she hadn't gotten her buck the first day, she couldn't be all that great a hunter.

  "Hey," she said brightly.

  "Hey yourself," he replied, trying to look like less of a dweeb by taking his hands out of his pockets. Ready for action. "How's the hunting?"

  She shrugged. "I'm not dragging anything home yet."

  He gave her the Tom Cruise grin. "Maybe your luck'll change."

  "What, now that I've met you?"

  Holy shit, he thought, she zinged it right back. That was a come-on, sure as hell. Tim suddenly felt that he had been dropped into a scene in which Penthouse Forum met Field and Stream. But now was most definitely not the time to lose his cool. "Could be," he said. "Where have you set up camp?" Good, that sounded macho.

  "Real close by." That was good. "About a mile down that hollow." That was better. "It's my boyfriend's cabin."

  That was bad. Tim felt his smile drift in spite of his efforts to hold it. He snapped it back into place and nearly winced as his chapped lips cracked. Christ, it was cold. "You're both hunters then?"

  "Well, he is. I'm just along for the ride. Not really into it. You like it?"

  He weighed the question like he would have in court. Depending on what she thought, if he said yes, he was a butcher, if he said no, he was a wimp. So he tried to make a joke out of it. "Well, little lady," he drawled, "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." She giggled, and he knew had chosen right, so he extemporized. "Hunting's fine, but it's not my life."

  She grinned then, a real dirty, almost nasty little grin, and he thought he had a live one here, except for the boyfriend. "It's Billy's life, that's for sure," she said. "I was so darn excited, him asking me up to his cabin, just the two of us, for four whole days, but he's too much into hunting to even...well, be romantic, you know?"

  He nodded as though he did know indeed.

  "And a girl who's been expecting that kind of thing can get pretty disappointed, you know?"

  "I can understand that," Tim said with what he hoped was an understanding smile, edged with just a touch of lasciviousness.

  "Now tell me the truth, would you do something like that?" she asked, her pretty head tipped to one side like a bird's. "Get a girl up here, get her all, you know, expecting something, and then act like one of those monks or something?"

  "I'll tell you the truth," Tim said gallantly. "If I had a girl like you up here in a cabin, just the two of us...I'd never get outside long enough to even look for a deer."

  He felt himself get a hard-on like a rock when she lost her smile and looked at him with smoldering eyes. Holy shit, he thought, she looked like she wanted to do it right then and there. "You ever do it outside?" she said. "In the winter?"

  Tim felt like jumping up and down with excitement and horniness. This was every fantasy he had ever had and more. But he kept his cool. It wasn't hard, considering the temperature. "Not this cold, no."

  "I'm willing to bet you won't even feel the cold." Not "you wouldn't," but "you won't," like it was a given, like they were going to be doing the dirty in another minute. This girl was a gem, a wonderful, wacko gem.

  "I bet I won't either," he grinned. "And neither will you."

  "Come on," she said. "We won't go back to the cabin, but there's a place just back in these trees..." She tucked her rifle under her left arm and took his hand, then pressed it against her breast. He wished his gloves were off, but he could still feel enough of the soft roundness to stand him at attention plus.

  "I can't wait," he said. She pulled his hand away then, and led him toward the grove of trees from which she had so wondrously appeared. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked her as they walked from gray light into pale darkness.

  "Samantha," the girl purred. "But since we're gonna get to know each other real good, you can call me Sam..."

  It seemed to him as though he was in a blissful dream as he took off his heavy coat and set down his gun on top of it. He felt her hot breath against his neck, her hands fumbling at the zipper of his trousers, then the cold knife sinking in, hot blood pouring out over his bare flesh, something wet on his face that might have been spit, then nothing at all.

  Larry Moxon answered Ned's call on the second ring with his usual, clipped, "Moxon."

  "Larry, it's Ned. I got...something else to report."

  "Oh Jesus, nothing bad?"

  "A wild shot. I probably shouldn't even bother, but—"

  "A wild shot? Close to you?"

  Ned looked through the windows of his Blazer, but still could see no one nearby. He wished that he didn't feel so damn nervous. "Right by my head."

 
; "See who did it?"

  "No. I called out, but nobody answered. The guy probably realized what he'd done, and felt too stupid to own up to it, so he lit out."

  "Now listen to me, Ned." Larry's tone was no-bullshit. "I want you to come in right now."

  "Hell, Larry, it was just an accident, it's happened before."

  "I don't think it was an accident, buddy. Somebody was looking for you. A woman."

  "Attractive?" It wasn't the kind of comment Ned normally made, but he felt the urgency to lighten the situation. He didn't like the thought of two people trying to kill him in two days.

  "It's not funny. She called on the phone. Said she wanted to know where to get in touch with you, that she was a reporter for the Banner. Now, I don't have to tell you that the Banner's only got two reporters, and only one woman, and you know that lady well enough that she wouldn't have to call me to interview you."

  The news made Ned feel even colder, and he was suddenly worried for Megan. "Did you tell her where I lived?"

  "No, but all she has to do is look in the phone book."

  "You think she's a friend of this guy I...I shot?"

  "I don't know who she is, Ned. But her fishing around for you, and you just getting shot at isn't a combination of things that would keep me out in the woods today."

  "Oh hell, Larry, if somebody was really after me today, they could've gotten me easy with another shot. I'm sure it was just an accident. And that woman who called was probably a reporter from someplace else, maybe one of those tabloids or something." Now that he had the leisure to think about it, it made sense to him. He had been too uptight about what happened yesterday, that was all. Nobody was after him. His earlier panic had been a result of yesterday's tragedy, not today's peril. "I'm staying out here, Larry. There's not a damn thing to worry about. Believe me."

  "It's dumb to take chance, Ned."