Hunters (19 page)

"No, never was."

"Nothing much to it. Relaxing really. Main
thing is not to fall asleep up there."

"I wonder if there'll be much to see," Megan
said. "Have you heard the weather reports?"

"Yep," Larry said. "They're saying we're
gonna get it before morning, and then it's gonna keep on, what, a
foot and half, two feet? So I suspect what you two are gonna
have—
if
the snow doesn't keep you from getting there—is a
nice, snowed-in vacation for a few days."

"Shouldn't be a problem," said Ned. "Chains
on, that Blazer'll get through almost anything."

"You may
see
almost anything, pal," Larry
said, and took another huge gulp of coffee.

I
t was long past
dark by the time Jean, Chuck, Sam, and Michael got to the end of
the access road that had led them to Camp Kessler. They drove out
of the Moshannon State Forest, Chuck and Sam in the Bronco, Michael
and Jean in the jeep.

While Chuck and Sam headed back to St.
Mary's, Jean headed west on 948, then north on 219 until they
arrived in Ridgway. She pulled over at a phone booth near a closed
gas station and Michael took out a handwritten piece of paper from
his pocket and dialed the number of the St. Mary's police
department. Jean had wanted to call in the message, but Michael had
told her that a woman's voice would narrow down the search too
quickly to women hunters, who were far in the minority.

"St. Mary's Police Department," a man said on
the other end.

"Listen to me carefully," Michael said,
pitching his voice lower than its natural range. "This is a member
of the Wildlife Liberation Front calling. We were responsible for
the executions yesterday in McKean, Jefferson, and Clearfield
Counties, and one the day before in Elk County, when one of our
brothers was murdered. Our latest visit has been to Camp Kessler in
Elk County. We suggest you go there immediately to learn the fate
that may await all those who hunt and kill the wildlife of this
state. The work of the Wildlife Liberation Front has only begun."
He did not wait for a reply, but hung up.

"You want to wipe things off?" Jean asked.
"The receiver?"

"I'm wearing gloves, Jean," he said, holding
them up. Then he remembered the quarter. "Oh shit."

"What?"

"The quarter I put in the phone. I couldn't
get it out of my pocket with my gloves on, so I took them off to
get it."

"Did you put them back on before you put it
in?"

"Yes, but I didn't wipe the fucking coin, it
could still have my prints on it." He looked around. "How can we
get it open?"

"Jesus, I don't know, shoot it?"

"No, somebody would hear the shot, see the
jeep, maybe get the license plate."

"Well, we can't wait around, they may be
tracing that call already. Don't they have machines that do
that?"

"Hell, I don't know, maybe. Oh
shit
."

"Look, there are lots of quarters in there,
right?"

"I don't know. Maybe they just emptied
it."

"And maybe there are a hundred in there.
Michael, get real, they are
not
going to fingerprint every
quarter in there, and what if they do? Have you ever been arrested?
Are your prints on file with police
anywhere?
"

"No."

"Well, fuck it then. Let's just get out of
here."

They got in the jeep and drove back to St.
Mary's. Jean could hear Michael sighing in the passenger seat every
minute or so. "Will you stop worrying about that goddamned
quarter," she said.

"All right, I know, it's stupid. I'm
just...you know, it makes me think how easy it is to screw up. I
mean, nobody can think of everything. It just makes me realize how
haphazard
this whole thing is."

"We plan as well as we can. You can't foresee
everything."

"You got that right."

At the motel they met Chuck and Sam, who had
changed from their hunting clothes. Chuck was wearing a brown and
orange striped sweater and khakis, and Sam had on a pair of black
designer jeans and a tight black sweater.

"Hey," Chuck said as he followed them into
Jean's room, "let's go out and celebrate, huh? I asked at the desk,
and the guy said that Bavarian Inn's pretty good. Hell, we've had
nothing but pizza and take-out chicken since we been here. Whaddya
say?"

"I'm not...very hungry," Jean said as she
took off her hunting jacket and tossed it in a corner.

"Somethin' spoil your appetite?" Sam said
knowingly. "Seen a little too much rare meat today?"

"I just don't want to go out," Jean said,
refusing to meet the girl's gaze.

"It's not that smart for any of us to be seen
more than we have to be," Michael added. "The lower profile we
keep, the better off we are."

"Mikey, I want a fucking steak," Chuck said.
"And
Sam
wants a fucking steak too, and we're gonna go and
get one. We just thought it would be nice if you two came along
with us. Hell, nobody knows who we are, we could just be two
lovey-dovey hunting hubbies and wifies who got tired of looking for
venison, you know?"

"Maybe..." Jean thought for a moment. Chuck
and Sam were loose cannons. If they went out alone, there was no
telling what would happen. They could get drunk, and talk about
what they had done earlier that day, or, if the mood took them,
they could even repeat part of it with guns and knives. Jean
couldn't take a chance on that happening.

She looked at Michael and saw the concern she
felt in his eyes as well. "Okay," she said. "Wait until I shower
and change."

"A
par
ty, a
par
ty," Sam chanted
as she danced out the door.

Chuck followed her. "Don't be too long now,"
he said as he walked out. He stopped at the door and looked back at
Michael. "You gonna help her shower or what?"

Michael frowned and left as well, going to
the room he had shared with Timothy Weems. Thinking of Timothy
reminded Jean to turn on the television while she undressed. But
she found that the local news was long over, and CNN was covering
some political debate, so she turned on the radio instead.

She spent a long time in the shower, letting
the water beat down on her as she washed her hands and nails with
the washcloth over and over again. As she toweled herself dry, she
learned from the radio that the identity of the hunter who had been
accidentally wounded was still not known, but that authorities felt
there was a link between the man and the killings that had plagued
northern Pennsylvania. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had been
called in, and agents were expected to arrive the following
day.

She froze when she heard that. It was not
that she was afraid of them, but she—and the others—had one more
thing to do before they left this place. If FBI agents surrounded
and questioned Ned Craig, she might not be able to get to him to
perform her final act of vengeance.

Then she would have to beat the FBI agents to
the man, that was all.

She got dressed, and took a longer time than
usual over her hair and makeup. Who, she wondered, was she trying
to impress? It seemed so ironic that they should be going out after
what they had done this afternoon. It was not the kind of thing one
would celebrate, and yet it had been their goal, and they had
accomplished it. What was there
not
to celebrate?

Still, she did not know if she could bring
herself to eat. The smell was still strong in her nostrils, and she
dabbed some perfume on her upper lip to neutralize it. It didn't
work. Now she smelled flowered death, a slaughterhouse planted with
violets. The smell made her giddy, and before she knew what she was
doing, she was bent over the toilet bowl, throwing up what was left
of her sparse lunch.

She coughed and hawked until the last bitter
shreds came up, then pushed herself to her feet. She could taste it
now as well as smell it, and she saw it too, afraid that she would
always see it, that no matter how good her reasons for doing what
she had done, those corpses would always be there behind her eyes,
as cruel and unforgettable as the bloody images of baby seals,
skinned deer carcasses, blinded rabbits, and tortured dogs that had
led her to this place and this act. They would be there, as
implacable as man's cruelty to the creatures with which he shared
the earth, and to his fellows.

Think of the cause, she told herself, the
cause
.

But as she thought of the savaged bodies of
the animals, they turned before her eyes into men, guilty men, men
who were stupid and cruel, but men. That afternoon she had worked
in a dream. She had wielded her knife as though she had not really
been there, as though she were doing what she did in a dream that
had no consequences or repercussions, and she would wake up in her
bright bedroom overlooking L.A., and there would be no blood on her
hands.

But this was not L.A., and she was wide
awake, and she could still see thin, half-moons of pink clinging to
her cuticles. She choked back more bile, spat, and scrubbed her
hands once more with the washcloth under the hottest water she
could bear.

Then she cried quietly, sitting naked on the
toilet lid, wishing that they had never come here, that Andrew had
never killed that man to start the butchery, wishing that Ned Craig
had never found and killed Andrew, dear, sweet, stupid Andrew who
wanted to please her so much that he would do anything, even
slaughter a man like a deer, and it had been stupid for him to do
it on his own, yes, but he had done it for her, and Ned Craig had
killed him, and
that
, God
damn
it, was why Ned Craig
had to die.

It was done. No matter how much she might
want to, she could not change anything that had happened in the
past few days. So she might as play it out, finish it. And
finishing it meant finishing Ned Craig first thing tomorrow
morning.

She wiped her tears away, vowing to shed no
more, fixed her makeup, and got dressed. If she could not forget
what had happened, then she would celebrate it, revel in it, be
among her friends who felt the way she did.

Her blood brothers.

The Bavarian Inn served decent food. Chuck
and Sam had their steaks, and she and Michael had the fish. She had
thought about a vegetarian plate, but that order didn't go with the
persona of hunters. They had drinks before dinner, and wine with
their meal, so by the time the dishes were cleared away, they were
all feeling mellow. Even Sam seemed more subdued than usual.

Jean paid the bill in cash, as they had paid
everything since arriving in Pennsylvania. The four of them drove
back to the motel, where she asked them to come into her room to
make the plans for tomorrow. "One thing left," she said. "Ned
Craig."

"T
he hunk?" Sam
asked.

"How you know he's a hunk?" Chuck's words
sounded slurred, and Sam thought he had too damn much to drink.

"His picture was on the news, and he
looked
like a hunk."

Chuck snorted. "Boy scout."

"Well, hunk or boy scout," Jean said, "I want
him tomorrow."

"So you want us to get him for you?" Sam
said. That was just like this bitch. Me me me, do what
I
want, listen to what
I
say. Sam had known bitches like Jean
Catlett in community college. The place was full of them. That was
why she'd only lasted three months.

"No. I'll get him myself. I just want one of
you as backup. The others can stay here and wait."

"Then what?" Chuck said.

"Then we go home. Our work's done."

"We didn't get to take down a tower," Sam
said.

"What?"

"Chuck wanted to take down a tower."

"A fire tower?"

"Yeah. He hasn't blown up a goddam thing
since we got here. What's all that plastic for anyway? I thought we
were gonna have some fun with that."

"We've taken enough chances," Jean said. "The
executions at the camp will prove our point. Besides, taking down a
tower would be against what we're working for. Those fire towers
are to prevent fires. Fires kill animals."

"Well,
I
think," said Sam in what she
considered to be a gushy, upper crust accent, "that the
political
benefit, uh,
derived
from such an explosion
would
more
than make up for any risk to
wild
life."

"Hey, don't forget," Chuck added, "it'd be
fun
too."

"No," Jean said, her face hard. "Absolutely
not. We execute Craig tomorrow and that's it."

Sam gave a hiss of disgust through her teeth.
"Oh, like how come we always gotta do what
you
say? Who like
made you Queen Shit?"

"My money financed this, and I'm the one who
planned it," Jean said in her snotty voice. "It's not a pleasure
outing."

"Yeah, well, maybe it oughta be a little. I
mean, we done everything you said. You say go out and kill a
hunter, we go out and kill a hunter. You say, slice these guys and
hang 'em up, we slice 'em and hang 'em up. Well, we did what you
said and made you happy, and now we just wanta have a little fun.
There's more to life'n just what
you
want." She took a beat,
then added, "Bitch."

Michael held up a hand. "Okay, knock it
off."

"Aw, fuck you too," Sam said.

"Shut
up!
" Michael barked. "I can't
fucking believe this, what are you, a little kid? You want to blow
up a tower? Hell, why don't we steal a bunch of hunters' cars and
run them off a cliff and watch them all blow up? But why stop
there? Let's wait until they go into outhouses and then tip them
over? You want fun? Let's soap their cabin windows!"

Sam looked at him, her best sneer in place.
"You're really itchin' to get into her pants, aren'tcha?"