Hunters (2 page)

The pattern was set the first year Ned went
deer hunting with his father. Ned was positioned next to an oak
tree, crouching among the acorns on which the deer loved to feed.
His father was a half mile away, and Ned, his heart beating
rapidly, waited, feeling youthful erections of excitement come and
go. An hour passed, during which he stood up several times,
stretching his legs.

He was standing when he heard the deer
approach. He froze, felt the wind on his face from the direction of
the sound of breaking leaves and snapping twigs, and saw a buck and
two doe push through the brush less than fifty yards away.

He raised his rifle with what felt like the
slowness of a watch's second hand, and by the time the buck had
cleared the brush, Ned was looking at it through the notch of the
open sight. Its smooth coat made it look as though it were carved
of wood, and its brown eyes stared into his like some spirit of the
forest. He felt, holding the deer's life in his fingertip, as
though he were defying God, a vandal in a cathedral. If he pulled
the trigger he thought he would violate a far more solemn contract
than the one forged between him and his father.

He lowered the gun, and never willingly
raised it to an animal again.

And though he never begrudged those who
enjoyed hunting, he could not easily share in their enthusiasm as
they proudly displayed the dead deer tied to their roof racks or
hanging at their camps, hind legs downward as though they were
walking like men, gutted and empty. Tomorrow there would be
hundreds taken, and a few less the next day as the deer grew more
frightened and cautious and moved deeper into the woods, and even
fewer the next, and so on through the week, until the hunters went
home fulfilled or disappointed, waiting for next year and another
deer.

It would be a week of great carnage, Ned thought,
and if deer could grieve, many survivors would weep musky
tears.

"I
weep for these
animals. We all do." Andrew Kenton looked at the five other people
in the room with him. Then he squeezed Jean Catlett's hand, and she
smiled up at him. "And that's why we're here. Let's not forget
that. What lies ahead of us is going to be pretty awful. And I mean
that both in the sense of being terrible and in inspiring awe in
those who see it. It will have a tremendous impact on what happens
here, and in our efforts to liberate wildlife from the encroaching
hand of man."

"Nice speech," said Chuck Marriner, his
booted feet propped arrogantly on the single table in the motel
room. "Who do we kill first?"

"Okay, Chuck." Jean Catlett's voice was as
rough as she could make it. It still sounded like soft fingers
brushing velvet. "That's enough."

"I'm
serious
, Jean." Chuck took his
feet off the table and slammed them down with a thud that shook the
floor of the room. "I mean, hell, we're beyond the talk crap now.
We're hyped, we're ready to go, ready to take a couple scalps for
Bambi, right?"

Of the six people in the room, only one, Sam
Rogers, laughed at the joke. "Righteous," Sam said, and high-fived
Chuck. "For Bambi—and his mom!"

Chuck laughed in return, and then looked
challengingly at Jean. "We're already believers, so Andy's
preaching to the choir. Now we got guns, we got ammo, we got
plastic, and I'm itching to use them. So can we just cut to the
chase?"

Jean frowned. She wasn't used to being
ordered around, especially by somebody like Chuck Marriner. After
all, this was her mission, and it was her money that was financing
it. But she had to admit to herself that he was right. The time for
talk was over. Now it was time for action.

"Okay," Jean said, looking daggers at both
Chuck and Sam. "Tomorrow is reconnaissance. We'll stay in the
county, split up, and look for a camp that fits our parameters.
Chuck and Sam, you'll go south. Chuck, drop Sam off at Moshannon
State Forest, and you go to Elk State Forest. Andrew and I will
head north. I'll drop him at Game Lands 25 and go up to the
northern state forest. Tim and Michael will go to Allegheny
National Forest."

She looked at the two men sitting on one of
the two double beds the room held. Timothy Weems nodded sharply,
but Michael Brewster only lowered his eyelids slowly to indicate
that he had heard.

"Take hunting rifles only. We've got to
blend in. Wear the gear we bought in DuBois."

"That stuff sucks," said Sam.

"It'll make you look like a hunter," Andrew
said stiffly, "At least it'll help." Sam flipped Andrew the bird
and giggled. Jean ignored the interruption and went on. "You'll
look for a camp, isolated, far from any others, with no more than
half a dozen members."

"We could take more," Michael said softly.
It was the same tone, Jean thought, that he had used in bed when
they were lovers.

"No," Jean said. "There's enough risk as it
is. Besides, six of them will send the message just fine."

"Along with the others," Timothy Weems
added, pushing his glasses back up. "The single kills."

Jean nodded in agreement, and Andrew quickly
followed suit. "So let's get to bed. We've got to start early in
the morning. The hunters get out before dawn, the camps will be
empty, we can find what we're looking for." She looked around at
all of them and tried to feel as though they were her family. "For
the wildlife," she said.

"For the wildlife," they responded, although
Chuck Marriner split the last word into two distinct words, and
chuckled.

Chuck was the wild card in her deck, Jean
thought as she watched the others go back to the rooms they shared,
Tim and Michael in one, Chuck and Sam in another. The motel was
cheap, but that made it the kind of place where nobody cared much
who came and went.

When the door closed behind Michael, Jean
put her arms around Andrew and hugged him. "Tomorrow," she
said.

"Tomorrow," he answered, and kissed her. He
tried to make it passionate, but her closed lips made it
chaste.

"Let's go to bed," she said. "Practice what
I preach."

They showered quickly and climbed beneath
the covers. He knew her well enough to realize that she would not
welcome any overtures to lovemaking, and simply put an arm around
her. She turned so that they nestled together like spoons in a
drawer. Andrew went to sleep quickly, but Jean stayed awake for a
long time, listening to her lover's soft breaths, feeling them
rustle her hair.

The next day would be the start of their
operations, and the fulfillment of her dream. It had been hard work
to find enough people, but she had done it. Now if she could only
depend on all of them. She knew that Andrew was a given. He would
do anything she asked. And Tim Weems was a real straight arrow,
totally dedicated and brilliant as hell. She thought she could
depend on Michael as well. He had loved her once, and, she thought,
probably still did. But Sam and Chuck were still question
marks.

She had met Chuck when they had
simultaneously thrown buckets of red paint over the fur-wearing
wife of a studio owner during the L.A. run of
Sunset
Boulevard
. The woman was taking in a matinee of the show, and
had used one of the days when the temperature had dipped below
sixty as an excuse for wearing a short fox coat. What had impressed
Jean the most was when Chuck not only landed his bucketload dead
center (hers had missed), but then proceeded to spit on the sobbing
woman as, eyes full of paint, she tried blindly to run away. They
both escaped before the cops came, and found themselves laughing
together in an alley. Chuck talked a good talk about animal rights,
but she suspected that he was in it more for the mayhem than the
principle.

So far she had overlooked his lack of
dedication, since Chuck Marriner was big and mean and not afraid of
anything, and knew where to get not only their deer rifles, but
also automatic weapons and plastic explosive. "After all," he had
said as he placed the box full of small cubes of concentrated
explosive into their gear trunk, "if you're gonna be a terrorist,
you can't be afraid to make things go boom." Jean Catlett just
hoped that nothing went boom before it was time.

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.

I
n 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..."

T
he 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.