Hunters (21 page)

"Not yet." Statler's voice sounded thick with
phlegm. "I got to have pictures first."

"But, Jesus, to leave them up there..."

"I got to have the pictures. And I'm calling
the state police in. We don't touch a thing until they get
here."

Chief Statler contacted the state police on
his cellular phone, then directed one of his men to start
photographing. For a few minutes the bright, quick lightnings of
the camera's electronic flash illuminated the victims even more
harshly than the controlled, white fire that clung to the lantern's
mantle. The snowflakes seemed frozen by flash after flash, but the
quick heat did not melt the snow that was beginning to fill the
empty cavities of the torsos, or the valleys between the folds of
what had inhabited those cavities.

Megan spoke for the first time since the
discovery, and her voice sounded pitifully weak. "Was it like
this?" she asked Ned. "The other man you found?"

Ned shook his head. "It was bad, but he
hadn't...gotten this far." He put his arm around her shoulders, and
wondered if she was trembling from the storm or from the sight
before them. Either would have been reason enough. "I'm sorry you
had to see this. God, I'm sorry that
anyone
has to see
this."

"It's all right," she said, though he could
hear that it wasn't. He was amazed that she could still look and
hadn't turned away or begun to cry. It was one strong woman who
shared his life. "This way," she went on, "I can see what we're up
against." She looked up at him, and he could easily see the
pleading in her face as the snowflakes lit on it, making her blink
them away. "We have to get out of here, Ned. These people...whoever
did this... they'd do anything."

"We'll leave first thing. There's no way I
can deal with something like this..."

"All right," Chief Statler said. "Larry, Ned,
Megan—you can come back to the main road with Ben and me. We'll
meet the staters there, and you can take off. No need for you to be
here any longer." He stepped closer to Ned. "If this is how these
people...do what they do, you get outta here right away. These
bastards
will
get caught. But until that happy day, you and
Megan head for the tall timber. Go someplace these lunatics will
never find you." He looked at the hanging, gutted bodies, then back
at Ned. "But I swear to God, we'll find
them
."

N
early everybody in
his deer camp was mad at Earl Pierce. Earl was a worrier. The
prospect of snow had worried Earl, and now that the snow had
finally started, Earl worried if they would be able to get out on
Friday, or if they would be trapped, and if they were trapped, what
they would eat if they couldn't get out for days and days.

His friends had told him not to worry, that
they had plenty of food for any emergency, and besides, they were
only a quarter mile walk from where their cars were parked, and
even if they couldn't get them out the access road, it was only
another mile to the main road. As Nick Serrano told him, there was
no way they were going to end up like the Donner party.

Earl hadn't known what the Donner party was,
so when Nick told him, Earl started to worry about cannibalism. And
when the news came on the radio Wednesday about hunters being
purposely killed, Earl's worry quotient increased a hundredfold.
Everyone told him not to sweat it, that even if there
were
a
bunch of nuts running around, there were literally millions of
hunters in the woods this week, and the odds that one of those few
nuts would wander near their camp were astronomical.

This argument didn't sway Earl, who responded
by saying that if one person was going to get shot, then either it
was you or it wasn't, which made your chances fifty-fifty. Though
his buddies tried to explain to Earl the errors in his
calculations, it didn't ease his mind.

The camp retired around eleven, but Earl sat
up for a long time, looking out the window near his bunk. It had
begun to snow, and Earl thought he could hear the flakes landing on
the cabin roof. By morning the cabin would probably be buried in
snow. They wouldn't be able to get the door open. They'd be trapped
here all winter, and after the food was gone, they'd start looking
at each other like that Donner party. He listened to Tony and
Frank's breathing. They seemed to be asleep. Frank was snoring
slightly, so Earl put in his ear plugs, and finally went to
sleep.

He woke up when it was still dark. The only
light was a gentle red glow from the wood burning stove that kept
the cabin warm. Earl slowly got out of bed, put on his slippers,
and padded over to the window. It was pitch black outside, but he
imagined that he could see a huge mass of encroaching white in the
darkness.

He turned from the window and went to the
table where they ate. Tony had brought his big shortwave radio
along, but they kept the dial tuned to an FM station in Meadville.
Earl sat on the bench, felt in the near dark for the volume slide,
and pushed it all the way to the left, then turned on the power.
The radio's clock showed him that it was 4:00 in the morning.

He slid the volume up until he could just
make out music. Then he began to spin the tuning knob until he got
a human voice. What he wanted was the weather, to find out how many
feet of snow they had by now, but what he got was the news.

A few words gripped him, and then he slid the
volume higher, so that he wouldn't miss anything. He sat there
fascinated and horrified by what he heard, and slid the volume up
some more until finally he heard Tony's voice from out of the
darkness, and jumped, startled by the sound.

"Shit, it's not morning yet, is it?"

Earl tried to slow the pounding of his heart.
"I, uh, couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get the weather
report."

"Aw jeez, what they say?"

"Whaz gone on?" Frank mumbled.

"Earl's listening to the radio."

"What for?"

"He can't sleep."

"Listen!" said Earl, turning the volume still
higher, but there was only a story on a state politician caught
taking bribes. "Aw, it's over. You're not gonna
believe
this!"

"What?"

"You know those murders? Well, there were
more
, and they're all connected. A camp—a whole damn
camp
—was slaughtered today. And mutilated too!"

"Where 'zis?"

"Elk County. Just a few counties away!"

"Don't sweat it, Earl. Still snowing?"

"Hell, yes! I bet there's a couple feet out
there!"

"And I bet you're exaggerating. At least the
snow'll keep the axe murderers away."

"It's not funny, Tony—they killed six more
people. They're anti-hunters, like
terrorists
."

"And they're not in this county, Earl."

"Not
yet
," Earl said. "Doesn't mean
they won't be. They had somebody from the Game Commission on, said
it might be dangerous to hunt until they get these guys, and that
with the snow and all, it might be better to go home."

"I'm not going home," Tony said. "Not without
my buck."

"Well, this guy said if you stay to be real
cautious with strangers."

"Earl," Frank said with an edge of impatience
in his voice, "you're
always
cautious with strangers. Hell,
you're cautious with
toothpicks
. Now will you please turn
that damn thing off and come back to bed. I got my buck, so if you
want me to I'll hunt with you tomorrow to watch your back."

"Ah, bullshit," Earl said. But it took him a long
time to get back to sleep. Every groan of the cabin roof as the
weight of the snow piled on it sounded to Earl like the tread of
madmen come to kill them all. And then mutilate them.

N
ed Craig woke up at
the same time that Earl Pierce drifted off into another fitful
sleep. Ned's own sleep had been light, and he had awakened several
times throughout the night.

The luminous dial of his wristwatch read a
quarter of five. He gently shook Megan to wake her, but from the
immediate response, he assumed she had already been awake. "Ready
to go?" he said.

"Sure."

The sounds of their preparations woke Larry,
who had been on the phone most of the night with Game Commission
officials in Harrisburg. Ned had involuntarily overheard much of
Larry's end of the conversation—

If you'd seen what I did, you'd clear the
goddam woods...

These people will stop at nothing...

Hell, with the snow and these terrorists, I
think we should just chase them the hell out...

There's no buck born worth more lives...

I'm serious, more people are gonna
die...

"How'd it go last night with Harrisburg?" Ned
asked as he put their overnight bags next to the front door.

Larry sounded disgusted. "They're
suggesting
that hunters clear out. Blaming the weather as
much as the terrorists."

"What do you expect, Larry? They can't close
the woods. No locks on 'em."

"Yeah, but, Jesus, you think they could do
something
more than just give a warning."

"I wish they
could
," said Megan.

"Could what?"

She looked at Larry with eyes that reminded
Ned of a Pieta. "Close the woods."

Ned knew what she meant. Their woods seemed a
battlefield now, a site of terrible carnage that should somehow be
sanctified. He hoped he could once again think of it as a domain of
the living.

Ned and Megan thanked Larry for his
hospitality, and stepped outside into a world of chill gray slowly
brightening to white with the first light of morning. It took
several minutes to brush the snow off the Blazer, and a thick,
stubborn layer of ice was underneath the two inches of snow on the
windshield. With the front and rear defrosters roaring and all
three of them scraping, it eventually cleared.

Once they got going, they found the roads
treacherously slick, and it took them over twenty minutes to travel
the five miles between Larry's house and their own. Ned's Blazer
could get through snowdrifts as well as any vehicle in the state,
but only chains would improve traction on the hard, slick surface
the road had become. He would put on his chains at home while Megan
got them packed.

There were only a few other cars on the road,
and most of them were creeping as well. When they pulled into their
driveway, the whole area seemed tomb-like, with the material of the
sepulchre still falling as if it had no intention of ever stopping.
No neighbors seemed to be up yet, and the only vehicle that the
snow had not yet made part of the landscape was a pickup truck
parked a good way down the street. Probably a friend of a neighbor
who got stuck and had to stay the night. There would have been a
lot of that last night.

Ned pulled the Blazer into the garage next to
Megan's little Toyota, unlocked the door into the kitchen, and
helped Megan carry in their bags. Then he went back to the garage
and started to put on the snow chains, while Megan packed and
brewed coffee for their trip. In this weather, it might take hours
more than usual, and they would be better off stopping as seldom as
possible.

After he had the second set of chains on, he glanced
at his watch, and saw that it was nearly 6:30.

"W
here the hell are
you?"

Chuck's voice came back muddy, as though he
were still asleep. "Whuh? What the...'m in
bed
, man."

"I told you five o'clock!" Jean shouted into
the mouthpiece. "Didn't I say five o'clock? It's
six-goddam-
thirty
, Chuck!"

"Whoop-de-shit, you can tell time. So where
the hell are you then?"

"I'm in my room, I just woke up, my fucking
alarm
didn't work. What's your excuse?"

"I didn't
set
my fucking alarm, okay?
I was a little hammered, you know, and—"

Jean heard Sam's voice behind Chuck's. "And a
lil' horny too. Whozit, the bitch?"

"Yes," Jean said. "You tell Wondergirl that
this is indeed the bitch, and if you want to get back to L.A., you
have your ass out at the jeep in five minutes ready to go
hunting!"

Jean slammed the phone down and breathed
heavily, trying to calm herself. Then she dressed quickly, not
taking the time to shower or brush her teeth. Every minute more
that she wasted increased the chance that Ned Craig would be on his
way to the woods, for God's sake, and she didn't want to wait until
he got home tonight. She wanted him dead, and she wanted it as soon
as possible, so that they could leave this idiotic backwater and
get back to civilization.

But god damn it, she would not leave until
that bastard was a corpse.
And
his woman. And, she thought
with a Margaret Hamilton smirk, his little dog too, if he had
one.

Outside, the snow had fallen heavily, even on
the covered walkways, and she kicked through the stuff, squinting
to see if Chuck was at the jeep. When she saw he wasn't, she
trudged down to his room door and battered on it until he opened
it. His wool hunting shirt was unbuttoned, and his hair looked like
squirrels had nested there the night before. "Jesus," he said, "at
least lemme slap some deodorant on..."

"No time. Let's go.
Now
."

In the bed, Sam sat up, letting the covers
slip from her large breasts. "Morning, sweetie," she said to Jean,
who turned her back on her. "No time for a threesome?" she called.
Her mocking giggle followed Jean back to the jeep until Chuck
slammed the door.

"Oh,
this
is nice...what we got, two
feet of this shit here? Beautiful..." He started to open the
passenger door, but Jean stopped him.

"No. You drive."

"Hell, Jeannie, I'm hardly awake yet. And I'm
not used to driving in this shit."