Hunters (22 page)

"You're awake enough, and you're a better
driver than I am."

"Can we at least stop for some coffee?" he
said as he got into the jeep. Then he stared straight ahead. "It's
gonna take us a half hour to get this fucking windshield cleared
off."

"Then we'd better start." Jean started to
brush off her side with her gloved hand, while Chuck started the
engine and turned on the defroster. Then he got out and started to
clean his side. "It's ice underneath," Jean said.

"We need a scraper."

"Do we have one?"

"One oughta come with the jeep." He dug
through the forms and manuals in the glove compartment, and came up
holding a plastic scraper with the name of the rental company
printed on it. The thin plastic bent with the effort, then snapped.
"Shit!"

"What else have we got?"

"Got a knife, but that'll scratch the
windshield."

"Fuck the windshield," Jean said. "Use
it."

Chuck took out the long-bladed hunting knife
that had seen such bloody work the day before, and began to scrape
away at the thick coating of ice, cursing at the snow that kept
covering his handiwork. Several minutes later the ice was gone, and
he and Jean got inside and started off.

At the first stop sign, Chuck stepped on the
brakes, but the jeep kept going, sliding through the intersection
as Chuck frantically counter-steered to straighten it out. "Holy
shit," he said through clenched teeth. "It's like driving on
ice!"

"It
is
driving on ice," Jean said.

"I gotta slow down."

"Go as fast as you can, just don't run us off
the road."

"That's pretty damn tricky."

"Just do it."

Jean tensed every time they took a turn or
had to brake, but the jeep did not skid again. She told Chuck where
to turn, and slowly they made their way toward Ned Craig's house.
She took her eyes off the road long enough to reach into the back
seat, unzip the AK from its pouch, and load it.

As she jammed in the curved magazine, Chuck
laughed. "Bringin' out the heavy shit, huh?" She nodded. "Hell, for
all those automatics cost, you oughta get a little use out of 'em,
right?" When she didn't answer, he went on. "Just like I oughta get
some use out of that plastic."

She looked at him coldly, sick and tired of hearing
about his goddamned explosives. "Well, if you're a good boy, maybe
I'll let you blow up Ned Craig after I kill him."

B
y the time Ned
finished putting the chains on, Megan had a thermos full of coffee
ready and enough clothes packed to see them through a week of cabin
living. She had packed her climbing gear as well. "In this
weather?" Ned asked as she threw the ropes in the back of the
Blazer.

She shrugged. "If it turns nice, I might be
able to get a little climbing in. I'd hate for this to be my dream
cliff and not be prepared."

"Fine with me," Ned said, and shut the tailgate.
They put the thermos and the map to the tower up front with them,
and backed out of the garage. Ned closed the door with the remote,
and backed out onto the highway.

"M
y God, that's it!
That's his house!"

"Where that guy's backin' out?"

"Yes! Go on, go
on
, cut him
off!
"

Chuck tried to accelerate, but he hit an icy
patch, and the jeep skidded again. He swung the wheel, but the
right rear tire bounced off the curb, and he lost control. Jean
shrieked a curse. Chuck put the jeep in first gear, but when he
tried to take off, the tires spun on the ice, so that the jeep
advanced only inches.

"Come
on!
" Jean shouted again,
hammering on the dashboard with her fists, as though that would
make the jeep's tires grip the ice.

"Shut the fuck up! I'm
trying!
" Chuck
yelled back. He let the jeep slip back, while Jean struck the
dashboard one final time. Then she grabbed the AK, pushed the door
open, and stepped outside. She would run up to them and finish it,
if she had to.

But the Blazer was already out of the drive,
and was going in the other direction, away from her. Her first
impulse was to run a few steps closer before she opened fire, but
as she brought up the automatic, her boots slipped on a patch of
ice under the snow, and she found herself sprawling on the street,
the gun falling into the snow.

Jean screamed a wordless cry of rage, and lay
there a moment, knowing that it was too late to fire now. The
Blazer was far out of range of the weapon. She pushed herself to
her feet, grabbed the gun, and shuffled back to the jeep, which
Chuck had extricated from the icy curb. Her door was still open,
and she climbed in, pulling it shut behind her.

"Great, Jeannie. Who were you, Nancy or
Tonya?" Chuck said.

She was too furious to respond, and could
only shout, "Go, go,
go!
"

"Okay, Tonya, let's bust some kneecaps..." Chuck
followed the Blazer, now a block ahead and pulling away from them
fast.

"T
hey
are
following us," Ned said, his glance flicking from the rearview
mirror to the treacherous road ahead.

"Do you think it's those people?" Megan said.
"The killers?"

"I don't know." He kept his eyes on the road,
awash in white, and accelerated as swiftly as he could without
skidding.

"Could it be somebody from the police? Or the
commission?"

"Why come after me in this weather when they
could call?"

"Could we go to the police? I mean, just
drive there?"

He shook his head. They were heading in the
opposite direction, out of St. Mary's on Route 120, and there was
no place Ned could think of to turn around without having to pass
their pursuers, who could then cut them off on the narrow two-lane
road. The few side roads would be unplowed, and he didn't want to
take the chance of getting stuck. If he did, and the killers were
able to get their jeep as far as Ned had gotten his Blazer, it
would be all over. In spite of his misgivings, he had brought along
a pistol, though not the one with which he had shot the still
unidentified killer. But one pistol, he was sure, would be no match
for the firepower the terrorists were probably packing.

So the only thing to do was to keep driving and hope
that he could outdistance them. He pressed on the pedal until he
felt the traction of tires against packed snow slacken, then eased
off until he had control again. They were still in his rearview
mirror, but were slowly growing smaller, and soon, he hoped, would
be lost in the falling snow.

"G
oddammit, Chuck,
we're
losing
them!"

"You want me to run off the fuckin' road? You
want to get stuck out here? Just tell me that's what you want, and
I'll send this bastard flyin'..."

"Catch them," Jean said shrilly. "I don't
care what it takes, just
do
it."

Chuck shook his head as though he couldn't
believe what he was doing, then pressed the pedal down. They
skidded, straightened, and he eased off. "They got chains, we don't
got chains. Makes a big difference." Then he accelerated again
until he found a speed that would keep him on the road, while
allowing him to keep up with Craig. "We'll keep 'em in sight, okay?
If they start to pull ahead, I'll try and go faster, but there's no
way in hell, Jeannie, that I can
catch
'em."

"All right, all right, just don't
lose
them..."

T
he jeep stayed
behind Ned and Megan until they reached the hill to Goetz's Summit.
It was never less than three hundred yards behind them, and never
closer than a hundred. When it got that close, Ned fed the Blazer
more gas in spite of the risk of skidding. But now, as they labored
their way up the snow covered slope, Ned thought the jeep was
falling farther and farther behind.

"I think we're losing them," he told
Megan.

"God," she said, looking back through the rear
window. "I hope so."

"W
e're
losing
them!" Jean shouted, banging on the dashboard with a gloved fist.
"Catch up, catch up!"

But the more pressure Chuck put on the pedal,
the slower they went. The wheels spun, but the treads, already
packed with snow and ice, couldn't grip the slick road surface.
"Forget it," he said, just trying to keep the jeep on the road,
"we're screwed."

"
No!
" Jean cried. "No no
no!
"
And with her last scream of rage, she hit Chuck hard on the
shoulder. It was just enough to make him lose control. The wheel
spun, the tires shifted, and the path of the jeep twisted
backwards. The vehicle slid helplessly, despite Chuck's frantic
efforts to control it, and slipped thirty feet down the sloping
road, until the front end, completely turned around, slid over the
lip of a ditch. The front tires dropped into the foot deep slot,
and the jeep finally came to a dead stop, although the back tires,
free of the road at last, continued to spin.

Chuck and Jean sat in silence for a moment,
Chuck furious, Jean stunned by what had happened. Then Chuck
reached out and turned off the ignition, so that the only sound was
their breathing and the fat flakes of snow plopping on the
windshield.

"That was
real
entertaining," Chuck
said through his teeth.

Then a new sound reached their ears, and they
knew that another vehicle was laboring up the slick road. Chuck
opened the door and leaped out, and Jean followed. A pickup truck,
plastered with snow so that they could not see its color, was
rattling up the hill toward the summit, its tire chains biting into
the snowpack with little effort.

They both waved their arms, though the sight
of the jeep, its rear end in the air, made their plea for help
redundant. The driver, however, simply waved and grinned through
his windshield, and the jerky wipers made him look, Jean thought,
like a bad animation of an idiot. The illusion wasn't harmed by the
fact that he even seemed to be laughing.

"Hey!" she yelled when he did not slow.
"
Hey!
" She started to run to the truck, thinking to yank the
door open and force the hick to stop and help them, but her feet
slipped on the incline, and she fell again. By the time she pushed
herself to her feet, the truck was twenty yards away, still
effortlessly climbing the hill at about the speed that bastard Ned
Craig had been doing. She thought she saw the hand wave again
through the back window, but the snow was falling so heavily that
it might have been her imagination.

Nevertheless, she thrust her hand into the
air in response, her middle finger extended. "You
shit!
" she
cried. "You goddam shit..."—she searched for the most terrible word
she could find—"...fucking
hillbilly!
"

"That was good, Jeannie," Chuck said. "I'd
give you a 5.8 for that." He walked toward her. "And that whacking
my arm in the jeep when I was trying to get our asses out of
trouble, that was real good too. You're just full of great ideas,
aren't you?" He put a hand on her shoulder that she was afraid to
shake off. "And since you're such a strategic genius, maybe you can
tell me what you think we oughta do now, huh?"

Despite her fear, she shook him off and
looked at him savagely. "I wouldn't have hit you if you'd been
doing your job right!"

"My
job!
What the hell did you want me
to—"

"Shut up! We're stuck, so let's get
unstuck."

"I'm not really Ah-nult, sweetie, and I don't
think even he could pull that jeep back onto the road."

"Then we'll call for help."

"There's no phone, Jeannie. Cellulars are
back in your car in nice warm L.A., remember? We're just gonna have
to wait here until somebody comes along who can take us to a goddam
phone, and then we're gonna have to get the jeep pulled out, and
then
we're gonna have to go back and get our little chums,
and
then
we can start trying to find out where the hell
Craig and his bitch went! Now do you think that'll keep us busy
enough for the rest of the day?"

He stomped back to the jeep and got inside. She
thought the vehicle looked absurd tilted that way, but thought too
that it would be warmer inside, and that she could put up with
Chuck until a car or truck or van came along. And she was sure that
someone would come. After all, it was still deer season, and the
county was filled with hunters.

E
arl Pierce was
convinced the snow would get them if the maniacs didn't. He
couldn't believe the amount that had fallen overnight, and son of a
bitch if it wasn't still coming down.

The radio said not to expect a letup until at
least tomorrow morning too. That meant maybe thirty-six hours of
snow, and figuring an inch an hour, they'd be damn lucky to get out
of the woods by June.
A mile and a quarter to the main road,
Earl
, Tony and Frank had kept telling him. But what if it
didn't stop when they said it was supposed to? What if it just kept
snowing and snowing until they couldn't traverse even that mile and
a quarter?

The one good thing about it was that it would
probably slow down those kill-happy lunatics too. The snow was just
as deep for them as it was for honest hunters. Unless, of course,
they got to wherever they were going last night.

It was a viable scenario, Earl thought. Kill
a camp full in one county, then head out across the state to
another county where people wouldn't expect you. Now if
he
were running things, it would make sense to leave that Allegheny
Forest area and go someplace like Crawford County, where there were
still a lot of hunters. Like him.

He swallowed heavily, brushed the snow off
his rifle, and looked around him. He felt he stood out like a sore
thumb in his blaze orange against the white snow. The deer might
not notice too easily, but another hunter would, a hunter hunting
something other than deer, maybe.