Hunting Season by Nevada Barr

and exultant. A thick voice said, "You can't shoot us. We don't plan to hurt you none."
    "Leastways it ain't gonna hurt much," came another voice. Laughter followed. Crude remarks. Boots pushing through duff. Mob courage was reasserting. Voices—only three—Anna's mind took note even as she fought down panic. Sexual remarks, sneering, inarticulate whoops melded into a cacophony of pack hatred. The lights began to converge on her.
    "Stay back," Anna yelled. "I don't want to shoot anybody tonight."
    "She ain't gonna shoot," said the speaker, the holder of the spotlight. "She can't. It's the law. We ain't threatening her life."
    A whoop from the left and the lights moved closer. Taking careful aim, Anna pulled the trigger. Noise and light and breaking glass shattered as the spotlight exploded into a thousand pieces. A man screamed, high and wild like a hawk shot on the wing.
    The ring around Anna fragmented. Lights spun, men shouted. Cloaked in chaos, Anna fled into the black of the woods behind her.
    Hat-blind from the spotlight, she stumbled and fell in a parody of countless film heroines destined to be run down by the villain.
    The part of her mind that was never off-duty noted the yells of the men. "The bitch shot at me." "You said she couldn't..." "Shut the tuck up." "Fucking bitch." Then, with a baying of the hounds of hell, they came after her.
     

5
     For a nightmare's eternity, Anna ran, fell, stumbled, noted without feeling the banging of her knees and elbows, the rip of thorny branches across her face and forearms. Her Sig-Sauer was still in her hand and she used it like a club, bashing through foliage that seemed sentient, closing around her trying to trap and hold. The six-cell flashlight had been dropped when she'd pulled her weapon, and she fought on in a darkness so complete she was choked with it.
    Bit by bit her night vision returned and with it came a hopeful smattering of gray to her left: the meadow with its pooling of light from moon and stars.
    Too far. The hounds were closing in. The pitch of their baying rose in the excitement of the chase. The cut of flashlight beams slashed green from a glut of oak hydrangea to her right. They'd not yet seen her, but only followed the racket she made.
    Forcing down the panicked need for flight, she made herself stop. The crash of hoots and the guttural yells would cover small sounds. Quick as a burrowing fox, Anna dove for the ground. Crushing herself into the scratchy embrace of a drying shrub, she pulled leaves and needles up over her as best she could. Curled in a ball, elbows touching knees, shoulders hunched, she raised her gun up to eye level and waited. A snake in the grass. Like a snake, her blood grew cold, her eyes narrowed, and a snake's ethics took over. If her pursuers came too close, she would strike. If they passed by, she would let them live.
    For half a minute, the crashing came on: three flashlights jabbing through the trunks and creepers. Anna counted them by the lights. Their voices had melded into one hurting cry of many notes. Lying as she was, coiled half under a bush covered imperfectly with leaves, she felt as exposed as if she stood naked on an empty stage.
    She banished the urge to run and steadied the nine-millimeter.
    The advance of lights slowed, then stopped. The hullabaloo of sound lost volume and separated into voices.
    "Listen," one said, a rasping pant. A man unused to having to chase down his prey.
    "I don't hear anything."
    "What're we chasin' now?" Another man spoke and a part of Anna's mind registered a need to laugh at the sudden bewilderment in his voice, but this totally human response didn't make it past the cold and snaky heart of her.
    "Shit."
    "Listen."
    "She's gone to ground." The rasping panting voice. He was the leader then.
    Gone to ground. They were hunters.
    Anna'd forgotten that and she felt a chill. She'd never been hunted by hunters before, men who prided themselves on knowing where the scared and helpless went