Hunting Season by Nevada Barr Page B

The stabbing of the lights, wild during the running, became purposeful, scraping high and low, raking through the woods to where she lay. The thick chest of the leader was thrown into faint silhouette by the man behind him, careless of his flashlight. Anna lined the two iridescent green dots on her gun sight, one to cither side of center mass, and breathed in. As she exhaled she began a slow, even trigger pull.
    Before her finger reached the point of no return, the black silence of the trees behind the stalkers was cut through with a shout. A familiar voice yelling. "Break it up. Barth go around to the left." A fourth light careened down on the backs of the hunters. "You there. Drop your weapons. Drop them." Hesitantly the men began to turn, not throwing down but at least lowering their rifles.
    For the briefest of instants Anna thought she would fire anyway, kill because she could, because she wanted to. God or conscience or sanity stopped her, and she backed the pressure off the trigger.
    Randy Thigpen had arrived. Anna'd given up on him, then forgotten he existed. Once before she'd called him for backup, and he'd quietly gone back to the ranger station and left her to deal as best she could. Randy'd come through. Barth, Anna knew, wasn't on duty. Randy was showing some imagination.
    "Drop your weapons," he called again, and Anna whispered hallelujah.
    The hunters stopped. Lights flashed. "Run," someone shouted and, with rebel yells that sounded, to Anna's jaded consciousness, more gleeful than disappointed, her attackers fled in all directions, the woods snapping and groaning with the violence of their passage. One of them laughed, high and wild, ending in a hoot. The crunching of their flight faded. Night's quiet flowed back into the woods. Still Anna did not move.
    She felt as elemental as the dirt and leaf litter she'd cloaked herself in.
    "Anna?" Randy called. She could see him now in the faint backwash of his light. The underside of the absurd mustache glowed orange and the dull gleam of his badge proclaimed him an honorable man. Still Anna stayed where she was, watching him come.
    Finally he stopped not more than three feet from where she'd curled down into the forest floor. "Anna?"
    In his face she read only concern, a deep fear for her safety. Mollified, she said, "I'm here."
    Randy shrieked like a schoolgirl presented with a snake, stumbled sideways and fell on his most ample feature.
    Uncoiling herself, Anna brushed the leaf litter from her trousers and hair. Her right hand still gripped the semi-automatic pistol.
    Hit with the sudden loss of dignity, Randy's concern turned to irritation. "Jesus!" he said. "What the hell were you playing at? There were three of them armed with hunting rifles. What would you of done if they'd found you?"
    "Killed them all."
    By the weak and moving light Anna saw the muscles of his face freeze then twitch back to life again as his brain rejected—or assimilated—her violence.
    "Jesus," he said again and, using a downed log for a lever, hoisted his considerable bulk into a standing position. "Don't they have such a thing as due process back wherever the hell you claim to come from? Those boys were just having some fun with you. They never meant you no harm."
    "I was just going to have some fun with them," Anna said. The snake that had come to possess her soul had not yet fully let go.
    Thigpen turned his light on her face. She didn't blink or look away. "Jesus," he called on his savior a third time. "You give me the creeps, you know that? Let's get out of here. I'll walk you to your car."
    "No."
    Randy stared at her a moment. "Okay," he said uncertainly. "Meet me at the Mt. Locust Ranger Station."
    "Port Gibson." Anna needed the familiar around her, the things of her everyday life to bring her back from the wild and dangerous place the snake had taken her. Thigpen must have gleaned something from her voice; he didn't argue.
    "Port Gibson then."
    Both waited. Neither moved. "You