Jimmy didn’t honestly want to hunt with Redmund. From his new point of view, on this side of the Apocalypse, Jimmy could see Redmund was a blowhard. Despite Redmund’s massive build, he fell drastically short in cardio fitness. But the social pressure was more than Jimmy could handle. He would go with Redmund, but Jimmy would insist on running the hunt.
It turned out to be a non-issue. By the time they had hiked four miles up the bottom of Tellers Canyon, Redmund was breathing like a blown pony. Jimmy was no picture of cardio fitness either, but he had been dropping Redmund on the climb, having to wait for him every quarter mile. The football player didn’t have the wind to argue about anything, so Jimmy stayed a bit out in front, the default expeditionary leader.
They reached a tiny stream spilling into the canyon bottom over a moss-covered waterfall. Jimmy decided they had climbed far enough to get above most of the other starving hunters, and he turned up the tributary without consulting Redmund.
Redmund followed as they began the more serious climb. The stream cut through a deep gorge, and the woods around it filled in thick, like a thatched barricade meant to hold out man, but allowing deer to pass. The steep climb became twice as hard as the men ducked and wove between trees, deadfall and thick gooseberry. They crossed the stream back and forth, working around cutback embankments and impassable brambles. After half a mile, Jimmy began the even steeper climb out of the stream bed.
Their rifles snagged on branches every few steps, and several times they crawled on hands and knees through grown-over passages in the scrub oak. The back of Jimmy’s neck filled with sharp chunks of bark and dead sticks, which then dropped down the back of his shirt into the waistband of his underwear like malignant thorns searching for a home. The frustration of the climb nearly overwhelmed Jimmy and he swore under his breath, hating the hunt, hating the mountain, and hating fat-butt Carl Redmund.
Why had he agreed to this?
After forty-five minutes of torture, Jimmy emerged onto the ridge. Thankfully, the trees and scrub opened up. The summer heat prevented anything from growing more than two feet tall out on the sun-baked, gravelly side of the mountain. Jimmy got his bearings while Redmund struggled up behind him.
As Jimmy had hoped, the number of hunters this high was far less than in the lower canyon. He saw about thirty guys, but that was on both sides of the canyon and mostly below them. They had maybe five guys within a mile to worry about. Jimmy watched them from afar and hated them like he had never hated other men in his life. He remembered something his brother always said on opening day of deer hunt. “The only guy I despise more than an anti-hunter is another hunter across the canyon from me on opening morning.”
Yeah. No kidding, Jimmy thought. I can’t even stand the guy I’m with.
As soon as Redmund caught up, Jimmy took off again, not really caring if the big man caught his breath or not. Jimmy hadn’t seen any deer yet and he wanted to get even higher, even farther away from the other hunters, before the “golden hour.” The last hour before dark always produced the best hunting—maybe twenty times as good as midday. After the climb, Jimmy was hell-bent on hunting to the bitter end of the day, even if that meant carrying an animal home seven miles in the dark. He knew it would be miserable, but at least it would be downhill and at least he would have meat for his family.
After ten more stops to wait for Fat Boy, Jimmy sat on a rock and took another look around. The light still hung too high in the sky for golden hour, so Jimmy didn’t sweat the fact that he saw no deer. For the tenth time that day, he kicked himself for not borrowing binoculars. He would have loved to use this time waiting to scan the tree line for animals.
He could look for deer through his rifle scope, but holding the rifle up for any period of time exhausted his arms. His arms would start shaking. With the rifle shaking, he couldn’t see a thing.
Redmund caught up. This time Jimmy waited for him to catch his breath. Jimmy needed to form a plan of attack for the evening hunt. They were near the top of the main ridge and it would place them above deer coming out at sunset. That was a good thing. So long as they stayed off the ridge, the deer would have a hard time seeing them, since the deer would be looking into the setting sun. The wind was another problem, since it blew downhill.
How were you supposed to hunt with the sun at your back if the wind’s also at your back? Jimmy wondered.
The old hunting saying went: “Hunt with the sun at your back and the wind in your face.” But what if the wind goes wherever it wants and the sun sets wherever it sets? How were you supposed to control that? If you had to pick one, which one should it be, wind or sun?
It didn’t really matter, since Jimmy wasn’t about to hike any more than he must. The wind and the sun could blow and shine whichever direction, and Jimmy wasn’t going to walk a single extra step. He was too dog-tired.
His stomach had been growling for the last three hours. His legs throbbed. His thirst had reached epic proportions. His mind felt muddy. Jimmy dreamed about stuffing his face with a bunch of venison cooked at the site of a deer kill, assuming they could pull it off.
It looked like they would need one more big push to make it to the top. Jimmy set off without talking to Carl, and they climbed straight toward the pinnacle, their hands pushing on their knees with each step, both of them struggling. Across the trail, a piece of barbed wire blocked their way. Without a second thought, Jimmy lifted the wire up for Fat Boy, grateful for the brief respite. A sign jangled to the wire, something about private property and hunting, not that it mattered to Jimmy.
Redmund could barely climb under the wire and Jimmy’s irritation flared. He couldn’t be expected to lift the wire over the huge man. Finally, Redmund made it under and snagged his rifle barrel, jamming the barbed wire into Jimmy’s hand. Jimmy’s irritation went stratospheric, and he would have exploded with rage if he wasn’t so completely exhausted.
“Whump!” A spray of rock dust erupted from a boulder ten yards from the two men.
“Booooom.” A shot rang out, the sound delayed.
Jimmy’s first thought was that someone had shot a deer and his mind raced, but his thoughts came out jumbled, lost in his heavy breathing.
He searched, glancing back and forth across the hillsides, looking for a deer—maybe a wounded animal or something running from other hunters.
Then he saw it―something not quite right on the ridge above them. A tiny glint of light. Probably a reflection off something man-made. Jimmy’s curiosity kicked in and he shucked the rifle off his shoulder sling for a better look.
Winslow commanded this section of the perimeter—the high ridge—which made a lot of sense since he was a former Marine Designated Marksman.
Jeff had assigned a dozen men to this sector, running two overworked shifts of six men twenty-four hours a day. Jeff promised more guys within a few days, so Winslow and his shooters were making a good show of it, hanging on and staying frosty.
These combat conditions were even more fucked-up than Iraq. Shooting evil men, like the fundamentalist dickheads in Iraq, dragged a man’s soul through the mud. Shooting American citizens, hungry and maybe a little stupid, would seriously fuck him up. It wasn’t a responsibility Winslow was eager to shoulder.
Here, the enemy combatants were regular Americans. Under his ROEs, if the guys turned around at the wire—then they were harmless hunters. If they came through the wire into the Homestead, the lookouts were supposed to shoot to kill. Winslow preferred clear orders. It wasn’t a responsibility he wanted for himself, who to shoot and who not to shoot.