Mercy Street(64)

Today he was talking about the Ebola virus, which had been created in a lab in New Mexico by Purdue Pharmaceuticals. He paused briefly to acknowledge Victor’s presence.

“You been following this horseshit?” he asked rhetorically, pushing open the screen door.

Victor stepped inside. It was best to let him talk awhile. Luther’s house was very dark, the shades pulled to the windowsills, the few pieces of furniture spaced far apart to make a path for the chair. The perimeter of the room was lined with cardboard boxes, stacked three deep. A regular customer at the VA, Luther had made friends with a nurse there. For years he’d been stockpiling medicines and syringes, surgical masks and latex gloves.

“First they cook up the virus. Then—believe it!—they try and sell you a cure.”

Luther was obsessed with infections, communicable diseases of all kinds. In prepper circles he was considered odd, but not extraordinary. The community was full of lunatics—Rapture lunatics, climate change lunatics, Gold Standard lunatics. Luther was a virus lunatic. He could talk about viruses for hours on end. Victor found him tedious, but for strategic reasons maintained friendly relations. Luther would be a valuable ally when SHTF. It was the great lesson of prepping: everyone had their pluses and minuses. Luther couldn’t outrun an assailant, but he was a trained medic. He could set a bone, dress a wound, excise a bullet. In the post-collapse world, these would be valuable skills.

“You believe this shit?” Luther demanded.

Victor waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, a response seemed necessary.

“Fuckin’ A,” Victor said.

He followed Luther outside to the patio, where the generator was waiting. It looked to be in decent shape, the same model Victor had at home.

“Crank her up, if you want,” said Luther. “I tested her out this morning, but I guess you want to see for yourself.”

Victor did. The motor turned over with a satisfying roar.

“Looks good to me,” he said. “I got one already. This is just for backup. What do you want for it?”

Luther said, “Got any meat?”

Victor felt his face heat. This time of year, the chest freezer in his basement should have been full of wild game.

“Nah,” he mumbled. “I got nothin’.”

“Huh. I thought for sure you’d have something. Don’t get your back up,” he added hastily, reading Victor’s glowering face. “What else have you got?

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FORTY YEARS OF HUNTING, VICTOR HAD failed to get his deer.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. In retirement he had nothing but time. He could hunt every day if he wanted to, and for most of the fall and winter, this was exactly what he did. The results were disappointing, a succession of inexplicable near misses. He blamed the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Early in the season, after a close call with a game warden, he’d switched to bow hunting. (In Pennsylvania, even a convicted felon was permitted to own a bow.) This should have posed no problem, and in other years it hadn’t. But in the winter of 2015, for reasons Victor couldn’t fathom, he did not get his deer.

The third week in January, on the final day of archery season, he’d set out in darkness. A fresh snow had fallen, ideal for tracking. The moon was bright and full. High on the ridge north of Garman Lake, he settled in. An ideal spot, patchy forest with good sightlines. Time and again, it had proved lucky. A dozen deer had met their ends here. His shooting spot was so extremely lucky that Victor had kept it secret for twenty years. He’d have revealed its location only on his deathbed and only to his son, if he had one. Being sonless, he would carry the secret to his grave.

But this time, luck failed him. He waited two full hours and spotted nothing. This late in the season, the population had thinned. He was about to give up when he glimpsed, in the periphery, a flicker of movement. A sleek little doe nosed at the ground beneath a stand of bushes. Too small and too far, Victor decided, and did not take the shot.

The doe wandered off and then came back, closer this time. She paused a moment, broadside, as though daring him to take the shot.

He took the shot.

He would regret it later, but at the time he couldn’t help himself. The doe was taunting him. She was at most—at most!—fifteen yards away.

The doe sprang up high, then crashed into the bushes. Victor scrambled to his feet.

Fifteen yards away, the bushes were still moving, but the doe was gone—immediately and completely, as though she had never existed. On the snow was a round blood spot the size of a ripe plum. Victor bent and touched a finger to it.

Deep dark blood. Good hit.

He plowed his way into the bushes, stiff and ungainly, a slow, lumbering creature on two feet.

The sun was rising now, the doe’s tracks clearly visible. Her hooves had barely nicked the snow. At regular intervals the ground was spotted with blood, brighter now. The effect was festive and strangely beautiful, like rose petals in the snow.

North of the ridge, without warning, the trail disappeared. How was it even possible? No blood, no hoofprints. It was as if the doe had been whisked into a helicopter.

Victor retraced his steps.

How had he missed her in the first place? A stationary creature, standing broadside, barely fifteen feet away.

He tracked the doe for a solid hour and never found her, a fact that shamed him. Somewhere north of Garman Lake, his doe was bleeding out.