The Survivors by Will Weaver

Author:Will Weaver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MILES

“LIKE I SAID, YOU DON’T have to shoot a deer,” Miles whispers to her the first morning of hunting season. They are dressed in blaze orange and stand outside the cabin on new snow. “I just need you in the woods with your gun. If other hunters come around, they’ll see that this area is taken.”

“That we’re armed, you mean.” Her breath steams in the chilly air.

Miles smiles.

“So I just sit?” Sarah asks.

“Yes,” Miles says impatiently. “I have a spot for you. Sitting is mostly what hunting is about. Staying still and keeping your eyes open. Shooting is the least of it.”

She slumps her shoulders.

“Look at things around you,” Miles says with annoyance. “Nature is great.”

After he gets Sarah situated in her little brush blind—with a pillow for her stump, a blanket for her legs, and a thermos of tea—he moves on down the trail. Before going out of sight, he turns to look back. She’s motionless behind a half circle of branches. Her blaze-orange camo glows, but deer are color-blind. He waves once. She doesn’t move.

Soon the woods belong to him. Walking as quietly as he can, he moves along the trail beneath some pine trees. When you’re deer hunting, stay out of trees. Only monkeys and squirrels climb trees. Every year, deer hunters fall out of tree stands and kill themselves. Used to be that a tree stand could be no more than six feet off the ground. That was the law. Six feet was plenty. If a hunter fell asleep and crashed down, at least he wouldn’t break his neck. Then the game wardens said you could be twelve feet off the ground, then sixteen. Now, who knows how high? And why? You’re only looking for trouble when you climb a tree or a ladder with a gun in your hands. Plus it’s windier and colder the higher you go. What you want to do is use the land for your shooting angles. Get yourself on a side hill where you can see a trail below. Find a stump or a log to sit on, then build yourself a brush blind around it. Sit there. All day. If you can stick it out for a whole day, you’ll get your chance at a deer. Most people can’t sit that long. They get antsy. Got to get up and move....

Miles eases into his brush blind just before sunup. Like Sarah’s, his is a black semicircle of dead branches about three feet high arranged around a stump, with an oak tree to lean his back against. He built it days ago but wanted to let it rest. Let it settle into the landscape. He sits on a gunnysack half full of sawdust, which drapes over the stump. The bag conforms to his butt and will give warmth to his legs. As he situates himself, a twig cracks beneath his boots; then a deer, unseen, crashes away through the gray-black woods. He swears silently; the deer must have been bedded down not far away.

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