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expanding the
instant it struck the orange jacket, widening as it tore through
flesh and muscle and bone. The man flew backwards into a red cloud,
and fell from the tree, landing on the dry leaves below like a sack
of lime.
    Andrew held his pose for a moment, the sound
of the explosion reverberating like a great gong. Then he operated
the bolt and lowered the rifle so that he still looked through the
scope at the man on the ground, ready to fire a second shot at the
hint of motion.
    There was none. He had died so easily. His legs just went out and he went down, Dad. Yeah, just
that easy.
    From the corner of his eye, Andrew had seen
the spent shell fly from the ejector, and it took him only a moment
to find the gleaming brass amid the floor of dead pine needles. He
dropped it into his pocket and walked to the tree stand, pulling
the wax wads from his ears. Although he listened intently, he heard
no other sounds, neither voices nor footsteps in dead leaves.
    No, no one would come. No one would leave
their stands and jeopardize their own chances of making a kill. It
would be safe, safe to do, what did they call it? Oh yes, the field
dressing.
    The sight of the dead man close up made
Andrew stop and breathe deeply for a moment as the forest seemed to
shimmer about him. It was incredible, he thought, the damage a
single, small projectile could do to a human body. The man had not
moved since he had fallen, and the glassy stare told Andrew he was
dead. Heart and lungs had been ripped through, and the blood must
have ceased its pumping to the brain instantly. He hoped the man
had felt little pain, only one, short, sharp, and savage, before he
lost consciousness and his life.
    Andrew stood for a long time, looking down
at the first man he had ever killed, indeed ever even harmed. He
thought he had been ready for it, but nothing had prepared him for
this moment. He struggled to stop shaking telling himself it was
only the cold and that he could not be shaking from emotion because
he had none. He couldn't allow himself that luxury. It was what
Jean had told him, and he had repeated it to the others many times.
No feeling but will, no goal but the mission.
    All right then. He had killed, and now he
must continue, be strong, finish the lesson, plant the first seeds
of legend and terror.
    He took a final deep breath. There. He was
all right now, ready to do what had to be done.
    He propped his Ruger against the tree that
held the stand, put on both gloves, and knelt by the side of the
dead man. He unsnapped the man's jacket, grasped his neck, hauled
him to a sitting position, and removed the sodden mass of cotton
shell and goose down. The hole in the man's back was greater than
Andrew had imagined.
    He let the body flop back onto the bloody
leaves, and saw that some blood on the man's small moustache had
frozen. It looked as though he had cut his lip shaving.
    Andrew took a horn-handled knife with a five
inch blade from its sheath, and tried not to think of this man
shaving, talking, laughing, tried to forget that what lay before
him was a human being, tried to think of it only as a slaughtered
animal, as the other hunters would think of the deer they had
shot.
    He cut open the dead man's sweater, shirt,
and thermal undershirt, exposing the pallid flesh and the entrance
wound to the freezing air. He yanked the upper clothing off the
body, then removed the boots, socks, and belt, and sliced through
the waistband of the trousers, tugging them off, along with the
long underwear, until the corpse lay naked on the frozen bed of
leaves.
    Andrew had watched, helpless and astounded,
as the father and son had done their field dressing, and now he
would try and recreate the procedure. Then they would see, and
realize, and tell the tale, so that everyone would know there were
avengers in the forest.
    He hurried at his grisly task, more to be
done with the unpleasantness quickly than out of fear of discovery.
Though he knew the statistics of how many