The forest smelled like rain and the hunters walked faster.
Four carried wooden crossbows at the ready, metal staves bent and strings cocked. At the end of the single file a young man twirled a shredded length of electrical wire. An occasional slap of the wire against his hemp trousers earned a look from the others. He held a crossbow over one shoulder, by the strap.
The leader held up a palm and the group halted near a pair of white-flowering trees at the edge of a clearing. Thorns as long as a thumb spiked from the knobby branches.
The young man rushed forward with a loud rustle of leaves and snapping twigs. “That’s hawthorn!”
“Quiet, Wilson,” hissed the leader.
“But I can use the flowers and leaves–”
“We’re not here for that. Stop talking.”
The hunters moved deeper into the forest. They stopped before a tangle of chokeberry bushes and sat with legs crossed. After half an hour the lead hunter stood up. He cupped his hands and made a sound halfway between a caw and a squeak.
Something small rustled through the bushes. Instead of the expected coyote, a white-spotted bear cub squeezed into view and ambled happily toward the hunters.
Deep in the thicket twigs cracked like gunshots and a hoarse bellow ripped the air. With a spray of leaves a massive bear charged from the bushes.
Bolts flew at her as Wilson fumbled with his crossbow. The brown and yellow-spotted coat shivered from the hits but the bear kept whoofing forward and swiped the lead hunter across the chest. He flew six feet and tumbled through the leaves.
Wilson shot his bolt as the hunters reloaded and fired again. Steel points ripped through the bear’s heart. She wandered into the trees and collapsed like an exhausted old woman at the end of her day.
The four made a crude litter for the bleeding hunter and raced home across the mountain. Wilson tried to remember his lessons on surgery. He found it difficult to think about anything but the dead bear on the brown chokeberry leaves.
HE FELT THE BLOOD on his face and in the air. It freckled his arms, his clothes, and his hands. It pooled under the wounded man to the edge of the operating table and splashed perfect round circles on the floor.
Wilson jiggled another clamp in his hand but Father Reed was too wrapped up in thoracic surgery. His bloody fingers struggled to find every shredded artery and seal them with the silver pen of the micro-cauterizer. Around the patient, machines flashed yellow and bleated like mechanical sheep.
In the end, the blood loss was too much for the wounded man. After the second cardiac arrest his heart stopped. Sounds from the machinery slowed and paused, became a solitary cricket.
“Trauma monitor––all systems off,” said Reed. He wiped his forehead with the back of a hand. “As it begins ...”
“What was that, sir?”
Reed startled and knocked a metal tray to the floor.
“Cat’s teeth, Wilson, don’t sneak up behind me! I need a washcloth.”
“Yes, sir.”
He helped to clean and wrap the body in hemp cloth, then donned a heavy yellow suit and a scratched, bulbous helmet.
Family and friends waited at the top of the concrete steps that led from the rectory to the surface. Two men came forward to help Reed and Wilson carry the stretcher. The procession officially began, and carved a furrow through the crowds of quiet mourners.
Blunt gray peaks footed by evergreen forests surrounded the valley. In the flat center of the village, pots of lemon trees covered a circular stone plaza. A concrete mouth gaped at each cardinal point and offered worn, narrow steps into the earth.
Windowless buildings broke the lines of intensely cultivated fields around the central stone circle. The gray boxes stood solemn in the midst of leafy vegetable plants and bright herb gardens, but were nothing more than crumbling spider-traps waiting to collapse. To the north lay fields of green hemp and the sheep corral. To the south, intertwined plots of maize and beans stretched to the pass out of the valley.
Reed and Wilson led the procession to a rusted gate at the foot of a mountain. A collection of weather-beaten signs covered the gate and fence. The only visible word was “Station.”
Reed and Wilson waited while a child put a clipping of hair in the hands of the deceased, then carried the stretcher to a concrete trench in the earth. After a short walk underground they arrived at a keypad. Reed pressed a sequence and after a few seconds the metal