Babes in the Woods (The He-Man Women Haters Club Book 2) Read online

  “Play with your axe,” Lars said.

  “I’ll trade ya,” Ling answered. “Please. Please.”

  “This,” Wolf contributed, “is already the coolest trip I’ve ever been on.”

  Steven sighed loudly as his father went on with his preparations. “You know, Dad, you don’t have to treat people like this, just because it’s your idea of fun.”

  The old man acted as if it were a joke, even if his son did not. “Ya, well, you can decide what’s fun and what’s not, when you’re the man.” Then he laughed. “If and when you’re the man.”

  “Steven,” I said, grabbing his arm and whispering. “What? What’s the joke?”

  “No joke,” he said grimly. “You don’t want to know the joke.”

  “Sure. Sure I do. Honest, Steven, you have no idea how badly I want to hear a joke right now.”

  He turned to me. “We are, okay, Jerome? You and me. We’re the joke. Are you ready to run?”

  I looked at him. I looked back at his father, who looked awfully serious. Lars was leering at me, the way sleazeballs always do when they know something you don’t.

  “You boys get a ten-minute jump. I suggest you use it.”

  5 I’m Game

  “COME ON, LEADER,” STEVEN said, yanking me by the arm as we raced back down the hill, across the stream, and out into oblivion. The whoops of delight up on the hill behind us were the starting gun.

  “StevenStevenStevenStevenSteven,” I said with every step. I was breathing the word, with no other words in mind to add, just to say something.

  “Relax,” he told me.

  “Relax? Relax—” I fell out of his grip as I stepped in a hole, probably dug by some small creature with a big head and teeth like rototiller blades.

  “Better keep up,” he said, running on.

  I caught up, boy, don’t you know it.

  “Steven, come on now. Why are we running? He wouldn’t. The man wouldn’t really hunt us? Right? He wouldn’t hunt other human beings, right? And his own son? He couldn’t get away with—”

  “This is Maine. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Oh my god, oh my god.”

  I passed Steven, pulling ahead now by several yards on my way toward I don’t know where.

  “Wait up,” he said, and I pulled up a little. “I figure to catch a little slack—the flesh-and-blood thing—but I have no idea what’s going to happen with you. I’ve never seen him hunt nonfamily before.”

  “What? This isn’t the first time?”

  He smiled. “It’s kind of a tradition. Don’t sweat it, Jerome. Whatever happens, you’ll wind up a legend. If he kills you—what a way to go. If you survive—you got a great story to tell. You can’t lose.”

  “I can’t what? That’s it, Steven, you’re as nutty as they are. And what then, when he finishes me off? You take over the club again, is that it?”

  He didn’t answer, exactly. “Great leaders are made in tough times. But don’t think about that. You have enough to worry about. The thing is, don’t get caught too soon or too close. That pisses him off.”

  “And we wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Ah, no.”

  We ran on. And on and on and on, jumping over fallen rotted logs, running over or through the hundreds of little gurgling clear streams that twisted through those woods. It got to a point, after about a half hour or so—twenty minutes longer than I had ever run in my whole life—that a kind of tired calmness took me over.

  You’d think I was deranged from being scared silly, but suddenly I didn’t mind the running. Didn’t mind the weakness that made me stumble and Steven catch me, before he stumbled and I caught him. It seemed, in the delirium, that this was all okay, that it was good even, the two of us thumping through the pine groves as if we were not foxes just ahead of the hounds, but were instead just two boys beating feet for no reason except to run, together, for the fun, for just being friends. Which I had never done before, to tell you the truth.

  And that was it. The Point. That was what I’d joined this outfit for in the first place.

  We finally stopped, at one of those fallen trees over one of those clear streams. Panted, and took drinks.

  “If it’s any relief, he’s never actually killed me, any of the other times,” Steven assured me.

  There, he’d gone and done it, reminded me why we were there, and spoiled everything.

  “Steven, this is the most berserk thing I have ever heard of. I saw this once on an old Fantasy Island, where a hunter hunted people because they were more fun than animals. And I saw it on Gilligan’s Island, too. But I never saw it on a quality program, and certainly never in real life.”

  Steven took a long drink, straight out of the stream, then raised his dripping-wet face to me. “You are assuming that my life is either quality programming, which it is not, or a real life, which it is not.”

  He didn’t smirk or anything when he said it. I felt bad for Steven then, which is not the way it’s supposed to work.

  “You want to be head He-Man again?” I offered.

  The singsong voice came from fifty yards behind us. “Oh boooyyyss,” Gunnar called.

  “You’re in charge,” I blurted to Steven as we bolted.

  “No way,” he said. “You wanted it, you got it.”

  Gunnar was not as fast as us, but he may not have cared to be. From the sound of his eerie laughing in the dark woods, it seemed he was having a fine enough time just scaring the snot out of us, and the actual killing would just be a bonus at the end. For our part, the He-Men did not let up. We ran like rabbits at the sound of his footsteps. We changed direction when a breeze rustled the trees. I hit the deck and covered up when I heard the croak of a frog that sounded like a gun to me.

  We had to have been four miles from camp, into a part of the forest that was so thick there were no trails left to follow, and little light coming through. We ran without jackets, without food, without drinks. We were cold, we were hungry, we were thirsty. Even the creeks hadn’t followed us out this far.

  And after an hour we hadn’t heard the laugh of the mad Gunnar, which was really what mattered.

  I felt Steven’s lungs laboring, his heart punching right through his bones as we sat back to back, watching all directions. Covering each other.

  “I can feel your heart,” he said to me.

  I listened and felt the drumming, mine and Steven’s running on opposite beats. “We’re going to die on the front page of the newspapers, aren’t we, Steven?” I said.

  “Always seems to happen up around here, doesn’t it, all that crazy stuff? Usually in New Hampshire, but sometimes Maine.”

  There was very little life left in Steven’s voice. I started to cry, but figured it was okay with my back to him.

  “I can feel what you’re doing back there, Jerome. Quit that now. Not the time, not the place. Wanna be a Johnny Chesthair kind of a guy? This is where it happens, right here.”

  I couldn’t believe him. How did he do it? I’d never be a Johnny Chesthair like that, no way.

  But I did stop the waterworks. And for a while we sat there on the ground watching each other’s back, the darkness coming down on top of us, the cold seeping up from the dirt, and the hunger and fear consuming me from the middle.

  “Heh-heh-heh-heh” came the wicked laugh from where we couldn’t even see.

  “Ah—” I couldn’t even form words as I jumped to my feet and gasped at the same time.

  “Where is he?” Steven asked desperately. “Where is he?”

  I raised my hand to try to point in the direction of the laugh, but—

  Pop-bang. It was a shot sound, in two parts, like a pair of steel hammers being clapped together followed by a small explosion. Then right beside me I heard, almost felt, the impact on Steven, like when a baseball hits a guy in the ribs.

  “Ohhhhh!” Steven moaned, grabbing his side.

  “Oh my god, oh my god,” I wailed as I looked at my friend and the thick
red ooze that covered his belly, his sweatshirt, his hands.

  Pop-bang Pop-bang.

  “Ahhhhhhh,” I screamed as I felt the two shots hit me, in the side, then in the shoulder. And there it was, all over me, the same red ooze. I dropped to my knees and felt like crying, but just stared instead. Even though it didn’t really hurt.

  “Congratulations, boys,” Gunnar said, strolling up from a dense thicket of brambles with the odd space gun under his arm. He checked his watch. “You took me quite a ways. I’m impressed.”

  “Jerk chicken,” Steven muttered, then offered me a hand up. Steven’s wound seemed not to bother him at all, even though it looked like the shark in Jaws had got ahold of him.

  “What’s going on?” I got to my feet and scurried behind Steven, to keep him between the killer and me. I flashed my red fingers around in front of his face. “Are we dead?”

  “Come on, Jerome, you’re not going to tell me you didn’t know. You didn’t think we were going to get wasted, right? Haven’t you ever heard of paintball?”

  “Paint… ?” I said, the stupidity gaining on me faster than old Gunnar had. “Ah, of course … I knew … Sure, I’m no rookie …”

  Gunnar had already turned to start the hike back to camp. “Well, you came through, boys,” he said. “You done the job, made me work a little … and cowered right nicely there toward the end. That’s what the woods is. Now you know what the deer knows.”

  “Great, Dad,” Steven cracked. “Now what, you gonna bring us back and roast us on a spit?”

  Gunnar laughed even though it didn’t sound like a joke.

  As we fell in behind the sadistic leader Lundquist, I said to his son, “So you knew the whole time?”

  “Of course,” he shot back. “You’d have to be a total Beavis not to know.”

  “Ya? Well, what about your arm, then? Your injury?”

  He looked at me like I was insane. “It’s a vaccination, ya dink.”

  I clammed up.

  I think he felt bad, because after a few minutes’ trekking he added, “But knowing doesn’t make me feel any less stupid, I’ll tell you that. And anyway, at least there were no real casualties, right?”

  I paused. “Ah, well … right. But … well, I’m glad now I brought all those extra underwear.”

  We both laughed hard, and when Gunnar asked, “What? What’s the joke?” we refused to tell him.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to Steven.

  “Don’t mention it. But I’m afraid I’m duty-bound to report this to the other He-Men.”

  You could have sparked a forest fire with the rotten grin Steven wore all the way back to camp.

  6 Big Shots

  BY THE TIME WE pulled back into camp, it was like we’d stumbled onto a guerilla hideout. Lars was giving a seminar on hunting hardware, with Wolf and Ling hovering like raccoons at the garbage.

  “Hey, look,” Wolf called as Gunnar led his two paint-splattered victims in. “A couple of dead guys.”

  Ling was uninterested. He just kept staring, and pawing, at the arsenal spread out on the blanket in front of him. Wolf picked a bullet out of a box and threw it at us.

  “Hey, Jerome,” Lars said. When I looked, he swiftly reached down and scooped up a great big handgun with a barrel like a vaulting pole. He pointed it at me. “Bang!” he yelled.

  Obviously, I was in no danger, so I only leaped about nine feet into the air.

  “Harr-ar-ar,” Lars laughed. “Truth, Steven, how scared was your fearless leader there?”

  This was Steven’s big chance. I winced.

  “What do you get out of it, Lars? If a kid gets scared? That make you some kind of bigger man?”

  Now I was really stunned. Steven didn’t give me up. In fact, he blocked for me. I opened one eye toward him, like Wile E. Coyote does when the fuse on his bomb burns out but there’s no explosion.

  Bap. Steven’s father clipped him a short-stroke cuff across the back of his head.

  “And what does that one mean?” Gunnar asked, referring to the language of the slappings.

  “It means don’t go wising off to my elders,” Steven answered dryly.

  “Cor-rect,” Gunnar said, and spun away to join the gun party. As soon as the old man’s back was turned, Steven drew out his hand in the shape of a gun, and aimed it at him

  “Aha!” Gunnar said, whipping around to catch him. Pretty suspicious guy, that Gunnar. “And what is that?”

  Steven, bagged, looked at his gun hand, then back at his father. “Pull my finger,” he said, which sent the father into a fit of proud, insane laughter.

  “That’s my boy,” said Gunnar.

  By the time we had all regrouped together in the traditional campfire circle—without campfire—Lars was showing how to properly annihilate a bull elk.

  Using a long thin rifle as a pointer, he stepped close to his model—the remarkably elklike Ling-Ling, who stood grim and steady on his hands and knees looking proudly off into the distance.

  “You have to make sure you place your shot either here,” Lars said, pressing the gun into a spot on the Ling’s neck, just behind the ear, “or here, or here.” He pointed to the temple and the shoulder. “What we all want, of course, is a one-shot kill, and with a big ol’ mother like this”—he slapped Ling hard on the back—“that means you gotta use strictly the hardcast .44 or .45 bullet, naturally, for maximum penetration. Otherwise, one of them hollow-tip or thin-jacket bullets’ll just blow up when they hit this tough sucker.” Walking around and around Ling while he spoke, Lars looked like he was displaying a new car for sale. “Any questions?”

  Wolf raised his hand. “Can I shoot him?”

  Either Ling didn’t care or he didn’t mind the idea of being shot. He didn’t even blink.

  “Ah, no, you cannot—”

  Pop-bang. The shot rang, and a burst of red bloomed over Ling’s kidney. He fell over without a struggle, like a tipped cow.

  “Heh-heh-heh,” Gunnar laughed. The rest of us were shocked into silence, even Lars. Even Wolf.

  Steven and I scurried over to help Ling up, and when he realized what had hit him and that he wasn’t injured for real, he nodded, and struck his wild animal pose again.

  “Don’t do that,” I said in his ear, as Steven and I grabbed him under the arms and straightened him back up to human posture.

  The sight of Ling-Ling back in human form seemed to trigger—if you’ll pardon the phrase—something in the men.

  “School’s out, kiddies,” Lars said, clapping and barking at us like he was rounding up sheep.

  “That’s right,” Gunnar seconded. “A-blastin’ we will go. For real this time.”

  “Blasting? Blasting what?” I asked.

  “Critters, of course,” Lars said as he started scooping up firearms. He slung one long skinny rifle with a scope over his back, and stuck a big fat-faced pistol into a holder under his arm. Gunnar carried three more weapons.

  “What?” Wolf laughed, looking at all that hardware. “Are the animals around here heavily armed?”

  “Like we taught you,” Gunnar said. “Different shots for different prey. And besides, we need to have enough guns to go around, or we’ll all be fighting over ’em.”

  I did the math. “Oh … well, six men, five weapons … guess I’ll just stay back here and straighten up, hold the fort, man the watch, or whatever it is you do with a campsite.”

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head there, Underwear Boy,” Lars laughed as he led the parade into the woods. “We’ll share.”

  “I won’t,” Wolf said. He was joking, as usual.

  “I won’t,” Ling said. He was not, as usual.

  The spot they took us to was deep enough into the woods that we had to gather together and give Wolf a king’s-chair lift through the roughs six times.

  “This is ridiculous,” Steven said.

  “This is fabulous,” Wolfgang said, rubbing our heads as we carried him.

  We finally reached a p
oint where there was no sign of previous travelers, no bent branches or footworn trails. We were high up on a ridge that looked down about fifty feet into a small meadow at the edge of a water hole not much bigger than the ’56 Lincoln back at the garage. So peaceful was this place, and so naturally insulated with pine needles on the floor and cool tree cover all around, that it was like a church the way it made everyone be quiet without anyone even shushing.

  Gunnar sat on a small rock that had a natural bucket seat worn right into it. Lars fell in alongside him, and the rest of us fanned out to the positions Gunnar pointed to. We all knew to be looking in the same direction the men were looking—at that water hole.

  “Everything comes here sooner or later,” Gunnar whispered. “Ultimately, it just comes down to whatever creature you feel like taking. Elk and moose don’t show up every day, of course, but there’s enough small game around this way to guarantee a few thrills every time we come.”

  “Which gun is mine?” Ling asked.

  “None of ’em,” Gunnar said. “They’re all mine.”

  “But, I mean, do I get to shoot one?”

  Lars laughed. “Relax there, big boy. Everyone who wants to shoot can shoot.”

  Ling broke out in a massive, helpless smile.

  “I want to shoot.”

  “I want to shoot,” Wolf said.

  The entire conversation was being conducted in whispers, making it sound as if we were a bed of snakes.

  “I don’t want to shoot anything,” I said, loudly.

  “Keep it down!” Gunnar hissed at me.

  “Oh, I forgot,” I said. “We don’t want to disturb the animals.”

  “That’s right,” whispered Lars, never figuring I might, possibly, be using sarcasm.

  Steven’s dad turned toward him with a menacing grin. “What about you, Swimmer? We didn’t hear you declaring your intentions.”

  “I’ll pass this time,” Steven said, picking at the drying paint on his shirt. “It’s not as if I haven’t shot a zillion times before, right?”

  “Right, He-Man,” Gunnar answered as he swung around to stare down into the valley once more. “And if I recall correctly, you even hit something once out of those zillion shots.”