The Deer Hunt

by John Drake

I used to love war. The adrenalin rush of combat, the excitement of the kill or be killed conflict, even the smells. Oh, I admit, the stench of the bodies was repellent, but I’m thinking of the almost erotic smells that come from the fight itself.

But that was when war was something I understood. When the dead stayed dead and didn’t occupy the souls of the living; when your enemy was human, or at least humanoid, and didn’t change into some nameless creature that took possession of your flesh and sapped your will. Back when, if you field stripped your weapon, re-assembled it, oiled it, loved it, it would always work for you. Back when firearms followed the laws of nature. Back when there were laws of nature.

I know, I sound like a burn-out. You’ve heard these stories before; didn’t believe them then, so why should you believe me now? Maybe it’s because you’ll know about her now. If I had known about her when I went to Daearu, maybe I could have made a difference. But probably not.

It was the screaming that first clued me in that this was to be no ordinary war. There was something different about the screaming. You expect men in the agony of death throes to scream sometimes, as when death isn’t instantaneous, when you’re hit by a pulse rifle or step on a scatter grenade. But there is a special scream that occurs when you lose not just your mind but your soul. When your metaphysical place is being exchanged.

Maybe if we had all known that scream, things would have been different. But I doubt it. We need the molybdenum, the other rare earths; the natives’ blood. So we would have gone to Daearu and done exactly what we did anyway.

We were a day out of base camp. Our mission was to hook up with Bravo Company, after seeking out a village in the Aeronwen Delta at the furthest corner of the southeasterly peninsula that juts out from the Golgonix Forest and into the Great Inland Sea. Our mission: to round up deer, of all things. Yellow-colored deer. And they had to be gold and they had to be female.

“We’re on a goddamn deer hunt,” Yank said. “A goddamn deer hunt. I could’ve stayed home and hunted deer.” He spat.

“It must be important for Command to send us on a deer hunt,” I said in exasperation. The heat was getting to me. I wished I could shed my gear. But without the mirrors to reflect back the forest, we’d be sitting ducks. And somehow, the herms would elude us if we couldn’t see them in the infrared or ultraviolet. Absurd as it sounds, I think that that may be their primary color. Something only the wasps here could see. And us, with our goggles.

“Important my ass. This is what I think of what staffers think is important.” Yank lowered his trousers, and let loose a big one.

“Gee, thanks for sharing that with us,” Columbia said.

“Any time, my lady, any time,” Yank said, giving her a wink. He pulled his trousers back up and buckled them with a look of satisfaction.

We were back to back, in a clover leaf; all of us on point. We had to be. Herms could come from any direction. Frenchie was even scanning the trees. Some of them could even fly, God knows how in this gravity well. I brought up my screen at the thought, checked to see if the gravity compensators were functioning; I felt a little heavy. They were.

“GPS says we are about three klicks away from the village,” Sergeant announced.

“Far Out. Time to kick some herm butt,” Yank responded.

“Hold off until we ascertain how many friendlies are there,” the Loot said. The Loot was right out of the academy. He was all right I guess, not an asshole like some, but he was totally green. As green as the foliage in this rotten jungle. He didn’t understand why Command wanted us to only use bayonets against the herms, or why Sergeant wanted them smeared with blood. Herms are superstitious, that’s why. A herm will come at you full force against an M-21 or a Q ball, but will run at the sight of a bloodied knife. Go figure.

Someone must have tripped something. There was nothing on the sensors, and then there was. But by then, they were all over us. I plunged a bayonet into a herm, sending her screaming into the arms of English. He placed a scatter grenade into her mouth. Smooth move, as we couldn’t duck in such close combat range. I was busy blocking an overhead strike with a sword when her body parts were splattered all over me. I know now why we had to use such gruesome weapons against the herms, but then I just thought Command had gone sadistic with the futility of it all. But orders are orders.

After I sliced and diced my herm, I whirled, side-kicked one, knocking her to her knees, and then dropped my own scatter grenade on her. I stepped back at the explosion.

“Jesus, where are they coming from!?” Frenchie yelled, as they started falling from the trees. I was too busy thrusting my bayonet against one and another and another, trying to get them in the throat, in the heart, anywhere, thrusting in rhythm to Sarge’s singing. He always sang when we were attacked, and always the same song. In the native tongue it was. He never explained what he was singing, but all I knew was it rhymed, it had a smooth cadence for the attack, and he insisted on it.

At the time I thought it was his own goofiness. Now, I wish I had been paying attention. I need to sing that song now. We all do. The blood on the bayonet won’t work without that song. Without the song, the sacrifices Bravo Company made to get the golden hind were in vain.

Sarge should have written it down. Should have made sure we memorized it. But he didn’t. How he learned about the song I don’t know. But he should have given it to us.

He screamed as the herm severed his spine. I rushed over to him; the herms had begun their retreat as suddenly as they had advanced, and that gave me time. The Loot was bending over him, uncomprehending his last request.

“I’m dying, boss. I’m dying. You got to place a scatter grenade in my mouth. You got to.” But the Loot wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Instead he cradled Sarge’s head in his lap, like it was his lost infant child. He cried when the death rattle came.

He insisted on burying Sarge there and giving him a prayer of forgiveness, sending him on his way. Loot wasn’t a good Sky Pilot, but he was all we had. It’s too bad he hadn’t listened to Sarge. I’d rather remember him blown to bits. I really would.

We slithered through the rest of the forest like serpents. The village may have been only been two klicks away, but it took us two hours to get through the bower. Sometimes, after a herm attack, the very trees seem against you. You have to watch against them falling on you, or their leaves slapping you in the face, or the vines themselves snaking around your boots and yanking you down into the fallen plant matter, where the ants can get you.

I prefer the death by the ants though to some of what can happen to you. The ants pick you clean and dissolve your bones in their acid. It’s a good death compared to some.

My eyes were watering something fierce. I tried rubbing them, but it just made the sting worse. But I could still see, sort of, that the village was a typical one. We marched into the square that was the center of village life to get our bearings. The people there mostly ignored us. By now, the sight of Terran soldiers must have been a familiar one.

“How can people live like this?” Columbia observed. She just shook her head. I was amused. It wasn’t that long ago that most people in South America lived like this. If it weren’t for the resources here on Daearu, most likely most still would. The daub and wattle hovels, the holes in the ground, the lean-to’s were all around us.

“Aren’t thinking of moving here after the war?” I said amusedly. She shot me a dirty look. I laughed.

“Up ahead’s the round up,” the Loot yelled. We locked and loaded our rifles, in case there was resistance. The golden hind had to have some religious significance; that’s the only reason I could think of that the herms would guard it so fiercely.

We walked among the villagers getting increasingly nervous. None seemed to be a herm, but you couldn’t really tell. There was no way to tell until you tried killing one. If they were easy to kill, they weren’t a herm. If you had to frag them to make them die, they were.

We began to attract attention the closer we came to the deer pit. I heard murmurs, felt, rather than saw anything. We came to the corral’s gate. It was then that I was struck blind.

“My sensors aren’t working,” I yelled, but then realized that neither was my comm. It was against regulations, but hell, everything out in country is against regulations, so I ripped my visor off. I wished I hadn’t.

I had heard of this happening, but I took it for war hysteria, battle fatigue; post-stress whatever. But now I saw it. Men we had buried, including Sarge, were converging on us, weapons drawn. They were moaning.

“Open fire!” yelled the Loot. I knew somehow this was not what Sarge would have ordered. I don’t know how I knew this, but I followed the Lieutenant’s orders. The bullets made the ambushers dance a dance of death, but they kept coming. I didn’t really get it then what was happening, not even from their dead eyes. I didn’t get it, even though I had helped bury Sarge.

I still don’t get it. How can the dead come back? And why does death mean that you switch sides in a battle? That you join the herms?

Not waiting for orders, I hurled a scatter grenade into the lumbering corps of zombies, or whatever the hell they were.

“All right!” Columbia yelled, as the concussion spread through and caused flesh to fly like shrapnel. Everybody followed suit. Soon the living corpses were now in bits and tatters. All except for Sarge. His upper torso was cleaved from his lower body and he was still crawling, using his arms. His moaning got louder. No wonder the poor guy had wanted to be fragged, back in the jungle.

Sarge made it to the Loot and began pulling him down. The Loot started screaming. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t an ordinary scream that you hear on Daearu. No ordinary scream ever sounded like that.

I didn’t know what was happening to the Loot, but I fragged him. The cascade made him merge with Sarge and they were both sent straight to hell.

It had been bad. The zombie attack was followed by a mass onslaught by the villagers. The six of us couldn’t stop them, even though we killed most of them. Fragged some; bayoneted others; unfortunately, for later, we had killed some with bullets. They would later return, as did Sarge.

Columbia and I were the only survivors, but we had the deer in tow. But our GPS signal was somehow being messed with. Either that, or the damned thing wasn’t worth the plastic it was made out of. It kept sending us maps that led us deeper into the forest. And the forest was changing.

“I haven’t seen a live tree in an hour,” Columbia said. The trees here were all brackish, looking like scooped out corpses with rotten cotton balls as decorations. “What the hell you doing, man?” She noticed me eyeing the sun and pointing.

“Trying to get direction the old-fashioned way. The sun goes from north to south, and that would make that direction-uhhhh-east!” I said triumphantly.

“So? And your point is?”

“That’ll lead us to the rendezvous point with the rest of Bravo Company. If we keep going, we should get Bambi here back to Command in a couple of days.”

“If we have a couple of days,” she shook off the sweat. “God, I could use a bath.”

“Yeah, stinks to be you.” She threw a rock at me. I ducked, grinning.

I shouldered my weapon, chucked-chucked to Bambi, and started in an easterly direction. This took us to a clearing. I stopped. Felt my mouth hanging open and my pants getting tight.

In the middle of the clearing was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was completely naked, had tits that would bring you to your knees. She had short black hair, and was pacing back and forth as if she were waiting for somebody. Columbia snapped her fingers at me. “Hello!”

“Uh, what?”

“For one thing, you were drooling.”

“Oh.”

“I wonder what she’s doing here,” I said. “Maybe she needs help.”

“Maybe you should start thinking with the organ between your ears, not the one between your legs. She could be a trap.”

“You don’t really believe those stories about men being led to their dooms by demons in the form of beautiful women, do you, Columbia?”

“No, but judging from the effect on you, if it weren’t for me, you’d be a trophy on her wall right about now. Cover me. I’ll check her out; see what her story is.”

“I’ll go.”

“Uh, uh. I’ll go,” she said firmly. She tramped through the high grass to the woman. I walked behind her. She turned and pointed to the spot I was at. Mouthed, “Stay put, dammit.” I stayed put.

Columbia came up to the woman, her weapon drawn. The woman stopped her pacing, looked confused for a moment at Columbia’s presence. Then she spotted me and the hind. Gave me a wide grin that said ‘come and get me,’ if it said anything. I wanted her like I wanted no woman. I then heard in my mind “Shoot her.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said ‘shoot her.’ You want me, don’t you?” the voice in my head said. The sylvan nymph was staring at me; her brown eyes swallowing me whole.

“Yes. Like I’ve wanted nothing else.”

“Then shoot her, and you may have me.”

I unshouldered my rifle, aimed, and took out Columbia. An instant later, she rose. The two women walked toward me. I froze. I couldn’t move. I don’t think it was any kind of a spell; I was scared shitless, literally, I’m ashamed to say.

The naked woman then fulfilled her promise to me. She took me and gave me such delights that I can’t even put them into words. As I lay there naked and glazed over, she took the hind. Columbia looked at me hungrily.

“You may feed,” the naked woman said to Columbia. Columbia came closer to me. She wasn’t breathing; there was no sign of a pulse. I got up, gathered my uniform and ran.

I swear this happened. I didn’t betray us to the enemy; I would have delivered the hind to Bravo Company if I had known what was at stake. Even though she was beautiful and I was afraid of what Columbia had become.

If I had known then what I know now: that the herms are fairy goddesses who can only be killed with the blood of the Golden Hind on a knife’s blade. That they possess the ability to re-animate the dead. That the blood on the bayonet is hind’s blood and that Sarge’s song was an ancient chant that, with the blood, can kill a goddess. That if you can’t kill them, you have to do the next best thing, and scatter their body parts all over hell and gone, so they can’t reassemble.

You’re looking at me like I’m mad. But I’m not mad. And I’m not the enemy. Our enemies here are sex and death. That is why we will lose this war. You can’t fight sex and death. You can only succumb to them.

Judge me harshly if you must; but you would have run too. Or surrendered to her; been made her slave. You’re like me.

You’re only human. Our enemies are not. We should never have come here, even if we did need the resources. The price we will pay is far too high. Far too high. Believe me, for I know. And we haven’t even begun to pay it. But we will. God knows, we will.

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