Andi nods.
“If it starts coming over here, do that,” I say. “It’ll probably run away once I cut it free, but just in case.”
“Can I help?”
“Yeah, by staying out of the way.”
She makes a scrunched, slightly grumpy face at me, but doesn’t argue.
The hog’s got its front two feet tangled in the net, and the closer I get to it, the louder it squeals. With two days above freezing, all the snow is half-melted, sticking around in dirty scraps and muddy puddles, and the hog’s managed to churn up a good one.
“Okay, okay, Jesus Christ,” I tell it as I pull out my knife and flip it open. “Simmer down, the knife isn’t for you. Why does everyone think the knife is for them?”
In response, I get the world’s most unpleasant noise. I sigh and step toward it, studying the net to see if I can free it without getting much closer. Feral hogs haven’t outrightkilledvery many people, but they’ve maimed and bitten plenty.
I get to work, sawing through the points of tension in the net in the hopes that it’ll loosen its hooves. At first the thing just thrashes harder, furious and probably terrified, and then seems to calm down a little.
All at once, it gets loose. One second it’s pulling at the net, snapping it back and forth; the next the net is destroyed and sagging between two trees and the hog is getting its feet under it, slipping in the mud.
The second it’s up, it heads for me. It’s not charging—more of a trot, really—but two hundred pounds of pissed-off pig is never good.
“Hey,” I say, backing away, the knife still in one hand. “Shoo.” It doesn’t. “Go on, get.”
It stops short, its front legs planted wide in the snow, and snorts. The hog is a mottled brown and covered in bristly fur; it looks like a pig that lives in the forest, and that’s exactly what it is.
Pigs will, incidentally, devour an animal so completely there’s nothing left. There’s a reason murderers feed bodies to hogs sometimes, a fact I can’t help but remember while this thing stares me down.
“Get outta here,” I tell it, waving my non-knife hand, and it’s a mistake.
Because itcharges.
“Fuck!” I shout, turn, and sprint for the nearest tree. There’s a second where I slip in the half-frozen snow-mud and I swear I can feel its breath on my ankle, but then I’m upright and scrambling, the knife dropped in the process. The lowest branch of the tree is higher than I’d like but adrenaline’s on my side, and when I grab onto it the rough bark scratches the shit out of my hands.
I hang on anyway, the stupid fucking hog a few feet behind me, and half-pull, half-kick myself up until I can get a foot over the branch and wrestle myself on top of it. Below me the hog is snuffling at the knife on the ground, making a noise like pissed-off, rusted-out brakes.
“GIDEON!” Andi shouts, her voice shot through with panic and half-swallowed by the snow, and I jerk my head up to find her fifty feet away and crouching on top of the boulder, thank fuck, four feet off the ground and firmly out of hog range.
“I’m fine!” I shout back. My heart is slamming against my ribcage and I have to close my eyes for a second and breathe, then swallow, then breathe again before I open my eyes to see that Andi’s still okay.
“WHAT THE FUCK?” she shouts, and all I can do is shake my head, because I don’t know what the fuck either, but I sure don’t like it. The hog is still below me, and as I watch it finishes nosing at my pocketknife and raises its head, like it’s scenting the wind or something. It gives a small, interested grunt.
And trots directly for Andi’s boulder.
“ANDI!” I shout, alarm pouring through my veins.
“I know!”
“Don’t move!”
“I KNOW!”
My knuckles are white around the branch and there’s sweat pouring down my back, half adrenaline and half exertion. Andi stands slowly from her crouch, eyes on the hog as it hustles over, hands up and out like she’s placating it or something. My heart’s in my throat, and no matter how much I tell myself that she’s fine, hogs can’t climb for shit, she’sfine, my heart stays there as the hog trots around the boulder and disappears.
Andi turns to watch it, her back to me, and I feel like I’ve been dipped in ice water. I start trying to remember all the diseases hogs can carry. I start thinking about how I’d treat a hog bite with the first aid kit back at the cabin, how I’d get her back to the cabin, how I’d need to get her out of here and to a hospital before it got infected, how I brought her to help tag grouse and now she’s facing down a fucking man-eating bone-crunchingferal hog—
Andi says something I can’t hear, her back still turned to me, and then there’s a flash of snout above the boulder, just to one side of her foot, and then it’s gone.
Fuck. Is it jumping? Is it goddamnjumping? Motherfucking hell goddamn son of a bitch—
