Forever Never Ends by Scott Nicholson

to kill.
    Sylvester wasn't complicated enough to try to understand why he gained so much pleasure from hunting. An anthropologist might have chalked it up to some primordial survival instinct still swirling in the genes at the base of the human backbone even after all these millennia. A psychologist might have decreed that Sylvester was still trying to measure up against the judgments of a harsh father-figure. A Mooser would have said that killing was more fun than a fart in an elevator.
    But Sylvester was untroubled by the many facets of the equation. Because the equation was simple: the hunter versus the hunted.
    He pressed the gunstock against his cheek and pulled back the safety. It slid smoothly and easily, loose from years of being lovingly oiled. Sylvester aimed down the barrel to the tiny wingtip of the sight and lined the gun up with the spot where the footfalls were headed. He breathed shallowly to hush the roar of his own blood in his ears and to steady his hands.
    He saw movement through the drizzle, a quiver of laurel branch, and his finger grew taut on the trigger. He knew the exact degree of pressure he could apply before the hammer fell, and he was halfway there. Then his eyes saw a spot of brown, a more reddish brown than the surrounding dead leaves and tree trunks. His finger notched to about three-quarters.
    Another step, just show me the white fur target on your chest, and I'll park your ass in the deep freezer back home.
    And suddenly the animal stepped into the clearing, and Sylvester's finger was squeezing out the last millimeters of the trigger's resistance when he saw that it wasn't a buck that had lurched between the trees.
    In that same micro-second, although it seemed to stretch out so long it felt like minutes, Sylvester pushed up with his left hand as the roar of the igniting charge filled his ears. Sylvester's mind collected several observations in that slow-motion instant: the smell of the gunpowder, harsh and cloying; the slight kick of the gun butt against his shoulder, like that of a baby jackass; the mist lifting as if someone had sucked it up with a king-sized vacuum cleaner; and the sound of the bullet whistling through the treetops overhead, carving a slice in the sky before digging into the mountainside somewhere hundreds of yards away.
    The sweat was back on his scalp line, and this time it was nervous sweat. He'd almost shot somebody.
    He leaned his rifle against the stand and looked at the figure that stumbled between the trees. Whoever it was didn't seem to have heard the shot. Sylvester’s hands trembled. He looked down at them as if they were someone else's.
    He stepped from the stand and looked down the ridge. The figure staggered and fell.
    Sweet holy hell. I didn't shoot the son of a bitch, did I?
    Tears of panic tried to collect in the corners of his eyes, but he blinked them away. He ran toward the fallen heap of flesh, hopping down the ridge, slipping on the rotten rug of leaves. They'd lock him up, sure as hell. Never give him another hunting license. Kick him out of the Lodge, maybe.
    The huddled form was rising, wobbly but still alive. "Praise to Thee," Sylvester muttered to the wet gray sky, not really giving a good goddamn whether or not anybody was up there to hear him.
    He saw that it was a man he'd almost shot, a short man whose dark hair hung in wet mop strings. His back was to Sylvester, but he looked familiar. Those square ears jutting out from under a red ball cap gave him away as surely as if he'd handed Sylvester a picture ID.
    "Ralph," Sylvester hollered, reaching to touch the man on the shoulder.
    Ralph Bumgarner was as dumb as a hitching post, but even he knew better than to stagger around in the woods in a deerskin jacket. With a white wool collar to boot. Must be drunker than a Republican judge.
    "I almost shot you, you crazy fool," Sylvester said, and his words almost flew back down his throat.
    Because Ralph had turned .
    Because Ralph's eyes were