Zack pitched forward with the impact of the bolt and fell hard. Rising unsteadily to his knees, he allowed no more than a single groan to escape his lips. He mastered his pain with fierce resolve, twisted about, and ripped the damned bolt free from his left shoulder. He gritted his teeth and simply refused to acknowledge the injury. Slowly and with obvious effort, he clambered back to his feet. He faced his assailant, a young woman, likely even younger than his eighteen years. Without volition, his lips drew back and he showed her his teeth in some sort of instinctual display of defiance. She looked up at him from re-loading her crossbow, shook her head slowly, and actually smiled. She had wished that her shot had hit a more vital area, but she had drawn his blood and he would soon be hers.

Zack tossed aside the bloody bolt and ran. Branches tore at his bare skin, but these new scratches were negligible compared to the terrible hole in his left shoulder. He crashed through the brush, running along the crest of the steep ridge. His wounded shoulder burned and geysers of pain erupted through his body with every step. Breathing became more difficult but he ran. Merely by strength of will, he ran.

Jill hunched back over her crossbow and tried to reload, now oblivious to anything except her disappointment with herself. She had had her opportunity and she had missed despite her hours of practice. In her excitement, she couldn't even make her trembling hands do as she wished to reload the damned thing. She took off her cap and shook her head in frustration. Perspiration made her dark brown hair limp. Finally, her bow was reloaded and she set off again with a tremendous will and determination of her own. She had not come this close to triumph to be denied in the end. He was not the finest specimen whom she had ever seen. She had seen others more impressive, but he was to be hers -her first.

Males had once been the "Lords of Creation." They had ruled the world for millennia but they had betrayed their trust and nearly destroyed humankind with their institutionalized destructiveness. Some said that civilization itself was women's response to male strength and enthusiasm for violence. Ultimately, civilization itself stood on the brink of chaos and women finally banded together and found their deep-rooted strength. In the aftermath of the Revolution, they discovered that a simple reduction in male numbers had finally ended war and markedly diminished violent crime. No one could deny the benefits that came to all with the end of war and violent crime. The cost of crime itself was vaster yet than the great expenditure on police, courts, and prisons. The end of the half- century standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War, brought decades of prosperity. This new peace dividend was greater and more durable still. The challenge for the new order was to restrict male numbers in the face of the male birth fraction and women's vast sentimentality. Males might recover their lost numbers in a generation. However, allies were readily found among the women who had picked up the reins of power, long held by men, and had quickly come to enjoy their new prerogatives.

An annual Hunt was established. Starting in the summer of his nineteenth year, each male had to survive three annual Hunts. Just as untold generations of males had shipped off to war with much bravado, now males shipped off to their "national service." For each Hunt, a male was released in a designated preserve for three days. Each day's hunting began at 7 AM and continued until late afternoon. The precise rules were tweaked from time to time to control the harvest. Males had an opportunity to study their sectors before each hunt and were hunted in the same sector all three years. The males trained the rest of the year and provided low cost menial labor and other more specialized services. No more than one male in ten survived three Hunts.

Before the Revolution, women had comprised ten percent of all hunters and perhaps twenty percent in Western States. Now the ranks of hunters grew with women who loved the out of doors and thrill of the chase but had been repelled by the unpleasant details of the slaughter of graceful wild creatures. Males or jacks as they came to be called evoked much less sympathy.

Jill matched her quarry stride for stride. She had also trained long and hard for this day. The separation narrowed and she had a fleeting opportunity for a second shot. She raised her weapon, aimed, and fired again, only to miss again when Zack tripped on an unseen tree root rising from the rocky soil.

Pain wracked Zack's frame. Somehow, he threw himself in the opposite direction of his impending fall, lurched forward, and maintained his balance and his momentum. Pain assailed his consciousness - denying him awareness of anything around him but the pain but he kept going somehow, tapping a reservoir of strength that he had not known that he possessed.

Zack ran. The first day had been utterly uneventful. He had hidden carefully and no one had disturbed his hiding place. This morning, he had spotted two hunters and sneaked away unseen. The day had then been very quiet until the witch-bitch had flushed him from his hiding place. She came closer and closer. He had held his position as his coaches had told him, and waited for the moment to sneak away undetected. If he waited too long, she might simply take him where he lay with his face in the dirt. He did not want that. However, he might abandon a relatively safe position only to stumble into another hunter. A moving target is easier to see. He did not want that either. When he finally tried to sneak away, he suddenly saw two other women. As he saw them, one spotted him moving through the brush and called out to the others. He knew that he was seen and would be pursued.

Zack had known this day would come. His life had been quite simple up to now. He lived at home with his mother and older sister until he was fifteen. He had heard that he had had an older brother. When Zack was born, his mother had sent his brother to a ranch, not wishing to raise two joeys at home. His brother had earned their sister a college scholarship. His mother and older sister had treated him kindly. He had only to run and play while his sister carried heavy books and spent long hours with her boring school work.

He had known about the Hunt for as long as he could remember. His mom and sister didn't hunt, but every year in late summer, excitement erupted in their neighborhood as those who did prepared for the annual event and their enthusiasm rapidly infected others. Stories about the Hunt appeared more and more frequently on the TV. People well known to him in other guises paraded about on the street in their special hunting attire. Lines suddenly appeared at the archery lists at the park. Suddenly, the girls all wanted to play "Hunt" with the very joeys whom they usually ignored quite successfully during the rest of the year. For three crazy days, schools and businesses were closed and all attention focused on the Hunt.

The bland images on TV never revealed the details of the Hunt. Although no one had ever made him look and no one had really wanted him to see, Zack and his friends somehow always found a way to see something of the aftermath of the Hunt. Even though their birth mothers and foster mothers tried to keep their charges indoors, he saw a gutted jack lashed to the back of Susan Norwich's jeep. The hairiness and heavy muscles of the mature male, looked much different than his boyish frame.

Susan Hoskins brought home a magnificent bull - a male in his third Hunt. He must have weighed more than 100 kg. She ran two strong cords through his nostrils and out his mouth and hung him legs down from the side arm of the basketball hoop at the side of her driveway for everyone to see. The joeys saw him too. His head was tilted up and they couldn't really see his face. His arms hung limply at his sides and his body cavity gaped open where he had been gutted. White bone gleamed against red flesh. His sex parts were a mystery. They were simply gone. They never had anything more than a glance.

Once, two days after the Hunt, he saw Sally Preston and Julia Michaels hang a carcass from the cross bar of little Katie's swing set, in need of room to work. They skinned and butchered him while Katie Preston rode around on her BigWheels oblivious to everything around her. After Ms. Michaels sawed off his head, he hardly looked human at all. Twelve year old Marissa Michaels had offered to help but half the way through, lost interest in the proceedings and pronounced the whole business "gross" and "yucky." The women finally saw the joeys and chased them away good naturedly. The joeys did not need much encouragement to flee.

When he was fifteen, his mother sent him to live with an old college friend, Ms. Langton, who had a joey about Zack's age who came to live with her in exchange. Ms. Langton had a daughter, Carrie, several years younger than Zack's sister. At the Langton's, Zack ate well, which was very important to him, helped out around the house, and began his training.

The girls here also wanted to play "Hunt." Older now, they were not content with the joeys running around in the formless smocks that they always wore. They wanted more "realism" they said. The males would be naked, they insisted, just like in the real Hunt. When the males were captured, the games changed but did not come to an end. More than one girl went home with a skinned knee or blackened eye. The boys went home with sprains and bruises but all came home with something else to make up for all of that.

At eighteen, Zack went off for his National Service. His mother came to see him off, even though his sister accused her of excessive sentimentality. Zack knew that she had cried and Carrie had cried too.

Jill cursed and paused to load once again. She waved to her partners, Ty and Jan, and once she saw that they saw her and were following after her, she set off once again in mad pursuit. Ty was of the same modest height as Jill and perhaps even slighter of build. She was the most accomplished hunter. Jan was taller although you could not call her taller than average and of medium build. Her grace was more athletic than Ty's who had more the movements of a dancer. The trees and thick brush slowed Jill down too and denied her the sure, clear shot she sought. Under the thick canopy of trees, it was more and more difficult to see through the deepening shadows of the fading afternoon. It was hard to believe that this naked male and his kind had once ruled the world. One man could simply paralyze a dozen grown women by threatening to expose his male paraphernalia. Males had had their time - like the dinosaurs - and never would rule again.

Zack just kept running. He knew little of the former days. He had never terrorized anyone. He just kept running. He turned every so often to gauge his pursuers' positions. One, a slight girl with jeans and a camouflage vest, was far ahead of the others, but the others were also in pursuit. The one closest raised her arm to fire again, Zack continued to ran in a straight line and counted to three slowly to himself. Then he deked sharply to the right.

She fired and missed a third time, but he had cut too sharply on the narrow trail and lost his balance. Zack fell, rolling and bouncing down the steep side of the ridge, out of control. He almost fainted from the pain when he finally came to rest at the bottom of the hill. Zack's side was wet with blood and plastered with adhering dirt, twigs, and leaves. He rested for a few seconds until his head cleared. Apparently, he could move both his arms and legs - nothing was obviously broken - though his left shoulder pained him greatly. Tears welled up in his eyes. Through the tears, he saw the woman climbing down after him doggedly. Somehow, he crawled forward again on both legs and one arm. His left arm dragged limply behind him.

Jill swore again - somewhat more colorfully than the first time - and slammed a fourth bolt against the stock of her crossbow and worked the windlass to the sticking place - this time without a thought or moment's delay. She hoped that the motherless bugger had broken something in his fall. However, she saw him recover enough to crawl off into the heavy cover at the bottom of the ridge. Jill turned to spot her partners once again. Ty and Jan were closer now. Both were experienced hunters and she did not look forward to their taunts. She turned quickly back to her quarry and set about picking her way carefully down the steep hillside.

Suddenly, Jill heard a commotion behind her and turned to the sound of excited shouting. She saw another jack burst out of the trees - half again bigger than the birdie whom she pursued - and run right behind her along the crest of the ridge in the direction opposite to the one her jack had taken. Apparently, he been flushed by another party of hunters and blundered unknowingly into Jill, Tee, and Jan. He must have seen Jan and Ty right away because he stopped abruptly, then made a sharp right-angled turn and veered down the crest, right at Jill whom he apparently hadn't seen at all.

Jill turned from her wounded jack and took aim at this new inviting target. He was a broader target, though moving. Hitting a moving target is much more difficult than hitting a stationary target. She aimed quickly and pulled the trigger. Her arrow lodged itself in the meaty part of his thigh. This was simply not her day.

Pain shot up his leg as red blood streamed down the pale skin of his thigh. Only then, the new jack saw Jill. He was no more than 10 meters away. He screamed in pain and rage. He decided right then to flee no more. An end had come to flight. He bellowed his defiance and charged right at Jill, shouting obscene threats and waving his heavy muscular arms.

Jill stood transfixed, cradling her unloaded bow and made no effort to defend herself. She was in a state of shock, physically and emotionally. The jack was huge to begin with and filled space in an assertive male sort of way. His male parts displayed themselves quite aggressively. His face - no - his whole body was contorted - twisted - by rage. Jill felt absolutely nothing. She did not feel fear or panic. For a long moment, she stood as if she were merely an observer to this wild scene and not someone who was an actor central to the melodrama.

The wounded jack literally collided with Jill. She had made no move to avoid contact and they crashed to the ground heavily together. Her bow fell from her weak grasp. The jarring fall finally awoke her from her trance and she tried at last to free her hand and grab her Janie knife from its sheath on her belt. The jack saw the knife also and desperately tried to wrestle it free.

Just then Ty came to the top of the ridge. Perspiration darkened her blouse under her armpits and in a semicircle between her breasts. She saw the jack and Jill, tumbling together down the hillside. She lifted her crossbow, cocked and ready, and flipped off the safety. She stopped short of releasing the bolt. She simply could not fire safely because of Jill's close proximity to her target. With a shout to Jan, she tossed her bow aside, and dived down the hill herself, unsheathing her thick bladed Janie knife. Her feet hardly touched the ground as she seemed to fly above the ground.

Jill was clearly overmatched. Her skill and training could not fully compensate for the jack's advantages in weight, at least 50 kg, and strength at such close quarters. The jack weighed more than Ty and Jill together. As much as Jill, he was fighting for his very life. His hand came closer and closer to yanking Jill's deadly knife from its sheath.

Suddenly, Ty crashed onto the pile. Her impact cost Jill her breath. Ty wrapped her left arm around the jack's strong neck and tried to pry him off of Jill with her not inconsiderable strength and all of the leverage that she could muster. No success. With one strong movement, he brought his head forward again against Ty's best efforts. Her leverage was not sufficient and the jack had a tremendous size advantage. His skin was slippery with sweat and the odor of his maleness and his exertion was almost overpowering. Gathering her wits when brute force failed, Ty found her opening and strongly jammed the thick blade of her Janie knife home under the rear of his head, smashing through base of his brain. At once, the creature stiffened and went limp.

Jill lay beneath his dead weight, unable to dislodge him. Together, Jan and Ty were able to rolled him over onto his back and free their friend. Jill stood only with difficulty as Jan helped her to her feet. Her clothes, face, and hair were fouled by his blood, brain fluid and worse. The jack had lost control of both his bladder and his bowels when he died. She finally stood unsteadily, hands on her knees. The wind had been knocked from her and she fought to catch her breath. Ty asked repeated if she were hurt but Jill was too winded to talk.

The second party of hunters stood at the top of the ridge, looking down. Jan looked up and waved. They had been the ones who had flushed the jack. They waved back in good humor and then disappeared back into the woods, still looking for their jack. There was still time.

Content now that Jill would be okay, Ty and Jan inspected their jack who now lay supine on the rocky ground, arms and legs akimbo. Jan felt his throat for any sort of pulse. Finding none, she yanked Ty's blade from the back of his neck and handed it back to its owner.

Ty cleaned her knife on the jack's hairy chest and placed it back in its sheath. She assessed the heft of his pecs and flanks and tried to gauge the size of the balls in their scrotal sack between her thumb and index finger. His cock was soft, but thick and Ty made a game of looping the tie over its head. Pulling the string tight, she had done what she had wanted. Finally, she tweaked his vestigial nipples in good humor. Cleaned up a bit, he was a fine bull jack, a male in his third and final Hunt. "I wonder how my sister Faith is doing? It's her first hunt!"

Jill gasped for air, then tried to speak. She promptly gagged and then she vomited, setting off a prolonged coughing jag. At the end of which, she retched again. This time her stomach was empty and all she could manage was dry heaves. Jan took mercy on her and passed her the Sportsade. Jill filled her mouth, swished and spit. Vomit stains joined with her older streaks of blood, brain fluid, piss, and shit. She waited an instant, sighed, and took a deep draught. Her pony tail had come undone and leaves, twigs, and undifferentiated dirt littered her tangled hair. "I want my jack," she croaked hoarsely. Then she spoke more distinctly, "I want my jack - now!"

"Are you sure you're up for it?" Ty asked. "It's getting late. We've got this one!"

"I want my jack - really. I had him, you know, if it weren't for this damned distraction."

"Well, Ty offered fondly, "you'll be mighty sore in the morning in any event. Since I caught this one, Jan can clean him," she smiled, more than a little pleased to leave someone else with the dirty work for a change. "Let's go!"

"Help me get the bugger hung, before you run off!" Jan implored. Working together, the three hoisted the jack head down and tied off the rope. Jan made careful incisions on either side of his neck to open his large blood vessels and still leave his windpipe and esophagus intact. "I wish I had a hose to wash him down," she commented as he bled out.

"You'll figure something out! Let's see if we can find this guy a sidekick. Can't let him get lonesome in the truck on the way home," Ty offered.

Jill retrieved her bow and found it broken. Ty found hers and passed it to the younger woman, loaded and cocked. She showed Jill how to work the safety. Only then, the two set off down the hill.

They quickly found the place where the jack had ended his fall. Jill showed Ty the flattened grass and obvious blood stains. However, Ty first found his path into the brush and showed Jill the way.

"How long do you think it's been since he was here? Ten minutes - fifteen minutes? I winged him good! How far do you think he's really gotten?" Jill asked.

Ty raised her finger to her lips in the universal call for silence. She then pointed to herself and gestured to Jill. She would follow on the trail and Jill would hang back a dozen paces so that she might have time to react when Ty flushed him.

Jill acknowledged the plan with a wave.

Ty gave her "thumbs up" and set off in a cautious pursuit. A creature as large as a jack had to leave a trail. However, more than one jack may have been hiding here in the course of the day. The jack was wounded and as likely crawled as ran. He was bleeding and blood might be found. As much as she feared anything Ty feared picking the wrong jack's trail. She might find blood along the path where a wounded jack had passed earlier in the day or where a hunter had dragged or carried a field dressed jack back to the staging area.

The trail took her to a small stream. Ty walked up stream and down stream. She might have lost him had she not seen a knot of flies buzzing over a blood speckled leaf. The blood was of medium consistency, not the frothy pink of a chest wound or the deep beet red of a liver wound. It had no yellow or green lumps that betrayed intestinal contents.

She checked her watch. She was going more slowly than she would have liked, but she suspected that her quarry was moving even more slowly. Jill tagged along behind her and scanned the brush intently.

The trail seemed to come to an end. Ty scanned the ground and saw only leaves and the usual detritus of the forest floor. Then she searched the surrounding brush and finally looked into the trees. Perhaps the damned jack had climbed a tree! She saw nothing still. Jill looked too and saw nothing.

Ty's eyes returned to a seeming pile of leaves. Why would such a pile collect in that particular place? Staring at the pile, it seemed to move. Was it the wind or was it throbbing at the rate of breathing? Ty shook her head and flashed a small smile. Jill was still clueless. Ty pointed to the pile and Jill was even more confused. This was her first hunt after all. Ty pointed again and finally Jill figured it out.

Jill raised her bow but Ty motioned for her to hold. Ty pointed to her knife. "Take him with your knife," she urged silently.

Jill shook her head, no. She had had a belly-full of belly to belly fighting. She raised the crossbow and tried to decide where under that pile of leaves the jack was lying and how she might hit a vital organ this time. She studied the leaf pile and waited. She shook her head again and looked over to Tee.

Ty struggled to keep from laughing out loud, but she had been a novice once too. She pointed to herself and gestured sharply to warn Jill to be ready. "Just don't shoot me!" she formed the words silently. This was her last chance. She counted on her fingers, "One, two, three!" She shook her leg to limber it up. Then she strided over and kicked the pile once - leaves scattered and nothing more. Then she kicked the pile again. Leaves scattered once more but her foot struck something solid.

A naked jack exploded from the pile and Jill was as ready as she would ever be. He was moving quickly but the range was short. Her bolt took him in the flank, but diagonally, angling out, away from his spine as he twisted to get away.

He ran a few steps further, enough to make Jill curse her luck, but only a few steps. In his weakened state, his loss of blood from the earlier wound and his utter exhaustion from the prolonged pursuit, the wound was enough to stop him. He swayed, then simply collapsed.

Jill grinned ear to ear. She put down the bow and unsheathed her Janie knife. She gave Ty a joyful thumbs up and approached the crumpled figure cautiously. Ty smiled back at her, remembering her triumph of her own first jack. Jill crouched beside him and placed a finger on his neck to feel his pulse. She felt once and moved her fingers, then felt again. The pulse was there.

She had her jack, though. Her birdie, in his first Hunt, was much less formidable and frightening than the bull jack that they had taken earlier. She was in her first hunt too. She flipped him over onto his back all by herself. He groaned terribly when he hit the ground and jarred the bolt lodged in his side. Jill crouched beside him and examined her quarry. He was of medium height and lean, his belly was flat His boy-parts were cute and intriguing. In other circumstances, she might imagine other things that she might do with them. It was hard to believe that males once ruled the world with those thing. She could see where he had pulled the arrow though his left shoulder and blood still seeped from the wound. She saw the arrow in his flank that protruded out his side.

"You , know - Ty - just two years ago I was playing at this in park." Jill turned to the task at hand.

In all her dreams of hunting, she had never looked forward to this part. He was a fine jack, but no better than average. She would not take his head for a trophy, even though he was her first kill. Jill lifted his chin and he did not resist. "Your pain is almost over,": she whispered, "Thanks for a great run!" Jill looked to Ty for a last bit of encouragement and raised her knife to cut his throat.

Ty smiled and gave her a "thumbs up." Suddenly, the horn sounded and Ty's face dropped. "Stop!" she shouted. "Stop! Jill! The hunt is over for today."

"Come on!" Jill pleaded. He's almost dead anyway. I spent the whole damn afternoon chasing him and he's mine!

The returning hunters gathered in the staging area with their quarry. With Ty's help, Jan had dragged their bull back to the staging area after she had bled and gutted him herself. They hung him again, scrubbed him down thoroughly with anti-bacterial soap and hosed him off. Then, they carefully dried him inside and out with paper towels. The warden came by to register the kill and add his serial number to others listed at the website. He was a fine bull. They would let him hang for a couple of days in the meat locker with his tenderloins wrapped in cheese cloth, then skin him and break him down into quarters.

Jan thought about her home town celebration. Younger girls took turns swinging from the hanging metal chain impatiently as older teens wrestled as a scrubbed and scoured eighty-gallon drum into the fire pit under the ten foot steel tripod. The drum was half-filled with water from 5-gallon containers brought up from the Clubhouse in a flat-bed truck. Salt, vinegar, pepper, garlic, rosemary and about 10 pounds of onions were thrown in and the fire was lit.

Meanwhile, volunteers worked in the clubhouse kitchen, chopping cabbage for slaw, shucking corn, peeling turnips, and scrapping carrots and parsnips.

Others retrieved the piece de resistance from the meat locker. The flayed headless carcass lay supine on the table. The bony fingers and toes had been trimmed as waste. Several tendons around the knees were clipped and his lower legs bent back all the way around backwards so that his ankles rested bizarrely on his thighs. Someone always made a joke about chiropractors. Then someone then always retorted that this poor jack needed more than a chiropractor to get back on the road. The inverted knees were swung up under the armpits and pinned to them with metal skewers. His ankles dropped against his meaty buttocks and his arms were snugly wrapped around his contorted thighs. His ankles and wrists were neatly tied with heavy twine and pierced with a metal skewer, hand over hand, foot over foot, then hands over feet. The skewer was anchored in his lower spine. A compact shape would ensure even cooking. Finally, the spit was inserted and the stays anchored in his shoulders and rump.

The cooking method was traditional. The carcass was lowered into the seething cauldron and boiled for two hours with onions and various spices in order to assure tenderness. Then it was withdrawn on its spit and was seared over an open flame. The carcass was basted lavishly with barbecue sauce. As the outer layers browned and crisped, thin slices of flesh were shaved off with a sharp knife, exposing less cooked layers underneath which in turn were basted generously and seared. Thinking of it made her hungry.

Ty concentrated on her task. The jack's genitals lay on a cutting board. Using a keen, small knife, Ty slit the scrotum and ran her blade up the underside of the penis, opening the glans and the urethra. Then she peeled the thin skin free of the fibrous structures inside the penis, making careful short cuts to free the skin from its attachments. Finally, the skin was free and she peeled back the scrotum expelling the testicles and their supporting structures. Skillfully, she dissected out the testicles and returned them to a fresh plastic bag. The skin of the penis made a small rectangle while the scrotum was an empty bag. She inverted the scrotum over her fist and gingerly scraped away adhering fragments of flesh. Then she laid out the patch of penis skin and continued the careful process.

Jill finally came back from the aid station, where she had escorted her wounded jack. A certain fraction of license and bag fees went for medical care for jacks who survived the day but needed treatment. Altruistic medical students volunteered their time and skills too. Apparently, Zack's foster mother had bought special insurance in case Zack survived the hunt but needed medical care. Zack would get patched up, Jill was sure. He would get time to heal and recuperate, but still owed one day for this year's Hunt. He would make it up later but Jill still had her regrets.

Faith, Ty's sister, had done no better Jill. She hadn't even seen a jack except for the ones taken by other hunters. All that was left for her was to join with those admiring Ty's jack. "You mean Ty wouldn't let you take him? You were so close!" she responded when Jill told her the story.

"Smile!" Ty urged positively. "Jill showed her character. There are rules and you followed them. Without rules, we are no better than the beasts ourselves."

"I still want my jack!" Jill insisted, still hurt.

"Better luck next year." Faith responded. "For both of us."

"Okay. Okay. You always remember your first one. You'll both really do better next year." Ty offer. " I'm just so sure you will!"

"We really couldn't do much worse." Jill pouted.

"Mom named her Charity' - she should have named her Hope!" Faith flashed her exasperated smile.