“Thanks,” I said as I took a big gulp, “You’re lucky you didn’t grab Sara. She’d be biting you and screaming right now.”
“Then she’d be dead already.”
I swallowed and looked up at him, “Remind me why I’m not?”
“We already went over this yesterday. Why does it matter? You’re alive don’t complain, Kate.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked with my breath stuck in my chest.
“Well, your father has two daughters so you were either Sara or Kate. You filled in the blank for me.”
“Well, you have some additional explaining to do,” I said eating the last piece of pop tart and staring him down.
“I have no explaining to do,” he retorted as he stood and kicked dirt over the fire.
“You won’t tell me what this is about?”
He looked down at me and his eyes were miserable, “I don’t want to shatter what your perfect world must have meant.”
“It meant nothing. It was a lie—I already knew that,” I said, my eyes searching his. I knew from his tortured expression that he had the answers I had been searching for. I also knew he didn’t want to tell me. It made me wonder how many questions he could actually answer. May be he had just accepted things as they were too.
“How did you know that? When everyone else there seemed so content.”
“If you won’t explain, I won’t either because I’m sure each is equally as personal,” I said, standing and tripping over a log into his arms. I tried to tell myself to keep breathing as his strong arms grasped my hips and his laughter shook his chest against mine.
“That would have seemed a lot more meaningful had you not just tripped over a twig again.”
“Thanks…” I said, pulling away and straightening my shirt, “I smell like something died, how do you—“
“Smell so good? It’s just natural,” he said, a slight smile creeping into the corner of his mouth, “Actually, I have extra shirts in my pack.”
“Well, give me one,” I said taking my shirt off. His eyes widened, “Oh, come on, as if you haven’t seen a chick in their bra before.”
He shook his head and reached into the pack handing me a black shirt, “It’s going to be a bit big.”
“Better than smelling like that,” I commented as I threw my shirt at him.
“Here’s some deodorant. It might help,” he said, shoving my shirt into a plastic bag and putting it into his pack.
“Thanks,” I said, tying a knot in the back of the shirt so it wasn’t as baggy, “What’s your name anyways?”
“Hunter.”
“So how long are you going to make me run today Hunter?”
He held out his hand and I placed mine in it, “As long as you can take, darling.”
Chapter 4
We had been running for hours, and my mind was whirling with questions that I knew Hunter might never answer. I wanted to know how he had learned to run holding someone’s hand because it was awkward for me, and I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t for him. I wondered if he really thought I was going to try to get away from him. As I glanced over my shoulder at him I realized I would never try to get away from him. He had kidnapped me, but he had saved me in some ways too. I didn’t know much about him, or understand why I trusted him, but I did. I hadn’t ever been able to trust anyone before, especially those in my family. Sometimes the biggest lie is saying nothing at all, and that is what they had done. As I looked at him I realized it was because he had the most to hide, but that his eyes told me the truth that I trusted him. I watched as his expression changed; his brow furrowed and his eyes darted as his paced began to slow. He stopped and pushed me behind him. His head turned and so did his body as I tried to look over his shoulder on my tip toes.
“Shit— Kate hide and don’t come out until I say so,” Hunter ordered as he nodded sternly over his shoulder.
“What?”
“I said hide,” Hunter pushed me back with one hand.
I darted into the bushes and up a tree as quietly as I could. When I looked down at the top of his head I could see what had stopped him. There were three men coming out of the tree line that he had turned to face.
“A general out in the woods with his girlfriend all alone?” the man in the middle said. He was taller than Hunter by a good five inches and just as wide. He looked like he could eat Hunter for dinner and my heart went into my throat, “You must be a general to be bold enough to stop when you’re being hunted, albeit a dumb one.”
“I’m dumb? I’m a general while you’re just a glorified tracker,” Hunter said. The man proved how stupid he was by taking the bait and lunging forward.
In a movement I didn’t quite catch the man was on the ground behind Hunter and the other two, who were equal in size to Hunter, lunged forward. The size of their leader led to his clumsiness, but these two were quicker than the leader. Hunter caught one punch in his hand and twisted the man into the ground while barring the kick of the other with his arm. I was surprised that Hunter didn’t flinch at the impact of bone on bone because it sounded like something had crunched. Hunter turned to the man who had done the kicking and smashed him in the face with his foot. The man flew backwards into a tree and crumbled to the ground unconscious.
The burly leader was just recovering as the man who tried to punch Hunter ran towards him fists flying. I could barely tell what was happening as Hunter blocked several punches, but then took one to the gut before he received a knee in the face. When Hunter looked up the man looked pleased as he hopped up and down like a boxer. The leader was still rubbing his head in confusion.
“Good try,” Hunter said, unfazed as he ran forward and pushed the man back into a tree. He grabbed the man’s hair and pulled his head forward and then backwards slamming it into the tree. The man’s eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground.
The leader had recovered and was laughing, “You may have taken them, but can you take me?”
Hunter turned one eyebrow raised, “I’m surprised you’re not running back to your tribe crying like a baby already.”
“I’ll kill you and your pretty little woman too.”
“No one is going to touch her,” Hunter said with his voice level. I felt butterflies in my stomach as I imagined what his face might look like, what his eyes might say that meant. I knew somehow that right now they weren’t revealing anything, but that he was perturbed with the situation.
“When you’re dead how will you stop me?” The leader replied, arms crossed, but again Hunter had used the conversation as a distraction. In one swift movement Hunter grabbed a log from the ground and cracked it over the man’s skull. He fell to his knees and then face first into the ground.
“Kate?” Hunter said, his voice strained.
“Yeah,” I said, clinging to the tree above him.
He looked up, “You hid in a tree? How did you get up there so fast?”
I shrugged and slid back down. When I came out of the woods I found Hunter pulling a gun from the back of his pants.
“Who are these guys?” I asked.
Hunter clenched his jaw, “People who won’t give up, and there are bound to be more of them,” he said, bending his knees and throwing me over his shoulder, “Close your eyes and don’t open them until I say so.”
“Hunter…”
“Please Kate. You don’t need to see this.”
“They’re closed,” I replied, and I heard the pop of the gun and the recoil into his shoulder three times before he took off running.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he said as he continued to run at a full sprint, “You can open your eyes.”
“Can you put me down and let me run?”
“No, we need to get away quicker than you can run,” he continued to explain, “They’re like pack animals. There are always at least six—typically two groups of three. Once they find their other team members dead they’ll turn back and we won’t have to worry—as long as we don’t get in
the way of where they’re going.”
“I think you need to teach me how to fight, so there’s an even match up,” I said, and a cynical laugh came from his throat, “It’s not a bad idea, is it?”
“Not really, but you aren’t very coordinated,” he said, readjusting me on his shoulder, “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
Chapter 5
“I think your shoulder bruised my rib cage,” I said when Hunter finally let me down off his shoulder. I figured now wasn’t the time for questions.
“Did I now?” he joked, running his hand through his sandy brown hair that stuck up into a faux hawk. I had to take a breath and look away as my eyes landed on his soft lips.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, regaining my composure and leaning forward to touch his eyebrow, “You need this stitched up. It’s still bleeding.”
He flinched at my touch, “Well, that would be kind of hard for me to do seeing I don’t have a mirror.”
“Do you have a suture kit somewhere in your bag of tricks?” I asked as my hand dropped to his arm. His muscles flexed in pain as my hand landed.
“Yes,” he said, turning to try to stop me from seeing the pain that was filtering into his face.
“Let me see your arm,” I ordered as he turned back to face me.
“It’s fine.”
“I’ll determine that,” I said, looking at the large black and blue mark, “I heard the impact and it sounded like something broke.”
“What’s the verdict?” Hunter said after a moment.
“It’s just a bruise,” I said, watching his smug reaction, “I’ll sew this up for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. I watched him keep his composure even as I pulled the needle through his bruised skin, “How do you know how to do that?”
“My father did teach me some useful skills, but only because he got sick of suturing me up himself.”
“So you’ve always had a knack for injuring yourself?”
I shrugged, “Less now that I’m older.”
He looked up at me as I snipped the excess string, and I could tell that he could see the pain in my eyes as I admitted it. It was something I had always hated about myself. I could do things that required coordination and thought, but when it came to doing something that required little thought, like walking, I had a great talent of getting injured.
“I’m sorry I’ve teased you about it,” Hunter said.
“The truth can’t hurt.”
“It depends on whose truth it is,” he said as he ran his fingers over his parched lips.
“It’s funny how that works,” I said, sitting down next to him on the log. I understood exactly what he was saying, “So who were they?”
He clenched his jaw, scratching his five o’clock shadow in unease, “Those were hunters.”
“That means nothing to me,” I said as he threw some sticks in a pile and lit it with a match, “and why did you call him a glorified tracker?”
“A tracker is the lowest person in the army ranking. They do exactly what their name is; they track people. Usually it’s those from other tribes to find out where the rival tribe is stationed. We live few and far between out here. There are safe houses similar to the underground rail road along the way. At any rate, trackers don’t carry weapons and aren’t supposed to let their presence be known. Although, most of the time they’re so dumb you can tell they’re tracking you straight away.”
“So a hunter must be one step above that? Just as dumb obviously,” I said, watching him search through his pack.
“Yeah, they were trackers that survived long enough to become hunters except they hunt to kill. Most are cowards though, so if you kill one the other half of the group doesn’t usually follow,” he said with a sigh, “I’ll be back in five minutes, don’t go anywhere. You can hide in a tree again if you have to.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It was funny for me,” Hunter said, looking over his shoulder and smiling.
I rolled my eyes and leaned closer to the fire. I could get used to that smile.
“You unable to sit still?” Hunter commented when he returned with a skinned animal.
“It’s cold, okay?” I replied with clenched teeth.
“Well, I have dinner. Hope you like bunny,” he said with a smirk.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to look as disgusted as I was.
“I’m sorry you’re cold.”
“And you’re not?” I questioned as I looked up at him. He didn’t look cold at all.
He shrugged, “Yes, but you get use to it.”
“Right.”
“How do you like your bunny?” he asked.
“Well done,” I answered, and Hunter laughed. It wasn’t long before I was laughing too, “Is it really a bunny?”
“Well…yes. I can pretend it’s a chicken if you want,” he suggested, putting it on a stick over the fire.
“I’ll just pretend when I’m eating it,” I said, reaching in the pack and taking a sip out of the water bottle, “So it must be an honor to be a general?”
“Not quite,” he replied as his eyes darkened.
“I don’t understand?”
“The only wars you read about are in books where it’s glorified, but it has no glory in the world we live in,” Hunter explained as he looked past me into the woods.
“So you didn’t want to be a general?” I asked.
“Trackers and hunters have a choice, but generals are chosen. I’ve sold my soul for something I don’t believe in. I’m an assassin of my enemies and my own people. I send trackers and hunters out knowing that most likely it’s a pointless mission and they won’t come back.”
“Does every general hate it?”
Hunter looked blindly into the fire, “No, most love it.”
“So have you had bunny before?” I realized that he was telling me something that he had not told anyone before, and I didn’t want to pry even though my mind was spinning with questions. I felt sick to my stomach wondering why he had told me so much about himself. If he killed me it wouldn’t have mattered that I’d ever known.
“You’re scared again,” he observed as he looked up at me.
“I just don’t know where we’re going or why,” I answered as I locked my eyes with him.
“I have to go back,” he said not looking away from me, “but I’m going to do everything possible to keep you safe here and there.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to.”
I didn’t bother to ask why because I could tell by his expression that he didn’t know. He stood and came to sit next to me. His body was close enough to mine to make the shivers dissipate.
Chapter 6
We were running again—endlessly running. Hunter seemed to be unfazed by it as if he could run for days without stopping, but I was dying from fatigue trying to keep up. I couldn’t think of any besides the fact that I was exhausted, and that I was too afraid to stop running. We were running away from something—that much was clear. I just wasn’t sure what we needed to get away from so fast, and if it was my family it only brought up the fact that Hunter wasn’t telling me something about the situation. Or maybe my family really did care and were searching for us. I shook my head at the thought and took a deep breath, but it made it so I had to stop. It felt as though I wasn’t breathing anymore.
“You need to drink more,” Hunter commented, stopping and throwing a bottle at me. My reaction time was zero and it hit me in the chest, “Are you okay?”
“It’s just a bottle,” I answered, leaning down to pick it up and falling to my knees.
“Kate, are you okay? You need to speak up if you need to stop,” Hunter ordered, pulling me to my feet and grabbing the bottle of water, “Kate, I’m not trying to kill you. You need to tell me when you need to stop.”
My eyes were barely open.
“Hunter, I need to stop,” I mumbled, and my words slurred together.
He twisted the cap off the bottle an
d tilted my head up to force the water down my throat. I sputtered a bit at first, but he did it slow enough that I didn’t choke, “Any better?”
“Mhmm. Can’t move legs.”
“It’s almost sunset anyways, so we’ll set up camp here. The skies look clear, so we won’t need to worry about rain,” Hunter noted as he sat me on the ground, “Will you be okay while I get us some protein and fire wood?”
“Sure.”
“Here, use this as a pillow,” Hunter suggested, putting the backpack behind me and pushing me lightly on the shoulders to lean back, “I’ll be back in five minutes tops. You should’ve said something. You’re so god damned stubborn.”
“I don’t want to hold you back,” I responded as my eyes closed.
“Stubborn,” he grumbled, and I heard his feet hit the ground as he jogged off.
By the time he had returned I had recovered a little bit.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting up as he came into focus.
He sighed with a smile, “I just can’t get use to you Kate. You’re full of surprises. All you had to say was that you needed to stop.”
“I’m not one to let on to what I’m feeling. It’s hard for me to speak up,” I said as I attempted to shrug, but my shoulders felt like lead weights and it was more of a twitch than a shrug.
“For some reason I don’t think you were always like that…being stubborn, I imagine you can be quite opinionated,” he said, building a fire and placing a fish he must have caught onto it.
“Am I that see through?” I asked, picking up a leaf and tearing it into small pieces.
Hunter stopped me with his hands, “For what it’s worth I think your opinion was probably right even if it wasn’t wanted. You seem very observant.”
“And cold, they called me the ice queen. Trevor was set on melting me,” I added, shaking my head as I thought how inferior Trevor was to Hunter.
“I don’t think it worked, but then again I think they had the wrong impression. It seems to me that they may have forced that onto you by lying.”
In Between Seasons (The Fall) Page 2
