The Hunt

by T. J. Lebbon

  If they’re even still alive. But that was one thought too far.

  Now that he was out on the mountain again, his energy restored from the food he’d been given, thirst quenched, and feeling warmer than he had for a while in the borrowed jacket, Chris felt a burst of optimism. He was running once more, albeit slowly, the beam from his head torch bobbing before him. The rain was just as heavy, the wind unforgiving, but he enjoyed the sense of isolation it gave him. For a moment he might have been all alone up here, master of his own fate instead of being steered and used by others.

  He used that time to think.

  He had a satphone now, and perhaps that would make it easier to call the police – Rose’s and Scott’s phones continued to have intermittent signals. But he could not see what that would achieve. If he told them who he was, all they’d want would be to talk him down. He could tell them about his family, but whether they believed him or not it would do no good. He suspected that they were being held in the greater Cardiff area, but it would take a lifetime to search that far.

  Maybe they could track the signal from the satphone. He had no idea. He’d seen such things on TV and in movies, one policeman gesturing for the other to keep a killer or terrorist on the phone while they traced the call. But he had no concept of how something like that worked in reality. Perhaps the moment he connected with them, they’d have a real-time location for him. Then maybe they really would send the Special Forces up here to get him. If not military, then police. Hunted by sick and rich bastards as he was now, at least he had a chance. If anyone trained came to find him, he’d certainly be quickly caught or killed.

  Knowing that the last three hunters could follow his position was useful. It would not be easy to escape them, but it also meant that he could push hard, giving himself a safety buffer and time to rest, refuel, warm up.

  Nothing he’d done had improved the chances of him and his family getting out of this in one piece. He wondered whether Rose was faring any better.

  His limbs soon grew used to running again. He watched the ground before him, leaping trip hazards, side-stepping holes, always alert for signs of a sheer drop or a rock wall to run into. As his feet came down and swept the ground behind him, he felt the connection with the land that he always loved. When he was running at his very best he always felt as if he were standing still, and it was the land itself being pushed behind him by his feet. A strange but satisfying feeling, and one that he experienced only on rare occasions.

  Every fifteen minutes he surveyed the landscape, turned off the head torch, and crept a cautious twenty metres onwards. Then he paused and listened for any signs of pursuit. There was nothing but night sounds accompanying him. He enjoyed those brief moments when the head torch was off, imagining that his presence here was no longer acknowledged and the natural world around him was back to its basic, primal self. Even the light from the torch changed things – the way rain completed its journey, the reactions of night animals, the feel of the place. He loved the wilderness most when it did not know he was there.

  He glanced at the satphone screen every few minutes. He’d turned on a simple application on the tablet screen that provided a digital compass, and he made sure he headed southwards as much as possible. The time would come soon when he would encounter a road, and soon after that there might be signs, place names, and a deeper understanding of exactly where he was. The brief glance at his damaged map in the hut had located where he was, and what he thought was probably the lake he’d swum across. But he knew that any map could only describe landscape in an abstract way. Being on the ground was the only way to truly appreciate and understand a place.

  He’d seen that he was probably in the wildest, most inhospitable, and least populated part of Wales. There were valleys here where only the hardiest walkers and adventure sportsmen came, and which were so remote that farming them was an unprofitable proposition. The best roads were dirt tracks. Most buildings were ruins. The perfect place for a hunt.

  He thought again of the ultra-marathon in the Lake District. The race description had labelled it as a tough off-roader, but with the bulk of the trails definable, made up of compacted gravels and well-worn paths. The description had been misleading. At one part of the course the runners had to cross a high area of marshland, probably only two miles in total but out of sight of any manmade influence, and sparsely marked with a few windswept flags. This was thirty miles into the race, and by then the field had spread out so much that Chris had found himself alone up there. Those couple of miles had felt like the wildest, most remote miles he had ever run. Up to his shins in wet, sticky mud, he’d fought every step. The wind had risen, intermittent rain showers hammered down. A mist rolled in from nowhere. He’d wondered how many unwary walkers had died up here over the decades and centuries, and then he’d started imagining that, beneath the mud, the hard layers he felt under his shoes were the mummified corpses of the missing.

  It had only lasted for half an hour, but that was the most frightened he’d ever been during a race. His tired mind had played tricks with him, and finally running down out of the hills towards the cheering masses at the finish had been akin to finding himself again.

  This place felt ten times worse, and he was more tired than he’d ever been. But he could not allow himself to become distracted. This was still a race, but at the end there was so much more than a medal, a tee shirt and a burger. His family was his prize. His own life hung in the balance more than it ever had. He had to embrace the wilderness, not be intimidated by it. Rose had brought the hunt up here for a reason, and he had to cling to that – it was the most likely place where he could win.

  The time would come soon to try to make contact with her again. Scott’s phone had lost its signal, the hardy mobile Rose had given him was almost out of charge, but he had the satphone. All he had to do was discover her number on the mobile.

  But first, he had to be safe.

  Downhill, off the mountain, he followed rough paths worn into the landscape by cattle or wild ponies over the decades. Some had become streams in the torrential rain, and he skipped across these where he could, finding it safer to cover ground he could see. There could be rocks or holes hidden beneath the water.

  As he followed one such stream, it disappeared. One moment it was tumbling beside him, the next its waters had vanished, and the torch reflected off nothing but a void of heavy raindrops.

  Chris dropped, clasped his hands into claws, dug them into spiky heathers and wet ground. He slipped a little then came to a halt. He was panting hard, heart thudding. He turned and looked in the direction he’d been running. The light was swallowed by the night, the storm, and a million sparkling raindrops. The ground was gone.

  He’d almost run off one of the cliffs.

  He crawled uphill a little before regaining his feet and setting off again. He berated himself – he must have been running in a semi-daze, on auto-pilot, aware of the small circle of light before him and not thinking about what might lie beyond. He had almost made the Trail’s job easy for them. Kill himself and they’d dispose of his family, gather in the hunters, and go about arranging a new hunt.

  He had to keep his wits about him. Couldn’t let his mind drift. But he’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and in that time he must have run thirty miles or more, including his early morning run for pleasure. That now seemed so long ago and a world away.

  Chris had to tap into the endurance he had built over the years. He knew that he had a strong engine and a fit body, but as always he had to adapt. While his physical self drove forward, he had to remember at every moment that he and his family were in terrible danger. Endurance sport had a huge mental factor. Physical fitness was never enough, and now that had been complicated even more. But he could do it. Anything was possible, and he had to believe that now. Drive on, keep moving forward, keep planning, and save his family.

  There were so many problems still to overcome – discover where his wife and girls were being k
ept, evade capture by the law, ensure that the hunt continued. But he would succeed. Failure was not an option. He had to believe that.

  After moving forward for another half an hour he took a break. He needed a piss, and after that he hunched down in a small ravine and took out the phones. The one Scott had given him was blank. He pressed the button, kept his finger on it, waited for the screen to light up … but there was nothing.

  ‘Damn it!’ He almost threw the phone, then pocketed it instead. Out of charge, perhaps, but maybe he could try again later.

  Rose’s mobile still worked. It took him a while to discover her preprogrammed number, but as soon as he did he entered and saved it in the satphone. Then he called.

  It went to voicemail. He almost laughed out loud. What, was she busy?

  ‘Rose. We need to talk. One hunter’s down, not dead but out of it. I’m moving onwards. Heading south, I’m going for my family, and … you have to help me. You have to. I’m on a satphone now, you’ll see the number. Call.’

  He disconnected, then examined the satphone closer. It had an emergency button. He guessed it sent a signal, SOS, to mountain rescue, pinpointing his location and automatically calling for help. It was tempting … but no one could bring the sort of help he needed.

  Chris ate a little, then ran on into the night, keeping thoughts of his family close.

  It was while he was being most careful that he made the worst mistake.

  Maybe it was the intense concentration. Focusing on his surroundings might have imposed a form of subtle hypnosis, his attention so sharp and forced that it began to drift and haze. He didn’t even notice. He moved quickly forward, checked the terrain with his head torch, switched it off and moved again, and then the ground was gone, the cloudy sky and darkness switched and spun and changed positions, and he was falling.

  His awareness of his surroundings vanished instantly, and darkness was the only solidity. Shock sharpened his reactions and he thought, If I fall for more than—

  He struck ground hard on his left side. His outstretched arm took some of the impact, then his left leg and hip hit as well, smacking pain through his bones and joints. He didn’t believe he could make an impact sound like that without breaking something, but his breath erupted from his chest in a loud cough, and he couldn’t be sure whether or not he heard the snap or crack of bone.

  He slid on something wet – not grass, something more slick – then slipped down a steep slope. Arms and legs waving, Chris tried to halt his movement.

  Everything hurt.

  He clawed his fingers and tried to dig in, but they scraped over rock, a white-hot pain kissing the fingertips of his right hand. The rifle over his right shoulder twisted hard against his back, stock pummelling his lower back and the strap pulled tight, burning against his shoulder.

  The rucksack snagged on something and twisted him around, and for a moment he thought his fall had been arrested. Silence settled, the absence of scraping, shouting, grunting, and his panicked breathing faded in, shallow and hard. He was on his back looking up, and for the first time he thought the underside of the clouds glowed just a little brighter.

  Then something tore and he was sliding again. He hurt, but did not know from where. The pain seemed to shift around his body as he rolled and twisted, as if it too were attached to the ground and he was the only movable object.

  He hit a rock hard and the breath was smacked from him. Movement ceased, and as he struggled to breathe – that terrible, winded sensation that he remembered from occasional childhood fights – the sound of loose stones tumbling around him seemed to snicker at his situation.

  Chris gasped in a huge breath, uttering a groan of relief when he let it out again. He breathed in several more times, and then the pain began to sing in.

  His left side felt battered from the knee right up to his shoulder. His left arm had been twisted and the forearm felt odd. Perhaps it was broken. His right hand felt like he’d dipped his fingers into hot water, and coolness touched them as they began to bleed. There were other aches and bruises, and his right shoulder also felt hot and damp where the rifle strap was twisted tight against the skin. The rifle and rucksack were beneath him, pressed between his back and the rock he’d come to rest propped against.

  Fucking idiot! he thought, and panic began to bleed in around the shock. If he’d done some serious damage, broken something vital, then all this might be ended. He could not run with a broken leg. He could not climb with a snapped arm. Even fractured fingers would severely inhibit the ways he had to evade the hunters. Cracked ribs would slow him, bleeding wounds would weaken him.

  Chris lay motionless for a while longer, trying to analyse the pains as they truly settled in. Nothing screamed at him. He’d fallen before, though not quite so far. A few tumbles from a mountain bike, one of them down a steep slope that luckily had been softened by heathers. A couple of falls from his road bike had given him severe road rash, a nicely stitch-laden scar, and dented pride, but little else. He felt like that now – abused, battered, bleeding here and there, his body finally screaming at the efforts he was asking of it.

  He sat up gingerly, cautious not to disturb his position too much. He had to take stock, not only of himself but of his situation. Gingerly he reached up and flicked on his head torch. The beam diffused around him and, if anything, made him feel more enclosed.

  It was misty again. Maybe he’d slipped down into a layer of mist, or perhaps it had formed again over the past moments. He knew how quickly it could descend this high in the mountains. The glimpse he’d caught of the lightening underside of grey clouds was no longer visible. He was on a steep slope. Darkness and the mist brought visibility in close, as if the landscape wanted him all for itself.

  If he went back up he would risk slipping and falling again. The slope here was not sheer – he could climb on his hands and feet – though if he’d been here by choice he would likely have rope, crampons and proper climbing gear. But there had been that brief moment of weightlessness after he’d fallen and before he struck ground, which indicated a vertical drop of perhaps ten feet.

  He was lucky he hadn’t brained himself or broken a limb.

  Several fingers on his right hand were bleeding. He went to suck the blood from them, then saw the smears of muck streaked with blood. He sniffed. It was foul and sickly, the stench of accumulations of bird shit. Instead, he wiped his hands on his running trousers.

  Aiming the light downhill showed the slope continuing before disappearing into the mist. That was the way he needed to go. Down into the valley, then south towards his family.

  He started moving that way, edging down on his backside, feet first with his hands propped behind him. The rifle stock snagged on a rock and he moved it aside, trying to sling it at a diagonal across the front of his body. He kept the head torch on.

  The ground sloped so steeply that he constantly felt on the verge of losing his grip, and the fear of what he could not see below chilled him. It felt like lowering himself into an abyss that might never end.

  The surface changed from bare, loose rock to a layer of tough heathers, and his fingers and heels dug in as he crawled downward. It felt safer, and he was also certain that the slope was lessening.

  Maybe I’m almost down, he thought.

  But then the slope ended at another sheer drop. He saw it several feet ahead and below him, a space where mist drifted and rolled with no sign of the mountainside below.

  Chris made sure he was secure and switched off the head torch. It was a spooky experience. He felt so small and alone, a speck of insignificance in this huge landscape. The mist seemed so heavy that it was cloying, cooling his skin, settling on his tongue when he opened his mouth. Perhaps it was a little lighter than before, but it was so difficult to tell.

  He now faced a choice, and neither option appealed to him. He could climb back the way he’d come and try to ascend back up to easier ground. He’d been descending for twenty minutes, and to climb up again would be
three times slower. Or he could continue down, descend the sheer drop before him, and perhaps find himself below the mist when dawn came.

  That would be soon. But he could not afford to stay in one place until it arrived. He had to keep moving, everything depended on that. The hunters would have seen that he was all but motionless and they’d be coming for him. Perhaps Blondie had another phone he had not found, and he might have told the others not to climb the mountain but wait for their target at the bottom. Chris could be climbing down towards them even now. They’d wait quietly, patiently, watching him moving on their tracking devices, fingers tight on triggers as he came closer, each of them wanting to be the one that made the kill. When daylight came and exposed him on the cliff, he would be in their sights.

  Maybe they’d agree to all shoot at the same time, and all claim the kill.

  And yet he could not believe they had moved this quickly. Blondie had been fast and fit. The others … he hoped they were still struggling across the dark and stormy landscape. If he descended quickly, while it was still dark, he could reach the valley floor and be away before they even arrived.

  But Chris could know nothing for sure, and he could not afford to dwell on the situation.

  He started climbing down.

  He had discovered his fear of heights relatively late in life. On a family holiday several years before, Gemma had asked if she could do some high ropes. They were a network of ladders, bridges, and rope structures high in the trees, traversed from one end to the other. Anyone using them was clipped to a safety harness and it was impossible to fall. But Chris had almost frozen.