Hunters: A Trilogy

by Paul A. Rice

  At that time, George hadn’t gone into too many details regarding the boy’s parents. Instead, and as though he were beckoning a maître d', he’d merely waved his arm in the air. Ken and Jane had watched as his order arrived. It came in the form of a large holographic screen, and even though they’d seen that particular servant before, it was still a phenomenal sight to behold.

  So it came to pass, the telling of the tale, George’s latest instalment of the truth, his version of what it was that really went on around here, there, and most probably everywhere. The information was conveyed to them in the usual mixture of George’s blue-eyed sincerity, together with some help from his silver partner, the shimmering screen that rolled the pictures whenever he commanded. The final instructions they had received contained some problems to which, even up to the present moment, Ken had not yet managed to find a solution.

  George had told them that the identification of the latest person involved with the Demon, its new partner, remained unknown. The Dark One had cast a veil over their ability to see past much more than simple things, things like where he was or maybe just the fact that he was still alive…at least they knew that…but the rest was like a fog, misty and dark, and even trying to see what he was up to, never mind anything more detailed, gave the impression of looking at a television picture wracked with interference.

  George had grimaced as he said, ‘He’s blocking us, somehow he has learned to hide, we are having a few problems with that, but do not concern yourselves too much because we are working on it as we speak.’

  That was all George had said, but Ken knew he was worried because the ancient lines on that ruddy face seemed to have become a lot deeper of late. The real problem, as far as Ken was concerned, was that the veil of darkness seemed to be growing in stature and was, according to George, beginning to outgrow its host. Most worrying of all, the veil, or shield, seemed to have the ability to block the use of weapons.

  The problem was made ten times worse by George’s casual remark on the matter. ‘We have sent several heavily-armed Hunters to carry out cursory probes against the enemy, but none of them have returned…’ he’d said.

  Ken had sat bolt upright at that piece of news.

  George then calmly said, ‘All of their weapons appeared to have been rendered useless by the mist and, by the looks of things, they may have all been killed – we have not seen or heard any trace of them for a long time.’

  Ken most definitely did not like the sound of that. He was mostly a simple guy, one who loved Jane, liked a beer or three, swore far too much, and kind of half-wished that he still smoked. Other than those things, his life, rather like him, was generally easy-going, and that was just the way he liked it. But, and it was a big ‘BUT’, the one thing he wasn’t really into at all, not in the slightest, was the thought of going into battle unarmed.

  He’d once heard a really smart-arsed comment on the subject, one which went something along the lines of: ‘Never bring a knife to a gun fight.’

  The phrase had become a philosophy – one that Ken always tried to live his life in adherence to. At any time he and his friends had gone into harm’s way, then they’d always put plenty of time and effort in trying to get the biggest damned guns they were able to lay their thieving hands on, and most definitely before they departed to do battle!

  Right then, sitting on a couch in the middle of…of who knows where…he was being told they were to be going into battle unarmed! The thoughts had made him feel sick at the time, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying so. ‘We’re sitting here, looking at going up against the world’s worst, fucking…’ he paused for breath, and then continued with his frustrated outburst, ‘…Demon, Dragon, Dark One, or whatever the fuck it’s called, and now it looks to me like I have to consider going up against this…this thing…without any weapons whatsoever – whose stupid idea is this?’ He blew out a long stream of angry breath. George had looked at him, and smiled.

  That’s when Ken’s patience had snapped.

  ‘Listen, sorry about this, Jane, but…’ He’d looked at her in apology, and then turned angrily back to George, saying: ‘Listen, I don’t see what the hell there is to smile about here, George! I’m not fucking smiling, in fact, smiling is about the last bastard thing I’m thinking about doing right now!’ Ken leant forward and stared at George, he hadn’t cared if the man was able to read his mind – he’d wanted George to see his anger and frustration.

  George had stopped smiling. Instead, he laughed.

  Ken had felt the heat rise behind his eyes, the thought of seeing the little red-faced git lying on his back and spitting out his teeth had been a very attractive one at the time. With a supreme effort he’d remained sitting, the feeling of Jane’s nails digging into his thigh, helping him to stay calm.

  Ken bit his tongue as he listened to George.

  The old man, obviously getting the image of his own loosened incisors skittering across the floor, had guffawed loudly, and then, whilst only narrowly avoiding another laugh, gave his answer in that calm and totally persuasive manner of his. ‘Oh, ye of little faith, Kenneth, do you really…’ He’d paused to absently raise a bony hand to his mouth and tapped a fingernail on his front teeth, before continuing. ‘I do understand the somewhat over-reactive concerns,’ he said. ‘Yes, but, after all of this time working alongside of us, do you seriously expect to be left unarmed whilst you go into the teeth of the Dragon, into the very mouth of our deadliest foe – do you?’

  He wasn’t smiling anymore, and Ken had seen that the last thing the old guy had on his mind was humour, of any sort. He’d swallowed hard, his throat had become dry all of a sudden, the headache was back and Ken had started to wonder if any of this had been such a great idea after all.

  He shook his head, and said, ‘Well, no I don’t, George, but you’ve just told us we can’t have any guns. What the hell do think I should do, fucking cartwheels around this bloody room, maybe throw a fancy ‘Yahoo, no guns allowed’ party, or something, huh?’ Ken had known his retort was a dumb one, but what the hell!

  Jane had coughed loudly and then started to make a sound as though she was choking. Ken looked at her, his wife’s face had gone bright red and he saw the laughter trying to force its way out of her tightly-clamped lips, tiny tears were starting to seep from the inner corners of her shining eyes.

  In all honesty, Ken himself had started to see the whole funny side of his ‘Yahoo’ outburst. At the time he’d felt like a fool and had immediately capitulated. ‘Ah, for God’s sake, people!’ he said, with a wry smile spreading across his face.

  The smile had also crept back on to George’s face. ‘Oh, dear me, my poor Kenneth!’ he said. ‘I do apologise, here am I telling you why we are depending upon your skills so much, and when that self-same fire ignites in front of my very eyes, I think about chastising you – I am such a fool, please accept my deepest apologies!’ His shoulders slumped in a display of regret.

  George had given Ken such a mournful smile that all thoughts of anger had been instantly washed away from his mind. ‘It’s okay, I just get a bit carried away at times,’ he said. ‘That thing scares the shit out of me…you’re the only two people who will ever know that, I’m sure that you already do know it!’ He puffed his cheeks and blew out an exasperated breath, saying: ‘I’m sorry, too. I know we’ll be fine – let’s make a plan and then just crack on. We’ll get through this and we’ll get that prick whilst we’re there, won’t we?’ Ken had looked at them and his sincerity was plain to see. With a rueful expression on his face, he’d said, ‘I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t. They’re a nice set of teeth, George.’

  George, smiling in acceptance, said, ‘By the way, that was a most impressive use of profanity, Kenneth, a person would have no doubt as to where they stood with you, now would they?’ With that, their fully-toothed, ancient guru had laughed at them once more.

  ***

  It was subsequently that Ken found himself back on the farm,
lying on some warm grass under the apple tree and listening to his own pupils laughing about the pure madness which Red had recently exhibited. After a while they joined Ken on the grass, it was a pleasant day and as they lay there alongside each other in the afternoon sun, rubbing shoulders in an unwitting human-chain, the feeling of being of as one, a sensation of singularity, seemed to enter them.

  Ken felt a strange sensation slide into his head. It was almost as though he was able to hear the thoughts of the others, they whispered in his head, he saw images, listened to words that he wasn’t thinking – he heard them with his mind.

  He murmured: ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Yes, Kenneth, what may I do for you, my dear?’ she whispered.

  Ken wasn’t quite sure if it was a whisper, maybe it was only in his mind, but he definitely heard her. He waited for a while before answering. ‘Will you think of a colour?’ he asked. ‘Don’t say anything, just think of one– any colour will do.’

  She laughed like a child. ‘Why, certainly I will, young man,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m already thinking of one as we speak.’

  Ken felt his thoughts open. It was as though someone had just knocked on the door of his mind: ‘Hello, anyone home? There’s a special delivery for a Mister Robinson.’ He shivered as the hairs on his body chose that precise moment to hold a small, military parade – with perfect-timing, every single one of them stood proudly to attention. It was one of the strangest feelings he’d ever had; a mixture of fear, deep emotion, and sudden clarity. They all rolled into one sensation and Ken’s hairs came out to join their celebratory parade.

  Michael’s amazed voice broke the spell.

  ‘It’s yellow – it’s a yellow…’ being interrupted before he could finish.

  Without hesitation, Red jumped right in there, shouting out in amazement.

  ‘A yellow flower,’ he exclaimed. ‘I can see a yellow flower! It just grew right inside of my head! Wow, Grandma, you just sent me a flower!’ The man was incredulous.

  Jane was whispering: ‘Oh my God, Oh my God,’ the repeated irreverence being the only sound she was capable of making.

  Then Tori began to laugh, her tinkling joy was soon joined by Michael and then Red Junior. The young man sounded completely flabbergasted. ‘Whoaaa, that was something else, how’d you do that, Grandma Maggie? I saw it, too…it’s a flower; we all saw it!’ he said, incredulously.

  And so, after all of their training, the bloodied fingers, scraped knees and bursting lungs, all earned during the weeks of exertion, after all of those hard-won new skills, it was somewhat ironic to discover that the final and most powerful weapon in their armoury was one they had possessed all along.

  Or maybe it was the training that had been responsible, the camaraderie born of an exceptional team effort – perhaps it was this that had given them the key to such a powerful tool. Then again, maybe it was simply a part of the bigger plan – George’s plan.

  At any rate, no matter what the actual cause was, they, as a collective, had changed. With one, small thought, a single glimpse of an imaginary yellow flower, the Hunters had unwittingly become much more sophisticated in their abilities, much more dangerous. Someone, or something, had best watch out.

  ***

  That thing, as it were, had already been partaking in some of the oft-mentioned ‘watching out’. Yes, it had been watching all right, watching and laughing. The things it learned by doing all this watching, amused the Dark One intensely. It couldn’t stop the little giggle that crossed its wrinkled lips.

  ‘Flowers…?’ The giggle erupted into laughter. The sound of its hysterical glee was nearly as loud as the pneumatic drill pounding the floor of its now brightly-illuminated cave. The awful laughter reverberated in time with the rhythmic beat of the shuddering, diamond-tipped machine.

  It let the chuckle became a whisper; a few of the men working in the cave had begun to glance across toward the source of the cackling joy, their faces crossed with the uncertain shadow of growing fear. It let the false smile of reassurance ooze onto its face. The stupid worker bees were within earshot and it didn’t want them to see the truth, it was not time for them to see the true colour of their master, not just yet. Later would be the time for all of that.

  With a sickly smile, it said, ‘Keep working, my friends, keep working, and then you shall have your reward.’ With the wave of a hand, the Demon set its slaves back to their task – the hole needed to be deep, very deep. A final whisper, maybe just a thought, echoed within the enormous plain of its blackened mind, a place almost without boundaries and not really a ‘mind’ at all – the expanse of its all-seeing intellect was more akin to an endless, black desert.

  ‘Flowers, fuckin’, yellow flowers…we’ll show them yellow, fuckin’, flowers, won’t we, my friend, my love?’ Its host wriggled as the feeling of the Demon within exuded a pleasantly warm feeling.

  Vengeance and hatred are strong emotions, Siamese twins whose twisted partnership only needs a little hospitality; all one needed to do was to embrace them, let them come in and make them a cup of tea. Once you were friends and had learned to trust each other, well, then the world would truly be at your feet.

  Yes, a nice fat, juicy oyster just waiting for you to lick its sweet innards.

  The frail host had smothered itself with a blanket of those decaying emotions, which lay smouldering within the prison of its twisted soul, forever incarcerated by the self-made chains of hatred and spite. The voice sniggered again, as thick and malevolent as the spittle running down the bony chin of its earthly companion. ‘I have the biggest, muthafuckin’, yellow flower of all stinking time. Yes, a great big, yellow flower!’ The face of its human partner grinned in agreement as the acidic hiss of those final words became lost within the metallic cacophony of the jackhammer.

  7

  Maggie’s Song

  The training continued – every day they would either learn new skills, or practice ones already acquired. It became their way of life, a routine that was, in fact, quite pleasurable. The women would spend half the day training and the rest running their businesses. The arrangement fitted in neatly with Ken’s schedule as he was now concentrating on some unarmed-combat techniques with the others. Escaping from a grapple, or perhaps the disabling of an opponent with an incisive movement of the foot – the sheer agony of having the rapidly-descending instep of a boot, viciously scraping down the shin, before it smashes on to the top of the foot below, has to be experienced to be believed.

  Ken made them practice it again and again. ‘If anyone grabs you then make sure you do this movement immediately!’ he said, doing a slow-motion demonstration with Red. ‘That trick is one of the most underrated methods of self-defence in the book, and it won’t fail to loosen the grip of any attacker. I’m telling you – it’s seriously painful!’

  Ken didn’t need the women for the whole day, because a large amount of his effort was concentrated on the more physical side of their preparations. He was now brushing them up on things such as fitness, self-defence and similar activities, and he had no intention of letting the girls become involved in any actions that would lead to that type of thing, not if he was able to help it. Sure, they might need to climb the same wintry slope which had seen the downfall of the unfortunate Jack Wildeman, but if it came down to the women getting involved in hand-to-hand combat with some black Dragon? No, as long as they kept up their shooting skills and maintained a good level of physical training, Ken would be happy.

  However, the one set of training that all the women did attend, and attend religiously, were his lessons on first aid. Ken had been highly trained back in his day – the term ‘Patrol Medic’ had meant a whole lot more than simply sticking some plasters on a cut. Ken’s own instructor from all those years ago, a quiet man who went by the name of ‘Ginge’ – a nickname derived not from the colour of the man’s own hair, he was totally bald, but more from his choice in women – had told Ken and his friends on the first day of their very long course: ‘By t
he time I’ve finished with you guys, and you’ve spent some time working in the emergency clinics around the country, and then served with your units for a couple of years, well, then you’ll be able to do open heart surgery with a plastic spoon, won’t you?’ It was an exaggeration, of course, but not by much.

  Ken taught his students as much as he was able to remember, and it was surprising how much detail he did recall. He had no doubt much of it was well out of date by now, but if it had been good enough back in those days, he supposed that it would just have to do in the present. By the time he was finished with them, all his students felt confident in their ability to help each other in the event of the unthinkable happening.

  Ken didn’t allow the thought of something bad happening to become unthinkable. In fact, he preached quite the opposite, positively drilling into their heads the idea that they probably would face such things.

  ‘Be ready for the worst, stay prepared and then things can only ever get better,’ he said, whilst making Tori redo her tourniquet. ‘Higher up the leg…’ he said, ‘…and tighter, that’s it – well done!’ As usual, he was relentless in his pursuit of perfection. He had plenty of equipment and never shied away from making them redo something several times over to achieve the desired result.

  George made sure that Ken had everything he needed.

  ***

  During their initial meeting, Ken had asked the old man about equipment and weapons. George had said that Ken should feel free to ask for whatever he needed, anything he wanted could, and would, be provided by George’s team. He had looked at Ken and then reminded him: ‘You must keep in mind, Kenneth, that there will be a stage when all material weapons will be cast aside; from what we have seen, it appears as though the black veil disallows such things.’ George had raised his eyebrows, looking as though he half-expected Ken to go ballistic again.