Hunt (Book Four the Hunted)

by Patti Larsen

  Drew stares for a long moment. “Shut up.” He blows out a quick breath. “Man, I need to catch up on your story.”

  Reid nods. “You first. Keep going.”

  “There’s this big argument. Brackett thought I was too puny, but Kirstin was watching me, picked me personally. Said my brains would be enhanced. She was in charge I guess, because she got her way.”

  Reid’s mind goes to the tent and her insanity, the colonel’s inability to stop her.

  “Was she right?” Reid asks the question half-joking, but Drew just nods.

  “She was.” He reaches out to stroke Minnie who has given up on chasing sticks and flops down to rest her head on Reid’s lap. “It’s scary, Reid. Like my whole head is on fire and everything makes total and complete sense.” Drew’s fingers pause over Minnie’s soft black coat. “I have some confessions. If you want to hear them.”

  Reid doesn’t. He would rather keep his memories of his friend clean, positive. But Drew needs to unload, Reid can feel it, and it’s the least he can do to listen.

  “Go ahead,” he says.

  “The station,” Drew says softly. “Setting you up with food and shelter. Creating that safety. It was my idea.”

  Reid nods. “But not to help us.”

  “No,” Drew says. “To create false hope. Trap you there. My alter ego figured it would drive you to despair and make you run again. But what I didn’t count on was you finding out about the dust.” Drew looks up at Reid. “My human side wanted you to win, just so you know.”

  Reid grins. “I know.”

  Drew looks away. “The fire,” he says. “I lit it.”

  Reid’s stomach clenches as he sees the station in flames, the crouched forms of hunters feasting on the dead kids in the street with the orange glow and smoke as their backdrop.

  “It was my idea.” Drew forges on, purging his conscience all over Reid. “I saw Milo and Leila and you and I just wanted to eat you.” He hesitates before finishing. “But I didn’t get a chance. Daryl wanted to only cull a few. So we… we only ate them.”

  Reid wants to throw up, can’t hear anymore, or look at his friend. The sweet face of a little girl hovers in his vision, huge eyes terrified but trusting, bone thin body hardly much of a meal. And yet, there it is. The truth he despises, the horror he wishes he could take back. The memory of those shadows pulling chunks of fresh flesh from the tiny bodies, cramming it into their mouths.

  Reid can’t help himself. He gags slightly, turning his face away as his mind chants at him over and over again. Drew ate Megan. Drew ate Megan.

  Still, he can’t hold onto his anger and disgust, the horror rushing from him in the wake of his own sharp memories. Like crouching over three dead ex-hunters, devouring their soft internal organs, their blood so sweet in his mouth.

  Reid draws a breath past the receding bile and forces his gaze to meet Drew’s. His friend’s face is so twisted by regret and self-loathing it drives all the blame and the last of the anger out of Reid. He reaches out and squeezes his friend’s hand.

  “We have to remember who to hate,” he says. “And it’s not us.”

  Drew’s eyes brim with moisture. He nods once, throat working around the need to control his emotions. He finally just squeezes back.

  “I didn’t change completely.” Reid is only remembering now, his mind searching for something else to focus on. “Only one hand. I think my eyes. Why didn’t it work for me?”

  But that’s not right and he knows it. It worked, very well. Drew confirms the truth.

  “Daryl had to have been taking new dust,” his young friend says. “The doctor’s always creating new kinds.”

  Reid wonders how much Drew knows, remembers taunting the hunter, telling him Dr. Lund was keeping the best stuff for herself while the dust she gave them made them monsters.

  He’s sure he’s right. And is fairly certain the now-dead Daryl knew it too.

  “I think she eventually wants us to be able to go out in public and not be noticed,” Drew says. “We’ll lose some benefits, like our claws. But mainstreaming us has more up sides.”

  Reid nods. Of course. The army wants monsters because they are going to use the hunters for war. Fear is always a weapon. But Dr. Lund has other ideas, though what those are Reid can’t say.

  “Whatever the reason,” Drew says, “the new dust still drives us to kill, so no change there.”

  Reid’s mind starts to turn. If they can get the formula she developed and find a way to pull that part of the programming… he can’t think that way yet, not only because they are still out there, trapped in the forest with little to no hope of escape, but because he hasn’t the faintest idea how to even go about such a thing.

  Still, it offers a glimmer of hope. Because as much as he knows he shouldn’t want it, he can’t imagine living his life without another dose.

  It should worry him. He refuses to be shocked that it doesn’t.

  ***

  Chapter Five

  The others are waking from their brief rest, stirring. Reid feels them and rises himself first, coming to stand at the crest of the clearing near the water, making himself their rally point. He has to take this leadership thing seriously if he wants to survive. Reid is surprised to feel a soft, wet nose under his hand and looks down. Minnie is glued to him like she’ll never leave him.

  So Drew wasn’t kidding.

  When he looks up again the pack has gathered, some taking another drink, the rest looking at him, waiting for orders.

  “What’s the plan?” Joel’s grumble is halfhearted but Reid knows it’s meant to sow seeds of discontent and needs to shut it down immediately.

  “Good question.” Reid looks around at the others. “More importantly, what was the plan?”

  Emme speaks up. “To escape with enough dust to sustain us and make more.”

  “Why?” Reid needs them to wake up, to stop thinking like tools and start making decisions again. He gets the impression from the blank looks they give him their leader Daryl was as much a control freak as Dr. Lund.

  “What do you mean?” Nathan stands so close to Emme, he reminds Reid of the dog pressed to his own leg.

  “Why escape in the first place?” No one says anything and Reid sighs. “Come on, people. I’m not asking you the reason for the Universe here. Why escape?”

  “We’re tired of being told what to do.” It sounds petulant, even more so because Joel says it. He looks almost guilty before glowering at Reid as if his show of weakness is his fault.

  “You can do better than that.” Reid enjoys the sullen rage on Joel’s face a little too much. Finds his mind drifting to adding some pulped flesh and shattered bone to that picture. Has himself jerked back to reality when Emme speaks again.

  “They don’t have the right to keep us.” She is impressing Reid. She’s tough, spunky and from the way the others look at her, she has their approval. He’s glad she’s more or less behind him. “Or to experiment on us. They don’t own us and it’s time we were in control of our own destiny.”

  They nod with her, as though she’s spoken for them, saying exactly the words they couldn’t voice.

  “Okay,” Reid says. “Good answer. I agree. So why take dust with us?”

  “You heard her.” That’s from Billy. His green eyes won’t meet Reid’s. “To keep us going. And make more.”

  “But why?” Reid challenges each and every one of them. “Whose idea was it to make more of us?”

  They all exchange looks before Nathan says, “Daryl’s.”

  Reid thinks about it. “I can understand wanting dust to keep us going,” he says at last. “Even though it means killing in the real world.” Drew was right. Most of the pack doesn’t look concerned about it so he moves on. He’ll have to watch them though, that much is certain. “But why make more?”

  “To preserve our species,” Joel says like someone taught him to say it.

  Reid is getting it, the picture coming clear. “And did Daryl just
spring this on you one day? Or has this been the plan all along?”

  Even Joel looks troubled at that.

  “He just showed up,” Emme says. “Killed Charlie, our last leader. Told us it was time to break out and start growing. Like Joel said. To preserve our species.”

  Reid lets them mutter among themselves while Drew shifts beside him, releasing a soft sigh of understanding. Reid sees his friend’s face out of the corner of his eye, the flash of anger and self-recrimination that flickers over his features before he calms again.

  “Did you ever think,” Reid says, “that she hasn’t stopped manipulating you?”

  That shuts them up. They stare at him in utter shock.

  “Kirstin,” Emme says.

  “Dr. Lund,” Reid agrees. “She wanted you to escape. That’s been her plan all along.” He knows it’s true, because it’s nuts and wild and crazy, just like her. “She planted Daryl among you, however she did it, and set this in motion. She knew the minute the testing was over that Brackett would take you all away and lock you up somewhere until he needed to use you.”

  Reid actually laughs. He can’t help himself. It’s beautifully perfect and sick all at the same time. “Think about it. If it worked, she wouldn’t be to blame for breaking you out. But if it didn’t, she could keep testing until it did.”

  “There’s another reason,” Nathan says. “To make more of us.”

  Reid shifts his attention back while the others seethe in rage, their anger washing over him. “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a weird thing that happens,” he says. “To the older hunters. Ones that have been around for a while. It’s like one day they take a dose and just revert to human. Like that poison you fed us. Kills them.”

  There has to be a connection between the dust and the poison, then. But he has no time to think about it. This conversation is already taking too long.

  “We need to hunt,” Joel says and the majority nod along with him. “That’s the bottom line. And we can’t do that like this.” He gestures at his human body. “We need dust.”

  They look so eager when he says it, like killing is something to look forward to. They’ve bought into Dr. Lund’s twisted reality, the one she’s been feeding them since they took their first dose of dust. She’d be thrilled to know they are still driven to follow their programming. He’s just disgusted by it.

  “We were planning on taking her with us.” Drew’s words are soft but they carry. “So she could make more.”

  “You know she’s one of you, right? That she’s taken the stuff herself?”

  No one looks surprised. “We can feel it in her,” Emme says. “But no one has ever seen her change.”

  “And you won’t,” Reid says. “She’s using the good stuff on herself. The stuff that keeps her human.” But drove her crazy. At least, that’s his fear. But he doesn’t tell them that.

  “All right then, hotshot,” Joel says, smirk back, attitude rearing its ugly head yet again. “Tell us you’d trade this for normal. That you’d go back to being just plain old Reid again. Say it like you mean it.”

  The pack doesn’t smile with the grinning bully, but every one of them is listening.

  Reid shakes his head. “I wouldn’t,” he says. “But I’d rather be in control of it rather than the other way around. No matter what it does to us, wouldn’t you prefer to call the shots?”

  No arguments. He didn’t think there would be any.

  “What’s your plan?” Emme’s silver eye challenges Reid all over again. “That is, if you have one?”

  He doesn’t. But he still has some time to create one.

  “The gate first,” he says. “We find out if escape is even possible.”

  “And then?” Joel’s voice drives pins and needles of revulsion through Reid’s brain. He’ll have to take care of the bully sooner rather than later if this is going to work.

  “First things first,” Reid says. “Now if you kiddies are all rested up, we have some ground to cover.”

  They grumble and snarl at him like an unruly pack of animals, but they fall in line so he knows he’s taking the right attitude. Emme winks at him, that creepy silver eye closing for long enough she actually looks normal.

  With Drew on his left and the equally faithful Minnie on his right, Reid turns to the southeast and starts the final run to their last hope for freedom.

  ***

  Chapter Six

  Just as the sun is coming up, the air around them beginning to warm, light making his night vision shutter closed, Reid feels vibration disturbing the calm of the forest. He senses the pounding of helicopter rotors before he hears them, in plenty of time to duck and cover. He’s been wondering when one or more would show. Surely the pack is easy to spot. Perhaps the soldiers have just been securing the gates. And maybe they aren’t so interested in killing the hunters as Reid thought.

  He’s safe at least. Reid knows from the GPS unit Marcus had that none of the normal kids have trackers inside them. While the rest of the pack scatters, Reid knows it’s no use. His eyes drift, meet Drew’s. If he stays with his friend he’s toast. The GPS trackers the pack have embedded in their bodies will lead the soldiers right to them. And to Reid by association.

  When Drew tries to veer off and put some distance between them, Reid grabs him by the back of the shirt and hauls him back.

  “No way,” he hisses in Drew’s ear. “I’m not leaving you behind again. Ever.”

  Drew looks relieved then guilty.

  They crouch together as the chopper swings low overhead, moving slowly, searching. Reid tenses, ready to fight. Running will get them nowhere this time. He feels Drew’s anxiety, the nerves of the pack. Even Minnie begins a low, deep growling beside him. He knows each and every one of them will fight for their own freedom to the death.

  Reid’s jaw drops, the tension running out of him in a rush of lost adrenaline when the chopper continues on in its low, sweeping course, leaving them behind.

  He forces himself to wait until the last of the vibration has faded. He finally steps back out into the open of the trail, his mind working over the situation, eyes locked on the distant trees over which the chopper has disappeared.

  For some reason, the tracking system has failed. There’s no other explanation. The soldiers don’t know where they are. As fast as the pack has been moving, they should have been pinned down by now. Air support or not, the soldiers would know where they were heading, just from the appearance of the trackers.

  If he’s right, if the GPS is no longer viable, things have just started looking much better. That’s a definite advantage. It perks his hopes a little.

  “They could have just scouted us for ground troops.” For once, Reid wishes Drew wasn’t so smart.

  But he disagrees right away. “That helicopter didn’t even hesitate,” Reid says. “It was hunting us, Drew. And had no idea where we were. I’ll take that as a good sign until I know otherwise.”

  “Why didn’t they attack?” Emme and Nathan are the first to join them but the rest aren’t far behind.

  “We’re thinking they can’t track us,” Drew says. “Either the equipment they were using to do so originally was destroyed when we attacked the compound, or there’s been some kind of malfunction.” Drew is in teacher mode again. It makes Reid want to smile. “If that’s true, it could mean we have a better chance of escape.”

  Joel rolls his eyes. “I’ll believe it when it happens, braniac.” And yet, even he looks relieved.

  “We don’t have much time if we’re going to make this work,” Reid says. “Whether they know where we are or not, they must know we won’t just run around in circles. The longer it takes us to reach the gate, the more time they have to prepare for us. Let’s get moving again.”

  They don’t say a word, no complaints or grumblings, but simply fall into line and start running. Reid is grateful they are so compliant, remembering the constant battle he had to keep the other kids on the go when he was still hu
man. Except, of course, this group isn’t afraid. Just very angry. And he knows they will turn on him and kill him if he lets them down. He’ll only get one shot at it.

  Reid’s pretty sure he knows which group he prefers. Complaints or not, at least the other kids wouldn’t gut him and eat him given the chance.

  They are close to the fence again, he can feel it. This ground is exceptionally familiar, the trail almost his second home. He’s very near where he was dumped that first night. A morbid part of him wants to go looking for the dead boy, the first one that showed him what he was up against. He needs to know if the kid is still pinned to the tree with two steel spikes, decaying corpse hanging over the spill of his own entrails.

  Reid shudders at his sick and twisted curiosity, not for the first time wondering what he’s becoming. Of course the kid is gone. At least, he keeps telling himself that. All the while the hunter in him chuffs and snarls and wants to go see for itself.

  He ignores it, but his feeling of familiarity is so strong he slows, signaling the rest to do so as well.

  They know, too. It’s in the anxiety in their energy, the tension and excitement they hold inside at the prospect of freedom. Still, they have to be very careful. If they are at risk at all it’s now, so near to their goal.

  Reid feels the presence of humans just before something whizzes by his left ear, so close he feels the wind from it ruffle his hair. It’s followed quickly by the crack of a rifle. Reid drops to the ground, the rest of the pack diving for cover. He scoots to the edge of the trees, sliding from the trail, but it’s full daylight now and there is less cover than he would like.

  Soldiers shout from the woods on the other side of the pack. How they snuck up on him he has no idea, unless there were blinds nearby he didn’t sense. He curses his own lack of attention even while he shrugs off the guilt in favor of action. It’s irrelevant now. They’ve been spotted. Time to go.

  More gunfire echoes through the forest, bullets whipping past. Reid hears someone cry out, glances to the side, just in time to see one of the pack collapse in a hiss of dust. There is no time to collect it. Still, one of the girls tries. And dies herself in a shower of glitter.