The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  Cage had to sigh—he needed some kind of release of air in exchange for taking in that depth of information. On the breath out, he floated his own words. “I love you, Dad.”

  But it was too much, or too quiet, or too something, and his father only offered a nod before he went off to take his turn at a quick shower.

  When Joule returned, with her jeans and sweatshirt on, her feet bare and hair wet, Cage told her, “I asked Dad… I think he'll be okay. It's going to take some time, but he'll be okay.”

  “He should come to college with us,” Joule replied, “I mean, move to wherever we go.”

  It was an easy statement to agree with. Without their mother, they were their Dad’s family. Having him at a distance—alone—didn’t make any sense. “We'll have to look for a place that has a think tank he can work in.”

  They needed Nate close, if only for their own peace of mind. Later, Cage wondered if his question had snapped his father out of something. Because, when he came out of the shower, Nate was wearing a decidedly different attitude.

  His eyes searched for Cage and he called, “Your turn!”

  Even that had been snappier than anything else that week, but when Cage returned, there was a whole chicken in the oven. It sat upright on an opened beer can in a tray. Whoever had made it seemed to have also added lemon and herbs. Scattered and roasting on the tray around the chicken were the vegetables that his dad had commented earlier that they needed. And the rice cooker was out and turned on, presumably making a batch of sticky white rice to go with all of it

  “Did you do this?” Cage mouthed to Joule, his brows pulling together as the kitchen filled with smells of the first real food they had eaten in well over a week.

  “Dad,” she mouthed back, to Cage’s relief.

  As he looked around, he saw more changes that had occurred during the short time he’d been out of the room. The table had been peeled of its plastic and scrubbed down. The microscope was put away and the room generally returned to rights.

  As they sat around the dinner table that night, he thought maybe he had his Dad back. Nate looked at the two kids sitting on the other side across from him as he finished up a full plate of food. From the light in his eyes, Cage knew something was coming.

  “I have ideas, but I want to know what you think is next.”

  With a quick glance to his sister, seeing she was on the same page, Cage asked, “Are we going back to school?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “No, but we need to graduate. So I’m guessing we have to.”

  Nate nodded, but it looked more like he was trying to figure out how to get them out of it.

  Cage had something else to add. “We need to take down the traps. They're not working. The least we can do is reclaim the material. We certainly don't want a trap to catch something now because it's not worth checking them regularly.”

  Nate looked to Joule and as she agreed, his father nodded his consent as well. Then he turned to Joule, “What do you think we need to do next?”

  “I think we all need to read Mom's notes. I've been up at night reading. Did you know that?”

  Cage did, but his father seemed surprised by it.

  Joule checked their expressions and that seemed to be enough. She went on, “I'm through most of her notes and I've been going through the textbooks as much as I can. But I’m just one person, and there are several full-course texts. We all need to be researching for the next couple of days before we make the next move… so we can make the right one.”

  Nate again nodded in agreement and Cage realized that—somewhere in the past couple of years—he and Joule had graduated from being “just kids” to being at least partially equal family members. Their father could, and certainly would, outvote them if he wanted to. He’d claim fatherhood as the ultimate be-all/end-all and demand his way be enacted. Immediately. Cage had seen it happen. But it hadn’t happened in a while.

  As his parents had explained to Cage and Joule years ago, while Nate and Kaya were paying the bills, they had the option to declare themselves overlords. Cage fully understood. He thoroughly enjoyed not making a house payment, or dealing with utilities bills, and yet still getting to live in a home with heat, light, and clean running water.

  Until the dogs had truly invaded the neighborhood, he’d enjoyed playing video games during his down hours. He’d binge-watched his favorite TV show on his laptop and did the piddly job of keeping up with his homework. So he tried not to complain when his father pulled rank. But right now, he was trying hard to think of the last time Nate had done such a thing, and he couldn't remember it.

  Here at the table, his father was consulting him and his sister as equals and accepting their suggestions. But then Nate spoke up with his own plan for what to do next. “I want to look into some kind of armor. I want to find it and get it ordered ASAP.”

  “Armor against what?” Cage asked, thinking bullets, or maybe the full medieval suits of mail and metal that his friends had worn in Curie when they had cosplayed knights and swordsmen.

  “Probably chain mail,” his father said far too casually. It made Cage suspicious, but he stayed silent.

  “Lightweight, but impervious to dog bites, something like that.” Nate’s enthusiasm was concerning.

  “Why would you need that?” Joule asked, caution creeping into her tone. She clearly had her suspicions, but she was going to make her father say it out loud.

  Then Cage lost every good feeling he'd had about his father coming back around because Nate said, “I want to go out and fight them.”

  29

  Joule was exhausted. Somehow, they'd been outside, in the dark, for three hours, with no sighting of any dogs.

  Truthfully, she thought she'd maybe seen one go by in the distance, keeping to the shadows. She'd heard rustling noises in the woods, and even in nearby bushes. But in neither case could she say that it was, specifically, one of the dogs.

  She was exhausted because she'd been walking in the dark, tense and hyper-alert, for three hours, holding her bow, with an arrow notched and ready, the whole time. She’d done all this while wearing approximately sixteen pounds of high-quality chain mail. The armor was necessary but growing heavier by the minute.

  Her father had ordered it online. He’d surprised them one day by suddenly measuring each of them—shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to hip, hip to floor, and so on. Next, he’d made them measure him.

  Delivery of his very precise orders had taken longer than he'd wanted. He'd hoped to find armor he could get in two to three days. But custom orders weren’t that simple, and it had taken much longer for the chain mail to arrive at the house. So Joule and Cage had gone back to school. The weather had warmed up a bit too, which now only worked against the chain mail.

  Joule was hot as fuck, sweating beneath the lightweight shirt she’d worn. It was long-sleeved, because no one wanted chain mail rubbing on their bare skin. And it wasn’t thick, but it was slippery—again, to keep the mail from causing her skin any problems—and that made it hot.

  Because the wait for the mail had taken so long, Nate had turned to other ideas. He’d sat at the dining table designing traps, reading the texts as though he were getting another degree in mammalian and canine biology and behavior. He had not gone back to work.

  When Joule questioned his ability to pay for the house and more, he'd answered her almost ambiguously. “I don't worry about it.” He’d shrugged her off without even looking up from a design she couldn’t distinguish from the one he’d done yesterday.

  “But I worry,” she replied, calmly and cautiously.

  “You're going to college soon.”

  “Yes, but I thought we would still have this house. I realized later that that may not be the case—that you and mom might prefer to move closer to us. Honestly, Cage and I were hoping that you would.” She paused for a moment, but still couldn’t tell if her father was listening. “But that means we should be able to sell this house, which means you hav
e to keep up with the payments.”

  It was a conversation she'd never expected to have with her father. Then again, she'd never expected to lose her mother. She'd not been given the opportunity to be a grieving child. But, as Cage pointed out, her parents had been treating them mostly like adults for some time. Now, she was having to step up fully and act like it.

  “Dad, you need to make the payments on the house. Are you still getting paid from work?”

  “Yes, I have four more weeks of leave,” he told her, still without looking up. Finally, a straightforward answer to her questions. She’d been afraid he would put her in a position in which she needed to call his job and see what was going on. That would not go over well.

  After a few more questions—very pointed and specific—he caught on. Looking up at her, Nate said, “Your mother left a good-sized life insurance policy. I cashed it a week ago, and it was more than enough to pay off the house. Also, it was designed to let me live at home with you two kids until you graduated.”

  It would only be a few more months before they graduated, then three more before they left for college, Joules thought.

  Nate shook his head. Apparently, her line of reasoning had shown on her face.

  “No, honey.” His words were gentle and he finally seemed to see how worried she was. “We set up this policy when you were four. There’s enough money for me to stay home with you for fourteen more years… We never changed it. It will cover your college without worries, and I can stay home. I can go where you go, without having to worry about finding a job for a long time. We are okay.”

  He’d stood up, putting his hands on her shoulders to comfort her, and at last, she nodded.

  But then he said something that shocked her. “It really wouldn't matter if we didn't pay off the house anyway. Who's going to come here and reclaim it? Not the bank. People are losing houses—physically—left and right. They aren’t going to pay their loans. The banks are going to collapse any day now.”

  For a moment, Joule stared at him. None of that was right. Yes, people were leaving their homes. And yes, the housing market was crap and the banks were suffering. But they were not on the verge of Apocalypse Now—were they?

  She stared at her father, hard. Even so, she figured just telling him he was wrong was a bad idea. “Dad, that's not a plan. Pay the house. When the bank stops asking, you can stop paying. But until then, pay for the house.”

  She'd walked away then, ending the conversation because she simply couldn't deal with any more of it.

  And then, the next day, the chain mail had arrived and her father had asked them to try it out. They'd worn it for two full evenings before going outside with it. They’d all known it would be heavy and that they needed to get used to it.

  That had been an understatement.

  Cage turned to her at one point and said, “It's heavy enough that I noticed it's taking more effort to breathe.”

  For a moment, Joule flashed back. “Just like what they did to Marat and Johanna.” She remembered old friends of theirs from Curie, Nebraska. Their murders were a big part of the reason their family had left that state.

  Now the remaining three Mazurs stood out in the street, chain mail on and weapons at the ready, waiting on dogs that might not show.

  Joule was almost relieved when she heard the growl behind her. With a deep breath and bark of her own, she hollered, “Now!” and turned to face the three dogs coming toward her.

  Aiming her bow, she took stock. Still at enough distance to use it, she pulled back on the string, and waited.

  30

  Joule let her second arrow fly. The first was already sticking out of the dog’s chest, having lodged between his ribs. Yet the injury was not slowing him down.

  Even as the second arrow flew, she was reaching for one more, aiming and hitting a second of the three dogs before she made her move.

  Nate and her dad were on either side of her—giving her just enough room to work the bow and arrow—but the dogs were now closer than her range. Also, no one was watching their backs, with the three of them lined up to face the dogs. Either the dogs couldn’t count, or they could and they thought the match was still in their favor.

  Joule didn’t like it. She'd almost yelled to her dad to watch their backs as the dogs tended to circle. If there were three dogs in front of them, there might be four—or five or ten—more coming around the other side.

  Her father had wanted to fight the dogs, and this was his chance.

  Clearly, she and Cage had reluctantly agreed. Though neither of wanted this, they’d known Nate needed to do it. He mentioned going out by himself, and the twins wound up arguing their way into a plan neither of them wanted any part of.

  “No one goes alone,” they’d told him, throwing his own words back. “The family sticks together.” So here they were, suddenly in the middle of a dogfight Nate had sought out.

  Now, dropping her aim with the bow toward the ground, she turned swiftly, another arrow notched as she raised it facing the other side. Using sweeping motions, she searched for dogs circling, but didn't see them.

  Behind her, she heard the fight. They wore small army helmets, buckles under their chins, and she knew they must look like ridiculous warriors in their loose and heavy chain mail and tiny helmets. Wasn’t this too close to what those bands of soldier wannabes had tried to do? Hadn’t they all gone missing?

  She was bumped into from behind and recognized it immediately as her father. Straightening her legs, she offered him support, and he bounced off, heading back into the fray. At least it sounded like they were winning the fight. That was what her father wanted. She and Cage just wanted to survive with all their limbs intact.

  Nate had originally considered carrying a broadsword, but after testing the one he’d bought he found the weight of it—along with the heft of the chain mail—gave it all the same problems the Crusaders had originally encountered. It was far too heavy and unwieldy. Quick movements were nearly impossible, and he’d set it aside in favor of her mother's machete. He added a dagger he liked the heft and balance of.

  That choice of weaponry meant he was only doing close fighting with the dogs—hand to hand, as it were. Not like her with her arrows and the ability to wound at a distance. That was why she’d brought the bow and why she’d turned around to protect their backs now. She still saw no other dogs approaching and thought that was out of their usual pattern.

  Cage had chosen a short sword and a long dagger for himself, while Joule had two stilettos, one sheathed at each side, in addition to her bow. As far as she was concerned, she could not be armed enough.

  The three stood back to back in the middle of the street, though only Cage and her father were fighting right now. Sweeping her gaze again, Joule spotted another dog approaching from her direction. She was opening her mouth to let her father and brother know, when she saw the second one coming in close on the first’s heels.

  “Two!” she hollered out. “Ten o'clock.”

  “Got it!” Cage called back over his shoulder.

  Nate didn’t respond, except for the grunts of his hits coming through to Joule. At least they were comforting sounds that he seemed to be winning whatever skirmish he was in. Joule wasn’t hearing screams or yelps or swearing that he'd been hit.

  Joule let an arrow fly, hitting the first dog and—just like the last time—angering it more than wounding it. It darted toward her, as though now set on a faster speed. There was only enough time to put one arrow in this dog. Aiming another, she turned to face the second.

  Then she had a choice to make.

  Pull the stilettos or stay with the bow?

  Though her focus was on the dog she was shooting at, she saw movement on her left. “Eleven o'clock,” she said. By her account, if no more had joined Cage and her dad on the other side, then they were at seven. Three of them against seven dogs.

  Turning, she put one more arrow into the dog on her left, leaving one dog without any wounds yet. He wou
ld be the one to be wary of. But he held back, watching the fight, watching the other three in her sight stalk toward the little trio, barely giving her time to think.

  It was the best she could do with the ones on her right. They were getting too close, and slung her bow over her shoulder with her right hand even as she pulled her stiletto out with the left. In one smooth move, she unsheathed it and jabbed it forward, sweeping her now free right arm up in a practice arc. Her forearm clashed with an embedded arrow as the first dog came for her.

  Brilliant. It made her smile as she realized the dog was controlled.

  The arrow had embedded into its sternum, and now, the metal rod forced the dog to turn to the right with her motion. It didn't even require much strength from her. She was using the arrow against the dog’s motion, and the dog had no chance. That was a small reward for excellent aim and hitting the dogs, even if it had just made them angry at first.

  The stiletto in her hand was long and sharp, and she had studied her mother's notes. With a jab, and knowing she had to be quick, she aimed now to the dog’s side. She didn't have to kill the dog, she simply had to render it unable to fight. Incapacitated was fine.

  Shoving the stiletto in between his ribs as her mother had instructed, Joule now stirred. After a moment of feeling the insides give beneath the sharp edge, she pulled the stiletto back, sliding it between organs she had shredded, removing it with blood dripping.

  With her right arm, she continued to push the dog out of her way. And she heard a sick thud as it fell over onto its side. One down.

  It was a heady feeling, but one she couldn’t dwell on for long. Unfortunately, the dog’s friends didn't seem to care that their friend was injured and they kept coming. “Caaaaage!” she called out, lengthening his name. If her brother and father had three dogs to fight and she had four, then she needed reinforcements. Though—as she looked at the one bleeding out on the street—she only had three now.