The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  Nodding to her brother, she started to gather their supplies. It took a little while. Each time they thought they were finished, they realized they had missed something.

  “Water bottle.” Her brother filled one up. “To drink and in case somebody gets cut.”

  They added the folding shovel, tarps, gloves, and more. Cage had a full backpack by the time they were ready. He was also carrying the loaded gun.

  No one said it, but if they found a hunter this time, they would have to kill it. A mercy shot to the head or something similar. There would be no leaving it to die.

  Even as she crossed over the small creek and into the woods, Joule could feel her lungs getting tighter. This was where she had encountered the night hunters during the day. She didn't like it.

  She didn't feel safe. She hadn't felt safe the first time, but this time it wasn't just a hunch but evidence-based knowledge. She kept her stilettos in sheaths along the sides of her legs, one ready for each hand.

  But she didn’t hold them now. The bow was once again in her hands, the string pulled tight. She figured she could measure her own tension right along with the string.

  Cage was using the tracker once again, holding it out at arm's length and swinging it wide to pick up the signal changes. “We're headed the same way,” he said. Eventually, they wound up at the same place.

  Joule took a sweeping glance around, wanting to look at her brother and read his face, but no longer trusting even that moment. She kept her eyes on the brush and the trees in the distance.

  “Are we following the first tracker by mistake?” she asked, still not looking over her shoulder.

  “It's possible,” but he held the receiver up toward her. “It sounds louder, doesn't it?”

  “But you have the volume up.”

  “I have it at the same level we set it at yesterday. I wanted to be able to hear it and distinguish the frequencies. But we don't want to be so loud as to wake something.”

  Made sense, she thought, then added, “It does sound louder.”

  “Which means, plausibly, both trackers are here.”

  She swung around to look at him, then snapped her eyes back into the trees scanning for movement, for threat. She shouldn't have looked at her brother. She asked her question to the space around her. “Do you think one of the hunters ate both of the trackers?”

  “It's plausible,” he said again. “It's also possible that they move in a pack, and the pack is territorial. Like, this is our pack. We haven't made any effort to identify individual animals, but we could go back into the night vision cameras and check see if we're getting the same number each night. See if we're getting the same ones that show up repeatedly.”

  Joule nodded and it all made sense, but it didn't help right now.

  “So if two of the animals from the same pack ate the two trackers, they would wind up in the same place… which means…” she paused, sweeping the arrow again, pulling back just a little tighter on the string, “that they're sleeping in the same place.”

  “Or barfing them up in the same place,” her brother added, obviously irritated at the thought that their trackers had not lead them to the dogs.

  For a moment, they were quiet. Only the staticky squeal of the frequency meter kept time to their thoughts. Nothing moved, and she swept the point of the arrow back and forth, ready to aim and let fly.

  What would bring both the trackers right here—right to a spot where there weren’t any night hunters?

  They weren't here. She was looking. She was testing. She was even nudging the leaves, but the dogs weren't in them.

  And then she figured it out.

  She realized how the trackers were, in fact, right here, and how the one night hunter had popped up behind them so quietly the last time.

  With jerky movements, expecting an attack at any second, she swept the arrow up and down, side to side, and watched for ambush. When she saw nothing, Joule turned to her brother. In her softest but harshest voice, she said, “Run!”

  58

  Joule’s feet pounded through the leaves and sticks that littered the trail. Beneath her feet, a twig cracked, but she was gone before the sound hit her ears. She was going as fast as she could.

  She would have held her brother's hand, but they both needed their hands free in case one of the night hunters popped up behind them. Or in front of them. And she now believed the canines could do that—just pop up.

  Cage had pushed her to the front. She didn’t understand the move, but she just had to assume he had a reason, and there wasn’t time to argue.

  As her feet pounded the trail, making far too much noise, she swept the tip of her arrow toward the brush, then the trees, and back again. Though she was ready to shoot if she saw one, she wasn’t sure they would fight if a hunter found them. Could she outrun it? She didn’t know, but she was moving like she would try.

  Joule was going so fast that everything blurred around her, she couldn’t focus on anything. She was afraid that the initial tweak of movement in her peripheral vision—the one that would trigger her to look—would not register at this speed. A hunter could be on her before she even knew it was there.

  But she decided that stopping wasn’t worth the risk, and her feet pounded on, the earth slapping upward at her with each step. Her lungs felt as though they were going to burst, but she had no options.

  Cage occasionally looked back over his shoulder, checking the trail behind them. She knew because, every handful of steps, she looked over her shoulder for him. She could not afford to lose her brother, and she was glad he was watching their backs.

  Perhaps he’d put himself in the back because he had the short dagger and the sword. He would be the first to attack at close range, by their plans. Snapping her head back for another quick glance, she saw he had the gun in his hand now, not just waiting at his hip anymore. She ran onward.

  The place where the tracker pinged was deep into the woods, well beyond the edge of their own property. There was a good distance to cover to get back. Too far.

  Her lungs soughed, and she hoped that she would make it all the way. When she got close, she spotted the creek and her hope soared. During the day hours, they’d only seen the hunters in the woods.

  If they could just get across the creek, she told herself. She held her breath.

  Ten more steps. Five. Two. When she hit the edge, she leapt the water in one jump, landing hard on her left ankle. She’d hit a rock she hadn’t seen and her ankle twisted beneath her.

  Turning her shoulder into the fall, she rolled, the hard metal of her quiver smacking against her back and adding insult to injury. Joule kept moving, rolling up onto hands and knees. Cage bounded just a few feet beyond her before stopping, leaning over, and breathing as though he’d just finished a marathon.

  When she added in the adrenaline and the fear, they had run the equivalent of a marathon. But Joule climbed to her feet, grabbed at her brother and said through her scattered breath, “Keep going. Keep going… Inside!”

  They ran together to the front door. They hadn’t been locking it, not until dark. There seemed to be no need. They'd reconsidered once they thought there were looters, but of course, it had only turned out to be Dr. Brett. And they’d decided once more against locking themselves out.

  She was glad now that it was open. Despite the deep twinge in her ankle every time she stepped down on it, Joule bounded up the front steps, yanked at the storm door, and threw herself into the house with enough force to smash the door wide. The knob surely had left an impression in the drywall.

  She made it three feet further before she stopped and rolled onto her ass. Dropping the bow and arrow, she pulled the quiver off over her head and watched as Cage followed her through the doorway. Turning around, he slammed the door shut and threw all three bolts as fast as he could.

  Safe at last, she sucked in the deepest breath she could.

  At least he’d understood when she told him to run. At least he listened and didn't
demand an explanation first, even though he didn't understand why they were running. He hadn’t questioned when they were already in their yard and she tapped his arm. Farther. Faster.

  Her lungs were still heaving too rapidly to talk and she held up a finger to say, just a moment. It appeared her brother had not figured out what she had. But she still couldn’t talk. Finally, her adrenaline began fading, almost as though it was leaching out through her skin wherever she contacted the floor and draining into the wood.

  She spoke before she had the air for it, thinking she was further along in recovery than she was. “Their feet,” she said, breathing the words with no voice behind them.

  “Their feet?” Cage asked, his own words coming on an unsteady cadence. “What do you mean?”

  She tried again, her lungs huffing once more, but this was important. “Dr. Brett told us he recognized their feet and the nails. They're digging feet. They were there,” she huffed it out. “We found them.”

  When Cage still looked at her like she wasn’t making sense, she added, “They dig. They burrow. They’re sleeping in a pack, probably with both the trackers. Probably not in the same dog.” Jesus, she wasn’t making any sense. “One second.”

  She leaned back onto her hands and tried to open her lungs. She tried to steady her breathing and slow her heart, and she started again. “I mean, statistically it's unlikely—”

  Shit. Her breath had run out and she stopped, and she sucked in another lungful of air. It hit her then, that she was no longer breathing heavily from the run. Now it was out of fear. She tried again, but Cage was already nodding along.

  “Probably we have a local pack, like you said. One set of dogs that most likely lives with an alpha and a beta leader. They have a territory that they claim and defend and feed from.”

  “You think we are seeing the same dogs each night.”

  She nodded. “I do now.”

  All she had energy for was sitting on the floor, her feet flat, her arm propped on her knee. Thinking better of that position, she tipped her left leg then, taking the weight off the ankle, hoping it wasn't any more damaged than just a little twist that would feel better by tonight.

  “So you think probably two different hunters ate the trackers, and they wound up sleeping in the same batch in the forest,” Cage filled in.

  “In a burrow. That's how the hunter appeared so quietly behind us. He didn't walk up to us. He just came out of his burrow.”

  “Underground.” Cage was nodding along with her.

  “I think if we had moved the leaves, we might have seen the entrance,” she said, her oxygen safe now, her voice coming back, her words resuming their normal force, even if the fear of what she was discussing still remained behind them. “But we might have woken them.”

  Cage’s expression told her he understood. That he knew why she’d demanded they run.

  “I think,” she said, “that we were standing right on top of them.”

  59

  Cage watched the house as he drove up the driveway. The whole day felt odd. Last day of school. The problems with the hunters. That they weren’t ready and wouldn’t be. They were still sleeping in the attic, and he hoped he didn’t suffocate up there.

  At the porch, he pulled the door open and held it while his sister walked into the game room ahead of him. She was still limping just a little bit. She was trying to claim it wasn't that bad. He was trying to believe her.

  They’d attended the last half day of school, which had gone pretty much as he’d thought. Aside from seeing his friends, he’d hugged a handful of teachers goodbye, he’d thanked them for recommendation letters and such, and not much else. The day had no academic purpose, so he was surprised that it hit him as hard as it did.

  Maybe that was why their house—their home—felt like brick and wood and high-end siding. Maybe that was a good feeling to have, since they’d be leaving it behind.

  Joule flopped down onto the couch, her now-empty backpack still in her hand. “That's it. No more high school functions ever.”

  Though Cage didn't flop, he sank down next to her. “Actually, I think we have to attend graduation.”

  They had decided to skip the ceremony, as both of them had wondered, what was the point?

  It wasn’t like either of them was valedictorian or anything. Their old school in Curie, Nebraska had been hard. He’d gotten a B+ in statistics. Joule had gotten several A- grades in various history classes. Those classes should have been curved when they transferred in here, but this school hadn't done it. So while they ranked well, and bumped up their GPAs with advanced placement classes, neither of them was valedictorian.

  Clearly, he was just a little bitter about that, and so was his sister. But they’d decided it was a good thing, as neither had to give a speech. Now, she turned and looked at him as if to ask him what in the blazing hell he was talking about.

  “I think we have to get that sheet of paper, and I'm not positive that we can get it at any other time.”

  “Why?” she asked, still not having moved from her Jell-O-like position. “The sheet of paper doesn't mean much. It's the school records that—” she cut herself off as she caught on. “—that will burn down when the school burns to the ground or the hunters rip all the administration apart, and no one's willing to come back into the school to get it. Crap.”

  Cage nodded at her. “Assumedly, there’s some kind of backup system—another high school or some national database—but I don't want to be the one tracking that down later. We do have to prove to Stanford that we graduated. If their administration calls here and no one answers, I want that paper in my hand.”

  Joule offered him a wry press of her lips that—while she didn't speak—made it clear she agreed it had to be done.

  “Let's have lunch,” he told her, not quite ready to do everything that was still necessary today. They still had to get the room barricaded, and it wasn’t going to happen today. But he had to admit he had a powerful urge to sleep in the air conditioning rather than three feet above it.

  Ultimately, he thought it was a good thing that they had gone to school. The extra time had changed their plans about how to fortify the room. Their initial designs had conjured up an image of chairs shoved under doorknobs or hurricane window boarding. At one time, they had discussed covering the doors permanently and putting a ladder to the window. They would lift it up and close the window to get in ... and not be able to get from the house to the bedroom, or vice versa.

  What they had wound up with instead was a medieval barrier system. They’d bought steel strips and contrived a device to bend them. They’d bought solid two-by-eight pieces of wood and cut them down on their father’s saw into four-foot strips.

  Joule had pointed to the name Mazur written in permanent marker on the side of the saw. “What are we going to do with all of their stuff?” she’d asked. But Cage had no answer and no drive to answer it. He just wanted to sleep in his room.

  So now, four thick boards sat ready by each door. They slid through the steel holders almost the way a bathroom door closure did and much the way the movies always portrayed medieval fortresses as blocking the door. They had sunk heavy wood screws into the studs, and then tested them, though they were no hunters.

  The two-by-eights themselves should be hard enough to get through. But there was the anchor into the walls, and the doors themselves. At least they were real wood. Old houses, he thought.

  If the night hunters were going to get in, they would have to break through all of it. Unfortunately, while Cage believed in the system, it didn't matter what he believed. It mattered how determined the hunters were. It did help that Joule believed in it as well.

  “Time me,” she said five hours later, hot and sweaty from sinking anchors into the walls and lifting wood bars. Steel strips held the two-by-eights to the left of the door, ready to slide into place once the door closed.

  He was exhausted, but Joule seemed ready to go. Pulling his phone out, Cage called up
the stopwatch and said, “Go!”

  Joule moved quickly. At least she was tall, reaching up to slide the top one across. But before she had the second crossbar in place, he said, “Stop.”

  “I didn't get anywhere near finished.” She turned around with her hands on her hips. “Well, how long did that take?”

  “Barely two seconds. Less than that, I think,” he told her as he looked at the clock. “That's good.”

  “But why stop me?”

  “If we're timing for speed, we're timing for a panic situation.” She nodded, as though that were obvious. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to this. Ever. They both wanted every evening to happen that they simply slid the crossbars into place, put themselves to bed, and slept in a safe place at night. But they were running the drill in case that failed.

  He continued, “If the night hunters are on the other side of the door, you shouldn’t slide the top one first. It's the one they're least likely to hit at.”

  Catching on, she examined the setup for a moment. There were four bars across each door—one just below the doorknob and another between there and the floor. In fact, for a hunter to get between them would be incredibly difficult. Another one slid across just above the doorknob, clearing it by maybe six inches, and at the top, another one split the remaining space at the top of the door.

  They’d designed it this way specifically because the night hunters were most likely to come in low.

  “Ready?” Joule asked. “Let's do this again, and for the sake of accuracy and overestimation…” She stepped back. “I'm going to start from the middle of the room. Tell me when to go.”

  He looked around the room, at the stopwatch, hit the button and said, “Go.”

  This time, his sister ran so fast to the door she practically slammed into it. She slid the bolt below the doorknob first, making practical maneuvers this time. Next, she worked the one above it. Then the bottom, and last the top one.