HUNTER (12 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sitting next to the wall in the bedroom, when I remained completely still, I could just make out Hunter and Greg’s conversation. Greg’s voice was shaken, raspy. Or maybe that was just from being out in the frigid woods for at least three hours.

“I think she’s with them. She must have converted when we were gone. They probably got to her, man, think about it. She’s working with them, Hunter, I know she is,” Greg said, his voice becoming increasingly frantic with each passing word.

“Calm down,” Hunter said. “Take a breath, Greg. She’s not working with the Kongies. We can trust her.” He spoke slowly, like a man trying to calm an angry guard dog. Easy, boy. Easy.

“She has to be.”

“Why would you say that?” I didn’t know Hunter was capable of speaking in such a calming tone of voice. I was used to his usual uncaringly, sarcastic tone, laughing at the end of each sentence, scoffing, dismissing everything. He was doing none of those things now while talking to Greg.

“On my watch, I was positioned two klicks east, eyes between command and the tracks. I spotted a possible target searching the sticks about half a klick south.”

“What are you talking about?” Hunter asked. “There’s no one out here but us.”

“No. There was someone there, Hunter. I fired a warning shot and he ran back to the tracks. I should have taken the body. I don’t know why I didn’t take the body.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a deer or something?”

“I saw him through my scope. Medium build, about five feet, ten inches. White skin, short brown hair, white coat—”

“—It was probably a hunter. And for the love of God, Greg, don’t take the body until you have the go ahead, okay?”

I guess Hunter wasn’t lying to me after all. Greg really was out there on guard duty, with his finger hovering over the trigger of a hunting rifle. I wonder if I would have gotten a warning shot, too?

I could hear Greg pacing through the room, his heavy footsteps eliciting deep groans out of the old cabin’s floorboards. “He wasn’t armed but he had a camera, with a telephoto lens. He was looking for us, I could just tell. The way he was sneaking from tree to tree, using his camera as a scope to scan the horizon.”

“Maybe he talking pictures of birds.”

“Birds?” Greg suddenly shouted. A moment of silence, then, “What birds, Hunter?” he said, returning his voice to a near-whisper. “There’s no birds out here right now. It’s too cold.”

“What does this have to do with Kyla?” Hunter asked.

“She’s a spy. She has to be. How else did they find us? She gave away our coordinates.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. She’s harmless. I promise you.”

The pacing footsteps stopped and Greg was silent. The thought of Greg thinking I was a possible enemy wasn’t nearly as frightening as the thought that the outcome of my life was in Hunter’s hands.

“I want to trust you, Hunter.”

“Then trust me. Kyla is our old friend. We’ve known her since we were kids. She’s not out to get us.” My gut turned. I don’t think Hunter realized what he’d said, that that one little slip up might have just cost him Greg’s trust, and maybe even my life.

“What did you say?” Greg asked slowly.

“What?”

“Kyla is
our
old friend. What does that mean?”

Hunter was silent for a moment—long enough for my body to sag with anxiety. I could feel that rush of light-headedness come back.

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Hunter said. I bit down on my index finger, hoping that his face was more convincing than his suddenly shallow, timid voice.

“You said
we’ve
known Kyla since
we
were kids.”

“We as in my family, Greg. She’s a family friend. Not
we
as in you and me.”

The silence returned, save for the tolling of my heart in my chest. My vision blurred and I took a deep breath.

“Let’s not take any chances.” His heavy footsteps started in my direction.

“Where are you going?” Hunter asked.

Greg didn’t respond. I ran back to the bed as quickly as I could without making any noise. As I pulled the cover over my body, his shadow entered the slit beneath the door. I rolled onto my side, so he wouldn’t be able to see my heart aggressively beating against the blanket.

But his footsteps continued past the door.

“Greg?” Hunter said.

Greg didn’t respond, but I could hear him enter the other bedroom. As his footsteps stopped, a rustling began. I was almost sure he was going through my bag, looking for evidence that I wasn’t in fact a spy with the Congolese Rebels.

My body relaxed some, knowing that there was nothing but books and clothes in my bag. My cellphone was in there, too, but I couldn’t think of anything that could be considered remotely suspicious on the device, unless the Congolese Rebels used photos of cute cats as a form of secret communication. I hoped he would see my phone was out of service and calm down.

I could hear a dull thud as my bag hit the floor. Then, more silence.

“Happy?” Hunter said.

“Just keep an eye on her.” Greg’s footsteps crossed the hall again and moved towards the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“Back on watch.” The door hinges squealed, the cold wind whistled, the door slammed, and then the cabin was silent once again.

I’d lost count of the reasons why I should have been having a mental breakdown. Not only was there a dangerous borderline-schizophrenic with a rifle patrolling the woods, an enraged and abusive boyfriend awaiting my return in Nintipi, a delusional, sex-starved caveman in the other room, but now the media had, by the sounds of it, tracked me down. Greg said he saw a man with a camera snooping through the woods—and he was right, there were no birdwatchers scouring the woods at this time of year.

But how did they find me?

Maybe some reporter followed me out of town. Or maybe the trucker that picked me up recognized me and told the press. Maybe Liam put out a missing persons notice and the trucker recognized me. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. I had to hide either way. I would have to stay inside, away from the windows, and I’d have to keep my voice down so no Peeping Tom could hear me through the thin cabin walls. Even prisoners get to go outside to stretch their legs.

I’m pretty sure that’s how some of the nastier governments in the world torture people. Isolation torture. Locking someone in a quiet room for days with nothing but their thoughts, their regrets, and their anxieties. It’s more than enough to drive a person to the brink of insanity. The proof was out there, sitting in a blizzard with a high-powered hunting rifle, ready to murder the first living thing that came within a mile of our cabin.

I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. I should have been trying to think of a way to get back to Nintipi alive, unnoticed by the press, and a way to explain my sudden absence to Liam. Instead, I was thinking about Sammy, about what he supposedly said before he died.

He loved me and he was sorry.

He must have meant it if he felt inclined to say it before they killed him. And so what if he did mean it? Was I supposed to forgive him just because he said he was sorry? Would I have forgiven him if he was still alive? If I didn’t, I’m sure if the media found out, it would make the front page. “The Witch of Nintipi does not forgive War Hero, retains title.”

Maybe the world was right. Maybe I was a bad person and I deserved to be called a witch. It’s not like I didn’t want to forgive Sammy. I did. But just saying it aloud made me no different from the rest of the “God bless our troops, every last one of ‘em” bandwagon. What Sammy did to that girl was horrible, and I’m not convinced he was sorry. I think saying so was just a convenient way rid himself of his own guilt in his final moments. I’d probably do the same if they put a gun to my head.

I doubt it would make me feel any better about dying, but it’d probably be worth a shot anyway.

Or maybe—just maybe—he did mean it. Maybe he was sorry and maybe he really did love me. Whatever the case, there would never be any way of knowing. I had to live with that uncertainty for the rest of my life.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Greg only came inside briefly every four hours or so. He would grab something quick to eat, fill up his water bottle, take ten seconds to warm up his hands by the fire, and then he would leave again. He took off his gloves to warm up his hands, exposing his ivory and blue fingers. The bastard was going to lose the things if he wasn’t careful.

There was nothing I could do to stop him. Any attempt to get him to relax was seen as a threat—an attempt to get his guard down. Even during the few minutes he came inside, he kept an eye on the window.

Even the setting sun didn’t make him ease up. “That’s when they’re most likely to attack,” he said when I suggested getting a few hours of sleep. I didn’t hear him come inside all night—or at least he didn’t wake me up when he did, and ever since the ambush in the Congo, I’d been a
very
light sleeper.

The next morning was quiet and the blizzard was still going strong. Kyla still hadn’t come out from the bedroom, and as far as I knew, Greg could have been frozen and buried beneath five feet of snow. At least the heat can’t kill you in the Congo.

It was around noon when Kyla finally came out of the bedroom, but she didn’t come out for long. Like Greg, she grabbed some food, filled up her glass of water, and then retreated back into the bedroom. At least Greg answered me when I said, “Hey.” Kyla wouldn’t even look at me, still angry about what I’d said—about what Sammy said.

At least, that’s what I figured she was angry about. It was probably more to do with my timing, telling her while I was half-naked on her bed. I guess that wasn’t the best time to bring it up.

Angry or not, I did it. I did what Sammy asked me to do. Kyla’s anger would pass eventually—in a few days, a few weeks, maybe longer—but it would pass. I knew the constant guilt and the sleepless nights wouldn’t pass until I finally told her—and now I’d told her, though I didn’t get too much sleep that night, and I still felt like shit about the whole thing. The thought was always there: if Sammy knew about me fucking Kyla, would there still be guilt? I knew it was a pointless topic to dwell on, but that didn’t stop me from dwelling anyway…

Growing up, the other kids didn’t like Sammy. Everyone thought he was slightly mental. Hell, even I didn’t like Sammy when we first met. I thought he was a goddamned psychopath.

There were the cool kids, there were the geeky kids, there were the quiet kids, there were the jock kids. Sammy fell into none of those categories. He wasn’t outgoing, but he was far from shy. He hated sports but he was fitter than most of the jocks, and he hated school but he was smarter than most of the teachers. He was a freak—a weirdo. To most people, that title would have been an insult. But Sammy loved it, he embraced it.

Before we were friends, all I knew about him was that he skipped class to smoke dope and cigarettes behind the school, and he always did it alone. He never missed a chance to watch the cheerleaders practice, and he always made the cheerleaders feel uncomfortable.

At first I thought he was just trying to be a bad boy, some misguided attempt to get girls’ attention. The guy can’t be that weird, I thought. Maybe he means well—maybe he’s just a little quirky.

Then my little sister told me a story…

I was in junior high. My sister was a few grades below me, in an elementary school across town. Every day after school, before heading home, my sister and her friends played a game that they called “Where’s Weirdo?” The object of the game was simple: go into the woods behind the school and yell “Weirdo! Where are you?” If there was no answer, you had to go another twenty steps into the woods and yell it again. “Weirdo! Where are you?”

There was no real way to win Where’s Weirdo, but losing was simple enough. If you chickened out and ran back to the school, you lost. If Weirdo jumped out and grabbed you, you lost. I guess it was a kind of “Who’s the Bravest?” competition. The girls got a kick out of it. Hearing about it made my spine tingle.

“Oh, to have the imagination of a child,” my mom said to my little sister.

“Weirdo’s real, mom,” my sister said. “He lives out in the woods. He’s always out there.”

My mother laughed, gave my sister a pat on the head, and continued watching her soap operas. My sister told me she wasn’t lying, and she even told me what Weirdo looked like. Her description was spot on. Weirdo wasn’t only a real person, Weirdo was Sammy.

And that’s how we met.

The next day, I kept a close eye on Sammy. We had the same fourth period, but I’d never paid much attention to him—no one did, because he left five minutes into every class. I followed him when he left, out of the school, down the street towards the edge of town, all the way to the woods behind my sister’s school. I kept my distance. The woods were dense and dark, a perfect place for some creep who called himself Weirdo to hide.

He crouched down behind a tree and waited, so I did the same. He killed time with a comic book, a Walkman, and a pack of cigarettes. The school bell rang and Sammy perked up and packed up his bag. About ten minutes later, a pair of timid footsteps crunched the dead leaves.

“Weirdo! Where are you?” a girl called out, hiding the fear in her voice with forced, nervous laughter.

Sammy stood up and tiptoed to another tree.

“Weirdo! Where are you?” the girl called out, deeper now.

Sammy cupped his hands around his mouth and cackled like a demon. The little girl spun around, jumped into the air, and grabbed at her mouth to prevent a loud shriek from slipping past her lips. The little girl stepped deeper into the forest, tripping over the roots her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to distinguish. She caught herself from falling.

At this point, my pocket knife was in my hand and I was ready to jump the pervert. He kept moving back, deeper into the woods, luring the girl further from the school, far enough that her friends wouldn’t be able to hear her scream.

“Weirdo… Where are you?” the girl tried to call out, but her voice was broken.

I was impressed by Sammy’s ability to move through from tree to tree unnoticed, without making any sound. Even from my prime vantage point, with my eyes well-adjusted to the dark, it was hard to keep track of him.

He was clever, too. He knew how to throw his voice, how and where to direct it so it would bounce off a surface and sound like it was coming from somewhere else. He knew to time his footsteps with hers—techniques my dad taught me when we would go out hunting, before he passed away.

“Weirdo?” the girl said, her voice trembling. Sammy snuck around behind her, blocking her escape. She didn’t notice.

“Did you bring me the meat I wanted?” Sammy asked in an unsettling voice.

The girl spun around, not seeing Sammy, even as she was looking right at him. “W—What?” she managed to say.

“I wanted meat. Where’s my meat?”

“I—I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

I was up on my feet, ready to jump in. The girl was helpless, far from her friends, nowhere to run, and blind from the cover of the thick treetops. I’d kill him if I had to, the sick fuck.

“They didn’t tell you?” Sammy said.

“No. I’m sorry. I want to go home. I’m sorry.”

“I see, that makes sense,” Sammy said, inching closer to the girl.

“What?” she said. Her hands trembled and her head sunk down between her shoulders. She was paralyzed with fear.

“They sent you to me. You’re the meat.”

The girl had all she could take. Her adrenaline kicked in. She took off screaming, totally oblivious to the fact she brushed right up against Weirdo. He could have grabbed her, but he didn’t. He just watched her run until she was out of sight, and then he started to laugh.

I’d seen enough. I jumped him, pinning him to the ground with my blade against his throat. His eyes became wide but he didn’t say anything. I expected him to beg for his life. Instead, the creepy son of a bitch started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You found Weirdo,” he said, still laughing.

“You get a kick out of scaring little girls? You a perv or something?” I pressed the blade down, letting him know I meant business. He didn’t seem to mind, or maybe he thought I was bluffing.

“I’m just having some fun, man,” he said.

“It’s a fucked up way to have fun.”

He shrugged. “They like it. It’s the best part of their day. Can I stand up?”

I hesitated. I still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t some kind of pervert. But his excuse was too strange to be a lie, and he came up with it too quickly. I let him go.

“You followed me from school?” he asked.

“I heard there was a perv luring girls into the woods.” I kept my blade in hand and an eye on Sammy.

“Calm down, Batman. I’m just makin’ life more interesting. Besides, I ain’t hurtin’ no one.” He lit a cigarette and offered it to me. “C’mon, take it.” I did.

I thought it was a pretty fucked up way of looking at things, that pretending to be a sexual predator out in the woods somehow made the world more interesting.

But the more I hung out with Sammy, the more I realized he was right, and the Weirdo persona wasn’t the only strange thing he did that convinced me.

He invited me over to his house. In his garage, he was working on this strange project—a ring, the size of a small car, made from the foam they wrap around pipes so they don’t freeze in the winter. Every foot or so around the ring was a blue-tinted light bulb, and the foam was stuffed wire wires. The thing looked like a goddamned UFO.

Turns out, that’s exactly what it was. “Promise not to tell no one?” he said to me. I agreed.

He told me I was lucky, that he’d been working on it for over a month and he was going to fly it that very night. I was invited to help him out, though I had no idea how the thing could possibly fly, seeing as it was nothing but wires, foam, and cheap light bulbs. We met at midnight, on the outskirts of town.

It was a windy night. I thought that would mean no flight, but I was wrong. The wind was part of the plan. Sammy had spray-painted a kite with matte-black paint, and he’d tied the UFO about ten feet below the kite, with the light-bulbs on the craft’s underside, so the light wouldn’t reveal the kite. Instead of fishing-wire, he’d rigged a long copper wire on a spindle.

Once the craft was high up in the black sky, he flipped a switch and the thing lit up. Anyone looking out their window would have shit themselves. It was glorious.

He handed me the kite and said, “Run to the other end of the field.” The field was three miles long.

“You kidding?” I said.

“And run fast, too, make it convincing. Then crash the thing into the ground.”

Sammy got into the truck (which I later learned he stole from his dad) and leaned out the window. “I’ll meet you over there,” he said and then peeled off.

So I ran as fast as I could, pulling the UFO behind me. After a mile, I started to wonder what the hell the point of the thing was. After two miles, I was wondering why I agreed to help out with something so juvenile, with someone I hardly even knew. By the time I reached Sammy, I wondered why we couldn’t have just strapped the kite to the truck. Sammy’s laughter when I arrived at the other end of the field suggested it was for his own amusement. I crashed the UFO as directed.