Run (The Hunted) (5 page)

“How long have you been running?” It’s important to him. He needs to know what the limit is, how much of his own life is left if he can compare it to hers.

“Four days.” She snuffles very softly, wiping at her nose with her sleeve. “Like you give a crap.”

He is hurt, the truth of it driving into his already wounded heart. When it settles over him, his grief numbs. Of course she feels that way. Alone out here for four whole days by herself?

“How did you survive?” She amazes him. He’s barely made it through one night.

“I’m smart.” She is limp, but he can feel her tension now, the hum of it that runs through her. She is ready to move at the first opportunity. “And small. Guess they like bigger targets more than me.”

“I’m Reid.” It also feels important she knows his name.

She shrugs. “Monica.” Her eyes flicker around them in a calculated pattern. “Don’t think I trust you now.”

Fair enough. “Didn’t ask you too,” he says.

“Did,” Monica’s eyes come back to his. “You said we could help each other. Well, I’ve heard that before.”

Someone found her and abandoned her. It is the only explanation. How can he convince her he’d never leave her behind when he doesn’t know he wouldn’t? Nothing is sure anymore. And if the chance came up to rescue Lucy, he knows he’ll choose his sister over what remains of this little girl. Still, he lets the outrage of it show in his face.

“I’m sorry.” It’s not much, but it seems to work on her. She shivers and sighs deeply, her tension going quiet for the moment.

“Not your fault,” she says, “or theirs. Just, I’m younger and slower and they couldn’t wait for me. I get it.” She snuffles for the second time, her sleeve now dark from cleaning up her tears. “But it’s still not fair.”

He’s been thinking the same. No such thing as fair in this place. Would he do what they others did? Run off without her? Would he let her hold him back? In that moment, he decides. No matter what happens, he’ll protect her if he can.

“I’m not them,” he says. “Will you come with me?”

Maybe if he reached her a day earlier or even before darkness fell. But he can feel her need overthrown by her fear of rejection, that instant of wanting to be part of something washed over in her eyes by her own instinctual drive not to trust him.

“We can’t stay here.” Monica tries to pulls free but he won’t release her. It would mean letting go of the hope he had that they could run together. Still, he agrees with her. They have to move. Maybe if they find somewhere safer he can change her mind.

“That cry.” Reid shudders.

“They’re coming.” She gives another gentle tug and he finally lets her go. Monica sits up, but doesn’t run away. It’s a start at least.

“What are they?” He knows he should let her run. There isn’t much in her anymore. But he can’t just let her go. She reminds him so much of Lucy for some reason, it would be like losing his sister all over again.

Monica shakes her head, her filthy hair dropping a few leaves. “I don’t know.”

“How did you get here?” His desperation is rising, tied to hers.

“I don’t know.” Her words are breathed around a silent sob.

“Why are they doing this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.
I don’t know
!” She might as well be screaming. Her whole being
is
screaming, shaking him up even though her frustration and fear is expressed at a whisper. Her face crumples and her little fists beat against him, her skinny body wriggling back and forth.

“Shut up. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Just shut up!” She hisses at him like a small animal, her tiny hands now claws, slashing toward his face, his chest. “You’ll bring them here!”

He barely has a moment to realize what she said. For the second time. Them. What does she mean,
them
? Reid hasn’t even considered there could be more than one hunter. He is so overwhelmed by this news he almost misses her sudden reaction to something he hasn’t heard.

She tenses, a frightened rodent, cheek twitching convulsively in terror. A low and horrible hum rises from her stomach, coming up to her chest and out through the flare of her nostrils. She twists in Reid’s grip, trying to slide free. He wants to hang onto her, but he is stunned, made useless by what she told him, so he lets her go. When she pulls away and glances at him, he finally understands. They have nothing to offer one another after all. She is simply too far gone.

Still, Reid doesn’t want to leave her there. He can help her get to a safer place before they part ways. Before he can act, she moves two steps and locks up again. He is about to urge her to move when he feels it. They are not alone. He searches their surroundings, slinking slowly and carefully into the depth of the shadow she just left. There, near the path. Something moves with deliberate slowness. Reid sees Monica tremble. She hasn’t moved. And needs to, quickly. She only has a moment. He reaches for her, too late. She uncoils from her fearful freeze and dashes several steps toward the trail.

The hunter is there in one fluid motion, snatching her out of the brush with a whoosh of air, dropping her into the open. Reid hears her scrawny body thud to the dirt, the gasp of escaping breath as she loses hers. Reid is forced to press his hands over his ears as her low hum begins again, turning into a piercing keen so loud it shakes him to his bones with its desperation.

There. Beside the hunter. A form slides from the darkness. Another one. Them, she said.
Them
. She was right. Two hunters. Two killers in the night.

He didn’t want to believe her. Now he has no choice. She’s proved it to him in the worst way possible. His horror growing, Reid forces himself to move on, to escape the sound and Monica’s final torment. Her death.

He has gone less than ten steps when her humming protest, the last weapon she has in a terribly unbalanced war, is cut off abruptly. Forever.

Reid runs.

***

Chapter Six

This time he runs without reason, his focus lost to him, as much an animal as she was in the end. He finds the edge of the trail and hates to use it, but has no choice, instinct forcing him to take the path of least resistance. He must run and run and never, ever stop. Not for anything or anyone. Rest is impossible, brief moments caught in jerking instances of gasping air, barely enough to restore his wind before he is off again, a new sound or flicker of motion chasing him deeper and deeper into the forest.

He only peripherally feels the ground under his feet, the slap of branches against his face when he gets too close to the edge of the trees, usually after he spins to check the trail behind him. Reid can’t think or feel or reason. He doesn’t have time and can’t afford the effort any of them take. He is legs and feet, ragged breath and burning muscle, sheathed in a world of pain and terror driving him onward, ever onward.

He has only a heartbeat to register the barrier before he reaches it, but it is just enough to keep him from hurtling headlong into the chain link fence. He stops all at once, whole body twitching in response, gaping upward, feeling his skin tingle and the hair on his head and body stand on end in answer to the power running through it. The dull metal thrums a steady beat, vibrating its way down into the ground. Reid doesn’t need to check or even think about it. He just knows.

There is enough juice running through the fence to kill him.

Reid is so stunned by its appearance and obvious meaning, it takes him a while to react to it. His flight mode has been interrupted and he is so tired and strung out from stress and fear it takes him achingly long moments to register and understand what is going on. When he finally gets it, he wants to fall to his knees and quit. On top of everything else, whoever dumped him here has trapped him as well. The unfairness of it shrivels his soul a little further and he spends a moment rubbing at the gooseflesh raised by the electricity and his own despair. Until he considers the fence again. And a ray of hope shines through.

It has to have a gate. Maybe more than one. If he can find the way out… nothing will keep him from escaping.

Without Lucy?
His mind tortures him with the thought.

Of course not. But knowing where the way out is will be a great advantage when he does find her. Reid refuses to think about the alternative. He knows there is a chance she has already met with her fate at the hands of the hunter. Hunters. He shudders again, backing off a bit from the fence. How many are there, then? He was obviously wrong thinking there is only one man. He sees how foolish that assumption was, but only in hindsight. There was no way he could have even for a moment believed there was more than one of those men. It took seeing it to believe it. Now that he
has
seen two, his mind swells with horrible possibility. There could be dozens. Hundreds. They could have him surrounded right now.

Reid spins and checks the forest around him. As far as he can tell, he is alone. When he returns his attention to the problem of the fence, he has recovered more of himself and the focus he lost in his overwhelmed flight.

There is only one way to find the way out if this idea of his could be his salvation or not. He has to follow the fence. Reid looks back and forth, first one way then the other, trying to decide. On his left the fence curves off into the darkness, barely visible in the thickening trees. But on his right, where the forest is thinner, he can see more of it up ahead. He chooses that way, only because he is tired and the ground seems less treacherous, the cover not so stifling. And while he knows he trades ease of movement with shelter from the hunters, Reid trusts his gut and goes to the right.

West
, he corrects himself.
I’m going west.
That’s almost the deal breaker for him. He would rather head toward the dawn and see the sun lighting the sky, leading him into the morning. In fact, he’s looking forward to it. And yet, he sticks with his plan and trudges on.

Reid sets out, stepping gingerly over the body of a dead rabbit, barely a day gone, flies humming their ravenous dance over it. He forces his eyes away, not wanting to contemplate what would have happened to him if he hadn’t stopped.

It isn’t worth thinking about.

He finds it hard to focus on the world on his side of the fence. His eyes scan the other, for a sign, a chance of rescue, anything. Anyone. It’s such a thin barrier, really. Such a simple yet effective wall between him and freedom. It drives him a bit mad when he focuses on it and he has to look away from time to time or fall back into spiraling despair. He fantasizes about coming across someone, a forest ranger maybe. A logging truck. But there is only the forest, the night and the quiet to keep him company. Those and the constant buzz of the fence.

It annoys him after a short time, even though he longs for it and what it means. Civilization. People. Safety. The very things he treasures, powered by the only thing keeping him from his life.

Despite the brief sleep he caught a few hours ago, Reid is stumbling tired, his legs barely able to keep him upright. So, when he hears a car horn he thinks he is hallucinating. His eyes see the lights in the distance, register the sight, but don’t translate what they mean for a long time. When he finally realizes what he is looking at, his heart leaps up and jerks him toward the fence. He is again wide awake.

There are cars in the distance. Their tires rumble over asphalt, a steady rush and hum as they pass. Trucks roll by, powered with their distinctive roar. Brightness cuts through the darkn, makes paths across the trees, sending shadows bouncing in steady streams only to die and be reborn from the next set of headlights.

The highway vibrates with steady life, not even a mile in the distance. He is elevated, looking down on it, the passing interstate in some kind of shallow valley below him. He can almost smell the gasoline fumes, the heat from the engines. He is sure he hears music echoing in the distance from someone’s open window.

He wants to shout, jump up and down and laugh all at once. This is it, what he’s been searching for! Until he works out the final part of the situation in his exhausted and fuzzy head. And when he does, he wishes he never saw the fence or the cars or the people going on with their lives while he remains trapped with the monsters.

There is no exit here. The interstate is too far for the moving cars to hear him. He has no way of signaling that he is in trouble. For a moment he has a fresh rush of hope. A fire! He could set a fire. Surely someone would come. But he has nothing to make a fire with, no matches or lighter and is sure he can’t do it the old fashioned way. He tried and tried as a child after his father told him native people used to kindle flames from a pair of sticks. All he ever managed to do was give himself splinters.

Reid stands there for a long time, forgetting the hunters and his fear and gives in to his longing. Safety is so close he can smell it, taste it, feel the end of his terror and pain. He is almost desperate enough, tempted by the thought of that highway in the distance, to just risk it and touch the fence. Maybe he will survive? But reason explains to him very gently even if he does, he will only make it to the fence itself and will never manage to get over the top with all that power running through him.

He doesn’t want to abandon his only glimmer of hope, but has to face the truth at last. Reid can’t just stay there. It’s too dangerous. He finally trudges onward, still following the fence, easing his disappointment by trying to convince himself there must be another spot just like this one, closer to the road even. A place he can call for help.

Small consolation. Smaller still as he passes through a line of trees. He hesitates one last moment, absorbing the hint of humanity in the distance before pushing himself onward.

The last of the sound and light from the highway is lost behind him.

He isn’t aware he is crying until his vision swims in front of him and he is forced to wipe at his eyes with the filthy cuff of his hoodie. Reid chokes, spitting out precious moisture, his throat so thick and painful he can’t bring himself to swallow.