The Hunted (7 page)

It was better hunting the next day. There were two fat rabbits in the traps in the morning. There was a scarecrow in the field that ended up on the bone pile to feed the dogs. Scarface soon found a fresh trail and picked up a scent. Before midday they’d found their prey, hiding out in a house, but they weren’t finished there. Scarface picked up another scent and they were off into a small town, with posh houses among the trees, cars sitting in the driveways.

After he’d dealt with the sickos in the town they set off for home. They were nearly there when Scarface suddenly got excited. He’d seen something. He paced round and round in circles, his good eye scanning the ground. Every now and then he’d stop and tilt his head up and sniff the air, and then he was off and moving quickly, not towards the farm, but back the way they’d come.

Ella wanted to tell him they’d done enough for one day, but she knew there’d be no stopping him, so she tagged along behind, watching his heavy pack as it bounced on his back and trying not to get fed up.

After a while he veered off into the big park. They jogged along the wide walkway that ran down the middle of it, trees lined up in neat rows on either side. The walkway ran dead straight. In one direction was a hill with the
statue of a man on a horse on the top of it. In the other direction was the big castle she’d sometimes spotted off in the distance. And there, running down the path towards it, were three children.

Scarface got his binoculars out and watched them go. He made a sort of disappointed sound in his throat, like
mhmph
, and lowered the binoculars.

They looked in the other direction and Ella saw that a couple of scarecrows had appeared by the statue, standing there as if they were trying to stay as still as it was. And, as Ella watched, a group of grown-ups came over the crest of the hill next to them, stumbling along in a tight pack. Ella hoped Scarface wasn’t planning to attack them. It was different hunting ones that were asleep, or from behind. These ones would see him coming before he got close.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home, yeah? You can’t kill them all. Not today.’

Scarface just sniffed and lifted up his binoculars again. Studying the grown-ups, who were walking steadily down the hill towards the start of the walkway.

‘Let’s go the other way,’ said Ella. ‘We’ve had a good day.’

Scarface seemed to think for a moment, then put his binoculars away and started to move towards the hill, getting faster and faster as he went. For a tiny fraction of a second Ella had a fantasy of turning and running in the other direction, towards the children, towards the castle. It would be safe there. There would be other children.

But she didn’t turn and she didn’t run. She was too scared to risk going off on her own. Too scared to leave Scarface. Instead she ran to catch up with him like an obedient puppy.

In the end it didn’t really matter that the grown-ups saw Scarface coming. They tried to be ready, some even hurried up and stumbled towards him in a sort of charge, but he was too fast for them, and he had his knives, and he stabbed them as he ran past, then he turned and went back and stabbed them again. Ella didn’t want to watch, but she was running so she couldn’t shut her eyes. She hoped that was the end of it. The walking grown-ups were all knocked to the ground and bleeding. Scarface carried on, though, up to the top of the hill, and chopped down the two scarecrows and then stood against the skyline at the base of the statue, which was sitting on what looked like a pile of rocks and stones. As she got nearer, Ella saw that the statue seemed to be of some sort of Roman emperor.

She ran the last few steps up the hill and over to Scarface.

‘Face-Ache,’ she said, sounding hot and bothered and grumpy, ‘can we
please
go home now?’

She tugged at his sleeve. He ignored her. He was staring through his binoculars again.

Then he made the
humph
ing noise in his throat again. What was he looking at now? Bloody old grown-up.

‘What can you see?’ She turned and looked for herself. It was like all three of them were looking now, she and Scarface and the Roman emperor on his green metal horse.

There was a long sweep of grass down the hillside, then woods and fields dotted about, roads and hedges and the odd building. And there, about as far away as Ella could see, was a dark, moving mass. It looked like a shadow on the land, slowly turning it black, eating it up, like when a cloud passes over the sun.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What is that?’

Scarface passed her the binoculars and Ella put them to her eyes, fiddling with the wheel that adjusted the focus until she could see sharply.

Even then it took her a few seconds to make sense of it. This big, blurry, moving
thing
.

No. Not a
thing
. Not
one
thing.
Lots
of things.
People
… men and women, mothers and fathers, grown-ups. An army of them, tramping slowly and steadily towards her. They filled the ground they walked on. There must be hundreds of them. She wrinkled her nose. It was as if she could already smell them.

How awful must that be? The stink. So many of them like that.

And then Ella realized something.

‘The farm,’ she said. ‘They’re heading towards the farm.’

Ella didn’t think she’d ever run so fast. Down the side of the hill, nearly falling over as her legs ran away with her, and then cutting across the park towards some woods, Scarface holding back so that she could keep up with him, though she knew he would rather be racing ahead. He must be scared for his precious farm, his supplies, his chickens, his fire and his bed and his books. His whole world.

She was glad of all the walking they’d been doing, strengthening her legs, but she soon had a stitch in her side and burning in her lungs. Her head was pounding, like someone was hitting her with a spade.

As they ran, Ella couldn’t stop thinking about that big stain of grown-ups spreading across the ground, all the way from right to left, filling the world up it had seemed. Surely nothing could stop them, not all of Scarface’s traps. Even if he had fifty of them, a hundred. The only thing on their side was that the army had been going slowly, plodding along, only moving as fast as the slowest walker. The binoculars had made them look nearer than they were. It would be a long time before they got as far as the farm. Even so, they’d get there eventually, and then what? Would they go round? Or would they plough straight on through, not caring?

What were they doing, marching along like that? She’d never seen so many of them all together in one place. She hated not being able to talk to Scarface about it. Just having thoughts rattling around in her head, getting bigger and scarier because she had no way of letting them out.

As they got to the trees, Ella took a last glance across the familiar fields in the direction the grown-ups had been coming from. You couldn’t see anything from down here, though. All you could see was green grass, blue sky, wispy clouds, some birds. You couldn’t imagine what was coming your way.

Then they were pounding through the woods, Ella desperate not to trip up. She could hear a weird sound, like screaming and wailing. She thought at first it was people, and then she realized it must be the dogs. They were spooked. She couldn’t see any of them, but she could sense them in the trees all around, so that she couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from exactly. They sounded like wolves in a horror film. She knew how careful Scarface was around them. He was scared of them, and if
they
were scared of something else then it was bad. Very bad.

Ella saw some movement off to one side and was terrified that the army of mothers and fathers had caught up with them. But it wasn’t grown-ups, it was kids, five of them, charging through the woods like rabbits running from a pack of hounds. They were going much faster than her and Scarface and, as they crashed past, Ella saw their terrified faces. Were they scared because they’d spotted Scarface, or was it the thought of the army, which they were obviously running away from? In a moment they
were gone. Ella didn’t even have the chance to call out to them.

Scarface slowed down and stopped. He was thinking about something. He looked pained. Was he wondering whether to change his plan? Abandon the farm and run away? He turned to Ella.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me. You have to save the farm.’

Scarface suddenly scooped Ella up in his left arm and hurried on, clutching her to his chest, so that she was facing backwards, going faster than she could run by herself. They burst out of the trees back into the sunlight. Ella twisted round to see where they were going, and there ahead of them was the farm, across the other side of the field.

And people.

At first Ella thought they might be grown-ups and then she realized they were the children who had passed them in the woods. Three boys and two girls. They were moving towards the gate. The tripwires. Ella screamed, her voice high and thin and piercing.

‘No! No. Stop! There’s a trap! Stop there!’

The kids turned, froze, not sure what to do. Scared. Ella wondered what she and Scarface must look like, charging across the open ground towards them.

‘Please!’ she yelled again. ‘Just wait. It’s all right.’

But the kids were pointing and shouting something, eyes wide, mouths black holes in their faces, panicked. Ella looked back over Scarface’s shoulder.

‘Oh no …’

The dogs were running.

They were streaming out of the trees from all sides, howling as they came. If she hadn’t been up high on Scarface’s shoulder Ella might not have been able to see them, only the waving of the long grass as they pushed through it. Some were getting close enough for her to be able to make out the yellow of their teeth, their wide, crazy eyes.

‘Faster. Go faster!’ she shouted, but Scarface didn’t need to be told. He’d moved on to the road and was sprinting, jolting Ella’s face into his body. She looked down and saw a dog running with them, a mongrel with its tail between its legs, its fur up all along the ridge of its back, showing its teeth and gums, whimpering and yelping.

Ella twisted round and looked towards the kids at the gate. They hadn’t moved. Thank God. They’d listened to her. But they would have had a good look at Scarface by now. What would they be thinking? Especially now he had a gang of dogs coming with him. Which would they fear more? Ella’s warning or the things bolting towards them across the field?

One of the girls obviously decided to risk the gate. She walked quickly towards it, and Ella screamed louder than she had ever screamed before in her life, shrill as a referee’s whistle.

A boy hurried after the girl and pulled her back, and at last Ella and Scarface were there.

‘He’s all right!’ Ella shouted, wriggling down out of Scarface’s arms. ‘He won’t hurt you. He’s not an enemy. He’s been looking after me. But this is his home and there are traps.’

Her words had come spilling out in a breathless tumble and she hoped it was enough. The kids were all armed and ready to fight. Scarface had his knives in his hands. He didn’t trust them any more than they trusted him. The mongrel was zooming around them, jumping up, and snapping and yapping. Scarface kicked it away and risked glancing back at the field. The other dogs were still coming through the grass.

One of the boys pointed at Scarface.

‘We know who he is,’ he said. ‘He’s The Predator.’

‘Never seen him up close before,’ said another boy. ‘He’s even uglier than I thought.’

‘He’s a good person,’ said Ella angrily.

‘Never mind that,’ said the girl who had almost got herself killed in Scarface’s traps. ‘Those dogs are going to massacre us.’

They all turned now, weapons at the ready, set to take on the pack.

The dogs were nearly on them, but they were slowing down, and at the last moment they began to split and turn to left and right, avoiding the farm, all except for one huge brute with a square head and short black fur. It charged towards the kids, who scattered. But the dog ignored them and ran on, not attacking but retreating. It went right past them, barking like mad, and stumbled straight into the tripwires. Ella didn’t manage to look
away in time and watched helplessly as the pole came whipping out of the bushes and smacked right into the dog, taking it in the back of its neck as it jumped up to free itself from the wires.

One of the other girls screamed and a boy laughed. The shortest of the three, the one who’d been mean to Scarface.

‘Did you see that? Sick!’

The dog died instantly and hung there on the spikes, its back legs twitching, as if it was still trying to run.

‘Close one, Sonya,’ said the tallest boy.

‘Ooh, I’d like to have seen that,’ said the short boy. ‘A Sonya kebab.’

‘Shut up, Harry,’ said Sonya.

‘
Shut up, Harry
,’ Harry repeated, mimicking Sonya.

The dogs were still circling the farm, seeming to want to stay close to Scarface, but scared to come
too
close.

‘We’re screwed,’ said the third boy, who had a bow slung across his back, a bandage over one of his eyebrows and a big bruise covering half his face. ‘We can take our chances with the dogs, the grown-ups, or the Windsor bastards. But either way
we are screwed
.’

‘We should keep on running,’ said Sonya.

‘
We should keep on running
,’ Harry repeated.

‘If you don’t shut it I will smash your teeth in, Harry,’ said Sonya.

‘
I will smash your teeth in, Harry
.’

‘Just shut up, Harry,’ said the third boy, and he glanced at Scarface, not liking what he saw.

‘Instead of being a total jerk, as usual,’ he went on. ‘Why don’t you tell us what you think we should do?’

‘To be honest, I agree with Sonya,’ said Harry. ‘I think
we should go on. When those grown-ups get here it’s gonna be well crazy.’

The other girl, who had been quiet up till now, turned to Ella. She looked very similar to Sonya; they could be sisters.

‘We don’t know what to do. Whether to keep on running. Did you see them? The grown-ups?’

Ella nodded.

Sonya was staring into the distance.

‘How long before they get here?’ she asked nobody in particular.

‘Fifteen, twenty minutes maybe,’ said the boy with the bruised face. ‘We can’t keep on running. We can’t get round them. We need to hide.’

Sonya was now looking along the road towards the gate.

‘If you go carefully you can get over the wires,’ said Ella.

Scarface grunted and gave her a look, as if to say, ‘Why are you inviting them in?’

‘They can help us defend the farm,’ she explained, hoping he’d understand.

‘I’m with Isaac,’ said the tallest boy, the oldest-looking one, who had a round face and spots. ‘I say we hole up here. We’re way off our turf and it’ll be dark soon.’

The short boy, Harry, eyed Scarface suspiciously. He was wearing a black North Face jacket that he’d painted with slogans: kill all zombies – ladies’ man – i will eat you.

‘You sure Pizzaface is safe?’ he said.

‘Why would I lie to you?’ said Ella.

‘
Why would I lie to you?
’ Harry repeated, and Ella felt her
face get hot. She wished she hadn’t said anything. Wished she’d just left these kids to look after themselves.

Sonya walked over to the wires.

‘Show us the way.’

Ella led them to the gate, carefully avoiding catching Scarface’s eye. He hung back, letting them get ahead, and she heard him making some noise behind them. She knew he’d be pulling the dog off the spikes and resetting the trap.

‘You must never try to open the gate,’ she said when they got to it. ‘Always climb over. And don’t go in the bushes. There are traps everywhere.’

Once safely inside the farmyard the kids stood around awkwardly, taking it all in, unsure of themselves, trying to act tough. Obviously scared. They were older than her, the boy with spots being maybe fifteen. He introduced himself as Daniel, the quiet boy was Isaac and the other girl, who looked like Sonya’s sister, was called Louisa.

‘So what you got here?’ said Harry. ‘We gonna be safe?’

‘You got food?’ asked Sonya.

‘Oh yes,’ said Ella. ‘Lots …’ She stopped herself. ‘Well, not lots, some.’

Stupid. She’d wanted to show off. What if the kids were lying, though? What if they’d only really come here to steal stuff? What if they found out about the barn full of chickens? They might come back with friends, with their own army. She wished Scarface would finish what he was doing and come back. She didn’t feel like she could deal with this by herself.

‘He got weapons?’ Harry went on.

‘Oh yes,’ said Ella, the words coming out in a rush. ‘Loads. He’s really good at hunting, he hunts grown-ups
and he kills them, he’s very good at killing, every day he kills people …’
People like you
, she wanted to add as a warning, but thought that might be going too far.

‘Do you live here then?’ asked Louisa. ‘With Ghostface?’

‘Duh,’ said Harry. ‘What do you think, Louisa? Oh, I forgot, you don’t ever think, do you?’

Louisa blushed and looked at her shoes.

‘I didn’t always live here,’ said Ella, coming to Louisa’s rescue. ‘I do now. Scarface saved me.’

‘Scarface?’ said Daniel. ‘Him? The Predator?’

Harry let out a burst of nasty laughter. ‘You can talk, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Are those your spots, or are you looking after them for a grown-up?’

Daniel swore at Harry, who just laughed again.

‘You are such an arsehat, Harry,’ said Isaac and Harry copied him.

‘
You are such an arsehat.
At least I’m not an arse
face
like your friend,’ he added, looking at Ella. ‘He’s ugly as the Elephant Man.’

‘He got kicked by an ugly bastard wearing ugly boots,’ said Daniel.

‘Whacked by the ugly bat.’

‘He won Britain’s ugliest man competition.’

‘
Britain’s Got Ugly Talent
.’

Sonya joined in with them. ‘
Ugly Come Dancing
.’

‘
Ugly on Ice
,’ said Louisa.

‘That’s crap,’ said Harry. ‘
Ugly on Ice
.’ He turned to Sonya. ‘Tell your dumb sister not to try to join in with the jokes.’

‘Actually I thought
Britain’s Got Ugly Talent
was lame,’ said Louisa.

Ella heard something and looked round to see that Scarface had arrived without anyone noticing. He must have heard everything they said. She hated these kids being mean about him. Especially as he might be the only person who could keep them alive when the army arrived.

He was standing there, silent, not moving. The other kids were peeking at him out of the corners of their eyes, not wanting to stare. Pretending they hadn’t been laughing at him.

‘We should check out these buildings,’ said Isaac, looking round the yard, changing the subject.

‘Yeah,’ said Daniel. ‘The farmhouse looks pretty solid.’

‘It’s not safe,’ said Ella, almost before he’d stopped talking. ‘It was burned.’

‘We should still check it out, though.’

‘He won’t even let me see inside,’ said Ella.

‘We gotta do what he says?’ said Sonya, her voice all sneery.

‘He’ll kill you if you try and go in there.’ Ella couldn’t think of what else to say. She needed to change the subject. Besides, it wasn’t necessarily a lie. It wasn’t working, though; the kids were still looking over towards the farmhouse. What if they searched everywhere and found the food, the chickens?

‘There’s a look-out,’ she blurted.

‘What sort of look-out?’ Isaac asked.

‘In the trees,’ Ella went on quickly, pointing up to where one of the platforms was just visible. ‘We can see where the grown-ups are maybe? They might not even be coming this way. We should check.’

Ella led them over to a shed.

‘Who’s coming up?’ she asked. Sonya and Isaac stepped
forward. There was a ladder you put against the shed, then you climbed on to the roof, and from there you could lean over and reach the first wooden board that was nailed to a big tree.

‘We’ve heard about The Predator,’ said Sonya as they began to climb. ‘Everyone talks about the creepy skulls and weird crap he has hanging up everywhere. But nobody really knew what he looked like. We keep away from him.’

‘He’s not a monster,’ said Ella.

‘Can he understand us?’ Sonya asked. ‘Can he talk, or what? What is he?’

‘He can’t talk,’ said Ella. ‘But he
can
understand.’

‘I don’t trust him,’ said Sonya. ‘I wouldn’t live here with him. I’d be scared he might fatten me up and eat me one night.’

‘I’m not scared of him,’ said Ella.

‘You should be,’ said Sonya. ‘We need him for now, but if you like, when this is over, we can try and get rid of him for you.’

‘Oh no,’ said Ella, panicked. ‘No, you mustn’t.’

Sonya laughed. ‘I was only joking,’ she said.

But was she? Ella couldn’t be sure.

There was only a small platform up in the tree, with just enough room for one of them at a time. Two ropes tied round the trunk led from there to another tree, then another. By using them as a bridge, they could get to the main viewing platform at the front of the farm. Sonya and Isaac went first, standing on one rope, their hands on the other, wobbling and swaying backwards and forwards, laughing to cover their nervousness.

Ella waited till they’d reached the next platform and went after them.

Once they were all on the main platform they looked out across the fields, but couldn’t see anything of the grown-ups. The army must be hidden behind trees and small rises in the ground.

‘Maybe they won’t come this way,’ said Ella. ‘Maybe we’ll be all right.’

‘They’re out there,’ said Isaac. ‘We all saw them.’

‘One of us needs to stay up here as a look-out,’ said Sonya. ‘I think you should, Isaac. You can fire your arrows down from here.’

‘How many arrows have you got?’ Ella asked.

‘About twenty-five, thirty,’ said Isaac.

‘And how many grown-ups did you see earlier?’

‘Yeah, way more than that,’ said Isaac, and he gave a harsh laugh. ‘Better than nothing, though.’

Isaac agreed to stay up there if they brought him something to eat and Ella took Sonya back down.

When they got back to the yard, the other kids came over and crowded round them, asking loads of questions, trying to reassure themselves they’d made the right decision to stop here.

‘We couldn’t keep on running,’ said Louisa.

‘Specially as you run like a typical girl,’ said Harry, and he went into a silly run, all wobbly knees and flapping arms. ‘Look at me,’ he squealed in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m a kind of crap dinosaur.’

Sonya stepped up behind him and tripped him, sending him sprawling into the dirt. He swore at her, but she stood over him and held him down with the heel of her boot.

‘If you have a go at my sister one more time I will shove your head up your arse,’ she said. ‘And you can see what you had for lunch.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Harry. ‘Lost your sense of humour? Besides, you’re always having a go at her.’

‘She’s my sister, that’s different.’

Ella left them to it and went to look for Scarface. She found him near the gate, rigging up more defences. Pulling some vicious-looking farm machinery into place. She said hello to him, but he ignored her. He looked in a bad mood, but whether that was because there was an army of grown-ups on its way or because Ella had invited the others in she couldn’t tell. When he was in one of his moods, he behaved like a little kid.