The Hunted

by Val Tobin

  They maintained a slow pace since Hound Dog kept passing out, and after dragging him for a few paces, they had to stop and rest. Rachel’s back ached. Her throat and lungs burned, probably from inhaling smoke. She tried to ignore it but couldn’t shake the gritty scratchiness in her throat and the pressure in her lungs. Peter, when he spoke, sounded as hoarse and uncomfortable as she did.

  Hound Dog’s throat and lungs seemed to fare better probably because he’d been lying on the ground below the smoke for the worst of it. They’d worked their way beyond it, away from the direction the wind blew it. The rain picked up again, a slow, chilly drizzle that seeped into their bones.

  Every so often, while they rested, Rachel tilted her head up and tried to ease her parched throat with rainwater. They needed to find water soon, and her stomach had already alerted her to its hunger. Peter’s stomach also growled out its desire for food. Hound Dog’s remained silent, his preoccupation pain in the upper body.

  The next time they took a forced rest when Hound Dog drifted into unconsciousness, Peter suggested they try to sleep. They huddled in a clearing, the rain soaking them, but they couldn’t risk going under the trees. Hound Dog lay on his front, his upper body draped across Rachel’s thighs so his head could rest on her lap.

  “We must’ve walked ten kilometres,” Peter said.

  She hated to tell him but had to. “We’ve walked three, and they’ll catch up to us in minutes once they pick up our trail.”

  Peter moaned. “How is that possible? How do you know?”

  “I know how to estimate distance covered based on our walking pace, which has been slower than a turtle’s.” Her words and tone trumpeted her frustration. “I can’t go any faster.”

  “We can’t go any faster,” Peter replied.

  From Rachel’s lap came Hound Dog’s voice. “Leave me. I’ll catch up. I’m slowing you down. You’d be at the highway if it weren’t for me.”

  “I swear, if you suggest that one more time …” She couldn’t finish the threat. She could do nothing to him that was worse than what he already endured.

  “What?” he said and panted a little from the exertion of speaking.

  “I’ll”—she had a sudden idea—“set fire ants on you again.”

  He gave a wheezy chuckle and coughed. “Then I’ll have to sic spiders on you again, Frosty.”

  “Deal. You don’t ever suggest we leave you, and neither one of us will have to retaliate.”

  His hand moved to her leg, and he squeezed her kneecap. “I’m awake. Let’s walk.”

  “Are you sure?” Peter asked. “You look like hell.”

  Hound Dog made that chuckling sound again. “You’d better be talking to Frosty, big guy.” He coughed. “Get me up. You two are slowing me down. Do I have to take the lead here?”

  Rachel opened her mouth to respond when, from deep in the underbrush, came the rustling of movement. Whatever was in there headed straight toward them.

  ***

  All Hound Dog wanted to do was pass out and never wake up, but when the rustling of leaves and brush to the west of them reached his ears, he tried to raise his head. It throbbed and pounded and felt as if someone had thrust a sword through it.

  Peter, already on his feet, brandished a handgun. Rachel gently extricated herself from under Hound Dog, resting his face on the ground. He forgave her—she only did what was necessary to protect them.

  With effort, he raised his head, then his torso, until he rested on his hands and knees. Next to him, Rachel swapped a rifle for Peter’s gun and set the handgun on the ground in front of Hound Dog.

  “If you can, we need all hands,” she said.

  He rose to his knees, clutching the gun in his right hand. “I’m with ya.” The effort to say that while hoisting the gun almost brought his face back down into the dirt, but he rode out the wave of pain and stayed on his knees.

  Who’d have thought the day would come when he’d be grateful for simply staying on his knees? He turned his face up to the rain and let it trickle down his face and into his open mouth. Not exactly Evian, but it would have to do.

  “There’s more than one.” Rachel spoke calmly, but when Hound Dog checked her out, he could see her shaking. Might be the cold, but he doubted it. Her nerves were frayed.

  They had to get out of here. Dog gritted his teeth and staggered to his feet. He refused to greet death on his knees. They’d eliminate whatever burst through the trees, and then they’d hit the road. It had to be close, but close was a relative term, wasn’t it? What before would’ve taken him two minutes to walk now took him twenty, and he could only manage it if Peter and Rachel supported him.

  He’d never been so helpless, and it sucked. Someone would pay for doing this to him if he could only remember what had happened. In a moment of terror, Hound Dog’s memory faltered, and he couldn’t recall why they were here or how he’d been hurt. He almost asked his companions but then realized it would only frighten them more if they discovered he’d lost his mind.

  The brush ceased rustling, and something—some things—paused, panting and hidden from view. Chills ran up Hound Dog’s spine.

  “Get behind me, Frosty.” He wanted to call her Rachel because maybe this would be the last time he’d get to say her name. But he didn’t want to scare her, so he stuck to her nickname, but when he said it, even he heard the affection in it.

  “No.” She moved in front of him, shielding him.

  Irritated, he said, “Damn it, get behind me. It’s grendels.”

  “Sure,” she agreed. “If so, I’ll step aside and let you have them if I miss them. If it’s my father’s thugs, I’ll take them out with my rifle.’ She threw a haughty glance in his direction. “But I won’t miss.”

  When the creatures burst into the clearing, Rachel fired first.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One dropped from a bullet to the head.

  “All right, you had your shot,” Hound Dog hollered. “Step aside.”

  The three other creatures moved fast, descending on Rachel as she struggled to line up another shot.

  Hound Dog knocked her aside with his left arm and took his shot with the handgun in his right. Another grendel dropped, followed immediately by the third as Peter squeezed off a shot that hit true.

  The fourth leaped on Rachel, sinking its teeth into her thigh. She screamed, the sound chilling Hound Dog and sending his blood and adrenaline pumping. He dropped on it, dug his fingers into its eyes, and when it opened its mouth, he hauled it off Rachel. Since he didn’t know where he’d dropped his gun, he yanked a knife from the sheath at his belt and sliced its throat open.

  While the beast twitched its last, Hound Dog hurled himself beside Rachel. Peter already pressed on the wound with his hands.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Rachel stuttered out between sobs. “He didn’t get the artery. I moved, Dog. I moved in time, and he didn’t get the femoral artery.”

  “Okay, Rache, it’s okay. We’ll fix it.” His head swam, and he gritted his teeth and focused all his effort on not passing out on top of her.

  They were two team members down. The only one unhurt was a civilian.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I should’ve done what you said.”

  “Can’t argue with that, sweetheart.” He patted her cheek. “This’ll kill me, but my shirt must be sacrificed to the cause.”

  He met Peter’s gaze over Rachel’s head. “I’ll need your help.”

  “Okay, anything,” Peter replied.

  Hound Dog directed Rachel to put pressure on her leg while Peter helped remove Hound Dog’s jacket and T-shirt. Peter then tore the shirt into strips, and they bandaged Rachel’s wound. They needed to get to a doctor for Rachel’s sake as well as Hound Dog’s. A grendel’s bite didn’t contain poison, but it could cause an infection.

  The pain came rushing back into Hound Dog’s head and shoulder as the adrenaline rush diminished. His vision greyed and he dropped onto his butt,
drawing his knees up and putting his head between them. Nausea threatened, and he focused on his breathing, trying to quash the queasiness.

  “How can we possibly keep going?” Rachel’s voice held despair, and she dropped her chin so her hair hung in her face.

  “Don’t quit on me, Frosty. You’re the only thing keeping me going.”

  Peter leaned into Hound Dog’s face, making him lurch back. He let out an involuntary yelp of pain followed by a string of curses.

  “What?” He glared at Peter.

  “Sorry. We should get moving.”

  Hound Dog checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. Dawn was hours away. They hadn’t reached the marina yet, and he doubted they should head that way. The place could be another trap. With nowhere else to go, it would be the perfect place for an ambush.

  “A boat.” Hound Dog’s voice danced with excitement. “Either of you know where an old cottage around here might have a boat?”

  Rachel slowly raised her head, and the look of hope on her face warmed Hound Dog’s innards.

  “It’s a long shot, I know,” he said.

  Peter considered. “The closest cottage is the one on the point.”

  “Yes,” Rachel agreed. “They had watercrafts, and the cottage is located before we’d get to the marina, if we alter our route a little. We’ll have to backtrack, but that might help us. My father would expect us to try to make it to the marina, not head to a place that’s totalled and a dead end.” She fell silent a moment before she continued. “But if any of the boats are there, we could strike out into the lake, go around the island, and cut back to the highway through the creek that feeds from the lake. Or we could cut across the lake and take a different road altogether. We’d lose any pursuit that way.”

  “Unless they anticipate it and have motorboats,” Peter said quietly.

  She sighed. “I don’t know what else to do. If we follow the road, they’ll find us. If we stay in the woods, more grendels will attack us—and then my father’s people will find us.”

  Peter helped Rachel to stand and then assisted Hound Dog to his feet. Hound Dog’s vision wavered again, and he closed his eyes, biting back a groan. He placed his left arm around Rachel’s shoulders and his right one around Peter’s.

  “Can you walk with me hanging off you, Frosty?” Her wound was fresh. He’d had time to get accustomed to his. At least, that was how he saw it. The bite on her leg, when he’d examined it, hadn’t looked deep, but the creature had shredded the tissue. She’d have a wicked scar for the rest of her life—which would hopefully go beyond tonight.

  “Yes, as long as you stay conscious. Try not to pass out or we’ll all go down.” No annoyance tinged her voice; she simply stated a fact.

  “I’ll do my best,” he replied, and as one, they started moving.

  The pace was excruciatingly slow topped with painfully slow and with a delightful cream filling of hideously slow. To make matters worse, Hound Dog kept losing his train of thought and caught himself regularly wondering what someone had just said.

  Twice, he must have nodded off because he suddenly came to lying on the ground, his head in Peter’s lap. He was beyond caring how it looked, but he missed the intimacy of resting on Rachel. That he always referred to her in his head as Rachel and not Frostbite wasn’t lost on him. He chalked it up to the direness of their situation and that he perhaps wanted his last night on Earth to be spent touching a woman rather than a man.

  But he figured he preferred the man over the cold, wet ground.

  At this point, he remembered they needed to keep moving. One more grendel attack might do them in. He alerted the other two to his readiness to continue the hike, and they started the cycle over.

  In this way, they made it at last to the cottage on the point Peter and Rachel had discussed. Hound Dog first glimpsed the building through a foggy haze. He had to squint into the moon-dim night where he discerned the outline of a small bungalow-type structure. The roof was gone, of course, and, more to the point, a tree had fallen on it and shoved most of it off its foundation and into the lake.

  “I guess we’re not going in,” Peter commented.

  “Not tonight,” Rachel answered. “Help me and Hound Dog find a place to sit, and then you search for boats. They had an aluminum fishing boat. If we can find that and the oars, we’ll be okay.”

  Peter agreed and helped them hobble over to what remained of the back porch. It had detached when the rest of the cottage slid away, but the cedar boards were in good shape, and a built-in bench spanned the perimeter. When the two wounded had settled in, Peter started walking away.

  Rachel stopped him. “Peter.”

  He halted and turned to face her, his expression puzzled.

  “Let’s see that gun at the ready.”

  “Right.” He held it up and walked away.

  Rachel turned to Hound Dog, her brown eyes sparkling black in the moonlight. “How’s the shoulder and the head?”

  He shrugged. “It won’t kill me tonight, I suppose. How’s the leg?”

  She smiled, making his heart beat faster. “It won’t kill me tonight, I suppose.”

  To lighten the mood and get under her skin, he said, “Damn, Frosty, I wanted to be the first one to bite you there.”

  “Shut up, Dog,” she said, but she didn’t sound angry or even unhappy.

  Suddenly, Hound Dog wanted like hell to get home and start over with her. If they died here, she’d never know how much she meant to him.

  “Listen,” he said, “I have to tell you something.”

  “Sounds serious.” Her expression grew grim, and she leaned toward him. “Is it your head?”

  “No.” As soon as he said it, his shoulder and head both kicked up the throbbing and burning. “I mean, yes, that’s always an issue, but something else.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “If I don’t make it—”

  She cut him off. “Don’t start.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and he found that touching enough he figured they didn’t need to have the conversation after all.

  “All right. How about this: when we get home, we make a new start. Forget I dosed you with spiders, and I’ll forget you put ants in my pants.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “Interesting. A clean slate. You going to suddenly turn into a gentleman?”

  “A gentleman?” He scoffed at the idea. “You won’t get any mamby-pamby romance crap from me. No, you’ve got to hold your own with me, sweetheart.”

  She laughed, the sound deep and from the belly. “Oh, thank God. I thought you were going soft on me.”

  From below them came a splash and a shout. They both jumped to their feet, each letting out a groan of pain.

  “What now?” Hound Dog said.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rachel picked her way down toward the water where they’d heard the cry. The voice was Peter’s. On the positive side, he hadn’t sounded frightened or hurt, so she hoped it meant he’d found the boat. But he should’ve known better than to blast out their position like that.

  She kept her pace steady so she didn’t lose Hound Dog, partly for his safety and partly for her own. If grendels lurked, she needed him to cover her. She’d never make such a mistake of arrogance again. Her refusal to accept she might be injured in a grendel attack had cost them the full use of her left leg.

  Up ahead, she spotted movement by the water. A man wrestled with an aluminum boat, and when she squinted, she verified the man was Peter. The boat was half in the water, as was Peter, up to his knees. He struggled to drag the boat back up the rocks, but it kept sliding back in.

  Behind her, Hound Dog dropped to his knees. She turned back to help him and spotted the camera.

  “Dog.” She pointed to a metal pole looming above the roof of the cottage.

  He raised his head and faced the direction she pointed. “Shit.” He slowly regained his feet. “Do you think they’re monitoring it?”

  “If they are
, they already know we’re here, assuming the camera belongs to my father. It’s probably motion-activated.”

  She reached him and offered her arm. When he took it, she let him lean on her and guided him down to the water.

  “Stay on shore and watch for grendels while I help Peter,” she ordered.

  “I’ll do better than that. Hand me your rifle.”

  She knew what he wanted to do and preferred that option to providing her father and his people an unobstructed view of their activities. Rachel handed over the rifle and said, “Have at it.”

  “Here.” He held the handgun out to her. “I don’t want you unarmed. Ever.”

  She accepted the gun without comment and then made her way down to the rowboat. She peered into it. “No oars?”

  Behind them, the rifle blasted and the camera smashed. Bullseye.

  “No,” Peter replied. “The boat was half in the water. I had to empty it and drag it back onto the shore.”

  “We’ll have to search for oars. We need a way to manoeuvre.”

  “I got it. Let me look in that shed they have next to where the cabin used to be.”

  “Watch yourself. They probably have more than one camera out here. You got your gun?” she asked even though she could see it hanging at his side in his hand.

  He gave her a sheepish look and raised it, holding it out in front of him as he made his way back up the rocky slope to the shed.

  “They saw him messing with this boat.” Rachel lifted Hound Dog’s arm and draped it around her shoulders.

  “I can stand,” he said, his voice flat, but he didn’t remove the arm. “What can we do about it? Now they know where we are and that we’re trying to leave by boat.”

  “They don’t know if we’ve found the oars.” She gave him a side-wise glance. “I have an idea.”

  Peter found oars and returned with them, but when he heard Rachel’s plan, he balked.

  “No way. Not a chance. Not on your life.”

  Hound Dog laughed. “Tell us what you really think, civilian.”