by Lauren Algeo
‘What about those silver bullet things?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t that what people use to kill werewolves or demons in films?’
‘Tried it,’ he told her. ‘I spent hours tracking down a silver bullet on the internet and used it on a female.’ He shrugged. ‘Same thing happened – I shot her, she healed within a minute.’
‘Well it was from the internet, maybe it wasn’t a real silver bullet,’ Georgie said pointedly.
The girl exasperated Brewer. He had covered all these thoughts himself.
‘Look, Georgie,’ he said, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt. ‘Bullets don’t work on hikers, silver or otherwise. They have this immense power to heal themselves almost instantly after any trauma.’
‘Fine,’ she replied, not sounding convinced. ‘What else did you try?’
Brewer fidgeted uncomfortably and poured himself another large measure of Jack Daniels. These were not parts of his life he wanted to remember. Georgie held her glass out and he topped her up too. He took a gulp of his drink.
‘I did all sorts of awful things,’ he said. ‘I’m not proud of any of them but they had to be done. It doesn’t matter now anyway, I guess, because none of them actually worked.’
Georgie leaned forward with morbid curiosity shining in her eyes. ‘Like what?’ she pushed.
‘I tried to burn one alive. I stalked a male for a couple of days then when it slept, I doused it in petrol and torched it with a lighter,’ he said quietly, staring into his glass. ‘The smell of burning flesh was horrendous, I could almost taste it, and the flames were so bright. The hiker screamed at first, then it went quiet. It dropped to the ground and rolled a few times then suddenly the flames were out. The hiker was lying there, all blackened and burned, and before my eyes pink skin began to show through. It must have suffered first degree burns all over, however the damaged skin just seemed to flake off and there was new, perfect skin underneath. It took a little longer but after ten minutes the hiker was back on its feet like nothing had happened. I was hiding round the corner watching. I mean, I still had the smell of its burning flesh in my nostrils, but…’ His voice trailed off.
‘It was fine.’ Georgie finished for him.
Her face was paler, as though it had finally gotten through to her that hikers were virtually impossible to kill. He threw in one more story to hammer the point home.
‘I slit the throat of a hiker last year too. Another male. I seem to find it easier to swallow when I experiment on a male, something deep rooted about not attacking a woman or whatever… apart from that female I stabbed… anyway, I used the same knife.’ Brewer took another sip of his soothing liquid. ‘Again, I waited until it slept and I slashed the knife along its neck from ear to ear. I’ve never seen so much blood. It was gushing everywhere and the hiker was making this gurgling noise. Its eyes flew open and it sank down the wall, but the bleeding stopped after a moment as the skin on its throat began to fuse back together. They must regenerate blood amazingly fast because it was getting to its feet before I’d even had time to get round the corner to hide. I felt it trying to get into my mind, although it was weak and I legged it away from there. Just another method tried and failed.’
Georgie shifted on the sofa and brought her knees up to her chin in front of her. For a second, she looked like a young, frightened girl then her face hardened.
‘So conventional methods don’t work…’ she started and Brewer scoffed out loud.
Georgie narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Conventional methods don’t work on these things,’ she repeated. ‘You said there was one other way that did. Let’s hear it.’
She folded her arms across her chest in a petulant manner. Brewer fought back the urge to shake the girl. Before today, she had been blind to the fact that hikers even existed and now she was quizzing him as if she was the expert.
‘Ok,’ he said defiantly. ‘The only other thing I’ve seen that kills a hiker is if it’s still in the victim’s mind when they die. I saw a male hiker on one of its suicide missions. It was convincing a young boy to shoot himself in the head for being a waste of space. They were in some woods in Bedgebury and I came up behind them. I could actually see the boy and the hiker, although obviously the boy didn’t know it was there. He was kneeling on the ground with a handgun in his mouth. The hiker was whispering at the boy to go ahead and shoot, and the boy pulled the trigger. He must have complied more readily than the hiker anticipated because it was midway through urging him on when the blast sounded. Both the boy and the hiker collapsed at the same time. There was a shrill noise from several startled birds in the woods, then silence. No whispering, no movement. I went to investigate and the hiker was as dead as the boy. It was lying on its front and I nudged it over onto its side with my boot. It was a young-looking male and its black eyes were wide open but it wasn’t seeing anything. The boy had a gaping exit wound in the back of his head, however the hiker had dropped down dead for no apparent reason.’
Brewer shrugged. ‘I figured it had to be because it was still trapped in the boy’s mind when he had died. All the other times the hikers stop whispering an instant before their victim dies, so if it doesn’t get out in that second before death then the hiker is killed too.’
‘So if I had jumped in front of that train earlier and the hiker had still been in my head, it would have died,’ Georgie whispered then she looked over at Brewer again. ‘Not a great plan – if you managed to kill one hiker that way, you would be dead too so it would be no good for wiping out all of them’
Brewer drank some more JD and said nothing. He had been working on a new theory for the last couple of months. The Grand was the most powerful of all the hikers, and he could put his voice into the minds of all of them, so he had to be linked to them somehow.
Brewer wondered if he killed the Grand, would all the other hikers die too?
Georgie was oblivious to his silent avoidance of her question.
‘We need to think of a successful way,’ she said with determination, lightly tapping her fist on the sofa. ‘One that we can use to exterminate hikers one by one.’
‘We?’ Brewer’s eyebrows flew up in surprise.
‘Yes, we,’ Georgie replied. ‘You think I can just get on with my life now I know these things are out there? No way.’
Brewer was enraged. He knew blowing up at her would only encourage her crazy ideas though. ‘I work alone,’ he told her through gritted teeth.
‘Fine,’ she huffed. ‘Well I will too then.’
‘Georgie, hikers are extremely dangerous. You don’t know the first thing about them, about protecting yourself from them. You’d be killed… if you even managed to find one that is.’
‘So you teach me then.’ She wouldn’t back down. ‘Train me up using everything you’ve learnt then I’ll go on my way.’
Brewer couldn’t quite comprehend the day’s events. He had saved this girl’s life but now he seemed to be stuck with her. An irritatingly headstrong girl who drove him mad already.
He liked working alone. His past with the first hiker was a private one and he preferred to hunt them by himself. He didn’t want Georgie tagging along. He’d be distracted by worrying about her and what she was doing. That sort of thing could get him killed. Nope. He refused to have a protégée.
‘You don’t want this life,’ he explained gently. ‘It’s lonely and terrifying. I travel all over the country tracking them and rarely stay in one place for long. I come back to base camp here for a couple of days a month maybe. I have no friends and no real future.’
Georgie was toying with her hands and refusing to meet his gaze.
‘You’re young, Georgie. You can have a future, settle down one day. Have a family, whatever. You have much more than my empty life.’
She finally met his eyes and he was shocked to see hers were filled with tears. Her mask of attitude had slipped temporarily.
‘You want to talk about empty lives?’ She asked in a voice that was breaking with emotion. �
��I already have no life. No friends. You know I’m a prostitute, right? You heard what the hiker was saying so you do, but you’ve been too polite to ask about it. A dirty, fucking prostitute. You think your life is terrifying? I’m scared shitless nearly every day. I’ve seen things, experienced things that girls my age couldn’t comprehend, let alone cope with. Hikers are just another link in a long line of depravity. My life is shit.’
She spoke fast and a couple of tears fell from her eyes, although she didn’t look away or wipe at them.
‘If there’s any way that I could turn my life around, even a chance that I could help other people, then I want to take it,’ she said. ‘I want to help you defeat these things. You saved my life and I want to make what you risked for me worth it. And I want to think that my dad would be proud of me. So I am going to join you, and you are going to teach me everything you know. Ok?’
Brewer found himself nodding. Her compelling display of raw emotion had put a hard lump in his throat.
‘Ok,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll train you.’
’Good,’ she nodded back. ‘Then I’ll honour my side of the deal and tell you about myself.’
Chapter 10 – 15th May 2007
‘Georgina!’
Her mum was calling from downstairs and Georgie could smell the burnt toast wafting up from the kitchen – breakfast was ready.
‘Coming!’ She yelled back, however she stayed sitting at the chair in front of her dressing table.
Georgie ran a brush through her long, brown hair and solemnly regarded her reflection in the mirror on the table. She had dark circles underneath her puffy eyes; sleep had not been coming easily lately. Her face was thinner than she’d seen it in a long time but her cheeks were still a little chubby. Georgie porkie.
She stood up from the chair and straightened her school blazer. The ugly green checks on her skirt and oversized darker blazer made her look even wider. She contemplated tying her hair into a ponytail to pull the skin on her face tighter then decided against it. Her long hair acted as a mask that could hide her when she wanted to be invisible.
She picked up her school bag from the bed. Her room was decorated in a baby pink colour, with cream curtains and bedcovers. She hated pink only she didn’t dare ask to change it. And it was neat, way too neat for a teenage girl but that’s how he wanted it. He liked her neat, little-girl-pink room.
Georgie took a breath and steeled herself. He would be lurking out there somewhere. She’d heard them drinking until late last night, maybe he would be sleeping off a hangover. The sickened knot in her stomach was always there lately. She tried to think back to the last time she’d been happy, a time when she hadn’t felt scared or alone.
It had been when dad was still alive. When they’d been a normal, happy family. Her and dad and mum – the three bears. She’d give anything to hear her dad’s affectionate voice as he called her baby bear right now. But she knew better.
Her dad had been killed in a car accident when she was ten and her mum had never been the same since that day. She’d been overcome with grief. Georgie heard her sobbing all night, every night. She went through the days like a zombie. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. She mechanically fed Georgie and sent her off to school each day but the house was a mess.
The doctor prescribed anti-depressants, however her mum took them too sporadically for them to have much effect. Georgie had tried to look after her only nothing she said would get through to her.
Georgie had begun to over-eat for comfort. Stuffing herself with food had made her feel safe somehow. It had been easy – her mum basically let her do their weekly shop online. She didn’t care how many bags of crisps or chocolate bars were in the basket at the end, she just handed Georgie the credit card.
The weight piled on rapidly and before she knew it, there was a fat stranger looking back at her in the mirror. Georgie was disgusted with her new figure but she couldn’t stop the eating. It was as if this layer of fat could protect her from any pain.
Her mum didn’t so much as blink at her daughter’s unhealthy appearance, she didn’t really see Georgie any more. She survived each day but she wasn’t living.
Her dad’s parents were no longer around, and Georgie’s mum had a falling out with hers when Georgie was a baby, so with no other adult support, Georgie became the parent. She learnt to cook and clean the house, how to wash her clothes. She was tackling ironing when she should have been outside playing.
A year after her dad died, Georgie had started secondary school. There was no sentimental gushing from her mum about her little girl growing up, just a nod as Georgie left the house in her new uniform.
Within a week, some boys had given her the nickname ‘Georgie porkie’ and it had stuck. Cruel taunts were yelled at her and she tried to ignore them at school. It was only when she was alone in her room, cramming pieces of chocolate in to her mouth, that the tears would come. Only then could she let out all the pain and hurt she was feeling.
Life had passed like that until she was thirteen. Georgie went through her days at school like a robot: head down, grades up, avoid contact. Her mum had gone through her days in the same fashion – go to work, watch TV, drink.
It had started slowly at first, a few glasses of wine in the evenings to numb the pain, to try and forget. Now it was shots of neat vodka throughout the day. Georgie could see her mum fading in front of her eyes as addiction took hold but there was nothing she could do. Her begging fell on ears that didn’t want to listen and she had no responsible adult to turn to for help. She was scared that if she told anyone about her mum’s drinking, they would take her away, and she didn’t want to leave the house they had shared with dad. She grew to hate the woman her mum had become.
Just before Georgie’s fourteenth birthday, her mum had changed. She had met a new man. His name was Nick and Georgie hated him instantly. He was the polar opposite of dad. Her dad had been tall, with dark brown hair and warm brown eyes. He had been clean-shaven and kept himself in shape with jogging and swimming. Nick was fairly short, with unkempt, dirty-blond hair that hung limply below his ears. He had a beer belly, permanent stubble and cold, grey eyes.
Nick came round most evenings. He and mum drank, stayed up late and had noisy sex. Georgie hated it, hated him. Something about the way he leered at her felt wrong. Every time he spoke to her it put her on edge. He was too touchy-feely. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she sensed something very dangerous about this man.
Georgie stood in her room and gave herself one last look in the mirror.
Just get breakfast and get out of the house as quick as possible, she instructed her reflection.
She threw her bag over her shoulder and pulled open the door. As she moved for the stairs, Nick stepped out of her mum’s bedroom and stood in front of her, blocking the staircase.
‘Morning,’ he croaked in a rusty voice.
Georgie could smell the stale alcohol and sweat pouring off him. His bloodshot eyes ran down her body.
‘Where are you rushing off to?’ He edged closer to her.
Georgie found her mouth too dry to respond. She stood rooted to the spot, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. Nick was still drunk from the night before and he swayed in front of her. He was wearing a creased, grey t-shirt and black boxer shorts.
‘You should wear your hair up,’ he slurred, as he brought his hand up to caress the side of her face.
Georgie backed away from him fast. She didn’t know what to do. Should she run back into her room or try to barge past him?
‘Georgie! You’ll be late!’ Her mum called again from downstairs.
To Georgie’s relief, it seemed to break the awful scene. Nick staggered to the side and stood with a leering smile.
‘Better run along like a good girl,’ he sneered.
Georgie made for the stairs gratefully. As she passed Nick, he reached out and gave her bottom a hard squeeze. With a cry of shock, Georgie bolted down the stairs on rubbery legs. Nick’s
cruel laughter followed her down. She ran from the house and slammed the door behind her.
The day at school passed in a blur. Georgie avoided talking to anyone and kept her head down. As she sat on her own at the side of the playing fields at lunchtime, she contemplated telling a teacher about Nick, but what could she say? The girl who had lost her father hated her mum’s new boyfriend?
The only physical thing to report was the inappropriate grabbing of her bum that morning, only who would believe her? Nick would deny it and her mum would stick by him and say that Georgie was acting out for attention. She didn’t really like or trust any teachers enough to confide in them either. No, she would keep quiet and make sure nothing like that happened again. She had a plan.
After school, Georgie phoned her mum and said she was going to a friend’s house for dinner.
‘That’s nice dear,’ her mum said cheerfully. Not bothering to ask her daughter who this sudden friend was, where they lived, or when Georgie would be home. She was probably just tucking into her first drink of the afternoon.
Georgie took a bus to the local shopping centre and walked around browsing for a couple of hours until the shops began to close at 5.30pm. She went to the food court near the cinema and got herself some dinner from McDonalds with the little money she had. She managed a few bites of her cheeseburger before her hunger faded and the nervous anticipation about going home took over. She hadn’t had much of an appetite lately.
At 6.30pm, Georgie got a bus back to her neighbourhood and went to sit in the local park. It was early summer so the evening would be light for a while and it wasn’t too cold. Georgie sat at a picnic bench and did her homework to pass the time. When the light faded at 8pm, she couldn’t put it off any longer – she had to go home.