Hikers - The Collection (Complete Box Set of 5 Books)

by Lauren Algeo

  She laughed almost mechanically. The sound sent icy chills down Georgie’s spine. The hiker’s skin was porcelain white in contrast to her coal black hair and eyes. She was wearing a knee length, grey dress with black stockings and flat, black shoes. The dress was long-sleeved with a scooped neckline that showed off the hiker’s heaving chest. She wasn’t wearing any sort of coat, despite the freezing temperature yet there were no goose bumps on her creamy flesh.

  She turned her gaze to Georgie.

  ‘I’ll enjoy making you squirm the most.’ She pursed her blood-red lips and narrowed her eyes in concentration.

  ‘Open up for me,’ she purred.

  Georgie felt the hiker probing at the edge of her mind, looking for a way in. She was gentle, almost teasing, but Georgie anticipated another burst of power like the one she’d displayed after she’d been shot.

  Georgie waited patiently, guarding herself from each little dig. Several minutes ticked by but she refused to relax. Brewer stood rigidly next to her, silent, waiting for the attack they both knew was coming.

  Bam! The hiker burst into Georgie’s head. She felt her roughly trying to grab at her memories. Georgie gritted her teeth and forced the hiker back out. She was a strong one and it took several attempts to bolt the door against her again.

  The hiker giggled and the sound echoed eerily in the woods.

  ‘A virus, huh?’ she questioned them. ‘You really think that will kill me!’

  Brewer looked evenly back at her. ‘It killed your brother.’

  The smile froze on the hiker’s lips. ‘So it was you who killed Greiger!’ she hissed.

  Brewer nodded. ‘It was slow and painful, and it will happen to you too.’

  The hiker battered against his mind; seeking the truth about what they had given her and whether she would die. It was the most mortal she had ever felt.

  Brewer held strong and her efforts died down. She probed in little bursts again and he suddenly realised what she was doing.

  ‘She’s working out which area of our minds she needs,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Georgie frowned.

  ‘With the half-hearted attacks; she’s searching for the areas of memories she wants,’ he told her. ‘So when the big hit comes, she has just enough time to snatch what she needs. Like getting that you’d infected her from your mind.’

  ‘Sneaky bitch,’ Georgie muttered.

  The hiker chuckled darkly.

  ‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ She mocked in a singsong voice then she lunged into his head again, ransacking the memories she wanted and retreating before he could kick her out.

  ‘Rabies!’ she spat.

  ‘Yes rabies,’ Brewer replied. ‘A fitting end for an animal like you. I trust you’ve seen that I wasn’t lying and it will kill you.’

  The hiker’s stony silence was all the confirmation he needed.

  ‘You want answers from us?’ he continued. ‘Well, we’ve got some questions for you too.’

  The hiker snorted a laugh. ‘I’ll never tell you anything.’

  She had resigned herself to her fate but she would go out fighting. They wouldn’t get a thing from her. She decided that she would learn as much as she could about these terrible people and relay the information to the Grand before her death.

  She quit struggling against the handcuffs and stood up straighter, so she was looking squarely at Brewer and Georgie.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘How old are you?’

  Silence.

  ‘What the fuck are you?’ Georgie cut in.

  Nothing.

  She would bide her time and find out what her father would want to know.

  Chapter 38

  Time was not on the hiker’s side. Brewer and Georgie watched with satisfaction as the rabies took hold rapidly.

  She refused to answer any of their questions and repeatedly tried to get into their minds to answer her own. Georgie got frustrated and began edging closer until the hiker spat at her and she quickly backed off to a safe distance.

  It started slowly, a couple of hours after they’d infected her. Her attacks began to get weaker and her body started to twitch every now and again. Then she started to shake uncontrollably as the virus hit her nervous system hard.

  A little while later she began to dribble. She could no longer stand up straight to face them and she slumped against the tree trunk, quivering.

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ she slurred.

  They kept on interrogating and after a while, her mind began to betray her. She couldn’t control herself properly while fighting the virus and her mind started to project random images.

  A vision of the boy she’d been trying to make kill himself suddenly flashed up in Brewer’s head.

  ‘She won’t answer but she can’t stop her mind replying now,’ he told Georgie excitedly.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked for the fiftieth time.

  The hiker’s lips stayed closed – albeit a small parting for the dribble to escape – however in his head he heard a faint sigh.

  ‘Matildah.’

  ‘Did you…?’ he started.

  ‘I heard!’ Georgie exclaimed.

  They asked her a series of other questions but the responses were often disjointed memories that didn’t mean anything. When they asked how old she was, the reply was a vision of a woman with auburn hair, and that gave no clue of her age to them. Hikers always appeared timeless – neither young nor old – but some had to be ancient. Their hiker, apparently called Greiger, had looked older than some of the others Brewer had seen.

  The dribbling got worse, until it was continuously around her mouth. The hiker was entering the ‘foaming’ part of the rabies. Her forehead gleamed with sweat and her throat kept hitching with random muscle spasms. Brewer remembered reading about paralysis and that the throat spasms could cut off her airways.

  Shortly after, the hiker had an outburst of rage. Georgie was sitting on a fallen log and Brewer was leaning against another tree, firing off questions, when she suddenly went mad.

  She bucked against the tree and tried to shake off the handcuffs. She yanked them so hard they cut into her skin and blood bloomed around her wrists. She howled and snarled, and tried to charge at them. Spit flew from her lips and her teeth were bared. She looked exactly like the photos of the rabid dogs they’d seen. Her body was succumbing to the virus extremely fast.

  Brewer was forced to let her into his mind a little to try and keep her quiet. In this state, she would alert any passers by that they were there. She wouldn’t manage to get anything of substance from him; she was growing too weak so she just lapped up the titbits of memories he gave her instead, some random things he’d seen in films and holidays he’d been on as a child. She was a fighter and tried Georgie’s mind again but she refused to let her in.

  The hiker quietened down until a sudden bout of vomiting hit her. She doubled over, her body wracked with violent heaving. She moaned in pain, as she was sick again and again. The coughing and spluttering was too much for Georgie and she went for a brief walk until the vomiting passed.

  The hiker had sunk down to her knees, and she was slouched over with a pool of sick on the ground around her. She gasped through her tight throat. There was blood mixed with the drool around her mouth. She looked up at Brewer through blurry eyes and had one last attempt at getting into his head.

  Brewer stared down at her and knew she wouldn’t last much longer. He swatted away her feeble attack and asked the question he’d been dying to know, yet hadn’t wanted to ask with Georgie there.

  ‘Where is the Grand?’

  A series of visions immediately flashed up in his mind. A large manor house, followed by a shadowy image of a man silhouetted in a doorway, then a view of vast land and finally, a village sign post. Brewer staggered back in surprise – the images had been so clear it was as if he’d been there himself.

  Georgie halted sil
ently behind him. She’d gotten back just in time to hear what he’d asked, and had received the visions from the hiker too. She knew he was serious about going after the Grand now.

  The hiker gave a wheezing laugh from the ground.

  ‘You want to find my father?’ Blood bubbled from her lips as she forced the words out. ‘You won’t have to. You believe I only got the scraps you fed to me when you let me into your head? No. I saw the town you live in.’

  She struggled into a sitting position to deliver her final blow. With the last ounce of her strength she sent a pulse out to the Grand.

  ‘He’s coming for you.’

  Chapter 39

  The Grand was back in front of his map again. He’d been spending more and more time staring at the blinking red lights, waiting for one of them to stop.

  He’d added a couple of static black dots at the locations those two people had interfered with his plans. From the positions, he determined that they must live near London, or the south, to travel around so easily but it was hard to pinpoint where.

  He’d instructed some of his unoccupied children to roam the south and try to find any clues. He was starting to take on more contracts down there in a bid to try and draw them out.

  He was now certain that it had been these two monsters who had killed Greiger. He’d had the blood tested and been shocked when the results had come back showing that Greiger had died of meningitis. A virus that was not something one of their kind would usually pick up, so he concluded they must have infected him with it. How they’d achieved that, he did not know. Perhaps one of them had the virus, however that seemed unlikely. Either way, Greiger was dead and they would pay for his murder.

  The Grand sat down at his desk and browsed through the latest files but they bored him. He wanted the man and girl. Knowing they were out there, thinking they were untouchable, made him angry. They were mocking him.

  He sat and thought, and plotted revenge, for most of the afternoon until the peace was shattered by a terrible cry in his head.

  ‘Father!’

  It was one of his daughters, Matildah. He sat upright and listened. She did not sound well and even worse, she sounded terrified.

  ‘I don’t have long left,’ she carried on in a breathless whimper. ‘They found me and infected me with a deadly virus.’

  The Grand felt his blood run cold. Them.

  ‘They have me restrained in some woods however I managed to find out something useful about where they live.’

  A vivid image of a town centre flashed up in his mind. One of the directional signs read ‘West Dulwich’.

  ‘Avenge my death, and Greiger’s,’ she wheezed, her voice fading fast. ‘Goodbye father.’

  ‘Thank you… Matildah,’ he replied but she had already slipped away.

  He focussed on her blinking dot on the map. It pulsed once, twice, three times more then it stopped. The constant, burning red taunting him. She was dead.

  The Grand let out a bellow of rage. Those savages had killed two of his children; this was war. They would be found and tortured for their crimes.

  His shout brought one of his daughters running into the room.

  ‘Father?’ she enquired with concern.

  ‘They have murdered Matildah,’ he seethed.

  His daughter’s eyes narrowed in hatred. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Find them,’ he instructed. ‘Send every child not on a job to… a town called West Dulwich. Bring them to me… alive.’

  Chapter 40

  Brewer stormed through the woods and Georgie had to run to keep up with him. He hadn’t said a word since the hiker’s threat.

  The hiker herself had died moments later. Brewer had carefully removed his handcuffs from her limp wrists and wrapped them in a plastic bag. He’d then taken a couple of samples of her bloody saliva in plastic tubes and put them in his rucksack. His face had been contorted with silent anger the whole duration.

  Georgie had watched without speaking. Her heart was still in her mouth and she didn’t dare interrupt him with questions when his face was that dark.

  As they hurried back across the park to the nearest transport, she couldn’t keep them in any longer.

  ‘Do you think she really saw?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Or was she lying?’

  ‘I’m so fucking stupid!’ Brewer burst out then he fell silent again.

  Five minutes later, he punched the bus stop. He proceeded to mutter profanities until they were nearly back at the flat. Two roads away from home, he suddenly grabbed Georgie by the shoulders and they both stood on the pavement.

  ‘Can you feel one?’ he demanded.

  It was the first comment he’d aimed at her in over an hour. She listened hard and felt for that niggling sense deep inside her. There was none.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He looked more ashamed than she’d ever seen anyone. ‘I can’t believe I ruined it all. After everything I’ve taught you… I underestimated that bitch. I thought the virus had made her weaker than that. I screwed it all up.’

  ‘She could have been bluffing.’ Georgie tried to reassure him.

  ‘No.’ Brewer glanced at her with hooded eyes. ‘She saw it and she showed the Grand. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming for us here.’

  ‘But she only saw the town, not the flat. There are thousands of people. What if…’

  Brewer was no longer listening. His mind tortured him over and over again with the moment he’d let her into his head, that one stupid moment. Why had he done it? Surely there had been another way to keep her quiet.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered again.

  He wanted to kick and punch everything but that wouldn’t do any good. He’d never been so furious with himself. A few days ago he’d had the perfect plan, only it had all gone to shit now. He couldn’t very well leave Georgie the flat as a safe house if the hikers already knew about it. He’d always been so bloody careful.

  Georgie let them into the flat. It was undiscovered for now but it wouldn’t stay that way. Who knew how many hikers could descend on the town in the next couple of days. They could search the mind of every person until they found them, or found someone who could lead the way to them.

  He needed to think, however he was too wound up. Georgie stood back as he stalked into the living room. She was giving him space to calm down but he could see the fear in her eyes.

  He snatched a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen counter and gulped some down greedily. The taste made him screw up his nose and a few drops trickled down the side of his mouth. He put the bottle down and stood, panting, with his hands flat on the counter. The liquid warmed its way down to his stomach and he waited for his head to clear.

  His racing mind tried to process the day’s events. She’d seen the town, he had to accept that, and the Grand would know where to find them. They had some more rabid saliva from the female but not enough for the amount of hikers that could descend there.

  They could pack up their stuff and leave the flat for good. It would take a while for the Grand to rally his children, get them there and begin the long hunt for them. They had time to get their shit together and find somewhere else to live temporarily, although he really didn’t want to do that.

  He’d invested a lot in setting the flat up as a safe house for him, and now a future inheritance for Georgie. The idea of trying to sell it while never coming back to town seemed like a lot of hassle. Plus, he felt too defiant to leave there. It was his base camp, damn it, the place he came back to after every hunt to plan his next move. He wouldn’t let them take that away from him too.

  So what to do? He could send Georgie away to keep her safe and stay there to fight alone. No, they knew about her so they’d keep trying to find her, even with him dead. And the Grand was old, would he really travel there for a confrontation? Unless…

  Brewer’s mind recalled the hiker’s answers to his question about the Grand. The mansion, the scenery, the villa
ge sign. He could go to the Grand. Take the fight there so the flat would be safe and undiscovered.

  The cogs in his head turned rapidly. Yes, he could take the showdown there… wherever there was. The sign had been ‘Embsay’. He could look it up on the internet and find out, then he could leave Georgie somewhere safer while he went to finish this once and for all.

  The Grand would want him alive so he could punish and torture him for information. All he had to do was find the place and the hikers there would take him straight to their father. Then he could kill the Grand, and subsequently all the other hikers, before they got to Georgie.

  He’d spoken to his solicitor the week before and she’d prepared the relevant forms for him. All he had to do was go to her office and sign the updated will, then everything he had would be left to Georgie when he died. She’d be set up for a decent life in a hiker-free country. It was perfect.

  Brewer had been standing there for so long, leaning against the kitchen counter with his eyes closed, that Georgie started to get worried. She edged closer and put a hand on his arm, making him jump out of his thoughts.

  ‘Scott?’

  He could hear the worry in her voice.

  ‘I’ve got a plan,’ he assured her. ‘I’m going out for half an hour. Stay here and keep watch. I think we’ve got time but if you hear any sign of them, get yourself somewhere safe first then call me on the mobile.’

  He was gone before she could ask where he was going and what the hell his plan was. The front door slammed on her questions.

  Chapter 41

  The solicitors’ office was just closing for the evening when Brewer burst in. It was nearly 5:30pm and his solicitor wanted to go home but he was so frantic she agreed to stay and get the forms signed.

  ‘That’s legal now, right?’ he asked, fifteen minutes later when they’d gone through the papers. ‘She’ll inherit everything?’

  ‘Yes,’ the solicitor replied.

  She was mildly curious about who this eighteen year old, unrelated girl was who he was leaving his life to, but it was after hours and she had plans for the evening. She filed the forms and showed him out, then carried on with her day without another thought.