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

by Lauren Algeo

  She yanked him down towards her and they stumbled backwards through the door. They grappled to the floor and she hoped she was strong enough to keep him trapped.

  Suddenly her body was plummeting towards the solid ground below. She held on with everything she had and focussed on her dad’s smiling face.

  Chapter 51

  Through the painful torture of Karen’s last days searing into his mind, Brewer had reached out one last time to Georgie. He had accepted they would never get out of this alive and steeled himself to go out fighting, if he could.

  He sensed a movement to his left and suddenly Georgie shot into his field of vision. She was running directly towards the window. The Grand released his hold on Brewer’s mind instantly to go after Georgie’s. The realisation of exactly what she was doing hit him hard.

  ‘No!’ he yelled, rushing for the window as he regained control of his body. ‘Georgie!’

  It was too late. She crashed through the glass with the Grand fully inside her head. Brewer reached the window frame as a sickening thud sounded from below. He tried to peer down through the shattered glass but Celiah shoved him aside roughly and he dropped to his knees, still shouting.

  ‘Father!’ Celiah screamed.

  Brewer looked up in time to see the Grand crumple to the floor. His eyes were wide and unblinking. A second later, a low buzz began to resonate inside Brewer’s mind. It was omitting from the Grand’s lifeless body.

  The hikers heard it much louder than he could. Celiah gave an ear-piercing shriek and clutched at her head. Louis shook his head from side to side, as if he could clear the sound. The other male hiker had his hands firmly clamped to his ears. The buzzing grew louder and more high-pitched. Brewer winced and covered his own ears but it was no good, the awful sound was in every part of his brain.

  It grew louder still and he curled into a ball, whimpering. It was even more magnified to the hikers, who had shared a direct link with the Grand’s mind. They howled and moaned. Celiah was tearing at her face now, as if she could rip her ears off to make the noise stop. The other male hiker clawed at his ears too and Brewer could see bright spots of blood blooming on his skin. It was a thousand times worse than the night he’d seen the Grand kill that male hiker.

  Louis was the first to collapse. He dropped to the floor like a stone and lay twitching uncontrollably. The crescendo of noise peaked and the other two hikers hit the floor beside Louis. Brewer felt as though his teeth would fall out of his head with the intensity of the noise. His eyes and nose were streaming. He wiped at his face and when he pulled his hands back, he saw there was blood on his palms. A second later his left eardrum burst with a barely audible pop. The pain was excruciating. Brewer writhed on the floor and wondered if this was what dying felt like.

  All of a sudden, the noise stopped. For a moment, he thought he was dead, but he could still feel his heart drumming inside his chest. He sat up slowly, gasping, feeling the agony in his head. There was a light ringing in his ears, as though he’d been standing next to a loud speaker. The blood running from his nose trickled into his mouth and he rubbed at it with trembling fingers.

  Brewer struggled to his feet but his legs buckled, sending him down hard on his backside. He embraced the floor and crawled over to the nearest hiker instead. Celiah’s body was five feet away from him. He nudged her with the heel of his hand. She didn’t move.

  He fumbled for her neck and tried to feel for a pulse. There wasn’t one. He quickly scrambled over to the other two hikers and checked them too. They were both dead.

  Brewer choked back the sobs that were threatening to burst from his throat. She had done it. Georgie had killed them all. He should have been euphoric that the hikers were dead but all he felt was agony. She had sacrificed herself.

  Maybe she’s not dead, a tiny part of his mind whispered.

  He knew it was stupid – of course she was dead if the hikers were – but he couldn’t let go of the idea. He needed to see.

  Before he left the bedroom, Brewer dragged himself over to the Grand. He leant over his motionless body and stared down at him. The Grand’s eyes were still wide open and Brewer didn’t close them. He didn’t want to touch that thing, the hiker that had started all of this tragedy.

  Georgie’s flick knife was on the floor next to his body. Brewer picked it up and without hesitating, he plunged it in to the Grand’s chest. Up to the hilt, right over his heart.

  ‘That’s for Georgie.’ Brewer’s voice sounded far away to his damaged ears.

  He managed to get to his feet on the second attempt and steadied himself near the door. He took one last look at the hikers’ corpses and hobbled from the room, leaving the knife poking out of the Grand’s chest.

  The foyer downstairs was littered with bodies. There were three females and one male sprawled on the marble floor. The other hikers who had returned to join the Grand’s killing party. Brewer stepped over them without pausing.

  Halfway across the foyer, he doubled back on himself, weaving along the hallway as if he was drunk. He pushed open the door of the study and stood vacantly in front of the illuminated map. A place he had been not an hour before with Georgie by his side.

  All the red lights were still. The hikers in the country were all dead. The constant, burning lights gave him no comfort. He walked back into the hallway and focussed on the front door again.

  He took a deep breath and stepped outside. It was freezing but he barely noticed. He limped slowly from the shadows of the porch and looked left along the wall.

  Georgie lay in a heap, facing away from him, with shards of broken glass littered around her. His boots crunched loudly with every step and he dropped to his knees beside her body.

  ‘Georgie?’ he whispered.

  He touched her arm only there was no response. Her red hair was covering most of her face and he smoothed it back. He eased her towards him until her body rolled onto her back. There were small lacerations across the left side of her face from the glass but her eyes were closed and she looked almost peaceful. He tried to ignore the ugly gash on the right side of her head, the one that had matted her hair into a wet clump and stained the gravel underneath her bright red.

  He cradled her fragile body in his arms and let the tears come. His chest hitched painfully as his body was wracked with sobs.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he cried again and again.

  He didn’t know how long he stayed there but fingers of light began to appear on the horizon. He had to get away from this house of bodies.

  Brewer leant down and tenderly kissed Georgie on the forehead. Her skin was cold under his lips.

  ‘Your dad would have been proud,’ he said gently, with an aching heart.

  He carefully picked up her stiffening body and staggered wearily to his feet. He fought down the wave of nausea that surfaced as her head lolled back to reveal the horrific cause of her death once more.

  He gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead through glassy eyes. He walked purposely towards the front gate, with tears drying on his ashen cheeks and Georgie’s small, lifeless body in his arms.

  Epilogue

  Brewer sat slumped in his armchair, staring at the blank TV screen. There was a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his left hand and he occasionally took a swig. He was running low on alcohol and would need to venture outside at some point to stock up. But not today.

  He ran his right hand across his face, feeling the rasp of the beard that had grown there. Two weeks had passed in a blur. Brewer had stayed in the flat, mainly sitting in semi-darkness and submerging himself in a haze of alcohol. His mind tortured him in every waking moment, and chased him with nightmares in the rare times sleep took hold.

  He went over that fateful night again and again in his head; trying to find a way it could have turned out differently. Anything he could have done to save Georgie.

  It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have listened to her and let her come along. He should have made her stay somewhere safe
and carried out his original plan to kill the Grand – alone. None of it would bring her back but he couldn’t stop the endless loop of ‘what ifs’.

  He tried to use alcohol to numb the pain; instead it only muted it to a dull ache. He felt empty inside. His life had no meaning now. The hikers may have been dead but he would undo that in a heartbeat to bring Georgie back if he could.

  His eyes flicked to the empty space on the wall where his map had been. He had torn it down in a fit of rage the first day he’d arrived back at the flat. There had been a male hiker’s body by the bins at the back of the dry cleaning shop below. Brewer had given it a vicious kick on the way past. He had gone into the flat and promptly attacked the furniture, unleashing all of his pent up anger. There were still piles of books littered around the floor from where he had thrown them off the bookcase. He’d hurled several kitchen appliances his rage, ripping them from their sockets. There were a few overturned chairs around the dining table. His flat was a mess and his mind had all but fallen apart.

  He had flashbacks of Georgie’s stiff, grey body, of him digging a shallow grave to bury her in the Dales at dawn. Of the sound the dirt had made as he’d showered her body with it; covering her face until there was nothing left. He’d had to leave her up there. He couldn’t bring her back to give her a proper funeral; there would have been too many questions. Police enquiries into how she’d died. Besides, there was no one down here to mourn her anyway. She would’ve liked the spot he’d chosen in the Dales – it was peaceful.

  He barely remembered the journey back. The tall man, covered in dirt and grime, with dried blood and snot caked on his face and tears occasionally falling from his dead eyes. No one bothered him.

  He’d only ventured outside the flat once since he’d been back – two days after to stock up on JD. The hiker’s body was gone from behind the bins. He didn’t know who had removed it, or what they had done with it, but he didn’t care. He’d stumbled blindly to the nearest shop, purchased six bottles of JD and left. He didn’t notice the curiosity and fear in the shopkeeper’s eyes at his appearance.

  He was still wearing the same jeans and t-shirt as he had been on that night, however he had taken off his jumper. It had been dotted with Georgie’s blood.

  He stayed moulded to the armchair, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating just enough tasteless food to stay alive. Not that there was much reason to now. The only thing that stopped him from taking the coward’s way out was Georgie. He could almost hear her furious voice in his head every time the thought crossed his mind.

  ‘I didn’t kill myself and that old fucker just so you could bottle it and check out too!’

  No. He would keep on living for as long as he was meant to. It would be his punishment for failing her.

  Brewer took another gulp from the bottle and stared around the room. He would need to tidy up at some point but he just didn’t have the energy. He didn’t know what time it was or even what day. He closed his eyes until he drifted into a merciful sleep.

  Brewer awoke with a start a few hours later. Maybe it was the fact that he’d just had a dreamless sleep for the first time in weeks, but he felt different. Like there was a spark of motivation inside him again.

  He walked stiffly to the bathroom and stripped off his dirty clothes. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and reeled back in shock. He’d always been thin however weeks with no decent meals had left him emaciated. He had a dark beard that made his skin look even paler, and his eyes were sunken into his skull. He looked half-dead.

  The first thing Brewer did was have a scalding hot shower. He scrubbed every inch of his body, until some colour returned to his skin then he wiped the steam from the mirror and shaved off his beard.

  He padded along to the bedroom and paused just inside the door. The bed was still unmade from the last time Georgie had slept in it. There was a pile of her clothes on top of the dresser and a couple of pairs of her shoes lined up by the wall. He sagged against the door as panic threatened to take hold. He was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe and the room spun. It still smelt of her.

  The familiar feeling of grief washed over him. The acute pain he’d felt for months after Karen had died. Still felt. He wanted to run away, to crawl back to the living room and find solace at the bottom of a bottle again, but something stopped him. Georgie would not want that. She’d want him to get hold of himself and do something with his life. Just as he’d wanted her to carry on if he had died.

  So, instead of collapsing, Brewer forced himself into the bedroom. He opened the wardrobe and took out a fresh pair of jeans and a clean jumper. He got some boxer shorts and socks from the drawer and dressed quickly. He regarded his reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door. He looked a little more alive now. He ran a hand through his hair – it was a lot longer than normal and he would need to get it cut.

  Brewer went back to the main room and began to tidy up. He put the books back in their place on the shelf and stacked all the papers neatly. He picked up the chairs and tucked them upright under the table. The kitchen appliances all went back where they belonged and he returned the cushions to the sofa. Everything was in order again.

  He boiled the kettle and made a strong mug of coffee then sat back in the armchair and switched on the TV. He flicked to a news channel and watched with mild curiosity. The Grand’s map had shown the hikers were all dead but he waited for any sign of their activity, just in case. There was no mention of anything out of the ordinary, and nothing about dozens of unidentifiable bodies being found up and down the country.

  Brewer let his mind drift back over the showdown with the Grand only this time he didn’t torture himself. He thought rationally about exactly what had occurred. In hindsight, perhaps his original plan to kill the Grand himself would have failed. Georgie was younger and stronger than him – if anyone could have done it, it was her. She had been brave and powerful enough to carry out what he might not have been able to.

  He tried not to think of the life she’d had before her, which had been cut way too short. She could have given up and let them both die up there at the hands of the Grand, but she’d found the inner strength to fight. Maybe it was meant to be her all along.

  Brewer sipped his coffee and felt his empty stomach rumble. The fridge and cupboards were bare so he would need to venture outside to get some food. He glanced at the clock on the news channel. It was 9:30am, plenty of time to build up the courage to face life.

  He reached down and took his laptop from the rucksack next to the chair. He watched the news while he waited for it to power up. He wanted to be one hundred percent sure the hikers were all gone. He opened the internet browser, ready to trawl through his usual news websites for any sign of them.

  There was a loud ping from the laptop. Brewer scanned the screen in confusion. In the bottom menu bar was a flashing red circle with a number one inside. There was an unread email. Brewer clicked it curiously – he’d never set up the email account on this computer.

  The inbox opened and there was a solitary email in the folder. His heart skipped a beat at the name of the sender – Striker25. The email had been sent a week ago and the subject was ‘Re. You’re not alone.’ He quickly opened the message and scrolled down to the bottom without reading the content.

  Georgie. There was an initial email from her at the bottom that this boy was replying to. She had disobeyed him and contacted Striker25. Brewer gave a bitter smile. It was exactly the kind of stubborn thing she would do. He didn’t know when exactly, but she had set up an email address, activated the account and messaged Striker25.

  He was glad she had. In all the panic and confusion of the last few days before the Grand, he had completely forgotten his intention to contact the boy himself. His plan to inform him of what was going on in England, and what they had discovered about killing hikers, to leave a legacy after he was gone.

  Georgie had done it all for him. In her email, she had introduced who they were and wh
at they knew.

  ‘Scott calls them hikers,’ she had written. ‘And that’s a pretty perfect name for them.’

  She had detailed their efforts to kill them and what hadn’t worked. She’d outlined their own stories at evading them but hadn’t gone into much detail. Most importantly, she had shared the knowledge about the meningitis virus working and the fact they were going to try rabies to see if that worked.

  She must have written it before they had killed Matildah in the woods, perhaps when he had been in the quarantine kennels getting the rabies. Either way, she had done what he’d forgotten to do. He pictured her grinning smugly at him.

  Brewer scrolled back up to Striker25’s response and skimmed over the message. The boy apologised for not replying sooner as he’d been ‘crazy busy’ there and said he was ecstatic that other people knew about them too and were trying to stop them.

  With every line, Brewer’s heart began to sink. Striker25 talked of Philadelphia still being rife with hiker activity. He double-checked the date at the top. The message had only been sent eight days ago – a week after they had killed the Grand. All the hikers should be dead.

  The boy thanked Georgie for her tips on how to kill them and asked her to let him know if the rabies had worked. He planned to try and get hold of the viruses himself and give them a go there – if he could find a hiker. He’d signed off with ‘take care and good luck out there.’

  Brewer re-read the message then rubbed distractedly at his mouth. It wasn’t over – the hikers were still alive in America. Maybe it was a proximity issue and the death sound from the Grand hadn’t travelled across the Atlantic?

  He thought again of Georgie. He knew exactly what she would do with her stubborn nature. She’d already be on a plane to get over there.

  He clicked the ‘reply’ button and slowly typed an email back to Striker25 with heavy fingers. He owed it to her to try and end this for good; to show her that her death hadn’t been for nothing.