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

by Lauren Algeo

  It wasn’t all jokes at my misfortune though, after the video Marcus gave a sincere speech about our friendship. How I’d always been there for him and he knew I always would be for Karen. That he was certain the night I met her in that bar in town that she was the one for me. That he wished us a long and happy life together.

  I could never have imagined on that perfect day what the future held for us. Never considered that we wouldn’t have a long life ahead of us…

  I was hoping that writing about the wedding would make me feel better but I’m just filled with a great sadness. Painfully aware of everyone I’ve lost in my life. I think that’s enough for now.

  4th February 2012

  Today was another extremely eventful one. After a restless night, I followed the hiker to a high school, where she sat down opposite the entrance. She was still there when Ellen phoned me mid-morning to say they had the venom. I gave them directions to come and join me.

  The hiker took up whispering to a new victim while I was waiting for them – someone inside the school. I’d guess a teacher, as she murmured about people not listening again, but we never had to find out. We shot her with the venom before she could really begin any mental torture.

  It was the trickiest take down so far. We had to get some water from a nearby store to reconstitute the powered venom into a liquid and also some rope to restrain her with while we transported her in the car. The best we could get were some leather skipping ropes and a pair of my spare socks to act as a gag.

  We had enough venom for two doses, so we mixed one with water and one with neat vodka, as that’s how Mitch said his friend had used it to get high. I’m not sure which dart was which but we loaded one into the tranquiliser gun and went back to the school.

  The plan was for Ellen to shoot her from the car, in case the hiker recognised her from the bar last night, while Mitch and myself snuck up on her. As soon as Ellen made the shot, we were to drag her to the car and throw her in the boot before anyone knew what was happening. It almost went down like that.

  Ellen shot earlier than we were expecting and the startled hiker began to run towards the car before we had time to reach her. She managed to briefly get inside Ellen’s mind before we could stop her only she didn’t learn anything about us. Luckily she’d run towards the car so she was right next to it when we caught up to her and we bundled her straight into the boot. I bound her wrists and ankles with the rope and we put in the sock gag. The venom was taking immediate effect and her eyes were glazed so we didn’t have to worry about her attacking us in the car – she was too busy trying to fight the poison.

  Finding somewhere secluded to take her was the next hard part. I located a place called Minnechaug Mountain on the map while Ellen drove through the town. We found a quiet road that was surrounded by woods and I scouted around for an empty house… well, sort of empty. The older couple who lived there were away for a few days, judging by the piled up post and half-empty wardrobes.

  I know breaking and entering is pretty extreme but technically we didn’t ‘break’ in – we used the spare key that was hidden by the back door. Ellen was dead against the idea but we had no choice with the hiker thrashing around in the boot. She was getting worse and had vomited at some point during the car ride. We couldn’t keep her in the car in case she tried to attack Mitch’s mind. He’s the only one who hasn’t had to experience that unpleasantness yet and Ellen is keen to keep it that way, which is the only reason she relented.

  The house is mainly hidden by trees and has a long driveway, so I’m sure no one spotted us. We kept the car parked behind the house, out of view of the road, and Mitch and I carried the hiker inside. The venom was acting rapidly and she was semi-conscious when we laid her down on the tiled kitchen floor.

  It was lunchtime and I hadn’t eaten since the night before so Ellen started to make us some pasta from our unsuspecting hosts’ cupboards. The hiker came round and asked who we were. She was even paler then and moaning frequently. She tried to penetrate my mind with probing bursts, like Matildah had done back in the woods at home. I know the tactic all too well and kept her at bay. She made for Mitch’s mind then and I bundled him outside while Ellen distracted the hiker. She looked petrified but I knew she was determined to keep the hiker’s focus away from Mitch.

  From snippets in our heads, the hiker gleaned that she’d been shot with venom, and I threatened her with the other dart-full to try and get her to answer our questions. She must have been in a great deal of pain as she reluctantly replied to a few.

  Her name is Tabitha and she’s thirty-seven years old. She thinks she comes from Tennessee although she’s not certain. How weird is it for you to not know where you came from? Some of her responses were out loud but others were from her mind, as it began to betray her. I don’t know if it was the effect of the venom but the rest of our brief conversation was confusing.

  I asked where the Grand was and she appeared not to understand me. When I called him her father, she got it. I said he would have just arrived in the states but she shook her head and said something strange: ‘Master has always been here’. That’s what it was – not Grand, Master. I’ve never heard him called that before.

  I wanted more answers but she chose that moment to have a seizure. Ellen and I could only watch as her body convulsed on the floor. She settled eventually and slipped back into unconsciousness so we let Mitch back in and ate some pasta in the adjoining living room.

  Tabitha must have been feigning how bad she was as when we went back to the kitchen afterwards, she was trying to open the back door. Somehow she’d managed to drag herself across the room without us hearing. Ellen was at the front and the hiker attacked her mind immediately. She got to the memories of Lucy before Ellen could react through her shock.

  I saw her beginning to break down and I did the only logical thing – I snatched the tranquiliser gun from the counter and shot the hiker with the other venom dart. It hit her chest, just below her neck, and was enough to stop her torture of Ellen. She howled in pain and I dragged her away from the door. She was whimpering pitifully on the floor and I left her to try and comfort Ellen.

  I know exactly what she was feeling – it’s what the Grand did to me. Seeing painful memories of loved ones playing over and over in your mind is horrific. Somehow the hikers make your feelings even more intense. You feel as though the person is right there with you; you can smell them, almost touch them. It’s mental agony.

  We know the double dose of venom will kill her, we just don’t know when. I’ve sent Ellen upstairs to rest while I take the first watch of her. Mitch has gone up too so he can keep an eye on her and watch some TV in the bedroom. I’ve been busying myself with tidying up the kitchen but now every trace of our presence is gone so I’m just sitting at the dining room table, waiting. Mitch is due to take over the next shift in two hours.

  The hiker has been making a nuisance of herself and wheezing to me, despite her failing health. Trying to manipulate me. You know she told me that Ellen ‘likes me’. She said she saw it in her head. She thinks I’m ‘safe’. Tabitha’s obviously just trying to mess with me as that can’t be true… can it? The idea has set my heart racing like a fool. Of course it’s a trick, the hiker must have seen a tiny sliver of my thoughts when she was probing into my mind and thinks I have feelings for Ellen or something – which I don’t. Or at least will keep trying to convince myself that I don’t.

  God, this is going to be a long couple of hours.

  My mind is on overdrive. I’ve never been filled with so many conflicting emotions: elation, excitement, fear, confusion, and nausea.

  The first major development to tell you about is the hiker’s death. She died during Mitch’s watch and he came upstairs to tell us. I checked her body and confirmed that her heart had stopped beating. Venom works. We waited until it was fully dark outside and buried her in a shallow grave in the woods.

  The second thing is that before Mitch came up to inform us that the hiker w
as dead, Ellen and I kissed. In fact, Mitch interrupted our kiss. I hadn’t meant for it to happen. I’d been planning on having a nap after nearly two days with no sleep but Ellen was awake and started talking to me in the semi-dark bedroom.

  She sat next to me on the bed and finally told me about Lucy’s father. She’d had an affair with a married man when she was younger, which resulted in her pregnancy and him moving away with his existing family. He’d left her money on the basis that she never contact him again so Lucy had never met her father – she hadn’t even known who he was. Ellen was upset as she spoke about it and I found myself putting an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. Somehow it turned into a kiss. Not a gentle peck either, a full, passionate embrace. A hungry kiss.

  I don’t know how it happened and I’m not certain how to feel about it now. We jumped apart when Mitch came into the room and she’s barely looked at me since. I think she might regret it. As much as I want to, I don’t. That kiss awakened so many emotions that I’d buried deep inside.

  The guilt is twisting in my gut at my betrayal of Karen’s memory, but there are also butterflies there. Anticipation about seeing Ellen in the morning. She and Mitch are asleep upstairs and I’m camped out on the sofa. I said it was so I can keep watch if the owners return during the night but really it’s so I can get myself under control.

  I can’t stop thinking about that kiss. I can taste Ellen’s lips; feel her body pressed tightly against mine. I want nothing more than to kiss her again and I hate myself for it. Does it mean I’ve forgotten the love that I shared with Karen if I’m now falling for another woman? I wish I had somebody to talk to about this, anyone who’s been through it and could give me some advice. Is it a betrayal to move on? I know Karen wouldn’t want me to be alone for the rest of my life but I feel like I should be. I don’t deserve to find love again.

  Love. I don’t know why I’m even mentioning that after only one kiss – one that might never be repeated again. Ellen was clearly upset… God, did I take advantage of her? It’s fuzzy in my mind as to who actually initiated the kiss – it just seemed to happen. I feel as though I’m burning up from the memory of it.

  I’d always felt like the luckiest man in the world when Karen agreed to go on a date with me and now I’m wondering what Ellen sees in me. I mean, she’s smart and beautiful and I’m just… me. Haunted, damaged, broken, however you want to say it. There must be something though?

  I’ve got a feeling I won’t be getting much sleep tonight.

  5th February 2012

  Morning has come around all too quickly with no decent rest for me. My head’s not only been full of Ellen – I’ve been going over and over what that hiker said yesterday too.

  She called the Grand ‘Master’ and that concerns me. I’ve never heard that before. I don’t think she was putting on her confusion when I asked where the Grand was either, I’m not sure she knew who I was talking about. I’ve been mulling it over for a while.

  When that hiker at the swimming pool said that ‘father’ was coming, I’m not convinced now that she was talking about the Grand coming from England. Could there be an American equivalent of the Grand? Is it possible for someone else to have been born with his terrible gifts? After all Master has ‘always been here’.

  Maybe he is a different person entirely and the Grand really is dead. Or could he be one of the Grand’s own sons who has gone rogue and is spawning his own generation of hikers over here? I don’t know if this is just my tired mind over-reacting or some element of the truth. Having two Grands would mean that Georgie’s death had counted for something. Am I just considering this to reassure myself?

  We need to find out more from another hiker before I drive myself insane with all these unanswered questions and theories. First step is a shower though; I haven’t actually had one for nearly two days.

  The bathroom was particularly useful, and not only for the high-pressure shower. I raided the drugs cupboard and there’s a ton of something called Warfarin. Several boxes filled with strips of pills in different strengths.

  Ellen and I looked it up and it’s used to thin people’s blood to stop clots developing. There’s speculation online that 100mg would kill an adult within hours, although 50-100mg could still work. We’ve got 150mg, potentially enough to kill two hikers.

  It sounds like an extremely unpleasant way to go. An overdose of Warfarin would thin your blood to the extreme so you basically bleed from the inside. The only problem is that we won’t be able to shoot a hiker with a mixture of it, as the pills have to be taken orally. Ellen turned surprisingly ruthless by suggesting that we force-feed a hiker the pills, crushed in some water. We’re going to leave this couple’s house and try to find one to test it on.

  Oh, by the way, Ellen doesn’t think our kiss was a mistake. Well, I don’t think she does anyway. I passed her on the way to the bathroom and she squeezed my arm, and gave me a smile that suggests she likes me too. Whatever this is, there’s only one-way for us to take things: slowly. We’ve both recently lost people and grief isn’t exactly a good foundation for a relationship… if that’s where this might lead. I don’t know. I can’t really say until we talk about it and I don’t think the best time to bring it up is while we’re hunting hikers. Maybe when this is all over.

  I’m not certain I’m even ready for a new relationship. My guilt from last night has faded a little in the light of day but it’s still there. And that was only a kiss, how would I feel if it was more? What do I want? I mean, I only have two and a bit months left in this country so starting something is a bad idea. What would we do when I have to go home?

  I’m getting way ahead of myself. Let’s just put this on the back burner and concentrate on locating a hiker to use the Warfarin on.

  It is the Master. Not the Grand. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  After a false alarm in Binghamton, we finally located a hiker this evening in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Ellen picked up the sensation as we were driving along and we pinpointed it to a house on the edge of town. It was a male hiker and he was sympathising with a man in the house about his loneliness. Trying to make him drink away his sorrows.

  It was dark outside and Ellen and I went to scout out the house while Mitch waited in the car. Ellen was reckless for the first time and it sent me into a wild panic. She spotted the hiker at the edge of the garden and took off sprinting into the woods after it, with the last remains of venom in the tranquiliser gun. I ran blindly after her in the blackness, terrified for her safety.

  She’d shot the hiker by the time I caught up to her and I secured him with the skipping rope while he was down. The male was strong. He was dressed all in black and his skin glowed white in the moonlight. He fought me while Ellen raced back to the car for the Warfarin. We hadn’t been at all prepared to take him down. I’d only intended to observe at first but she’d forced me into a confrontation we weren’t ready for.

  While I was trying to keep the hiker restrained for the venom to take effect, he sent a mental pulse out to his father. His body went limp beneath me and it filled me with an icy fear. He would be telling his father about us. I did the only thing I could think of and kicked him hard in the temple. It was enough to snap him out of his exchange but then it was a violent struggle for me to get him to the man’s house. I was hoping there would be a secure room in there for us to lock him in.

  I was battered and bruised by the time I got him in there, and he’d added to my terror by telling me he’d shown his father everything. The man who owned the house was passed out in the other room so we had the place to ourselves.

  Ellen finally got there with the Warfarin mixed in a bottle of water and we forced the hiker to drink it. He was gagging and choking but we made sure he kept it all down. We shut him in a windowless cupboard under the stairs while we waited for it to work. Mitch joined us after the drama was over and according to him, I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson with my bruised face, cut cheek and torn clothes.<
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  As soon as I told Ellen about the hiker sending out a pulse, she was full of remorse. She’d been so intent on bringing him down that she hadn’t considered he could try and get in our minds and contact his father before the venom had taken effect, or we had the Warfarin ready.

  We used the time we had before the Warfarin killed him to find out exactly what he’d revealed about us. The hiker’s name was Joseph and he was from Tennessee (the same as Tabitha). He told us that the Master was there too. Definitely the Master and not the Grand. He was old and had always lived there. Georgie did kill the Grand.

  His health deteriorated as he spoke to us. Blood began to flow from his eyes, like dark red tears, and from his mouth, dribbling between his lips. He was too confused to tell us how many of them there were. We were asking him about what he’d shown the Master when he lost brain function. Ellen and I actually felt it.

  He was saying that the Master knew who we were, and what we’d done, when there was a sharp stab of pain in our minds. It only lasted for a split second but it was agonising. He became brain dead in the middle of speaking to us. He died shortly after and Mitch and I took his body out into the woods at the back of the man’s house. The guy wouldn’t know any of what had happened when he woke up.

  We arrived in Indiana early this morning and have checked into a motel although I’m not going to be sleeping. Whoever this Master is, he knows our faces and what we’ve been up to: hunting and killing his children. I never intended to put Ellen and Mitch in this much danger. He’ll be trying to find us now. Who knows how many hikers are over here but they’ll all be instructed to track us down. We used 88mg of Warfarin to kill Joseph and only have enough for one more hiker. We need to be able to protect ourselves.

  On the drive over here I suggested that Mitch and Ellen both travel home and they went crazy, saying it was no safer for them there and we all need to stick together; that we used teamwork to bring down the last two hikers and I need them as much as they need me. They think we should all stay together. I’m too tired to argue with them about it, all I’m worried about is getting us armed against whoever comes.