Death Hunt

by James Axler

  Mildred made a cursory examination of J.B., and agreed with the spiky-haired healer. They’d have to move now. She explained about the tunnel and where it would emerge. Michaela listened intently and didn’t seem pleased with the prospect of the darkness. Mildred added, “We don’t want to risk the wheels on this thing in the dark, so as soon as we get into the tunnel, we’ll have to carry John.”

  Michaela took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do it,” she said with an attempt at an encouraging smile that did nothing other than betray how little she was looking forward to this part of the journey.

  The two women wheeled the gurney to the entrance of the tunnel, and with the barest glance to scout the ground to the bottom of the dogleg, flipped up the wheels and carried J.B. down into the darkness. Bones waited for them to reach the bottom, then followed, tugging at the slab.

  “Here it comes!” he yelled as the weight of the concrete slammed the slab back into place, disturbing a small cloud of dirt and dust that made him cough before darkness fell upon them.

  There was an eerie silence as the women stood still at the mouth of the tunnel, the only sounds breaking the quiet being J.B.’s soft moans and the pattering of Bones’s footsteps as he came down the incline toward them.

  Mildred looked around, desperately hoping that her eyes would adjust to the gloom and that there may be some small source of light to just outline shapes. But there was nothing—the faintest whisper of breeze, the movement of air, but nothing more. Not even the scurrying of rats.

  She felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of claustrophobia wash over her and a desolating sense of loneliness, which was absurd considering that she was in the tunnel with three other people. The thought that they may be trapped down here, and no one would find them, made the bile rise in her gorge and she had to swallow hard. She didn’t usually react this way to the darkness and she realized with a start that it was because she felt the weight of responsibility on her. John—even though he didn’t know it—was totally reliant on her right now, and she had these two Pleasantville citizens who had abandoned all protection from their baron to aid her. And then there were the rest of the companions, pitted against one another. How could she help them, being the only free member of the group…?

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. First things first: get out of here and get John better. Then deal with the rest as it arose.

  “Hey, are we moving or what? I’m getting a little antsy down here,” Bones piped up from the rear. Obviously she wasn’t the only one affected by the pitch-black of the tunnel, which gave Mildred a little boost. She was at the front end of the stretcher, and she gave a decisive nod, not that Michaela or Bones would see it, but it made her feel better.

  “Let’s move,” she said calmly. “But stay as alert as you can be down here. We don’t know what the floor is like.”

  She began to pace out the floor of the tunnel, each foot gingerly coming down, testing for breaks in the surface, bumps and rocks and uneven potholes in which she could twist, sprain or break an ankle. The floor was surprisingly smooth, worn down and hard-packed earth forming its base. She had no idea how close the walls were to her, but once or twice she found herself veering away from a straight line and bumping into them. She couldn’t tell what was happening behind her. She knew that Michaela had to be following directly behind at a steady pace and with surefootedness, as the stretcher kept up with Mildred’s speed, its weight and balance steady. But there was no other way of knowing: no one spoke, their breathing was shallow and barely audible, almost as if they were afraid to use up the air in the tunnel; and it was pitch-black.

  The walls and floor of the tunnel smelled musty, where the air was stale. But there was also a richness underlying it, from the dampness of the soil as they traveled below the sun-parched surface, hitting where the water table began. The old timbers also carried their own smell, beginning to muster and rot as the damp earth worked on them. It became almost overpowering and Mildred’s head was filled with visions of being trapped down here, the panic beginning to rise again.

  She bumped into a wall in front of her. The tunnel floor was heading upward, and they had hit the dogleg at the other end. Trying to suppress the cry of relief she wanted to give, Mildred spoke as calmly as possible.

  “We’re at the other end. Bones, get the hell up here and help me open the tunnel.”

  She put down the stretcher and heard the old man shuffle past until she could feel rather than see him beside her.

  “Should be just up…Yeah,” he said, reaching out to touch the concrete slab. Mildred felt it as she, too, reached out. It was cold and unyielding.

  “Push on three. One, two, three…” she gasped, putting effort into the push and hearing Bones grunt beside her. The slab was unyielding for a moment, and a cold dread clutched at her guts. Then, before it had a chance to take hold, the slab gave way, springing open to let daylight flood in. She screwed her eyes against the painful intrusion, then turned to see Michaela doing likewise, standing over J.B.

  “Stay here a moment,” Bones said quickly. “I’ll just have a look to see if the sec guards are back on the wall. If they are, we’ll need to be careful. If not, we can just go for it.”

  And before Mildred had a chance to speak, the old man had scrambled out of the mouth of the tunnel and was on his way, using the lower level of the old cellar floor and the surrounding rubble as cover. It seems he had taken her imprecations for speed to heart. Which, looking at a sweating J.B., wasn’t a bad thing.

  And let’s face it, she thought, whatever came next couldn’t be as irrationally scary as the tunnel. Whatever the ruined city had in store, at least it’d be an enemy she could see.

  Chapter Ten

  As Ryan, Krysty and Doc watched Jak being taken from the sec compound, they each felt an inchoate rage rise within them. They wanted to rip him limb from limb for some imagined ill that they couldn’t bring back to mind, but that ruled their instincts and senses. Each of them strained against the bonds that kept them tied to the stakes, and each yelled incoherently at the departing albino and his sec guard.

  Ethan watched them from back up on the stand, where he could also hear his customers make wagers and argue about the merits of each side of the contest. He was pleased. There was a lot of jack riding on this hunt, and he had little doubt that it would be a success as he watched the three outlanders almost rupturing blood vessels and tearing off their own limbs to get at their former comrade.

  “Gentlemen, may I suggest that we take our leave?” he queried as Jak, accompanied by Horse and Riley, exited the compound on his journey to the forest.

  “Sounds goods to me. The sooner we get out there, the sooner the fun begins, right?” one of the traders asked, chuckling.

  “Exactly,” the baron stated before leading his guests to the horses that had been supplied for them. As they mounted, he called over to him a man-mountain of a sec guard, with a face heavily tattooed with a spider’s web. The man had been chosen as Horse’s number two for the hunt mostly for the reason of his size and strength. “Tracey,” the baron began as the man lumbered to him, “keep a close watch on your wrist chron and give us half an hour. Then you bring these scum out to the starting point. Horse told you where that was, right?” He waited for the sec man to nod before continuing. “I want you to be real careful with them. They’re raging, and they may be hard to handle. They’ll want to get straight after Jak, and we don’t want that, right?” Again, he waited for the tattooed man to nod dumbly, signaling that he had taken in the instructions. “Good,” Ethan said finally. “Now, there’s one thing. I want the big bald guy sent to the farthest sec post on the wall. I want him nowhere near the action, okay?”

  Tracey wasn’t the brightest of the sec guards, although possibly the strongest, and he furrowed his brow, trying to understand the connection between the two sets of instructions. He knew that it was wrong to question the baron, but…

  “Why?” he asked. “I mean, sir, I know I
shouldn’t ask, but what do I tell him if he asks?”

  Ordinarily, Ethan would have exploded at such apparent insubordination, but there was an ingenuousness about the tattooed man’s face that suggested he was asking from a genuine concern over what to say if asked. It was a mark of the baron’s good mood on this day that he didn’t shout and rant at the man, but gave him an answer.

  “There’s some sympathy between the big man and the albino. I get the feeling that he doesn’t approve of this hunt. But he’s too good to throw away, so I want him where he can do no harm. Tell him I want the wall defended well because there may be an attack with the number of barons and traders we have with us today. Tell him I have had information.”

  “Have you, sir?” Tracey asked, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice.

  Ethan grasped the man’s shoulder and resisted the urge to laugh. Such innocent stupidity in someone so large and dangerous. It seemed incongruous, to say the least. “No, son,” Ethan said gently, “it’s just a story to keep him away from the hunt.”

  The tattooed man seemed to think about that for a second, then smiled a little and nodded. “Yeah, I see, sir. I’ll do that.”

  “Good.” Ethan clapped him on the back. “Now bring me my horse and we’ll be going.”

  Tracey rounded up the horses for all the guests and for the baron, and watched them leave, checking his wrist chron and working out when he had to release the three prisoners to take them to the forest. Then he looked up with a grim expression on his face and walked over to fulfill the second part of his task.

  “That’s stupe,” the bald sec man said bluntly when Tracey gave him the baron’s explanation.

  “Are you arguing with Ethan? ’Cause it’s not me saying it.” Tracey bristled. He hadn’t expected to be questioned and he wasn’t sure what to do.

  The big man thought about it carefully before answering. “No,” he said finally. “I’ll do it. But it sucks, and you know it.”

  Without another word he turned on his heel and set off for the gates out of the compound, not looking back.

  Tracey scratched his head and looked at his watch. Still a lot of space before the hands on his chron, which were formed by the hands and arms of a black mouse in red shorts, which usually made him chuckle, but not today—reached the point where he could let loose the three prisoners.

  Shit, he preferred it when he was taking orders rather than giving them. There was less to worry about, then…

  THE HOT, chem-hazed sun beat down on the compound, mercilessly hitting the three companions as they struggled almost nonstop with their bonds. The sweat poured from them and they hadn’t been given anything to ease the thirst and dehydration that was building up within them. Jak had been gone for some time, and it seemed to them, in their frenzy, that they would never be able to track him.

  Eventually, Tracey and a team of sec men walked over to them. They were carrying large knives to sever the bonds that kept the trio bound to the stakes, and chains with which to bind them once more until they had reached the hunt site. Following on the heels of the sec party were women with salty food and buckets of water. They also carried small canteens of water for the companions to carry on the hunt, something that had been denied to Jak.

  “Take them down, and be real careful,” Tracey directed the sec party, before adding to the companions, “Okay, listen up. We’re going to let you off in the woods. Don’t go all crazy on us and try to get away, ’cause that won’t work. You’ll get to rip the little guy to shreds, but first you gotta eat and drink, get some water and salt back in you. Then we’re gonna take you to where he is. So you be calm now, or else we’re gonna have to hurt you, and we don’t want to do that. D’you understand?” he added in a slightly plaintive tone, seeing the wild look in the eye of each person, and wondering if they could even hear him.

  In truth, it was difficult for his words to penetrate the perverted and corrupted consciousness of each of the companions. The hypnosis, the constant draining heat of the sun, and the loss of salts, minerals and water from their bodies had left them in a state where everything around—each stimulus—came to them as though it were through a red mist: a mist of pain and nonunderstanding, where every nerve fiber screamed for an action they couldn’t take.

  Inside their heads, each was playing out a scenario where they hunted and chilled Jak. Their minds were filled with twisted images of the wrongs he had done them to incur such wrath. And all of these were filtered through the pain caused by the constant straining against their bonds and the mental anguish of that small part of their minds that still screamed that they were wrong to feel this way.

  The sense of Tracey’s words filtered through—perhaps to this small part of their consciousness—and they each stopped writhing and straining against their bonds. Blank-eyed stares were all that greeted him as he tried to look into their faces and he whistled softly before directing his men to cut them loose, reminding them to be real careful.

  The sec party stepped up to the stakes, three to each companion. Even though they were obviously weakened by the heat and their exertions, they still had the strength of the crazed, and in front of those Pleasantville citizens who were still watching with interest, Tracey didn’t want the men he had been put in command of to fuck up.

  On a count of three, and like a well-oiled machine, one sec man sliced the bonds at arms and legs with precision strokes of his razor-sharp machete, carried for that purpose. As the companions fell limp for a second, the blood-drained legs and arms not quite receptive to the brain’s command, the two sec men on each side, equipped with the chains, grabbed the person and secured them so that they were effectively hobbled.

  Tracey watched and nodded appreciatively. So far, so good. If Horse got a good report about this, then he may not get stuck with as many shitty tasks as he had in the past. That was all that concerned him: getting it right, and getting better tasks in the future. He didn’t care about what was happening in the hunt or to the three people in front of him. Why should he? As far as he was concerned, they wouldn’t worry about him.

  Chained, the three companions were then fed and watered by the women who had followed the sec party. At first they were resistant, as though they didn’t know what was happening, and it was some kind of bodily invasion. But then the need for salt and water took over and they followed instincts that told them to eat and drink. They all partook hungrily of what was offered, and were clamouring for more when, at a signal from the tattooed sec man, the women pulled back.

  Tracey looped the canteens of water over their necks personally. “Now, this is for when you’re on the hunt, chasing the little dude. You’ve got to save this…I hope you can understand me,” he added to himself, noting the animal quality that still haunted their eyes, seeming to make them distant from what was going on.

  “Bring the horses up, it’s time for us to get going,” he called to the other side of the compound.

  There was a horse for each companion, and they were to be escorted by two sec men each, with Tracey heading the party. He looked anxiously at his wrist chron. The mouse’s black hands and arms were almost in the right place.

  “Okay, get them mounted,” he shouted to his men.

  The companions were pulled to their feet and led to the horses. They didn’t try to resist the sec men, as though they had—in some way—taken in what had been said to them. But trying to get them astride their mounts presented problems of its own. With their hands and feet effectively shackled, it was hard for each of them to get their bodies up. They were still dazed from the heat and the sudden effects of the food and water on their blood sugar, and were pliable when the sec men tried to get them on the horses, but it was no good.

  “It’s a fucking stupe idea, Tracey,” one of the sec men said finally. “They ain’t gonna get over the backs of these horses. Look at the chains on their legs. No way are they long enough to let them get a leg each side.”

  “Aw shit,” the tattooed man cursed as he
came over to look. It was true. The length of the chain wouldn’t stretch across the backs of the beasts. “Okay, sling the fuckers over on their bellies.”

  “You sure about that? It ain’t gonna look good when we reach Ethan and the payers when they come like that.”

  “It’s that or nothing.” Tracey shrugged.

  He saddled up and mounted his own steed, signaling to the sec guard with him to follow on, bringing the horses with the three hunters flung across their backs. The entourage left the sec compound to the cheers of the remaining crowds, with the man in charge feeling uncomfortably aware that they didn’t look quite as heroic as the baron would have wished.

  For all three companions, the time spent on the backs of their mounts passed slowly and in a haze of discomfort and pain. Doc vomited heavily as the jarring of the horse made his stomach rebel. Krysty was in a semiconscious state, her mind slipping in and out of strange and disconcerting dreams, and Ryan was aware only of a throbbing in his head, as though the pressure had built to such a pitch that the only way to vent it would be through his empty eye socket.

  As the sec party bearing the hunters approached the forest, Tracey held up his hand to halt the parade.

  “What’s wrong?” queried one of the sec to his rear.

  “Look at them,” the tattooed man said in disgust. “If we ride up with them like this, Ethan’ll have our hides. We’ve got to make them look like they can do the business. Right now, they just look like a bunch of stumblebums.”

  “Yeah…” the talkative sec man replied slowly. He wasn’t sure what his tattooed boss was talking about, but looking at the so-called hunters slung across the backs of their mounts, he could take a pretty good guess. “What d’you suggest, then?”

  The tattooed man dismounted and walked back to the three hunters. “They don’t look like they’re gonna make a run for it, do they? We unshackle their legs so they can sit on the horses properly, we clean up the old guy, and we douse them down, try to wake them up a little. They’ve gotta look good, if nothing else.”