He dies instantly.
I pull the knife back out. Dark blood glistens on the shaft. Indeed, the blade is not metal, but bone. Animal bone? Human bone? No idea. All I know is that it is sharp and it did the trick.
“Rodney!” Kylie cries out behind me.
I spin around and find her on the ground. Her hands holding the pointy end of a spear inches away from her stomach. A hunter stands above her, legs straddling either side of her hips. He’s pushing down with all his body weight, trying to drive the spear into her.
I charge at him, surprising myself with my own speed, and drive the bone blade up through the base of his skull just as I did with Mr. Stinky over there. This guy jiggles in place, releases the spear. When he stops moving, I retrieve my blade and push his corpse to the side.
Both Kylie and I take a moment to catch our breath. To digest what just happened. Can’t believe I just took down those hunters the way I did. Guess what my old buddy Phil said was true: we fall to the level of our training. Those years hitting the mat were worth more than just stress relief.
I extend a hand and pull Kylie to her feet. There’s blood on her face. Oh God. “You’re bleeding,” I say as I reach toward her face.
“I’m fine!” she huffs and knocks my hand aside.
We both hear Bear grunt, and turn to see him lift a hunter up in the air like some WWE wrestler. Bear tosses him onto a large tree stump. The hunter cries out as his spine is crunched against the solid wood. Before the hunter can make another sound, Bear crushes in his face with one swift blow of his tomahawk.
But the beating goes on for longer than it needs to.
“Bear!” I yell.
Bear continues hammering down into the hunter’s head until it’s oatmeal.
“Jesus! Bear . . . enough!” I pull him away from the hunter’s mutilated body. “He’s dead, all right?”
Bear’s massive shoulders heave with each breath, he trades glances between the hunter and me. He gives the corpse a final look then tosses the tomahawk onto the ground.
“I killed him just like this,” Bear says, his voice shaky.
“What?” I ask.
“I smashed his head in.”
“Yeah, I know! We just saw—”
“No. Not him,” Bear says. “Jake.”
I share a look with Kylie, and then back to Bear whose gaze drifts downward.
“Who’s Jake?” I ask.
“The asshole who talked me into knocking over a convenience store.” Bear gazes straight ahead now. The shock of this situation unlocking some dark corner of his mind. “I didn’t expect there’d be a pregnant girl behind the register.” He’s focusing with such intent that I’m compelled to check out what he’s staring at, but there’s nothing out there but more of that red glow. He finally turns back to us. “I thought he was just going to tie her up while I went and got the money.”
I hear movement in the shadows.
This is a terrible time for Bear to have a breakdown.
“Bear…” I try to cut him off, but he continues.
“Jake had the goddamn nerves of a squirrel.” Bear takes in a deep breath. “The girl moved like she was going for something, and he shot her.”
I hear that distinct, shrill bird call of a war cry. Damien. He’s calling out for his buddies. For reinforcements. But no one is responding.
Damien is alone.
“Bear, I believe you,” I say. “Now snap out of it, man.”
Damien cries out. His strident war call is unnerving. The hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Bear!” I shake him. He may as well be rooted into the ground. The man barely moves. “Look, we need to go!”
“Yeah, come on!” Kylie pleads.
“I deserve to die for my sins,” Bear mutters, seemingly not hearing a single word we’re saying. “That noose should’ve held around my neck.”
Damien lets out another war cry.
This time at least a dozen hunters answer. Well . . . a dozen is just a guess, but it sure sounds like more than one or two.
“Bear,” I say, “we are leaving!”
But Bear snatches up my collar, bunching it in his hands. For a moment, I fear he’s going to punch me, but instead he just says, “My name’s Arthur. Bear’s my last name.” As he speaks, I get the feeling in my gut that we’ve lost him mentally. “If I die, tell Sasha and my little girls that I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home.”
“You’re not going to die, all right? You’re going to live to see your family!”
He gawks at me as if I’m speaking another language. As if the idea of peace is so remote, that the whole concept seems unattainable now.
“By this time tomorrow, you’ll be curled up with Sasha on the sofa, watching The Late Show.” I catch a glimmer of sanity in Bear’s eyes. Seems he’s listening to me now. “You’ll be kissing the top of your children’s heads as they rest quietly in their beds.”
Under the sliver of light from the moon and the red haze, I watch as Bear’s distant expression fades. A weak smile spreads across his lips. A moment of serenity and sanity?
Maybe he believes me?
I’m about to tell him to get a move on when that peaceful look on his face is replaced by fear. “Look out!” Bear pushes me aside, launching me sideways into the dirt.
This is quickly followed by a wet thud—the sound of something solid hitting something else very solid.
Followed by Bear crying out in pain.
Chapter 13—Not So Fast, Lover Boy
I look up to see Bear howling above me. The long end of a spear protruding from his stomach. He grabs it with both hands, screaming in agony.
“Bear!” Kylie yells. “Nooooooo!”
Bear’s face contorts. The beads of sweat on his skin shimmer under the moonlight, outlining the pained grimace. He pulls the end of the spear from out his belly and holds the weapon in the air, just as the hunters have.
“Come . . . Come at me!” Bear roars. “Come at me, motherfuckers!”
War cries answer from all around the forest. A stampede of feet trampling over the twigs and leaves soon follows.
Bear looks down at us, eyeballs swelling to the size of moons. His words are very distinct and deliberate. “What are you waiting for?”
I can barely speak. My gaze shifts down to the glistening, growing bloodstain on his shirt. Then I look back at him.
“I said, what are you waiting for?” he asks again. “RUN!”
“We’re not leaving you!”
Bear pulls Kylie and me to our feet. I swear the man has the strength of a god. Only gods don’t bleed, and he’s doomed if we don’t get him to a hospital—
“I said . . . RUUUUUUUUUUN!”
The stampede of hunters draws closer.
I put a hand on Bear’s shoulder, not wanting to abandon this man, but he swats my hand away. Tears welling in his eyes. “GODDAMMIT!” He gives me a shove that nearly knocks me off my feet. “GET OUT OF HERE, RODNEY!”
The war cries are nearly on top of us.
Without further prodding, Kylie and I take off running at a speed that would make horses jealous. Cutting through trees and tall bushes with the precision, agility, and determination of smart missiles locked on to their respective bull's eyes—only Kylie and I have no idea where are our target destination is.
Nor what lies beyond the wall of trees ahead.
“THAT’S RIGHT, ASSHOLES!” Bear cries out behind us. “COME GET SOME!”
This is followed by a frightening chorus of war cries, then sounds of Bear belting out himself, then a series of hoots and howls.
Then the deathly silence, broken up only by our feet thumping against the ground and the huffs of our own heaving breaths. We run for what feels like another few miles, and then I hit my wall. Exhaustion kicks in. I stop running, and Kylie spins around. I bend over, prop both hands on my knees and catch my breath . . . or at least try to.
“I’m sorry,” I say between gasps, “my side is cramping up bad
.”
“Mine too, but we’ve got to keep going,” she says, equally winded.
“Keep going?” I say, still panting. “Kylie, I don’t even know where we are going.”
She swallows a few big breaths of air, then points up ahead. “Take a look.”
And I see where she’s pointing, off in the east. I don’t know how I didn’t see them before—perhaps due to fear or adrenaline—but there’s a break in the forest, and up ahead are . . .
Lights.
“There’s something over there,” she says as she puts her hand on my back. “Now come on!”
I nod. She’s right. For as tired as I am, to take a break now—even a quick one—would be suicide.
Suicide.
Hmm…
Here I was, ready to end my life.
Now I find that I want to live.
Never has air tasted better than after running for my life. Maybe that’s the whole point of this game. To teach us something about gratitude.
That or for someone to get their jollies off on killing strangers.
I’d love to take the more philosophical route, but no doubt the latter reasoning is clearly the motivation for this manhunt. But why?
What’s the point?
“RODNEY!” a voice cries out from behind us.
Damien’s voice.
“STOP RUNNING, YOU PUSSY!”
He’s not that far away.
“That’s our cue,” Kylie says, taking my hand. “Come on!”
That blink of a breather was enough to barely let me get my wind back, but that break may have given Damien just enough time to close in on us. Doesn’t matter. We take off, not wanting to stick around to find out.
After another ten minutes of running, my lungs and legs burn. Both of us stumble through the woods like drunks after a hard night of partying. I’m still grateful for the full moon and the funky red glow all around us. We’d literally be running in the dark otherwise.
Just as we are about to collapse, we see a break in the trees. Further ahead, a large field, and in the center is a small RV park. Several light poles encircle the outer edges of the park. It’s odd seeing an RV park in the middle of nowhere like this, with no major roads leading to it, but here it sits. About a dozen trailers quietly nestled close to one another.
Only one of them has lights on inside.
“Think this is where the flares came from?” Kylie asks.
“It would make sense,” I say. “Then again, nothing tonight has made sense.”
Kylie turns to me, and the ambient light from the RV park cascades across her face. The sweat on her forehead sparkles like glitter. She’s still catching her breath, mouth slightly open. There’s a certain depth in those eyes—a depth I don’t think I’ve seen in a woman before.
Certainly not in Diane.
And maybe that was a red flag that I should’ve paid attention to from the beginning. Diane was shallow. Diane lied to me. And her superficiality led to the end of our marriage. She told me she had walls up and that I needed to be patient. That she had gone through some shit when she was a kid, but that was far from the truth.
The truth was that Diane had walled herself away from anyone that could get to her heart.
Namely me.
Kept me an outsider for all those years, only to cheat on me and throw me away like a stranger.
But I see the opposite in Kylie’s eyes.
There’s warmth there. Substance. All things Diane was devoid of.
I don’t know how I know this about Kylie, but I know. See it plain as a billboard off a highway. Maybe it’s because we saw the face of death tonight and that’s enough to make all the phony, insignificant stuff disappear. Our horrifying reality is boiling out the impurities—the trivial crap rising to the top to be scraped off. I guess it’s accurate to say that having my life flash before my eyes peel back a layer of the world I didn’t realize I wasn’t seeing. Or perhaps I’d just been too wrapped up in trying to scale the impossibly high walls of someone who didn’t want to be loved.
Diane’s walls were never mine to try to climb over.
The bullet I was going to take for her infidelity, my loss of her affection—what little there was—would’ve been taken in vain.
Being brought to the brink of death is shedding light on what really matters.
Family.
Friends.
Love.
Love?
I feel excitement stir in the back of my mind. Correction: the center of my mind. The temporal lobes of my brain are already picturing a future with Kylie. This stranger that I’ve just met. Maybe it’s managerial sixth sense that I innately possess—the same instinctual insight that was 100 percent accurate during interviews. Generally, within the first few minutes of meeting a candidate for a position, I knew right away if they’d be the right fit for the job or not. Dating is similar to interviewing in that respect.
And I’ve only been wrong once.
Thanks, Diane.
There’s something about Kylie that draws me. A spark somewhere in my cerebral cortex that tells me . . .
Wait a minute.
What am I doing?
Warmth spreads across my face. I suddenly feel like I’m staring at Kylie too hard.
“Rodney?” she asks. “You all right there?”
I shake my head; shake off the thoughts. “Uh, yeah,” I say as I wipe the sweat from my brow. Way to play it smooth, Casanova. “Just taking a moment.”
“I’ll admit it,” Kylie says. “I’m freaking out inside.” She is? Well, she has a heck of a way of keeping her fear suppressed. Which is the polar opposite of Chase.
I feel this undeniable urge to console her, to cup her face in my hands and kiss her forehead, and tell her that everything’s going to be all right. That we’re going to make it out of this alive. That I might be bold enough to ask her out for coffee. Then at some point, I might be lucky enough to take her out to dinner. But for starters, that would be awkward, and she’d probably punch me into next week.
And secondly, the last two people I said would live through this ended up dying.
“I thought I wanted to die,” she says as she looks away. “And now all I want to do is live.” She turns back to me. Her gaze searching my face for answers.
“Well then let’s keep moving.” I nod toward the RV park ahead. “So that we can make sure that happens.”
Just as I’m about to pull her beyond the edge of the woods and into the clearing, a hand grabs my shoulder, and I hear Damien’s pitchy voice scream, “NOT SO FAST, LOVER BOY!”
Chapter 14—Tomahawks & Fireworks
Damien spins me around to face him, and I get a full view of his newfound condition. The top of his skull is exposed. Strings of muscle and skin still attached. A dark web of flesh, what I can only guess was once part of his scalp, hangs from the back of his head like a backward ball cap. Stripes of blood run down his face. His skin, pale and waxy. He’s equal parts nauseating and disturbing.
“Go!” I shout to Kylie as Damien pulls me so close enough I can smell his blood.
His eyes light up. A full spectrum of orange and reds. He raises a tomahawk above his head.
“Kylie—GO!” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Kylie do a double take as if unsure she heard me right.
She takes off running for the RV park.
Damien’s eyes dart in her direction—
I plunge the bone knife into his stomach.
He freaks. Plants a foot in my chest and kicks me backward. I land on my tailbone. The sharp pain is intense. For a second, I wonder if he cracked my back, but thankfully I’m still able to move.
“You really think this little splinter is gonna kill me?” Damien yanks the knife out of his gut and tosses it aside. He stands above me now with those demonic eyes, glaring down at me through fresh streaks of drying blood. “You can’t kill me, dumbass!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m immortal now.” His teet
h pulse a dull white as he finishes with, “Chek-tah!”
I wish I knew what that meant.
Or maybe I don’t want to know what Chek-tah means.
“I’m immortal,” he repeats, “and you’re not!” With that, he raises the tomahawk above his head once again.
Damien might be immortal or whatever, but apparently he still feels pain. Before he can strike, I bring my leg up and kick him square in the kneecap. Damien buckles slightly and howls out in agony.
I roll to my side and get to my feet, and I throw a clumsy, backward kick knocking him to the ground. I take off running. Just as I break through the wall of trees and into the clearing, I feel bony fingers grab my shoulder. He catches me by my shirt—the tips of his fingers light up like matches. Fingernails sizzling, skin cracking, and turning a fiery amber. Damien screams. Pulls his hand to his chest, recoiling as if he’d touched a hot stove. There’s a bewildered expression on his grotesque face. Beyond the pain, he’s trying to figure out what just happened.
And so am I . . .
For a moment.
I make a mad dash for the RV park.
“Rodney!” Damien shouts.
I glance back to see a twirling tomahawk headed right at me. I feel every nerve on my body twinge. Bracing for impact. I shut my eyes. This is it—
Pop!
It’s like the sound of a clay pigeon bursting in midair.
I spin on my heels to see a cloud of cascading ashes spill onto the ground.
Damien just stands there. Speechless. Guess his tomahawk wasn’t supposed to burst like a firecracker.
He belts out a war cry, chants in a throaty language I’ve never heard. Begins moving rhythmically, as if dancing to a song stuck in his head. There’s a lot of foot stomping, face twisting, and tongue wagging. Very reminiscent of the haka performed by the Maori rugby team of New Zealand before a match.
A dance of intimidation.
It’s almost . . . mesmerizing watching him do his thing.
Part of me screams to keep running. The other part of me is frozen with unexplainable curiosity. I guess that part of me is dying to uncover what this whole game is about.
A dozen hunters, armed with spears, emerge from the woods and line up next to Damien. They dance alongside him, eyes pulsing brightly with their shades of rage. Tongues wagging. Fists thumping against chests. They chant the occasional, “Aaaah-ooooohhh!”
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