The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  Somehow, she had managed to ignore some of the noise. It seemed Susan was bashing some of the hunters with a shotgun. Maybe they had been too close to shoot? But now that the packs had turned on each other, maybe Susan could get a step back. She seemed to be defending herself well enough, despite the damage to her leg.

  Joule turned and looked at the fight in front of her, for once able to observe rather than just react. Though the black pack was fresher and clearly had an advantage, the brindles were still trying to fight back. It seemed one of the evolutionary disadvantages of the hunters was that they didn't know when to quit, when to retreat, when to regroup and come back another day or just call it a loss. But Joule and the group were going to use that to their advantage.

  Susan had no such compunctions. As Joule suspected, as soon as Susan found two feet between her and the hunter, she quickly loaded shells and pumped the shotgun. She seemed to have loaded her pants pockets with a huge amount of spare shells.

  The noise of her shots hung heavy in the night, though none of the hunters seemed to notice the two shots in rapid succession. As far as Joule could see, Susan peppered most of the dogs.

  Though she tried to get out of the way, one bumped her, but she was ready. It turned on her, black-coated, angry, and as fresh for the fight as any of them could be. This hunter already had several gashes on his side, but Joule guessed she did, too. Like the canine in front of her, she was caught up in the fight and didn’t feel them.

  “Put all the water on the pack!” she yelled again, though it came out more like a grunt. Because as she watched her teammates pull out their water bottles and aim at the few still-fighting dogs, Joule watched as Cage brought the short sword down across the hunter’s back. It didn’t cut too deep, or create an open wound, but he clearly damaged the spine.

  The hunter—in a fit of its own rage—looked up at her and howled. Joule jammed her brother’s dagger through its open mouth and let the weight of it drag her arm down as it fell.

  85

  Cage watched as what was left of the brindle pack somehow found the energy for a pointless try at defending themselves. No longer defending territory, they were probably only trying to save their own lives at this point. But it was enough. It was a distraction for the black hunters, who were no longer moving as a unit against the people.

  He scanned the fight, still slicing at the occasional hunter that found Cage in the darkness and thought he was an acceptable target. But he wasn't. Pushing them off, he sent them back into the fray with fresh injuries and cyanide in the cuts.

  “Get in the cars!” he yelled to the group. “Let's get out of here!”

  It was Joule who looked at him, holding up her last water bottle. Kayla and Ivy behind her had caught on.

  “All the water,” she said again. Though Steve was clearly reluctant, and it took a minute, they pulled them out one by one, and emptied the last of the water onto the few hunters that were remaining fully in the fight.

  Between Susan’s shotgun and the slices from swords, daggers and more, there were plenty of night hunters injured, and the few that still stood probably wouldn't last long. The cyanide would kill them, even if it took a few minutes.

  He watched as one stumbled, fell, and burbled blood from its mouth.

  Good.

  Throwing the bottles on to the ground, Cage ran, grabbing his sister's arm and pulling her along. If only two of them made it to the car, it would be him and Joule. He ducked into the passenger side back seat, pushing her into the front as Steve approached from the other side.

  The older man tugged on the other door handle for a moment, and Cage suffered a shock of panic that Steve had dropped the keys. They'd been monumentally stupid coming out here with only one set. But Steve pulled the door opened and quickly slid the key into the ignition, turning it as though it were any normal day.

  He squealed the tires as he peeled out, even as the frenzy in the street died down. Even as the slashing bites and growls turned to tugs and whines as the fight came to a conclusion.

  The six humans in the group fled the scene and headed back up the street. It was Kayla who stuck her hand out the window—not a move that Cage would have done—to motion their second car to turn into her driveway.

  The second car followed her up the short drive to the brick house and watched as the white garage doors chugged their way up on two open spaces. His heart stopped. The damn doors were so slow. His consolation was that the hunters were busy. His fear was that there was another pack waiting.

  But as soon as the door was maybe one inch over the roof of his car, he pushed the gas and jolted them into the spot. Next to them, Kayla pulled her car into the space in a more respectable manner, but she must have hit a button as the garage doors began closing behind them.

  Cage sat frozen in the car as none of them moved, listening to what seemed like the slowest garage doors in the world. The noisy chug would have brought night hunters at any other time. If there was another pack around here, surely the grinding noise was alerting them to exactly where the people/prey were.

  When the door was finally down and the cars off, they sat in silence for another moment before Kayla climbed out. Everyone followed suit as quietly as they could. She didn't shut the car doors. Despite the noisiness of the garage door closing, none of them made avoidable sounds.

  Kayla and Ivy climbed the three short steps to the door connecting the garage into the house. Cage and the rest of the group followed softly. The ragtag group tumbled into the kitchen scattering around the space, worn thin and not willing to get too far from each other.

  Leaning on the countertop, Cage noticed his hands had left blood smeared on the granite surface. On the floor, he could see drips that he thought probably were from Susan, but maybe were from him. He didn't know who else might be bleeding, but they all needed to be checked.

  He looked around at each of them, and one by one, they looked back at him. Everyone was here, and everyone ultimately looked okay.

  So they drank water that Ivy poured from a filter she kept in the fridge, and no one spoke.

  They had survived.

  86

  Cage hadn't seen any night hunters for three full days. Joule said the same, and the reports from Steve, Susan, and Kayla and Ivy were the same: no hunters—nothing on the cameras. No evidence in the yards.

  Susan and Kayla and Ivy had also installed night vision cameras on their homes, giving all of them a much wider range to monitor. They could see from the back of the Mazur home to the end of the street they lived on now.

  Joule had tapped a closed circuit system to all three houses and to Steve. Any of them could link into any camera or any recorded feed at any time. Steve had volunteered to get one, but it was generally agreed that being next door to Kayla and Ivy, his camera would have mostly been redundant.

  Now, they had twice as many cameras to watch, but three times as many eyes. Cage would not have predicted this turn of events, but he found he liked it.

  So far, no one in the group had asked after the twins’ parents, even though Cage knew they had all waved to Kaya and Nate in the past. His parents hadn’t known everyone on the street, but Nate had been able to name the neighbors most of the time when Cage had asked. These people had known Cage’s parents, but they hadn’t asked—they’d simply understood.

  In fact, none of them asked the others if they had lost any family members. The one they all knew about was Susan's son, and that was only because she had volunteered the information. Ivy said Kayla had yelled that the hunters had killed Newton, but he didn’t ask who Newton was. No one wanted to relive their losses, they just wanted to avenge them.

  Cage had found a cut on his leg the next day, even though they’d all passed a cursory inspection at Kayla and Ivy’s before going home with the daylight. Joule had been quick to point out that the wound was already partially healed when he found it. Cage figured he must have gotten it jumping out of the tree into the branches, several nights before.
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br />   He'd showered five separate times now in the small handful of days. It was an obvious attempt to wash away the carbon black powder that he had not been needing to wear any more. He wanted to look like a person, not the dulled-out version that the carbon made him look like when it was left lingering on his skin. He and his sister had been dialed down by several shades of grey for some time.

  Their altered hue was an odd side-effect of the powder. The first wash left them looking only slightly dead. By now, they had washed enough that almost all of it was gone, but the faint traces of powder absorbed the light a normal human reflected, leaving them just a little less vibrant than their usual selves for days. He’d seen the same on the rest of the team.

  Susan had gone to the ER for her leg that day. The staff there had stitched her up and sent her home with instructions to stay off it. She ignored that as well as the antibiotics. Cage didn’t agree, but he was finding some respect for the woman.

  Apparently, when the staff had asked her what happened, she'd not even said “dog bite” but only raised an eyebrow and refused more explanation. As far as Cage knew, nothing had been followed up on or reported about Susan’s wound.

  He and Ivy both had cuts that needed something more than a Band-aid. Like before, he had washed his injuries using soap in the shower and had done his best at home. When his biggest gash was as clean as he could get it, he held the wound together for his sister to apply their mother’s superglue again. Ivy and Kayla had apparently done the same thing. The group had agreed to shower and change and regroup quickly for street clean-up.

  When Cage and Joule called Dr. Brett to come check them over that morning, he’d brought them several rounds of amoxicillin again. This time, though, he’d said, “Maybe it’s time you stopped gluing yourselves together. Or doing things that make you have to glue yourselves together.”

  Cage had laughed. “That’s the idea.”

  Dr. Brett had introduced himself around the group, meeting all except Susan, who’d still been in the ER into the afternoon. Once Cage and Joule explained what they’d done, he’d cleared his schedule and come with a large pickup truck, tarps, body bags, and more.

  Though they had found several other neighbors kicking at the carcasses the next morning, the team had shooed them away, Dr. Brett sounding official and scary. The twins watched the reactions in their neighbors. Most stood around in awe as the vet helped the team clean up the dead hunters. Dr. Brett didn’t once ask what they’d done or how. He already knew enough.

  Everyone was curious about the hunters, but that didn’t mean they should be poking them with a stick. What if they hadn’t been dead? Cage thought.

  Trying to stay clean—since they’d all just showered—they worked to get the bodies into individual bags in the back of the truck.

  “There’s cyanide in the water that was on them,” Ivy warned him. But since he’d already been briefed by the twins, he only answered, “I know,” and continued his help hauling the bodies away. Dr. Brett had taken all of the carcasses.

  Neither Cage nor his sister had asked what he was going to do with them. The group stayed silent on that one as well, as though some unspoken pact had been made.

  When everything was packed up, Dr. Brett turned back to them, holding a small bag he’d grabbed from the cab of the truck.

  “There’s an online source for asthma inhalers written in there. And several doses of steroids. You’d have to start taking them at least in the morning before you go out, though.”

  While he looked at the group, he’d handed the bag to Cage. “I think you might be right about the medications. The guy in the wheelchair was taking the same inhaler.” Then he waved good-bye to all of them and climbed into the truck.

  Only when he was out of sight had they all turned away and headed home. Cage had showered one more time and laid on his bed in a pool of bright sunlight and warmth. It didn’t stop him from falling into a deep, exhausted sleep before his sister even made it into the room.

  She must have barricaded the door when she came in, and they both must have slept the sleep of the dead. Cage woke the next morning with the rising sun and headed downstairs to eat and sit in the chairs looking down the street. He’d watched the video from the night cameras before Joule came down the stairs.

  “Morning!” She had on her bright pink T-shirt for the first time in ages. She looked like the high school kid she was for once, wearing shorts, sneakers, and a sheen to her face that indicated she'd managed to wash the very last of the carbon black powder away.

  “Today's the day,” she chirped.

  Plucking at the corner of his own bright blue T-shirt to indicate he'd been paying attention, Cage nodded his reply. He hoped that he, too, had managed to wash himself back into humanity.

  They gathered the two boxes of materials they had prepped and walked down the street in the sunlight. Once again, the neighborhood looked as though nothing was wrong, as though they didn't pull the curtains tight and clip them closed at night, as though they didn't sleep with barricades on the doors.

  But the fact was, for three nights, there had been nothing wrong. Nothing in the front yard. Nothing in the backyard. Nothing down the street.

  He didn't doubt that there were more hunters—somewhere—and he didn’t doubt that more hunters would come. But now they had a plan. Kayla and Ivy had insisted they do this at their house. Steve and Susan had begged off the whole project, wanting nothing to do with this part of it, though they had agreed it was a great idea.

  Once inside, Ivy had played generous hostess, offering sodas and snacks. Together, they’d covered the countertop in black plastic that Ivy had bought just for this. She taped it down around the corners and Cage and Joule—the tallest of the four—helped hang a thin, solid-color blanket behind them with the idea of creating a small studio. Their hope was to disguise the location.

  Ivy clipped her phone onto a tripod that she had already set up and looked up at Kayla. “Do you want to be in this? Or do you want me to do it?”

  “I think I can,” Kayla told her, standing ramrod straight at the counter. Her hands were clasped, fingers interlaced, her back straight. But she made every line on precise cues and never messed it up.

  Still, Cage and Joule were more fun.

  They ran through it a couple of times before Ivy said they were ready and turned on the camera. She snapped a still shot and showed them how she’d captured the countertop perfectly. How their shirts and hands showed, but not their faces. Voice would be the only thing any one had to go on, because the point was not to become famous. They were just distributing information.

  They didn't mention any names. No streets. No location.

  But they showed the design for the trough and did a quick demo of how to stuff and tie a steak with rat poison. Joule held up the boxes showing the two brands that seemed to have worked best. They mentioned that—once this was live on the internet—all the designs would be downloadable from the comments.

  They showed the carbon black powder, mentioning the ballpark price and where they had ordered it from. They suggested crossbows, arrows, and handguns—if a person was qualified to handle them. They talked through the timeframe needed to bait, wait, and bait again. They showed off the trackers and the frequency readers, both the original and the better version, with Kayla promising that schematics for the upgrade would be downloadable.

  Cage held up the inhaler. “We don’t know that this works, but we have some limited evidence that some side effect of the inhaler causes the hunters to not bite, or not want to cause real damage.” He went on to emphasize that it was medicine and should not be overdosed, but he’d seen it work. They showed off the bottles, cyanide water, which weapons worked best, and more.

  They taught anyone watching how to eradicate a species.

  87

  Eight weeks later, Joule turned to her brother. “Did you see the comments that are showing up on our video?”

  She’d been tracking the numbers. Thinking
she could check it once a day to see if anyone had even watched it was a mistake. Once a day check-ins would not be enough; the post had blown up. Joule had to log in several times a day just to see most of what was going on. A conversation had started and more than one thread had spun off.

  Interestingly enough, some of their comments were coming from other states. It seemed the night hunters had evolved and traveled further than they’d originally expected. But groups of fighters were forming up. People had gone online and said where they were from and asked, did anyone want to join their Black Carbon group?

  Cage grinned in response to her question. “It blew up again last night. People are reporting in that it’s working. We have seven groups that are now patrolling neighborhoods that have been clear for four weeks. Nine more have been clear for two weeks or less, but clear, nonetheless.”

  “Where did you find that?”

  “Search ‘Black Carbon’,” he told her, and Joule filed that information away for later.

  The post with the video contained comments—strings and strings of them—about how it had worked. Some people had created and posted about adaptations they had made. Some had changed the trough, or the location. One group put it in an intersection between two packs they’d located and had intentionally started a war between the hunters, letting them mostly take each other out. The humans had finished the job.

  Kayla had designed a better trough that stood on a movable post, so the meat bounced and swayed in the bin, making the whole thing look like it was alive.

  “Is the moving trough a better delivery system?” her brother asked.

  She’d checked last light. “Preliminary results look good. I’m trying to track comments from the same commenters, to follow one group through the process. Mostly, I can do it. And it looks good. We should tell Kayla.”

  “If she hasn’t already been following it for herself,” he said. Joule was thinking he was probably right, when he asked a second question. “Did you see the troughs in the other subdivisions?”