The Hunt

At least it had been quick for him, Paco thought ruefully. Realizing now how open he was out here, Paco used the survival instincts he'd learned during a dangerous life. He grabbed Mark's gun and pack and, as quickly and quietly as possible, crawled off, hardly daring to breathe till he'd put some trees between him and his former partner's body.

Eli had almost thought for a moment that he'd gotten both of them with the one shot. After all, there hadn't been any return fire and they'd gone down together. He'd moved to a new position to see if he could get another shot, but by then he could hear the spic moving away through the brush. He took a look through his scope but couldn't get a clear shot at the retreating figure, so he decided not to waste a round.

Eli would let the gangbanger get a good head start before he started tracking him. By the time Eli was done with him, he thought with a snort, this kid would be praying to be back in the hood. With a smile on his face at these pleasant thoughts, Eli moved to a new position to wait.

Part 4

Following the all-too-brief class he'd given her, Jim and Jennifer had been on the move too -- that is, after he had finally gotten her to reluctantly bury her designer clothes. Once the two of them got moving, they made slow but sure progress. He could have gone faster, but Jim understood that (since they were on an island) they really didn't have anywhere to go.

He was still hoping to find a shoreline or some high ground and get a look around. But so far they hadn't managed to find much of any significant terrain. As near as he could tell, the topography of the island they were on was mostly just flat ground with a few rolling hills. That was good, since it would mean that Walsh couldn't have an observation post where he could watch the entire island. But it also meant that they couldn't either.

Hearing the sudden rifle shot in the distance, Jim reacted and immediately went to ground behind a tree, waving for Jennifer to do the same. After a moment, he looked back to see that she was still standing out in the open, so he tried signaled again --this time a lot more urgently -- to get down. Not understanding what he wanted her to do, she just looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before he finally lost his patience and yelled at her, "Get your ass down before it gets shot off!"

"OK, OK, you don't have to yell at me!" "Besides," she added, "that shot sounded a long way away."

"Maybe so," he acknowledged, "but Walsh could be a long way away shooting at us too."

Not hearing any more shots after a few moments, Jim figured that Jennifer had most likely been right; Walsh hadn't been shooting at them. He waved Jennifer back to her feet, and they moved out. Irritated at how this played out, Jim now wanted to find a defensible position, since he could see that the two of them were going to have to have a conversation.

It didn't take long to find a small gully. Jim concluded that this was about as good as they could expect to find on short notice. Not wanting to put this off any further, he waved Jennifer into it and followed along after.

"Are we going to wait here?" she asked, watching her accidental survival partner take his backpack off.

"For a while," he replied. "But the main reason that I stopped was so we could have a little talk."

"About what?"

"About the fact that you need to do what I tell you to do without an argument."

"That shot was a long way off," she reminded him, guessing what he was going to say.

"Yes it was, this time. Next time it could be a lot closer, like right between your eyes. I told you about this before, remember? If you hear a shot or see movement, immediately hit the ground, get behind the best cover you can, and be ready to return fire," he told her, trying to emphasize how serious this situation was. But he just wasn't sure she was getting it. "In the middle of this mess, there's simply no way to call a time-out and have some sort of debate about whether you're going to do something or not. You are going to have to be ready to act," he told her, trying to get through to her.

Trying a different tack, he went on, "We both know there's no way that Walsh is going to let any of us get off this island alive." Seeing that Jennifer had thankfully already figured that out too, Jim drove his point home. "We are either going to have to kill him, or he's going to kill us. Are you ready for that?"

"I guess so," she replied, not sounding too convincing to Jim.

"Well, you're going to have to be ready because Walsh sure is."

"I know, OK!" she said, the anger that had been bubbling beneath the surface now rising to the top along with the volume of her voice until he warned her to keep it down. "I get it, all right, but 24 hours ago, I was working on Fifty-million dollar business deal, and now here I am," she said, indicating the dirty hole they were currently sitting in, "and I'm being hunted down by my boss, who wants to kill me because I turned him down for a date."

"Look, I know it's a lot for you to take in all at once," Jim said, looking her in the face and hoping he was finally getting through to her. "It is for me too, but you have to shift your thinking. Stop thinking like that executive you used to be, working in a climate-controlled office building, and start thinking like the most vicious and cunning animal on this planet, which is what you can be," he told her, his voice and eyes full of intensity.

Jennifer, a little taken aback, couldn't believe what she was hearing. It almost sounded to her like this janitor that she wouldn't have given a second glance to before today had some idea of what he was doing. Could that be possible? she wondered.

After poking he head carefully above the edge of the gully for a look around to make sure Walsh wasn't trying to sneak up on them, Jim dropped back down, pulled out a canteen, and tried to get comfortable.

"Does everyone call you Jennifer?" he asked suddenly. Surprised by the question, she answered a little too quickly, "No, most people call me Miss Ryan."

Jim bristled at the tone of her reply as well as what she said. If this broad seriously thought he was going to call her Miss Ryan out here, well, she had another thing coming.

"Really?" he replied, trying to keep things civil and avoid another argument at the same time. "Well, I have a hard time believing that your friends call you Miss Ryan."

Seeing that she'd overreacted, Jennifer tried to do a little damage control. "I know. I'm sorry about that. It didn't come out the way I intended."

Accepting that she really was sorry, he decided to let it go. "No problem. So what do you like to be called?"

"Most people call me Jennifer, but my mom and dad used to call me Jen."

"Jen, eh? I like it. You can call me Jim if you want," he told her. "Well, Jen, what do you say we get ourselves moving?" he announced, climbing to his feet.

After they got their packs on, Jim noticed that it seemed to be getting dark awfully early today. Just then, he heard some thunder in the distance, and a light rain began to fall. "Just perfect," he muttered, staring up at the traitorous sky. Someone up there really doesn't like me, Jim thought -- and not for the first time.

Part 5

After watching Mark get his brains blown out, Paco had (quite reasonably, he thought) taken to moving as fast as he could in the other direction. He didn't know it, but he'd been leaving a trail wide enough for a blind man to follow.

Pausing for a moment to catch his breath, Paco had to do some thinking. What in the hell was he going to do now? It didn't take long for him to reach a decision, and Paco knew what he had to do: He had to find the others (assuming they were still alive, that is). After all, there was still safety in numbers. Paco might have had his pride, but this was a matter of his survival. Wiping the sweat from his face, he wondered just how he was going to find anyone in among all these damn trees.

Unknown to Paco, Walsh had been on his trail ever since making sure that Mark Anderson was really dead. The older man did this for a couple of reasons. First, he didn't want anyone he thought was dead coming up behind him, and second, a good hunter never leaves his prey merely wounded (it wasn't humane, after all). So after collecting his trophy and marking the position of the body with his GPS unit for later retrieval, he moved out. After all, he still had three more out there, and the day was getting on.

After leaving the gully, Jim again led the way, keeping himself and Jen moving despite the rain and the mud. Looking back at her from time to time, he could see that she looked pretty much the way he felt in her rain soaked clothes, along with the mud splattered uniform and boots. The only difference was that Jen was still wearing the boony hat from her pack, while Jim had chosen the baseball cap.

Seeing him looking at her, Jen signaled that she needed a break. Nodding his assent, Jim couldn't argue with that sentiment. This certainly wasn't the best weather to travel in. But he'd wanted to put in the most distance they could after the rain had started; he was hoping that it would help erase their passing, just in case Walsh was trailing them.

It wasn't much longer before Jim found a thicket of trees to shelter in. After making sure it was safe and seeing that they had multiple escape routes, Jim lead Jen in and stripped off his pack.

Seeing that the sky was already going from merely gray and gloomy toward actual dark now, Jim decided to just wait out the rain here and possibly the night as well. It wasn't exactly dry under these trees, but at least you were in out of the worst of the weather.

He, of course, told Jen to forget about a camp fire even before she asked. Huddled together in the gathering gloom of a dreary afternoon, they each got out one of their MREs. After Jim explained what it was, Jen reluctantly dug into some kind of mystery meat covered in spaghetti sauce.

Seeing her sitting there on a rotting log with her boony hat pulled low over her face, her long brown hair hanging wet and stringy, Jim had to admit he didn't think anyone had ever looked more beautiful.

Catching the way that Jim was looking at her reminded Jennifer of how another man had looked at her that same way once, but she had to nip this situation in the bud right now. Jen was well aware of what she had to do here, and having some kind of wilderness romance wasn't part of it. No, she had to keep her eye on the ball and to make sure he did too, so she brought her involuntary traveling companion back down to earth with a thud.

"Don't even think about it," she told him in the bossy tone she used on her underlings who were starting to get to big for their place.

The effect on Jim was immediate; the appreciative look he'd been giving her had quickly vanished from his face, replaced by more of a scowl than anything. He was a little embarrassed at having been caught staring again. But that hardly meant that Jim was going to try getting into her pants. Understanding clearly what she was telling him, Jim couldn't help but give some or her own attitude back to her. "Jesus, lady, why don't you get over yourself!" he exclaimed. "Regardless of whether I think you're good looking or not, or even what I may have been thinking, I've got a little too much on my mind right now to really relax, if you know what I mean," he informed her in no uncertain terms.

That last exchange having effectively brought conversation to a halt for the moment, Jim got back to the business at hand. Once they had finished eating, he told Jen to try to get some sleep. "I'll take the first watch and wake you in two hours."

"So we're going to stay here?"

"Unless you have a better idea, we're going to need to rest eventually, and I for one really don't want to sleep completely out in the rain."

Unable to argue that point, Jen put aside what was left of her supper, curled up on the wet cold ground and tried to sleep.

Still trudging through the mud, Paco knew he couldn't go much further without a rest. He'd already gone through Mark's pack and had gotten rid of what he didn't need, including the pack itself. But still it was like he was lugging around a bag of bricks or something. He'd been looking for the others for what seemed like hours, but so far he hadn't found a trace of them. He hoped they were still alive; he certainly didn't want to be the last person out here with this nut.

Sitting on the exposed roots of a tree, Paco had intended to rest for just a moment. However, as soon as he closed his eyes, he drifted off to sleep.

Part 6

Walsh had been tracking the spic for most of the afternoon and was finally getting ready to move in despite the rain. He wanted to knock down another clay pigeon yet tonight if possible. He'd been staying close to his prey -- probably too close -- but he hadn't been noticed with all the noise the other man was making. All of a sudden, however, everything went silent.

Alerted, Walsh immediately froze in place briefly before slowly sinking to his knees. He worried for a moment that he'd walked into an ambush, but no one fired at him. In fact, there wasn't any movement at all. Nothing. All he heard was the sound of the last of the rain falling into the foliage all around him. Walsh kept his rifle gripped tightly in his hands. After a lengthy pause, he rose back to his feet and started forward again to see what had happened and why had he lost contact.

Moving cautiously forward, Walsh still made a mistake. He put his foot down, but instead of finding solid earth, he could feel that he was going to be standing on something. Realizing what he'd done, he tried to pick his foot back up, but it was too late. The branches he'd stepped on broke with what sounded like an earth-shattering roar in the gloomy forest.

With his anxiety-fueled senses on overdrive, Paco snapped awake with a heart-pounding start. Pistol already in hand, he leaped to his feet, looking around wildly. It took him a moment for what he was looking at to sink in, but there was a man standing next to a tree not twenty yards away. Not even pausing to think, he simply reacted and immediately started shooting.

Eli was just as surprised to see the spic that close as the other man seemed to be at seeing him. Even though he'd reacted at once, Walsh hadn't even had time to dive for the ground before the kid, in an impressive display of reflexes, had opened fire on him.

Hitting the ground, he rolled behind a tree to use it as a shield from the bullets that were now thudding into it. He rolled again and quickly crawled behind another tree; staying on his belly, he got his rifle ready.

By this time, the spic (Walsh couldn't remember what his real name was at the moment) had stopped firing and a hush settled over the area. Looking out, Eli kept a watch for movement from the surrounding forest, hoping he hadn't lost him again.

For whatever reason, the ambush Eli had thought he'd walked into hadn't worked out. If the situation had been reversed, once it become clear he'd missed his target, Eli would have used the burst of gun fire as cover and would have run for it, hoping to disappear in the darkening woods, and of course set up another ambush further down the road. But Walsh didn't give this guy that much credit. No, the spic would want to shoot it out like this was some kind of video game or something. Well, that was just fine with Eli.

This hunt, up till now, really hadn't been all that exciting. The first kill he'd made had almost been too easy. He was still hoping that this one would end up being more of a challenge, and so far at least, the gangbanger had been living up to his billing.

Not far away, behind his own tree, Paco didn't know what to do. His natural instinct was to run, but he also knew full well that this freak would just come after him again. The next time, he might not catch another break.

Paco had emptied an entire clip at the guy who was after him. When, after reloading, he still hadn't heard anyone shooting back, he got to thinking. Maybe he'd killed him. Could he have been that lucky? One way or another, he needed to find out.

By this time, Eli had moved again to another new location. Here, he could keep both the place where he thought the spic was hiding and the original spot where he'd gotten shot at under observation. Knowing that he now had everything under control, the hunter settled in to wait.

Coming awake with a start, gun in hand, to the sound of the distant shots, it took Jim a moment to realize that he wasn't the one under fire. It was only then that he noticed that he had his gun pointed at Jen, who had been on watch. Fortunately she hadn't seemed to have noticed.

Quickly pointing the gun away, he heard the last of a flurry of shots he identified as coming from a pistol. It seemed like he'd just lain down to get some rest. He checked his watch to see that indeed only a half-hour had passed. Well so much for sleeping, he thought with a frown.

"What's going on?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know," Jen told him in the same hushed whisper. "There was just a whole bunch of shots."

"Did you hear anything else?" He wondered if someone had moved right past them in the dark without being heard.

"No, nothing. It about scared me to death when all the shooting started," Jen admitted to him. "It had been so quiet since the rain stopped."

Only after she had mentioned it did Jim realize that the rain had, in fact, stopped. With nothing more to say, the two of them settled in behind their respective trees and waited to hear what else was going to happen.

Paco could see that it was getting dark. which put him under a certain amount of time pressure. If he was going to find this guy tonight, he'd have to do it before it got much darker. He certainly didn't want to lose this Walsh guy in the murky twilight that was even now gathering around him, especially if Walsh was really hurt. After all, the last thing Paco wanted was for this crazy asshole to go off and die somewhere -- somewhere Paco couldn't find him, that is. Then what would Paco do? No, he decided he had to finish this now. After making sure that he had full clip in is pistol, Paco started cautiously forward.

The city kid might not have been a natural outdoorsman, but he wasn't an idiot either. Instead of going straight ahead, Paco started moving more to the side, thinking that he'd circle in from a different direction in hopes of catching Walsh by surprise if he was still alive out there. With his heart hammering both from exhaustion and fear, trying to move as quietly as possible, Paco edged forward.

From his own position, Eli had started to wonder if maybe he'd misjudged the other man. Finally he saw and heard movement but not from where he expected it. This was coming from more to his right. Quickly realizing what the spic was doing, Eli had to give him some credit for the element of surprise.

Once again he was reminded of why he loved these hunts. Only an intelligent and cunning creature would think to do something like that. Most animals, when they realized the danger, would either simply have run away or charged straight at him, but a human had planned and launched a more cunning counter attack.

Eli quickly changed his position to keep his rifle pointed at the new threat. It was really too bad he was going to kill this guy, Walsh thought to himself.

Sticking his head up for a second to look around, Paco was starting to think that he was going to pull this off -- that is, until the first shot rang out and blew a piece of bark off the tree just inches from his head.

Quickly ducking back down, he hurried to find something to hide behind as another shot thudded into the tree next to him. Pointing his own gun in the general direction of the threat, Paco fired blindly a couple of times, just hoping to get Walsh to keep his head down.