The Novice Prey & The Daring Prey

Chapter Seven-1

Chapter Seven

Days went by. Armed with her stolen map, Alexa ranged as far as the next trading post to the east, called White’s. It was much like the others, but when she first saw it there were a number of men standing around outside it, talking and drinking what looked like beer, so she didn’t dare approach. Instead, she faded back into the sheltering woods, feeling angry and upset that no one had told her that beer was available at the trading posts. But then, Albert had told her that they weren’t obliged to offer information unless she specifically asked. Still, it felt like a raw deal to her. A nice, cold beer would be so good right now!

Once she’d had an unnerving feeling that she was being shadowed. It had stuck with her for most of the day as she crept slowly and cautiously from one patch of cover to another, all the while with her head on a swivel, looking in every direction from which a hunter…or hunters…might come. It wasn’t until after sundown that the feeling passed. She felt more than a little let down when it did, because feeling as if she was in imminent danger of being taken had her incredibly pumped up and powerfully aroused. Her sleep that night kept getting interrupted by vivid dreams of faceless men coming upon her in the night and dragging her, too sleepy to resist effectively, out of her sleeping bag. She always woke up at that point, heart pounding, mouth dry, her hands shaking.

This strange and new experience of being hunted was having an unexpected effect on her. On the one hand, she still desperately wanted to beat her competitors, and that drove her. On the other hand, the constant tension, while it had her feeling incredibly alive, was getting to the point where she could barely stand it. It was beginning to make her jumpy and nervous and, if she couldn’t get a handle on it, it could very likely cause her to make a mistake.

She drifted back towards Jackson’s but only came close enough to it to see if the striped red and yellow flag was still flying over the shed she’d seen Lydia in. It wasn’t, but she saw two more men there, dressed for the outdoors. Since they were almost certainly hunters, she quietly slipped away, unseen.

She’d gotten into the habit of moving her campsite daily. As much work as that entailed, it seemed much safer than trusting that a hiding spot would remain undiscovered. She was running low on food, and water, and clean clothes. She’d found a stream big enough to rinse her things out in, but that was a stopgap measure at best. She still had her third cache, if no one had discovered it by now, so one morning she packed up her gear and set out to find it.

Everything felt strange, somehow. Sounds seemed either unusually sharp or strangely muffled, and there was no wind at all, not even a breeze to ruffle the trees overhead. She picked her way through the woods just as cautiously, but much more easily than she had on her first day out here. She felt as if something was coming, but she had no idea what it might be, or why she should feel this way. As the day wore on, the feeling neither grew nor faded away, so Alexa decided to put it down to how jumpy this whole thing was making her. It was nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix…she hoped. The problem was that she wasn’t getting any good night’s sleep lately. She rested for a while after she reached what she thought was the general area where she’d secreted away her last cache. Sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree, she surveyed the area, trying to spot anything that looked familiar. After so much time in the woods, though, everything had started to look the same to her.

She got up and started moving through the woods in an expanding spiral, hoping that she might find her stuff that way. As the sun dropped down almost to the horizon, she had to admit that her plan wasn’t working. Maybe she’d picked the wrong place?

“Hi, there!”

Alexa shrieked and at the sound of a male voice practically at her elbow. She whirled, ready to flee, and then saw it was Will Longstreet, sitting on a log and smiling crookedly at her, his air rifle slung across his back. She wasn’t on his list. She was safe.

“You scared the s**t out of me!” she gasped.

“Didn’t mean to,” he shrugged. “I thought you saw me. You seem a little jumpy, Alexa Marx. How come?”

“This hunting thing is getting to me,” she said. “I’m just not used to it.”

“You’ve been doin’ pretty well, I’d say,” Will rejoined. “You still ain’t caught.”

“No, but I don’t know how the others are doing,” Alexa said. She wanted very much to sit down, but the only spot to do that wasn’t the ground was on the log right next to Will, and she didn’t want to get that close to him. She hadn’t had a shower in days, and washing off in the same creek that she did her laundry in was an unsatisfactory substitute.

“Well, I can give you some information about that,” Will sighed sadly. “My tall, blonde volleyball player got taken early today, about as far to the east as she could get without goin’ out of bounds.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Alexa’s sympathy was genuine. “I know you had your heart set on her. But that means it’s down to just me and Naomi, so it’s good news for me.”

“Well, get set for more good news. Naomi was nabbed late last evening at Jackson’s.”

“That means…I won!” Alexa smiled. She almost felt like dancing. “Thanks, Will!”

“No,” he corrected her. “You beat them out, but the hunt’s still goin’ on. There are still men after you.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess there are,” Alexa turned somber.

“So, now what?” Will asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you plan to do now?”

“Oh.” Alexa said. “I guess I’ll keep trying not to get caught.” Now that she knew she’d actually beaten the other women she felt a bit let down.

“Think you can keep it up?” Will asked.

“I don’t know,” Alexa admitted. “This is hard. But…how did you know about Martina and Naomi?”

Will unclipped something from one of his pack straps. He held it up so she could see it. It looked something like a cell phone, only bulkier.

“See this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Alexa nodded. “What is it?”

“It’s a chip reader,” Will answered. “You hold it up next to a woman’s earlobe and it reads the chip. A hunter catches a woman; he uses this to send the information back to Gordburg so they know she’s been bagged. I’m not sure if these things are connected, or if somebody in town sends a signal back out to all of ‘em, but it’ll also tell all the hunters carryin’ them that the woman was caught.” He clipped the device back onto the pack strap. “That’s how I know.”

“Can you talk to other hunters with that thing?” Alexa asked warily.

“Oh, hell, no,” Will shook his head. “Can’t talk, can’t text. It’s only good for sendin’ one kind of signal, and receivin’ one kind of signal.”

“Oh.” Alexa felt relieved. “So, what are you going to do now?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno. Head on back to town, maybe.”

“Well, thanks for the information,” Alexa said. “Sorry you didn’t get Martina.” She turned and started to walk away. She still had to find her stuff, if it was anywhere nearby, and she really didn’t feel like talking. She’d gone about half a dozen steps when she heard a sudden, loud ‘POP!’ behind her and something stung her left butt cheek, making her jump and cry out. She twisted her head around to look and saw a brightly colored feathered dart sticking in her. She turned to face Will. Her left leg wasn’t working properly, and she could feel a numbness spreading out from where the dart had hit.

“You fuckin’ shot me!” she exclaimed angrily. “I’m not on your list! Why did you fuckin’ shoot me?” Her left leg gave way and she dropped onto one knee.

“You think I shot you just to be a jerk?” Will asked as he approached her, shouldering his air rifle. “You don’t get it, do you? When you’re the last one left, you’re on everybody’s list.” He stopped a few feet away and looked down at her. “I told you,” he said. “It was a b***h and a half to get them to consider letting me use this thing,” he patted the stock of his gun, “and another b***h and a half for them to qualify me to use it. One way or another, I was gonna bag somebody. It was just dumb luck that I came across you lookin’ for somethin’ out here with you bein’ the only one left.”

Alexa had to get onto her hands and knees to keep from falling over, but from the way her body was going numb she knew that it was only a stopgap measure. She tried to scream, but all that came out was a croak.

“It’s just a muscle relaxant,” Will said to her. “Mixed in with a little tranquilizer, they tell me. Acts fast, but don’t last too long, so I’m afraid I gotta get started.”

Alexa couldn’t do anything as he shucked her pack off of her and tossed it aside. She slumped down, lying full-length on the ground, her face in the leaf litter. She couldn’t move. She could see and hear, but her body wasn’t responding at all to the panicked signals her brain was sending out. Will turned her head to the side and grinned at her. He flourished his chip reader before holding it against her earlobe.

“There we go,” he said cheerfully. “All done. Now it’s just you and me, Alexa Marx. I’m gonna strip you and tie you up now, but I’m not gonna use you until the shot wears off.”

Alexa tried to snarl at him. This time she couldn’t even make that croaking noise. Instead, she felt herself drooling.

“I’m gonna go old school, too,” Will chuckled. He held up a coil of rope so that she could see it. “I get you back to civilization we’ll see about some chains or leather.” With that he moved out of Alexa’s sight. She felt him doing something, and then, barely, felt him pull off her boots and socks.

“Always the first step,” she heard him say. Was he speaking to her? Was he expecting a reply? “Get ‘em barefoot, and even if they somehow get loose they won’t run far, or fast.”

He put her on her back. All Alexa could do was try to glare at him. He kept his eyes fixed on hers as he ripped her khaki shirt open, popping buttons all over the place, and seemed a bit disappointed at her utter lack of response. Well, that was his own damned fault! She managed to make a gargling noise as he pulled her sports bra up, baring her breasts.

“Well, hey, these are kinda nice,” he said as he squeezed one. Alexa couldn’t tell if it was a gentle squeeze or a rough one. All she felt was a vague sense of pressure. He pulled her sports bra up over her head and then rolled her onto her stomach. Now Alexa was grateful that she couldn’t feel much of anything. The ground was covered not just with leaves but with twigs and small stones as well. She felt Will tug her shirt and sports bra off. When he began to pull her arms behind her back, she made one titanic effort and managed to get one of her arms to flop free of his grip. That seemed to take everything she had, though. All Will did was try again, successfully.

“Now, the trick here,” he said, as if they’d been carrying on a normal conversation, “is to make ‘em secure without cuttin’ their circulation. Handcuffs are best, but I didn’t bring any with me. You let me know if this starts to pinch later. Okay?” All Alexa could do was make that gargling noise once more. Will chuckled and put her on her back again. He took the time to brush off leaves and other debris that had gotten stuck to her torso. Alexa found herself in an uncomfortable position, with her bound hands digging into her back, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t even tell Will about it. But as his attention was entirely taken up with tugging her pants off she doubted that he would have paid much attention anyway.

She’d deliberately chosen loose-fitting shirts and pants. Those would be more comfortable for running around in the great outdoors, but she’d gone with close-fitting underwear. As Will grunted and tugged and yanked her pants down and off of her…she couldn’t do a thing to help him there, not that she would have if she could have…her white bikini panties remained in place. Will tossed her pants away, gripped her panties by the waistband, and yanked. Alexa grunted at the powerful wedgie he wound up giving her. The panties remained intact. Will muttered something under his breath, tightened his grip, and gave another, stronger yank. The panties tore, but not completely. He made one last effort, and this time managed to rip them off of Alexa’s body. He stood up, waving the torn garment like a flag, and looked down at his prize, now lying bound and naked on the ground. As Alexa watched, his expression changed from triumph to something she couldn’t quite identify.