Chapter 28
brEK
The barracks is quiet and tense as we eat breakfast. The only sounds are of the people moving around and silverware against plastic plates. Everyone keeps glancing toward the board, waiting for the dreaded flipflipflipflip. Right now, it’s just black. All the little slots are blank.
I glance down at my plate. I’ve only managed to eat a couple bites. My stomach rolls and flips. A sour taste remains in my mouth. I know I need to eat. I’m going to need some sustenance and strength if I’m called out again. But I feel too close to vomiting.
“Eat,” the guy in front of me says as he gently kicks my foot.
I put a bite into my mouth, but it tastes gross. The food isn’t bad here. I’m not going to say it’s gourmet, but as far as being prisoners kept to be hunted at a person’s whim, the food is decent. Absently, I wonder how much it costs to book a hunting trip here.
What price do you put on hunting a human? It better be a lot.
Time continues to move. I think we all collectively hold our breath as we look at the board when the time comes. Silence. Seconds drag. All sixty seconds as we stare.
Nothing.
There isn’t a sigh of relief. Right now, we’re not called, but they’ve already changed the rules by holding two hunts in two days. Anything could happen. Maybe we’re all going to be let out at the same time. Maybe we’re going to be stuck on a night hunt.
As time keeps moving, everyone slowly turns back to their meals, and we finish breakfast. I drop my plate through the slot in the wall and make my way back to the bunk I’ve been sleeping in. I don’t dare call it mine. My existence here is temporary.
Dropping into it again, I close my eyes.
There are times in your life when you can’t help but think, Is this actually real? Most of the time, I’d like to think it happens during good moments. Moments that feel too good to be true. For the unfortunate, it happens during nightmares.
My brain feels like a broken record. Every hour at least, the same thought keeps scrolling through my mind. This can’t be real. How did this happen to me? What did I do in life to deserve this? I suppose that’s better than the constant chant that I’m going to die the next time I’m called up.
Honestly, it’s a damn miracle that I lived. I wouldn’t have if I’d been spotted. It’s dumb luck that someone else was caught first. In reality, they probably didn’t have someone like Malcolm to give him all kinds of pointers. No one told him how to make it out alive.
They sentenced him to death alongside the people who brought him here.
On the one hand, I get it. Survival of the fittest. If that guy dies, I get to live another day. I can’t say I wouldn’t be that person.
“Hey.”
I open my eyes. Malcolm stands over me.
“You okay?”
“Not even a little,” I mutter.
He gives me a smile. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
Malcolm nods. He drops to the floor at the head of the bunk and rests his head against the wall.
“How have you lived through this for so long?” I ask. “I can’t imagine living with this hanging over my head every single day.”
“What are my options? Lie down and die? Then they kill me in a manner out of a horror movie?” He shakes his head.
“As lame as it might sound, the easiest way to stay alive is to remain in the middle of the pack and run—don’t be the first they see and don’t be the straggler.
I refuse to allow myself to die like this. ”
“So every day you fight to live. What kind of life is that?”
“The only option I have,” he answers.
Someone crawls through the bunk next to mine and lies on his stomach facing us. “Has anyone ever escaped?”
Malcolm shrugs. “No idea. I imagine they won’t announce it if it happens. They keep track of who returns to the barracks after each hunt. I don’t know if there are trail cams. I’ve never slowed down enough to look, but maybe.”
“Do you know where we are?” A second voice asks. They’re behind me. Must be on the bunk at my back.
“The weather is turning cold, so I’m going to assume we’re north somewhere. The only signs I’ve actually seen are the ones leading back to the barracks,” Malcolm answers.
“If you were to make a run for it, which way would you go?” the guy in front of me says.
Malcolm shakes his head. “I’ve made a few observations in the months I’ve been here, and that’s the complete unconcern on the side of the hunters and those who guard the barracks’ doors.
From this, I glean that wherever we are, we’re far removed from civilization.
No one is going to stumble upon this operation accidentally.
So if we think about this logically, it’s not a matter of just surviving the hunt when we’re let out and running away.
It means that wherever we are, we’re a long way away from another human—or one that isn’t involved in this.
Which means we not only need to survive the hunt but also the forest. On our own.
With no food and no weapons. No first aid.
Nothing. For who the fuck knows how long. ”
“It’s just as much a death sentence as being here,” I say.
Malcolm shrugs, nods. “Yes. We can also assume that no one has made it out alive. Otherwise, I’d like to think that they’d have told someone their story and this place would no longer exist.”
“There goes that hope,” someone mutters.
“Have you ever fought back? Against a hunter, I mean,” the guy behind me asks.
Malcolm nods. “Yes. Not those with guns. That seems pointless. There are times when I’ve stepped in and given someone else a little help to get away.
Especially when they’re young. I have a couple scars for my thanks, and I’m not always successful.
More than one has died anyway. One hunter came at me with a knife, thinking that was going to be enough to subdue me.
They ended up with that knife in their neck, and I made it back here. ”
“Wow. That’s…”
“Dangerous,” Malcolm says, nodding. “Also, a bit of luck. He was overly arrogant, thinking that because he had enough money to be here, he was stronger than those here fighting for their lives. Arrogance is always their weakness. That’s not the only hunter who’s died.
He’s the only one I’ve killed. There was a guy here who made it his mission to kill as many hunters as he could.
Every time he was let out, he came back with at least a single kill. ”
“What happened to him?”
Malcolm shrugs. “I’m assuming he’s dead. Haven’t seen him in quite a while, though he could very well be at one of the other barracks. He hasn’t been back to this one in over a month.”
“A month,” someone murmurs. “I can’t help but wonder what’s become of the life I left behind.
My wife, my son, my job, my car. Has my house been foreclosed on because my wife can’t make the mortgage on her own?
My car repossessed? Has my cell phone number already been reassigned?
What about my job—have I been replaced? Has my kid forgotten me? ”
I shiver at his questions. They feel like they’re coming straight from me. I’ve only been gone for a couple days. I think. Who knows how long I was passed out in the back of the truck? As if Malcolm read my mind and is speaking it out loud, he says, “Have they stopped looking for me?”
“At least someone was looking for you,” someone else says.
“I worked at home. Self-employed, making shit and selling it online. I didn’t get along with my family, so I hadn’t spoken to them in years.
I’m an introvert, so I never spoke to my neighbors.
I didn’t have a girlfriend. Very few friends and none that I spoke to regularly. Has anyone even realized I’m missing?”
My chest tightens. Fuck.
“Wow, man.”
I close my eyes and listen to the voices around me as they ask a different version of these same questions.
How has the life they left behind been rewritten?
At what point does your debt get written off?
When does your partner stop grieving and move on?
When do the authorities label your case cold and stick it on a shelf, forgotten?
I think about Voss. He was the last person I sent a text to. How long before he got concerned that I didn’t arrive home? Did he call the police? Are they looking for me? What about my friends? Have my parents been notified? Do they care at all?
A stray thought that my parents would answer the report that I’m missing with an eye roll. “Always such a dramatic child. This isn’t how you get attention, Albrecht.”
It’s difficult coming to terms with the idea that I’ll never see my friends again. I’ll never see Briar’s kid grow up or Haze get married. Honey Bee become a mother. Levis get his chivalric happily ever after. I’ll never see Axl grow up.
My breath catches in my throat with that last thought.
Axl. When did he become important to me?
When did I decide I wanted to be around to see him grow up?
For a minute, I can’t catch my breath as the knowledge that I’ll never see any of them again, and they’ll never know what happened to me, is the only thought.
This can’t be real! This isn’t fair. I haven’t done anything bad enough to have this be the end of my life!
“Brek?”
I inhale and open my eyes. Malcolm is watching me. “Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
“I don’t know why you keep asking that. Nothing is okay. I don’t accept this as the new normal. No, I’m not okay.”
A beat passes before he asks, “What do you plan to do to change it?”
I snort and close my eyes again. “Nothing. I’m a spoiled rich boy, Malcolm. I don’t know the first thing about escaping something like this or staging a revolt or whatever. But for the record, every time you ask, know the answer is that I’m not okay.”
Malcolm chuckles quietly. I feel his hand rest on my head for a minute.
“Sorry. I’m not really asking if you’re okay.
This—whatever this level of existence is—is the new baseline.
Not okay, obviously, but for the duration of our stay, it’s the new okay.
When I ask if you’re okay, I mean beyond this hellscape. ”
“You should have led with that. I’m fine,” I answer.
Several people around me laugh quietly. Honestly, it feels good to hear laughter. Even quiet. Even if it’s not real humor.
Minutes pass in silence.
“I keep trying to think of something to say, like, It’ll get better or Everything will be fine. Something that’s hopeful, reassuring, and not a complete lie,” Malcolm says. “I can’t think of a thing.”
“Count your blessings doesn’t even apply to this situation,” the guy behind me says. “What fucking blessings do I have right now?”
“We’re alive,” someone volunteers. “Is that a blessing?”
“No, that’s fucking luck. I wasn’t spotted and shot from a hundred yards away.”
“We’re fed,” another voice offers. “We have beds and… a roof?”
“In an ironic way, we still manage to have more than the homeless living on the streets,” someone muses.
“In a less ironic way, our deaths will be just as noteworthy here as theirs are,” another guy murmurs.
“There’s no hope of surviving this experience, is there?” the guy behind me asks. “Like, no hope that someone is going to find us and rescue us.”
Malcolm shakes his head. “I gave up on that hope a long time ago. I don’t know what they’re doing to hide us, but yeah, I don’t see that happening. We’re going to live out the rest of our days here, be that two or two hundred. We’re going to die fighting for our lives.”
Once, I might have made a joke about how dooming that sounds, but that’s my new reality. There’s no escape.
The familiar flipflipflipflip penetrates the quiet room. I’m not the only one who jumps. Not in surprise or startlement, but because that sound incites fear. It’s a roll of the dice on your fate.
“What the hell is going on?” someone mutters.
Feet shuffle around the room as everyone moves to get a look at the board. I wonder what would happen if someone refused to come out of the barracks. Would they be dragged out? Killed right there?
“Three hunts in three days,” someone hisses. “What the fuck?”
“This one is later than usual—why?”
“The game is changing,” Malcolm notes. He’s standing at the end of the bunks. I haven’t gotten up. I don’t want to see. “I don’t know if this is a good thing or not.”
“More hunts mean more of us die more rapidly. I think that’s a bad thing.”
“But is that to clear out their inventory of human game? Are they shutting down? Relocating? Or is this something like… an event for their clients? Maybe a hunting party booked,” Malcolm muses. He comes back and retakes his seat.
“You talk about this disturbingly calmly,” a guy says as he stands where Malcolm had been a minute ago.
Malcolm shrugs. “You don’t live by panicking over why the changes are happening. You live by adapting to them. Understanding them makes adapting easier. Quicker. Understanding your enemy allows you to outsmart them.”
“What’s your conclusion?” the guy asks.
“I don’t have one yet. Not until we figure out if this is a permanent change. If those dying are being replaced or if they’re weeding down our numbers. Not the best answer, but it’ll be a few more days before I have the beginning of a hypothesis.”
“In the meantime?” I ask.
“Rest. Keep our strength up. Survive the hunt.”
“Are you called up?”
He shakes his head. “Neither are you. We get to sit this one out.”
I sigh with relief and close my eyes again.
That flipping sound is the new voice of doom.
It determines whether it’s your turn for a gunfight without a gun.
It determines whether you get to live on frayed nerves, waiting to see who leaves and doesn’t return, or whether you get to be one of the ones running for your life.
Along with the memory of the teenager being brutally murdered in front of my eyes, mere feet away, that one sound instantly makes my stomach roll.