Chapter Two
Hunted
Thirty-one years later.
Kana moved through the forest, as silent as any shadow. It was dim within the forest, because of the heavy canopy above and Kana took full advantage, as she moved lithely through the shadowed understory. It was dangerous to be here, but then it was dangerous to be alive.
Small isolated pockets of still standing forest, such as this one, were heavily contested for by all those left alive and those that hunted them. It was a harsh world that she’d been born into. She was one of the few who had managed to survive, but to survive on this world meant that you had to daily risk your life to do so. Death was a constant companion to all those who dared to live in freedom.
It was either continue fighting to live free or die because of the temerity for wanting to live free of the Enlightenment’s control. Some people got tired of the fight to live and had been known to just walk out in front of enemy patrols, in order to end the struggle for continued existence. That might be okay for some, but it wasn’t for Kana.
She wanted to live. Death was a constant out here in the wilderness, but as long as she could avoid its cold grasp she would. She wasn’t quite sure for what she was hanging onto life so desperately for, other than the thought that there had to be more to it than this. There had to be hope of some kind, some greater purpose to living other than merely surviving day to day.
It was true that she had her faith, but she had that whether she lived or died. Surely God wouldn’t let this wretchedness continue on like this for forever? Surely He would do something? Anything?
All this struggle to survive would pay off someday. Maybe one day life could go back to the old ways. That time hadn’t been so long ago, but she had never experienced it. All she knew about it was from what others had said. She had been born ten years into this living disaster of a world that she fought daily to survive in.
This small patch of forest had once been part of a much larger forest known as the Attagron Forest. Now however, they were only scattered patches such as this one, to give a glimpse of how it must’ve been in the past. Now the old forest lands were simply known as the Barrens. The old forest had been consumed in a great fire that burnt up an entire civilization that had lived within its forest realm. The fire had burned so intensely that it had burnt the topsoil layers off of most of the forest’s former range. Now other than for a few small isolated pockets of forest, the majority of the Barrens was either bare, as the name implied or choked with stunted shrubs that were barely enough to support much of anything. Some of the outlying areas had even started turning to desert.
It was a harsh place to try to survive in, especially when everything that moved was targeted by the occasional hunt and kill enemy patrols that came to the area off and on throughout the year.
The Barrens were the only home that Kana had ever known. Her parents had lived and made their home for generations in the very place where all the trouble had been rumored to have started, the Tranquil Islands. Over fifty years ago a populist group self termed, The Enlightenment Society, had swept into power of the small island nation, much to the surprise of everyone including most Tranquil Islanders.
The Enlightenment Society had quickly solidified their power over the island nation. Over the next several years they worked hard at eroding most of the personal liberties that the Islanders had always known and enjoyed. Her parents had been influential people and they had done all they could to stop what they saw as the wholesale destruction of their country by lesser men with poor ideals, which shouldn’t have inspired anything but a rethink.
They hadn’t really been ideals to live by in terms of sensible society. Rather the ideals fostered by the Enlightenment Society had been more on the verge of a promise of more to those who had less to start out with or those who just wanted more of what everybody else had.
The populist movement inspired social class warfare and any who opposed them were openly ridiculed and worse. Riots, that had been purposely stirred up, crippled the once prosperous island nation and in the chaos that followed many of those who had protested against the envy driven crusade movement were killed.
Kana’s parents had both been wealthy people, but they barely escaped with the clothes on their backs. They had left the island in the dead of the night and gone to stay with distant relatives in the Valley Lands. There they had been received with open arms, as were all the other refugees from the islands. Her parents had thought they would be safe there and they were for several years, until the Valley Lands were attacked by a suddenly militant Tranquil Islander nation.
The surprise attack was aided by a whole range of technologies and advancements in weapons that had never before been seen. The smaller Islander attacking forces smashed through every defensive strategy that the Council of the Valley Lands could improvise and within two weeks the Valley Lands were a wasteland of burned-out dwelling places and dead bodies.
It had been a hateful annihilation of a once proud nation virtually overnight. The Islanders had cursed the land and had sworn to make it impossible for the place to be ever inhabited again. They had installed a device with an un-penetrable shield at the very heart of the Valley Lands.
The device affected the immediate weather patterns of the area, which encompassed most of the former range of the Valley Lander nation. The weather changing effects of the device had plunged the Valley Lands into a virtual winter that knew no end. Little could survive in such a frozen wilderness of snow and ice, but it was rumored that some still did.
During the invasion when it had become clear that defeat was inevitable at the hands of a more advanced enemy the order had been given to evacuate as many people as possible from the Valley Lands with their remaining air ships to Assoria. Kana’s parents had been on one of the ships bound for Assoria, but their ship was shot down over the Plains of Zoar and they had been among only a few that had survived the crash. At the time it had looked bad, but in reality if her parents had reached Assoria she would never have been born.
After the Islanders had finished with the Valley Lands and the Attagrons had all been burnt up in their great forest, they had begun to systematically bombard every city and town that was left on the face of the world. Millions had died, as the Zoarinian cities and towns followed by those of the Khartians were destroyed with no quarter given. Only the Southern Settlement’s cities and towns were spared in the onslaught.
The Islanders invaded the Southern Settlements and turned the citizenry into slaves to do all the work that had become beneath what a new member of the Enlightenment Society was willing to do. The Islanders, confident of their control of the major continent, had turned their attention to Assoria and its two powerful kingdoms.
They attacked, but were met with a surprisingly stiff resistance. Within a week of fighting the Islanders had lost all of their larger ships and most of their ground troops, which had forced them to employ weapons of destruction that they hadn’t so far. They used the weapons of mass destruction they possessed unsparingly. Every city of Assoria along with all the inhabitants and the refugees that had flocked to her shores were destroyed in the toxic disaster that had burned the smaller continent to a pile of rubble and ashes within the course of just a few hours.
It was said that the very air of Assoria had been made poisonous and that every living thing whether plant or animal had died. If her parents had reached their destination she and her twin sister Eshta would’ve never have been born. Her parents, after managing to survive for years in the aftermath of the attack, had been driven to these barren wastelands by the death patrols. To their mutual surprise they had conceived, something which they had thought impossible for them, as they had tried for many years to have children without success.
They’d given birth to her and her sister in bitterness, fearing for the life their young daughters would have to face. When she and her sister had been seven years old both of their parents were taken from them by a death squad, while they had been out foraging food for them. Since that time it had been a long fight for survival with little to no hope of anything positive ever occurring.
Kana saw the woodland buck up ahead of her and she stopped abruptly. Well at least she wouldn’t go to sleep tonight hungry, there at least was one positive. Slowly, as to not attract the attention of the deer, she slipped behind the trunk of a nearby tree. She undid her bow from off her back and pulled an arrow free of its quiver. She brought her bow up with the arrow already notched. It was a primitive means by which to hunt, but it was all that was left to them the survivors of a bygone war.
She sighted down the shaft of the arrow, as she let her breath out in preparation of releasing the arrow to fly free to its target. Her fingers had started to release the drawn back arrow, when she noticed the buck pull against something with one leg.
Her eyes flared wide in alarm and her fingers desperately clamped down on the arrow that had already started to leave her grasp. She managed to halt the arrow, but halting the rapid panic of her breathing was harder to bring under control. By sheer force of will alone she stayed where she was, instead of giving in to her heart’s desire to flee the scene. Forcefully bringing her breathing into steady focus she debated about what to do next.
Had she really seen what she’d thought she’d had or had it been her imagination getting the best of her? Cautiously she peered around the trunk of the tree scarcely daring to even breathe. The buck still stood there in the slight clearing up ahead. It pulled again at something with one leg and Kana saw the braids of a rope that was tied around one of its forelegs. Kana brought her head back around the tree and stood there gripped in fear and indecision of thought.
Who would do such a thing?
It was obviously a trap meant to catch humans, but she’d never heard of such a ploy being used before. Roving bands of survivors, who had become cannibalistic out of desperation, were known to pass through here occasionally, but it couldn’t have been them. They would never have had the reserve to hold back from eating the deer once they had caught it, which left only one plausible answer to who could have laid such a trap. The Hunters were here!
It had to be a kill squad, the same kind that had killed her parents and so many others through the years. Maybe it was even the same squad.
All she wanted to do was to run away with every fiber of her being, but some rational part of her reasoned against her desire for flight. She was still alive so they must not know she was here yet. It would be darker in a few hours; it was already heavily shadowed in the dappled shade of the forest, which her dark green clothes and darker skin and hair blended in well with.
Kana squinted her eyes to mere slits so that the whites of her eyes did not betray her. She ever so slowly sank to the forest floor next to the base of the tree and let the understory foliage conceal her even more. She would slip away when it got darker.
She sat there barely even breathing for fear of detection, as her ears strained for any noise alien to the natural sounds of the forest. An hour passed by and she thought she heard some movement. The sound was coming from the other side of the clearing and there was a slight hush to the natural sounds of the forest.
The approach by whoever it was sounded almost clumsy. Hunters would never be so loud. It was said that they made no sound at all. Some even said that they didn’t even talk among themselves out loud, but communicated on some deeper unspoken level of consciousness. In any case little was known about Hunters in general, other than they always caught their prey and were utterly ruthless in how they killed without mercy.
Kana heard the deer snort nervously and she risked a glance around the tree. The deer was trying to run off, but the rope anchoring it to a nearby tree kept it within the clearing. Arrows, knives and even spears shot out of the undergrowth and downed the hapless animal to the ground. At least twelve individuals or more rushed forward out of the undergrowth of the forest toward the deer. From their wild and unkempt appearances Kana knew them for what they were, cannibals.
They tore into the deer carcass with their knives and teeth and began to eat it raw on the spot. The fools! Didn’t they see the rope? As if on the tails of her thought she watched, as a round ball fell near the busy feaster’s with a soft plop onto the spongy forest floor.
Kana whipped her head back around the tree and had to fight to hold back an involuntary scream as a large explosion rocked the clearing behind her. Gruesomely drawn to see what had happened she peeked back around the tree trunk. All of the cannibals were down and probably dead, as there didn’t appear to be much left of them or the deer.
On a sharply inhaled breath Kana watched as three large powerfully built men converged on the clearing. The men moved with the grace of big cats and Kana caught her first glimpse of Hunters. It was said that you never lived to see them a second time.
They wore full body armor and had partial helmets, but they moved with seamless grace despite their bulky appearances. They came to a stop in the midst of the wreckage of the forest clearing and quietly surveyed the bloody carnage of the scene. Seemingly satisfied they looked away and started scanning their surroundings and Kana quickly brought her head back around the tree.
Had they seen her or had they sensed that she was there?
Kana had an awful feeling rise up inside of her. The feeling she got was that she was going to be as dead as those cannibals were very soon. She glanced to her right suddenly, had she heard something or was it more that she had sensed something?
Her wild eyes scanned the forest undergrowth and the trunks of the nearby trees. She saw nothing and then she did. She saw a heavy armored boot! Her horrified gaze followed the outline of the boot up the cleverly camouflaged leg to the torso that was half behind the trunk of a tree and finally her gaze landed on the eyes that were staring right at her! It had to have been the intense focus of those hazel eyes that had made her sense another’s presence so near to her.
The Hunter, for that was what he was, was so cleverly disguised that she still doubted her eyes were telling her the truth. She was just seeing something that wasn’t really there! She couldn’t have been hiding in full view of the Hunter that stood less than twenty feet away from her all this time and not know it could she?
It didn’t matter what her brain tried to tell her, the pair of eyes watching her were real and that meant she was as good as dead. She didn’t want to die!
In a panic of motion she sprang from the base of the tree to the left dropping her bow and quiver of arrows in the mad effort for freedom and continued existence. She heard a heavy foot fall behind her and her head was twisted to the side, as several strands of her long black hair were caught in a steely grasp. Kana yanked her head away, the hair tearing free in the Hunter’s grasp.
The knowledge of how close the Hunter was to her gave her a burst of energy such as she had never known before. She felt like she was flying, she was running so hard. Her long legs and natural athleticism took over and she began to run smart, which saved her life.
No sooner had she weaved to the side to slide through a knot of close grown trees did the bark of a tree straight ahead of her old route explode showering her face with sharp bits of bark. The fast-paced realization that that could have been her head reinforced the need for distance. Kana ran with a speed that was reckless, as she weaved back and forth over the un-even terrain, but she had nothing to lose because if she lost this race it would mean her life.
The four Hunters stood watching the departing form of the forest girl. As warriors they respected her, but they had their orders. The three hunters from the clearing departed back toward the coast, while the fourth Hunter took off after the dark skinned girl in a pace eating stride.
It was a simple decision. It would only take one Hunter to bring her down no matter how brave she was. The Hunter ran along the route she had taken following after her relying on sent as much as he did on his sight in following the signs of her trail. Hunters never stopped, until their target was dead and this time would be no different than the thousands of times before.
Kana pulled up at the edge of the patch of forest breathing hard. She saw no sign of pursuit, but beyond the shadow of a doubt she knew that there would be. Hunters never stopped, they just kept coming.
Wiping some tears away from her cheek Kana started out at a more reasonable pace into the weedy shrub spotted vastness of the Barrens. She had no weapon with which to defend herself, all she could do was run and hope. Hope that something positive would happen to save her, because she needed a miracle if she was to survive.
The Hunter pulled up at the edge of the forest, a light sheen of sweat across his forehead the only indicator of the expenditure of effort in following after the girl. He could see her moving out across the Barrens ahead of him and he admired the easy swinging stride she had settled into. If she kept that pace up it would be a long hunt and his respect for her grew.
The sun had lowered over the horizon, but Kana still ran on. Her sides hurt and her feet were becoming clumsy on the uneven ground of the Barrens. She was tired and hungry. She tried to fill her hunger by stopping to drink often from the many streams and seeps that were across the Barrens. She ran all during the night, never had she pushed her body so hard, not even when she’d had to run from a party of cannibals three years before.
Wearily she saw the sun rise over the horizon and it began to lighten the day with its warm rays. She was approaching their home base. She’d be there in a couple of hours. On a rise she stopped and fell to her hands and knees and breathed hard, as she took the burden of supporting herself upright off of her sore lungs for a few moments.
Reluctantly she glanced behind her at the barren landscape she had just come across. Screaming in fright she bounded up to her feet, “No!!!” She screamed out, as she tried to wave away the fast approaching figure of the Hunter from the forest, as if it was a possible solution.
He couldn’t be much more than a quarter of a mile behind her! She was the fastest runner of their whole group and yet there he was after an entire night of hard-pressed running. She’d earned the right to survive!
Looking up at the morning sky she sobbed out, “Oh God help me! I don’t want to die! I want to live!” There was no answer from the heavens and sobbing Kana started down the rise at a run that she knew she couldn’t sustain for much longer.
She surprised herself, because two hours later he hadn’t gained any on her, maybe she could out run him after all. She had veered away from their home base’s location for fear of bringing the Hunter upon them too. Topping a rise she gathered her ragged breath and issued forth a series of high pitched calls that would signal any of her group that there was danger close by and that they needed to hide.
A small stream lay ahead and she planned to lose her trail in the fast-moving water and hopefully shake his pursuit of her off. She ran down the bank and jumped into the stream, but she didn’t see an up thrusting rock and her foot landed awkwardly. Her ankle turned over and she fell into the water clutching at it with a cry of pain. Bitterly she said to herself, “You’re dead now Kana!” She couldn’t stop the sobs of hysteria that began to rack through her.
Kana tried to stand, but fell back into the water when she tried to put weight on the twisted ankle. Sobbing she did what she could and she started crawling through the water upstream on her hands and knees.
Two hundred feet upstream she saw a flat rock beside the stream and she crawled out over top of it. Twenty feet further along the rock was a heavy thicket of shrubs and she pulled herself into the shelter that they offered. It was all she could do to hide herself adequately. She turned over and looked back out through the screening branches of the thicket at the wet rock she had crawled across to get here from the stream.
Kana’s lips moved in a frantic prayer, as she watched the wet rock dry in the hot morning sun. “Please dry! Please dry! Oh God please dry!”
Minutes passed by and the rock became dry and she breathed a sigh of relief, but otherwise she kept absolutely still and silent. She heard a splash further downstream and she knew that the Hunter was near. She stopped breathing, as he came into view and continued past where she had left the stream, but then he abruptly stopped and lifted his head, as he looked back like an animal scenting the breeze.
He was an animal, a soulless brutish animal that killed without hesitation. His head turned and he looked right at her and somehow even with the shelter of the thicket she knew that he had seen her.
“No!!!” She screamed out pounding the sand of the ground with her fist. She turned over onto her belly and started to crawl out of the thicket crying as she did so, because she knew the uselessness of her actions.
Her shoulder was grasped in a grip that felt like iron and she was flung over to her back. Kana blinked temporarily blinded by the brightness of the sun, but then the sun was blocked out by the form of the Hunter, who straddled her. Her flailing arms were caught and shoved to the ground and secured there by the Hunter’s knees. She couldn’t move and even if she could have she didn’t have the strength left to fight anymore. She was done.
The finale of her life was a hard realization, as she looked up into the heavy breathing face of the Hunter, who held her captive. Their eyes met and she knew that he was going to kill her now. His powerful hands came up to her throat and closed around it. As his hands began to tighten she whispered imploringly up at him, “Please!”
The powerful strength of the tightening hands stopped for a moment and she saw a fleeting emotion of some kind flip across the otherwise emotionless gaze of the Hunter’s eyes. Why had he stopped? Whatever it had been was gone, because his hands started to tighten again painfully and she couldn’t breathe. In her oxygen deprived state of near unconscious awareness she saw a fast-moving shadow and then there was a hard jerk.
Air filled into Kana’s starved lungs and with a sharp inhalation she reeled over to her side choking, as she desperately sucked up more air. Her brain started to work again. What was happening? Why was she free?
Kana’s eyes focused and she saw her sister Eshta clobbering the heck out of the Hunter with a heavy piece of driftwood. The Hunter had fallen over onto his side and must’ve been unconscious, because he wasn’t moving. Kana saw her sister draw her hunting knife out and she raised it back to stab down into the Hunter. Kana reached out and grabbed her sister’s leg and croaked out as loud as she could, “No, don’t kill him!”
“What?” Eshta demanded in consternation turning to face her. Eshta’s face was identical to her own, as they were identical twins from birth.
“Don’t kill him! I don’t know why just don’t kill him!” Kana rasped out as loudly as she could. Kana couldn’t keep her head up and she let it fall back to the ground. It had been such a long day already, was her last thought before she passed out.
Eshta knelt down beside her sister and checked to see if Kana was still breathing okay. She was, but her throat was badly swollen. Eshta looked behind her at the fallen Hunter and then to her shaking hands and closed her eyes briefly. She heard rustling in the brush and she looked up to see the rest of the group come into view.
“Tie him up.” Was all she said by way of explanation. They looked at her strangely, but did as she said, as in a way she was a junior leader of the group.