“We should run,” I said. “We can get there in half the time.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Chax said.
“You might have worn me out last night but I still have a little left in the tank.”
I heard a growl in the back of his throat.
“I’m going to have to make sure to give you both barrels next time,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I could stand it—I barely managed to survive last time.
But I was certainly up for the challenge.
We began at a gentle jog. It took a little time to get into a rhythm. Chax looked surprised I kept pace alongside him.
The field came to an end at a narrow stream that divided this field from the next one. It tinkled softly.
“Do you think it’s clean?” I said.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
He dropped down to his hands and knees and cupped a handful of it. He sniffed it, eyeballed it, listened to it—that last one came as a surprise—and then finally tasted it.
He nodded.
“It’s clean,” he said.
I supped as much as I could without bloating myself. I wiped an arm across my mouth and followed Chax up the opposite bank.
He dropped down onto his front and peered over the side.
“Why are you crawling around?” I said.
“The trackers will be out looking for us by now,” he said. “Best not to draw attention to ourselves.”
He focused on the sprawling countryside below. Nestled between two hills and half-shrouded in mist was a small farm. The paint was faded and half the windows were smashed. The barn looked in better condition with a newly-tarred roof and a fresh lick of paint.
“What do these trackers get out of this?” I said. “Maybe we can do a deal with them.”
“At a guess?” Chax said. “Money. And fame. The usual reasons someone would want to hurt somebody else. There’s nothing we can give them that the controllers of the show can’t. I’m afraid it’s us against them. Come on. We have to move.”
We hustled down the other side of the embankment and made a beeline for the barn. We paused at the flimsy handmade fences and ducked between the two horizontal bars.
I checked the farm field was empty before jogging across it. We reached the barn’s rear and slowed to a stop. I bent over, bracing myself on my knees to recover from our run.
The barn was in worse shape than I thought. The paint did a poor job of concealing the damage it’d received recently.
“Looks like fire,” I said.
“Looks like,” Chax said.
His attention was focused on the surrounding area. He was constantly on the lookout for an attack. He wouldn’t relax until we were got somewhere safe.
Then I noticed something else strange about the barn.
Something that shouldn’t have been there.
I fingered a series of holes in the wood panels. They formed a dotted streak from one end to the other.
“Bullet holes,” I said. “Are we in a warzone?”
The place didn’t look like the site of a battle. At least, not one that’d taken place recently enough to have caused this damage.
Then where had it come from?
The answer hit me like a sledge to the gut.
“We’re not the first ones to be subjected to this sick gameshow of theirs, are we?” I said. “There were others.”
“No,” Chax said. “This place represents a considerable investment. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble just for us. They lower costs by reusing the same locations.”
“How can you be so calm?” I said. “Our lives are on the line and they’ll kill us the first chance they get!”
“Because we have no choice and getting crazy and upset won’t change anything. We need to be careful and think like they do.”
“Like they do?” I hissed. “How do they think? They want to kill us!”
“Then we have to do everything we can to stop them,” Chax said, giving me a peck on the lips. “Come on. I think it’s safe.”
He led us around the barn and into the open courtyard in front of the farmhouse.
I noticed movement out the corner of my eye and grabbed Chax’s arm. I motioned to a farmhouse’s upstairs window.
Staring down at us through the smashed glass was a little boy. His skin was green and his eyes bright yellow. A larger version of the boy—who had to be his father—pulled the boy back from the window and slid a torn red curtain across to block us from view.
My stomach fell between my feet. We were being hunted in a place where alien creatures still lived.
The situation didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel right at all.
We were out in the open while the locals hid in their homes.
“Chax…” I said, the words seeping from between my lips. “I don’t think—”
“I know,” he said.
I know.
What did he know? Cos I sure as shit didn’t know anything.
“Well, well, well.”
A tall figure stepped from behind the farmhouse. It was a… a…
What the hell is that thing?
The creature stood seven feet tall and almost the same in width. The first word that came to mind was “barbarian.” And I thought Chax was a big cat! This guy stood head and shoulders over him. He carried a six-foot war hammer in one hand. The elaborate toggles on his armor clattered as he ambled toward us. It was only when he got close enough for me to make the toggles out individually that I noticed they weren’t toggles at all.
They were grenades.
He wore a gold ring through his nose and his two bottom canines were oversized and protruded like the tusks of a wild boar.
My insides turned to water.
“What do we have here?” the creature said.
He grinned at me. Saliva drooled from one corner of his mouth. It swung side to side before languishing on the muddy ground.
“My, my,” he said. “Well, aren’t you a tasty little treat.”
He was talking about
