“Gonna wait for ya over here,” Dirty Nails called out to his companion. Alexa heard him moving off. The other man was standing ten or twelve feet away, apparently taking aim at a sapling, his back to her. Before she quite realized what she was doing, she’d reached out and stealthily pulled the crumpled map from the backpack. The next few minutes she sweated out in a state of delicious suspense: Would they even notice that the map was missing? Dirty Nails hadn’t said where he was putting the map, and his companion hadn’t seen him stick it in the backpack. With any luck, each would think that the other had it until they were some ways away from here.
It seemed that her luck was in. The one taking a leak finished his business, came back and got his pack, and set off with Dirty Nails back the way they’d come. Alexa peeked around the tree, watching until they were lost to sight. She waited for a minute or two after that before daring to get to her feet and creep off quietly in a different direction, still clutching the map. She felt an incredible high at having pulled it off, and wondered if the legendary Elf-Girl had felt the same way after some of her exploits. She wanted to laugh out loud, but settled for sitting on a fallen log and stifling an intense fit of the giggles. Then, every time she started to unfold her new map she started giggling again. She couldn’t help it, and she finally gave up on looking at the map at all. It was getting late. Oh, it wasn’t really late right now, but she was getting used to planning her activities around how much sunlight was left, or would be left once she got where she was going. She tucked the map inside her shirt and started back to her campsite. She had a couple of juice boxes stashed away there, and maybe she could open one or two in celebration. She wondered who those two men had been, and whether or not she was on their list. It would be just so delicious if she was, even if only as the secondary, not the primary.
There was still plenty of daylight left when she reached her camp, so she decided to break open a juice box and have a look at the map. It wasn’t an especially large map, and it didn’t have as much information on it as she’d hoped it would. As she looked it over, she realized that before she could make any sense of it she’d have to figure out where she was on it. The only landmarks she had to go by were that little stream and Smith’s trading post. Unfortunately, the map showed a lot of little streams flowing through the area, most of them along an east-west axis. Some of them seemed to start for no particular reason and end for no particular reason. In places the blue line she assumed indicated a stream was broken into blue dashes, and she wasn’t sure what that meant at all. There was nothing indicating a road or a trail.
She carefully spread the whole map open on the ground and weighted the corners down with some small stones so that she could study it at leisure while sipping her juice. There was nothing on it to indicate direction, not even an arrow pointing to a big letter ‘N’ and for a moment she worried that there was some trick to using the map that she didn’t know. But then she found a couple of square shapes clustered close together near the very center of the map with ‘Locke’ printed just beneath them. She quickly scanned the map for anything similar and quickly found one labeled ‘Jackson’. Maybe the map didn’t have north clearly marked on it, but didn’t maps generally stick to a rule that north was ‘up’? If this one did, then north was away from her, south was towards her, and west was…
She had to think for a moment. West would be to her left, so she began looking for ‘Smith’ in that direction. She found it quickly enough and grinned. Okay, now she had some idea where she was on the map. It came as a bit of a surprise to her that they’d started her out so far to one side of the hunting area. There wasn’t anything to the west of ‘Smith’ before you got to the edge of the map. There was also nothing showing you where Gordburg was, or the main road. She settled for trying to pinpoint her location better on the map, and quickly realized that unless she came across some landmark it was a pointless exercise. She didn’t even know what scale the map had been drawn to. But the more she thought about it, the more strongly she felt that she had to be somewhere in the area of ‘Jackson’, which was probably another of those trading posts. Maybe she should drop in for a visit?
Ah, but Lydia had warned her that doing so wouldn’t be safe after the first couple of days. There might still be a window of opportunity, but it would be getting narrower by the hour. Anyway, hadn’t she planned everything around never even being seen if she could help it? That still seemed like the best plan. But still…
She left the map where it was and rummaged through her gear to see what was available for dinner. There were still three self-heating pouches, two marked ‘beef stew’ and one marked ‘chicken a la king’. After those were gone she’d be down to freeze-dried stuff and a couple of cans of corned beef hash. She pulled out one of the beef stew pouches and started it up. She didn’t know who had invented the things, but whoever it was deserved a statue somewhere.
She returned to the map and studied it. She’d been planning to change her campsite tomorrow anyway, so why not drop by Jackson’s as well? If she was worried about someone telling the hunters which way she went when she left there, all she had to do was head in one direction until she was out of sight and then change course. Or maybe just keep heading in the same direction because the hunters might assume that she’d change direction once she was out of sight? Alexa shook her head. She didn’t want to over think this, but she was so new to everything that she couldn’t help it. She might have a map now, but there was still an awful lot that she didn’t know. For example: How many hunters were after her? Were there even any, given the competition she was up against?
No, forget that. She didn’t know how many hunters or groups of hunters there were out here, but some of them had to be looking for her, and it was safest to assume that everybody she might come across had her on their list. Given that, there didn’t seem to be any good reason to go to Jackson’s at all. She still had plenty of supplies: There was still her third cache, sitting hidden and, she hoped, untouched in the woods. Hell: For all she knew the campsite she’d abandoned might be perfectly safe to go back to after all. No, there was no compelling reason to go to any of the trading posts. None whatsoever. Except…she wasn’t used to all this running around in the great outdoors. It had its moments, to be sure, but she found that she missed human contact. She also missed hot showers, indoor plumbing, fresh, cooked food, cold drinks…the list went on. Surely it wouldn’t be too much of a risk to make a quick visit to Jackson’s, not if she planned carefully and thoroughly enough ahead of time.
She quickly ran over what she knew: She’d be safe at the trading post even if hunters showed up as long as she didn’t stay too long. Okay, so what if hunters showed up while she was still there? Well, there was always the chance that they wouldn’t be after her, in which case she’d be able to leave without any trouble. And if they were after her? Well, that could be a problem. She might be able to just outrun them if it came to that. It would be better to outwit them, though. That was how that Elf-Girl had done it, wasn’t it?
Yes, but she was Alexa Marx, not Elf-Girl. She was going to have to sleep on this and make some sort of decision in the morning. There was still a little daylight left, though, so why not move her camp now? She’d seen a couple of places that provided better cover than here. Besides, it would be good practice to see how quickly she could gather everything up and get a move on.
It didn’t take that long, only five or ten minutes, if that, and some of that time was spent making sure she hadn’t left anything behind, even the least little bit of trash. She shouldered her pack and set out for the best site she’d come across: Some time ago, a big pine had toppled, taking a smaller tree with it. Underbrush had sprung up around the downed trees, and now there was a tangle of vines and prickly bushes hiding a space just a bit bigger than she needed to spread her sleeping bag. Even better, the pine still had plenty of needles on its branches. They were all brown, and came off easily, but if she was careful she wouldn’t disturb them and they’d provide even more concealment. She worked her way in, left her pack there and then went back to try and hide whatever traces she’d left behind her. By then the sun was down, but there was still a bit of light left to see by. She laid everything out and settled in for the night. After all her activity that day, it felt good just to lie there and relax. Even the noises of the night insects sounded restful. She didn’t think she’d ever come to prefer this sort of living to the city life she was used to, but she was beginning to feel more at home out here in the woods.
She was just drifting off to sleep when the night air was split by the sound of a woman’s scream. Alexa was instantly and fully awake; lying there frozen, heart pounding, mouth suddenly dry. She strained to listen, trying to determine where the scream had come from and how far or near it was. Her heart had just started to slow down when she heard another scream. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere nearby, and it sounded more angry than terrified. She concentrated on breathing deeply and slowly, trying to calm down. Who was doing that screaming, and what was being done to her to make her scream like that? She waited, and waited, but didn’t hear anything more. Gradually the chorus of nighttime noises, which had gone quiet after the first shriek, resumed. Alexa had an irrational urge to crawl out of her hiding place and go looking for the source of the disturbance. But it was fully dark now, and stumbling around half-blind in the woods was probably the quickest way for her to get herself caught. So instead, she took a shaky swig from her canteen and contented herself with wondering who had been screaming. Lynette had already been taken, so it was either Martina or Naomi. Either way, that was one more competitor taken out of the game. Lying still in the dark, Alexa smiled at the thought. She hoped that it had been Martina. She didn’t know Naomi that well, but she knew Martina for the arrogant, nasty bitch that she was with other women, and it gave her some pleasure to think of the volleyballer being stripped and abused by a pack of rough men. Maybe they would even put her in the same kind of stocks as she’d seen Lynette locked into. Oh, that would be sweet! She pictured the men whipping Martina’s tight and perfect round ass before taking her violently from behind again and again.
Wait. Wouldn’t she start screaming again if they did all that? Well, maybe they’d gagged her beforehand. Part of the ‘orientation’ they’d all gone through before being cleared for this unique competition was being shown all sorts of gags. They’d even been encouraged to try some on and see how they felt. Alexa hadn’t gone quite that far herself, but she pictured Martina with that big, red ball gag stuffed into her mouth and smiled. She fell asleep still smiling as she imagined yet more torments for Martina.
Morning came in gray and cloudy, with a hint of coolness in the air. Alexa slowly roused herself, moving around carefully in her concealed little space, trying not to make any noise. She had a couple of trail mix bars for breakfast and drank a little water. She still had a decision to make, and there was no point in putting it off any longer.
She spread her purloined map out on her sleeping bag and studied it. She had some idea where she was and some idea where Jackson’s trading post was. If she was close to right with either assumption, she ought to be able to get there in under an hour. All of her reasons for remaining out of sight were still valid, but her urge to visit what passed for civilization out this way had gotten a powerful addition last night: She was incredibly, intensely curious about the screams she had heard last night. They’d come from what she thought was the direction of Jackson’s. If she went there, in addition to getting a hot shower and a fresh-cooked meal she might find out what had happened during the night. And, with any luck, she might get to see what might still be going on.
That was the one thing she was finding to be the most irritating about running around in the great outdoors: She didn’t know
anything
about what was going on, except in her small, immediate neighborhood. Back home she had access to all sorts of information through all sorts of electronics. Out here, she didn’t even know where she stood in the competition. She craved some sort of information, any sort of information, but the only way she could think of to get it was to visit what passed for civilization out here, and that meant running what could be a dangerous risk. All right, she would run that risk. She had to
know
.
First things first: If she could get a shower, she’d want clean clothes to put on afterwards. She picked out clean underwear, long khaki pants and a light tan shirt and bundled them tightly together. She figured she could get soap and towels at Jackson’s, if she could get a shower there in the first place, and she wanted to travel as lightly as possible. Besides the clean clothes, all she took with her was the map, her canteen and her folding knife. She hadn’t had to use the knife at all so far, but it was a comforting little weight in the pocket of her shorts.
She crept cautiously out of her snug little hiding place, looking and listening all the while for any sign of the hunters. Once she was convinced that she was alone, she came all the way out and carefully obscured any tracks or other marks she’d made. She surveyed her work one last time before starting out in what she was fairly certain was the general direction of Jackson’s.
She saw the roof before she saw anything else of the place. It was rusty red, and it looked like painted metal. She approached cautiously at first, but as she didn’t see or hear anything that might be threatening she finally convinced herself to just walk up to the weather-beaten two-story building and go right in through the front door. Inside, it was a lot like Smith’s. There was a heavyset, balding older man standing behind the counter, apparently reading a magazine. He looked up disinterestedly when he heard the bell over the front door ring and did an immediate but not quite comical double take when he saw her.