Page 73 of The Hunt

“It’s so fucked up,” I said, voice almost cracking with fear. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

She turned and gave me a hard look. “Youcansurvive this, Everly. You just need to listen to everything I say. Okay?”

I nodded and swallowed hard, my pulse thudding in my ears. We kept walking, every step deliberate. My head was still swimming with fear and confusion, but I tried my best to focus on Nikki’s calm, measured movements.

Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks and held out a hand to halt me. Her head tilted slightly, and her brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She turned toward me, her voice low and steady. “Do you hear that?”

I frowned, straining to listen. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. It’s too quiet.”

She was right. The usual forest sounds—the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves, the distant hum of insects—were gone.

“That means someone’s here,” Nikki continued, her eyes scanning the trees. “Or they passed through here very recently. Could be a player like us, but…”

“We don’t want to risk it,” I finished for her, my voice barely audible.

She nodded and looked over my shoulder. “Let’s go back the way we came and find another way to the closest safe zone. Do you remember the coordinates for either of them?”

“Um… 12.5, 89.3 and 10.4, 85.9.”

“Hm. I think that sounds right.” She gave me the faintest of smiles. “See? You’re not totally crumbling under pressure. That’s a good sign that you can do this, even if you feel like you can’t.”

“I guess so,” I murmured.

“I mean it, Everly. Half the people here probably can’t remember jack-shit about those coordinates, let alone know how to read a map. So we’re already off to a good start,” she said, quietly dropping her backpack.

We crouched to look at her map for a couple of minutes. Then we put our packs back on and took off again, retracing our steps southward until we found another natural path toward the eastern part of the island.

As we walked, I forced myself to draw deep, slow breaths, trying and failing to calm the frenzy of fear inside me. The forest didn’t feel like a refuge from the open air of the beach anymore. It felt like a trap. Every crack of a twig or rustle of leaves made me want to jump out of my skin, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t alone. That someone, or something, was always just out of sight, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

An arrow suddenly whooshed through the air, landing with a sharpthunkinto the bark of a tree just ahead of us. My breath caught in my throat as I froze, staring at the quivering shaft.

Nikki didn’t waste a second. “Okay,” she hissed, grabbing my arm. “Now we can run.”

We bolted through the forest, my legs burning with every stride as adrenaline propelled me forward. Branches snagged at my clothes and scratched my arms, and the ground felt uneven and treacherous beneath my feet. I didn’t dare look back, focusing only on Nikki as she darted ahead like she’d been doing this her whole life.

After what felt like an eternity, Nikki pulled me down behind a thick shrub. I crouched low, chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath as quietly as possible, and the leaves around us fluttered with every shaky exhale.

Then I heard it: footsteps crunching through the underbrush. Slow, deliberate. My heart hammered in my chest as a figure came into view, and I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth to stop myself from making a single sound.

The hunter wore a full camo outfit, blending into the greens and browns of the forest, with a matching mask pulled down to reveal a face smeared with skull-patterned paint. His dark eyes scanned the trees as he held a bow loosely in one hand, an arrow nocked but not drawn.

“Thought I heard someone, but they ran,” he muttered, speaking into a radio clipped to his chest. His voice was low, rough, and slightly annoyed. “Yeah, I guess it could’ve been an animal. I didn’t actually see anything. For fuck’s sake, man.”

Nikki pressed a finger to her lips, her other hand gripping my wrist like a vise. I stayed as still as I could, even though every muscle in my body was screaming to move.

The hunter shifted his weight and sighed. “I’m gonna check my snares. Yeah, man, talk to you later.”

He turned and walked off, his boots crunching faintly against the forest floor. Nikki and I stayed behind the shrub, barely daring to breathe, until his footsteps faded entirely. Even then, Nikki didn’t move. She held up a hand, signaling for patience, her ears tuned to the slightest sound. Minutes passed like hours.

Finally, she whispered, “Okay. I think he’s gone. But let’s give it five more minutes, just to be sure. Or even ten. He could be one of those assholes who pretends to leave and then doubles back when he thinks the prey feels safe enough to move.”

I nodded, my pulse still pounding in my ears as we waited in tense silence. After the final excruciating minute, we slowly rose from our hiding spot.

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