Page 52 of Stream & Scream
Twigs snap ahead of me—Riley tearing through the underbrush, desperate.
I start walking, unhurried, savoring the chase before it even begins. “Don’t stop now,” I rasp, grin stretching behind the mask. “Give them a show. Make it scream-worthy.”
And Liv?
She’ll hear the echoes.
Fuck, nothing gets me harder than the fucking hunt.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Olivia
Sunday
The screams…
The screams alone will drive a person into insanity.
Two voices this time. One high and desperate—female, I realize—and another deeper, definitely a man.
I should feel more than what I’m feeling right now. Horror, maybe. Sympathy for whoever's dying out there. Relief that it's not my throat releasing the sounds of death.
The screams cut off abruptly, leaving behind a silence so complete that I can hear my own heartbeat. Then nothing. Just the whisper of wind.
I count to a hundred before moving, forcing myself to remain still despite every instinct screaming that I need to run and hide, and to put distance between myself and whatever the fuck just happened out there.
I've been walking for maybe an hour when I smell it.
Death. It’s a scent I’m quickly becoming familiar with. Nauseating, fowl, and rancid. The metallic tang of blood quickly rots once the heart stops, especially when it’s touching open air.
The stench leads me to what used to be Cody Reyes.
He's scattered across maybe ten square yards of forest floor, his body partially consumed by forest scavengers. What's left is barely recognizable as human—bones picked clean by birds, chunks of meat that look like they've been gnawed by a large dog.
But it's definitely Cody. The buzz cut is unmistakable, even matted with blood and dirt and whatever fluids leak from bodies when people die. The tracksuit is shredded but still recognizably black, still bearing the green "S&S" logo that marks him as part of this twisted human experiment.
My stomach lurches, but I don't vomit or run. Instead, I look for clues. For anything that’ll give me a look inside The Hunter’s mind.
The positioning suggests he didn't die here. Too neat, despite the scavenging. Too purposeful in the way the remains are distributed, like someone arranged as a feast for the carnivores of the forest.
I eventually find his wrist camera. The device is intact, somehow spared from the feeding frenzy that reduced its owner to scattered bones. It lies about three feet from what I’m pretty sure could have been Cody's left hand, its screen dark but responsive when I tap it back to life.
The battery is nearly dead—maybe an hour of power remaining, two at most. But the storage is full of footage that probably documents his final hours, his terror, his eventual confrontation with The Hunter.
I should leave it alone and respect the privacy of the dead, preserve whatever dignity might remain for him.
But curiosity wins out over respect, the same morbid fascination that made me watch Maxine's final moments despite knowing how fucked up it was.
I scroll back through the recorded footage, looking for answers.
The early footage is what I expect—Cody moving through the forest with a lot of nervous energy. Talking to his wrist camera like it's a diary, updating whoever's watching on his strategy, his observations, his growing suspicions for the show.
"I don't know if anyone's watching this," he says at one point, his voice tight with barely controlled fear as he walks around a fallen log. "But if you are, if someone in production is monitoring these feeds, something's fucked up out here. I think people are missing. Like, actually missing."
He was smarter than I gave him credit for. Not smart enough to survive, obviously, but awareness doesn't guarantee longevity when you're being hunted by an apex predator in his territory.
The footage continues chronologically, showing Cody's growing paranoia, his attempts to find other survivors, his eventual decision to hole up in what he thought was a defensible position but was probably just a convenient killing ground for someone who understands terrain better than his prey ever will.
