Jase & the Deadliest Hunt (7 page)

THIS RIFLE HAD BETTER BE
the right choice. It hasn’t done much for you yet today.

You sit there, sweating like a pig on a spit. Except you’re a Robertson in the sand. Kinda the same thing, though, ’cause this soft sand is blistering hot. And you’re letting the sun suck out every single drop of perspiration you have left inside.

Good thing I wore deodorant today.

Then again, if something goes wrong, like really wrong, the last thing you’re gonna be worried about is smelling bad. Dead people already smell bad.

That’s right. Dead men don’t dance. But they sure might smell awful.

You stare toward the jungle.

Don’t shoot unless you know you have a good shot,
you remind yourself.

You’re right next to one of the holes your target has made on the beach. After hours of watching it and being tormented by it, you’ve learned that it does indeed have a personality. It’s like that one girl who always smiles and talks to all the guys but never has any intention of going out with them. Kind of like the golden duck earlier this week, come to think of it. Yeah. That’s what you’re dealing with.

Oh, and you’re also dealing with a rodent.

A gopher, to be specific.

You’ve seen this gopher a dozen times. You’ve heard its laugh. And yes, it has a laugh. The thing might as well be wearing a shirt that says
Psych!
Because all it does is emerge now and then to check things out, but the moment it sees any kind of movement, it’s gone.

Altogether, the four of you have probably fired fifty rounds at the creature. It hasn’t worked.

So now you’re the bait.

Now you’re lying in wait, trying to get it to pop out of the hole. To see what you’re doing. To taunt and tease you like it’s been doing all morning.

And then . . .

Yep.

Its final mistake. Overconfidence.

After thirty minutes, however, you begin to think this is a terrible idea. You’re just one big ball of sweat. Your head and face feel like they’re in an oven.

That’s what I get for having a full beard and long hair in this weather.

But the heat isn’t what’s bothering you the most.

It’s the waiting.

The wondering.

You close your eyes for a minute. Or maybe for ten.

When you open them, it’s there.

The round head and those big buck teeth. The whiskers.

The look that says, “Who let the dogs out?” and “What does the fox say?”

The face that appears to completely and totally mock you.

The gopher’s glancing around nervously as if it doesn’t trust the situation.

You don’t move. You don’t breathe.

Something’s wrong with this scenario, but it takes you a second to pin down what it is. The gopher isn’t in the hole you’re staking out. This is another hole
 
—and you don’t have a clear shot at it.

You want to try sneaking closer, but it would hear you for sure.

Willie’s not gonna try to
 
—

But apparently he is. A shot is fired, quick and loud.

You hear a snap and a crack. Then something drops to the ground.

You also feel something burning on the side of your cheek. Maybe it’s sunburn or some kind of bug bite.

Jumping up, you run to the hole where you last spotted the gopher. Sure enough, Willie got it.

“Yes!” you shout, but suddenly you feel dizzy.

Soon John Luke, Cole, and Willie are standing around you, expressions of concern on their faces.

“We got it,” you say. “Willie, you did it.”

“Yeah, I think I did it, all right.” He seems most worried of all.

You feel woozy. Too much time in the sun. Too much time thinking about the slippery slidy Spider-Man sunshine drink of lemonade mama water that’s so wonderful.

Wait a minute
 
—I’m gettin’ loopy.

You fall to your knees.

“Woo, I don’t feel so great.” You rub your cheek again. It burns even worse.

Then you raise your hand and see blood smeared across it.

“That don’t look too good,” you hear yourself say.

Willie grabs your shoulder. “No, it doesn’t.”

And that’s the last thing you hear before passing out.

Go here
.

THE GREEN CONTAINER
holds a large glass full of something thick and greenish-brown.

“This looks like some kind of shake.”

Count VanderVelde nods. “Yes. It’s very healthy.”

“Can I ask what it consists of?”

“Yes. In the kitchen, we have a container
 
—about the size of a bathtub
 
—that we put vegetables in. All sorts. And we let them sit and mingle and come together for two weeks or so.”

“Do you mix anything in with them?”

“No. They just morph into the dark liquid you see now.”

“That’s deeply disturbing,” you say.

“It really cleans your system,” the count explains. “Take a guess: How many glasses of your average health shake would it take to equal the fiber content of one island tropical treasure drink?”

“You’re calling this an ‘island tropical treasure’?” You take a whiff of the concoction. “What part of this is the treasure?”

“The way your body reacts to it. Of course, I’d stay close to a bathroom. All night long.”

Go here
.

YOU SQUINT THROUGH THE PERASIGHT QUANTUM 5
Thermal Imaging 42mm scope that’s on your rifle. Even though you’re only looking at the thick and endless trees and brush in front of you, you can tell the scope is a thing of beauty. You’d really just love to stay put and do target practice with this thing. But first off, you and the rest of the gang have to figure out
what
the target of this hunt will actually be.

A couple Jeeps dropped you off at the edge of this rainforest earlier this morning. Now the sun is hot and your legs are tired and you swear Willie has gotten all of you lost.

“Where
are
you going?” you ask Willie.

“Into the jungle,” he replies from the point position at the front of your expedition of four.

John Luke takes a drink of water as Cole tries to figure out how to adjust the rifle scope.

“Stay alert, boys,” Willie says.

You follow a trail that leads into the jungle and seems to stay adjacent to the river. But you come to a point where it splits in two.

“Go right,” you tell Willie.

“How come?”

“Get away from the river a bit. Maybe we’ll find what we’re looking for if we get farther into the woods.”

“Any of you seen any tree stands?” Willie asks, heading into the jungle.

“Are we hunting deer?” John Luke asks.

“That’s the whole point
 
—we don’t know,” you say. “But I haven’t seen any duck blinds or tree stands.”

“You’d think they’d give us a little more information,” Cole complains.

“
That
is part of the experience,” you say, being a bit sarcastic as usual.

But Cole has a point. If you were hunting deer, you wouldn’t be walking through this island wilderness making noise and sending them away.

Something tells me we’re not hunting deer.

“What if we find out we’re hunting humans?” you say, just to mess around with the boys.

“This isn’t a horror movie, Jase,” Willie says.

“What if this is an island where they send the worst prisoners around to fend for themselves, and then they invite people like us to hunt them down?”

“Isn’t that a movie?” Cole asks.

“I don’t know,” you say. “But maybe it should be. I could start writing the screenplay.”

“Shhhh,” Willie says, stopping at a massive tree that has to be a hundred years old.

You can hear the songs of birds along with other forms of life. But then you notice what Willie surely heard.

It sounds like someone in pain.

A
lot
of pain.

“What is
that
?” John Luke asks.

“Shhh,” Willie repeats.

It reminds you of a squealing pig, except heavier and lower. Maybe it’s some kind of wild boar.

That’d be cool
 
—to bring back a boar’s head to put in your house.
On the wall in our bedroom. Right before Missy kicks me out.

The squealing gets louder.

“I think someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” you say, aiming your gun into the trees.

“Hey, there. Right in there!” Willie aims his rifle to the left of where yours is pointed.

Suddenly you hear something to your right.

Wait a minute.

You turn and look into the scope and then
 
—

It’s coming too fast, too hard, too much.

Something plows into you like a running back, sweeping you off your feet.

You fire one shot, but it goes into the tops of the trees.

You hear another shot go off, then another. Meanwhile you’re on your back, dizzy, gasping, and confused about what just happened.

“I got it; I got it!” Willie shouts. He heads into the woods to bag it but comes back empty-handed. “Couldn’t find anything.”

“That was a big, fat hog,” Cole says.

“You saw it?” you ask.

“Yeah. When it mowed into you. Could’ve shot it too.”

“Could’ve shot me too.”

John Luke is still pointing his rifle into the jungle, where the hog that did this to you escaped. He fires off a couple rounds but doesn’t hit anything.

“I saw it, but it’s moving way too fast,” he says.

“Did you see it?” Willie asks you. “It’s like
 
—it’s like a hog that looks like a bull. Swear. Ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some things.”

“Come on, let’s go track it down,” you say.

But it’s almost like the giant hog got wise once it heard the gunshots. You spend the rest of the day hunting for it but don’t find a thing. You do nearly pass out from the heat, and you
think the spicy food from last night might not be doing great things in your stomach. So by dusk you’re ready to call it a day. Time to head back to the lodge and get packing.

“We got beaten by a hog,” Willie says.

“Well, that’s sorta how I feel every day,” you say to him in your typical deadpan way.
“Boss.”

THE END

Start over.

Read “Let the Good Times Roll: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”