Man Hunt

Chapter Six - If I fall, it's all over

We sit around the fire – which is crackling and sending embers soaring into the night sky like fireflies. I sit beside Aaron; he has his arm wrapped around me. The others haven’t questioned us about it. Do they just assume we are together? Do they assume this is just a friendly gesture because of how traumatized I was?

‘’This is really happening, eh?’’ says Kate after a few moments, ‘’so what’s our plan?’’

‘’At first light tomorrow we head out. We’ll hunt for them before they have the chance to hunt us,’’ Aaron explains, nobody disagrees.

Nobody questions what we will do once we have caught a member of the red. We know all too well. We will have to torture them until they give us their letter. But we really do have no choice; we are on an island in the middle of nowhere. Our only way off the island is by winning. To win, we must do the unthinkable. From what I saw and heard yesterday, Alex and the rest of the red team will be playing this sick game. We have no choice but to participate too.

‘’We have to play,’’ I exclaim, ‘’no one else on our team has to die.’’

‘’No one else will die,’’ corrects Aaron.

I glance around the fire to my team mates, we all wear the same petrified expression mingled with shock, fear and sadness.

‘’Are we all in the same boat here? Is everyone going to play this game?’’ asks Aaron.

‘’Don’t call it a game,’’ replies Kate immediately, ‘’this isn’t a game. This is sick.’’

‘’Well what do I call it?’’ asks Aaron, slightly aggravated.

‘’I don’t care, just don’t call it a game.’’

‘’I’m in; we really have no other choice. I was there when Robbie died. I heard what they said. They will be participating,’’ I state, trying to back up Aaron on this one.

‘’I’m not torturing anyone,’’ says Kate, ‘’do what you have to do though to keep us alive.’’

We turn to the quiet boy – who still hasn’t said a word – and he nods his head. He too understands we have no other options. We must do this.

‘’Maybe Robbie isn’t dead, maybe the TV show just wanted-‘’ she begins and I sigh, Aaron angrily interjects.

‘’Look Eve, Robbie is dead! I saw it! We’re not in a TV show; that was a cover up! Now are you in or what?’’ he yells, getting to his feet and standing by the fire.

Eve looks quite startled over Aaron’s outburst, but the girl needs it. If she is still going to try play this off as a ‘TV show’ then she’s going to die quite quickly. She doesn’t reply. The rest of us sit in silence.

‘’We should sleep soon,’’ I suggest.

The others agree. We all are quite exhausted and the fire is beginning to die. We all unpack our sleeping bags from our packs and we lie them out on the ground. Eve sits awkwardly, she doesn’t have one, and she knows nobody is in the mood to hear her complaining. Nor is anyone in the right mindset to calmly respond, we will take the head off her if she is not careful.

‘’Here,’’ I say, handing her Robbie’s pack that Aaron carried back from the LIS.

‘’Thanks, I guess.’’

I say no more to her, instead I return to where my sleeping bag is rolled out. It is a few meters from Kate and the quiet boy, and Aaron is beside me. Eve’s is situated further away from everyone else. She has made herself an outsider through how she has acted the last few hours. Part of me feels sorry for her; the rest is too focused on thinking about how we are going to make it out of this alive.