Hunters by Matt Rogers (books for 5 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

She hunched forward in the muck and vomited, then gasped with relief.

She could breathe again.

Slater hauled her to her feet, handed her to Alexis, and guided them deep into the archaeological site, putting buildings between them and the jungle. They rounded the corner of a set of preserved ruins and came face to face with two shadowy figures.

Slater’s heart dropped and he whipped the Kalashnikov up.

It was King and Violetta.

She had her arms around his mid-section, supporting his considerable weight. His glassy eyes stared vacantly. He was bloodied, bruised, swollen.

Just because they were allies instead of hunters, the dread didn’t leave Slater. He soaked in the damage done to his brother-in-arms and a lump formed in his throat.

He said, ‘What happened?’

King smiled with delirium, his teeth crimson. ‘I got one.’

Slater soaked it in.

Then he said, ‘So there’s only two left.’

Alexis said, ‘We need to go. Now.’

64

As they all headed for the other side of the archaeological site, they filled each other in.

King told them everything he’d been through, still in a semi-conscious haze. Each sentence was punctuated by sharp winces as he fought his own internal battle to hold himself together. He left no detail out.

The giant Diamond lumbering out of the tree line.

‘You’re out, right?’

Then the fight.

Slater said, ‘Matches what Spinel did in Vegas.’

King couldn’t quite put it together. Pain dominated his senses, clouding his critical thinking. ‘Huh?’

‘He attacked me with his bare hands,’ Slater said. ‘Didn’t pull his piece. Didn’t want the murkiness of a gunfight, potshotting each other from behind cover. Maybe Diamond swayed him into his way of thinking, or vice versa. When else would they get the opportunity to face opposition like us? They wanted the test. The purity of hand-to-hand.’

Violetta said, ‘Well, they got it.’

Her words carried weight.

She’d seen what King had done.

The violence he’d unleashed.

Slater took a deep breath. ‘So there’s two left. And I know their faces.’

They made it to the western edge of the site, to another tree line far from where they’d first entered Joya de Cerén. Alexis and Violetta supported most of King’s weight as Antônia swept the forest ahead with the AK-47 Alexis had handed her. Its curved magazine was full. In the confrontation with Opal and Topaz, Slater hadn’t expended a single round. Slater himself brandished the MEU(SOC) taken off Diamond’s corpse. He preferred it to the bulkier rifle, so he’d given Antônia the Kalashnikov. The pistol was chambered with seven .45 ACP rounds.

Rounds the dead idiot Diamond should have used, whether it made a difference to the end result or not.

‘I think there’s a road through here,’ Antônia said.

She and Slater covered the vulnerable trio from behind, practically shoulder-to-shoulder. She was hurt from Opal’s punishment, but she’d pulled herself together as soon as she’d caught her breath. Superficial injuries were one thing; a lack of air was another. She was almost fully functional.

When they made it to an asphalt road winding through the countryside near Joya de Cerén, they all spotted a car screaming toward them.

Slater went to raise the MEU(SOC), every sense firing.

Antônia put a hand on his arm, lowering his aim. ‘It’s not them. It looks like site security. I’d wager the ruins are owned and protected by the State.’

Sure enough, the vehicle — another old pickup truck with a government logo on the side — skidded to a halt on the road before them.

A well-intentioned but foolish employee in a khaki uniform leapt out of the driver’s seat before he’d spotted the guns.

Responding to the cacophony of noise from the archaeological site.

‘¿Qué—?’ he began in Spanish, then saw Antônia’s Kalashnikov and froze.

Slater sighed. Raised his MEU(SOC) and pointed it at the man’s centre mass. ‘Just stay there. Don’t move.’

His words were understandable even if the man didn’t speak a lick of English.

Alexis and Violetta helped King into the back seat, then climbed in themselves. Antônia got behind the wheel. Slater kept his aim on the now-soaked security guard until all his companions were in the vehicle, then jumped in the passenger seat.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the guy. ‘The State will buy you a new one.’

He slammed the door.

Antônia floored it away, leaving the guard statuesque in the middle of the road, frozen in the storm.

65

They were ten miles out from Santa Ana when King first vocalised his pain.

He moaned under his breath.

Until then, his eyes had remained shut, his face contorting as each bump in the road drilled into his destroyed body. Slater sat in nauseating silence, aware how bad it must be if it generated that sort of reaction out of Jason King.

Finally, it became too much, and the noise escaped his lips.

Violetta pulled him tighter into her embrace, trying to dissipate much of the bumping and rattling, but it was futile.

Antônia shook her head and unzipped a wide leather pouch in the utility belt at her waist. She pulled out an unmarked bottle of pills and tossed them over her shoulder, into Violetta’s lap behind her.

Violetta said, ‘What are they?’

‘OxyContin. He needs it.’

Slater glanced sideways at Antônia. ‘You use them for pain?’

‘Something like that,’ she mumbled, unwilling to go into the details.

He didn’t respond, but he knew what she meant.

The dark side of addiction — a realm he was all too familiar with.

King grunted again, eyes forced shut. His face was pale.

Antônia looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Violetta looked unsure, hesitant.

Slater twisted in his seat and stared at her until she lifted her gaze to meet his.

He said, ‘It’s okay. He’s not me.’

Violetta nodded her understanding.

Slater’s hardline abstinence toward drugs of any kind was entirely because he couldn’t control himself. When he did anything, he was all-in, whether it be physical training or the consumption of substances. He’d gone cold turkey sober from everything back when he first met Alexis, sick of training like a demon all day only to drink like a demon all night.

Alexis said, ‘What if we get ambushed again?’

‘We won’t,’ Antônia said, her tone determined. ‘I swear on my life,