Man Hunt

Chapter Twelve - Jack

 I stare around the clearing as Aaron begins to drag the bodies and places them in a row. Kate is still on the floor comforting the mute who is still unconscious. The tears have finally stopped falling from my eyes however my entire body continues to shake slightly.

It all happened so fast, three murders in less than thirty seconds.  

Eve’s throat is completely torn open however the blood has finally stopped pouring out. I glance at her pale face once more before Aaron places her blue bandana across her face. He then places the boy a few feet away from her – the one whose neck he snapped – and does the same with his blue bandana.

Finally, he places the girl down, the one that attacked our mute however he is less sympathetic towards her. He covers her face with the veil of her team colours and he then gets to his feet.

‘’We should go to the LIS, we need to put in the two letters,’’ he suggests.

‘’What are they?’’ I ask, not that it really matters but I can’t stand the silence.

‘’The boy’s was ‘C’ and the girl’s was ‘H’,’’ he explains, ‘’Eve’s was ‘Y’.’’

‘’So that’s ‘C’, ‘H’, and ‘O’. Any ideas of what it could be?’’ I ask.

Aaron shakes his head, ‘’it’s too early to guess. Remember what they said to us about guessing?’’

I nod.

‘’We’re halfway there,’’ he states.

I nod my head again, then nudge it towards the mute on the floor with Kate, ‘’we’ll go whenever he is awake and up for it.’’

I sit with Aaron a few feet from Kate and the mute as we wait for him to come back around. After a few moments, Kate gets to her feet and begins walking around the clearing with her eyes glued to the ground. She appears to be looking for something.

‘’Whatcha doing Kate?’’ I ask.

‘’I have an idea,’’ begins Kate, ‘’because we still don’t know that poor boy’s name.’’

We watch as she gathers twigs and begins piling them up in a bunch beside the mute. It’s quite shocking that none of us have actually made much an effort to talk to the boy, what’s even worse is that we don’t know his name! I guess before we found out what the people that are behind this did to him, we all just assumed he didn’t want to talk. We overlooked the fact that perhaps he couldn’t.

‘’He can use the twigs to spell out his name for us. It’s not much, but it’s a start,’’ continues Kate.

‘’Good idea,’’ I admit, ‘’I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before.’’

‘’That is pretty smart,’’ adds Aaron.

As he speaks, the mute begins to stir on the floor. Kate places the twigs that are in her hand onto the ground and rushes to the boy. She kneels down on the ground beside him and lifts his head onto her lap, resting it gently on her upper legs.

‘’Thank you,’’ she says immediately, kissing him on the forehead.

I turn to Aaron and he cocks an eyebrow.

‘’What’s that all about?’’ he asks.

I shrug my shoulders and turn back to the two of them.

‘’Thank you, thank you, thank you,’’ she repeats and kisses his forehead once more, ‘’you’re so brave.’’

He winks at her and she smiles.