Hunter
The Last Mission
By Billy_Ray77
Chapter 2
Call me Hunter.
Just... Hunter.
Don’t try tacking on some stupid ‘Mr.’ or ‘Agent’ or any of that shit.
Hunter.
It’s who I am and it’s what I am.
Sure, the official designation is ‘Tracker’, but, to my mind, a tracker simply follows things. A hunter, on the other hand, follows things, then kills them.
They use me, or one of the others like me, when some deviant with paranormal abilities has crossed the magic line between salvageable and disposable. Trackers, with our chemically and electrically altered brains and abilities, are their attack dogs. They decide the general area some evil mind fucking bastard is operating in, point me in the right direction and snap the leash off my collar. I am patient, relentless and without conscience – they saw to that.
Like a lion in the Serengeti peering at an unsuspecting wildebeest from between blades of grass, I sat in a rental car across from the middle school, watching the target.
It was my fifth day on the job and I was waiting for him to make a move. He had to make his move today as it was the last day of school.
There were probably twenty five cars currently parked across from the school. A school that had seen three girls, ages thirteen to fourteen, disappear over the past two months and some smart guys back at the council had asked me to come look into it.
‘Asked me.’... yeah, right.
Technically, I wasn’t alone in this. I did have a back up team, but they would only appear after the deed was done. That kept things quieter and, if the prey was up to the task, they would only lose one asset... me.
They send me in to make the mess; they send some other poor saps in to clean it up.
Somebody is getting the shitty end of that stick – I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
This job started out simple enough. The first day I had noted every car that parked near the school for any period of time – primarily when the kids were outside. By the end of the day there was only one that had come and gone without a load of newly minted teenagers or an over burdened teacher.
The second day I had positioned myself to watch only that car and saw the Jasper taking pictures with his smart phone.
Jasper was the name we gave to this particular breed of pedophile. The ones that like their girls after puberty hits, but before it’s gone too far. Jaspers don’t kill their victims when they’re done with them. They are still young and beautiful to the rest of the world, though most of that world will likely never see them again – It depends upon how he discards the ones he has finished with.
If they kill the girls we call them a Cletus. Don’t ask me, I have no idea.
The next day he didn’t take pictures, it looked more like he was waiting. Waiting, and watching the kids coming out of the school. Suddenly his attention was a little more focused. I couldn’t tell which girl he was interested in, but had a feeling my waiting would soon be over.
He sat and watched the next two days. I sat with him, patient, yet wanting to get it over with.
This day, I showed up, as usual, just before school let out to find him there as I knew he would be. Just as the kids started pouring out, he left his car and walked towards the school. He paused half way up the wide walkway, then stopped a pretty blonde girl to ask her something. By her reaction he’d asked for directions, but it was just a ruse so he could get close to her for a few minutes – long enough to implant his commands. She spent a minute or two waving her hands and pointing and with a nod of thanks, he headed into the school.
I split my attention for a minute, noting that he only stayed inside for a moment before heading right back out to his car. That told me she was the one – I focused on her. She was now the key to finding the other girls. All I had to do was follow her.
Yes, I could have tried following him, I could have tried that several days ago. Unfortunately, that always carried the risk of being discovered. Following the girl always worked. She wasn’t paranoid and constantly checking her back trail to see if anyone is interested in her. She would generally be concentrating on one thing, getting where she was instructed to go.
I stayed with her all the way home and parked across the street, waiting patiently while she busied herself with whatever the hell young teenagers are up to these days. She had dinner with her family and I watched through the window as she had some sort of argument with her mother and stormed up to her room. I thought about the regrets the mother would not have... no guilt over the last thing said to her missing daughter being out of anger. As for the young lady in question, she was about to find out what a “ruined life” really looked like. There was an off chance that this family would come out the other side of this in better shape than they were in now... you know... if they get the girl a really, really good therapist. Either way, they will be in better shape than if I hadn’t been sent after this particular Jasper.
So there was that.
I waited.
And waited.
About four in the morning the doubts I had been having were clamoring for attention. Maybe he had spotted me and approached this girl as a red herring. I tried to figure out where I had fucked up. Now that school had ended for the year, if I didn’t find his lair through this girl, there was no telling where his new hunting grounds would be.
Just as my blue streak was working up a good head of steam I saw movement at her bedroom window. The sash went up and she climbed out onto the garage roof. She moved quickly to the far corner and down the sapling just big enough that it didn’t snap completely off.
I followed her in my car as she walked through, and out of, the neighborhood, eventually winding up five miles from her house at a type of motel where they don’t pay too much attention to what their guests are up to. And, yes, I just idled along about half a block behind her.
Told you it was easier to follow the girl.
I went into what could be called a prevent defense once a target has been identified. The important thing was getting him or, rarely, her. The last thing you wanted to do was let one of these bastards slip away – they only become more furtive and slippery. Some may never hit our radar again, but that doesn’t mean they stop destroying lives. So I don’t take risks. The idea was to make contact one time – under circumstances that give me the best chances. The first indication these bastards have that anything is amiss should only be a few moments before it all ends.
Jaspers were squirrely fuckers. You never knew if they were going to try hiding under the bed or hit you with a flame thrower.
Okay... I’ve never faced an actual flame thrower. It was hair spray and a lighter.
The point being, with Jaspers the best bet was to slip into the room and grab him from behind before he figured out I was there.
That’s why I didn’t stop her from entering the room. First, I didn’t want him alerted by her not showing up, and second, I wanted him distracted for a while. Don’t think I don’t know what that ‘distraction’ would mean to that girl. That was a shame, just not to all the girls who would be spared in the future.
I called for the clean up team that had been waiting in the wings. An open door to the laundry room and... sure enough, a couple housekeeping carts. Grabbing what I needed I headed to the office where the friendly night manager made me a key that would let me into the room. And then that friendly night manager forgot all about me.
Two more minutes found me ready to go, waiting outside his door. I could hear the sounds of a girl being excited, but I wanted to be sure he was fully focused. The more distracted he was, the better chance I had at surviving ’till sun up.
Her moans and squeals escalated and were joined by grunts of pleasure that were definitively male. I waited until those had escalated as well.
I focused like a laser on the task at hand. Some part of what they had done to my brain allowed me to block out all distractions and put every sense into overdrive. Time seemed to dilate as I made my move.
Slipping the keycard into the slot, I quietly turned the knob.
The crash I heard told me two things. First, he had seen that damned movie and had balanced something glass on the doorknob, and second, I had blown the element of surprise.
Shoving the door out of the way I stepped into the room to see four young, nude lovelies on the bed and one naked Jasper diving to his knees, scrambling for something in the night stand.
I kept moving at a quick but measured pace. I wanted to get close to him, but still let him make some sort of move.
Yeah, I know, the best defense is a good offense – but when you outclass your opponent in every way, it’s never a fight, it’s an execution... as long as you play it your way.
Having their best move slapped down with no apparent effort tended to fuck with their heads a bit, leaving them even less able to defend themselves.
Besides, giving them something of a chance just seemed more sporting.
Before I could reach him he swung around brandishing a small semi-automatic handgun. Part of my mind was distracted trying to figure out what make, model and caliber it was.
My mind had weird thoughts at times like this.
I said I hadn’t reached him yet, I didn’t say I wasn’t close. That’s sorta the point.
My right hand shot out, grabbing the gun and moving the slide just enough to the rear so it couldn’t fire, not that the little fucker didn’t try. My left hand swung around and hit the back of his elbow, hard – it dislocated with a sickening crunch. The gun was now mine and he was rapidly realizing how much damage I had done to his arm – quite a bit top judge by the screaming. I quickly hit the magazine release and jacked the remaining shell out of the chamber.
I resisted clocking him in the head with the now empty weapon and discarded it. He was still in shock and somewhat sideways to me so I stepped behind him and snaked my right arm around his neck. I locked in with my arm tight enough to control him.
No, I didn’t simply snap his neck – one or more of these girls might not like that.
When we – and by we I mean genetic mutants like me and the unclothed reprobate I had in my arms – are in another person’s mind, we have to consciously remove ourselves. Since he was indoctrinating his new acquisition, he was likely still in her mind. If I knocked him out or killed him outright, the backlash she would experience would have unpredictable results. She might be fine, or she might wind up a mental vegetable. If push came to shove, I would take the chance, but as long as I didn’t have to do it fast, he would fade out... go to sleep. That would soften the blow to her vulnerable psyche.
Never did much for mine, though.
Kicking the flimsy armchair out of the way, I backed into the corner, taking a seat and keeping him to my front and between me and his girls – just in case he had ordered them to defend him. Didn’t look like he had.
“Okay, okay,” he said, his voice squeaky from the pain in his elbow, “I give. You got me.”
Right, like if I had said, ‘I give’ he wouldn’t have shot me, or if any of these girls had said, ‘I give’ they wouldn’t have ended up turning tricks for some pimp.
I didn’t say anything. If I engaged him in conversation, he would stop being an anonymous target and become a person. I was going to know him all too well before this was over anyway, why ask for more when it’s not necessary.
I reached into my left side cargo pocket and pulled out the small garbage bag I had lifted from a maid’s cart. I had already opened it before stuffing it in my pocket so it was easy to slide part of it down the back of his head and then another part down over his face, tucking the tail of it under my elbow.
“Wait! Wait! You don’t have to do this!” He cried as my hand came up to cover his mouth and nose through the plastic. I didn’t want to hear the deal he thought would save his life. It wouldn’t matter. They always tried to make a deal – the same promises and lies if only I wouldn’t kill them. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew by the sound of the panicked voice that they were wide with fear.
Fuck ’em. I showed these rats the same mercy they showed their victims. I wasn’t sent after guys who left their women healthy and happy with a college degree, a trunk full of cash and two cup sizes bigger.
He finally figured out his left hand didn’t have to cradle his tortured right arm and it came up in an attempt to restore his air.
He started scrabbling at my fingers. I spun my hand around so it was palm out, laced my fingers with his and with a twist of my wrist I snapped three of his digits.
His scream puffed out the bag and I had the thick plastic pressed back against his mouth before he could re-inhale any of that stale air.
He twisted and made pleading noises, his broken left hand batting ineffectually at my hand and arm as he begged, wordlessly, for his life.
Then I felt the slight nausea. He was trying to use his mind against me – they always did. Too bad I was better at this than he was. He hadn’t had the joyous experience of all those diabolically evil things they used to enhance our powers. If he had, he may have had a fighting chance, but as it were, his talent was a puppy to my pit bull. But like all things that make us better, stronger, faster, there was a price.
I simply ignored whatever he was trying to tell me to do and concentrated on a few minutes from now... when it would be over and I wouldn’t be feeling the life ebbing out of a man who couldn’t be more than twenty-three.
He knew he was going to die. He couldn’t break my grasp, he couldn’t breath, his right arm was completely useless, his left hand was in such pain that it had no strength and he was just figuring out his mental abilities weren’t going to help him. I felt the bottom drop out of his guts as he realized there was nothing he could do to stop his death. His life flashed before him and I got the impressions, it was unavoidable. I tried to ignore them. I always tried to ignore them.
Fat lot of good that did.
I didn’t want to see this kid at fourteen, the usual age that the talent presented. He was just noticing that he had been noticing girls and had a real good idea of what he wanted to do to each and every one of them.
Remarkable only in that there was nothing remarkable about him. He was a typical teenage boy with raging hormones.
Then he woke up one morning and found he could hear other people’s thoughts. Shortly after that he discovered he could control what they thought. He could make them think, feel or do whatever he pleased. Of course, this talent was first and foremost directed at those girls he had been noticing.
Life had served up a smorgasbord of all his newly discovered favorite foods and he feasted.
Shit, we all did.
No one judges shit like that too harshly. The talent was a genetic disorder so most new talents were kept in relative check, having some sort of guidance. But sometimes genetic disorders can skip enough generations that no one is paying attention when one pops. A lot of what happens during those first few months is forgiven. A lot of what happens in those first few months needs to be forgiven.
I ensured my arm was still locked in place around his neck. His most pronounced struggles had subdued but his heels still beat a staccato tempo on the floor. I hung on – sometimes they try to fool you. His mind was still there.
His first sexual experiences were with his classmates, young girls just like the ones on the bed staring at me with confused looks. But he also had an older, attractive sister with whom he was unable to control his adolescent lust. Her suicide guilted him so much he never wanted anything to do with an older girl again. No matter how old he got, he could only perform with girls early in their development.
Still, that could be forgiven, and it has, with concessions. Usually it boils down the girl being better off after the telepath has tired of her.
Better off my ass.
We tolerate a lot of fucked up shit in the name of peace and secrecy.
Hell, he wasn’t much different than I had been early on. I too was a feral telepath when they found me. I simply hadn’t crossed any hard and fast lines at that point – lots of gray areas had been shredded, but no lines had been crossed.
I don’t know why we ended up different. Just lucky I suppose. It was like that with a lot of the bastards I took out. They had been doing the same things I had done, then one day they took a left turn. I still have no idea why I never took that left turn – I can’t think of any good reasons.
He was now twitching, semi conscious. Hang on a little longer – make sure it is done. His mind was still there... barely.
This dipshit had crossed lines. He couldn’t just settle in and let life happen... let his lust grow up with him.
Instead he built a harem of girls who would begin to disgust him in a year or two. He got new ones but then had to deal with the ones he no longer wanted.
Even he knew that simply making them forget and turning them loose to wander aimlessly around would only invite unwanted scrutiny.
He tried killing them, but by the second one he knew he hadn’t the stomach for it.
It didn’t take long for him to figure out that, if he was going to keep a rotating harem, he couldn’t stay too long in any one place – two, maybe three years. Time enough to acquire a harem and let most of them age out. So he became a purveyor of young, very young, prostitutes. He wasn’t a pimp, when the girls were with him they were only for him – he supplied the pimps with his cast offs.
When it came time to move on, and having secured his bona-fides by selling a sample to each of the ‘businessmen’ interested, he would hold an auction for all his remaining girls. By then they had all been amazed by the pretty little girls who loved their pimp with all their hearts, were obedient and loyal to a fault and would do anything, absolutely anything to gain their ‘daddy’s’ approval.
He made a ton of cash.
I looked around the room for the money as he went still and the impressions I got from his mind dissipated. I started a slow count to twenty-five. Nothing obvious, but it was here. They always kept the cash with them.
Reaching twenty-five, I released him, twisted the tail of the bag into a knot and tucked it up against the back of his neck.
“Stupid bastard.” I spat as I pushed him off me, he folded over and his head smacked the floor between his splayed legs.
“Stupid dead bastard.”
I was finally able to give the young ladies my attention.
Four young women – four prime examples of early pubescent beauty.
In the spirit of full disclosure, my Id thought they were sexy as hell and wanted to continue where he had left off, but my Superego shut it down. Biologically, they were well on their way to being ready for motherhood, sociologically, they were still basically children and we weren’t living in caves anymore.
I climbed to my feet and willed the four girls to relax, telling them everything was fine and they should just sit quietly. I did this without uttering a word. Just like starting a conversation with my mark, I saw no reason to get involved with these victims. Sometimes they were too far gone to be returned to their families – I didn’t want to know.
Slipping into the mind of a pretty brown haired youngster I looked only to see if he had included any fail-safes in his programming. It wasn’t unheard of for these creeps to tell the girls to kill themselves if anything happened to them. It was partly to keep them from telling anyone what had happened to them, but it was mostly because these vermin were spiteful little bastards.
By the time I had checked all of them the clean up team had arrived. Two telepaths and three normal guys – well, if you consider large, muscular Special Forces types ‘normal’.
The body was already being bundled up in plastic. They would take it elsewhere, cut it into little pieces and burn it until there was no shred of him left.
There was a good chance the only evidence of his existence would be the memories I had stolen as he died. Well, that and the shattered lives.
He had thought himself a God, but soon it would be as though he never existed. In that way, as far as I was concerned, he was much like God.
If there was a God, I couldn’t see how he could have allowed this talent to persist. The things some people did with it... the things we had to do because of it...
My phone rang. It was my boss, my connection to the council.
“I know you just finished a job, but we have another one.”
“Don’t I get at least a few days?”
“Sorry, we had a hit on facial recognition. We got close enough to him in Korea to get his face, but he slipped away – it’s a ‘Bundy’. We have to shut this guy down, Hunter. You have to shut this guy down.”
Bundys were the worst. Evil rapists, torturers and murderers and the only nickname that made sense to me.
I told him to send me the file and hung up. The telepaths were doing preliminary work on the girls, they too would be taken to a hidden location where their memories would be altered and then, if they could, they would be released to deal with their friends and families. Flimsy excuses to explain their absences and the mysterious post traumatic stress would have those close to them forever concerned and somewhat suspicious. Despite our best efforts, life for these girls would be difficult.
“You guys good here?” I asked the telepath in charge.
“Sure, Hunter. We got this.”
A tone told me I had received the file.
The Philippines... Great.
Well, just because I was going there, didn’t mean I would have to see her – it was a big country... for such a small country...