Kim panted heavily as she ducked behind a thick oak. Her thighs fairly burned from the excessive running and crouching strategy she'd been forced to drop into to prevent the sudden dissappearance of her head at the hand of a few bits of copper jacketed lead.
Lured to this distant island with the promise of a threatened village to save, she'd instead been dropped into a sick realization of human as prey.
There had been a village. It's residents, barely a hundred to begin with, had already mostly been gunned down for sport. All that remained were a few passable women, able bodied enough to maintain this pervert's paradise.
It might have been marginally understandable if this had begun because humans were the most difficult of all prey.
Well, supposed to be, anyway. Judging from the scant half dozen left, the humanity of the village had been easy sport.
Sport that had served no further purpose than to assuage their venerable hosts desire to bask in the death rattle.
He cared nothing for the hunt, though he was adept at it. His only desire was that final moment of life fleeing from the human body. That scant moment of warm conciousness before creeping black coldness seeped through.
Kim shivered in the grey predawn light. She'd been running all night and still had an entire day before she'd see any respite.
She hadn't heard the bullets winging at her head for a while. Early on in her hellish endurance test, she'd been relieved of her Kimmunicator.
Early on meaning almost from the moment she'd landed.
She dashed through the trees with energy born of desperation.
This bastard was not going to succeed where so many others had failed.
From some small distance behind her, she heard the distinct break of fallen branches beneath booted heels. The rising of the day offered little cover as it exposed her silhouette against the trees.
A scant few seconds were all that stood between her and the illuminating brightness of the morning sun…discovery was a tree trunk away.
Crouched low to the ground, Kim's chest pressed into the grass and brush that blanketed the forest floor. Against her knee, a tree root wedged into her joint painfully. If she survived this, there'd be quite a bruise there.
“Goddamn, you suck at finding cover.”
A sob of relief threatened to break free from her chest. That taunting voice was never more welcome. Twenty yards from her prone position, Shego pushed through the brush.
“If you tell me you have a way to stop this bastard, I will love you forever.”
Still a few yards away, Shego grinned widely and raised one hand far enough to show Kim what she firmly clenched. Held in the tight grip of familiar pale fingers was a pistol she couldn't identify in the wan light. Unidentifiable as it was, it's traditionally sleek bulk was a welcome sight indeed.
“How do you know I'm not here to kill you?”
“So not your style. Do you have a spare?”
“You want heat, Possible?” She handed over a late-model CZ-75.
“Only in international waters, Shego.” Kim checked her magazine and chamber. Satisfied with the comforting slugs of inert metal and dormant powder, she nodded. “Now that's heat. Let's go.”
Shego grinned. “Our DZ is the roof of the mansion.”
Kim smirked and flicked the safety off, the metal click echoing slightly in the copse of trees. “Let the hunt begin.” She moved to take point, but a pale hand snagged her arm with a light touch.
“How about letting someone who knows about cover go first?”
Kim glared. She'd been able to elude the sick wacko all night. How much of that had been luck and how much had been skill, she wasn't sure. A curt nod gave her assent and she followed behind her unexpected rescuer. She wasn't exactly feeling a hundred percent and some small part of her was grateful for Shego's demand.
They moved through the forest quietly. Shego looked around, then nodded to one side, toward a clump of brambled bushes. “C'mon, I've got something I want to show you.”
A decidedly unladylike grunt had her following Shego past the squat bushes to a small bare spot in the trees.
She didn't see him until she stubbed her toe on his shoulder.
A wide, cold stare took in the suited figure of her host. His neck rested at an awkward angle, his temple colored with a bare threaded trickle of dried blood. His lips were curled in a postmortem sneer, formerly pristine white teeth stained brown with regurgitated blood. His watery blue eyes were whitening with cataracts, staring sightlessly at the growing light of the horizon.
“I found him on my way to get you.” Shego's voice was somber, quietly intruding on the burgeoning relief that was tearing through Kim. Sadness warred with unreasoning anger that mystified her. He was dead. It shouldn't matter that she hadn't been the one to kill him.
“Let's go.”
She didn't care if she was lying to herself. She turned and strode purposefully and recklessly through the forest.
It was over.
All that remained was returning home and debriefing Global Justice on what had happened so they could fix this mess.
The branches whipped at her as she forced her way through. The steel of her borrowed pistol was heavy and reassuring in her palm. behind her, Shego followed silently, pushing through the foliage with ease.
The clearing of the landscaped front lawns of the decadent villa loomed before her with alarming suddenness. No longer forced to sidestep fallen branches and treacherous roots, her feet stumbled on the flat plain of grass, her body lurching forward to meet the ground.
A hand tangled in the loose material at the back of her shirt, fisting in the lightweight cotton and yanking her upright in time for her to catch sight of the rapidly approaching GJ choppers.
What in the world…
Things were starting to coalesce in her mind. Turning, she pinned Shego with a penetrating stare.
The woman merely smirked and waved to the choppers.
- end -