So a new story for all my loyal peeps who have been waiting so patiently for something new from me for so long.  I present to you...

THE DEADLIEST PREY

  “Man ...Is the deadliest prey,” began Colonel Clearly Von Turnbull.  Of corse he’d only been a Colonel in a mercenary army, sustaining the measly rank of Corporal in his enlisted duties.  Also his name wasn’t Clearly Von Turnbull, his real name was Oswald Swayles but no-one wanted to hunt their fellow man with someone called Corporal Oswald Swayles, whereas Colonel Von Turnbull was a fearless warrior who people would willingly traipse through the jungles of the world with.  “Today you will be hunting down someone who is armed only with wits and cunning.  In many ways these are the things that we should fear the most.”

  The gathered throng he was addressing were six billionaires who had each paid two million dollars in cold, hard, untraceable cash and had communicated with Oswald only via an untraceable mobile address that bounced off passing blue-tooth signals and gave no indication of Oswald’s origins.  They had been instructed to destroy all and any communications they had made with the Colonel and to come to the agreed location in a roundabout route.  Along with the billionaires stood Oswald’s personal guard of four highly trained marksmen to make sure that things didn’t get too far out of hand.  They stood there resolute, knowing in only thirty minutes to handle an environment whose shadows and light could trick the sharpest of minds.  The billionaires listened to Oswald’s rhetoric with an assortment of hero worships or arrogant indifference, some looked at him with puppy-dog eyes others with disdain while they picked their nose and looked on their discoveries with yet more disdain.  It did not put Oswald off.
  “It is important we stick together and we follow the rules.  One ...We don’t wander off.  Two ...We don’t point weaponry at each other and we will walk in formation to prevent that from happening and the last rule and for yourselves the most important ...Whichever one of you makes the winning shot gets their stake back,” Oswald said.  Behind Oswald a diesel engine chugged away and a forklift truck carrying a large wooden box flattened the undergrowth and trampled down the foliage making an industrial path through the jungle.  The billionaires attention now piqued; some with ambition others in fear.
  “There’s your prey, gentleman.  A homeless man from the outskirts of Paris, we don’t know his name but his temperament seems suitably animalistic,” said Oswald.  The forklift lowered the box to the ground and two of Oswald’s team opened the front and then stood back with the group, weapons raised.  A dirty, lean man, stubbly but otherwise seeming in good shape, emerged from the box.  For a minute they could see from his eyes that he considered charging the guards for a weapon but as they cocked their rifles he thought better of it.
  “You’ve got thirty minutes head-start!” Oswald said to the man.  “I suggest you use it!”
  At that the man was gone, darting into the deep Amazonian forests and disappearing like a ghost.
  “There is your prey, gentlemen.  In thirty minutes he will be your deadliest enemy.  Any questions?” Oswald asked.  One man raised his hand.  “Yes?”
  “Can I go for a wee, Colonel?” said the billionaire.  Oswald’s men shook their heads.
  “Billionaires!” spat Oswald under his breath.

  Light streamed through the canopy of leaves and strained through the trees, the animals in the tree added a symphony of sound that was exotic in the movies but an unwanted distraction when hunting a deadly enemy.  The hunting party was armed, had water, food was travelling through the undergrowth by Jeep.  Their advantage was substantial.  Oswald watched the trees looking for any sense of movement.  The forest was a deceptive beast and beneath its shades and undergrowth were unseen dangers, but in this heat the biggest danger was panic.  Running at full speed through this uneven landscape took energy and that sapped the body of liquid and strength.  To some degree adrenalin compensated but nowhere near enough and after half an hour most people would be close to exhaustion in this weather.  
  “That’s the thing about the half-hour start,” Oswald told his clients.  “This isn’t for our prey’s advantage ...It’s actually for ours!”
  Oswald sat in the front jeep, the Cartwright semi-automatic rifle slung, care-free on his lap, his hand pressing the beauty firmly against his leg.  He wasn’t worried about the target and although some might see his laid-back stance in the front vehicle as being foolhardy he  knew exactly what he was doing.  Oswald’s jeep moved ever forward making light-work of the ground beneath, Oswald wondered just how long it would take before they found...
  BANG, BANG, PSHHH!
 “CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER!” the guns spat out from behind him as his jeep came to a stop.
  “CEASE FIRE!  CEASE FIRE!” Oswald shouted as he left his jeep.  The two front tyres were flat, a row of hidden spikes had pierced the protective sheath and drained them of air.  It was clever, it was VERY clever.  Oswald’s second in command, Jerry Spratchett came over, all the while staring out at the trees that seemed to stand in silent conspiracy against the hunters.
  “What happened, Boss?” Jerry asked.
  “Tyres spiked,” said Oswald, deep in thought.
  “Bad luck?” asked Jerry, fearing the more likely answer.
  “Sabotage,” Oswald replied, grimly.
  “Damn!” said Jerry as he scanned the defiant trees, the birdsong and animal calls feeling more like mocking laughter now.  “How long will it take to change the...”
  PFFT!
  “URGH!” said Jerry holding his neck.  Oswald looked around.  Jerry removed his hand and in his palm was a blow dart.  Jerry looked in fear as he felt at his throat.  The side of his neck was red and swelling up more every second.  Jerry fell to the floor a hoarse fading rasping sound coming from him as he sat back against the jeep.
  “Jerry?  JERRY!” said Oswald as his friend closed his eyes and slid to the floor.
  “Well he wasn’t very useful was he?” asked one of the more arrogant billionaires.  No sooner had the words left his lips than a whoosh through the air was replaced by a stifled gurgle as the billionaire looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his throat.  Oswald got up, grabbed his rifle and turned in the direction of the arrow traversed from.  A shadow moved across the trees and Oswald opened fire, more bullets quickly being spat from other rifles behind him before Oswald raised his hand to get his fellow hunters to cease fire.  Leaving the jeeps behind and their fellow dead hunters they marched forward, in only a matter of minutes they found the mysterious vagabond’s perch and saw the tiniest sliver of blood against the tree trunk.
  “If you can bleed then we can kill you, you son of a bitch!” said Oswald as he gripped the rifle, tight, all pretence at calm gone.  Behind him he could hear the five remaining billionaires chatting and whimpering in fear as their party of eleven hunters had been all too quickly whittled down to nine.
  “Now listen up.  Fear will get you dead so I don’t want any more of this lily-livered nonsense or I will shoot you myself!  Now due to this unforeseen turn of events I have decided to increase the stakes to four million for whoever makes the winning shot!  Clive and Steve, you’re at the rear, myself and Reece here will be at the front with yourselves well protected in the middle.  Now, let’s move out!
  They all headed forward into the forest, all a little bit slower now, as the distance and time got drawn out to breaking point.  For ten minutes all that could be heard was the crunching of foliage under boot and the heavy, nervous breathing of the wealthy patrons, until a SWISH and a WHOOSH broke the silence as Reece found himself hauled thirty foot into the air in a trap, then suffering the indignity of an arrow to the chest turning him into what looked like a leaky, human shaped fruit-juice dispenser.  Oswald and his team got off several shots but hit nothing.  
  It was to be the tragic pattern of the rest of the day.
  One-by-one they fell and one-by-one Oswald got increasingly frazzled by their enemy’s apparent ease of finding them wanting both tactically and physically.  Oswald’s men and the billionaires found their numbers diminishing and their odds quickly reducing, eventually only one billionaire was left standing with the usually unflappable Oswald at his back.
  “As long as there are two of us there’s a chance,” said Oswald.  “Just remember...” 
  “Just remember what, Colonel?” asked the billionaire as his eyes darted all over the trees, every movement sending him sick with worry and fear.  “Colonel?”
  The billionaire turned slowly, there, a spear in his gut keeping him upright was the man the Billionaire viewed as his best hope of survival.  The dead eyes told the man all he needed to know about his chances of escape.  Tears began to stream down his face and as he did so he began to unload the automatic into the dense woodland, the remaining bullets in his gun being chewed up by thick bark to be buried alive in the wood forever as the trees would slowly seal themselves around the metal fragments.  As his gun clicked empty the billionaire let it drop and started to half-run, half-tumble over the ground, his forty pounds of extra weight from living the good life, feeling anything but good now as it slowed his movements to a virtual crawl.  Eventually he fell into the dirt and, reaching for a branch, grabbed something softer, somehow less woody and more cotton-covered fleshy.  The billionaire looked up and there, in front of him, was the prey, the unarmed man they wanted to hunt down with rifles, the man whose head they wanted to turn into a private wall ornament, standing before him with a spear in hand.  The businessman clutched at his chest as his heart creaked to the point of fearful exhaustion and somewhere inside a ventricle burst, spewing its precious cargo exactly where it did not want to go.
  “Please,” he begged as his face went from plush to pale as the blood emptied inside his body and drained from his veins.  “Please...” he managed to beg one more time till his heart stopped beating and his froze, forever in fear.  The victim who had so easily turned the tables on those hunting him let the spear fall to the ground as he wallowed in his triumph.
  “Jesus!  What a bunch of arseholes!” he said.
  “I know.  It’s amazing how stupid they are,” interjected Oswald before raising his walky-talky.  “Jerry, you there?  Over.”
  “Loud and clear, boss.  You want us to pick you up?  Over,” Jerry replied. 
  “Yeah do.  Usual point.  How’s your neck?  Over,” Oswald asked.
  “The usual.  A smear of peanut and the outside enflames like crazy, other than that as good as new.  Over,” said Jerry followed by a small smattering of static.  Oswald and Patrice looked down at the latest billionaire to fall foul of their ruse far away from prying eyes deep within the Amazon rainforest.
  “Do you think they’ll ever catch on?” Patrice asked.  Oswald looked at the fear-frozen face of the former baby-food magnate in front of him.
  “No.  Stupidity knows no boundaries.  Thankfully the wealthy, separated from reality, are probably more susceptible than most,” Oswald replied as he let his mind wander to what he would spend his share of the money on this time.  “Come on.  Let’s get rd of the corpses.” he said as they disposed of the evidence and already started to look forward to the next hunt six months from now.

FIN

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