The forest was a cacophony of terror: the desperate sound of breathing, the crunching of leaves, and the roar of the pursuit.
Chris looked over his shoulder and felt his heart might burst from his chest.
That truck was advancing like a blind beast, completely ignoring the terrain as it approached at a frantic speed.
"Quick! Toward the hilltop, run!" Chris shouted with effort. He saw Jessie stumble and nearly fall; he grabbed her arm and used his entire body weight to drag her forward.
Scott and Carly stumbled behind them, their faces covered in tears and mud.
Scott's leg had been badly injured in the previous accident, and every step he took was pure agony, but the instinct for survival was stronger than the pain.
However, flesh and bone could not compete against the machine.
With a roar of the engine and an abrupt skid on the dirt, the truck cut across right in front of them, blocking their only escape route. "One Eye," "Sawtooth," and "Three Fingers" jumped out, forming, along with the driver, the infamous semicircle of death.
And just when they thought it couldn't get worse, a movement in the dense vegetation behind them revealed a deformed woman.
She was relatively thin, but just as horrible as the men, and she held a rustic bow in her hand. The tip of a hunting arrow was already pointed directly at Carly, who was the last of the group.
They were surrounded.
"No..." Carly whispered, her legs finally giving way.
It was over.
That was the only thought that crossed Chris's mind.
His interview, his future, his life... everything was going to end here, in this desolate West Virginia forest, with a bloody period placed by this group of monsters.
The deformed woman smiled cruelly, and fully drew the bowstring, ready to shoot.
But just at that instant, a sharp gunshot that didn't belong in this forest cut through the area.
Crack
The cannibal woman, who was about to release the arrow, threw her head back with brutal force.
A perfect hole had appeared between her eyebrows. Her smile froze, and the cruelty in her eyes was instantly replaced by an absolute blankness.
The next second, she fell backward, rigid as a log.
"..."
The sudden turn of events was so brutal that it left everyone completely paralyzed.
For a long second, no one moved.
Chris and his companions, who moments before were certain of their death, were now paralyzed by a completely new shock. The three cannibals also stopped, their heads turning in unison toward the direction of the shot.
From behind a large oak tree, about twenty meters away, a figure slowly walked out.
He was a tall, slender young man, dressed in a black motorcyclist suit.
In his right hand, he held a silver pistol, large and ornately designed, from whose barrel a thin wisp of smoke still rose.
The sunlight, filtering through the dense leaf canopy, fell upon him, illuminating a face so perfectly symmetrical that it hardly looked human.
His expression was one of pure indifference, as if what he had just done was no more important than swatting an annoying fly.
Lief gently blew on the muzzle of "Ivory," watching the smoke dissipate. 'The recoil on this thing is smooth as silk,' he thought. 'Too bad my entrance was a bit cliché, though. I should have descended from the sky.'
A bestial growl broke the silence.
After the brief stupor, "Three Fingers" let out a shrill shriek. His primitive brain couldn't grasp why his companion had fallen, but he could clearly sense the mortal threat emanating from this man who had appeared out of nowhere.
Brutality seized him. He grabbed his axe and charged wildly, straight toward Lief.
"Sawtooth" and "One Eye" reacted instantly, splitting up to flank him from the left and right, their own rusty blades held high.
Faced with three horrifying monsters running toward him, Lief didn't even blink; he simply raised the arm holding the pistol.
!
Chris and the others felt their hearts jump into their throats. They wanted to scream "Watch out!" but found that fear had blocked their voices.
Just as "Three Fingers'" axe was raised, ready to fall onto Lief's face...
Bang
Another crisp shot rang out.
"Three Fingers'" forward momentum stopped dead.
"..."
He looked down, bewildered, at the smoking bullet hole in his chest. He opened his mouth, as if to let out a final howl, but instead only spat a stream of blood and fell heavily onto the leaves.
Almost simultaneously, before the first body finished falling, Lief's wrist spun to the right. "Ivory" was already aimed at "One Eye," who was attacking from the flank.
Bang
The bullet embedded itself precisely in the cannibal's single eye. The sheer force of the impact sent him flying several meters backward, crashing violently into a tree, and then sliding down it, leaving a damp trail, until he fell like a rag doll.
Three shots. Three dead. Only one remained.
"Sawtooth," wielding his axe, was now less than ten feet from Lief.
He had seen with his own eyes how his two brothers died one after another in less than two seconds, and his bestial instinct screamed with a terror he had never felt before.
But he was too close; he could no longer stop the momentum of his run. All he could do was turn that fear into fury and bring the axe down with all the force he had left.
Lief watched as the rusty blade rapidly grew larger in his vision, and the corners of his mouth curved into an icy smile.
He didn't even bother to shoot again.
He simply extended his other hand forward.
An invisible, instantaneous force enveloped "Sawtooth."
The axe, descending with enough force to split a skull, stopped dead in the air, trembling less than four inches from Lief's forehead.
"Sawtooth's" expression changed from bestial fury to absolute confusion.
He could see his prey, but he couldn't reach it.
He used all the strength in his body, the veins in his arm swelled, but he couldn't make the blade advance a single millimeter further.
"Too weak," Lief said with boredom.
His left hand, still extended, slowly closed its fingers into a fist.
Crack
A sound of snapping bones, so sharp it made their teeth grind, resonated.
The arm with which the cannibal held the machete broke cleanly, bending backward. The unbearable pain tore an inhuman scream from him, and the machete fell to the ground.
And before the scream faded, Lief flicked his hand, as if swatting an annoying fly.
Swish
"Sawtooth's" massive body shot backward like a meteorite. He flew more than ten meters, breaking several branches in his trajectory, before crashing heavily onto the ground.
He shook a couple of times in a final convulsion and then lay motionless.
In less than ten seconds, everything was over.
The four deformed monsters who had plunged humans into utter despair had been eliminated.
The forest returned to silence.
"..."
Chris, Jessie, Carly, and Scott stood there, completely paralyzed, staring at the man who had appeared out of nowhere and executed their torturers with terrifying calm.
Their minds were blank, unable to process what they had just witnessed. Was it a hallucination? Were they filming a movie?
What had just happened simply didn't fit within the bounds of reality.
Lief, completely ignoring them, holstered "Ivory" in its invisible sheath and calmly walked toward the cannibals' truck.
He glanced inside, which was full of rusty tools, garbage, and the stale smell of dry blood.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
He turned around and looked at the four survivors, who were still petrified on the spot.
"So... the main road was blocked, and you decided to take this shortcut, huh?"
That simple question, so out of place in the middle of the carnage, was like a slap that rebooted their brains.
"Y-Yes... yes..." Chris stammered, trying to stand up and finding his legs shaking uncontrollably. "You... who the hell are you? And what... what were those things?"
"I'm a hunter. From around here," Lief lied effortlessly. He nodded toward the direction they had come from. "This place isn't safe. If you want to stay alive, follow me. I'll take you back to the highway."
His voice wasn't a suggestion.
There was a quiet force in it that permitted no argument, and the four of them instinctively chose to obey.
The primal desire to survive took control again. Leaning on each other, they started to follow their savior.
The entire way, no one spoke again. All that could be heard was the sound of their own breaths and the crunch of leaves under their feet.
The atmosphere was strange.
Every now and then, they cast furtive glances at his back. Their hearts were a chaos of gratitude, awe, and deep confusion.
Who the hell was this guy? Why was he here, in the middle of nowhere? That expert marksman aim, and... whatever he did to that last monster, that ability to stop him in mid-air... none of it made sense.
Lief, for his part, paid no attention whatsoever to the gazes he felt fixed on the back of his neck. He moved through the complex forest with confidence, and it didn't take him long to find the path that led back to the main road.
When the familiar gleam of the asphalt and the long line of stopped cars appeared in the distance, the tension finally broke. Jessie and Carly, who had stayed on their feet out of pure adrenaline, couldn't hold back anymore and collapsed into hysterical sobs of relief.
Scott simply let out a long sigh and fell to the ground, his injured leg finally giving way.
Only Chris, after a brief, choked wave of emotion, immediately turned to Lief, his face full of gratitude. "Thank you... seriously. I... I don't know how we can ever thank you for this."
"Don't worry about it," Lief waved his hand dismissively.
Just then, the sound of sirens abruptly intensified. Several patrol cars, with red and blue lights sweeping the trees, were stopping in the accident area, not far from there.
An officer seemed to notice the group emerging from the forest and pointed in their direction.
"The police! Oh my God, it's the police!" Jessie screamed.
Chris's face lit up with relief. He was about to turn to Lief to ask him to stay, to explain to the police what had happened... but he found that the man who had been by his side was no longer there.
He turned abruptly, confused. The space was empty. And then he heard it: the monstrous roar of an engine that vibrated his eardrums.
On the side of the road, where he was sure there had been nothing seconds before, a black, low, extravagant motorcycle had appeared, looking like it was straight out of a science fiction movie.
The mysterious man who had saved them was already sitting on it. With total calm, he put on his sunglasses and gestured with his hand, a two-finger salute, saying goodbye.
Before Chris could say a word, the engine roared to a deafening crescendo. Fenrir became a black lightning bolt, shooting down the road and disappearing in an instant, leaving behind only the four stunned survivors and the increasingly close sound of the sirens.
"..."
Chris stared at the empty road. In the end, he could only let out a bitter smile as he shook his head.
It seemed there were some questions that were destined to remain unanswered.
________
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