3. Hunters on the Run
Paul Street Crossroads had once been one of the most famous busy districts in Pramo.A movie theater and a department store.General stores and bars lined up along the road.Glittering lights and neon signs every night.Crowds of people filling the streets.
At least, that was before the city next door, Houston, stole away its signature downtown event: the International Film Festival.
By the time the hunters arrived around 10 p.m. after receiving the report, the scene that greeted them was very different from usual.Aside from the flashy, sparkling billboards and spinning lights, the only thing that greeted them was silence.
The streets were as quiet as if every person had suddenly evaporated.
For the hunters, unfamiliar with the area, the whole situation was strangely fascinating. They wandered in and out of empty shops, looking around. Some groups had spread out a map and were discussing where to set up a base.
That was when a gunshot rang out from far away.
Everyone froze at once, looking up at the sky in the direction of the sound.
When the gunfire stopped, a few minutes of heavy silence passed.
Hearing nothing more, they all grabbed their gear and vanished somewhere into the dark.
Anderson was standing in front of a prize crane machine.Figures, phones, earphones, toy helicopters—
Among them, what caught his eye was a silver-plated Zippo lighter.
He fished a few coins out of his pocket and started the machine.
There were only two buttons: one moved the rod up and down, the other left and right.
The rules were simple.
You aimed at one of the prizes displayed on any of the five shelves and used the long rod to push it back. Once pushed far enough, the prize would tip off the shelf and drop.
Aiming was easy.
The problem was, even when the rod pushed the item all the way to the edge, it refused to fall.
[Gunshot]
The second shot echoed through the street.Now, including him, only a handful of people remained near the entrance.
Plenty of hunters had flocked in to catch the madman, but for some reason, he wasn't the least bit impatient.
If anything, he seemed to be waiting for something.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
That speed. That movement.
Five people had already died before his eyes.
This was Jimmy's third case since he'd started working as a hunter.
The first had been a man in his sixties who had gone into a fit at a gambling den on a ship.
The second had been a man in his forties who had gone berserk after a minor fender-bender at a downtown intersection.
Both had been individually assigned notifications, and each case had wrapped up so quickly it felt almost trivial.
The pay had been modest—about enough to cover a night of drinking.
He'd been waiting for something big to finally come his way.
"Men in their twenties are dangerous."
Sid, a teammate, had said that on their way to the scene.
This year marked Sid's tenth year as a hunter; he was a seasoned veteran.
Jimmy hadn't taken his warning too seriously.
He'd brushed it off as the usual scare tactic seniors liked to use on rookies.
Placebo—the app that listed hunter jobs and payouts—had put a hefty reward on this case.
If he could just pull this one off, he was planning to take a short vacation at a nearby resort.
Whenever he imagined bikini-clad beauties running and playing on a blue beach, he couldn't stop a grin from spreading across his face.
Even when they first arrived and began sweeping the area, he'd been in a great mood.
An empty city was like a lawless paradise.
He walked into random shops, touched whatever was on display, even grabbed food and started eating.
There were CCTV cameras, so if you touched anything expensive you'd get hit with a compensation claim pretty quickly, but nobody bothered with trivial stuff like canned beer or peanut biscuits.
It happened while he was lost in the thrill of his little lawless shopping spree.
In a back-alley shop that the CCTV didn't reach, he had just shrugged on a leather jacket and, feeling good, was about to ask the teammate next to him if it looked good on him.
But the moment he turned his head, the bright smile on his face hardened in an instant.
Standing next to him was a madman, pupils rolled back to white, baring huge, lion-like fangs as he savagely tore into the neck of the young hunter who had come in with Jimmy.
His body locked up on the spot.
This was on a completely different level from any madman he'd seen before.
Tall, with solid, powerful muscles.
He knew instinctively: this was not someone he could handle alone.
They were too close. He didn't even dare reach for his gun.
He felt that even if he shifted his gaze the slightest bit, the creature would lunge at him.
The young hunter was still twitching, which meant he was probably still alive, but Jimmy didn't have the courage to try to save him.
No—if anything, he was desperately hoping the madman would stay so fixated on his teammate's neck that he wouldn't notice Jimmy at all.
It was only in the face of this unexpected horror and his own helplessness that he finally realized just how dangerous his job really was.
[Gunshot]
A gunshot rang out from far away.
The madman in front of him shuddered in the shoulder.
Jimmy turned his head toward the sound and saw a bald man in black sunglasses aiming a gun at the madman.
A sudden gust of wind blew through, and the massive shape in front of Jimmy vanished like a bolt.
As Jimmy glanced around, trying to find where the madman had gone, he finally spotted a black shape above his head, climbing along the wall on all fours.
[Gunshot] [Gunshot]
The bald man fired several more shots at the madman clinging to the wall, but the creature leaped effortlessly from wall to wall with its huge body, closed in on the man, grabbed his head, and ripped it clean off.
Jimmy's mind went blank at the surreal sight, like something ripped straight from a movie.
All he could do was pray the madman wouldn't realize he was there.
Fortunately, more gunshots sounded from outside, and the madman disappeared in the direction of the noise.
"Hah…!"
The breath he'd barely been holding back exploded out of him all at once.
He couldn't stay here any longer.
The madman would finish with their throats and eventually come back.
He had to get as far away from this place as possible.
Forcing his trembling body to stand, Jimmy started walking, one slow step at a time.
From somewhere in the distance came screams, as if another neck had just been snapped from a body.
But he couldn't look back.
He felt certain that if he did, the madman would be right there, charging toward him.
Heart pounding as if it might burst, he quickened his pace, then broke into a full-on run and fled.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
From a window on the fifth floor of a building, Seth had his sniper rifle braced against his shoulder, sweeping the city through his scope.
When the colleague who had gone to lure the madman—Prairie—still hadn't returned after thirty minutes, boredom began to sink in.
A sniper's work was always like fishing: it demanded endless waiting and patience.
Human concentration wasn't infinite, and when you poured time and mental energy into waiting for prey that might appear at any moment, sooner or later unease and doubt started to creep into the corners of your mind.
What if someone else had already taken it down?
What if, right now, someone was happily enjoying a wild chase with that thing somewhere else?
If that were the case, shouldn't he grab his gear and rush over there instead?
One question led to another, suspicion piling on suspicion, making the waiting feel even longer.
At times like this, you had to distract yourself as much as possible and just let time pass.
The fifth-floor building where Seth had set up was a wide-open office space with no supporting columns.
There was a two-person sofa, a few office desks, and a folding cot behind a partition.
If something were to suddenly burst into this pitch-dark, empty office, the sheer surprise alone might give him a heart attack and knock him out cold.
He'd volunteered as the sniper because he wanted to stay as far away from the madman as possible, but he hadn't expected he'd have to endure this kind of creepiness as the price.
Seth often imagined a madman creeping quietly up behind him and driving its sharp fangs straight into his neck.
"You're overthinking it."
Prairie had smirked at him, one corner of his mouth curling up, and thrown a dart at the dartboard across the room.
He was proud of his courage in doing the bait work against madmen.
His lean, well-toned body was marked here and there with grazes and claw scars, but the fact that he'd survived this long might mean that, deep down, he too felt a certain thrill when facing madmen head-on.
Sometimes, Seth found Prairie's orders annoying, but even so, whenever Prairie closed in on a madman and engaged in close combat, his imposing back looked cool—even from another man's perspective.
[Gunshot]
Lost in these thoughts, he suddenly heard Prairie's gunfire from far away.
Prairie's 9mm automatic always had a sharp, cracking sound that stung the ears.
Seth expected him to burst out of the shadowy alley at full speed, cutting through the darkness and signaling that the target was coming, his face lit up like an excited kid about to pull a prank.
But this time, strangely, no such figure appeared.
Even ten minutes after the shot, the alley's darkness still refused to spit Prairie back out.
Had he gotten too excited and finished the job early?
Or… no, that couldn't be.
Prairie was quick and agile, an excellent gunner.
Even a madman couldn't take him down that easily.
But Seth's focused anticipation gradually turned into nervousness, then into unease.
Something about this case felt off, like a familiar beer that suddenly tasted much more bitter than usual.
Three hundred thousand dollars for a single one of them.
Even split with Prairie, it was enough to slack off for a month.
Strangely, the payouts on Placebo always matched the difficulty almost too precisely—
As if someone were deliberately setting madmen loose.
Just then, a small figure slowly emerged from between the alleys.
As if drenched in some dark red liquid, it staggered out, very slowly, very unsteadily.
For a moment, Seth couldn't believe his eyes.
It was Prairie.
The way he clutched one arm over the opposite shoulder, face contorted in pain, made it clear something had gone very wrong.
Normally, no matter how badly he was injured, Prairie would dash out nimbly and signal to Seth.
But now, the pain was so severe he could barely keep his eyes open, and his sluggish movements made him look like the perfect target.
In other words, the madman could go for him at any second.
So where was it?
Seth swept his sights around Prairie, but there was no sign of the madman anywhere.
A moment later, a massive shape strode out of the dark alley.
It looked like a minotaur emerging from a maze.
Even at a glance, the madman's build was far larger than that of an ordinary man.
It looked less like a person than some huge animal.
Breath puffing out in pale clouds from its mouth, it advanced slowly toward the suffering Prairie.
This was bad.
Normally, Prairie would distract the madman while Seth lined up the shot.
But this time, he would have to rely solely on his sniping to take it down.
Once someone turned into a madman, shots anywhere else were practically useless.Only a clean hit to the head would do.
Not easy.
If the first shot missed, his position would be exposed and he'd have to move immediately.
Madmen were fast.
One shot.
He had to drop it with this one shot.
Seth held his breath and pulled the trigger.
[Gunshot]
Did he get it?
He squinted harder into the scope, focusing on the madman.
Its head was bowed, but it wasn't falling.
Its legs were planted firmly on the ground.
A miss?
After a moment, the madman lifted its head.
Dark red blood trickled down from its right temple.
One eye seemed to be shut, but the other widened, fixing directly on Seth, five floors up.
The madman's expression twisted, exposing its sharp fangs in a furious snarl.
He had failed.
And on top of that, it looked like his position had been compromised.
Before he knew it, he'd ducked down, back pressed against the wall under the window, hiding out of sheer fear.
He'd made misfires before, but had he ever stared into a madman's eyes for that long?
More than that, the image of its twisted face was so terrifying he couldn't shake it from his mind.
What should he do?
Run?
Then what about Prairie?
Or maybe… maybe this was his chance to line up another shot.
The madman would assume he'd fled somewhere else.
He could use the moment it moved in to finish Prairie to take another shot.
Seth gripped the rifle with trembling hands and bit his lip, steeling himself.
He stood back up and aimed out the window.
But he couldn't see the madman.
Prairie was already lying face-down on the ground.
Where had the madman gone?
Was it… coming into the building after him?
If so, from which side?
The back door on the left?
The front entrance?
He leaned out the window, scanning around for any sign of the madman.
Then a sickening thought flashed through his mind, and he glanced straight down.
Ah.
The madman was already climbing up the wall—
And it blew Seth's head off in one clean strike.