Spider

CHAPTER 10

Jason groaned in pain and felt his ears going deaf. Scorched wood, shattered iron sheets and other messy things crackled down like a meteor shower. He touched his newly added wound with wholehearted lament, and wanted to complain, but he saw the man half lying on top of him and swallowed the words that rose to his throat — he had twice as many injuries as he did because he had protected him from the blast debris.

They were now in a dried up well, less than two hundred meters away from the warehouse. It was said that it was a well, but it was actually a semi-finished product. It was only dug more than ten feet deep before being abandoned, and its bottom was covered with dark mud and rotting leaves. Gavin threw him down just before the explosion and jumped off with the machine gun and the black leather suitcase.

"Will those idiots believe that they've taken you out?" Jason asked in a low voice.

"Not unless they find a corpse," Gavin replied. "It's still a dangerous area, and as soon as the fire decreases, they'll come over to check it out, so we have to leave before that."

"Then what are we waiting for, let's go!"

Gavin gave him a bit of a surprised look. "'We'? I thought it was my own problem."

Jason chuckled and hooked his shoulder smoothly. "Fellow, I have a bad feeling now. As long as I walk out of the twenty meters range alone, my body will be immediately pierced with many professionally shaped holes. My hunch has always been very accurate, so it's not just your problem, but ours."

Gavin frowned, thought for a moment, and asked, "Can you use a gun?"

"Does the lack of a green card stop illegal immigration? Similarly, not having a gun permit doesn't stop the use of firearms." Jason curled his lips triumphantly. "A handgun should be fine, haven't tried the big guy."

Gavin pulled out a revolver from his waist (Jason recognized it as the one against his head on the car). It had a classic shape, a walnut handle, and a dark blue frame in baked lavender. The lines were breathtakingly beautiful, and the lengthened barrel with large-caliber bullets multiplied its might.

"Colt Python. 9mm caliber, the magazine can hold six rounds at a time, and the front sight is suitable for quick aiming. The balance is good when shooting, it doesn't have much recoil force, and the impact point is good. I think you should be able to use it."

"This is a Python? My God, 'the king of revolvers widely known for its accuracy and might' — that's what the military magazines say!" Jason picked it up and admiringly touched the sleek body. "He's a real beauty! It's a pity that it lacks ammunition capacity. I thought high-capacity semi-automatic handguns were all the rage nowadays."

"I don't like to follow trends." Gavin paused, and then said, "One of my comrades, the guy loved Pythons, practically to the point of obsession..." He unconsciously softened his voice, and Jason was surprised that he actually saw some kind of tender look under those grim, pitch-black eyes. "He once told me, 'There're so many guns in the world, and only one is genuinely suitable for you, just like there's only one true love. Once you find it, you'll try your best to protect them, which may require to pay a considerable price, such as freedom, dignity, life and so on, but by then you can't care less about that.'" Then he began to stare into the distance in a daze.

"But you liked him." Jason laughed. "That's touching. I bet the one he loves must be happy as hell. And then?"

Gavin was silent for a moment. "Then he died," he said coldly, lowering his head and opening the suitcase. He drew out a 10mm Smith & Wesson 1076 handgun and pinned it to the back of his waist, then equipped all the magazines and bullet chains in the suitcase.

Jason moderated his smile and whispered, "Sorry... I just want to know who you are, or rather, who you guys are? Professional killers?"

"...No, we're trappers."

The suitcase was basically empty. Gavin picked up a TOPS Tracker and a Buck 650 Nighthawk lying at the bottom of it — the former resembled a small, serrated axe, while the latter was so smoothly shaped that it could practically be used as a large dart almost regardless of air resistance — and rigidly fixed the scabbards around his waist and under his armpits. He stood up with his machine gun in his hand and dug climbing points on the well wall with a sharp blade, concrete, and brick practically soft jelly under his knife. "Avoid the fire and enter the woods as quickly as possible. As soon as we lose them, we'll go our separate ways."

Jason swore he heard something.

It was not the uproar of the night wind blowing through the branches and leaves, nor the rustling of small animals in the bushes. It was like a quiet, evil wind blowing over the back of the neck, and he instantly felt like his back was pierced by ice arrows. He couldn't help but shivering. Maybe it's just some neurotic auditory hallucination. I'm too tense, he reassured himself. Relax, dear, you've got Jean-Claude Van Damme in front of you. He rigidly took two steps closer, almost sticking himself on the back of the action star.

Gavin abruptly turned off the mini flashlight, turning around to cover his mouth. His right hand wrapped around his waist and dragged him behind a large tree.

Jason was taken aback. Before he could make any reaction, a series of intense gunfire swept over, spitting tongues of flames of machine gun bullets to the trunk of the tree where they were hiding. A tree trunk riddled with holes with a diameter of less than half a meter was a bit strenuous to use as a shelter for two people, and Gavin was compelled to press the guy who was still frightened out of his mind on his chest and cool-headedly waited for this round of firepower to pass.

Jason's face was forced into the nook of his neck, and the smell of gunpowder in the air and the bloody aroma of the wounds mixed with the smell of a healthy and mature man filled his nasal cavity. He took a deep breath and found that they were like the most effective sedative to soothe his nerves. And as the calming frosting melted away, a sense of eager excitement gushed from the bottom of his heart and quickly spread to every cell of his body, causing ripples of moving emotions.

Gavin felt the light trembling of the body in his arms and couldn't help but pat his shoulder and mutter in his ear, "It's okay, relax."

The blond man looked up at him, exposing a shallow smile in the corner of his mouth alongside a gleam in his eyes. "No, it's actually exciting," he said softly.

Taking advantage of the short period of intermittent force, Gavin dodged out from behind the tree, holding the Minimi M249 machine gun and strafing violently. An optical night vision scope was installed on the barrel, and he quickly determined the approximate number and location of the opponent, taking out two guys who had not gotten back behind cover in time. Another series of bullets flew towards him, and he rolled over and ducked behind another tree agilely, the bullets grazing his heels and stirring up bits of soil and rotting leaves on the ground.

The fight's going on next to me, but I can't get involved at all, Jason thought with a bit of boredom. The man seemed to have received strict professional training, and his skill was outstanding, like a designed action in a gunfight movie, flawless and without any slip. Were his so-called 'trappers' a certain special force of the military? It's similar to Delta and SEALs and the like, but he has never heard of this name. Perhaps it's a special operations group that was kept secret from the public?

While Jason was letting his imagination roam, the gunfire had already stopped.

Gavin picked up the flashlight and went over to examine the corpses. "Seven in total, well-equipped, probably followed all the way from the warehouse — he really put some money into getting rid of me, even a defense squad was dispatched." There was a hint of sardonicism in his tone.

"Who's 'he'?" Jason couldn't help but ask.

Gavin was silent for a moment and said coldly, "My boss."

Jason approached with the complacency of ‘as expected, it's that.’ "His beautiful and coquettish wife unfortunately took a fancy to you?"

"He doesn't have a wife, he's gay."

Jason looked at him with a pitiful, distressed look. "He made advances on you?"

"No, he doesn't usually make advances on his subordinates. He's a paranoid and cowardly tyrant who never sleeps with men he considers dangerous unless he tortures them to death first. No one gets out of his bed alive after that. Maybe if he thinks the other is his subordinate, this disposable use is a bit wasteful."

Jason nodded in understanding and concluded, "A bad person. You don't have to work for someone like that, leaving was the right choice."

"Right?" Gavin glanced at him strangely. "This is an unforgivable mistake. I failed to absolutely obey my boss' orders under any circumstances, which is a disgrace for a trapper... No, it's worse than that, it's a precursor to ruin," he exhaled heavily. "Forget it, you wouldn't understand."

Jason was really baffled by him. He could see that he loathed his boss, yet he thought it was only right to obey his orders; he chose to leave, but then denied himself for it. He truly didn't understand this person's way of thinking. Maybe it had something to do with his identity? What exactly is a 'trapper'?

Gavin no longer continued the subject. He walked behind the low bushes and kicked over the last corpse with his foot.

"There's a survivor." He frowned critically, as if expressing dissatisfaction with the results of his work and aimed the gun at the wounded man's heart.

"Do-don't kill me..." the man pleaded in panic. He looked badly injured, but not to the point of being fatal. "I was just following orders; I have no hatred toward you... Don't kill me, please, for the love of God..."

After seeing the other's unsympathetic cold gaze, fear and despair cast a chaotic and broken shadow on his face, and his spirit almost collapsed. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die... Lisa is still waiting for me to go back for her birthday, I promised her... And the child we are waiting! God, if I die, what will she do? No! I can't die, she'll be heartbroken. I have to keep on living..." His young, delicate features twisted in despair, and he sobbed in pain, "I want to live..."

"Hey, Gavin..." Jason scratched his hair, as if choosing the wording for his next sentence. He didn't like the current situation very much. A viscous and suffocating emotion squeezed the surrounding space, overflowing with sorrow and compassion, making him feel sunken underwater and couldn't breathe well. "He doesn't have to die, does he? You see, the previous killing was only in self-defense, but he's not a threat now. We don't have to kill him... I mean, we don't have the right to kill someone who's not resisting—"

A series of gunshots interrupted Jason's words! The rapid sound reverberated through the layers of the isolated forest, like the echo of some fierce beast's savage roar.

Jason stared at the mangled corpse on the ground in disbelief — he was still alive just now! He had a headful of light, soft hair, and a visage that was probably quite handsome when he smiled. He had a wife who loved him dearly, and they even had a child on the way to the world! He was still so young. A few seconds ago, he was imploring for the continuation of his life and a future he didn't want to give up; several holes were opened up in his chest in the blink of an eye, dread and despair frozen forever on his face — only a few inorganic bullets had wiped it all out!

He let out a muffled snort and his lips quivered slightly. "Damn! You fucking killed him! Why did you kill him!" his chest heaved violently as he yelled in agitation, "he said he wanted to live, didn't you hear him? Who the hell are you to take a man's life away when he's begging to live?"

He rushed forward, grabbed Gavin's collar and roared, "Who are you to do that! What's human life to you, a fucking toy to be made fun of and destroyed at will?!"

Gavin was swayed back and forth by the force of his outburst, his eyes staring lifelessly at the face burning with rage, his pupils as dark and barren as a midnight desert, as if it was layered with sand and gravel, yet there was nothing at all. The extremely angry eyes of the person in front of him scorched him fiercely, and he subconsciously covered his eyelids with his fingers.

"I'm sorry... I couldn't control it..." He took his hand off his face, lowered his head, and whispered, "I forgot... he's not a prey."

"The hell are you talking about? Prey? What do you mean?" Jason asked, staring him in the eye.

"A prey is just... prey. A hare, an elk, or bigger, a leopard or a tiger or something," Gavin said in deadpan, his voice like a precision instrument running mechanically, serene and unwavering. "They all breathe, make noise, have heat, and move. Some of them are dangerously aggressive, be careful when dealing with them. Observe and analyze them until the order to hunt is given, and then — kill them."

"Fuck you, man! He's not a hare or a leopard, he's a human being! Do you have a problem with your eyes or your head? Can't you tell the difference between humans and animals?!"

Gavin was stunned for a moment, and a fluctuation finally roamed through his eyes — Jason caught it and suspected that it was also a kind of sad look — and he whispered, "You're right. I couldn't tell the difference between man and animal a long time ago, and to this day, I often get confused... I trained with many comrades, where the first sentence we learned to write was 'obedience is life.' From the time I could hold a gun, the muzzle pointed in the direction of the prey; some were animals, some were people, and some were even comrades. After a while, I couldn't tell them apart..." He held up the gun, and the order echoed in his ears like the bell of doomsday judgment: ‘Kill it..’

Countless 'it' boomed in his head, so he fired, seeing the undifferentiated red of the splashed blood, the man across from him falling in a pool of blood, the familiar face he had spent so much time with gradually swaying and blurring in his retinas, ultimately sinking into darkness. He looked in perplexity at the pile of flesh whose signs of life had faded and thought long and hard before finally finding the answer: ‘That's a prey,’ he whispered to himself, and walked out of the room.

Jason's eyes widened and he muttered, "What fucking shithole is that..."

"That's... Beast Camp." The dark-haired man's eyes were cast toward a nonexistent focus, silently radiating a metal-like stiff and inert aura, as if the fragments of consciousness still remained in another dimension.

Jason slowly loosened his grip on his collar, feeling breathless. This is genuinely terrible, he thought to himself. Some important elements of the man's soul had been forcibly taken away from him. He could have chosen to be ignorant of it and continue to kill as a matter of course without feeling any guilt. Sad to say, he felt its shattering and subconsciously wanted to retrieve and fill that gap, yet he didn't know where to start and could only wander painfully around the cliff of contradiction... Anyhow, this guy is a huge inconvenient, I'd better end this pathetic unrequited love and say goodbye to him. Maybe he'll agree to a goodbye kiss, although I'd prefer to convince him to let each other leave a good memory...

Jason sighed.

"You know, growing up I lost a lot of things. Most of them were my favorite ones, like my Transformers figurines, my remote control frisbee and so on. I always lost them after playing with them for a while. My mom called it 'flash in the pan.' When I remembered them and went back to look for them, I couldn't find them anymore. It seems you've lost something too, but it's okay. I believe it's not like anything else, and no matter how many times it's lost," he stretched out his palm and pressed it against the man's heart, "it'll grow back from here. It's just a matter of time."

"So, it doesn't matter what the hell it was that place, what matters is that you're already out of there, right?" He looked at him, then smiled.

Gavin was stunned. Being watched attentively by his close eyes, he suddenly felt a tingling inside his heart, as if the things inside his body that had been frozen stiff for many years began to spread out cracks from a certain point in the center. He could almost hear the light sound of their split, as sharp as a blade cutting through metal, with the hurt of numbness gradually defrosting.

The various senses of the body slowly revived as if they had woken up from a deep slumber. He began to hear the blood flowing in his body, the sound of his heart beating, to distinguish the meaning in another person's expression, the slight arc of their eyes and the corners of their mouth, and the inner feelings they expressed. He felt the warmth of another body extending through the cloth and blending into his own skin, and he even tasted the bitterness on his tongue, the nerve-touching pain that came from the wounds...

This was thoroughly awful. In the Beast Camp, the instructors called this 'virus infection resulting in system paralysis,' and then they would take the guys in this situation 'back to furnace processing.' Some people could be restored and and preserved, while even more were further deteriorated, so they were simply destroyed, because they had already been 'completely corrupted.' Gavin still remembered their eyes before they were destroyed, when all he could see was the color of the irises and the dilated pupils, but now he could read the intense emotions that burst out of them: wrath, hatred, dread, pain, and a certain struggle and desire to never give up... He felt an ephemeral strangled twitch in his heart, and he tried to suppress this pain, unceasingly telling himself: You're already out of there, don't think about it again... You need to cut off its effect on you, you're out of there!

When the shattering sensation spread to his fingers, he could barely restrain the trembling of his entire body. He suddenly embraced the man before him tightly, as if the other's body could contain those frosty powders and melt them with burning flames. He believed that as long as he held him tightly, those things would ultimately turn into a warm liquid and flow back into his body. The warmth in his arms carried a disconcerting and unsettling strangeness, but... It feels so good, he sighed deeply in his heart.

"Hey, are you aware of what you're doing, damn..." Jason suddenly called up dully, looking a little tense. "I say, you'd better not do this, I've barely made up my mind and you're making me start regretting it... Sigh. Whatever, I've never been a strong stander anyway." He wrapped his arms around his waist and hugged him.

The mini flashlight fell to the ground, the dim light jumped and flickered a few times, and finally died out with no strength.

The two men hugged each other tightly, and their outline melted in the dark woods.

Jason felt himself float in excitement as he slipped his hand under the other's jacket and ran it all the way up the strong, charming muscle line of his back. Now I finally understand why priests pray to God every day, because He's never willing to give them this kind of treatment, he thought with some schadenfreude.

The other's voice rubbed over in a low tone, "Jason..."

"Hm?"

"The flashlight’s dead."

"There're some things that done in the dark have a different mood, don't you think? The compensation for visual deprivation is that other senses become even more sharper..."

"I don't deny your point, but," the other paused, "we can't get out of the woods in the dark. We could've used the closest focusing distance of the night vision binocular, but it was broken just now, so it looks like we'll have to stay here until dawn. I suggest going up a tree to avoid being sneak attacked by nocturnal animals. There aren't many bullets left and I don't want to waste them."

His words seriously spoiled the blond man's horny spirits, and he muttered resentfully, "How about inserting a sign saying, 'Do not disturb.' American animals should know English."

"I don't think anyone has ever given them a culture lesson... Okay Jason, how long are you going to hang on to me?" The man's tone sank, "Take two steps back and get your fingers out of my pants. I don't know... Are you gay?"

Jason drew back his hand dejectedly. "No, I'm bisexual."

"Oh, that's great. Other people can only have sex with half the world's population at most, and you can have sex with all of them." The other remained unmoved and said, "But I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't accept it. I'm not inclined to that."

Come on, half the men I've slept with have said that before! Jason pouted in disapproval, plotting how to get this dangerous man to bed.

Gavin watched him step away and stand there with his head down, and he wondered if he had gone too far. Thinking that the other might be hurt because of it, a trace of unease that he had never felt before suddenly grew in his heart. It's a pity that his eyes didn't have a see-through function, otherwise, he'd have seen a hardcore pornographic scene being broadcasted in the golden-bright head before him, with the words NC-17 circled in the corner of the screen.

He pressed the luminous light of his watch, and it was about three hours before daybreak.