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There was loud bang in the air and the bear suddenly fell dead to the ground.
Xander gasped heavily in a mixture of fear and relief.
"Awwn. Bart the Bear is dead. He used to be my favorite. The EMP must have brought him out of hibernation," a voice said behind Xander before laughing. Xander looked back and saw two men. One was with a rifle.
“Thank you so much. Thanks for saving my life,” Xander kept repeating.
The one with the rifle turned to the other who was still laughing.
“Hey Connor, you think we should snuff him out too? He’s well out of civilized range here. I wonder what brought him out this far.”
Xander’s eyes widened.
“Please no. Don’t kill me please.”
The other one appeared to think it through.
“Well, we should spare him. He looks quite young. I think he'll sell. Besides, he was limping so he shouldn’t be much trouble. Let’s keep him, Morgan.” Connor said with a southern drawl.
“I think we goin' regret this,” Morgan said.
“Just shut up and put him to sleep.”
Morgan grumbled but he walked towards Xander anyway. The moment he got close enough; he rammed the end of his gun into Xander’s head. It knocked Xander out.
8:00pm
Xander woke up and found that he was tied to a tree with a strong rope. His head hurt where he had been hit by the gun. His mouth was gagged with a handkerchief. Morgan and Connor sat close-by, eating roasted meat. Xander tried not to make any sound so as not to draw their attention. He took in his surroundings. They all were under the starry skies and there was a fire burning before Morgan and Connor. They sat with their backs towards him so that he couldn’t see the woods beyond them. He spotted something long and thin in the dust close to a large dead animal. He guessed it was the tail of whatever animal his captors were eating. The burly one was using a white mini tablet. Xander wondered how the device still functioned after the EMP. Morgan and Connor used a knife to cut chunks of the large animal before roasting it over the fire. It took Xander a second to realize that they are eating the bear that was going to eat him. He was about to laugh at the irony but he noticed a pink ribbon in the dust a few feet away. Close to it was a black bag. He squinted to see the objects clearly. He couldn’t help but gasp the moment he realized that the ribbon was the one his sister had worn and the backpack was his. He began to shake himself in a bid to get free. The men noticed and Connor smiled at him.
"Hey, boy. Yer awake, eh? I'm guessing yer must be hungry. There's enough of the bear to go round. Yer can think of it as revenge on the bear for frighten' yer like that," Connor said as he got up with a chunk of roasted meat. When he got close and offered the meat to Xander, Xander struggled all the more to be free from the rope that held him to the tree.
"Let me go, freak! Where's Grayson? Where's my sister?" Xander tried to say but the words came out as muffled sounds.
"See? Told you we should have killed him," Morgan said.
Connor raised a brow as he stared at Xander's face. Then his eyes lightened as though in surprise.
"I should have seen it before! He looks like the light-skinned girl, Morgan. He must be her brother."
Relief and fear rushed through Xander's heart. He had found the girls but he wasn't sure what the men had done with them. Connor brought the handkerchief down and asked,
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
"Where are they? Give them to me. I want to take them home." Xander said, still trying to break free from the rope.
"Uh-uh. No, can't do. They are safely tied up there," Connor said pointing to a tree opposite Xander. Because Morgan and Connor sat in obstruction to his sight, Xander had been unable to see them before. Grayson, Prim and a little boy were sleeping against the tree. They looked so tired. Their mouths were also gagged,
"And I'm taking y'all to my bosses. They'll know what to do with y'all."
Xander cursed.
"We're not going anywhere with you. You'd better let us go or the cops will get you."
Morgan snorted.
"Yeah, sure. Call them... If you still have a phone."
Xander realized it was true. There wasn't much he could do. No one would be able to find them. Another thought jumped through his mind and he suddenly began to shout for help. His voice woke the children up. Grayson looked around for where her brother's voice was coming from. When she saw him surrounded by the big men, she tried to shout his name.
