Chapter 305: An Unlucky Vacation (4)
After explaining what had happened with Claytor, Remia turned to Gary.
The SAI possessed several specialized tracking artifacts for locating people. Using one of them, they discovered that Gary had robbed a motorcycle, a map, and some cash in Yonah City, and was currently speeding down a deserted highway.
“Investigators from our local branch used an artifact to locate the stolen motorcycle. They also found several bodies nearby. The motorcycle’s fuel tank was empty, so we believe Gary ran out of gas midway through his journey. He flagged down a passing vehicle, killed everyone inside, and drove off in their car…”
One of the investigators recovered a victim’s identification from a wallet found on one of the bodies, allowing them to confirm the victim’s identity and the license plate number of the stolen vehicle. The information was immediately sent to police departments in neighboring cities, asking them to keep an eye out.
Unexpectedly, before the stolen car was found, they received another report—
Gary had boarded a flight to Sunken City.
“The vehicle Gary hijacked belonged to a family of four. Their younger son was about Gary’s age and bore a similar appearance. Gary took the boy’s ID and used it to purchase a plane ticket to Sunken City. By the time we received the information, the flight had already taken off. There were no air marshals on board, and the flight crew had no chance of subduing Gary. To avoid alerting him, we had no choice but to deploy personnel at Sunken City Airport and wait to arrest him after he landed.”
Everly frowned slightly.
To be honest, Gary’s actions over the past few days had been genuinely surprising.
In the movie, he had done nothing but swing his butcher’s knife, slaughtering every living thing in sight and delighting in the screams and cries of his victims. Everly had assumed that once he left the campsite, he would behave like the classic slasher villain—murdering everyone he encountered and leaving every place he passed drenched in blood.
It turned out that Gary actually possessed a rational mind.
Whenever he found himself in a bustling city, he was capable of suppressing his murderous urges, cloaking himself in the veneer of civilization, and doing everything he could to avoid attracting the police’s attention. He quickly gathered whatever information he needed from other people. He wasn’t even completely illiterate—he could read maps and even knew how to travel by plane!
A monster with intelligence, acting skills, overwhelming physical strength, and an immortal body was far more terrifying than the brainless, muscle-bound slashers in your typical B-grade horror film.
Fortunately, Gary had grown up without access to computers or the internet. Having been locked away in a basement for so many years, he was almost completely disconnected from modern technology. Many of the usual ways of obtaining information were effectively “closed” to him. At least for the time being, there was no way he could track down Everly’s whereabouts.
No matter what, she could only hope the SAI would capture Gary as soon as possible…
As long as he remained at large, she wouldn’t have a single day of peace.
After hanging up, Everly shared the latest information with the others before throwing herself back into constructing the spike traps.
They worked through the entire afternoon.
By dusk, the yard outside the villa had been quietly filled with deadly concealed spike traps. The moment someone stepped on one, a cluster of hard, razor-sharp spikes would snap upward with a whoosh, driving straight through the intruder’s foot.
Dinner was seafood once again.
They had caught far too much seafood over the past few days—far more than they could possibly finish in a meal or two. To avoid wasting it, the four of them cleaned the excess catch, blanched it, and stored it in the refrigerator. At -18°C, it would keep for one to two months without spoiling.
Before preparing dinner, they took out a portion of the frozen seafood to thaw. It was then marinated with salt, black pepper, and garlic powder before being pan-fried over medium heat with lime juice, honey, and chili sauce. Once cooked, it was finished with a sprinkling of chopped parsley and basil, creating a fragrant spicy lime seafood dish bursting with coastal flavor.
Dinner was delicious. Unfortunately, a fierce storm was raging outside. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky, hiding the enchanting orange-red sea and the setting sun. Without that scenery to accompany the meal, it somehow felt like something was missing.
After dinner, the four of them headed down to the basement game room, planning to spend the evening playing a board game.
They had only just unwrapped the brand-new copy of Dungeons & Dragons when Everly’s phone rang.
The caller was Remia once again, and this time she brought bad news.
Gary had escaped.
“Not long ago, the plane landed at Sunken City Airport. The terminal was packed with people, so to avoid endangering other passengers, we planned to wait until Gary left the airport before making the arrest. However, he seemed to have detected our operation in advance. He hid inside a restroom, lured one of our investigators in to search the area, then caught the investigator off guard, killed him, took his equipment, and climbed out through a window…”
The investigator’s body was soon discovered by a traveler.
Realizing that Gary had slipped away right under their noses, the SAI and the police immediately launched a full-scale pursuit. Those with tracking artifacts used them; those without relied on surveillance cameras. Every available method was brought to bear.
Gary possessed no supernatural ability to conceal his tracks.
But he was extraordinarily fit, highly intelligent, and capable of learning from his mistakes. He adapted quickly, drawing lessons from every failed encounter.
As a result, the pursuit descended into a bizarre stalemate.
Every time investigators and police managed to locate Gary and arrived in full tactical gear to apprehend him, he would slip through their grasp like an eel. Before escaping, he would invariably toy with his pursuers, kill one or two of them, and then flee by some utterly inconceivable means.
Yet each time he escaped, he never managed to get very far before his whereabouts were uncovered once again.
The most mind-bending escape of all came when Gary found himself completely surrounded by investigators and police with no apparent avenue of escape.
Instead of surrendering, he deliberately threw himself into the industrial meat grinder of a meat-processing plant.
The machine reduced him to minced meat.
Then, moments later, he calmly reassembled himself at the neighboring output chute, emerging fully restored before everyone’s stunned eyes and casually fleeing the scene.
That willingness to be ruthless toward others—and even more ruthless toward himself—was enough to send chills down Everly’s spine, even listening from the other end of the phone. Remia was no different.
Fortunately, judging by the current situation, Gary was still playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the SAI and the police in the distant city of Sunken. He was unlikely to shake off his pursuers anytime soon, much less make his way to Gilosha.
For the moment, Everly could relax a little.
After thanking Remia, she put away her phone, forced the troubling thoughts from her mind, and focused on enjoying the board game with her companions.
A little after six o’clock, the villa’s doorbell suddenly rang.
The visitors were representatives from the homeowners’ association, and they had come for two reasons.
First, they were notifying residents that, due to the approaching tropical storm, the villa community could experience flooding over the next few days and reminding everyone to take appropriate precautions.
Second, they were asking homeowners to volunteer in clearing drainage ditches and stacking sandbags. Those unable to contribute labor were welcome to help financially instead.
Compared to homeowners’ associations in China, American HOAs wielded far greater authority. Within a neighborhood, they functioned almost like a miniature local government. Homeowners who wished to make any significant alterations to their properties were required to comply with HOA regulations. Maintaining a good relationship with the HOA was practically essential if one wanted a comfortable life in the community.
Old John carefully asked about the details of the flood-control work. When he learned that the assigned area was right around their own villa, he agreed without hesitation to volunteer in person.
“All four of you are going?” the HOA representative asked. His gaze swept over Old John, Everly, and Misha before he added hesitantly, “I mean… sandbags are heavy, and clearing drainage ditches isn’t exactly easy work. It might be a bit too strenuous for you.”
“It’s fine,” Old John replied with a smile. “The rain outside is coming down hard. The more hands we have helping, the sooner everyone can finish and get some rest.”
“Oh, all right. Just be careful, and don’t push yourselves too hard.”
The staff member still had plenty of other homeowners to notify and couldn’t afford to linger. After briefly explaining where they could pick up sandbags, shovels, and other equipment, he said goodbye to Old John and hurried off to the next villa.
As a result, everyone in the neighborhood who had signed up for flood-control duty witnessed a truly astonishing sight.
An elderly man with a head of silver hair and two beautiful young women with long legs arrived together at the HOA storage depot. After signing in, each of them casually hoisted two sandbags onto a shoulder, their expressions relaxed as they strode briskly through the curtain of rain toward one of the nearby villas.
Their steady gait, nimble movements, and ramrod-straight posture put even some of the burliest men to shame.
Accompanying the trio was a thin young man.
Unlike his companions, however, the young man performed so poorly that it was almost unbelievable.
The sandbags that the other three could lift with one hand required both of his arms just to hug against his chest. Even then, he could only stagger forward two or three steps before nearly falling over.
Afraid he might get hurt on the way, the warehouse manager persuaded him to give up on carrying sandbags and take shovels instead.
The result was no better.
He couldn’t even keep hold of four shovels. As he walked, they suddenly slipped from his arms, and one landed squarely on his big toe. The pain instantly reddened his eyes, and tears sprang from them almost immediately.
The contrast was so dramatic that it was hard to believe he belonged to the same group as the other three.
When Everly and the others had collected their equipment, the warehouse manager had given them a brief explanation of what needed to be done.
With their tools in hand, the four headed to the area around the villa and began stacking sandbags, shoveling away silt, and clearing the drainage ditches surrounding the property to keep the water flowing freely.
The work itself wasn’t complicated, but it was physically demanding. They frequently had to wade into the rainwater, clearing away branches, fallen leaves, and mud that the storm had washed into the channels.
To make beachcombing easier, the four of them had specifically bought one-piece waterproof waders—rubber overalls that were completely waterproof from the boots all the way up to the waist, allowing them to stand in the water while collecting shellfish and other marine life.
After buying them, however, everyone had complained that they were hot and stuffy, so they had been left sitting unused for quite some time.
Now, at last, those seemingly useless purchases proved their worth.
The four quickly finished stacking the sandbags, hurried back to the villa to change into the waders, and returned to the drainage ditches, where they climbed into the water and resumed clearing the channels.
They weren’t the only ones working that night.
Quite a few homeowners from neighboring villas were also standing beside the ditches with flashlights in hand, digging through the pouring rain. Looking out across the neighborhood, lights shone everywhere. For such an elegant residential community, it was an unusually bustling scene.
They had been working for a while when a sudden commotion erupted at one of the drainage channels not far away.
Even from a distance, they could hear people shouting.
“What’s going on over there?”
“No idea.”
“Let’s send Orff to check it out.”
The three exchanged glances before unanimously deciding to dispatch the one person who was, by far, the least useful at the task at hand.
“Be careful.”
“Got it!”
Receiving Misha’s instructions, Orff immediately climbed out of the ditch. Clutching the pistol Everly had given him, he cautiously joined the growing crowd of curious onlookers.
He wasn’t the only one.
Plenty of idle volunteers had gathered around the disturbance, and the crowd’s flashlights transformed the area into a sea of bobbing lights. Murmurs, exclamations, and excited chatter rose one after another, making everyone even more curious.
After waiting impatiently for a while, Orff finally came running back, flashlight in hand and breathing hard.
“I found out. They said there’s… there’s something in the water…”
“Do you mean this?”
Before he could finish speaking, Everly casually flicked her wrist and tossed a bizarre fish onto the ground.
The creature’s mouth was packed with razor-sharp teeth, and even on land it continued to thrash violently.
Orff’s eyes widened.
The rest of his sentence caught in his throat as he stared speechlessly at the monstrous fish.