Chapter 39: Is This What They Call Bare Hunting?

He continued “You head off along the path naked and you can walk or run. Anybody who catches you can have you,” I heard Leo’s questioning growl and Carl continued. “They have a variety of restraints like this!” He opened a bag to show me pink padded handcuffs inside and added “I have warned them them that any marks on you or injury or pain and the Leo here will be asked to exact retribution on them up to and including the necessity for hospital treatment.” He was looking at Leo at this point.

Leo was pondering and after a little thought turned to me and said “If anybody hurts you, they will pay.”

His tone was full of menace and I was suddenly more concerned about the threat of violence to others than a nude jog through the woods with unknown “rapists” lying in wait. I heard Carl’s voice again.

“If you look at the board here, you can see a map of the area”

Accompanied by the two strangers who still continued to slide their hands over my body, I went and looked at the board and Carl explained the details. It had several coloured lines leading from an arrow pointing to a sign saying “Car Park – You are Here!” they led to a point a short distance away where the path split into three and each of the coloured lines following the three offshoots a small distance to a roughly circular area marked “picnic area”, From there “Line A” which was green turned left and headed to another picnic area, then to a feature marked “Children’s Play Area” to yet another picnic area before rejoining the Car Park some distance along to our left and showing a distance of 1000 yards, Lines B, C and D led to a number of other picnic areas and features including “quarry”, “the gorge”, “observation point”, “old farm ruins” and some others. Each of the lines showed a total distance with D being 7 miles connecting with the main road and the track we had followed into the car park.

Carl was laughing,

“As it comes out on the main road, you might want to avoid path D. There are multiple offshoots on the other three which rejoin the main path and all the main paths are marked with coloured pegs. He pointed to the start of the path which had four coloured pegs.

“Path B goes out to the quarry before bending back round to the left and then joins up with path A at the Children’s Play Area while Path C and D turn off to the right just before the quarry and then splits with C coming out at the bottom of the car park there.” He turned and pointed at a clump of trees at the far end of the car park.

I felt a lump of excitement in my throat as I asked “What do I do?”

Carl grinned and said : You take off your clothes and follow the path. Any one, You can run but don’t struggle if anyone catches you. We don’t want any accidents These guys will follow you in to make sure you don’t hide outside and Leo and I will wait here for a while”

I said “Sounds like fun. How many are in the woods?”

Carl grinned wolfishly and said “We have plenty of hunters!” and I shivered at the word “hunters”.I noted there were six cars parked, not including Carl’s and my hand went to the top button of my blouse