The Hunted

We drove through a beautiful wide valley filled with fruit trees; farmers ploughing fields and small road-side stalls of apples, onions, melons and squash. The road meandered for a few miles following a dry river bed hemmed in by gentle sloping hills on either side. We eventually came across a track that crossed the river bed and stopped in a small triangular parcel of land where two hills converged.

Not soon after a large glossy black pickup drove past and as they did so they asked where we were from and whether we spoke Russian. About half an hour later they returned; this time stopping to shake hands. They asked us if we would like to come back to sleep at their house but we declined citing that we enjoyed sleeping out in the countryside. As they drove off a man, stood in the back of the pickup, proudly lifted up two huge dead rabbits; victims of their hunting spree.

And as darkness descended we saw the pickup driving along the valley and up into many of the parcels of land that nestled in between the hills. Two people stood in the back: one wielding a shotgun and the other a large bright spotlight that illuminated the sparse hillside. And every now and then a loud gun shot reverberated through the valley.

In the middle of the night I thought I heard a car drive close by but, as I turned over in my sleep, I put it down to yet another fitful dream. But then suddenly, waking us both up with a start, a loud shot gun fired. A shot gun fire that sounded as if it was right over our heads. We lay there, wide awake, trying to make sense of our surroundings. Captain gently pulled the curtain open a small bit and a bright light flooded the inside of the car. “There’s a car just up there pointing down at us.”

And then the car drove back down the slope, right past us and off down the dry river bed; shafts of light bouncing off the landscape and casting eerie shadows inside our car. Through the small crack in the curtains we saw another car approach; it too came up onto the bank, circled us and then drove off back down the riverbed. In the dense thick mist of the night all you could see was the red and white lights beaming this way and that as the hunters hunted.

And like those two dead rabbits we were left frozen with fear as gun shots echoed around us.