Navigating in a straight line was difficult once John was back down on the ground. He kept climbing up other trees and using them to relocate the tree house. More than once he found he’d been turned all the way around and was heading in the opposite direction. It didn’t matter that the sun overhead hadn’t changed much in its position.

That didn’t make any sense to him but he didn’t have the energy to spend time figuring that bit out. He just accepted that he couldn’t rely on the sun for consistent directions. Instead, he began picking out a couple of trees at a time, lining them up with the tree house, and then walking that line. When he reached the end, he’d climb back up, pick a few more trees, and repeat the process. In this way he reached the tree house in only an hour.

Surrounding the tree house, all over the ground, were garden beds filled with growing produce. He plucked a few berries off a bush and popped them into his mouth. They looked like blue berries but they had a bitter aftertaste that he assumed was due to them being under ripe. He didn’t care. He was hungry enough that he picked a handful and began munching them down.

“Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone here?”

There was no ladder up to the tree house that he could see, although there was a trapdoor visible from where John stood. Slowly, the trap door opened. It was dark inside the tree house and John could barely make out the eyes of someone else looking down at him.

“Hello,” he waved up at them. “I’m a bit lost in here.”

“You’re the new guy?” a female voice called down to him. It sounded rough and unaccustomed to use.

“Uh, yeah, I started work a couple days ago but got lost.”

“I thought it was you who got caught yesterday.”

“What?”

“It must have been the guy before you. He lasted quite a while.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They hunt us in here,” she replied. “Something is set lose for an hour every day. Sometimes during the day, sometimes at night. If it finds you, you die. But it can’t climb trees so I’m safe. You’ll be dead soon, though.”

“Is it out right now? Let me up!”

The tree that supported the tree house was very smooth at its base and was impossible for John to get a good drip on to climb up it. That didn’t keep him from trying though. The woman above only watched.

“The hunter isn’t out right now. You’ll be dead before it comes.”

John began to wonder about how sane this woman was. Perhaps she was the thing hunting everyone else. Or maybe she thought if she killed him she’d be safer. Maybe it was all in her head and she just assumed something was out there hunting everyone. It didn’t matter, John didn’t want to be around this woman for any longer than he needed to.

“I’m really hungry,” he told her, “would it be alright if I picked some vegetables here and then I can be on my way.”

“I’m not wasting my food on a corpse,” she snapped. “Keep away from my garden. I’m the one who worked on it. You didn’t do anything but come in here and steal from me.”

“I’ll do some work for–

“You’ll be dead! You can’t work if you’re dead!”

“I’m not going to die!” John shouted back, his own worries and frustrations getting the better of him. “I just want a carrot or something and then I’m going to get out of here.”

“No one gets out,” the woman hissed. “Not unless they die. Once you die they’ll take you away.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a bright ray of sunshine?” John wasn’t sure why he said that, only that he was done with this conversation. “I already picked these blue berries,” he went on, showing them to her. “Can I at least eat these?”

The woman laughed for some reason and began closing the trap door.

“Eat all the berries you like,” she said in a tone that unnerved him even more and was gone.

John shuddered and turned away from the tree house. He certainly wanted more than just berries, but he couldn’t be sure the woman didn’t have a bow and arrow or something. There were plenty of little gaps in the tree house that she could likely see out of and be watching him without him being able to see her. So, he loaded up on berries, using his trail mix bag yet again as a pouch. Once it was full he turned back to the now distant hill and began making his way towards it, eating the berries as he went.

As before, he climbed up a tree to orient himself and make sure he was going in the right direction. The hill was easier to spy than the tree house had been and he didn’t need to climb very high to see it. That was good, because John was struck by a sudden bought of nausea and vertigo, almost falling out of the tree. He caught himself and held on tight while he waited for it to pass. As it subsided, he gradually let himself back down. Even though the initial wave of vertigo had lessened, it didn’t go away.

John put his back to the tree and sank down to the ground where he sat for several minutes. The best he could figure was that his blood sugar was low so, ignoring his nausea, he forced himself to eat more berries. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be getting any better. His vision began to fill with swimming dots of color and strange shapes. Some looked so real that he tried to swat them away. He’d never felt like this before and wondered what was going on as he ate more berries.

“The hunter is smarter than you,” the woman’s voice came to him through the increasing delirium. “It knows the difference between a blue berry and belladonna. They trained it to avoid me because I kept finding ways to poison it and make it sick. I almost killed the hunter, so now they leave me alone. I don’t want you dead too near to my home, though. I don’t want the hunter coming here.”

Hands took hold of him and began to drag him away.

“You made it pretty far in only a couple days,” she went on. “Most take a week to get this far, if they last that long at all. The hunter will be sad it didn’t get to track you down properly.”

John tried to resist the woman but her grip was firm and his hands were beginning to feel strange and clammy. His mouth was dry and he tried to ask for a drink of water but all he managed to do was make grunting, gasping noises. Breathing was beginning to be a struggle for him and he wheezed as he was rolled over so that his face was now dragging along the ground.

“You’ve eaten enough belladonna,” the woman went on, “maybe the hunter will get sick from eating you. That would be a nice trick. I’ve left out poisoned food for it before but never like this. I hope you do the trick.”

It was beginning to sound like her voice was coming through a wad of cotton shoved in his ears and he couldn’t make out any more of what she said. How long they continued on like that, John couldn’t tell, only that it seemed to last for an eternity. He was barely conscious when they came to a stop and the woman left him there at a safe distance from her home. He would never know if the hunter died from eating him. He didn’t care. He couldn’t think any more. He let himself fade away into the welcoming blackness and went still.