Hey, sorry it's been a while. Things have been crazy here and I haven't gotten the chance to update in a while. My Dad still hasn't had the surgery they keep telling him he'll have and I'm leaving to go away on a trip in a couple days as well... But anyway, thanks for the reviews! Here is the next chapter. Lots of action in this one!

Chapter 9

Gun shots

Paiten jumped to the ground with a thud. He had climbed a tree to grab some fruit he saw when he overheard Cooper talking to Lukas about Jack and Kate's people.

I have to tell Kate right away!

Paiten ran to where he saw Kate standing beside a tree and stopped in front of her, "I need to talk to you!"

"Look, I'm really not in the mood to talk anymore about Lukas or Jack..."

"You need to hear this!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from where everyone else was standing.

"Let go of me!" Kate pulled free.

"We need to find Jack." Paiten said once he knew no one could hear them (he even scanned the trees).

"Why?" She asked as she placed her hands on her hips.

"He's in trouble, you all are in trouble."

"I already told you that Jack has a plan..."

"It won't mean anything. Lukas still plans to kill you all, even if you do prove that you're not the Hostiles. All he cares about is this island and carrying on with the Dharma Initiative."

"How do you know this?" Kate's face fell.

"I just overheard Cooper talking to Lukas on his radio. He's serious. Lukas means business. He doesn't care about you and your people."

"Let's go." Kate said and grabbed his arm as she turned towards the way they had just come from.

"We're going after Jack?"

"We're going after Jack."

Hurley watched as Locke knelt down to the ground and examined the dirt. He had no idea what he was doing but he used the time to take a sip out of his almost empty water bottle.

"There was a struggle here." Locke finally spoke. He pointed at the soil on the ground with his knife as he talked, "It looks like Ben tried to escape at one point. You see these foot prints here, they're all shuffled around."

"So where do we go now?"

"They lead off that way..." he pointed straight ahead, "but another set of tracks lead off in the other direction..."

"If you're thinking of splitting up, forget it."

"No, we'll follow these ones," he pointed his knife straight ahead.

"And what about the other set?"

"I think it's the kids, Alex and..."

"Karl."

"Karl. Yeah let's go this way." He stood up, put the knife in his back pocket and started walking again.

Hurley put his water bottle in his back pack, sighed and started walking again as well. I should have stayed on the beach...

"Kate, slow down!" Paiten shouted as she ran ahead of him in a mad dash.

"We have to hurry! Jack could have found them by now!" Kate shouted back.

"Are you sure you know where we're going?"

"Yes. I told you, their tracks are leading this way."

"But how do you know that it's their tracks?"

Kate stopped and looked at him, "I know ok. If you don't want to follow me then go back. I'm sure Cooper would love to hear that you were spying on him."

"I was not spying!"

"I just need to know, Paiten, are you with me or not?"

Paiten looked around, brushed the hair from his eye (revealing the scar Kate had seen earlier on him) and then he looked back up at her, the hair falling back in place over the wound and part of his right eye, "I'm with you." He sighed.

"Good." Kate said and turned around again.

"But, we need to slow down. You're going way too fast. I have a bad knee, I can't keep up."

"What's wrong with your knee?" Kate turned around to face him again.

"I... I don't want to talk about it." He said and walked past her.

"Paiten," she touched his arm, "if I am to trust anything you have told me, I need to know what happened? What has filled Lukas and the rest of your people with so much hatred towards the Others... err... the Hostiles?"

"You wouldn't understand..."

"Paiten, please."

Paiten sighed and looked up at the sky, "I... I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"The man in charge... He...he's even more cold-blooded than Lukas and Cooper put together... If I told you anything about the past... He would kill me..."

"Paiten, you've already decided to help me and my friends over your own people. If he wanted to kill you, he already would have."

"You just don't understand!" Paiten suddenly shouted and stepped back from her.

"I'm trying to..."

"You have no idea what I have been through... What we have all been through! The hostiles killed my parents! They killed all of our parents and the people that we lived with! I survived, along with twenty-three other children! Then I was raised by..." he stopped talking and his face suddenly turned red. "I- I'm sorry..."

"You don't have to say anything more. I understand, at least the basics..."

"We should really get moving now."

"Yeah. Are you okay?" Kate asked, stepping forward but then feeling a little awkward and stepped back.

"I'm fine. Let's just find Jack and get this all over with."

Jack stopped walking when he heard a scream in the distance. He looked at the other two men to see if they had heard it as well and the expressions on their faces told him that they had.

"What the heck was that?" Yusad said as he and Stenson both scanned the area with guns in hand.

"We should keep going." Jack said and started walking in the direction of the scream.

"Will you wait a sec?" Stenson ordered. "We don't even know where that came from or who it is..."

"It came from this way. Let's go." Jack kept walking.

"I said to stop!" Stenson shouted.

Jack turned around and saw that Stenson now had his gun aimed at him.

"Nobody said you were in charge. Now I think I should call Cooper about..."

"There's no time! The man we are looking for is in this direction. So put the gun down and follow me!" Jack snapped.

Suddenly a gun shot boomed through the trees and all men jumped to take cover.
Jack looked up from where he stood behind a tree and saw the other two men cowering on the ground. He realized that the shot had come from the distance as well and hadn't been directed at them.

"Let's go!" Jack said and took off into the trees.

"What was that?" Hurley asked as he stood trembling from head to toe.

"It sounded like a gun was fired." Locke said as he listened with his ears and then started walking. "This way."

"Yeah, what a great idea, let's go towards the gun shots." Hurley said sarcastically as he fearfully followed behind.

Kate kept running and running. She didn't even care anymore if Paiten was behind her or not. She had to get to Jack before she was too late.

What if they've already got Ben? What if Jack is already on his way to the cliffs? Has Cooper noticed we're missing yet? Is everyone else going to be okay?

Questions kept swimming through her mind like a school of fish as she ran harder and harder. I have to find Jack. I have to find Jack. I have to...

Kate stopped. What was that? She could have sworn she heard a gun shot just then... Oh no! Jack!

"Kate!" Paiten suddenly came up beside her. "Did you hear that?"

"We have to hurry!"

"We are hurrying, if you haven't already noticed. My knee is killing me."

"Jack could be hurt! Let's go!"

"And I'm hurt right now!" Paiten complained as they both started running again in the direction of the shot.

Rain started pouring down as Jack slowly inched his way forward towards the voices he had heard. Someone was shouting. He stopped when he saw three figures in front of him. They didn't see him as he approached cautiously.

"Just let him go! I can't do this to you anymore. I am sorry." Rousseau said as she knelt down to comfort a crying Alex.

"We can't just let him go! He will go back to them and then they will all kill us!" Karl yelled with a gun in his hand. "I know he's your father, Alex, but we can't just let him go free and lead them all to us! He tried to kill me!"

"I won't let you kill him, Karl!" Alex screamed through tears.

"He can't find us! I can hide us. I know hiding places that no one else knows about." Rousseau said through her French accent.

"We need him!" Karl argued, ignoring the French woman.

All of a sudden Alex screamed and Jack realized she had seen him.

"Stop right there!" Karl said with his gun aimed at him.

"It's me... Jack." Jack said as he held up his arms in surrender. "I'm not here to hurt you."

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you and your people be on your way home already?" Karl asked, still pointing the gun at him.

"I need Ben. Where is he?"

"He's gone."

"Gone where?" Jack shouted over the rain. He didn't have time for this.

"Jack!" Stenson called from behind.

"Who's that?" Karl asked as he trained the gun towards the trees.

"Where is he?" Jack was right in his face. He didn't care about the gun pointing to his chest.

"What do you need with him? Haven't you done enough already?" Alex asked.

"I can't explain!" Jack snapped. "Just tell me which way he went!"

"Are your people in trouble?" Rousseau asked.

"Yes, please tell me where he is. He may be our only hope of getting off this island."

"Jack, you son of a..." Stenson and Yusad suddenly appeared from behind the trees and were caught off guard when they noticed the other people standing around and one with a gun aimed at Jack.

"Stay where you are!" Karl shouted and turned the gun towards them. "Drop your weapons!"

"Hold it, kid, we ain't here to do you any harm. We're with him." Stenson pointed to Jack.

"I said drop them!"

"You're a little young to be playing guns, kid; I suggest you drop that before someone gets hurt."

Unexpectedly Karl pulled the trigger and a bullet flew right past Stenson and into the forest behind him. Stenson and Yusad froze and immediately dropped their guns to the muddy ground.

"Take it easy, Karl." Jack cautioned.

"Are they really with you? I don't remember them from your camp..." Rousseau asked.

"They're part of the reason why I need to find Ben. Their people have my people held hostage. They don't believe that we are the survivors of a plane crash and they think that we are your people." He said to Karl and Alex.

"These kids are Hostiles?" Yusad asked with rage suddenly in his voice.

"Hostiles?" Karl asked.

"Your people killed my family!" Yusad suddenly charged Karl and knocked him to the ground.

Alex screamed as Yusad began punching Karl in the face multiple times. Jack was about to try and break it up when there was another shot and they all watched as Yusad stumbled off the teenage boy and collapsed to his knees. That's when Jack noticed the red stain beginning to form in the middle of his chest. Before anyone could do anything, Yusad fell over, dead.

Karl lay in the mud with the gun still in his hand, shocked at what just happened. Jack didn't know what to do as Karl looked at him with terror in his eyes. The kid dropped the gun and immediately moved away from Yusad's unmoving body in fear.

"KARL!" Alex's scream suddenly overpowered the heavy rain and Jack turned to see Stenson now holding a gun to Karl's chest.

"You will pay for that, Hostile!" Stenson shouted with fury.

"Noo!" Alex cried.

"It was an accident... H-he attacked me!" Karl tried to defend himself.

"Stenson, he's just a kid. Put the gun down!" Jack tried to talk him out of it.

Stenson pointed the gun at Jack and yelled, "You shut up! I don't care! This kid just killed one of my people!" He aimed the gun back at Karl. "He deserves to die! All of you Hostiles do!"

"Please, I beg you, don't do it..." Alex pleaded through more tears.

"Nothing you pukes say can stop me!"

Just then a gun shot sounded and Alex screamed for her boyfriend's life. When Jack looked up he saw that Karl was still lying there, alive and unharmed. He turned his head to his left where Stenson had been standing and saw that Stenson was lying face down, dead on the ground.

Who...?

Jack saw Paiten emerge from behind him with a gun in his hands and a look of horror on his face as he stared down at the body in a frozen state.

Hurley wanted so badly to turn around and run the opposite way from here, away from Locke and his crazy ideas, away from the violence, and away from the guns... But instead he stood there as the rain poured down on them and waited for Locke to tell him why he had suddenly stopped and told him to keep quiet.

"Dude... I think I just heard another shot..." Hurley whispered with fear. It was the third shot he had heard now and he was becoming very uneasy.

"Sssh..." Locke put a finger to his lips with serious eyes.

"What are we doing? What are you waiting for?" He whispered again, ignoring Locke's orders.

"There's someone here..." Locke said in a hushed tone as he looked around with anxious but excited eyes.

"Well obviously. Who else would be shooting the guns?"

"No, there is someone here now..."

All of a sudden a figure darted past them through the trees and Locke hurried off after it instantly without another word.

"Hey, wait!" Hurley called. "Don't leave me here!" He decided he had no other choice but to chase after him.

A fourth shot was fired that forced Hurley to run even faster as he tried to catch up with John Locke.

I hope you liked it. I will try to update as soon as I get back from my trip. Please review. =)