Death Hunt

As the sun rose the next morning, the companions were out of sorts and tired. Not one of them had had a good night’s rest.

“Gaia, but I hope this changes soon,” Krysty said as she stretched, looking up to the green-purple sky and making the most of that brief period between the chill of night and the heat of day.

“It can’t stretch like this for much farther. We should hit the coast soon,” J.B. stated.

“Trouble is, what kind of condition are we going to be in when we do?” Mildred commented. “The salt tablets won’t last forever and neither will the water.”

“We press on. Can’t turn back,” Ryan said simply.

Doc fixed Ryan with a stare. His blue eyes, sometimes clouded with troubled visions that only he could see, were today startlingly clear. He could almost see into Ryan’s heart, see the pain. But at what cost to the rest of them? He chose to say nothing—this wasn’t the time—and handed out self-heats to the other companions, leaving Ryan to last. The one-eyed man gestured that he wasn’t hungry.

“My dear boy, I do not care whether you are or not. You have to eat, keep up your strength. We are relying on you, do not forget,” he added with emphasis. “You are of little use to us if you do not have the energy reserves to march or to fight…and of little use to yourself in such a case, I should not wonder.”

Ryan frowned and studied the old man intently. He was right, of course, he was. The one-eyed man took the food. It was bland and chemical-tasting, as self-heats usually were, but it was energy. That was all that mattered.

“J.B., you reckon we’re still headed in the right direction?” he asked. The Armorer checked his minisextant with the sun and confirmed that they were still on south-southwest. “Then I figure we keep going. We’ve come too far to turn back. It has to get better…”

“More out there,” Jak commented. “Smell it, hear it. Mebbe not much, but something survives on more than this.” He bent and took a handful of the dry soil, letting it run through his fingers.

“Then let’s go,” Ryan decided. “Sooner we move, sooner we get the hell out of this.”

They broke camp and set off once more. Mildred wondered if she was the only one to detect the double entendre in Ryan’s choice of words. From the way that Krysty was looking at the one-eyed man, she suspected not.

Jak had been correct. It was a subtle change, and it took some while for them to notice, but the Gila monster that sprung across the line as they marched brought it home. The conditions were improving. The air was still stifling and the heat from the sun was still intense, but there was a lessening in the humidity. Looking up, they could see that the cloud cover was spare, the chem clouds allowing more of the sky to show through untainted. The soil around was still dry, but there were signs of lichen and fern. The grasses looked less stark. They were softer clumps, thicker and more lush. The trees appeared to twist less, the root systems seemingly able to burrow a little deeper into the earth.

Stopping to take note, Jak could tell that there was more wildlife. He could hear birds, see a few in the distance. Obviously poor, scrawny creatures, they were there, nonetheless. As were the reptiles and insects—more than that Gila monster or the dung beetle that now crawled across his combat boot. Even the presence of a dung beetle suggested mammals from which it could scavenge. Small one, mebbe, no more. The albino could sense no danger in the shape of larger predators.

Jak allowed himself a small smile. “More life—mebbe food and water and not so much heat,” he said to the others.

“Mebbe. Press on some more before we rest, see if we can find out what,” Ryan replied. For the first time in days, a smile creased his seemingly ever-grim visage.

They moved forward with a renewed sense of purpose and a pace quickened by expectation. And as they moved, so the landscape around them seemed to improve with every half mile they traversed. The dusty top layer of soil gave way to hard-packed ground beneath, which became that much softer beneath the trampling of their feet. The patches of grass and lichen spread out so that the exposed soil became an exception rather than the rule. And the musk of animal life grew stronger around them, becoming almost tangible.

Which should have been a warning.

The farther from the redoubt, the more the landscape began to resemble something that could feasibly support life. It was almost as if the redoubt itself had somehow acted as the epicenter for the desert area. Perhaps it had. Although the toxicity would have abated within the area itself, it was possible that the military activity in the redoubt had concentrated on chemical warfare, which was reflected in the desolation. The thought crossed Mildred’s mind and she made a note to check herself and the others for any signs of contamination that may occur in the next few days. Assuming that the next few days would be quiet enough to allow for such a check.

It seemed as though quiet might be the case as the day slowly faded into twilight and they put distance between themselves and the barren land. It was still stiflingly hot, but even so the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the lusher vegetation allowed for more shelter from the direct heat of the sun.

It also provided hiding places for the wildlife that became more prevalent.

Jak slowed and focused his attention on a clump of turquoise-berried shrubbery wild with red and yellow leaves among the green.

“What?” Ryan questioned briefly, stopping as he noticed the albino hunter slow down.

Jak answered him with an almost imperceptible nod, not bothering to shift the glare of his red eyes from his target. In a smooth, fluid motion he palmed a leaf-bladed throwing knife from within his patched camou jacket. The knife left his hand with minimal effort, flashing through the air and into the clump of vegetation.

There was a squeal—fear and pain mixed on a screeching note—and the bush seemed to take on a life of its own, exploding as two creatures shot outward in a blur of motion. They were moving away from the companions, fleeing in fear, but the death rattle from the shrub suggested that there had been a third creature and that Jak’s aim had been true.

Ryan moved toward the vegetation, the SIG-Sauer in his hand, ready to blast anything that may present the merest hint of a threat. He used his heavy combat boot, raised tentatively, to open up the dense foliage. It would take an incredibly strong bite or claw to go through the toughened leather, and he was unwilling to risk a more vulnerable hand or arm to the task.

“Fireblast! That’s not a pretty sight,” he breathed as the creature in the shrubbery became visible.

The others joined him.

The creature was some kind of mutie raccoon, larger than any they’d seen before, with a heavily developed back and hindquarter musculature that made it look like some sort of hybrid raccoon-badger. Its snout had been cleaved by the knife, the razor-honed point making short work of the bone and flesh, Jak’s unerring arm driving it up and into the frontal lobes of the creature’s brain. The mutie lay in the last twitches of death, staring up at them with eyes that could no longer see.

“Shit, that’s a mean-looking bastard,” Mildred whistled.

“Yeah, and his little friends are going to be pretty pissed at what we’ve done when they get over the urge to run,” Krysty added thoughtfully. “They’ve been tailing us, right?”

Jak nodded. “Smelled them couple a miles back. Part of pack, getting closer, bolder when they think we don’t know.”

“They’re pretty quiet for something so big,” Krysty stated. “I thought I could feel something, but I didn’t hear them.”

“Guess we’d better be triple-red, then,” Ryan said decisively. “If we’re their game, they’ll be back. Figure we’re probably the biggest, tastiest-looking prey they’ve seen for a while.”

The companions set off once more, keeping closer and staying on the alert. Blasters were drawn in anticipation of an attack. As they became aware, it seemed that there was more noise, more movement. Was it because they had been slack before the chilling or had the scent of blood stirred up the creatures of the woods?

Small rodents scuttled into the undergrowth as they approached, causing J.B. and Ryan to draw beads, fingers tightening on triggers before relaxing as they realized there was no threat.

Doc and Mildred directed their attention to the skies. They were entering an area where there was a denser canopy of leaf and branch cover than before. What kind of birds were sheltering in the cover provided? And not just wildfowl. There was also the possibility of snakes dropping onto them from above.

“Over there,” Jak snapped suddenly, gesturing them to halt. He slipped out of line and into the cover of a grassy knoll. He emerged, dragging the corpse of what looked like some kind of wild dog. It had been gnawed at the hindquarters, the stomach and ribs stripped bare. The head and forequarters had been barely touched. The animal almost had a look of surprise on its muzzle, its glassy eyes seemingly shocked even in the moment of chilling.

“Fresh, mebbe less than day. No flies, maggots, no rotten meat smell. Must be close. Mebbe we stray onto their hunting ground.”

He didn’t add that the dog looked powerful and that the mutie raccoons were either powerful in a pack or were even more formidable than they had guessed individually.

“Need to stay triple alert now,” Ryan said quietly. “They could be close.”

“Not all that close, dear boy,” Doc said, suddenly sinking to his knees and examining the still intact forequarter of the beast. “I suspect we may be in spitting distance of something approaching a ville.”

“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked, puzzled.

Doc smiled grimly and traced a scar line on the joint of the dog’s foreleg. “This is no mere scar, and I suspect that this creature may not have been as wild as it was once. Dr. Wyeth, would you confirm my suspicions?”

Mildred came over and hunkered down beside Doc. “This had better be good,” she muttered. “It’s not my idea of a good time to kneel down and look at a hunk of rotting carcass.”

But her imprecations went no further. She squinted, taking a closer look at the scar. Dammit, but the old fool was right.

“Shit, that’s been stitched. This is a domestic canine, which means we must be near some kind of settlement. There’s no way it would wander far if it was used to living with people, and it doesn’t look like it’s been dragged that far.”

Ryan’s face split with a crooked grin. “Signs of life. That’s something, right? We’ll move on out, keep heading seaward. Who knows how far we are from the coast, but at least we know that there’s someone between us and the water.”

Spirits lightened by this revelation, the group picked up the pace. If they could find some kind of settlement before darkness fell, it would be safer than making camp out here.

But, as they moved on, Krysty frowned. The strands of Titian hair around her neck and shoulders started to curl, wrapping themselves close to her nape. She shot a glance at Jak and could see that he, too, was in a heightened state of awareness.