by David Peters
Cap-Cap zipped up the sniper suit and turned to Dylan, “Alright, you and I are going to set up the ambush by that large cedar tree, let’s roll.”
--2--
Dylan was leaning against a flat grey rock about ten feet off of the narrow trail. The narrow path in front of them climbed a low rise to their right before disappearing behind a huge tree about thirty yards away. To their left it went another forty yards before crossing a small stream then making a slow climb up the valley wall and disappearing in the heavy trees. Cap-Cap was just to his left sitting against a large tree holding a small silenced pistol. Dylan had a duplicate of the same weapon. Although they would make almost no measurable noise their accuracy at any range greater than ten feet bordered on sheer luck. On the center of the trail in front of them was a single large green maple leaf marking their buried bait.
It had taken them almost an hour to set everything up to their liking. When they had completed the setup Dylan had looked to the hillside for any sign of the hide that was built. Even knowing where it should be he could not pick it out from the scrub and small trees that covered the hillside. Movement caught his eyes and he finally picked out the camouflaged arm waving back at him.
It had been just over forty minutes when they could hear soft footsteps jogging down the trail to their right. Dylan tensed and readied his pistol when Jokester came into view. He could clearly see the conspicuous leaf in the middle of the trail and as he passed over it said “fifteen out”. He would continue another two or three hundred yards down the trail then turned sharply to his left and climb into the heavy scrub beside the trail. Once he reached the top of the ridge he would silently double back and wait at the top of the ridge for the all clear.
They had fifteen minutes before they would find out if the plan Dylan put together would work or not. He suddenly found himself filled with concern about the success or failure of the idea. They would no doubt smell Jokester as they came down the trail. If they pursued him he would be a dead man in the thick brush. What if they just turned and ran for reinforcements? What if it didn’t work at all? He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Regardless of what happened they would make it work. He had a solid idea and with Cap-Cap’s help they put together a solid plan.
Dylan was staring at the head of the trail when a Hunter came into view followed closely by a second one. They stopped for a brief moment as they smelled the air than continued their slow run down the hill. They were tracking Jokester and could tell they were catching up to him. The closer they got to the ambush point the faster they were going. Under the single leaf they had buried a sponge that had been saturated with blood donated by the town’s people. Blood was the one scent they knew would certainly give pause to a Hunter, but these two were going too fast to pick up the scent. They were at a full sprint when they passed directly over the top of marker, the leaf lifted into the air and thrown by the wayside with the rapid passing of the Hunters. Dylan felt the ground around him frantically searching for something. He found a small rock and threw it as hard as he could across the trail into a large tree.
The sound of the rock hitting the tree made a solid ‘tock’ sound then it rebounded into the brush.
Both Hunters slid to a stop and spun to face the noise. They slowly moved forward hissing as they tried to locate what had made the sound. It wasn’t a natural forest sound and they knew it. Both were now slowly stalking back up the trail. As one the Hunters stood upright and hissed. They were flexing the talons on their hands and one began openly drooling as they caught the smell of human blood. They both dropped low and began moving forward slowly as they tracked down the human they were sure to find. One of the Hunters started to move away into the brush as it positioned itself to attack from the other side of whatever made the noise. The lead Hunter kept moving forward slowly as it tracked in on the human scent. When the scent trail finally stopped in the middle of the path, it looked around and hissed in confusion. Dylan had his pistol aimed at the head of the one on the second Hunter moving through the brush waiting for a signal from Cap-Cap.
“Now,” Cap-Cap said quietly.
Two quick puffs could be heard from the specialized guns. They shot subsonic rounds so there wasn’t even the crack of a bullet breaking the sound barrier. Cap-Cap’s first round tore cleanly through the mouth of the Hunter, severing the spine as it exited out the back of the thing’s neck. It was dead before it hit the ground.
Dylan was shooting through brush and branches and couldn’t get a clean head shot. His first round struck the Hunter in the hip and spun the Hunter before it fell to ground in confusion. It quickly stood and Dylan fired off another bullet, just barely catching the Hunter in the side of the head. The round had snapped the Hunters head back but it did not penetrate. The dazed beast stood erect slowly, snapping its jaws and hissing as it tried to get its bearings and tear into the unseen attacker. Dylan and Cap-Cap emptied their magazines into the Corrupted before it could shout an alarm. With both dead they stood and waved up to the hide. Whitey came down the hill clumsily and very loud for someone that usually moved so silently.
When he finally arrived at their side he was sweating profusely, “This thing is insanely heavy.” He swung the pack off his back and dropped it unceremoniously to the ground.
Dylan took his pack off and began removing the supplies, “All right folks, the clock is ticking.”
Cap-Cap pulled out a small tablet PC from the protective pouch on the back of the pack and switched it on. While it was booting he pulled out his code book and turned to the appropriate page. Once he found what he was looking for, he opened the zippered pocket on the side of the pack and punched in a series of characters. Once the tablet was up he entered the same string of numbers. The small green light on the pack and the green readout on the tablet began blinking in unison. He punched another series of characters and a click could be heard somewhere inside the pack.
Dylan looked at the two corpses next to them. The one both of them had hit so many times was a mess. They would be covered in Corrupted guts by the time they were done. Just thinking about it made him nearly throw up.
“Let’s use the one you shot, I don’t feel like bathing in their insides. Just can’t quite get used to the smell.”
Dylan grabbed the Hunter by the arms and pulled the thing into a sitting position. Cap-Cap took the military backpack off the ground and the two of them fought to put it on the dead Hunter. Once the pack was on and clipped in Dylan took a length of bailing wire. He wrapped the wire around both the pack and the Hunter wearing it several times. Putting his foot on the Hunters chest he pulled the wire tight and tied it off with a pair of fence pliers.
Cap-Cap checked the bailing wire then pushed a few of the on screen buttons on his device. There was a row of four lights on his screen that matched the four lights on the inside of the zippered pocket. One by one each light went from red, to yellow and finally a steady green. He pushed another series of buttons and looked up, “That’s it. Let’s see how your plan works Dylan.”
They quickly picked up all of the extra gear and the three of them returned to the hide. Inside they found Jokester and Travis waiting for them.
“Now we wait and see.” Dylan said quietly.
The minutes turned into hours and dusk began setting in. Jokester was on watch and made a sudden motion with his hand. Down below them on the trail two Hunters had just crested the rise and were coming down the trail. When they got closer to the bodies they both dropped low to the ground and began prowling.
“Shit, they smell the blood still.” Dylan said quietly. He suddenly had the fear that they would instantly know it was a trap and return to the hive.
The two Hunters continued moving forward slowly. Once they reached the bodies of their fallen comrades they sniffed for several minutes around the corpses. One followed a scent to where Dylan and Cap-Cap had been sitting while the other one climbed a short distance up the nearest tree and sniffed around. Neither found anything of interest
and they hissed back and forth several times. The Hunter in the tree silently jumped down and joined the other Corrupted as they continued moving down the path. Neither one even looked back before they rounded the bend at the end of the trail.
“What the hell?” Jokester asked out loud. “Why didn’t they scream an alarm or something? Are you telling me this was all for nothing?”
Cap-Cap was shaking his head, “I don’t know how we could pull this off closer to the hive and not get ourselves killed. I thought we had this in the bag.”
“Dude, these Corrupted piss me off,” Travis added.
“Just wait a minute guys.” Dylan held up his hands as he spoke quietly, “You are coming at this like a human, which they most definitely are not. As humans we would see that we were attacked and immediately want to deal with the situation. Corrupted don’t look at life the same way we do. They found two dead Hunters and no attackers nearby. To them, dead Hunters are in all likelihood now considered no more than spare food. There is no need for them to raise an alarm because there is no enemy here. They will report back when they are done and I’m sure Workers will wander on out here and clean things up. In the immortal words of my good friend Travis here, ‘patience dudes’.”
The hide became very quiet as they settled in for the long wait. Travis had brought a deck of cards and after several hours all but the person on watch were playing a silent game of poker with pinecones as money. By two in the morning it was decided they would need to start sleeping in shifts. Dylan took first watch while everyone grabbed a corner and fell asleep. An hour later he tapped Travis on the shoulder and they clumsily switched places in the confined space.
It was during Dylan’s second watch when he could see movement coming down the trail through his night vision goggles. A small pack of Workers and two Hunters were moving down the trail. Dylan quietly woke everyone up as the lead Hunter arrived at the bodies. The second Hunter turned to the small group of Workers but they were too far away to hear anything the creatures may be saying to eachother. The Hunters continued on their way while the lesser Corrupted picked up the bodies and started walking back towards the hive.
“Here we go. Let’s let them get about half an hour ahead of us before we move out.”
Cap-Cap was looking at his small tablet and checking the numbers. “Looks good so far, solid read, strong batteries. Everything is green across the board.”
Dylan put his small pack on and grabbed his rifle, “Ok, Cap-Cap and I are heading out to follow. You have several hours before the next patrol comes through. Break down the camp and get out of Dodge. You three head back, see if the horses are still there, if not drop the heavy stuff there and double time it back to camp. Good luck all.”
“You too Dylan,” Travis said. With a mischievous smile he added, “See you after the boom.”
--3--
Dylan walked behind Cap-Cap and constantly scanned the forest and scrub around them for any sign of Corrupted. Cap-Cap was heads down watching the console and occasionally nodding his head.
They would walk for a few hundred yards through the brush and stop. They were walking parallel to the path the Hunters used for their patrols and assumed the Workers would follow that same path. Dylan would listen for any out of the ordinary sounds while Cap-Cap would do a more in depth check of how the system was doing. His primary concern was they would take the pack off or that they would take the Hunters apart to carry them and the pack would fall off. There hope was that with the bailing wire the bomb would at least stay attached to part of the body long enough to get it in the hive. The bomb could still be brought back to a safe stage but it could not be unarmed at this point. Neither one of them wanted to try and figure out what to do with an armed nuclear weapon.
Dylan looked over Cap-Cap’s shoulder at the scrolling numbers. It made very little sense to him and his face showed it. The captain looked at Dylan and caught the confused look in his eyes.
“Ok, this number here shows its GPS location, this is the longitude and this is the latitude and signal strength. It’s GPS so fundamentally it’s all or nothing as far as that indicator goes. This also shows the relative distance from us in both direction and altitude. If I click here it brings up an overlay map of where those coordinates are in real-time.” Cap-Cap brought up the map and was able to spin it around in real-time. It has a green dot for where they were standing, or to be more precise, where the controller pad was, and a red dot for where the weapon was. “This number here is the barometric pressure and temperature of where the unit is. This number here shows battery strength of the unit itself and the strength not only of our signal but the signal we receive back. These other numbers have to do with radiation readings and leakage but frankly, we don’t care about that right now.”
He continued, “The system has to be able to communicate both ways, so as long as both sides of this gauge here are somewhere in the middle we are ok, we are receiving and sending at similar strengths. These readings have to do with the bomb itself, as long as they are all green we are good. This last indicator shows the first stage of the weapon is armed but the second stage is in a standby safe mode,” Cap-Cap pointed at the small blinking yellow indicator.
“Why don’t you arm the second stage now?” Dylan asked with concern.
“Well, primarily because if I arm it, it will detonate in forty eight hours if it doesn’t get a signal. So let’s say the signal can’t penetrate the hive. Do you want to gamble where the pack will be two days from now?”
Dylan shook his head no.
“Either way, we don’t want this thing going off anywhere but deep in the hive.”
“Ok, that makes sense. I like the idea of knowing where our nuclear weapons are,” he smiled at Cap-Cap as he said it.
“It’s still moving towards the hive as far as I can tell. This map overlay doesn’t even have anything beyond the lumber mill and a gravel road leading up to it the thing is so old. It must be made from an old forest survey map or something. Whatever map the contractor for this pulled up it was older than dirt.” Cap-Cap switched the tablet into standby and tucked it into his jacket. Without a word they started moving again. They were nearly three quarters of a mile behind the Workers now.
Dylan spoke quietly over his shoulder as they moved silently through the low brush, “Hey Cap-Cap, this probably is a poor time to ask, but what happens if that thing doesn’t work?”
“I don’t understand. It’s already working. The plan has been borderline flawless up to this point.”
“I mean, what if the nuke part doesn’t work? Granted my experience with setting off nuclear weapons is a little on the limited side but I’m pretty sure that thing can do damage even if it doesn’t work right.”
Cap-Cap nodded, “Well ya. I suppose if something was wrong with the manufacture it may not detonate just the way it’s supposed to. In that case it’s just a very radioactive normal blast. But these readouts test everything short of actual detonation. I don’t want to even speculate what this cost tax payers when it was made. Either way, if it doesn’t make a very large boom, it will be much closer to a messy puff of smoke.”
“Great, so the difference between using a fire cracker in a hornets nest instead of a stick of dynamite.”
“Ya, that’s a pretty fair analogy.”
“Great, let’s add that to my long list of worries.”
Cap-Cap walked with his head down as he monitored the read-out continuously now, “It has stopped moving. It looks like it is right outside the entrance maybe. Hard to say with this old map, it has the river on it and they are close to where the original sawmill was.”
They continued on in silence for several hundred yards then broke through the brush and small trees and found themselves standing on a hill with the city of Sumter stretched out far below them. Dylan looked down onto the Sumter hive nearly two miles away and several hundred feet below them. The sun was just starting to crest the mountains to the east and push the morning shadows away. They w
ere now sitting where they would monitor the success or failure of their plan.
“Ok, it’s moving again,” Cap-Cap said quietly.
Dylan looked towards the entrance but it was obscured by a large pile of half burned logs. He couldn’t see a thing moving in the vast lot on the riverside. He felt a chill run down his spine as he realized how many Corrupted were down there right now and he couldn’t see a single thing. He made one more scan of the city with his binoculars and seeing nothing put them back in his pack and looked at the computer screen with the captain.
The numbers on the small military monitor showing the location turned into all dashes. Somewhere off in the early morning dusk the Worker carrying the dead Hunter had just passed into the hive blocking the signal from the GPS satellites and killed the locating ability of the pack. The numbers continued to change for several of the other fields. Temperature was climbing by a degree every thirty seconds or so.
“Looks like he is heading down one of the ramps,” Cap-Cap whispered as the reading showing barometric pressure began rising slightly. The pressure indicator went out four decimal places and varied quite a bit. For the most part the numbers continued to climb slowly.