Old Hunters on the New Wild

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 4 – A Missed Shot…

  “Don’t squeeze the trigger just yet, boy. Hold a breath to still your heart and steady your hands.”

  Wyatt Holmes leaned over his boy and gently nestled the rail rifle’s stock into Cayden’s shoulder. The rail rifle possessed a powerful punch, and the weapon’s kickback could harm Cayden unless he properly set his shoulder to the weapon to dampen the exploding projectile’s kick. Wyatt had demonstrated the proper way to hold that rifle on numerous occasions since they arrived on the savanna, but Wyatt could forgive his son for the oversight. Shooting targets tossed by the mudders was a very easy challenge compared to shooting a genolope standing beautiful and still amid the savanna’s swaying grasses. Wyatt wasn’t concerned if Cayden dropped the genolope the first time he pressed the trigger – the nerves involved with the first foray of the season ruined the opening shots of even experienced hunters, and it was Cayden’s first trip into the veld. Wyatt and his favored clone guide Jarvis saw how the rifle’s barrel shook in Cayden’s hand, but none of them urged Cayden to steady that weapon.

  What mattered most was that Cayden took the shot at the genolope. Wyatt’s heart pounded as he wondered if his boy had the mettle to pull that trigger, and that old hunter supposed that the hearts of the mudders thundered as well. The mudders depended on the human hunters in the expedition to fire their guns and kill the game centered in their weapons’ sights. Wyatt and the mudders would be proud if Cayden fired that weapon. The mudders would sing, and Wyatt cherished each occasion he was given to hear the song the mudders sang to celebrate the discovery of a new hunter.

  Wyatt whispered in Cayden’t ear. “You have that genolope measured. The day is calm. There is little wind. You must only take your shot.”

  Cayden peeked out of his weapon’s scope. “Will you take another look through the rangefinder and give me another guess of the distance?”

  Wyatt nodded. A part of him wanted to shout at his son, to let Cayden know that he understood that his son made such an unnecessary request to waste more time, so that his finger could tremble a while longer on the rail rifle’s trigger. After so many forays into the grass, a desperate and dejected part of Wyatt wanted to tell his son that he had seen so many men and women cower from their primary responsibility on the hunt. A part of Wyatt felt offended at the thought that Cayden distrusted his father’s assurances that the distance between that rifle and the genolope wasn’t enough to force Cayden to calculate any change in trajectory. Wyatt knew the kind of carnage the screaming wake of that projectile would rend behind its path. A rail rifle needed little finesse, needed even less skill, in order to kill. But Wyatt didn’t snarl at Cayden. He didn’t berate or shame his son, though he had done just that to many hunters who proved too timid to pull the trigger and accept his or her role in the new wild. In time, Wyatt learned that encouragement and quiet better increased the odds of a hunter claiming first kill than did mockery or derision.

  So Wyatt lifted the rangefinder to his eyes when Cayden asked for another estimate of distance.

  Wyatt still lost his breath each time he spotted a genolope standing in the high grass. The genetic creators designed the genolope’s long, lithe legs for speed, and the muscles and sinews of those limbs could cover miles of savanna before the creature tired. The genolope’s fine fur swayed in the wind, so that the darker pigmentation that rose from the genolope’s belly like ivy moved with the surrounding grasses to give the creature the ability to vanish in a wink. The genolope’s slender body was crafted for flight instead of fight, but the animal’s makers hadn’t left the genolope defenseless. Should the creature find itself surrounded by a clutter of splicer-lynx, the genolope could wield the pair of antlers that rose from its forehead like curved, calcium scimitars. Wyatt would never forget the afternoon he watched a mudder guide, perhaps turned careless by the hunger that always growled in the clone stomach, approach too close to a wounded genolope. The scene often visited Wyatt’s dreams. The genolope thrashed. Its antlers sliced through the wind. And the mudder guide didn’t have the time to cry before those antlers tore open his stomach and dropped his guts onto the savanna. Wyatt learned from so much time spent on expeditions that a clone’s blood didn’t look any different than a man’s.

  The genolope was a beautiful and deadly creation. The geneticists who introduced the animal to the new wild took such pride in each pairing of nucleotides, but Wyatt often wondered if those geneticists sinned when they tailored such fine specimens. Did those geneticists anger some original creator after mixing together the creatures of the new wild, animals that seemed superior to anything ancient evolution gave to the world before the last avalanche of extinction? Sometimes, Wyatt wondered if any of the old gods still held the power to humble woman or man. And sometimes, Wyatt thought the old gods had already delivered their revenge, and that those who didn’t bear the clone’s branding around their right eye were simply thrashing in their death throes after the first world’s makers already delivered their executing strike.

  “You’re just under two-fifty meters.”

  Cayden grunted. “Can you be more precise?”

  Wyatt fought against the impulse to sigh. His boy asked too many questions, and Wyatt lost what little faith he owned that Cayden would pull the trigger on that genolope.

  “You don’t need more numbers,” Wyatt replied. “You know more than enough to finish it. Now pull the trigger.”

  Cayden’s fingers trembled as they made further adjustments on the fine dials of his rifle’s scope. Wyatt wished he had never purchased such an expensive piece of equipment for his boy’s rail rifle. The excitement of Cayden accompanying him on the expedition must’ve gotten the better of Wyatt as he ordered the trip’s gear. He forgot how the savanna repeatedly showed him that a true killer needed little more than a spear to finish the hunt, forgot how experience taught Wyatt how all those expensive accessories distracted a hunter’s focus. Wyatt spent a fortune to arm his boy for that expedition, and he saw all the money was wasted when Cayden’s unsteady grip on that weapon made the barrel shake.

  Wyatt’s trusted mudder guide, Jarvis, whispered in his ear. “The wind shifts, Mother-son.”

  Wyatt lifted a patient hand towards Jarvis. The guide used the most formal and respectful of titles to address Wyatt. “Mother-son” alluded to Wyatt’s birth from a woman’s womb, and it served as another reminder of man and woman’s superiority over clone kind. Wyatt knew his guide was hungry. The dry season had proven to be a long one, and it likely forced the clones to ignore their growling stomachs as they tried their best to conserve food. The mudders sorely needed a successful hunt to replenish their stocks of dried and salted game. Wyatt saw the proof in Jarvis. The guide’s wide shoulders thinned and narrowed. The guide’s face hallowed and turned sharp. The mudders needed Cayden, and all those others who came upon the expedition, to pull the trigger of their weapons.

  “Give the boy another breath,” whispered Wyatt.

  “The wind will carry our scent to the genolope if it continues to change, and the genolope will hear after it smells.”

  “Give the boy another moment.”

  Wyatt again peeked into the rangefinder just as the genolope tensed and twisted its neck so that its small, dark eyes stared in Cayden’s direction. Wyatt felt the breeze push at his mustache, and he watched the genolope’s fur ripple. Cayden was fortunate that the mudders’ fires had pushed the creature so far from the taller grasses where the genolope could find immediate concealment. They might still have a chance should that genolope bolt. Wyatt watched the genolope’s body tense. The creature sensed danger in the savanna. It could turn into a blur of motion at any moment. Cayden only needed to pull the trigger. The genolope wouldn’t present a better target than the one it offered in that brief moment as the creature turned stiff, in that brief window of time when the creature tried to see the danger it sensed lurking somewhere in all the grass.

  But Cayden hesitated. His fingers again toyed with
the fine dials of his scope.

  The mechanisms within the scope clicked so quietly, but the sound still carried across the savanna to echo in the genolope’s ears. The genolope bolted into a zigzagging path away from the hunters. Its hoofs kicked clouds of dust into its trail to obscure Cayden’s view. The creature would soon speed beyond the range of Cayden’s weapon if that boy still failed to pull the trigger.

  Wyatt growled and threw the rangefinder to the ground before kicking his son in the ribs to send the boy sprawling away from the rifle. Wyatt lay flat upon the ground after another heartbeat, the rifle’s stock pressed firmly into his shoulder. He wished he could show Cayden more patience. He wished the circumstances allowed him to show Cayden more encouragement. He would’ve preferred to simply let the genolope speed away, to gently pat Cayden’s back and assure his boy that the expedition would provide him with ample opportunity more to pull a rifle’s trigger and claim a savanna trophy. Wyatt didn’t want to shame Cayden.

  But the mudders’ hunger didn’t afford Wyatt the luxury that old hunter desired. The mudder guides looked so thin, and their faces looked so lean after a long and dry season that made game more difficult to flush from the grass. The mudders exerted too much energy that morning tending to their grass fires to let them return to camp without game to replenish their food reserves. The mudders desperately needed to carry something back. So Wyatt kicked his son away from the weapon, and his arms quickly lifted the rifle until its sights rested on the careening, darting, jolting and kicking genolope, now barely discernable behind the clouds of dust its hoofs kicked into the air to shroud the growing distance it placed between itself and the threats that jeopardized it. Wyatt didn’t have the time to peer into the rangefinder or to fuss with delicate dials. Wyatt squinted, and his finger didn’t pause as it squeezed the weapon’s trigger.

  The rifle slammed into Wyatt’s shoulder. That sun-hardened hunter would feel that concussion during the remainder of the expedition, and he feared that shock would magnify the pain the Spiderstrand already pulsed within his bones for many more days. The projectile screamed out of the barrel, tearing a gash across the sky as it roared across the savanna faster than the speed of any noise that might alert the genolope. The wake of boiling, seething air that roiled behind that projectile shredded the grasses and tore at the ground it passed. A rail rifle’s wedge projectile was capable of ripping concrete, wood and flesh with only its shockwave, and thus Wyatt’s shot didn’t need to strike the genolope to fall that fleeing game. The projectile sailed high and right of its intended target, but it screamed near enough so that its shockwave snapped the genolope’s spine. The animal tumbled across the ground for several meters before its momentum slowed it to a halt as clouds of dust fell from the air.

  Jarvis grinned. “A brave shot, Mother-son, and a fine shot. You’ve broken the animal’s back, but we’ll lose none of its meat on account of your weapon’s carnage. No other hunter kills with such speed and skill.”

  Wyatt winced as his old, diseased bones stood up from the ground. “I’m afraid that’s not a very large genolope, Jarvis.”

  The mudder winked. “But it’s something, and there’s still plenty of day left to us.”

  “Enough time to light another round of the fires?” Cayden asked.

  Jarvis glanced at Cayden, who quietly stared at his boots, as if the young man felt unworthy to return that clone’s gaze.

  “Plenty of time, Mother-son. We understand that it takes time and practice to make new hunters. We will push more fire, and perhaps we will carry much back to the camp at the end of this day’s hunt.”

  Jarvis turned then and ran towards the fallen genolope, waiting almost four hundred meters away from Wyatt and Cayden. Wyatt envied his guide. As a boy, Wyatt never imagined a day would come when he would envy a clone. Yet the world changed. More and more quickly, Wyatt felt his era pass away from him. An old hunter such as himself – with stiff knees, arthritic hips and with so much Spiderstrand crowding his lungs that he gasped to merely walk – couldn’t resist feeling jealous of mudder kind. The mudders’ bodies seemed to glide across the ground as a half-dozen guides rushed to the fallen genolope. Natural men and women were so clumsy by comparison. Natural men and women moved so loudly, and their footfalls seemed to jar the land. The clones moved so silently by comparison. Natural men and women felt like relics to Wyatt, and the hunter had come to believe after so many expeditions that clone kind, and not humanity, would inherit the coming world.

  Wyatt gripped his son’s shoulder. “Are you alright? I shouldn’t have kicked you the way I did. Time and adrenaline got the better of me.”

  “You did what you had to do.”

  “I’m glad you understand.”

  Cayden helped his father lift the rail rifle from its tripod. “Why aren’t the mudders singing as they run to the genolope?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Cayden frowned. “You always said the mudders sang after you killed. You would come home and tell me such stories as we sat around the fireplace. You showed me all your sketchpads. You always had so much mudder jewelry to give to the rest of our family. I could look at and touch those things your brought back to me, but I could never hear the songs you described the clones singing at the end of a hunt’s kill. You never brought me any kind of recording, not so much as an instrument. I’d dream all summer about how those songs must’ve sounded. So why didn’t the mudders sing after you took that genolope?”

  “Maybe the clones don’t feel like celebrating.”

  “Why not? You took the kill. You pulled the trigger. You took the responsibility for it. You gave them something to carry back to the camp. Why wouldn’t they sing?”

  “Maybe the clones are worried.”

  “What do mudders have to worry about?”

  “Hunger for one,” and Wyatt heard the bite creep into his words. “Look, son, I’m not getting any younger. I’m a very, very old man if measured by savanna years, and the Spiderstrand is only going to get worse.”

  “You’re not answering my question. Why didn’t the mudders sing?”

  Wyatt finally sighed. “They didn’t sing because you didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I hope that you soon do.”

  Cayden lifted the rangefinder back to his eyes and watched the mudders as the clones arrived at the animal’s carcass. Wyatt had so often watched the clones work that he didn’t need the assistance of those magnifying lenses to appreciate how quickly the mudders dressed that genolope in the field, before the scent of that animal’s blood might attract prowling splicer-lynx. He knew how efficiently the mudders worked with their antler knives to clean the flesh from the bone. The mudders would leave nothing but blood behind. Each part of the genolope would serve a purpose for the clones. Wyatt always marveled at the way the mudders labored, and he thought it a shame that those new people of the savanna needed in any way to depend upon him.

  Lowering the rangefinder, Cayden slung the rail rifle over his shoulder. Wyatt raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “It’s fine, old man. I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to carry it.”

  “Do you know how to dissemble it? How to clean it?”

  “It’ll be fine. You’ll see. Next time, I’ll take the shot.”

  “I hope so.”

  Wyatt again looked towards the mudders. He watched the clones ignite the torches held at the end of their tall, walking poles, and the smoke from a new grass fire soon lifted into the hunter’s nostrils. The mudders guided the blaze, hoping to flush game like the helix fox or the Siamese pheasant into the open, where the guns of the hunters might claim them if the men and women looking down their gun sights finally did their part and pulled their triggers. Those hungry mudders would walk many more miles before their day ended. Wyatt’s stomach growled, and he hated to think of the appetite gripping at the guts of those toiling clones. How did the mudders accomplish so much with so little in
their bellies? Had humanity’s creator ever envied woman and man like Wyatt envied those clones? Did the geneticists ever regret blessing their clones with all the physical strengths and aesthetic beauties those engineers desired?

  He knew that the savanna was not the proper place to let one’s mind stray upon thoughts of creators and children. So Wyatt turned his attention back to his day’s smaller duties – the cleaning and packing of equipment, the checks of inventory and supply, the logistics that moving camp required. Small duties kept a mind sharp, and the splicer-lynx would stalk natural man and woman just as often as it would stalk a clone.

  Later, perhaps the mudders’ fires would chase a splicer-lynx out from the tall grass, and perhaps the sight of such a formidable creature centered in Cayden’s scope would help his son pull the trigger and shoulder a little of his father’s responsibility.

  Perhaps fear was the motivation Cayden required.

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