Huntress

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  The sofa is the same, just a piece of furniture. It’s honestly not in great condition. Very few pieces of furniture survive intact post-Apocalypse, even inside Solace, and too much of humanity is concerned with the basics of survival to match the artisanship of long ago. The metal frame creaks whenever I settle into the padded webbing, the small metal badge on the side barely legible. Dodge Ram B-Series.

  I’ve spent quite a few hours wondering what the A-series was . . . or even what a Dodge was. The webbing and upholstery have been replaced so many times I can’t even tell what the couch originally was except that it was bolted in place somewhere.

  Right now, my travel pack’s sitting on the seat like it always is, waiting for me to finish that last minute packing in case I need to be mission ready in under an hour. I’ve got most of my supplies, the travel water filtration kit, the emergency facemask if there’s a rad-clone, a change of clothes, and my med kit. I’ve got just enough room for weapons and food concentrates.

  I grimace, wishing I had another option, but food can be scarce out there in the Scorched Earth. However, three tablets can provide all the energy needs I have for the day, even if they taste not much better than a handful of sawdust.

  But I’ll pick those up on the way out. Instead, I think I might indulge in one of the few luxuries that I let myself have whenever I’m inside the walls of Solace . . . a long, hot shower.

  Of course, it’ll use most of my daily water ration, but I plan on also filling my belly to sloshing while I sing my heart out, another guilty pleasure of mine. No place in the world can make your singing sound better than a nice tiled shower. And I need all the help I can get in that area.

  I’ve got my left boot halfway off when there’s a familiar knock on my door, and it opens to reveal my betrothed, Crassus Phoenix. “Hey, Cerena, I heard you got a mission?”

  I nod, waving him in. We’ve been ‘together’ for many years now, and as he steps in, I have to admit I know why I started seeing him. He’s tall, with a wide-shouldered muscular physique that’s not your typical Hunter archetype which normally favors the leaner, more agile body. His brown hair, lightly tanned skin, and aristocratic features go along with twinkling blue eyes that are the epitome of handsome.

  And he’s from one of the most well-respected families in Solace. The Phoenixes can trace their roots all the way back to the founding of Solace, the so-called ‘Lost Generations’ right after the Apocalypse that had to fight even harder than we do now.

  At least we can go toe to toe with the paranormals, even if they outnumber us now. Back then, losses were more severe.

  But after the initial heat and flattery—I mean, I’d just graduated the Youngling course—I just . . . I didn’t see in him what others did.

  “Come in, Crassus,” I reply, knowing he will anyway. That’s part of what I don’t like about Crassus. We might be betrothed, but that doesn’t mean he should just treat my quarters like an extension of his. “And yeah, I got a mission.”

  “Again?” he asks, frustrated. “I was hoping . . . never mind.”

  I chuckle darkly. “No, go ahead and say it.”

  “Not right now,” he replies, grabbing one of my chairs and turning it around to sit in it in reverse. “So, tell me about the mission?”

  At least it’s a question, since he knows that from time to time, Hunters do get secret ones. But this one . . . well, I don’t see the harm. “You know where the Elders are, right?”

  “Sure,” Crassus replies. “Thomas is in cryosleep in the Vault, same as Edward, while Elizabeth is in Bane. I’ll tell you, I’m happy that it’s Elizabeth’s cycle to be leader. Imagine if Thomas had been the one to approach Bane with these trade negotiations.”

  Crassus has a point. While part of me prefers the direct, almost brutal leadership style Thomas embodies, he isn’t one known for tact. In fact, it’s partly because his four-year cycle has just ended that I’ve had more time for ‘rest and recovery.’

  “Say what you like, Crassus. If Thomas were still awake, we’d both be in the field right now, with blood on our blades and aches in our muscles.”

  Crassus nods, chuckling. “True. When you’ve been through the number of cycles that I have though Cerena, your body almost comes to anticipate what’ll happen the next four years. Elizabeth’s the diplomat, Thomas the . . . hardliner, and Edward—”

  “Is my father,” I remind him, even if the Elder isn’t my actual father. No, after my parents were slaughtered by werewolves, he took me into his house. He sponsored me for the Hunter Academy, and while he couldn’t directly have any impact on my studies, when he was awake, he would have dinner with me at least twice a week, often having me over to his quarters. “I look forward to three years from now when his sleep cycle’s complete and he’s able to wake up.”

  “True, as do I,” Crassus says, for a different reason than me. “So, your mission?”

  “I’m to go to Bane,” I reply, sitting down on my couch next to my bag. “As part of a team.”

  “A team?” Crassus asks, shocked. “Wait, you kick Telemachus’s ass and put him in the infirmary, and now you’re supposed to be on a team? That’s bullshit!”

  “Not a Hunter team,” I reply, watching as Crassus’s jaw drops. “It’s supposed to be a mixed team.”

  I can see Crassus growl, and I understand. The whole reason Hunters exist is to protect the last vestiges of pure-strain humanity from being lost in the paranormal soup that arose after the Apocalypse. As such, we’re not exactly the most well-liked group out there.

  But I’m also not averse to working with non-Hunters. As long as you respect humans and don’t try to feed on us, eat us, or whatever . . . I’m cool with you. Threaten us, though, and I’ll leave your corpse for the crows with your last insult still warm on your lips.

  Crassus is more . . . well, he falls in the spectrum somewhere between Edward and Thomas. “So you’re to team with a couple of muties.”

  “I don’t know. I just have a name and a meeting point,” I admit. “Other than knowing I’m going to Bane to retrieve a special asset to bring back to Solace, I’m in the dark. That’s probably why Elizabeth chose me.”

  Crassus sighs, nodding. “And why every time you walk out the gate, I wonder if I’m going to be left alone in the world.”

  And we’re back at this again. Great. “Cras, I have a job to do. A calling, even. I know you don’t like it, but—”

  “But you can help humanity behind the walls as much as you can out in the Scorched Earth!” Crassus says. “Come on, Cerena. You know that as much as Solace needs people building the foundation—”

  “You mean you’re getting antsy and want to get married!” I reply, sighing. “Dammit, Crassus, I get it. When I accepted your offer . . . listen, you’re a good man. You’re only forty-five. I mean, that’s ninety years or so left. But I’m not ready. I’m still twenty years younger than you.”

  “And if you keep it up, you’re never going to see forty-five,” Crassus says, standing up. “Cerena, I get it, you don’t quite love me the way that you read about in the holonovels or see in the vids. Nobody’s going to sing steamy songs about me down in the taverns. But we’re a good match. I’ll provide for our family, and you . . . I’m not saying you have to be a broodmare. But can’t you see being a little bit like Lily? She’s still badass and she’s had seven kids. I mean, one of her sons is looking at getting his own Hunter team the next round of promotions. And she’s guiding the Academy now. Isn’t that more badass than having the highest kill tally on the Wall of Memory?”

  Crassus just doesn’t understand . . . and he never will. He can’t understand the anger and pain in my heart the evening Edward came to my family’s quarters, kneeling in front of me. His eyes had been full of pain, and he laid his hands on my shoulders, smiling sadly. “Little Cerena, you’re going to have to be very brave.”

  It still wakes me up at night sometimes, knowing I’ve been robbed of my parents by the werewolves.

&n
bsp; “It doesn’t matter right now, Crassus,” I reply, standing up and walking to my door. “I have this mission, and any other discussion will have to wait until afterward. In the meantime, I need to finish preparing. I still need to go by Supply before moonrise. I’m supposed to meet my new team an hour afterward.”

  “You won’t let me help, at least?” Crassus asks. “I can see your boot untied. I know you, Cerena. You were getting ready to blow a few days’ worth of water rations on a shower.”

  “Perhaps . . . but before you ask, no, you can’t join me,” I answer, cutting him off. Crassus might have been the man who introduced me physically to what womanhood feels like, but I haven’t had him in my bed since Edward went to sleep. And while Crassus isn’t that bad a lover . . . I want more.

  I want to be worshipped. I want to be . . . special.

  Regardless of whatever else Crassus might say about caring for me and taking care of me, the idea of sex with him feels more like a duty than something I want. I’m more than just a childbearing machine.

  Crassus sighs and nods. “Fine. Just do me a favor, okay? When you come back and are back on Instructor duty, can you try not to put my friends in the infirmary? Telemachus is a team leader, and he needs to have his team’s respect.”

  “Tell him not to be such a clotpole, and I’ll consider it,” I reply with a laugh. “I might not be a good team leader, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the man has his head up his ass. Tell him that if he’s not careful, I’ll do a better job of removing it for him next time. Now, I need to finish getting ready, Crassus. Excuse me.”

  He leaves, and I close my door behind him, engaging the latch. Leaning against the door, I look toward my bathroom, but Crassus’s comments have put me off.

  “And that’s why I don’t want to marry you, my betrothed,” I growl, heading for my weapons locker to decide on my travel load. “Only you can make showers seem like a bad idea.”

  Chapter 3

  Cerena

  Ringtown isn’t technically one town . . . if anyone cares about technicalities anymore.

  Technically, it’s all part of Solace. But there’s Inner Solace, inside the walls, home to the Hunters, to pure-DNA humanity and the few trusted others who are given temporary passes and access to Solace’s markets and other business areas . . . and there’s Ringtown.

  It’s really not that bad. The Hunters have a whole division, part of the Wall Guard, that maintains the peace in Ringtown. It’s a challenge too, because Ringtown isn’t exactly one town either. It’s more like the three outgrowths that have spread from the gates of inner Solace out into the surrounding territory. If the human race isn’t wiped out in the next generation or two, West Ringtown and North Ringtown might end up joining together, but for now . . . well, it’s Ringtown.

  And if someone wants things you can’t find in Solace, Ringtown’s the place to go. Taverns, weapons merchants, pharmaceuticals that wouldn’t quite pass the guidelines on benefit versus pleasurable side effects . . . yup, Ringtown’s got it. If Ringtown doesn’t, either they know someone who can get it for you or you don’t need to be fucking with it in the first place.

  To some of the Solace residents, those who have their noses so far in the air it’s pretty much stuck up their asses, Ringtown’s dirty and dangerous. Look, I’m not going to say it doesn’t have its bad parts. You don’t go walking through East Ringtown at night without a couple of friends or a stun stick in your tunic. Preferably both. And if you decide to check out the boxing matches in West Ringtown’s Rodeo Arena, you might just end up getting into a scrap yourself if you’re not careful with whom you cheer for.

  But that’s the way the world is nowadays. Life is pretty cheap, and people are pretty tribal regardless of where you live. So if you’re a human and some mutie’s in your face, you have two options. Fight or run. Never mind the more dangerous types of paranormal.

  As I walk out of the gates of inner Solace and into the crudely lit dirt streets of North Ringtown, I still feel the little thrill that I always feel. Yes, I’m just a human in a world where we’re no longer the top of the food chain. We’re weaker, slower, and our intelligence doesn’t give us that much of an advantage over others any longer.

  But fuck it. The world’s exciting now. I can’t imagine what it was like in the ancient days that they taught us about in history class back in the Academy. A world of eight billion humans and nothing else sentient? Talk about boring.

  At least if I’m going to watch my species die, the final blow will be struck by something other than ourselves. It won’t be a suicide like we almost pulled off.

  I clear my thoughts as I walk through North Ringtown, letting myself set it all aside. Crassus? He’s back inside the walls. My ignored apartment with its mysterious couch? Inside the walls. Worries about humanity? Inside the walls.

  Right now, I’m just going to exist for the moment and for the mission. It’s what’s gotten me through all these years as a solo Hunter and what’ll keep me going until I decide to quit.

  The tavern up ahead is like most Ringtown taverns, down on its luck maintenance-wise. Rough concrete block construction, a few patches of corrugated metal or other mishmashes of scrap material that can be found around the Scorched Earth. The exterior lighting’s decent, at least, actual electric lights. The tavern owner must have connections to Solace’s government and the precious fusion power generated underground near the Elders’ cryochamber.

  Ironic name, too. Or at least, calling a tavern Defcon Whoops is about the height of humor in modern times. I’ve never been here before, but that doesn’t mean much. Despite there being a chronic shortage of food in Solace, pretty much like there is everywhere, someone always sets up a still. And there are a lot of stills in Solace.

  The inside’s not half bad, either, with the plank flooring sanded down and the walls cleanly scrubbed. I can’t say the same for the patrons, but that could be a factor of the lighting. Like a lot of taverns, Defcon Whoops keeps their interior lights low, both to cover anything illegal going down and to give the patrons who want some privacy at least the illusion of such.

  The clientele’s mostly human, although I spy a couple of third-generation muties over in the corner shooting pool, their slightly scaly skin a dead giveaway to go along with their leather jackets. It seems to be a requirement of the species, leather jackets. These are pretty good ones too, probably real cowhide, since Solace has some decent cattle farms to the south.

  Still, I keep my defenses up as I approach the bar. Quite a few of the various paranormal species, including werewolves, can hide their particular brand of oddness until they’re ready to take you down. Turn your back on that guy you think is innocent at the wrong time, and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.

  No wonder we regular humans struggled for so long.

  “What can I do for you, Hunter?” the bartender asks as I approach. I don’t bristle at his greeting, even if I am trying to blend in some. I know that my training, better nourishment, and general presence say I’m not like other humans.

  Which probably explains why some of the dirtiest looks I’m getting are from them. After the Big War, humanity got the biggest division since our ancestors became a species with two sexes.

  In the end, it came down to luck. Seeing a high chance of nuclear war coming to wipe out huge chunks of the population, the governments that could afford it built fallout shelters where they could. Places like Crystal Mountain, Barrick Goldstrike, Smoky Mountain, and more each housed a thousand inhabitants.

  It was a very important subject in Academy history, and one of my personal focuses. The program was all very scientific. Basically, the government calculated that a minimum viable population for reseeding the Earth after a nuclear war would be two hundred. When they figured in genetic drift, possible issues with long-term radiation, and other problems, they upped each shelter to a thousand and then repeated the ‘seeding’ in a bunch of other places. The idea was that if one shelter failed, or even i
f a bunch of shelters failed, at least one would survive and ensure that we’d carry on.

  Each shelter was stocked, and the people let in were all carefully screened for high intelligence, no family history of diseases, stuff like that. When the bombs looked like they were getting ready to fall, the shelters sealed up, and the rest of the world was left to go hang.

  When you consider that the government basically said twenty-five thousand people were to be helped out and the other four hundred million were just atomic dust . . . well, if I’d been one of those kept out of the shelters, I would have been pissed myself. There are rumors of a few of the shelters being stormed, but nothing is verified in the Solace Library.

  What is known is the Big War. The first missiles were launched on the stroke of midnight, January 1st Greenwich time. The United States government was taken out by one in the morning, and the last missiles fell less than forty-eight hours later. It’s never been confirmed whether anyone survived in what was Europe or Asia . . . but so far, nobody’s come calling.

  Guess they had other issues on their hands.

  But like cockroaches, humanity tends to survive. In a dozen different ways, from the Winter Stalkers who only come out of the northern mountains in the dead of winter to the Sand People who never leave the dustiest parts of the Scorched Earth, humanity survived.

  The most difficult, of course, have been the werewolves and vampires. Yup, it seems that humanity’s old so-called ‘fairy tales’ might have had a nugget of truth in them, because when the fallout shelters opened up a hundred years after the Big War and started trying to set up shop again, they were met by a whole host of nasty fuckers, beings who didn’t appreciate a bunch of high-tech old-school humans saying they were ready to get right back on track as if the world hadn’t been through the biggest change since an asteroid took out the dinosaurs.