Hunter and Prey

The ground was shaking behind me. I had a good lead on the mutant, but my heart was just about ready to jump from my chest. The forest was becoming quite dense, but that affected the monster a lot more than me. A natural predator would have no difficulty traversing this terrain and catching me but the freak of nature was just barely gaining up on me. Instead of gloating however, I kept my mind sharp and my eyes looking forward. If I slip and fell, my death would be fast only if I was extremely lucky.

Suddenly, a flash of light shone directly into my eye. Despite the shortness of my breath, I let out a quick laugh and veered towards the source of the light. Looking back, I saw the monster was perhaps as little as 10 metres behind me. Still, I slowed down even more. As the distance between us kept closing I suddenly stopped. The monster took advantage of it immediately and pounced straight towards me. I threw myself out of the way, just as a crack resounded through the forest. The mutant simply kept flying for a moment, then crashed to the ground motionless. Everything was silent. A couple of moments later I realised I had been holding my breath and finally breathed freely once more.

“I was starting to worry you got lost,” a voice came from the dense bushes, followed by my older sister Estelle. She was still holding the large coil gun.

“I see. Perhaps next time you would like to be the bait for one of these ugly bastards,” I shot back.

“But you said you would always protect me little bro,” she said, feigning distress. I could only sigh and accept my defeat. In truth, we both knew that despite being younger, I could never allow myself to let her be in more danger than me. That being said, it often turned out that she ended up saving my life and put herself in harm’s way anyway. “Come on, stop spacing out. We have work to do,” she said and began rummaging through her backpack.

“It’s in my backpack,” I reminded her and went back to the bushes to retrieve it. I brought it back and fished out a small handheld device that ended in three spikes. It looked fancy if somewhat battered but in truth it was little more than a Geiger-Müller counter. “Would you like to do the honours?” I asked and offered her the gadget.

“Please go right ahead,” she said with the sweetest smile she could muster. I frowned but said nothing. There was evil behind that smile. My dear devious sister knew how much the mutants disgusted me and took great pleasure in making me uncomfortable. I was sure she would be able to come up with some wild explanation of how this was all in my best interest, but it was difficult to appreciate her care for me while having to deal with repulsive cadavers.

I went towards the mutant. Every step made the beast more abhorrent in my eyes. It resembled a chamois mixed with bear, but deformed by tumorous growths and spikes. Blood and drool were frothing at its ugly maw.

“Do we even need to test this creature?” I turned back and asked.

“Don’t be such a wuss, it’s completely harmless,” Estelle replied. “In principle,” she added after a pause.

I looked again at the monster. The entry wound was surprisingly small and clean. Just a tiny dark red spot. I flipped it around with my boot, which took quite a bit of effort. The thing was heavier than me. The exit wound was messier, but not much.

“Please tell me you didn’t waste magnetised ammunition for this thing Elle,” I said. I looked at Estelle, but at that point she suddenly seemed very interested in the surrounding trees.

“Of course I didn’t. Just as we agreed,” she lied, but without conviction.

“How much do we have left?”

“It’s enough. I’ll take care of it. Okay?”

“You know we can’t afford to run out,” I started saying.

“Enough, Gaetan!” She said, cutting me off. It seemed she was genuinely angry at me. “I can decide when the situation calls for it. I may allow you to take more dangerous jobs but I will not risk you getting hurt just so we can save a little.”

I decided the smart thing to do was to keep my mouth shut. My sister was rarely cross with me, but once the fuse was lit, she was a frightening demon. I stabbed the spike of the G-M counter into the belly of the beast. The clicking started at once and grew in intensity. I gave Estelle a meaningful look.

“Get away from it you fool,” she said, waving her arm.

“Thank God I don’t have to eat this monstrosity,” I said and smiled. I wanted to get a couple of extra shots off but thought better of it. Estelle’s temper grew ever darker. I wasn’t counted among the brightest of men, but even I could see that kicking a hornet’s nest was a bad idea. Or perhaps in this case it was kicking a bear in the knee. I had to bite my cheeks to keep myself from laughing.

“What?” Came Estelle’s sharp question.

“Ehm well, we tried 5 different preys today,” I said, managing to regain my composure. “All were contaminated.”

She thought for a minute, then nodded. “You’re right Tan, we should move out of this area. I hoped we would chance upon a lost supply drop, but at this point we need to accept the loss and go. Maybe we should finally head to the valley. We are days away from the next drop anyway. We do need to be careful. We are running out of supplies.” Even as she said that, she pulled a pair of protein bars from her backpack and threw one of them to me.

It was indeed my plan to coax her into getting us to move away from this wretched place, but moving into the valley was a bit too much for me. “They may have expended their area again. They will kill us if they so much as see us,” I said and bit into the food. I hadn’t liked these rations at the start of our journey but after experiencing real hunger, normal food becomes a luxury.

“I’m not convinced. We should start to think about joining one of them. It isn’t as if we’re doing so well on our own,” her words came out a little mumbled, since she was stuffing her face as she spoke.

“Absolutely not. Even if do let us live. They will take everything from us. Not just any loot we manage to find, but our gear as well. We will be slaves and death will be the only way out,” I said. This time I was getting angry. “You know what they’d do to you.”

Estelle didn’t reply and kept her expression hard, but her face blanched and the protein bar was forgotten in her hand. “What else can we do?”

“We need to find some unclaimed part of the old lab complex. We’ll go east if that’s what it takes.”

“We might run into the Öst Bündes if we go too far.”

“True, but I don’t think we’ll need to go that far. I don’t think we’ll even reach no man’s land. I also really doubt that the easterners are much worse than the thugs we have around here.”

“I think you underestimate how easy it is to hate a foreigner. Not that you would know since you hate everyone Tan,” Estelle said and gave a sad smile.

“Not true,” I protested. “I love you.”

“Yes I suppose you do,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you,” she added and put a hand on my shoulder. Without another word we began preparing to move on. She took point and I watched our backs.

Far in the distance thunder rumbled. I could’ve sworn I saw a faint bluish tinge of Cherenkov light coming from the clouds even when lightning wasn’t striking. I attempted ta gauge the direction of the wind, but couldn’t tell one way or another.

“It’s moving perpendicular to our path,” Estelle said. I didn’t even notice when she had started looking back as well. “Let’s move on.”