Chapter 16: Mammoth Hunting

Junkie raids on the settlement have been steadily increasing in frequency.
While the people living here have been able to fend them off with no casualties so far, they can't keep this up. The settlement is home to around 30 people or so, while the junkies have a population of an entire big city, and are rapidly reproducing. Eventually, the people of the settlement will run out of ammunition for their weapons.
"We can't keep wasting our ammo on them!" A guard exclaimed with a frown on his thinking face.
"But what else can we use?"
"We can't risk using primitive weapons like them, or we might suffer casualties. We have to leverage our technological advantage somehow..."
Creativity is a weapon,  those who don't have it die. And the people of the settlement looked like they had one foot in the grave right now.
"Crossbows." A stoic voice contrasted the worried and anxious atmosphere of the room.
"Whad'ya mean crossbows?"
"We will raid a spider den, take the string, and make crossbows with the materials we have here. Bolts will also be easy to produce and we can recycle them."
"..." All eyes had turned on Astrea, who had just proposed an interesting idea. Crossbows.
Not too primitive and crude, not too expensive to make and use, it seemed like a perfect balance.
"We can also use bombardier beetle remains to make cheap grenades. Great for dispersing their large crowds."
"H-How do you... know about this stuff?"
"I don't, it's just an idea." All great innovations start from just an idea.

Consequently, Astrea and Gregory planned an expedition for tomorrow morning, into a spider nest.
They had to start from somewhere.

***

Morning of the next day

The time of the expedition was almost upon them.
"Here, apply this if they bite you, okay?" Atra handed both of them a small glass vial each. Inside was a semi-thick yellow liquid.
"And... what's that?"
"Antivenom silly! What else could it be?" Even though it was early in the morning and most of the people were sleeping, Atra was as full of energy as always.
"T-Thanks!" Gregory was able to at least get this word out.
"Alright, take care you two! And pleaaase be careful!" She looked like a mother who was seeing her kids off to school. After having given them the antivenom vials and telling them to be wary, Atra started trotting back to the main building, her glistering red hair shining in the scorching desert sun along with her old-school looking bordeaux robe.
Even though the sun was just starting to rise, the heat was still almost insufferable for an average human, and dust particles along with grains of sand littered the air, making it hard to breath without a mask on.
"Ready?" Astrea had put her eroded gas mask on, and asked Gregory in a calm manner, as if she already knew the answer.
"Yeah, let's go."
The front wooden gates started opening, slowly, with an audible creaking. They looked like they were about to fall apart but despite that, these walls still gave the people inside a fleeting sense of security.
Thus, Gregory and Astrea set off into the wasteland, with an objective of raiding a spider nest for silk.

***

After about half an hour of walking

"So... do you know where to go?" For the amount of time they'd spend walking, Gregory was starting to think about their destination.
"I think I remember a nest being this way."
"You think?"
"My memory is good." Despite Gregory's attempt at joking, Astrea's response was rock solid.
"Maybe... we shoul-"
"Over there. Look." Astrea pointed to a small hill with a gaping hole on its base. The area around the entrance was unusually shiny, like it was covered with something.
"That's it?"
"Yes, let's go."

After another 15 minutes of walking they arrived outside the entrance. The opening on the mountain looked like a giant black hole. It was the size of a huge boulder, what kind of monstrosity could live inside of here?"
"Wait." Astrea placed her arm in front of Gregory, signalling him to not move any further.
She then proceeded to kneel down, and grab a rock the size of her palm.
"Listen here. I want you to have your rifle ready, first of all."
"Right." He pulled out his vintage-looking bolt action rifle, and made sure that the safety was turned off.
"I want you to aim at the joints of its legs, okay?" Astrea sounded like a teacher, instructing her apprentice on exactly what to do.
"Okay."
"Once you see it, fire. Get as many legs as you can."

Gregory could feel his heart rate increasing, and he started feeling anxious. Even though he had just been told exactly what to do, and even though he completely trusted Astrea, he was still worried at the idea of facing a giant insect he had never seen before.
After waiting for a couple of seconds, and checking their surrounding, Astrea threw a rock near the entrance. The rock stuck on the ground as if something had grabbed it, instead of rolling down the hill, and in an instant;
Fwoosh
A truly gigantic terror emerged from the darkness. 
It was a mutated Desert Blonde Tarantula. Tarantulas were already considered big for arthropods, before the nuclear war devastated this planet and created terrible monsters like this one. Now however, this tarantula was the size of a small house.
In an instant after the rock landed, the monster arose from its dark dwelling and grabbed the stone with its massive legs, almost crushing it in the process.
"Hshhhhh" A shrieking hissing sound was heard, as Gregory landed a shot on the abomination's right frontal leg. It almost fell to the ground but got back up quickly.
Another shot, from Astrea, hit its left frontal leg, and the creature quickly returned to its cave inside the hill.
Most tarantulas are opportunistic predators. They will try to takedown and consume anything that happens to cross outside their burrows, but quickly retreat back to them if the situation is not favorable..
"Let's get closer, now." Astrea fearlessly started walking towards the hill, grabbing a small canister from her toolbelt.
"A-Are y-you crazy? I'm not going anywhere near that thing!" Even though Gregory managed to hit the monster's leg, that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. his body, was in fact, frozen solid. He couldn't move.
"Come on." But it seemed that simply grabbing his arm and pulling him in front a bit worked quite well.
Gregory was rightfully frightened though, who wouldn't be after seeing those huge, venom-injecting fangs for the first time?

The creature peaked outside again, but instantly got shot at its legs. It could barely get back inside the burrow.
"And once you've crippled them like this..."
Suddenly, fire emerged from inside the monster's burrow. Astrea had thrown some sort of incendiary grenade inside, and the tarantula started trying to get out of the cave, in a last ditch, desperate effort for survival.
It seemed that a common person had absolutely no chance at felling a monster this ghoulish, but if you knew what you were doing, this was nothing more than a game.

Eventually, the tarantula was completely crippled, it could not even get itself up from the ground. That was when Astrea went closer and started thrusting her knife into the creature's eyes, hitting seemingly random, but truly important locations. After that, it finally died.
This sort of hunt resembled humans trying to bring down a woolly mammoth back in the ice age.

"So... what now?" Gregory exhaled with a tired look on his face that was also reflected in his voice.
"We collect the silk. Pull out your knife and start cutting. Find the starting and ending point, don't cut the silk strands in the middle."