The Hunt Read online

  “Action initiated. Goat exits from the compound are restricted for the next 48 hours. Any further commands Marcus?”

  “No. That will be all.” Marcus grinned. It shouldn’t be a problem to locate one in the morning and tranquilize it, stake it out, and wait on his prey.

  Now that his plan was settled and on track, he could concentrate on his job at hand. “This looks good” he quipped. He tore open another container. Instantly there was a chemical reaction and the container frosted over on the outside. It was one of his favorites. Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. It was smooth and creamy and tasted like a dream. So many years. He had tried to replicate it using some recipes that he had found but ingredients were scarce and he ended up with a sloppy, gooey, and tasteless mess. He took the rest of the containers and put them on the counter in the kitchen and then took his ice cream and stretched out in his recliner.

  “TV: News reel Thirteen Hundred. Title: The Beginning of the End. Start.”

  Immediately the large screen TV came to life. The video started with a female news anchor setting behind the news desk reading her news release. She was wearing a surgical mask and rubber gloves on her hands.

  “This is Laura Sebring with Channel Nine News. I apologize for my appearance but with the recent outbreak of the N47Q virus, we at Channel Nine News feel the need to take every precaution. Reports have been coming in every fifteen minutes from Europe, where the virus started. These reports have been scattered and spotty at best. By the last count we had, over 750,000,000 people have died in Europe from the virus. Based upon the analysis that they have available, scientists are saying that the virus has an almost 98% kill ratio. Already in the United States, estimates are that over 150,000,000 people have succumbed to the virus. We at Channel Nine are afraid that this may very well be our last broadcast….”

  Marcus’ mind drifted off as he continued slowly eating the ice cream and watching the broadcast. Yes, it was their last broadcast. The people that weren’t dead were staying at home or leaving the city in droves but it didn’t really matter. They died anyway. He was only thirteen. He had been there when the calls came to his parents that his brother and sister had died. They were in the military overseas at the time. Then he had watched his mother and his father die. All the while, he was unaffected. So basically he had been alone for the last five years. He had travelled everywhere and seen a little bit of everything. He had met other survivors before but most of them were stark raving mad. It’s hard to deal with a situation of this magnitude and most didn’t. For some reason, it always seemed like the cutthroats, thieves, and general thugs seemed to gravitate to each other. There were these nasty bands of renegades that normally just added to the chaos and all of that doesn’t include the prehistoric creatures that roamed the countryside now. It’s a wonder he ever survived being as young as he was. His dad had always said that an apocalyptic event like the virus was imminent, so from the age he could walk his dad had taught him how to survive. If it wasn’t for his parents and what they taught him… His father was a weapons specialist in the military and ever since he was old enough to hold up a gun, his father had one in his hand teaching him to use it. He trained in every fighting technique imaginable. While other boys were playing football, baseball, or basketball, he was learning to kick, punch, and guard. His mother was a computer expert. Did that exclude her from his training? No way. In the middle of what his father was teaching him, she was teaching him advanced programming and circuitry. It wasn’t just him of course; his siblings received the same training and Marcus figured that was why they naturally moved to the military upon graduation. He was probably headed in the same direction but the opportunity never arrived.

  His attention focused again on the screen. Laura was explaining that due to deaths and widespread absentees that almost eighty percent of functional systems in the United States were running on automation. His mind drifted again. If this had of happened thirty years ago, the planet would have been sent back to the Stone Age. The old power grids had been replaced. Most houses ran off solar power and the grids were basically nonexistent except in your inner cities. All data had been transferred to satellites that had a lifespan of a hundred years. All the technology was still available but there weren’t many that could use it anymore. Marcus took another bite of ice cream. He decided to go outside and sit on his front porch swing.

  “TV: off.” The screen immediately went black. He took his ice cream outside and sat down in the front porch swing. He was looking at the lake across the way. It was a picturesque setting. The sun was just going down, sinking into the horizon just beyond the lake. There was only the slight rustling of leaves as a gentle wind came through. Of all the things he had seen, heard, and felt since the outbreak, he thought this was one of the hardest things to get adjusted to. It was the silence and loneliness that he dealt with day in and day out. He still tried to listen to his ham radio every chance he got. He wanted to talk to some of the people he heard but his fear of being discovered in his little fortress usually overrode that. The news had said that the virus had a 98% percent kill ratio but Marcus felt it was more like 99% or more. There were people out there but they were few and far between. He tried to make Jocelyn more human but it wasn’t near the same. Living alone in this situation tended to make you a hard person but sometimes the loneliness was just overwhelming. He had considered leaving his little safe haven in search of others but he couldn’t talk himself into it yet. The last vestige of the sun slipped below the gentle waves of the lake and the sky began to rapidly darken. He ate the last of the ice cream and placed the container on the floor. He took a large pillow and stretched out in the swing and was gently rocked to sleep. He woke up a couple of hours later shivering from the cold. The temperature had dropped from a comfortable 72 degrees to 58 degrees. Marcus could tell that the fall weather was coming and it would be in full swing before long. He picked up the container, went into the house, and went to bed.

  Chapter 5

  Early the next morning he showered, dressed, ate, and loaded up the SUV. He also hooked up the dump trailer to the SUV. He would need it to dispose of the beast when he had made the kill and if he was successful today, he would also need it to load up the provisions that he had found at the log house. He loaded the ZF7 into the SUV and got in.

  “Ignition: On”

  Although it was almost silent you could hear the slightest hum as the SUV came to life. The instrument panels all lit up and the steering wheel moved and locked out into position. Marcus flipped on the sensor array and double checked all the readings. Everything checked out.

  “Command: Zero, Two, Five: Sleep mode.” At his command the SUV instruments and arrays all blacked out. Marcus then got back out and went into the smaller outbuilding. This was where he stored all the different animal meds and other animal related items. It was also where he stored his tranquilizer guns. He had three hanging from the wall of the small building. He took one of those along with a box of tranquilizer darts. Going outside, he went to his ATV, loaded the gun, and stepped astride the machine. He turned the ATV on and reached in his pocket and pulled out a very small ear piece and inserted it in his right ear.

  “Jocelyn: Give me the precise location of the goats and their movement.”

  Thru the ear piece Jocelyn stated, “Sector 9, North Northwest, at lake’s edge.”

  The display on the ATV lit up and Marcus could see small red dots where the herd was. Marcus gunned the ATV and sped toward the direction of the lake. The forest here wasn’t as dense as it was in the southwestern sector. He made good time with his ATV and was within a hundred yards of them in only minutes. He stopped the ATV, got off, and took the tranquilizer gun off his shoulder. Marcus wasn’t worried about spooking them. Although they had been on their own for a while, they still were domestic animals and he had even been able to get close enough to pet them. He quietly made his way toward them. The goats were in the middle of a large cluster of briars and weeds. He would never understand goats
. There was plenty of good grass and other things to eat in the area and they were eating briars. Go figure. A few yards to the left of the others was what appeared to be an old female goat. After watching the herd for a few minutes, he was able to tell that she was the only female without a kid. He eased over closer to her. After a few minutes, she noticed him moving toward her. Instead of running away, she lowered her head and starting making her way to him. She was about fifty feet away from him when he shot her with the tranquilizer gun. She jumped a little and turned to run but then stopped again. Moving forward ever so slightly, she stumbled and fell. Marcus moved in quickly and checked her. She was out like a light. She must weigh a good sixty pounds. He taped up her hooves and slung her over his shoulders. Picking up his tranquilizer gun at the same time, he headed back to the ATV. He tied her on the back rack, sat down on the seat, turned, and headed for home. It didn’t take long to get back to the SUV. He laid her in the back of the dump trailer, parked the ATV in the building, plugged it into the solar fed charger, and loaded back up in the SUV.

  “Command three, two, one: Awake”

  Instantly, everything came back to life on the SUV. Marcus was ahead of schedule. He expected it to be at least ten or ten thirty before he was on his way to the log house but it was actually only nine o’clock. Now that he knew the way, even driving slowly, Marcus was able to make it out to the log house in thirty minutes. He drove to a spot in the middle of the field that was about 150 yards from the house. A shot at this distance would be a pretty routine shot for the ZF7. He took a metal rod about three feet in length with a piece of chain welded to the top and with a small sledgehammer drove it into the ground. He then got the old she goat out of the back of the trailer and laid her on the ground beside the pole. Taking a section of rope twenty feet long, he tied the goat to the end of the chain. Taking out his knife, he cut the tape holding her. She was still out of it. He hoped she woke up soon.

  Getting back in the SUV, he drove it over to the cabin. He unloaded his gun, a small tent popup blind, and his lunch. He didn’t know why he packed a lunch, especially with all the food in the house but he guessed he was afraid that the food would be gone. As he entered the house and surveyed the room, everything was just as he had left it. He quickly made his way up to the second floor and out on the balcony. After glancing to make sure the goat hadn’t awakened, Marcus set up the blind and loaded the ZF7. The blind was a small camouflaged tent with windows that could be unzipped on every side for viewing. It was only large enough for one adult sitting in the center. With him sitting, the railing was the exact height it needed to be for him to rest the gun on to shoot. The fold down duo rests weren’t going to be needed. He propped the gun on the railing and sat down to wait.

  After about fifteen minutes, the goat began to stir. In another five, she was on her feet testing the limits of the rope. Hopefully this wouldn’t take long because he had known goats to eventually eat the rope. She began bleating over and over for several minutes. After about thirty minutes she finally started eating some of the surrounding grass. Bringing out a small display device, Marcus touched the screen and remotely started the sensor array from the SUV. As it completed its initial scan, Marcus was shocked to discover that it had picked up the cat. The problem with that was where it was located. It was located approximately twenty feet to his right in small cache of trees. Normally being on the second floor wouldn’t have been a concern in most hunting situations but with the size and strength of the cat, Marcus knew with the layout of the house the saber tooth could be on the balcony in a single leap. He slowly turned his head to the right and spotted the large cat. Lucky for him, the cat was focused intently on the goat staked in the middle of the field. Not wanting to give away his hiding place, Marcus very slowly moved the rifle into position but just as he brought it around, the big cat crouched and began a slow stalking movement toward the field and the goat. He was going in for the kill. Marcus swung the rifle around and brought the scope to his eye. At that point the saber tooth cat took off at a dead run. The goat spooked and tried to run away but the rope held fast. The cat was on the goat in an instant. It slammed the goat into the ground and opened its mouth unbelievably wide and drove the two large canines into and through the neck of the goat. The cat then yanked and twisted its head ripping out its throat in the process. Marcus watched this for a moment mesmerized by the pure killing force of the cat. Quickly recovering, Marcus brought the reticule to bear on the middle part of the cat’s body just behind the shoulder. He slowly squeezed the trigger ever so gently so that it was almost a surprise when the gun roared and slammed hard into his right shoulder. The shot was dead on. The cat staggered, righted itself and looked toward Marcus’ direction. Incredulously, instead of falling, the big animal having spotted Marcus now, tore out in a dead run toward the house. Marcus quickly ejected the shell and slammed another one in the chamber. He would be lucky to get off a decent shot with the cat moving that fast. A quick thought came to his mind. Marcus turned away from his scope, tapped the remote for the SUV and screamed…

  “CODE RED! FIRE!”

  In an instant, the robotic arm on the SUV came to life. It swung around 180 degrees, locked in the on the cat and the Korak cannon sprayed a short burst of ten 20 mm rounds. Every single round slammed in to the big cat knocking it sideways and flipping it over and over again. The cat just laid there for a minute in the middle of a dust cloud.

  “Command: Stand down” Marcus barked. The gun swung around to its normal position and tilted to its holding arm. Marcus looked back at the cat. It was slowly trying to rise to its feet again. He brought the ZF7 back to his shoulder. Incredulously, the beast made it back to its feet and was just standing there for a minute. Marcus lined up his shot and fired again. The big gun roared again and this shot took the cat between its massive eyes. With that, it just slumped to the ground and didn’t move anymore. Marcus waited another ten minutes before moving from his location. He repacked his hunting blind and stored it and his gun back in the SUV.

  “Command: Sentry, 300 yards, execute”

  The 20mm cannon moved up from his holding arm and then remained stationary. In sentry mode, the SUV would continually sweep on a 300 yard radius and would eliminate any threat that came within that area. Right now it was only programmed for any large predators. He drove the SUV over to the cat’s body. Sensors were telling him that the beast was dead but he wasn’t taking any chances. He unlatched the 44 and stepped out of the SUV. The big cat was definitely dead. There was blood everywhere. It was amazing that the cat had been able to get to his feet after the ‘Korak’ had hit it. It had done a massive amount of damage. He hooked the winch and straps from the dump trailer onto the cat and had to work for an hour to get the monster loaded. He then tossed the remains of the goat in with it. He had planned to come back that day and pick up everything from the house but he knew it would take a while to go dump the cat and then go wash all the blood away that was beginning to coat his trailer. So he decided to pull over to the house and load up as much as he could take now and he would get the rest tomorrow. He took mostly food and some cleaning supplies.

  Chapter 6

  He had thought of several places to take the saber-tooth cat and finally decided on a bluff area about twenty miles down the road. He hadn’t been out much lately and that would let him look around. Finally ready, he loaded up, extended the sensor array’s scan area to its max at five miles, rolled the windows down, and headed out. After traveling to the road, he switched on the radio and turned on one of the automated satellite radio feeds. Everything about these feeds was automated. It still played all the same commercials it had played five years ago. It also played a full rotation of all the music in the audio library.

  Unless you understood about the automation, it was unnerving to hear them break in with a weather update and give accurate forecast details for the next ten days but you had to realize that Wendy the weather girl was just an automated satellite program that took availabl
e data and made the forecast. Unnerving but useful. Wendy let everyone know that the next few days were going to be mild with the temperatures beginning to lower with the onset of autumn.

  “This weather report was brought to you by the Solar Force Corporation. Our future is as bright as the sun. Stay tuned for the Super Oldies Hour with your host Jeremiah Johnson.”

  Marcus always enjoyed listening to this program. The first song started playing. He didn’t know what the singer was talking about, but whoever she was, she was singing about setting fire to the rain and it was awesome. It didn’t make sense but he liked it. He finally made it out to the main road. Although overgrown around it, the main roads were still somewhat passable.

  Occasionally you would cut through where a tree had fallen but generally the SUV could handle anything thrown at it. He had climbed hills with it that most people would have trouble walking. It had an internal gyroscope that kept it from flipping in all but the worst conditions. He drove for about five miles southwest before he left the dense forest in which he had been travelling in. The place was still somewhat overgrown but it looked closer to the old civilization which had been before.

  He was passing house after house on this road. He kept a chart of all the houses that he had searched and he was almost positive that he had cleared all of these. He noticed that a couple of these had been damaged by falling trees. It must have been that big storm that came through last April. Besides that, almost everything was just as it was last year when he came through this area. As he headed over a small hill, he passed another small lake. As slow as he was driving, he could see the fish hitting the bugs on the top of the water. Marcus loved to fish and was kicking himself for not bringing his tackle. It was easy fishing from his own little lake because he had the protection of the canopy for most of it, but he always wanted to try some of the different places to see if he could land something new. Most places with fish in them were just teeming with them. It was hard for a place to get over fished when there weren’t any fishermen. As the road he was following drew closer to the edge of the mountain, the area became clearer and clearer. The rocky type terrain prevented vegetation from growing.