At any rate, here's a bit. Onwards and upwards, like food when I've got the flu. Whatever.
One.
The man watched silently from the hill, in his space near the tree. The cold rain that had been falling all day trickled off the camoflage poncho and wide brimmed hat that sheltered him. He looked for all the world like just another hunter - well, truth be told, he was a hunter. The only incongruity an outsider would have noted were the oddly modern goggles on his face as he watched the valley below.
Fifteen minutes ago, he'd come to the edge of the treeline, surveying the valley with the slow gaze of a man walking a tightrope in a high wind. His body was coiled for quick movement, but he remained still, forcing himself to slow and scan the area in a methodical manner. Patience ruled the day in his world; and his patience was repaid when he first saw the woman.
He wasn't sure at first it was a woman. She was easily a mile and a half away, bundled and wearing a pack that obstructed his vision. It wasn't until he got out his specs and zoomed in that he could see the way her torso moved, which told the tale of hips built wider than a man's. As she looked around, he caught the flat blackness on her face of an eyepatch, which made him nod and grunt - he'd found her. Even then, he didn't move, but turned his gaze first to the area nearby her, then a widening circle looking for clues he might have missed.
No movement, no C's, no obvious signs of an ambush, he thought to himself. He checked again in disbelief. Now where in samhell did she come from, and where the hell is she going? He knew where the Enclaves were, and where she was going, she was going to miss them all by a decent margin. Even more perplexing, his scanning had shown her holding her side as if she was wounded, but there was nothing nearby dead or otherwise that looked to have tangled with her.
He was getting paid, so his job was to follow. His pattern was simple. One minute of scouting. Two minutes of moving to the next cover. He wasn't worried about her outrunning him. She was obviously wounded, and twice she fell to one knee before collecting her feet again. Once she stopped and knelt, and he realized after his search that she had used the manuver to suck from a puddle of water in a low spot in the valley. He grunted again at that. She must have been really desperate to drink unfiltered water.
As he closed to within half a mile, he took a few extra seconds to put his specs back on. As he zoomed in, he paid close attention both to any sign of a weapon and then, her skin. No gun was visible. She wore a brown down vest and a dark blue hoodie underneath. A watch cap peeked out from under the hood. The rain had visibly soaked her. She staggered a little, clearly running out of gas. He began slowing a little, both because he was getting close enough for her to hear and because the waist high prairie grass made him more cautious.
Then, during one of his sweeps of the area, she disappeared. One moment he was scanning the upper part of the valley he'd left, the next she'd gone to ground. He was amazed at the swifness enough that he actually spoke. 'Sonuvabitch,' he whispered, 'she's got a bolthole.'
This posed both a problem and a benefit. The problem, of course, is that she might have weapons or even backup in there. The benefit, however, was knowing that there was a place to bolt to in the event of Casualties showing up. He hadn't seen any today, but he knew if he took too long he'd be blundering around in the dark getting back to Broad Meadow or burning charges off his specs he really didn't want to use for night vision. If it came to it, knowing that he could wait out night in a covered area was good enough. He'd packed food.
He slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled a knife from his belt. He didn't need to make sound right now, even if it was clear, plus there probably wasn't a lot of space in there for shooting. He moved in, much faster now, checking quickly and moving. Finally, he saw it.
It was cunning, what she'd done. She'd (or whoever had made it) dug the tunnel with a hole wide enough for a body to squeeze down, and placed a form fitting cap over the top. The ingenious part was actually placing a thin layer of sod and some grass on top so it blended in much easier. A viewer could only tell it was a cap from the pair of rope handles that rose up out of the sod.
The man quickly shed his backpack and rifle, took a grenade from the backpack, unpinned it, and placed it firmly pin down between the rifle and the backpack that sat upon it. Confident that moving either would be enough to release it, he then adjusted the specs, removed his hat, and reached into a small bag at his waist. Out came a handful of fine sand.
He leaned his head to the ground, reached forward, and lifted one end of the cap an inch off the ground with one hand. The hand with the sand opened, and he blew, staring intently. The sand powdered into the hole, and he saw no glint of a wire that held onto the grains. Good. He lowered the cap again.
Pete always thought I was crazy, he thought-spoke, but Raker Jack doesn't take chances. You only get one mistake. Then he shook his head. Third person speaking about yourself, even in your head? You're losing it, man. After this score, better head for the Recession at full speed.
He stood, and lowered himself into the hole. A flicker of his eye activated the night vision in his specs. Immediately the walls of the tunnel glowed a spectral greenish white in his view field. No traps, let's go. Head first with knife in front of him, he lowered himself in. The woman had clearly went feet first, confident enough in her knowledge of the place to be able to close the lid behind her. Raker had no illusions, so he didn't bother. Plus the light might be handy if he had to get out in a relative hurry.
About ten or fifteen feet in, the light didn't matter, as the tunnel quickly sloped downward and curved slightly to his left. Before too long, the light was gone from behind him, and all he could see was the irregular smoothness of the tunnel, punctured here and there by what had to be prairie dog holes, as wide as his fist or a bit larger. He kept crawling. As he went, the tunnel got slightly larger, so that a crawl could become hands-and-knees instead of belly inching. Hell, if it got any bigger, he thought he could bear crawl. Raker wondered exactly how long the woman had been here, or if she had help. At least there wasn't a fork in the tunnel to slow him down.
The path leveled off, but turned again, this time to the right. The ground and walls of the tunnel were dry, and invited scuffing noises, so he slowed. Then he saw the light ahead.
Gotcha, he thought. He put the specs on auto as he neared what was obviously a small chamber up ahead. Hopefully you're looking at the damned light and not at the tunnel. It'll be easier if you're nightblind. As he reached the tunnel end, he marveled at how much goddamned ROOM this chamber had.
It could have easily held four or five people. It stood high enough that a man could hunch over in it easily. In the corner was a pallet, in the other a small pieced together wooden thing that might have been a shelf or a box. The detritus of a lived in small space littered the floor and his nose. Last was the small light and the woman, leaned back against the wall. She was still unarmed, her shirt half pulled off as she wrapped or unwrapped what evidently was a nasty wound low on her side.
"Miss Sarah Jackson, I presume." Raker nodded as he moved into the room, knife out. No sense in being rude just because he was going to kill her.
He was almost disappointed at her seeming lack of reaction. Her voice was flat as she replied, "My husband sent you."
"He did. And." - he made it quick as her mouth started to open - "Don't bother tryin' to offer me anything. What he's paying is more than enough to get me home, and what you'd offer isn't likely enough to keep him from finding me when I get there." He moved forward, coming to almost arm's length before he finished talking and
"I see. What did he tell you? Did he tell you what he did to me?" The hand opposite the compress on her side moved slowly up, until it came level with the eyepatch.
"No, ma'am, and I don't rightly care. What I care about is gettin' this done, gettin' my bounty, and gettin' home. The quicker I do this, the quicker that happens."
Her palm opened, pointing towards him. "Wait. Wait. Before you do this, you need to know two things. That's all, just two." Finally, a note of pleading entered her voice. Raker decided to play along, just for a minute. No sense in not letting her speak her mind; this wouldn't take long.
"Okay, ma'am, tell me these 'two things'. Whatever they are."
She fingered the eyepatch. "The first is, he did this to me. I didn't ask for it." She pulled the eyepatch off, and Raker stared into horror. His blade involuntarily lowered as he saw the hole where her eye was - and the thing that moved inside the hole, just enough motion to know that whatever it was, it was bigger than the hole and shiny like a wet rock.
"The second thing?" she filled in for Raker as he realized he was trapped in the room with - with whatever the hell it was. Underground.
OhFUCKOHFUCKOhJesusOhJesusOhJesus,she'safuckingAberrantshe'safuckingAberrantnotrealnotrOhGodOhGod, his mind spun around his conciousness in maddened circles as he stared helplessly as she pulled the bandage away from the hole in her side - and something long and ropy, green and gray and effluvent fell out.
"He should have told you there's a Worm Who Walks." The rope moved, swiftly. Raker screamed.
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