Claimed (2 page)

“There’s another hun
ter!”
His eyes rapidly scanned the trees, finally catching a glimpse of the green hooded man staring back at him. The shooter stepped back and then raced into the dense woods. Jared chased after him.

“What the heck am I doing?!”
he shook his head as he jumped over yet another dead log.
“He could be a corporate dog! No, he’s not! He’s clad in green! He’s masked. He carries a bow, for god sakes! Corporate dogs don’t carry bows!”

The man ducked under branches, flying through the trees at a stupefying speed.

Jared took another route, trying to cut him off. “Wolf! Get!!” he shouted at his dog.

The
husky obediently raced past him to catch the anonymous poacher. It stopped abruptly at a tree, circling it, its nose tracing the hunter’s odor on the ground.

“Wolf!” Jared panted, catching up to his dog. “Where, boy? Where is he?”

The husky growled, looking up at the tree.

Jared searched it with his eyes but saw nothing
other than its lushes leaves. He ruffled the dog’s collar. “That’s it, boy. Good job. He’s gone though.”

What would
he have done if he had caught the shooter? Make friends? Share the deer hunt? He sighed. He supposed his curiosity had got the better of him. He’d rarely met another person from the sector who dared poach in the woods. He hadn’t any idea who it could have been. No one he knew had any knowledge of maneuvering any kind of weapon.

Now that his adrenaline had settled, new worries clobbered him. The hunter had seen his face.
Would he report him to the authorities? The punishment could be as severe as death. On the light side, he might escape it for life imprisonment. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it. He had no choice but to risk his return to the sector. If luck had it, the poacher would do nothing- which was highly unlikely. With a scarcity of food, where people farmed rats for meat, where women cut out the fetuses of the pregnant varmints to feed their malnourished babies, where children were looked upon as possible food for the hundreds of severely starving adults and where the possibility of cannibalism was on its brinks of breaking out, there was a higher probability that he would be perceived as a competitor.

“I’m screwed, boy,” he
muttered to his dog as his fingers brushed through its coat absentmindedly. The dog licked his face, comforting him slightly. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m still alive, right?” He rose to his feet. “In that case, let’s get our deer and get out of here.”

The poacher stepped out
of the bushes. He had been afraid that he would be bitten by that husky as soon as it had chased after him. He wasn’t too worried about the man. He would have handled him with little difficulty. It was the dog he was terrified of.

He turned around and took his normal trek back north of the woods. He
neared a tree with a messy structure of roots overhanging a deep gully. His eyes roved the forest ensuring that he was indeed alone. Although, the forest was almost impenetrable to those who weren’t accustomed to its wilderness, he needed to be assured that he wasn’t being watched.

Satisfied, he crawled into the
space between the exposed roots. He moved further into the disguised hollow; finally lighting a torch as he wormed his way through the elaborate caves. The dim light in the tunnel ahead of him, gave him indication that there were people already there. Their voices echoed towards him and he could distinctly make out that one of them was loudmouthed Frank Townsend.

“
Why, if it isn’t Eric Stark?” said the burly, mid-thirtyish man as he emerged into the room.

“Hey,” Eric replied sullenly.

There were twelve other men seated about the two large tables in the musty bricked abandoned train platform.

“Where have you been, Eric? Hunting again?” asked Frank.

Eric threw his bow onto the table. “Yeah.”

“Where’s the meat, then? Don’t tell me you’ve hunted
all the deer out of the woods?”

“I was beaten to it,” he let out flatly.

It was a short sentence but enough to gain the attention of all twelve men. Eric rarely missed. He was the best archer amongst them.

“Was it a corporate dog?” asked one.

“No,” Eric answered. “It was a Sector 8 Central native.”

“Michael’s boy?”
James Saunders asked, trying to sound as casual as he could. The fifty-three year old man picked up his glass of brandy to calm his excited fingers.

“Jared, yes,” Eric groaned. “
Didn’t I tell you he was up to something whenever he brought in his meat to the butchers? Never believed him at all when he said he trapped them while they were crossing the highway.”

“Well, he sure was convenient,” Frank joked. “He’s been supplying venison like he was farming the
antlered animals. Some helluva luck he’s got!” He chuckled, and was prodded on by more cheeky quips from the others.

But
James was far too engrossed in his own thoughts to enjoy their light-hearted teasing.

“How is he with his bow, Eric?” he asked.

“Deft,” Eric sulked. “A little too deft for my liking.”

James nodded. He gulped down the last of his drink and then stood up.

“Where are you going,
Mr Saunders?”asked Frank, still beaming from the small uproar of laughter he had caused.

James harrumphed as he cleared his throat. He looked over at the men, now watching him curiously. He had only just arrived into their den and it was certainly suspicious that he was leaving so soon. He eyed the door eagerly, wishing to get out of there as soon as he could.

“I’ve got some business to attend to,” he replied.

“But what of Governor
Callum? Weren’t we going to discuss how we would infiltrate the parliament?” Frank protested.

“On what I have now, we don’t stand a chance,” he mumbled. “We’d have the military sweeping through these
forests for us. And we’d be over before we could properly start.”

“
Mr Saunders, you promised us you’d help us with the rebellion,” argued another man.

“Yes, I did and what makes you think I am not
working on it?” he growled back. “These are not the days of Robin Hood. You think that those thick webs of vines in the jungle out there is gonna hold back a team of merciless soldiers? They’d rather burn down this aquifer than subject themselves to the likelihood of a possible militia group.”

“But you said… we could do this,” stammered a short, ginger-haired man called Trent.

“I said if we worked together, we could come up with something that might break down the corporate regiment.” James Saunders walked to the end of the room, studying the charcoal stained walls. These rooms were long-forgotten subway stations, now ridden with a thickened mass of jungle from above. The only way into it was through the rusty tunnel escape doors by the railway tracks. “Have you heard of penicillin, Trent?”

“The old antibiotic they used a thousand years ago?
Yeah, sure.”

James coughed. “In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered that when a sample of a certain bacteria called
staphylococcus got contaminated- some mold, penicillin fungi to be precise, all the bacteria closest to the fungi began dying. You see, Trent, penicillin would infiltrate the bacteria walls, cross-build with them, pretending it is an ally and then begin damaging and breaking down the bacteria cell wall and ultimately killing it.”

Trent shrugged, not understanding a word the older man had uttered.

“You need an infiltrator,” surmised Eric slowly. “Where are you going to get such a man?”

James perked his mouth in deep thought, a faded vulgar graffiti catching his eyes.
It was the cartoon caricature of a penis in the form of a gun. He supposed the cum shooting out of it would be likened to bullets, “
Fuck the police
,” he read. Well, at least the generation of those days could spell. Not something he could attribute to the impoverished majority of today.

*****

Jared carried the deer carcass on his shoulders, taking it back to the stream to skin and butcher it. He trudged wearily over forest debris and then gladly threw the dead deer down as soon as he reached the banks of the stream. His back itched and ached again. A spasm ran up his spine and he almost cried out in pain. He pulled off his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth to muffle his cry. He braced his back against a tree, rubbing it against its bark. He would have torn out the flesh in his back if he could. The cramping lasted a while before it began to subside.

Beads of sweat formed
on his forehead, glazing it. He dropped down to the ground, crouching at his knees, panting.

“Not a good
sign, is it Wolf?” he muttered breathlessly as the dog licked his face. He put his tired face into its thick fur, hugging his animal close to him.

He’d been having spasm
attacks occasionally in the last two months; ever since his escape from a handful of ruthless poachers he accidently clashed with in the woods. They came upon each other incidentally and unlike the hunter today, it was he who was on the run as they raced after him to kill him. Their little commotion had instantly attracted the forest guards. He managed to flee from them but the poachers weren’t as fortunate. A small pursuit later, the poachers were shot dead without even as a trial.

It was just as well he hadn’t taken Wolf with him that day. Things could have escalated
for the worse had Wolf turned around to attack either the poachers or the guards. He would then have given his life trying to protect his animal.

He looked back over at the carcass
and groaned. “We need to get that cleaned before someone else discovers what we’re doing.”

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt. If the spasms grew any worse, he would have to see a doctor
. But they were expensive. It was an expense he couldn’t afford at the moment. He had to find ways to manage with the pain until then.

Wolf licked his face and he smiled. “Yeah, yeah, I got it. Let’s get this done and get out of here.”

*****

He wrapped the meat as tightly as he could into giant arrow leaves.
“Does it smell?” he grinned at Wolf. He held a parcel at the dog’s nose.  Wolf sniffed at it eagerly and he laughed. “I suppose it does. Let’s just hope the corporate dogs don’t have a nose as good as yours.”

He threw the parcel into his bag along with the others and then tickled Wolf’s neck. “No one’s nose is as good as yours. You already had smelt that poacher, didn’t you? Yeah, I saw
your ears perk up like you’d seen a rabbit. You knew he was there. Sometimes I think Wolf, you’re an actual wolf.” 

He
slapped the dog’s back gently and rose up. “Come on, then. Let’s get this meat to the butcher and get back home.”

He strode casually as he could through the sector village. Children played about him in tattered clothes. Their laughter carried into the air, infecting him. He couldn’t resist a smile.  This gloominess was all these children had ever known. They weren’t aware of another world other than the one they presently lived in.

He crossed the dusty street over to the deli store. 
“Stay,” he told Wolf as he pushed open the door. The tiny bell above it tinkled, announcing his entry.

“Duncan,” he greeted the butcher.

“Jared,” the butcher replied. “Come for the usual?”

“Yeah.”
Jared leant onto the counter, watching him serve the two old elderly customers in the store.

“Here’s your steak, Mrs. Roberts,” the butcher handed over a bag of wrapped meat. “Will there be anything else?”

“That’ll be all,” the woman croaked and then turned to her husband. “Come on, Patrick.”

The couple
held onto each other as they dawdled out of the store.

“You can never be too careful,” the butcher said, watching them
walk down the street. “So, what have you got for me, today?”

“Quality venison.”
He laid the parcels onto the counter.

“Yeah?” the butcher grinned. “Was there another
one crossing the highway again?”

“Something
like that.”

“I’ll give you five hund
red for them,” the butcher said thoughtfully after inspecting the meat.

Jared frow
ned. “Come on Duncan, you know you’ll get far more than that for the quality I give you. All lean and very little fat. It’s not just Central that buys from you, right? The more affluent of Sector 8 does too, don’t they?”

The butcher scratched his brow. “How much do you want?”

“Nine hundred.”

“
Seven, and we’ll call it even.”

Jared nodded. The butcher opened his till and began counting out his money.

“I don’t know how you get away with it,” the butcher shook his head in bafflement.

“I don’t know what you
’re talking about. I’m just a trapper.”

The butcher watched him over his eyebrows
and then called out to his assistant, “Eric.”

A younger man walked in from the back of the store. He stopped abruptly on seeing Jared.

“Eric, Jared’s got some meat for us. Take it to the back, will you?”

“Yes, Mr. Duncan,” Eric stammered.

“Well, don’t just stand there, gaping at the man. It’s not the first time, is it?” he hollered.

“Yes, sir.”
The boy meekly gathered up the parcels in a bag and carried them to the back.

The butcher shook his head again but this time in frustration. “You can’t get good help these days.” He handed over the bills.

“Can you trust him?”  Jared asked cautiously.

“Eric?” the butcher huffed.
“Of course. If he had to squeal, he would have done it long ago. You’re still alive, aren’t ya?”

Jared stuffed the money into his pocket. “Just being careful, Duncan.”

“Well, then stop wrapping the meat in leaves, will ya?” he growled. He bent down and gathered a fistful of paper. “It’s a dead giveaway.”

Jared pursed his lips.
The butcher was right. Those leaves could only be found in the forest. But he had been too proud to ask for any paper. It was a risk he had taken all these years. It was only fortunate that he was never searched. He somehow felt that it was Wolf’s presence that deterred any sentinel from approaching him. But there was no law against having canine pets, was there?

“Your dog is sure scary,” the butcher muttered, watching it march anxiously outside his store.

“He’s only a husky.”

“Have you seen its teeth when
it snarls? That thing looks no dog to me then,” the butcher spat out.

“
He’s a dog. That’s what dogs do.”

“
Just keep it away from me is all I ask,” he grumbled. The bell tinkled again. “Will there be anything else, Jared?” His voice immediately dropped to a polite tone.

It was enough of a cue for Jared to exit the store. “That will be all, thanks Duncan.” He smiled at the customers beside him, before walking out the door.

*****

“Ma,” he called out
, announcing his arrival.