The Hunt (4 page)

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 available 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. 

From here he was getting a magnificent view of the southern valley.  The valley looked peaceful and pleasant as ever.  After about another mile, Marcus finally came to the spot he had been thinking of.  The mountain had a small offset to the edge of the mountain that required the engineers to build a bridge across it.  He hoped that nothing had happened to the bridge and that it was in good shape.  Marcus stopped before crossing and got out and inspected the bridge.  Everything was fine.  Getting back in the SUV, he turned it around and backed the trailer on to the bridge at a perpendicular angle to the concrete barrier.  He grabbed the remote to the trailer before he got out of the SUV.  He looked the saber tooth over again.  It truly was a magnificent animal.  Magnificent but deadly.  Remembering what Jocelyn had told him about the cat being larger than normal; Marcus began to speculate on what other things the scientists had genetically altered.  With that, Marcus hit the buttons and the entire trailer raised vertically about two feet making it even with the top of the concrete barrier.  He clicked another button and the front of the trailer closest to the SUV began to raise and tilt the trailer at about a forty-five degree angle.  He raised it a few more degrees and just for a brief moment the cat and the goat held, then they began to slide slowly at first. Then, like a shot, they slipped over the edge of the bridge and plummeted below.  Marcus watched them as they fell about fifteen hundred feet to the bottom of the gorge and disappeared into the dense forest below.  He turned and looked at the trailer and the bloody mess that had been left.  Too bad the old car washes weren’t still in operation but at least he had a good pressure washer back at the compound.  He was going to need it.  He lowered the trailer and headed back.  The ride back was uneventful and he was back at the compound by early evening.  He unloaded the items he had retrieved from the log cabin, then parked the trailer, raised it up, and spent about two hours cleaning the SUV and the trailer.