Chapter Ten
“There is no greater communication between lives than when Hunting. Only in that moment, when the lines blur and death approaches, do you and your victim truly see life for what it is.”
–Hades, “Some Philosophical Shit”. 4 Years After.
* * *
So it begins again.
Leah left the boundary of the Lodge with a posse behind, their gear in hand. The sheepskin jacket with the exaggerated length she’d come to prefer had been swapped out with an older one that contained more internal pockets, her combat boots shone clean from a fresh polish, and her M16 rested in her arms. The other Hunters were all similarly dressed for the occasion, like the killers they were, ready to exterminate all in their path. She’d handpicked them each for that reason.
The truck could have picked them up at the Lodge, and she didn’t need to have her people march around with their weapons drawn, but there was value in making a show of it all. Pandemonium was in the throes of heavy hollowing, and her people needed an injection of hope to get them back on track. What better way than to see that the Head Huntress had their backs?
It worked too. The perpetual swarm of Asphodel’s shoppers gave way the moment Leah entered the street, their eyes swelling with glee as the Hunters marched past. The nature of the Hunt didn’t matter to them. All they cared about was that a group of their kind traveled beyond the Styx to get the resources the rest of them needed. Something worth dying over. That was enough.
Dwayne waited at the gate, his own MRAD sniper rifle packed in a case over his shoulder.
“Hope you’ve got the safety activated, at least. Wouldn’t want that thing going off before we’ve gotten in the trucks.” He chuckled. “Looking like a real rookie today, boss. Did all the sitting around make you forget how to Hunt?”
“Piss off, Dwayne. I know we won’t be needing these for days.” She grinned below her scarf. “Besides, I’m not the asshole wearing a bullet-proof helmet over a bullet-proof mask in the middle of sanctuary.”
“Can’t remember the day I ever thought of Pandemonium as a ‘sanctuary,’ but point taken. I guess we better get rolling then.”
Leah nodded and made for the truck. Dwayne was perhaps her best recruit after losing her last crew against Hades. Hunters were ruthless mercenaries at their core, and their leaders held loyalty to nothing more than the bounties they hoped to gain.
And it was in that truth that Dwayne became so easy to manage. He’d never had a reputation for honorable risk. Where others waltzed about without fear, he wore a ballistic mask inside Pandemonium lest a stray bullet strike his head, and tossed another helmet on top whenever he left the Styx. The moment a job became too dangerous, he’d pack his shit and go home without a second thought. Hell, he was one of the few who hadn’t bothered to join Hades in the Hunt against Leah. He knew how that battle would go down. Some were getting purged in a fight against her, and Dwayne would not be one of them. So when Leah brought the city back into controllable anarchy, he was the first to fall in line. Now her top lieutenant, he’d done well in helping to keep the peace.
Of course, Dwayne would also be the first to turn on Leah should the odds ever tilt against her. Just another reason that this needs to go smoothly, she considered.
“So what’s the job this time?” Dwayne asked as they hopped into the truck.
“Just some warehouse raids outside Oasis,” Leah explained. “We managed to find a few that shouldn’t have been stripped yet, and if those are dry, there are a few backup options further south. There might be a herd in the area, but it’s nothing we haven’t handled before. If we’re lucky, we could be there and back in less than a day.”
He glanced at the other two trucks behind, where a group of Styx security was loading up. “Quite a lot of heat we’re packing for a Hunt this straightforward.”
“Charon was already looking to pick up supplies, so I thought we’d kill two birds with one stone. Besides, you know how it is, Dwayne. You get a couple grunts out on a real Hunt, and next thing you know, they’re falling over themselves to form a crew of their own.”
“Still feels like overkill. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were playing this round cautious like me.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You got me. Been hearing a lot about folks leaving to pick up the bandit life, and there’s no better way to protect ourselves from them than boosting our ranks. Bandits only ever hit soft targets, and with this entourage, no one is harder than us out there.”
She also had her other concern, but no one else needed to know about that threat. Not when she still didn’t know it for herself.
“Yeah, been hearing the rumors of Hunters going rogue, though I heard that Declan came back at least.”
Leah turned his way and stared deep. “You hear about anything else?”
“No,” he replied, far too quickly.
So he either hadn’t heard about Liam and knew not to ask, or he had and was smart enough to pretend that he hadn’t. She supposed that either option worked. All that mattered was keeping everyone too scared to make this a big public story. The Hollowing would ensure that the memory eventually drifted out, so long as she got them back to Cheyenne sooner rather than later.
“Good,” Leah said. “Let’s get this over with then.”
* * *
Easiest Hunt of her life.
Oasis was an outpost they built inside the city of Phoenix, Texas, where old world tech was recycled into usable equipment. Pandemonium stood in Beverly Hills, which made the trek something that could be done in six hours or less by vehicle. The highways were clear, and enough open space lay along the way to simply off-road around any hazard they might face. With three hybrid trucks decked out with everything from reinforced steel plating to .30 cal minigun turrets to 40mm rocket launchers, it didn’t take much intelligence to know not to pick a fight with them. For those poor hollows who lacked that, they had enough armament at the ready to eviscerate any group of them without batting an eye.
Not that they needed to. As chance would have it, no herds bothered them on the initial drive up, and from what the workers at Oasis told her, it had been a quiet summer in their area.
The first two warehouse raids went by without incident. A paltry force of a hundred hollows interrupted them midway through the third, but Leah just used one of the trucks to double back and lure them into the nearest river. Why waste ammo when nature could solve the problem for them?
It wasn’t long before they were overloaded with everything they needed. Servos for machines, circuit boards for electrical equipment, gears and screws and bolts that were too small and precise to manufacture on their end. All wrapped in plastic by the humans who built them.
They could have gone straight home, but Leah took an elongated detour through the north, several hundred miles before looping back. Nothing could threaten them with their current gear, and she had the privilege of knowing that all her decisions were final and behind question.
Besides, Leah had her own reasons for exploring. She hadn’t left Pandemonium in months. That was too long to not remind herself of the nothingness that lay beyond the Styx. Of a world where the Hollowing claimed dominion. She had to see it for herself.
And Liam’s pursuers are hiding in these barrens somewhere. That much was clear. Leah had exhausted possible leads inside the city, so the only alternative lay somewhere in these untamed lands. With the new route that she’d plotted, they were in the general area where Liam and his family had fled. “Looking for new recruits” was the excuse she’d fed to the others to keep from snooping.
But this plan slowly eroded into the waste of time she knew it would be. Empty desert dominated the expanse between Las Vegas and Pandemonium, where the Mojave stretched as far as the eye could see. Nothing still flourished here, save for their own outposts.
Until something popped into view.
“Hold up,” Leah ordered to the driver.
The convoy rolled to a stop as Leah drew her binoculars.
“What you got, boss?” Dwayne asked.
She narrowed onto her target. “It’s humanoid, that’s for sure.”
“Think it might be a hollow.”
“No. They’re moving away from us.”
“Could be another dreg then.”
“Could be. Only one way to find out.” She drew her radio and put in the order.
Their engines hissed into action, and the trucks moved to intercept, spreading wide across the dusty plains to form the widest net. Leah’s rig barreled through the center as their target got larger and more clear. Thinned brown hair puffed out over a masculine face, revealing a Mark along the cheek that tore into his muscles beneath, along with some exposed teeth down to the gums. Much like her own Mark that she kept hidden below her scarf.
They made it within a hundred yards before the wanderer gave up his escape, knelt his head down, and threw his arms in the air. Their truck parked nearby, and Leah stepped out alone while Dwayne took aim from the minigun turret behind.
She held out her own hands wide to calm her target.
“Easy there, my friend,” Leah said. “You look like you can use some help.”
The guy kept his head bowed. His teeth grit where exposed.
“Can you talk?” Leah asked while the quiet lingered. “Gonna be a boring conversation if it’s on my own.”
“Yes,” he said at least.
“Then look me in the eye and let’s see where this goes.”
He raised his eyes slowly. The telltale red of a rezzer stained his irises, twisting what once must have been blue into deep violet. But hollowing had been hitting him hard, for a mantle of white cataracts had dimmed those same eyes into something duller and lighter.
“I’m Tristan,” he said. “Please, d-d-don’t hurt m-me.”
“My name’s Leah, and if I planned to kill you, it would’ve happened by now.”
Tristan blinked a few times as he considered the thought. “I j-j-just want to g-get aw-w-way.”
“Get away from where?”
“Not w-w-where. Them.”
“Okay. Then who is ‘them’?”
Tristan grit his teeth, his eyes watering.
“Come on, Tristan,” Leah said. “We were doing so well. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got enough firepower here to turn everything that you’ve ever seen into a pile of dust.” The other two trucks parked nearby as if to strengthen the point. “Why don’t we take a step back? Where did you come from, and what happened to cause you to leave? Tell me everything you can remember.” She turned around and snapped a finger. One of her guards nodded. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Another moment came and went before Tristan dared to speak. It was a nightmare understanding his story with such thick stutters, but Leah did her best to follow along. Her guard brought him some fresh meat, though the rest of her entourage stayed in the trucks behind. The guy was jittery as shit.
Apparently, Tristan belonged to an Enclave northeast. Perhaps as far as Utah, where the land was more fertile. He and a dozen others had gotten by raising a flock of sheep in a closed-off valley. From how he told it, they had formed a pretty strong community, with a palisade wall they doused in undead ichor to keep the hollows away and a couple spare guns to kill anything smarter. They even had some kind of election system to decide who’d be in charge, though Tristan never entered. All things considered, it might have been one of the most robust Enclaves out there.
Until someone else showed up.
“And who were they?” Leah asked.
“The Beholders,” Tristan said, blinking back tears. “They p-p-promised us salv-v-vation, b-but it was a l-l-lie.”
“They killed you as soon as they got in?”
He shook his head. “No, w-worse! We h-h-had to be b-baptized, they said. But it changed the others. It m-made them unr-r-recognizable. They forgot who they w-w-were.”
“In what way?”
“Just… Dif-f-ferent. They couldn’t th-think the s-s-same anymore. Their minds w-w-were trans-f-formed!”
What the hell could do that? Leah considered the possibilities but came up short. Too little information.
She handed him another hunk of meat. “Tell me about the Beholders, Tristan. What did they look like?”
“C-c-cloaks,” he coughed out. “Some with w-white. Others in b-b-black. The black cloaks w-were the most d-d-dangerous. They murdered Tobias when h-h-he refused to d-d-do their baptism.”
Leah perked an eyebrow at the sound of black cloaks. “Do you mean the Inquisitors?”
His pupils flashed in terror. “How d-did you know!?”
That proved it. “I think it’s time that you come with us.” If this guy had come across the same group that targeted Liam, she needed to get him back home, fed up, and properly interrogated. She held out a hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
Tristan looked at the bloody remnants of the free meal he’d received and licked his lips. “You m-m-mean it?”
“Yes. We’ve got a whole city of our kind waiting for you. Just take my hand, and it’ll be yours too.”
“A whole world,” he repeated before putting his palm in hers. She led him back to the truck, nice and easy.
But the moment they drew near, Tristan suddenly froze. One of Charon’s men opened the door for them, revealing his long black cloak that fell to the ground.
“No!” Tristan shrieked.
“Calm down,” Leah said. “He’s one of mine, not them.”
“Liar!” Tristan yanked himself free and swung his leg out. Leah tumbled into the dust.
Damn it. By the time she’d gotten her bearings, Tristan had cleared a healthy distance, bumbling away in a movement that was somewhere between an uncoordinated sprint and a stumble.
“Go!” Leah ordered her crew. “I want you to bring him to me. Alive!”
The lead truck roared in pursuit while Leah chased on foot, her own steps precise and disciplined. She couldn’t let him get away. She couldn’t afford to lose her only lead. If that meant hacking off Tristan’s arms and legs and throwing him in the barrel, then that was how this would go down.
This wasn’t just about Liam anymore. If there was a group out there strong enough to take out entire Enclaves and fucking with their reservoirs to boot, then it would be on her to beat them. Pandemonium’s security couldn’t be allowed to lapse. She needed to know who they were, where they came from, and most importantly, how many they had in their ranks.
She almost had him. Tristan scaled a hill where the truck couldn’t chase, but one of the guards crawled onto the roof with a harpoon gun and took aim. Any second now, they would have him.
But then the truck hit a bump as the shot went off. The harpoon flew high where it should’ve gone low. Leah was powerless as a puff of black mist burst from Tristan’s scalp. Right where the spear struck.
“Shit!” the guard swore. “Sorry about that, boss.”
Leah stared blankly. Just like that, she was back to where she started.
Alone and without answers.
