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Chapters ONE, TWO, & THREE
Chapter ONE
BEHIND EVERY TREE
(August 11th, 2047)
It was like viewing brimstone walking casually, shaded in a golden-red fire and shifting in an armor of black wind. It was the strangest sight, and the most apparent to his eyes as they watched, set, and settled on the two targets moving guiltily behind every tree.
There was no sweat, as he felt the pressure of the string becoming stretched and hugged to his side, the carbon fibers bluntly coiled in his stiff fingers.
The two were looking for something, that much was evident. Nick could see it in their faces, as they turned in all directions, their bodies moving like lost children. They did not know these trees, this forest like he did, as he kept watch on their presence. Sat in the comforting arms of a rattled pine tree, needles guarding him like some enormous sea urchin. Though, as they moved closer to him, the pressure under his fingers kept growing, by fractions of inches.
Soon there was a clear opening to one of the two, and he could not pass up the opportunity. The composite bow, with blunt blades forming at the ends and turning small wheels within the structure, bent back, as it raised up to the length of his sitting body. With the center of his legs, the area of bend, opposite his knees, he grappled the strong branch of the pine, as the arrow stretched with the full pressure of the string.
Looking down at the sight, he watched to see the movement of a hawk feather stitched upside-down along the bow from the arrow’s rest. He was only fifteen feet from the ground, and the feather didn’t waver. It was a very still and quiet midday.
Then, in a motion so graceful that dancers had only possessed it at one time, he released the arrow. Carefully letting his fingers fasten straight so that the string could all at once recoil. Something like a tiny steal dagger on a rod carried by a loon took flight.
In slow motion, one would witness the vibrations, the bow gathering composure while the string swayed from side to side as the arrow would wobble somewhat violently. This was all dependent on the class of carbon fibers used and the shot made by the archer. With the amazement being that the archer would almost completely stay motionless during the entire climax of the arrow’s release.
And there he was, still grappled, stiff as a statue and eyes still marked on his targets. He was a living painting of Apollo. The arrow transversed, past sound and branches, flying through air and into flesh, red smearing deep shades across brown dirt and grassy patches. Rocks with mold and background pines looking like gruesome hospital needles.
As the target fell to the ground, the arrow jumped within him on impact, the steal lying intimately inside of the man’s chest. His last few beats sounding of lullabies, putting the arrow to sleep.
For a second, as a hunter in the trees, he breathed deeply and recovered as he drew a second arrow. The sound of the other’s footsteps frantically ran over to the dead man resting with the Earth. Same path, different target, more blood to spill.
It was a harsh lifestyle.
He pulled the arrow against the string one more time, a hard kiss, and then blew. Turning his head down to the inside of his chest, when he heard the second man’s ribs crack, in the splitting sound of bones breaking, he couldn’t watch it enact again.
Then he felt something and raised his head. The feeling spread between the seams of his dirty blonde hair and ran over the tattered fur of his brown faux leather jacket. It even sipped its way along the stitches of his faded jeans.
He looked down at the hawk feather and watched the wind blow a single, long breath against him, the feather fluttering slightly to his left. Then, from the midst of nowhere fluttered a green darner, a dragonfly native to parts of America but rarely ever seen. Amongst many creatures of its kind, they were on the verge of extinction. As he reached out, the darner drew away and scattered towards the east.
He brought his hand back, a sense unlike any left him in awe. It was like a symbol he did not recognize, nor could read. Regaining his composure, he looked to the ground.
Climbing from branch to branch until he was a mere five feet from the earthly floor, bow wrapped around his chest and arrows kept quiet in a quiver carried on his back, he jumped. Rolling his feet he moved from the tips of his toes onto the ball barring of his knees and rolled from his head, back to the flat outstretch of his feet.
He always remembered the times he would fuck up, his feet landing the wrong way or going so straight that the top of his bow would impale his body upon landing, or crashing, depending on one’s point of view. It was a tricky act that took much practice, landing precisely and rolling at an angle so that everything rose in accordance. It was an act that made many good failures before he had perfected it.
Walking over to the bodies, he made certain that no others were around, watching him as he had them. But he stopped with a fearful expression. Bent on knees over the dead, he brushed his hands along one of the two men’s shoulders. They were both military scouts, patches on their left arms, embroidered with America’s Special Services symbol on fine linen and in close knits.
An eye wrapped inside of a triangle …
Chapter TWO
Catch of the Day
Tommy studied the map on the table, inked black and red, with circles designating points of interest encrypted all along the grayish white of the beaten paper. He marked down two new spots on the map, in red pen, and left the base camp to find his friends. One of which was in his immediate sights.
“Josh, go check the map, I set up two more traps along the western slope.” He yelled, with Josh from a distance counting supplies, the way a scribe usually works.
It took Josh a second, when recording he was always very focused. But as he finished, swiping the numbers from his pen and looking back to Tommy, with a nod he replied, “All right, what kind of traps this time?”
“Pitfalls, there’s one that took me all day yesterday to dig out, and then a log trap that I finally finished.”
“You mean the log trap from last month? You finally fucking finished that thing?”
“You try building one sometime.” He spoke, as Josh laughed.
Although Tommy was somewhat more serious, he didn’t take his companion’s laughter as anything more than a lighthearted expression, especially around camp.
“I’m gonna’ go check on the snares, I’ll be back before nightfall.”
“Hopefully with some food?” Josh begged, between checking the bags of rice and dried peas within the nearby shed.
“Hopefully …” Tommy stated, walking out with a sack over his left shoulder and a rifle.
The XM22 enhanced sniper rifle fitted with a mounted scope and modified 8-shot bolt-action clip, designed for accuracy in urban areas, now strapped over his right shoulder. Tommy always looked back to see the rifle folded, by design, the gun itself looking like two halves of a broken weapon sewn together.
His canteen of water shuffled along his hip, his cargo pants carrying a variety of tools and useful things that even a mechanic or a plumber would argue against owning. A deep green turtleneck sweatshirt kept him cool in the plummeting autumn air. Though, not a bead of sweat fell, as he worked his way over and up hills, jumping over rocks, his loose cameo pants breaking a sort of light current in the air.
This forest was his home; had been his home for over three years now. He knew its backends and forefronts like a tour guide knows the words to a brochure. His living room, family room, kitchen, and bathroom were made up of outstretched miles of land. Land that he never had the pleasure of enjoying himself, before his transition out of civilization and later from the war.
He stopped at a cliff. One he used for a vantage, to overlook several traps he had set. It took a few minutes, but from his detached scope he would pick apart details in the dirt and along the bark of trees. Then, he would reach from the belly of his back for his XM22.
His rifle was his friend, his companion, one he brought back from the war. Attaching its scope once more, he snapped its folded parts into one single weapon. Held heavily in his hands, with a firm palm, it became a welcoming handshake and the two sat atop of the cliff together.
Viewing through the red-dot sight again, the fine sharpness of the blackened steel balancing on the horizon, he maneuvered through the woods from a distance. Trap one still was untouched. “What a shame.” he thought. Trap two, which had been cleverly positioned between a friendly gap under the shade of two tall spruces, was also still set. Another downward step in a spiral of survival.
Though, he didn’t let this dampen his spirit for long, as he looked across the furthest point to the third trap, positioned in an area where he had seen rabbits gather. It had a tempered movement and color that didn’t match the rest of the woods, so he assumed that the trap had been sprung.
From the cliff there was a natural staircase made of stones, with underbellies laden with mosses and insects that glided down the cliff feet away from the vantage point. He climbed down, the grasp on each rock rough, while his muscles surged as power lines do.
At the bottom he would always look up, as it was a trained habit. One he recalled from scattering around the bunkers raised among the trenches to take out gunners. He’d always imagine those gatling machine guns firing from above, sparks like fireworks searing lines in the sky overhead.
He moved in and saw the poor animal struggling to be unbound. He never enjoyed killing innocent things, but for survival it was more than a necessity. From his belt he lifted his combat knife and kept it close to the deer’s neck.
The worst, which he usually avoided, was looking into the creature’s eyes. And in the deer’s, he knew from heart, were tears of panic. He turned all his emotions off, his brain shutting down in a singular path. There was no deer or world around him.
He was all that existed.
“I’m sorry.” He told the creature, in apathy as it still scurried along the fallen pine needles and broken bark on the ground.
With one hand he grabbed the deer by the back of its neck, a soft spot on mammals that usually consisted of extra skin and potentially harmless when gripped. With his other hand he shaved the knife across its throat. He only saw the neck as it drained, he never looked near the eyes, those damning mirrors of life.
After servicing parts of the deer, he placed what meat he could inside the bag, with the sounds of falling flesh rattling against the plastic that lined the inside. He lifted himself and heard another movement straining upwards from the foliage nearby.
Staying silent and lifeless, he looked to his side to find another deer in the not so far distance, grazing on a patch of tall grass. It was his lucky day.
The world stopped turning for minutes at a time, and the deer did not see him. As he kept his sights on it, his hands moving slowly, he drew his rifle forward as if it was a mine about to detonate with the slightest pulse of movement. Engulfed by the shadows of the forest, he crept forward like a walking shade.
His body became mechanical. Each part of him from the top of his head to the bones in his toes moved in conjunction. As his arms reached, he pulled the barrel from the bottom of the fore-stock and knocked it to the chamber. He pressed the rifle to his gaze as his bent legs paced closer.
His neck began curling, pressing his head past his chest and his feet clenching the inside of his boots. The rifle was positioned, and his eyes kept with the scope. Within his pupil, a bullet had already ignited.
Hunched and bent perfectly over, in the shape of a human sphere, he waited for the right moment. The moment when the world would turn again. Then it came, and the echoing noise being suppressed by a built-on compressor mounted onto the barrel fired. Yet, the smell of gunpowder flew upward in the canopy of trees to the birds. That much was unavoidable, as he looked to the dead.
Josh was in the shed, which acted like a library. The bookshelves, so to speak, were stacked with bags of dried rice, peas, and corn. There were jugs of water on the elevated shelves, and firewood at the base. At the top were rows of paper, pens, and other assorted objects of interest that, at one point in time, were considered dollar-store garbage. Lines of vitamins, and containers of preserved fruits and vegetables were placed precisely in position. While boxes of matches were cleverly sat in a plastic container away from anything flammable or of value.
Outside, he opened the back of the trio’s Jeep. Containers of gasoline, extra bulk sized packages of batteries and wires were neatly formed in groups in the lowered back seats.
“I’ll have to ask Tommy how we’re doing on power.” He spoke to himself.
Remembering all the cords that ran through their base camp and how many solar panels were stationed at the peaks of trees and to the sides of some illuminated cliffs. There were two backup solar panels in the Jeep, something they might need to consider in time.
Down by the stream they had installed a hydraulic energy system that worked off the flow of the current. The simplistic turning of wheels, and the production of low-grade energy that continuously formed.
“Give it another hour …” he said, as if speaking to the birds or the water.
The little waves and soft ripples somehow speaking a language no man or woman could comprehend. Though perhaps a child would hear more, by imagination or more.
But Josh was no child. In his time away from civilization, he became a man. He looked down at his hands, to the pen and paper, and how they did not entirely fit with his calloused fingers and toughened skin.
He was used to the steel, the warmth that configured to his fingers which guided metal plates. In the past, he controlled the flow of operations and recalled the assembly of wartime assets.
Not the greens of the forest, which he had fallen in love with. More than the smog-filled factories. But it was also the greens that punched numbers inside of screens. He wasn’t just a manufacturer; he was the executive, in charge of rising stocks.
Shaking his head out of his disillusion, he scouted around the base. Walking over to a weekender shed that Nick and he had purchased before the move. Everything seemed all right, there was a loose tile on the roof that might need fixing soon.
Otherwise, the place was as fine as a well-dressed Valentine in mid-February. It was small though. If you were a person who suffered from claustrophobia, then this would be your hell in a cage. But for the three, it was a comfortable convenience.
The bedroom contained one king-size-plus bed for the three to share at night. While the main room held a few cabinets that stored salted meat, cut and tenderized then placed into boxes coated in wax. It made the boxes easier to clean afterwards.
There was a knife set for cooking, and a wood oven stove for heat. Along with a worn but softened sofa for lax times.
The final piece of the checklist was, of course, savored for last. The restroom, a large hand-dug hole with a board of wood and a hole cut out and placed over. What was unique about their design was wooden stakes, partially soaked in gasoline and dried, buried into the hole. Not only to hold the board, but also to burn the waste after its final use.
Josh held up a measuring stick, a long twig from an oak tree they had picked up long before they had the storage shed built. Shoving it through the stink hole like a knife gutting the insides of a festering corpse, before extracting it. If the mark didn’t reach the second stump from the top of the branch, their faculties would be fine; and so, it was.
As he recorded the statistics, he saw the numbers aligning. Wanting to be written out, they had a need to please him, so he continued with his work. He went outside, it was getting cooler, the sun halfway towards the end of the mountains that surrounded them, and he figured they had two hours before dusk dreamt in.
With a small nap sack and an old, heavy suitcoat, he set outward to gather plants and berries for the remainder of the day. But before exiting the camp, he saw Tommy in the distance. With half of a doe carried in his hands and against his back, tugged next to his rifle like two friends in solitude.
“What the hell is that!” Josh stated with utter excitement, his face lighting up.
“Don’t just stand there, help me get this to the stump.”
What Tommy meant by the “stump” was a large, flat-faced log from a very old tree that had been cut down many years ago, which they used for cutting their meat. That’s if the meat had not yet been cut in the wild, as Tommy’s other sack had suggested.
The two lugged the carcass over, near the Jeep where the stump sat. Falling to the blood-stained bark, it gave the wood a petrified wine-red coating. The deer was laid out, ready for slaughter. Tommy, stretching his arms and twisting his joints from the tiring walk back, prepared himself for one more amputation.
“This is great,” Josh replied, astounded by Tommy’s catch, “this is gonna’ make a great meal. All we had left in the cabinets were some squirrel and crow, but this …damn!”
“As long as we can get Nick to cook it.” he honed onto the thought, readying his combat knife once again, “Where is Nick, anyhow? He should be back by now.”
Somehow, Tommy’s words couldn’t have arrived sooner, as they both heard something big being dragged through the wilderness nearby. They both leapt up and ran towards its origins, Tommy retrieved his Colt 1911, along with Josh who followed behind with a pair of sharpened Thunderbolt throwing knives.
Over a ridge they prepared themselves but quickly settled as they saw Nick hauling a body up from the hillside. As he looked up, his body struggled with the final few feet into camp. He looked at the two with beads of sweat.
“I bet you can’t beat my catch of the day.” Somehow smiling at the two, as they came down to assist.
Chapter THREE
The Humming Wind
“Soldiers? What would the military be doing out here?” Josh asked, knowing that Nick or Tommy would have an answer.
But neither of them did, and by the nod of either’s heads, the answer became immediate. There was no reason why. At least, not an obvious one.
“They’re not from any of our battalions. I can’t even read the rank on the two, but-”
“The two!” Josh and Tommy spoke together. Nick had forgotten to mention the second soldier.
“Yeah, we’ll have to get the other guy in the morning, just so nobody else finds him first. But the rank, I’d guess he was just a normal soldier. There’s only the specs insignia on his arm. But no bars, stars, or leveling symbols that suggest otherwise; just the emblem.” Nick looked to Tommy for support. They both had reached the same rank at one point.
Josh waited, hoping for something more to emerge. But there was only a covert, lasting silence that held all three of them in a grim, darkening grip. The unknown was an unsettling place to be.
“The government doesn’t send militants into the wild for no reason.” Tommy nudged Nick, the thought sitting uneasy in his head.
“So, if the military has found us …” Josh spoke, while pacing the camp.
“If the military had found us there’d be more than just two soldiers.” Nick exclaimed.
“They must have an outpost nearby.” Tommy rebutted; he was certain that the military’s tactics hadn’t changed too much in the past few of years.
“How far away were they again?” Josh asked, tapping his fingertips together.
Nick looked and felt humiliated with himself, “I forgot to mention. It was in the middle of my weekly scout, I finally reached the five-mile marker. That’s when I saw them from a distance, shuffling through the brush and the trees.
They were at least another quarter mile out from where I was, though I probably wasn’t at the five-mile point, exactly …seeing as these two are most likely infantry scouts, I’d say they travelled a relatively long distance from where they were.
I waited until they moved near my position before I took the shots.” He was concerned as ever, being a scout before, he did his best to remember the trade.
“So, they crept in at about five miles on the north-eastern corner, past the fault line and outward toward the highway, which is what …like, ten miles from our location?” Tommy questioned, scanning the map which was now laid out across the table.
“Something like that.” Josh replied, thinking in a variable of possibilities that seemed to surround his head with ghosts.
“Scouts wouldn’t travel out more than five miles, would they?” Tommy was more than disturbed by this news, hoping that they could act sooner than later.
“It really depends. They weren’t camouflaged, and their gear wasn’t typical of light infantry, though I guess it doesn’t matter. If the scouts don’t respond within a 24-hour window, their superiors might instead.”
Tommy looked at Nick and intently said, “These are the Rockies, signals get lost here all the time.” He had the knowledge, a certain detained comprehension for electronics and their capabilities.
“In that case, they’ll probably travel for a day’s time and nest somewhere in the woods till morning and head back to the base camp by then, wherever that might be. I’d say we have a little more than a week to act, since our location hasn’t been relayed. Neither has the information of their deaths, just yet. Their leaders will most likely assume they’re still scouting the region, at least we can hope so.” Nick replied, nervous of the coming reaction from his fellow men.
“Well, what are the options?” Josh began.
“We fight or we flee, what else is there?” Tommy answered, with a grim flow in his voice caressing the inside of his mouth, spoken like paste from his tongue.
“We have the ammo and guns …I guess. But we have no idea how many more are out there. Or if there will be more.”
“I suppose I could further my tracking out into the north-eastern section. Though, I know, there’s only the fault line and the side of another mountain out there. If there is an army encampment, it has to be set on lower grounds, most likely near the highway for easy transportation.” Nick begrudgingly replied.
“Why?” Josh asked, not being much of an educated militant himself.
“Because placing a base camp, or any camp for that matter, high above the ground causes the camp to be susceptible to wind chill and altitudes exceeding that of a lower-level base camp. People think that cool air plummets, and it does, but that coolness never exceeds the wind and altitude conditions that I was talking about. Why do you think we set up camp in between?”
“And nearby roads provide excellent transportation of supplies and extra troops. It’s perfect for a small military base.” Tommy added, now wavering away from the map.
“Ok-ok, I don’t know why I asked. I’m a mathematician, not a goddamn geologist.” He laughed, remembering a year ago when the trio was figuring out their camps placement.
He had allowed Nick to dictate the location. And now that Josh looked back, he saw that Nick probably had a good reason for doing so.
“I should be sorry, Josh, I never really told you why either. I was just happy you had assumed I was right.” and the two laughed, the way very old friends do before the fear of death greets them with open arms.
They all sat, wood burning in the stove, the only light was reflected from the fire at all angles. The flames were warm, but the harsh chills from their worried bodies filled the room with an eerie plight. A window was open to let in fresh air and to alleviate the tension. As they each listened to the bristle of leaves being carried by the winds outside, they each found temporary serenity.
It was easy to tell when winter was on its way. They had already survived two winters; one more would just be a testament. The wind always rises, flocks of birds form clouds in the skies, and trees wither and wait for the sun to befriend kind lights the following season.
Nick had noticed a few pines, with enough of their needles turning to an orange and brown pigment. Tommy had watched the change in animal behavior set in the forest. And Josh could feel the fringed flow of water starting to freeze the tips of his fingers as he would wash his face in the nearby stream. Signs were everywhere, usually in nature. But also in their human instincts, which were overlooked often in the past.
With winter fretting the state of their camp, the three knew that time was not on their side. It was enough work to keep the camp stable during the first snow. But with the military, this only added to their displeasure.
“We’re at a crossroads.” Nick spoke apathetically to the stove fire.
Tommy looked over in disdained overture, “There is no crossroad, we have to move.”
“We don’t have enough room in the Jeep to transport everything.” Josh replied, knowing much better than the others what was kept for their survival. The amount of effort in transporting it all would be beyond substantial.
“Tommy, I have crops for the winter growing, about ready for harvest. I can’t just leave those, we need them. And Josh is right, we have way too much shit to move at once.” Nick proclaimed, hoping for a better solution to their situation.
“Then we do it over time. We have a week to move it all.”
“We can’t move our farms. And taking apart this camp will be hell enough!” angered that all his work was becoming ignored for some fantasy escape. “Those stations cannot be moved without damaging the plant’s roots and endangering their growth, there’s no way. We don’t even have a location to move to, not one that’s hidden like ours.”
“Yeah, Nick and I worked on camouflaging this place months before you even got back from service Tommy, there’s no way of sacrificing that work. Not to mention our hydraulic systems, the solar panels …” Josh butted in.
“You guys aren’t listening!” Tommy erupted, “Nick knows as well as I do, that if we don’t leave, we’re dead.”
And the silence suffocated the three like a disease again. It was the quietness that stuck to four walls and stayed there, watching with huge eyes implanted in the fabric.
“Locate their base first,” Tommy revived the conversation, a slight flutter of confidence in his voice. “We have traps all along the three-mile radius, maybe I could plant more around the two-mile markers and make sure all our solar arrays are hidden extra carefully. Josh, we’ll need you to keep everything stocked to its maximum capacity. We’ll probably be rationing our resources just to stay alive.”
Josh let out a gasp, “I keep storage on everything, every two weeks, and that’s a pain in the ass as is. You know you’ll be hunting a lot more, right? And the batteries will need to be checked much more often than-”
“And you’ll have to help gather more.” Nick replied, “We’ll all have to do a little more until I can track down the encampment. Then we’ll decide what our next move will be. Until that time, I suppose we wait.”
“Feels like the war again.” Tommy said.
“Just like the war, something like Gangneung?”
“I was thinking outside of Hong Kong, in Macau.” a smile of misery painted itself across Tommy’s lips, beneath the shag of ragged dark hairs growing into a five ‘o’clock shade.
“Sorry buddy, I never made it that far.” Nick smiled back, cuffing his fingers together, his dry skin rubbing enough to start a fire on the insides of his palms.
“Sorry guys, but I never even made it.” Josh joked and they all laughed hard, with guts ready to burst from stress, and the remaining squirrel that they had eaten earlier. It became a lighter place, eyes on the walls were closing and the three strolled into their bed where they slept with the window still cracked and the sounds of the wind humming.