Chương 304: fd10
Arc 1: Arrival
Part 10: Tracker
XxXxXxX
I moved as quickly as I could while maintaining stealth with Cortana providing feedback via my helmet. I could see a tall play structure in the back of the nearest house, and so based on Cortana's estimated distance to the targets I made for that backyard. A quick jump over the back fence and a scramble up a rope net had me high enough to see down the length of the block.
I almost immediately dropped down, pulling the sniper rifle from my back and sliding the barrel between two of the bars around the 'crow's nest' of the structure. While being a more primitive, and ammunition limited, weapon than my pistol it had the benefit of a more powerful scope and accuracy at a greater distance.
"Vocal analysis indicates three females, and at least six distinct male voices with at least three to six more extrapolated from the less distinct noise." Cortana's voice said in my ear as I sighted across the row of backyards to where I could see the activity.
Several backyards further into the neighborhood three dirty looking men were manhandling a young girl down the back steps out of a house. I could see a side gate that had probably been barred prior to this but was now swinging open and, through it, one of those heavy duty pickup trucks with the extra set of wheels. At least two men were already at the truck, and the sound of shots indicated that they were firing at either other survivors, or more likely some zombies.
"Forwarding discrete audio to you, Chief." Cortana said as I panned my scope back and forth, trying to get a feel for the terrain and locations of all targets.
"Come on, you little cunt." One of the men was saying, dragging the struggling girl by her arm. "We're gonna have some fun with you."
I had to remove my finger from the trigger of my rifle lest I react out of anger as I saw the man reach a hand down, groping between the girl's jean clad legs.
One of the other men pulled her away from the first man, turning her around in the process. The girl couldn't have been older than fourteen. My heart went cold. It didn't matter if these were the same bastards as that previous group I had eliminated. They were clearly of the same strain and were going to die.
"None of that, Butch. You know the rules. The chief gets first dibs on all the women we bring in." That was the second man, who was brandishing a large knife towards the aforenamed Butch while his other hand held the girl's arm tightly in its grasp.
"Ah, come on, Jameson, just a little taste? We don't have to tell the boss. Or we could do her like those tasty things we found a few weeks ago. Boss doesn't have to know we found some tail today."
I almost shot the bastard then and there, but Cortana had said there were three distinct female voices. I could only see one. And if there were at least six guys, unless they were all in the open and I could take them out fast enough, the girls were at risk.
"No way, Butch, I'm not risking his wrath a second time. You don't believe that story about Henry being stupid and getting bit, do you? No one was there 'cept the boss, no one to corroborate the story. Do you think he really wouldn't find out? Besides, he's the one who sent us here to retrieve these ones. Said he remembered seeing them holing up during the chaos."
"Let me go, you bastard!"
That was a new female voice, followed closely by a cry of "Chrissy!"
Two more men had exited the house, one bleeding from the side of his face. They were forcing a brunette girl, probably somewhere in her late teens or early twenties, out of the house. She was the one speaking, and her struggles increased in strength when she caught sight of the younger girl.
"Looks like a pair of sisters or at most cousins." I said to Cortana as I watched the action.
Six men so far, and I still hadn't caught sight of the third female. Was she already in the truck? No, the audio sensors on the APC would be picking her up from there, surely.
A crashing sound drew my attention back to the house, just in time to watch a large man come flying out through a bay window on the third story of the home. The man landed on his head and didn't move. It wasn't hard to tell that he was dead.
"Jesus Christ!" Butch said. "That last cunt's a fucking fighter, ain't she? Hope the chief lets us teach her a lesson."
Jameson just spat to the side and continued to drag the struggling teenager towards the truck. The two men behind him also dragged along the older teenager, both girls in a state of fear and shock after seeing the man fall off the roof.
Screams came from inside the house, shouting and more crashing noises before it went silent. I watched as the men loaded the first two girls into the back of the truck. A few minutes later, four more men came out of the house. One was carrying a tall, leggy blonde girl hung over his shoulder. She wasn't struggling, most likely unconscious. Given the fight she had given them, she was probably going to feel horrible when she regained consciousness.
"So ten men, not counting the deceased." Cortana tallied for me as I focused on considering my options.
"I could strike now." I said. "I can see them getting into the truck and two nearby cars. I could hit the engine blocks, taking the cars out of commission and forcing them to go for cover. Afterwards, I could snipe a few more if I had the shots, then abandon my rifle, drop to the ground and move around to flank them. Problem is, I can't guarantee that they will simply abandon the girls. They could even use them as shields."
I took a deep breath.
"And that doesn't solve the bigger problem. That there is a group within a day's drive of our camp doing this kind of thing. Sooner or later we are going to cross paths with them, possibly when we aren't prepared. But if I can follow them back to their camp, then I can hopefully sneak in and rescue the girls, before killing the fucking murdering rapist bastards."
"Are you sure you can track them, Chief?" Cortana asked as I shimmied down to the ground.
"Your audio sensors could pick out the voices and individualize them at this distance. Surely, you can track vehicle audio in this otherwise empty space at a distance great enough for us to follow without being seen, or at least noticed."
"And if they do realize they are being followed?" Cortana asked as I sprinted back down the road towards the APC, the sound of cars starting up coming faintly from behind me.
"Then I pray they don't have anything heavy enough to pierce my kinetic barriers and we take them out."
I ran to the back of the APC and climbed in, rather than the cab.
"Go, Cortana, don't lose them. I've got some gear to prepare."
I opened one of the crates and began preparing weapons.
I just hoped the preparation distracted me from the fact that my decision here, while better in the long run for everyone, was putting those young women in greater danger in the short term.
I could only pray that I managed to save them in the end.
XxXxXxX
I followed the bastards for hours, always staying just far enough back to avoid notice, relying on Cortana's sensors to track them. Night was starting to fall when they turned into a high school of all places. This was either their camp, a safe haven along the way to their camp, or simply some place they had decided to hole up for the night.
I decided I needed more intelligence on the situation and left the APC parked hidden behind a gas station up the road. Cortana was of course still linked into my suit, and ready to bring the APC when it became required.
I hated leaving Shep, my almost constant companion, behind but I really had no other choice.
Slowly and quietly I made my way through the woods nearby, eliminating a few curious zombies I found stuck in the mud or just wandering around. The noise from my weapon didn't travel very far, so I wasn't worried that it would warn the people in the camp.
My destination was not the high school itself but rather a house I could see over the woods, situated on top of a nearby rise that looked out over the school. That would give me my best vantage point for both observation and sniping.
The house turned out to be a two story farmhouse, older but in good condition. The backside of the ridge led down to some wide gentle pastures, one of which had some living cows in it. That had made me blink a couple of times, and it was only as an afterthought that I asked Cortana to mark the location on our map.
Cows could be really useful for the future and it might be a good idea to return here and gather a few if they were still alive. The fresh milk alone would be a godsend. I wonder if I can find some books on making cheese?
I took up a perch in a window on the second story and watched. I needed to get the lay of the land, and I had nothing but time. Haste would ruin this. My best chance was the wee hours of the night, after I'd observed their patterns and when the most of them would be asleep and their sentries groggy.
With a little luck and some guidance from above, I could do this without any of the girls getting hurt. Without any alarm raising the bulk of these bastards from their slumber until I had executed each and every one of them.
Because that's what I was going to do. I couldn't think of it as murder. The Old World was gone. Due process and trial by a jury of one's peers was no more. These bastards were rapists and murders at worst, simply accessories at best. The worst of humanity brought out by the end of days.
I had to think about it as execution or I was sure my will to perform the act would falter. The fight at the mall had been because of fear, an emotional response to Early's story. Afterwards I had wondered how I would handle in a situation where I had to consciously make the decision to kill another human being. I could wrap it up however I wanted. Call it execution, righteous vengeance, justifiable homicide in the defense of innocents.
What I was about to do would change me, I knew it. I was being forced to confront the fact that I had been treating everything so far like a video game. It made me wonder why I hadn't just named Shep Dogmeat when I found her. I guess maybe I saw Mass Effect as representing hope against great terror, while I always saw the Fallout games as a desperate struggle to survive when the world had collapsed.
It made me wonder why I didn't just abuse the technologies I could see in the Proteus System already, turn something into an impenetrable vehicular bunker, ignore the rest of the world until the system had enough energy to build something bigger and better. That was the 'safe' choice where survival was concerned. I had no emotional ties to anyone. I had no reason to rescue these girls except for holdovers from who I used to be.
All it led up to was that I had to stop treating this all like a videogame and take that one, hard step forward.
I returned my focus to the school below me and began to study it using a pair of night vision goggles.
I had plans to make.
XxXxXxX
It turned out that the situation was more complicated than I had previously thought. The main body of these bastards' camp was situated in the large football stadium the school had. The stadium was shaped like a concrete 'U' with stands ringing three sides. Two chain link fences closed off the open end of the 'U' and led into the main body of the school's parking lot. From my vantage point I could see the refreshment stand at one end of the 'U'. It and several nearby barbecues were apparently serving as the cook stations for the group. Assuming the water was still working, then the locker rooms probably served for bathrooms and washing. If not then there was a lake a bit larger than the one I now thought of as mine only a few miles away.
Vehicles and tents were set up at one end of the U and around the track encircling the field in a large oval. Very little was set on the field itself and after some thought I decided that was probably because it was an actual grass field. Probably someone there was smart enough to realize its potential as field space for crops. Even if they didn't need to do so yet, they were eventually going to run out of salvageable food supplies.
There were at least fifty or sixty people in the main camp and, surprisingly, they weren't all male or even appeared to be bastards. I saw a fair number of women and children doing various tasks around the camp. Most, but not all, of the men seemed to be gathered around the grills chatting and drinking.
The presence of the women and kids, who appeared to be part of the camp and not prisoners, made me hesitate. Perhaps they simply didn't know what these men were up to? There was no sign that the girls I had seen being taken had been brought to the stadium.
That started me looking over the rest of the school more thoroughly.
I eventually identified watch points around the school. One person appeared to be keeping a watch from the far side of the U relative to my current position. He also appeared to be focused on looking out over the school towards the road.
Another was keeping watch over the vehicles they had in the parking lot, while a third appeared to be keeping watch over the gymnasium on the other end of the school.
It was about the time that I noted the man keeping watch near the gymnasium that I became suspicious. Sure, the stadium had a field that could be largely protected and used for farming. But wouldn't the gym or hell any classroom have made a better and more secure residence to sleep and hide out from the zombies as well as the elements?
Shortly after that I noted a smaller grouping, originally hidden from my perch on the other side of a building close to the gymnasium. A taller, burly man who seemed to be in charge walked into view, flanked by two other men. I recognized one as being Butch, one of the bastards from the house.
I contemplated using the sniper rifle, but then decided that I was too close. The sound would warn everyone, and my chances of saving the girls would go down.
No, I had to do this more stealthily, and more directly.
My priority had to be saving those girls, not killing each and every one of these bastards. The fact that part of their group may not be aware of, or may be choosing to ignore, their bestial actions was enough.
Even if it wasn't, the innocent children in the camp told me that my best option would be a quick hit and run. Sneak up to the gymnasium, eliminate any and all guards, arm the girls and then call in Cortana with the APC.
If there were more girls than I could cram into it then we'd have to hijack some other vehicles in from the parking lot, and I couldn't do that alone.
I looked down at the pack I had brought with me.
Good thing I had brought more pistols than just my Suppressor.
XxXxXxX
Sneaking up to the school proved childishly easy. Only the occasional distant echo of a sound from the school broke the silence and I didn't encountered any roving patrols.
I decided that these bastards were so confident that they weren't even keeping any real watch out, even though they had to know the potential threats out there given they WERE one of those threats.
Ultimately, it was just making my job easier.
By the time I reached the gymnasium, the apparent leader and his cronies had disappeared. Maybe back to wherever they hung their hats. Maybe into the gymnasium.
That last made me shudder and I had to fight down the urge to move more urgently. It was dark out but not impossible to see me. My armor was helping with that a bit, the black coating practically disappearing into the night. I couldn't afford to alert any potential witnesses or threats until I was right up next to them.
I took a few minutes to carefully circle the gymnasium. I found three guards, two who I hadn't been able to spot from my earlier perch.
The first one I tested the twist-the-neck method. With the enhanced strength of my suit, it proved to be terrifyingly easy to do. I took it as a warning about remembering my strength and dragged the body behind a nearby wall.
The second one I took with an omni-blade to the back of the neck, severing his spinal column and preventing him from making any noise. Again, I quickly concealed the body from immediate discovery before continuing on.
The third guard turned and caught sight of me just as I was coming up on him. I was faster than the bastard was to react. He went down with a shot between the eyes before his cigarette had even left his mouth.
With three for three, I moved to a nearby fire escape and climbed to the roof of the gymnasium. Breaking in via a door on the roof was childishly easy and soon enough, I was looking down into the dimly lit gym from the upper set of bleachers.
There were at least six men in the building, at least that was how many were in the chamber.
Two of them had their pants around their ankles and were forcing a pair of women, girls really I suspected, to suck them off with guns placed to their heads.
The remaining three were surrounding two young girls who I recognized from the house earlier, the two who had been conscious when they were kidnapped. All four men had weapons that I could see, but none of them were actually in hand.
So, six to one odds then with two potential hostages. Even if I tried out some two-gun mojo, that wasn't good odds in a hostage situation.
I looked over the entire situation. There were at least six other women and girls curled up near the base of the bleachers on my side of the gym. Examining via my helmet's low light mode revealed that they were chained up, mostly using handcuffs.
Most of the active occupants were towards the far end of the gym right now, looking away from my direction.
Maybe, if I could do it fast enough and keep them quiet, I could free and arm a few of these girls. If I was quick, I could eliminate the two bastards getting sucked off before turning my aim on the technically unarmed bastards cornering their two newest victims.
Below me, laid out on one of the benches, the blonde who had been brought out of the house that afternoon stirred.
I had to act. Waiting would only get some of these girls killed.
Silently, I made my way down the bleachers, checking my weapon as I went.
No more waiting
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