The Hunt (2 page)

“Movie.  Random. Start”

“The Notebook” started playing on the large screen.  Marcus rolled his eyes and quickly gave Jocelyn another command. 

“Jocelyn, Stop movie and while you are at it, delete it. Start something with a little action in it.”

“The Avengers” started playing on the screen, but as much as Marcus enjoyed that movie, in about 20 minutes into it, Marcus was sound asleep.

Chapter 2

Jocelyn woke him promptly at 6:00 a.m. the next morning.  Marcus grumbled and slowly sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Good morning sunshine” Jocelyn quipped.  Marcus could swear that with all his efforts to humanize Jocelyn that it was actually beginning to work.  The only problem with that was that apparently she was beginning to learn sarcasm.   He chuckled to himself.

“Thanks a lot, you over grown Xbox.”

“My capabilities far exceed those of the first generation Xbox’s.  One of my CPUs alone is able to perform more than a quadrillion more calculations in a second than….”

Frustrated, Marcus said, “Never mind.”  Apparently the humanization of Jocelyn still had a lot of work to be done.  “I’m going to go take a shower.”

As he got out of the shower he could smell the fresh brewed coffee wafting through the house. Although he had long since run out of the precious commodity, he had actually been able to grow coffee in his small greenhouse. It may not have been Juan Valdez that had personally picked his coffee beans but he was thrilled that he was able to replicate the process and produce some relatively decent coffee.  He dressed in some camouflage to fully cover his 6’4” frame. He had found most of his clothing from going through several of the large sporting goods stores that populated the southeast. After he finished dressing, he looked in the mirror to examine himself a little closer. He was tall with an athletic build.  He had a few days worth of stubble on his face, because he didn’t like a beard but he hated shaving about as much.  His curly blond hair could probably use a comb but with no one to impress, he usually just let it go. Anyway, who needs combed hair when you have your favorite Georgia Bulldogs’ hat on?  He put it on his head and smiled. Satisfied with his appearance he went to the kitchen.  He poured himself a cup of coffee and went about fixing his breakfast.  He fried the last of the ham from one of the pigs he had slaughtered last spring.  He sure did miss ole Bud but he did make a fine sandwich in the morning.  He smiled to himself.  Bud had served his purpose and Marcus appreciated it very much. Marcus spoke out in his best old time southern drawl, “Looks like its awmost hawg killin’ time agin.” 

Old accents seemed to have almost died out but Marcus did love to hear the English language spoken with the old Appalachian drawl that originated in the mountains where his grandparents were raised.  His grandparents had emailed Marcus the entire series file of the “The Andy Griffith show on his eighth birthday.  It was very popular about a hundred years ago.   He had watched the entire series the first week he had it.  Still smiling, he finished up his breakfast and went to his bedroom. Large by normal standards, his bedroom had a king size bed on the far wall as you entered. Besides the entry door, the room had two doors on each side of the bed. The one on the right was the bathroom.  He walked over and went through the left hand door and traveled a hallway for ten feet and came to another door.

“Thunder, four, one, zero, six, seven” He said quietly.

There were a loud click and the sound of metal moving again and door swung open to a stairway leading down about twenty feet to another door. Marcus walked down the steps and went into what he called his “batcave”.  The lights came on automatically when he entered the room.  The room was about twenty feet square with a large bed on one wall.  Almost identical to the flat screen up stairs, another one stretched out on one wall with a large couch in front of it.  The right hand wall looked like something out of a military base.  Weapon after weapon lined the wall.  Rifles, pistols, machine guns, shotguns, grenades, knives, and of course… his favorite… the ZF7 Precision Sniper Rifle.  That thing could shoot the wings off of a fly at a thousand yards.  Provided of course, that the shooter knew how to handle a gun and Marcus did. It also packed enough punch to blow a hole through twelve inches of concrete.  He paused momentarily as he passed it but moved on to the antique Remington 700 rifle. It was in pristine condition. He was almost positive that he wouldn’t be able to take the cat today.  Today was primarily for tracking and setting up the killing field for taking the monster. Hopefully he wouldn’t run across any other problems.  He strapped the large twelve inch hunting knife to his right thigh.  He then took a .44 magnum classic Desert Eagle off the wall, placed it in its holster and strapped it to his waist.

“Go ahead punk, make my day…” he said out loud and then laughed a little.  Then Marcus yanked the Eagle back out of his holster and drew down on his invisible foe.  Marcus thought, “Dirty Harry didn’t have anything on me” and he laughed some more. He sure did like the old movies.

After looking over his assortment of solar powered micro cameras and sensors, he chose about 5 of the most reliable, put them in his backpack and strapped it on.  Then he took the 700 and using the strap, slung it across his right shoulder, grabbed the necessary ammo and went back upstairs. As he strode through the front door, he initiated lock down.

“Dragon, one, five.”

You could hear the internal doors, windows, and barriers locking into place.  As Marcus walked over the courtyard, he noted that today was going to be a windy, fall day.  That made it harder to tell if anything was approaching him.  The cat was stealthy anyways but this just made it worse.  It was better to be safe than sorry, so he decided to load one of the small military sensor arrays and a small solar defense shield on the four-wheeler.  The sensor array could detect any physical movement within a half mile radius.  Although it could protect you from attack, the portable shield didn’t keep you from wrecking or being knocked around by an outside force and if you were knocked around enough the shield could fail.  It was controlled by the main computer in his compound.

After loading up, Marcus drove down a small path that branched off the main road through his compound and went about three quarters of a mile back through the wooded area behind his house. After topping a small hill in the woods, the area opened up to a small barn and pasture on the right.  Further on his right was a small stream that eventually flowed into the lake that covered the entire northeastern section of his canopy. He had built a small lot to the left rear of the barn where he had four pigs enclosed.  The pasture housed a couple of cows and a bull.  He had set up an automatic feeding system but he only used it on occasion.  He liked to feed the animals to keep them accustomed to his presence.  He fed the animals then loaded back up on the four-wheeler and headed back to the central part of the canopy.  As he approached the main road he turned left instead of right which led back to the house. After about a quarter mile, he crossed a small bridge that spanned the stream.  He stopped briefly on the bridge to look at the water flowing below.  He had caught some nice brown trout in that stream last week but had let them go because he was still trying to get the stream stocked.  He travelled several times to some of the streams near the Tennessee-North Carolina border and had netted and brought back several. As he was focused intently on the water, a nice rainbow trout broke the surface in pursuit of a large fly.  Marcus smiled.  It looked like it was working.  Turning his focus to the four-wheeler, he put it in gear again and headed in the way he had been going.

Marcus was trying to remind himself where camera 37 was located.  He had an idea close to where he needed to go but he knew it wasn’t going to be easy.  The area was heavily wooded. You could drive through it but you had to work back and forth because there wasn’t a cleared path.  It took about thirty minutes but he finally reached the small clearing where the cat was seen and stopped just inside the edge of the canopy.  He turned on the array and gave it few seconds to fully scan the area.  It picked up several decent sized animals to the northwest but they were inside the canopy and too small to be the cat from yesterday.  Noticing the size, location, and grouping, Marcus figured that this was a small herd of deer and the array confirmed that. After his cursory look, he decided it was probably best to program the array to eliminate deer and any of the other commonly seen herbivores. After doing this he was able to tell here wasn’t anything close that would be a danger to him.  He set it to scan mode and enabled the alarms.  He didn’t turn on the shield.  While the shield was engaged, it drained the battery at a very fast pace and it caused a steep decline in power overall to the machine.  He would only use it if necessary.

He shifted the four-wheeler into first and eased through the edge of the canopy.  There was always that feeling when you passed out of the protection of the canopy, that the safety net was gone and you were walking the high wire without it.  These were extremely dangerous times and those who weren’t cautious usually ended up dead.  Still nothing from the array, so he stepped off the ATV and began to look around the area.  He noted incredulously the sheer size of the paw prints left by the beast.  From all indications, the cat had been hunting the surrounding area because you could also see a commonly travelled game trail that came through here.  First thought was just to bait him right here and set inside the safety of the canopy and wait but it could be days or weeks depending on how successful the saber tooth was at hunting.  Letting him continue could also upset the game patterns in the area and when your success as a hunter directly affects your chance of survival, then it was serious business. 

After a few minutes Marcus got back on the ATV and headed off down the game trail.  He followed it for over three miles and there was still nothing coming through on the array.  He went down a smaller hill and then back up another hill.  As he crested the top, the trees opened up and he was in an open area and from what he could tell he wasn’t far from the small roadway that travelled the length of the mountain.  About three hundred yards away, at the end of the field was a house that he hadn’t seen before.  He thought he had actually visited every house in the area and had pilfered just about everything that was useful and had carried them to his compound but apparently he had been wrong.

It was still only mid morning, so after some debate, Marcus decided that he had plenty of time to investigate the house and see if there was anything worth taking and still find the spot he thought would be the best for taking the cat. 

Chapter 3

He still didn’t know how he had missed this house, especially when it was only a few miles from his little compound.  Of course if you came at the house from any other angle than the one that he just did you would probably never notice the house there. He drove up into the front yard which must have been well kept and cared for at one time.  Although mostly overrun with weeds, saplings, and vines, you could still see a broken down birdbath, concrete picnic table, and a couple of those concrete benches in the undergrowth.  The house was a split level log home with a faded red tin roof and solar panels.  For the most part, it looked intact.  The right hand section of the front porch looked like it had sustained some damage from a fallen pine tree that stretched across the ground on one side of the front yard.  He thought of turning the bike completely off but his sensory array was being powered by the ATV so he left it alone and turned up the volume on his audio alarm.

Leaving the 700 in the boot attached to the four-wheeler, he unholstered his 44 and unsheathed his knife.  It looked like he was going to have to hack his way in through some of the undergrowth to get to the front door.  After about thirty minutes of work he was able to step on to the first step leading up to the front porch. He was impressed at how well the house was made.  It had withstood the elements and total isolation very well.  The front porch swing was somewhat askew, but that could be due to the fact that one of the limbs from the fallen pine tree had crashed through it.  After cutting his way through to the front door, Marcus sheathed his knife and transferred his 44 to his right hand and tried the door handle with his left.  Surprisingly, the knob turned with relative ease and was unlocked.  Although stiff, the front door opened rather easily. 

“Lights?”  Marcus said in an almost question.

Although it seemed there was some slight hesitation, the lights flickered and flashed finally illuminating a large living room. Marcus was thrilled that they still worked.  From the looks of things, he was the first person to be in this house in the last five years. It was dusty and there were some cobwebs around but other than that it was in decent shape. He went from room to room looking for anything useful.  After visiting the kitchen, he knew he was going to have to come back with the truck.  The cabinets and food pantry were fully stocked with an enormous supply of food. 

About fifty years ago, Pristine Packing had invented a container that would not only preserve food in a perfect state but would also keep it sealed for hundreds of years with no refrigeration and with no preservatives added.  The shelves were lined with these and between the cabinets and food pantry; he thought he could fill up a pickup truck.  It still puzzled him as to how he had missed this treasure trove. Whoever had owned this had hid it with the intention of it staying hid.  It wasn’t on any of the maps he had found in the county seat that were located in the valley.  As he was still checking the cabinets and celebrating his find… all of a sudden the perimeter alarm shrieked to life on the ATV. 

“Warning! Warning!, Warning!” the sensor array blared through his earpiece and speaker on the ATV.

Marcus rushed to the front door. He only cracked it open.  The alarm array’s volume was set to gradually rise as the object approaches and he could tell by the volume of the alarm that whatever was coming was moving extremely fast. As he opened the door slightly, he muted the alarm with his remote and glanced to his right. A large female whitetail came barreling over the crest of the rise faster than he had ever seen one run.  Confused, Marcus said to himself. “I wonder if there’s a problem with the array.  A deer shouldn’t have triggered the alarm.” He almost decided to walk out and check it when the enormous saber tooth topped the hill coming his way.  He then understood.  The array didn’t pick up the deer; it had picked up the saber tooth.  The animal was slowing because it realized that the doe had gone into the dense undergrowth of the forest.  Marcus eased the door shut and moved over to gain a better vantage point, to see what the cat was doing without being seen.  Marcus could have kicked himself for not bringing the 700 in with him.  It was still in the boot bolted to the side of the four-wheeler, which the saber tooth, sniffing the air, was now circling slowly.  He had the .44 but it would be tough to bring down a beast such as this with a handgun. Despite being nervously on edge, Marcus laughed to himself.  What was that tiger that He-man rode in those ancient cartoons?  Battlecat… You could call him Battlekitten compared to that enormous fanged creature out there.  The cat circled the ATV a couple of times.  He paused for a minute, lifted up his head and sniffed the air.  He eyed the house for a moment.  The cat then bounded off in the direction the deer went and Marcus breathed a sigh of relief.