Nanowrimo 2011 - Day 14

The ground going away from the wall of vegetation rose to a ridge a few hundred feet away. The wall of dense trees and plants curved off to left and right. He really only had one option - head to the ridge and beyond it to the farm. Where were the others? He looked around and the only evidence that they might be anywhere close was the improvised stretcher under his feet.

An aroma caught James attention. The wind carried a smell that made his mouth water. He realized he was achingly hungry, and the smell just made things worse. It was as good as waking up to the smell of fresh-baked bread and cookies with the anticipation of breakfast ahead of you. With nothing else to guide him he took off toward the smell, up the gently sloping dirt, to the ridge where he was able to get a glimpse of the farm.

The farm. How did he know about that?

There was movement down below: two trucks were parked between outbuildings and boxes were being loaded onto the first. The second was more interesting. Its doors were closed and a pair of workers were lounging against them. At first glance they looked like a couple of guys taking a smoke break but there was a watchfulness to them that James noted, as if they were there to stop others from interfering with the content of this particular truck. James was intrigued, wanted to know more, especially if it helped answer the question of where the rest of the group had vanished to, but he was distracted. Workers had fumbled the loading of one of the boxes into the other truck and its contents had spilled. The smell that reached James was overwhelming. His feet were moving before his brain had caught up. Moving down the ridge was fun - like when he was a kid - getting faster and faster until his feet almost couldnt keep up. The distance to the outermost farm building closed quicker than he expected. At a dead sprint he moved between the buildings, between workers, and with a powerful leap landed inside the truck. Either the workers didnt care or something was afoot - no-one raised the alarm at his presence - they just keep plodding to and fro between the storage building and the truck, carrying boxes and loading them.

Deep inside the dark interior James pulled the flaps of a box open and found it contained a thick plastic bag filled with paste. He tore into that and lost all sense of himself as his hunger took control. He gulped down handful after handful until finally he’d had his fill. He sat back, sated, filled with a warm glow. Sleep tugged at him. It was worse than after the Christmas Turkey Dinner at his family gatherings. He would fall asleep then but this was deeper, more powerful, and as irresistible to him as the desire to feed had been. He curled up on boxes and slept not noticing as the last were loaded and the truck doors slammed shut with a bang. Sleep took him before he noticed the truck, and its partner, chugged away from the farm.

[SHAWNA - ROAD OF TRIALS]

Darkness. Not just the darkness of night, or the darkness of a room with curtains drawn, or even of being locked inside a box. Darkness. The darkness that comes when light may or may not be absent, but the ability to perceive it has been disabled. Or, in her case, burned. She had feigned death. It was easier. The man with the flame-thrower had moved on and when he was sufficiently past her, she stood in a single fluid movement, stepped in behind him and punched him in the back of the neck. He collapsed. She correlated echoes, gauging the two men dragging the unconscious form of Kat were just ahead of her and unaware of the loss of the third man of their party. She sent out an ultrasonic pulse - way above the hearing of a human being - to get an accurate echo location and that was her mistake. The two men dropped Kat onto hard-packed dirt and spun around pulling wicked looking handguns from their belts. Still acting on the assumption that they were human she advanced on them only to be met by a hail of gunfire. She had only pretended to go down last time. This time the slugs tore into her chassis and blasted vital processors and data storage to shreds. She turned her attack into a dive out of the line of fire.

For moments she thought she was going to be OK, that they would assume her dead, but two blows on her lower legs from behind proved that theory wrong. Using metal farm implements, shovels from the way that they bit into metal, plastic and synth-flesh, they rained blows down on her. She desperately shunted vital data away from the locations of the blows but they came fast and to random locations. She was only partly successful. Data preservation became her utmost priority - moving between storage nodes, compression, replication where there was space. Reports of severed limbs were filed away for later processing. Finally the blows stopped. Internal gyroscopes indicated what no other working sensor could: she had been moved. She was still for a length of time, before there was external signs of movement. Beyond that Shawna was powerless to do anything.

[KAT - ROAD OF TRIALS]

Kat knew her limits but was reasonably sure that an outlying farm like this wouldnt have a clue about her. Initial settlement patterns said to spread out, conquer the wilderness and that was what the colonists planned to do, up until their plans were usurped, perverted, twisted into a parody of what they were intended to be. Sure, settlers travelled outward, but as cattle for the farms. Those lucky enough to be deemed “unsuitable” as cattle were made to tend the farm. Kat was counting on the unworthy being in evidence. She would cut a swath through them all the way to the farmhouse. Speed. Determination. Obvious qualities once the plan was in action. The invisible had yet to be made known.

She used the dead space coming down from the ridge to gain speed and yet they corralled her near the last of the outbuildings. The three sons of the farm. Elder brothers to the two she had already seen dispatched. She laughed to herself. They were fast. She dodged. Weaved, sprinted and still they were on her. Circling. Biding their time. It would never have been a fair fight. The time had come to make a decision. She slowed enough for one to get close and landed a swift kick to his groin. His older brothers were upon her, fangs bared, and she gave herself to their embrace secure in the knowledge that she’d done what she could.

[LI - ROAD OF TRIALS]

Li had to admit, Shawna was impressive. Now that she bore little resemblance to an actual human, and internally given up on the pretence, she was a lot easier to deal with. Something had shifted. Li looked from Shawna back to the layout of the farm she’d sketched in the dirt. The accuracy was amazing. Inhuman. Just what they needed.

Kat looked at Shawna, and back to Li, “We cannot be sure that the two juveniles are the only one on the farm. We need a way to draw them out - a threat - and we need to take them down hard.”

The discussion had ranged all over the possibilities, there and back, a number of strategies. Eventually Li called it to a close.

“Shawna, I think you’re right, our top priority is getting to the shuttle. We dont have time to waste on walking there. We need those two delivery vehicles. And, yes, you’re right. I am the weak link in any fight we get into. Its down to you two on that with your individual strengths. I will play the only card I have left.”

Li reached down into her boot and pulled out her Scout Service ID card and held it up, “Contact from Earth, recognition, and something he will have to refer up the chain. He will want the reward for bringing me to whoever is in control of the shuttle.”

She looked at Kat, “Up for it?”

Kat nodded.

Li turned to Shawna, “I cant think of a faster way for us to get to the shuttle. You in?”

Shawna was still, focussed within. Then she spoke “We are.”

[LI - ROAD OF TRIALS]

The farmer turned out to be a man who looked to be in his middle fifties, and he took an immediate interest in Li, and kept referring to her as “my prize”. He insisted on her riding in the front seat of the first truck between a sickly young man - the driver - and the farmer himself. He didnt bother to check on his sons, just kept asking Li questions about Earth. In the distance she heard a single gunshot. She flinched. Finally she had come to understood that it had to be done. It didnt make it any easier to hear though. A scuffle near one of the outbuildings - more gunfire - and she sank into her seat. She felt so alone. What had become of her two companions she didnt know, she hoped that they had fared as well as she did. Meanwhile the farmer kept prattling on stopping only to congratulate, in sarcastic tones, the driver as they pulled away from the farm. His eyes were on Li. Every inch of him a predator. She shuddered. With his attention diverted, he didnt notice the second truck.

[KAT - ROAD OF TRIALS]

Kat had lost a lot of blood. The gambit paid off minutes later as she heard the two vampires in the truck cab thrashing around, succumbing to a form of anaphylactic shock, the result of her final (invisible) defense. The Watcher had been clear with her - as a Dhampir and the chosen one to cleanse the planet of the Vampire Menace, there were gifts woven into her genetic structure. She had their speed, reflexes, and strength. She also carried an engineered modification of the Vampire retrovirus that would only attack a Vampire. It had taken decades of research to create the virus she carried, it was the pinnacle of an entire teams dreams. It was engineered to induce anaphylactic shock and death should a Vampire feed on her. In the cab the 2 sons of the farmer died. The driver was too scared of the farmer do anything but drive.