Fanfic: A Hunter Captured Chapter 8: Day Seven: Secrets
Chapter 8: Day Seven: Secrets
Day Seven: Secrets
Chapter 8
The new hunter had to be processed and deloused before samples could be taken. It was worryingly easy. There were no growls. There were no struggles. A sudden jolt when the hoodie was removed, yet not the emotional dependency as had happened with Peter. Just lax muscle that didn’t resist as Stacey injected four times the lethal dose of Pancuronium into the jugular as the skin on arms and legs had hardened with scabrous boils and deep scars.
It had such a minimal effect, completely inefficient, yet this fact was caught with mild amusement by Stacey. He neglected to inject any more of the chemical for the rest of the spinal tap and chuckled lightly as the murderous hunter kept its body still, yet could not hide the tensing muscles that revealed its trickery. The only other person there was Lee as this hunter wouldn’t be getting the beauty treatment from Dr. May or Gwen, and Jameson was busy familiarizing the new refugees with the workings and expectations of the camp.
Once Lee was done retying the straps and ropes over the hunter, Stacey clapped him on the shoulder and grinned as wide as his wounds would let him. “You better watch out for this one. This Jack thinks it’s smart.”
Eyes wide and scared, Lee tried to match the grin and failed to. “Really? I mean, yeah, it’s bigger than Peter, but the mutt’s been a pushover.” Nonetheless, he held his rifle upright, hand on the trigger and stepped away, cautious and strung out.
The doctor shook his head and led Lee out of the room, to leave the hunter to stew on the observation table. “The bastard’s been able to move this entire time. It’s faking us out. I haven’t wasted anymore of the paralyzer on it.” He easily moved away when Lee whirled back and leveled his weapon at it.
It didn’t twitch like Peter when he cocked the trigger or noisily clicked the bullet chamber back in place. Breath cloying at his lungs as he shuddered in near panic, Lee saw that Stacey spoke the truth. “How the fuck could you touch it then? Why didn’t you say anything?”
A soft chuckle and a shake of his head, Stacey showed his lack of worry with disturbing ease. “What difference would it have made? It would have taken more time and Jameson would have thrown a fit at Dr. May about the dangers of it all.” He straightened his back, feeling the vertebrae settle in place and let out a stiff breath as his bruises throbbed dully back. “’Sides, what’s the worse it could do? Kill us? Don’t know about you, but this business has me not caring either way.”
Startled by the careless indifference, Lee set his gun down and marveled at the taller man, mouth quirked in an incredulous gape. “What’s wrong with you? It could have scratched one of us!” Because, at least for him, that was a lot worse.
Perceptive as he was, Stacey didn’t catch the obvious, but that’s what hindsight is for. “We’re immune, it doesn’t matter. Jameson’s still healthy.” He gripped the Dogcatcher by the shoulders to continue down the hallway. “You know, I’ll get in trouble if this gets out but you’re way too stressed.” The lilt of his words insinuated how that might be remedied.
Lee furrowed his brow and looked at the manicured hands that held him with quiet strength and decided to take the safer route of what he thought might be offered. “He’ll never let me get away with drinking or drugs. What do you have in mind?” He silently begged that that was it; he really didn’t want to deal with another unrequited stalker.
With a click of his tongue, the druggie doctor pulled out several packets from his lab coat and waved them right in front of the soldier’s face. “I have a stockpile of nicotine patches; takes the edge off without the health or addiction problems from cigarettes. Nobody will ever notice.” He wasn’t going to share the sweet stuff like Valium; he had those rationed for himself, but a fellow user to share the forbidden highs would be welcome company.
Even though he had never smoked in his life and actually did some activism to get it banned from his college, he snatched the packets from the doc’s hands and ripped one open. “You’ll hook me up? Why? It goes against the big man’s orders.” It took him a couple of tries to press it on right, but he got it to stick to his upper shoulder where he had seen commercials on TV teach him how. Anything to feel looser, to not have every nerve ready to burst at the slightest scare.
“He isn’t god or my daddy. A little help on the side is more beneficial than not.” He pulled out half a dozen more and pushed them into Lee’s front ammo pocket. “I like you, Lee. You remind me of myself. I don’t like working with infected either, but hey, gotta do it anyway. I’d rather have you watch my back when I finally get the go ahead to open one of these Jumping Jacks up.” There wasn’t any other normal person this deep into the experiment. Between the military psychos and iffy scientists, Stacey wanted to form a bond with someone that saw how messed up everything was getting. “Smith and Wesson creep me out. They like the boss and his way of doing things too much.”
Lee paused from placing a second patch on his other arm, a frantic memory of what happened to the guys who stole an AVC and supplies from under Jameson’s nose bubbling up. “The Lessons.”
Stacey nodded as he recalled the one he witnessed when some addicts weren’t useful enough and still tried to feed their hungers. “The Lessons. Just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Breath held, he could feel the slow burn of chemicals soothe his headache away. It was worth it. Fuck Jameson, this little bit of pleasure was worth it. “Sure, what’s nicotine going to do me anyway? I need to relax somehow.” The world is going to hell in a handbasket, he should try to get as much as he can.
///////
In the deepest levels of the laboratories, two researchers played a game of ‘Guess Who?’ across the thick, hermetically sealed and shatter proof glass that encased Dr. Benstein’s workstation. Their questions about the other’s card revolved around genetic deformations and racially unique features, about which alleles in particular chromosomes were predominant and which were recessive, about possibly parentage and life expectancy.
A simple twist, so they wouldn’t feel a bit silly about playing a child’s game.
Dr. May sat outside of the sterilized lab and spoke through the speakers there, the system already in need of some maintenance as Benstein’s voice came out crackling one time out ten. Nobody would ever fix it. “It’s getting to be too late, Ben.”
“That new hunter was that bad?” He hadn’t left to see this one. He had snagged his suit on a corner table and there was now an inch long rip. Instead everything was brought to him as he refused to leave till they localized some laboratory grade tape to patch it up.
Still in distress from her encounter, she sniffed softly and firmed her mouth. “That, that…infected is not like Peter. He’s diseased. The scars and boils on his skin. Peter looks a bit sick, that’s all.” Sick and scared, like a lost little boy. “He’s still human. But this hunter, it even sounds more monstrous.” The echoing growl when Jameson had hauled it through the detection screens, even with the alarms blasting she could still here the reverberated snarls that bounced off the walls.
Benstein chortled as he nodded his head in knowing superiority. “It? It’s not like you to be biased, Reilly.” He found her sentimentality with the infected to be comical in her ignorance. She always cared too much, humanized the experiment enough to make any results questionable.
She slammed her hands down and knocked the colorful tray of plastic aside. “It scratched its eyes out. It still tracked me across the room.” There was no way to relate to something like that. It was somehow worse than the bloated or tumorous special infected, because it had caught her off-guard.
With twisted hands, already besieged by the ravages of old age, he slowly flicked all of the garish faces down. “Oh, do you think it is echolocation, or maybe your heat signature?” He smirked at her with a jolly face that belittled her fears.
Unable to see the contempt in his eyes, she pleaded for his understanding, hoping to crack what she saw was his stagnant scientific mind stuck decades in the ethical past. “Stop it, Ben. Listen to me. If the hunters, the least mutated of the special infected are changing into worse, then…”
Taking offense to her didactic tone, he cut her off to dole out his own instructions. “Firstly, we already knew that it’s a highly mutating virus. In less than two weeks, regular people turned into acrobats and hulks. Secondly, just because the hunters look the most human doesn’t mean that they’re mutated the least. I’ve seen the videos of Peter. Those are the actions of a caged animal, not a man.”
Perplexed by how she was the only one to see it, she pleaded in Peter’s defense. “That’s not true, he even wrote…”
“It means nothing!” His raised voice crackled at the end. Face flushed red he was no longer the merry soul that personified grandpas everywhere. “You had more written on the walls, instructions and questions to see if he’d react and he didn’t. Just scratched at them and wrote in his blood over it. That is an animal marking its territory.”
Astounded into slack-jawed silence, she sat back down and glanced away to the broken child’s toy on the floor. The disproportioned faces gleefully smiled and scowled her way, a grim reminder of all the survivors living above them, waiting for her promises to be fulfilled.
A tap on the glass tore her sight back. “When are you putting them together?” Benstein’s face was back to its tranquil state, the outburst ignored.
After all these months, she no longer recognized the man who had mentored her for over two decades. So much anger hidden underneath it all. His query had her thinking of eggshells and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. “What?”
A stiff burst of air snorted out of his nose, his mouth disapproving of her lack of presence. “There’s only one cell left to us by those bastards that tried scapegoating us.” The slim mention of the heady secret they shared compacted the seriousness of his query. No matter her apprehensions, both hunters would share a small living space.
Still, Reilly couldn’t help the protective streak she had fostered for her charge. “What if it’s a new strain and Peter gets infected with it?” A more than reasonable fear.
Tired of her stalling, he rubbed his temple and his bald scalp, already spotted by liver spots. “Dear, he’s already infected. If Jameson hadn’t been healthy by the time he’d returned then I’d be worried. This new hunter can’t infect the already immune.”
“But Peter is not immune.” It sounded petulant to even her ears, but she persisted on.
From his scalp to the back of his head, then back to rub his face, he continued to spout what to him was painfully obvious. “If it is as you say, and the mutation is advancing, then it would be better for us to have two specimens with identical strains of what’s to come.”
“I promised Peter that I would help him.” There, the crux of her argument. A commitment she had made back in that open field when Peter hadn’t attacked her when he could.
He tilted his head back and exhaled in exasperation. “Think of it this way, he either didn’t understand you, or he’ll know that you’re doing what’s best for humanity.” Ben changed the subject before they remained stuck in a debating loop. “Does this new hunter have a name?”
“There weren’t any IDs on him. Jameson wants to call him Matt the Mutt, but one of the new survivors is called that. So…” She rolled her shoulders as she couldn’t care less. “I guess Hunter. Just plain Hunter.”
Head snapped back, he frowned at the name. “It’ll get confusing. That’s simply sloppy nomenclature.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s going to be the control since I’ve already started to reform Peter with the cleanings and by reassuring him whenever I can.” She leaned down to pick up the red tray of cartoony faces and attempted to reattach the pieces that had snapped loose. “I told Jameson that he could place that one in the steel dog cage, but he said that it nearly broke out of an armored truck, so he doesn’t trust it in anything less than ten inches deep and reinforced.”
“How about Homo infectus venator?” Infected gladiator?” He grinned like his old self, full of charisma.
Comforted by the sight of her old friend back, she smiled and scolded his choice. “Venator. That sounds like a urinary tract antibiotic. Stacey calls the new hunter Jack, because he calls them Jumping Jacks like the nursery rhyme.”
“Jack? Jack be nimble, Jack be quick? That Jack?” He tilted back in his chair and curled his hands in front of his rotund belly.
Feeling back to herself, she grinned optimistically and nodded, then shared a comfortable laugh that didn’t pierce the dark secrets they hid from everyone else.
//////
There were details about both hunters’ lives that were lost to the chaos of the infection. Their human lives had predisposed them to how they now stalked, killed and socialized within their groups.
Peter had been part of a group of dedicated dare devils that had amassed at a college near one of the best dirt bike tracks on the east coast. The grants and loans supported an adrenaline filled life with little responsibilities. He had only a few years experience when compared to some of his peers that rode before they walked; considered a rookie and mudface that slammed against the ground more often than not. But he was persistent, he was cocky and he knew that he was better than them, his practical experience not yet caught up with his mad skills.
The tattoo on his arm was a drunken bet amongst his friends; the twists and turns were a random design to represent the muddy track and their action filled lives that didn’t really go anywhere. About a quarter of the hunters in his native hunting grounds had this tattoo hidden under ratty clothes. Their playful jibes had morphed into deadly disrespect as he was considered the runt of the pack. In his city, it was all about reputation, it was all about image. It was about making the kill and not letting anybody steal his thunder. It was about bloody badges of proven skill and red teeth. Claiming territory and keeping it. It was about fitting in with the pack yet making himself seem more awesome than anybody else.
And just like before, he was persistent, he was cocky and he knew he was better. No matter, he couldn’t compete and hunted alone because he didn’t fit in either.
The other hunter, now named Jack, had lived in a violent city and had been a ruthless man. The high crime rate had led to a large hunter population and more guns for the immune. It was survival of the fittest; it was about pouncing and claiming a kill, ready to fight off any opportunistic hunter that would slash away at flailing arms as bloodlust blinded the rightful hunter that had pinned the prey. There were no territorial markings, too chaotic as packs formed and collapsed as there was never enough to go around. Even now, cooperative stalking only lasted till feeding time and hunger left all bonds broken.
A blood-soaked hoodie was not a mark of reputation, it was a sign to back off and flee in fear. Skill did not matter, number of kills did not matter, neither did red teeth or blood markings on walls. All that mattered was the now, all that mattered was whether or not the hunter was full on a fresh kill or starving enough to slay a brother. All that mattered was survival.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack was hungry and oh so sick.
//////
Jay-meh-son here. Dok-tor Mei here. Dok-tor Tay-see here. Lee here. Me here. Always here, trap here. Wait. Rest. Listen. Rest. Watch. Rest. Trap.
Kill Smallstrongbeast Jay-meh-son. No care. Death. Pain. No run. No escape. Kill and die and be free. Just free.
Peter wasn’t doing too well. He had learned names, he had learned customs, he had learned when to expect the pain and when to submit to livedeath. It had been a bad week for the hunter. By their nature, hunters require freedom of movement and vast areas to explore. They need heights to jump from in order for adrenaline to pump through their bodies and they fall into deep depressive states when they haven’t killed worthy prey since they become starved for endorphins.
By her actions, Dr. May was killing Peter’s spirit. His last desire was to kill the large man that beat him badly and take that to the darkness that followed death.
He could faintly sense all of the preys’ presence across the hardglass and was prepared to wait for the Smallstrongbeast to appear so that he could shower in blood one last time, to die with brightly red teeth, to die with what its diseased mind considered dignity.
Pair of prey, SmeethWaison, coming, coming. No kill. Wait. Kill Jay-meh-son, wait
WAIT!
Smell? Brother? Yes, brother! No, NO! Brother. Brother laugh, slash and kill. Brother come and take place. Before kill Smallstrongbeast, before red-teeth, before be strong and intimidating and happy.
Stricken by panic, Peter tensed muscles and crouched low on the ground, unsure of how to act. Despite his dreams of leadership, he had never dominated another brother, had never been as intimidating as to demand obedience. Scared and hopeful, he expected a familiar face that might spare him the fight he felt too weak to participate in.
Kill first. Be strong. Attack first. Be fast.The pair entered, guns raised as Peter held his ground and waited for them to leave. It hadn’t taken long for him to learn that it wasn’t worth it. On the ground lay the prone form of a large hunter. Bigger, no, no. Be slow, pleasepleaseplease. It still wore its deeply stained hood. Why?! Why not me? Peter had no way of knowing that Dr. May unknowingly granted this mercy since she felt too disgusted to see its disfigured, darkly mottled body. The exposed limbs experience enough.
Flowing tight against the wall, he rounded the soldiers as they untied the ropes and shrieked when he saw the deeply copper-stained teeth grin back mockingly. Whywhywhywhywhy!? This was too much. At least if they had been equally destitute of honor, he could have had a chance of forming a pack. Wrapped in a clean white blanket, teeth cleaned and whitened, -they had actually whitened his killing tools -, he looked like crazy prey that became feral rather than pick up loudstingdeath.
Hyperventilation racked Peter’s body as it readied to pounce on the new brother and kill it before the livedeath left it. With one last swipe at the crimson filled mark on the wall, Peter was prepared to defend his territory.
SmeethWaison left and the room filled with Peter’s growing snarls as he jumped up the wall in order to fall down hard. Just as he was about to turn around and plummet over his brother, a strong blow smacked him into the wall and slide down sudden enough to pull his makeshift hood over his face. His yelp cut short as he felt teeth grip his throat, one squeeze away from agonizing death.
Quivering in fear, arms and legs shaking, he felt heavy breath flow over his neck and let his body slump in submission. Brother too quick, too strong. Livedeath do nothing. No die, pleasepleaseplease, not like this. Teeth tightened and pierced skin as he felt lengthy claws stab deeply into his arms. It hurt much worse than when his brothers in his native hunting grounds stole one of his kills he had spent so long to stalk, held down as the prey screamed their last at the claws of another hunter. His joy taken away by the leader of the pack.
Then the tight pain slackened as a snuffling growl scoured over his face and a clawed hand tore the blanket to shreds. This close he could see the gory sockets still seep out watery fluids and the flesh-covered teeth with sharpened points snap by his nose. Yesyesyes, leader, follow leader. Obey leader. There was no spoken language between the infected, only inflection and body language that might reach the remaining human centers of communication. With short grunts Peter tried to communicate his capitulation in anticipation to live long enough to kill another leader that held him down.
Neither Jameson nor May nor Jack knew this about Peter, of why he didn’t fit in with his pack brothers, of why he hunted alone.
He wasn’t strong enough to be a leader. But he didn’t fear them either and simply waited for them to lower their guard and kill them in secret.
He knew he was better than everyone around him; it was only a matter of experience catching up to his mad skills. No one had the right to stop him from being the best.
Jack may have hated competition, but Peter reveled in annihilating it, especially when they never saw it coming.
//////
Congratulations, leaders of the once safest base on the northern continent. Fire has been introduced to a wick. Whether it be the soldiers or the scientists, even the hunters in their midst, secrets abound and have started to rot from within like a cyst. Be weary and wary as soon many will be sick.
And there’s nothing to be done about it.
A/N: Sorry that this has taken so long. I’ve been writing for Prototype and FF8. If you like my style in this story, then check out the Prototype fic via my profile if you like.
The FF8 stuff is much different than this and I think that most of the readers here wouldn’t like it. It’s slash, you see. And no, ‘A hunter captured’ is NOT going in that direction. Genfic stays genfic.
Day Seven: Secrets
Chapter 8
The new hunter had to be processed and deloused before samples could be taken. It was worryingly easy. There were no growls. There were no struggles. A sudden jolt when the hoodie was removed, yet not the emotional dependency as had happened with Peter. Just lax muscle that didn’t resist as Stacey injected four times the lethal dose of Pancuronium into the jugular as the skin on arms and legs had hardened with scabrous boils and deep scars.
It had such a minimal effect, completely inefficient, yet this fact was caught with mild amusement by Stacey. He neglected to inject any more of the chemical for the rest of the spinal tap and chuckled lightly as the murderous hunter kept its body still, yet could not hide the tensing muscles that revealed its trickery. The only other person there was Lee as this hunter wouldn’t be getting the beauty treatment from Dr. May or Gwen, and Jameson was busy familiarizing the new refugees with the workings and expectations of the camp.
Once Lee was done retying the straps and ropes over the hunter, Stacey clapped him on the shoulder and grinned as wide as his wounds would let him. “You better watch out for this one. This Jack thinks it’s smart.”
Eyes wide and scared, Lee tried to match the grin and failed to. “Really? I mean, yeah, it’s bigger than Peter, but the mutt’s been a pushover.” Nonetheless, he held his rifle upright, hand on the trigger and stepped away, cautious and strung out.
The doctor shook his head and led Lee out of the room, to leave the hunter to stew on the observation table. “The bastard’s been able to move this entire time. It’s faking us out. I haven’t wasted anymore of the paralyzer on it.” He easily moved away when Lee whirled back and leveled his weapon at it.
It didn’t twitch like Peter when he cocked the trigger or noisily clicked the bullet chamber back in place. Breath cloying at his lungs as he shuddered in near panic, Lee saw that Stacey spoke the truth. “How the fuck could you touch it then? Why didn’t you say anything?”
A soft chuckle and a shake of his head, Stacey showed his lack of worry with disturbing ease. “What difference would it have made? It would have taken more time and Jameson would have thrown a fit at Dr. May about the dangers of it all.” He straightened his back, feeling the vertebrae settle in place and let out a stiff breath as his bruises throbbed dully back. “’Sides, what’s the worse it could do? Kill us? Don’t know about you, but this business has me not caring either way.”
Startled by the careless indifference, Lee set his gun down and marveled at the taller man, mouth quirked in an incredulous gape. “What’s wrong with you? It could have scratched one of us!” Because, at least for him, that was a lot worse.
Perceptive as he was, Stacey didn’t catch the obvious, but that’s what hindsight is for. “We’re immune, it doesn’t matter. Jameson’s still healthy.” He gripped the Dogcatcher by the shoulders to continue down the hallway. “You know, I’ll get in trouble if this gets out but you’re way too stressed.” The lilt of his words insinuated how that might be remedied.
Lee furrowed his brow and looked at the manicured hands that held him with quiet strength and decided to take the safer route of what he thought might be offered. “He’ll never let me get away with drinking or drugs. What do you have in mind?” He silently begged that that was it; he really didn’t want to deal with another unrequited stalker.
With a click of his tongue, the druggie doctor pulled out several packets from his lab coat and waved them right in front of the soldier’s face. “I have a stockpile of nicotine patches; takes the edge off without the health or addiction problems from cigarettes. Nobody will ever notice.” He wasn’t going to share the sweet stuff like Valium; he had those rationed for himself, but a fellow user to share the forbidden highs would be welcome company.
Even though he had never smoked in his life and actually did some activism to get it banned from his college, he snatched the packets from the doc’s hands and ripped one open. “You’ll hook me up? Why? It goes against the big man’s orders.” It took him a couple of tries to press it on right, but he got it to stick to his upper shoulder where he had seen commercials on TV teach him how. Anything to feel looser, to not have every nerve ready to burst at the slightest scare.
“He isn’t god or my daddy. A little help on the side is more beneficial than not.” He pulled out half a dozen more and pushed them into Lee’s front ammo pocket. “I like you, Lee. You remind me of myself. I don’t like working with infected either, but hey, gotta do it anyway. I’d rather have you watch my back when I finally get the go ahead to open one of these Jumping Jacks up.” There wasn’t any other normal person this deep into the experiment. Between the military psychos and iffy scientists, Stacey wanted to form a bond with someone that saw how messed up everything was getting. “Smith and Wesson creep me out. They like the boss and his way of doing things too much.”
Lee paused from placing a second patch on his other arm, a frantic memory of what happened to the guys who stole an AVC and supplies from under Jameson’s nose bubbling up. “The Lessons.”
Stacey nodded as he recalled the one he witnessed when some addicts weren’t useful enough and still tried to feed their hungers. “The Lessons. Just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Breath held, he could feel the slow burn of chemicals soothe his headache away. It was worth it. Fuck Jameson, this little bit of pleasure was worth it. “Sure, what’s nicotine going to do me anyway? I need to relax somehow.” The world is going to hell in a handbasket, he should try to get as much as he can.
///////
In the deepest levels of the laboratories, two researchers played a game of ‘Guess Who?’ across the thick, hermetically sealed and shatter proof glass that encased Dr. Benstein’s workstation. Their questions about the other’s card revolved around genetic deformations and racially unique features, about which alleles in particular chromosomes were predominant and which were recessive, about possibly parentage and life expectancy.
A simple twist, so they wouldn’t feel a bit silly about playing a child’s game.
Dr. May sat outside of the sterilized lab and spoke through the speakers there, the system already in need of some maintenance as Benstein’s voice came out crackling one time out ten. Nobody would ever fix it. “It’s getting to be too late, Ben.”
“That new hunter was that bad?” He hadn’t left to see this one. He had snagged his suit on a corner table and there was now an inch long rip. Instead everything was brought to him as he refused to leave till they localized some laboratory grade tape to patch it up.
Still in distress from her encounter, she sniffed softly and firmed her mouth. “That, that…infected is not like Peter. He’s diseased. The scars and boils on his skin. Peter looks a bit sick, that’s all.” Sick and scared, like a lost little boy. “He’s still human. But this hunter, it even sounds more monstrous.” The echoing growl when Jameson had hauled it through the detection screens, even with the alarms blasting she could still here the reverberated snarls that bounced off the walls.
Benstein chortled as he nodded his head in knowing superiority. “It? It’s not like you to be biased, Reilly.” He found her sentimentality with the infected to be comical in her ignorance. She always cared too much, humanized the experiment enough to make any results questionable.
She slammed her hands down and knocked the colorful tray of plastic aside. “It scratched its eyes out. It still tracked me across the room.” There was no way to relate to something like that. It was somehow worse than the bloated or tumorous special infected, because it had caught her off-guard.
With twisted hands, already besieged by the ravages of old age, he slowly flicked all of the garish faces down. “Oh, do you think it is echolocation, or maybe your heat signature?” He smirked at her with a jolly face that belittled her fears.
Unable to see the contempt in his eyes, she pleaded for his understanding, hoping to crack what she saw was his stagnant scientific mind stuck decades in the ethical past. “Stop it, Ben. Listen to me. If the hunters, the least mutated of the special infected are changing into worse, then…”
Taking offense to her didactic tone, he cut her off to dole out his own instructions. “Firstly, we already knew that it’s a highly mutating virus. In less than two weeks, regular people turned into acrobats and hulks. Secondly, just because the hunters look the most human doesn’t mean that they’re mutated the least. I’ve seen the videos of Peter. Those are the actions of a caged animal, not a man.”
Perplexed by how she was the only one to see it, she pleaded in Peter’s defense. “That’s not true, he even wrote…”
“It means nothing!” His raised voice crackled at the end. Face flushed red he was no longer the merry soul that personified grandpas everywhere. “You had more written on the walls, instructions and questions to see if he’d react and he didn’t. Just scratched at them and wrote in his blood over it. That is an animal marking its territory.”
Astounded into slack-jawed silence, she sat back down and glanced away to the broken child’s toy on the floor. The disproportioned faces gleefully smiled and scowled her way, a grim reminder of all the survivors living above them, waiting for her promises to be fulfilled.
A tap on the glass tore her sight back. “When are you putting them together?” Benstein’s face was back to its tranquil state, the outburst ignored.
After all these months, she no longer recognized the man who had mentored her for over two decades. So much anger hidden underneath it all. His query had her thinking of eggshells and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. “What?”
A stiff burst of air snorted out of his nose, his mouth disapproving of her lack of presence. “There’s only one cell left to us by those bastards that tried scapegoating us.” The slim mention of the heady secret they shared compacted the seriousness of his query. No matter her apprehensions, both hunters would share a small living space.
Still, Reilly couldn’t help the protective streak she had fostered for her charge. “What if it’s a new strain and Peter gets infected with it?” A more than reasonable fear.
Tired of her stalling, he rubbed his temple and his bald scalp, already spotted by liver spots. “Dear, he’s already infected. If Jameson hadn’t been healthy by the time he’d returned then I’d be worried. This new hunter can’t infect the already immune.”
“But Peter is not immune.” It sounded petulant to even her ears, but she persisted on.
From his scalp to the back of his head, then back to rub his face, he continued to spout what to him was painfully obvious. “If it is as you say, and the mutation is advancing, then it would be better for us to have two specimens with identical strains of what’s to come.”
“I promised Peter that I would help him.” There, the crux of her argument. A commitment she had made back in that open field when Peter hadn’t attacked her when he could.
He tilted his head back and exhaled in exasperation. “Think of it this way, he either didn’t understand you, or he’ll know that you’re doing what’s best for humanity.” Ben changed the subject before they remained stuck in a debating loop. “Does this new hunter have a name?”
“There weren’t any IDs on him. Jameson wants to call him Matt the Mutt, but one of the new survivors is called that. So…” She rolled her shoulders as she couldn’t care less. “I guess Hunter. Just plain Hunter.”
Head snapped back, he frowned at the name. “It’ll get confusing. That’s simply sloppy nomenclature.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s going to be the control since I’ve already started to reform Peter with the cleanings and by reassuring him whenever I can.” She leaned down to pick up the red tray of cartoony faces and attempted to reattach the pieces that had snapped loose. “I told Jameson that he could place that one in the steel dog cage, but he said that it nearly broke out of an armored truck, so he doesn’t trust it in anything less than ten inches deep and reinforced.”
“How about Homo infectus venator?” Infected gladiator?” He grinned like his old self, full of charisma.
Comforted by the sight of her old friend back, she smiled and scolded his choice. “Venator. That sounds like a urinary tract antibiotic. Stacey calls the new hunter Jack, because he calls them Jumping Jacks like the nursery rhyme.”
“Jack? Jack be nimble, Jack be quick? That Jack?” He tilted back in his chair and curled his hands in front of his rotund belly.
Feeling back to herself, she grinned optimistically and nodded, then shared a comfortable laugh that didn’t pierce the dark secrets they hid from everyone else.
//////
There were details about both hunters’ lives that were lost to the chaos of the infection. Their human lives had predisposed them to how they now stalked, killed and socialized within their groups.
Peter had been part of a group of dedicated dare devils that had amassed at a college near one of the best dirt bike tracks on the east coast. The grants and loans supported an adrenaline filled life with little responsibilities. He had only a few years experience when compared to some of his peers that rode before they walked; considered a rookie and mudface that slammed against the ground more often than not. But he was persistent, he was cocky and he knew that he was better than them, his practical experience not yet caught up with his mad skills.
The tattoo on his arm was a drunken bet amongst his friends; the twists and turns were a random design to represent the muddy track and their action filled lives that didn’t really go anywhere. About a quarter of the hunters in his native hunting grounds had this tattoo hidden under ratty clothes. Their playful jibes had morphed into deadly disrespect as he was considered the runt of the pack. In his city, it was all about reputation, it was all about image. It was about making the kill and not letting anybody steal his thunder. It was about bloody badges of proven skill and red teeth. Claiming territory and keeping it. It was about fitting in with the pack yet making himself seem more awesome than anybody else.
And just like before, he was persistent, he was cocky and he knew he was better. No matter, he couldn’t compete and hunted alone because he didn’t fit in either.
The other hunter, now named Jack, had lived in a violent city and had been a ruthless man. The high crime rate had led to a large hunter population and more guns for the immune. It was survival of the fittest; it was about pouncing and claiming a kill, ready to fight off any opportunistic hunter that would slash away at flailing arms as bloodlust blinded the rightful hunter that had pinned the prey. There were no territorial markings, too chaotic as packs formed and collapsed as there was never enough to go around. Even now, cooperative stalking only lasted till feeding time and hunger left all bonds broken.
A blood-soaked hoodie was not a mark of reputation, it was a sign to back off and flee in fear. Skill did not matter, number of kills did not matter, neither did red teeth or blood markings on walls. All that mattered was the now, all that mattered was whether or not the hunter was full on a fresh kill or starving enough to slay a brother. All that mattered was survival.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack was hungry and oh so sick.
//////
Jay-meh-son here. Dok-tor Mei here. Dok-tor Tay-see here. Lee here. Me here. Always here, trap here. Wait. Rest. Listen. Rest. Watch. Rest. Trap.
Kill Smallstrongbeast Jay-meh-son. No care. Death. Pain. No run. No escape. Kill and die and be free. Just free.
Peter wasn’t doing too well. He had learned names, he had learned customs, he had learned when to expect the pain and when to submit to livedeath. It had been a bad week for the hunter. By their nature, hunters require freedom of movement and vast areas to explore. They need heights to jump from in order for adrenaline to pump through their bodies and they fall into deep depressive states when they haven’t killed worthy prey since they become starved for endorphins.
By her actions, Dr. May was killing Peter’s spirit. His last desire was to kill the large man that beat him badly and take that to the darkness that followed death.
He could faintly sense all of the preys’ presence across the hardglass and was prepared to wait for the Smallstrongbeast to appear so that he could shower in blood one last time, to die with brightly red teeth, to die with what its diseased mind considered dignity.
Pair of prey, SmeethWaison, coming, coming. No kill. Wait. Kill Jay-meh-son, wait
WAIT!
Smell? Brother? Yes, brother! No, NO! Brother. Brother laugh, slash and kill. Brother come and take place. Before kill Smallstrongbeast, before red-teeth, before be strong and intimidating and happy.
Stricken by panic, Peter tensed muscles and crouched low on the ground, unsure of how to act. Despite his dreams of leadership, he had never dominated another brother, had never been as intimidating as to demand obedience. Scared and hopeful, he expected a familiar face that might spare him the fight he felt too weak to participate in.
Kill first. Be strong. Attack first. Be fast.The pair entered, guns raised as Peter held his ground and waited for them to leave. It hadn’t taken long for him to learn that it wasn’t worth it. On the ground lay the prone form of a large hunter. Bigger, no, no. Be slow, pleasepleaseplease. It still wore its deeply stained hood. Why?! Why not me? Peter had no way of knowing that Dr. May unknowingly granted this mercy since she felt too disgusted to see its disfigured, darkly mottled body. The exposed limbs experience enough.
Flowing tight against the wall, he rounded the soldiers as they untied the ropes and shrieked when he saw the deeply copper-stained teeth grin back mockingly. Whywhywhywhywhy!? This was too much. At least if they had been equally destitute of honor, he could have had a chance of forming a pack. Wrapped in a clean white blanket, teeth cleaned and whitened, -they had actually whitened his killing tools -, he looked like crazy prey that became feral rather than pick up loudstingdeath.
Hyperventilation racked Peter’s body as it readied to pounce on the new brother and kill it before the livedeath left it. With one last swipe at the crimson filled mark on the wall, Peter was prepared to defend his territory.
SmeethWaison left and the room filled with Peter’s growing snarls as he jumped up the wall in order to fall down hard. Just as he was about to turn around and plummet over his brother, a strong blow smacked him into the wall and slide down sudden enough to pull his makeshift hood over his face. His yelp cut short as he felt teeth grip his throat, one squeeze away from agonizing death.
Quivering in fear, arms and legs shaking, he felt heavy breath flow over his neck and let his body slump in submission. Brother too quick, too strong. Livedeath do nothing. No die, pleasepleaseplease, not like this. Teeth tightened and pierced skin as he felt lengthy claws stab deeply into his arms. It hurt much worse than when his brothers in his native hunting grounds stole one of his kills he had spent so long to stalk, held down as the prey screamed their last at the claws of another hunter. His joy taken away by the leader of the pack.
Then the tight pain slackened as a snuffling growl scoured over his face and a clawed hand tore the blanket to shreds. This close he could see the gory sockets still seep out watery fluids and the flesh-covered teeth with sharpened points snap by his nose. Yesyesyes, leader, follow leader. Obey leader. There was no spoken language between the infected, only inflection and body language that might reach the remaining human centers of communication. With short grunts Peter tried to communicate his capitulation in anticipation to live long enough to kill another leader that held him down.
Neither Jameson nor May nor Jack knew this about Peter, of why he didn’t fit in with his pack brothers, of why he hunted alone.
He wasn’t strong enough to be a leader. But he didn’t fear them either and simply waited for them to lower their guard and kill them in secret.
He knew he was better than everyone around him; it was only a matter of experience catching up to his mad skills. No one had the right to stop him from being the best.
Jack may have hated competition, but Peter reveled in annihilating it, especially when they never saw it coming.
//////
Congratulations, leaders of the once safest base on the northern continent. Fire has been introduced to a wick. Whether it be the soldiers or the scientists, even the hunters in their midst, secrets abound and have started to rot from within like a cyst. Be weary and wary as soon many will be sick.
And there’s nothing to be done about it.
A/N: Sorry that this has taken so long. I’ve been writing for Prototype and FF8. If you like my style in this story, then check out the Prototype fic via my profile if you like.
The FF8 stuff is much different than this and I think that most of the readers here wouldn’t like it. It’s slash, you see. And no, ‘A hunter captured’ is NOT going in that direction. Genfic stays genfic.