I look out over the road, unkempt but still there. In the distance I see what seems to be a shape in the road. The caravan, perhaps. Looking through my scope, I see more detail. It is the water cart. And it has been stopped by some less than friendly sorts. This is exactly the sort of thing I warned Jim about when this whole thing started. Not the gods. Gods come and they go. Didn’t know we could kill them, but hey, you live and you learn. Not the scarring of the world. With time, nature always heals. No, it’s the chaos that’s the problem. When control falls into hands that don’t care and gods of destruction become able to walk in our world, chaos seems inevitable to follow. And I told Jim and J-P that, back when we were discussing the coming end. Jim had too much faith in the system. Our system, not the government or the people. He thought we would be able to see the world through the chaos. J-P, to his credit, did not believe in any side of the Triad that much, much less the Triad coming together as one. However, he was fairly certain that if any gods at all walked, we would all die. So he didn’t think about the future if we failed. Me, I always do. A curse of being me. Failure happens all too often and someone has to figure out what’s coming if it does.
Breathing out and holding it, I line up the most dangerous looking of the less than friendly sorts. Sometimes, newcomers don’t know better. Unfortunately for this new group, ever since my misadventures in Tucson, I’ve always held firm to my one strike policy. Depressing the trigger, I can still hear the explosion, even through my wax earplugs. The old, higher tech gear I used to use could filter out the sound much better, but hey, what works works. And, at least as far as protecting my eardrums, this seems to work. I breathe in once more and count two. Three. Boom. The bullet hits the guy in the chest, slightly further left than I was aiming for. Some wind I didn’t account for, I suppose. The people are looking around, nervous and confused. Next shot I fire, they’ll probably spot me. I move on to the next most dangerous looking of the bunch. Breathing out again, I aim a little further to the right this time and press the trigger. One of them gestures towards me. A guy with a rifle of some kind starts charging. Most people these days don’t have the patience needed to keep a gun useful. Keep it clean, make the ammunition, repair it when it breaks. That makes this guy either an idiot or a problem. Given how he’s approaching, I’ll bet on idiot. I aim for the guy who seems to be in charge, currently ducked behind a rock. I press. Turning my attention to the man with the gun, I mentally count. Two, three. I watch as the guy with the gun turns to face his leader. Then, he starts trying to hit me. A rifle like that, no scope and no aim, it wouldn’t have a chance of hitting me. But, as Randy would say, even a thing with zero probability can happen. Fortunately, I don’t need to worry about it. Because my guess is right. He’s an idiot. The rifle hasn’t been taken care of in ages and jams. Which is why one should always take care of their weapon. He starts to run. The others are already gone. I sling my rifle back onto my shoulder. I’ll need to find and root out those bandits, but for now, it is more important that the caravan knows it is safe for them to continue. That I am not some other, more problematic threat.
Returning to my pack, I pull out the signal mirror. Us wanderers tend to prefer other methods of communication, but I had a life before I began my wandering. Using the mirror, I flash out a quick four letters, repeated twice, in morse code. One of them should understand. ... .- ..-. . seems to be all they need to see. They’ll head on their way, tell tale to their friends of the mysterious stranger they encountered, albeit briefly, during their trip. That sort of story is good. It makes them feel safe around here. Means more caravans of people and goods go out through these roads. And that, in turn, contributes to the betterment of everyone around here. Which, hopefully, will help this world move forwards. Not that one should get too hopeful these days.
The three remaining bandits went in the same general direction. Probably some kind of subconscious urge to flee for a place they feel safe. Some kind of camp or home base. Thought I’d taken care of most all of those around here. One more won’t be a problem, I suppose. Slinging my bag alongside my rifle, I head down the hill in the direction they fled. I try to remember what Ismael taught us, back in the day. I wish I’d paid more attention, but I know the gist of it. Anything moving through nature disturbs it, follow those disturbances and you’ll eventually hit the thing making them. Things fleeing, things not worried about covering their tracks, they’re easier to follow.
The obvious trail ends a couple miles away at one of the relatively nearby forests. It makes sense. Running from a sniper, people feel comfortable taking the time to hide their tracks once they know the shooter can’t easily see, and therefore shoot, them. Also, after a certain amount of flight, the direction probably becomes less subconscious and more intentional and, when someone is consciously running away to a haven, they would not want to lead anything bad there with them.
These forests are too big to run a normal search pattern. Instead, I climb my way up a nearby tree that feels tall. It isn’t really. From the foliage atop my tree, I can see the trees around here mostly are about the same height. Not the tallest in the forest by any stretch, but tall enough to serve their purpose. Scanning above the treetops, I spot what I’m looking for. Above the treeline, looking out over this whole area, is the old fire lookout tower. Removing my scope from my rifle I look across the treetops at the cab of the tower. Knowing they’re generally only one story, I figure out the distance. Roughly one and a half miles further into the forest. Putting my scope back on my rifle, I pull my compass out from my bag and take the heading. Then, dropping towards the ground, I head through the woods towards the tower.
As I arrive at the tower’s base, I can tell that even before the world fell apart, even before we went and blew up arguably the most powerful aspect of death itself, this tower was not maintained. Such a state of affairs explains all those California wildfires getting out of hand back in the day. The stairs up are rotting thoroughly, though the cab itself seems sturdy enough. Going back to my bag, I pull out a grappling hook tied to some rope. Whipping it around, I toss it up at the thick, metal-reinforced railing around the cab. My first try, I don’t get the angles right and it doesn’t stay hooked on. The second time I get enough oomph into it to wrap it around once before it catches. The friction should help it hold. Wrapping the other end of the rope around my shoulders, I begin to climb up to the cab.
These towers were meant to have line of sight on the whole region of trees. Taking my time, I walk around the cab, looking for any unusually large or abnormally even clearings. Though the angle is slightly less ideal than I hoped for, I spotted three likely spots. Large and too sharply angled. One of the three is closer to a different trade route than it is to the one these bandits just attacked. Haven’t heard any trouble from that area, so I can probably eliminate that one from contention. I grab the binoculars from a table in this lookout. Hopefully it has a more powerful magnification than my scope. Trying to look at the two clearings, I can’t quite spot anything. Wherever the bandits are holed up, they’re smart enough to keep a relatively low profile, not obvious unless I could get a much better angle. Like almost right above it.
Suddenly I had an idea. Fighting fires efficiently needs maps and this tower is old. Maybe old enough not to have been wholly digital. Searching through the drawers and cabinets around the cab, I manage to find it. A topographic satellite map. The clearing I eliminated appears on the map. As does the further clearing. Closer clearing is on the map, but it seems bigger than it was when this map was from. That’s the most likely. Time to plan.
If all this effort needed for a large camp has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t afford any alarms or alerts to go off. If bandits flee into the woods, I’ll likely never find them. That means no noise. No guns. Pulling out its padded, soft case, I carefully take apart my rifle and store it. Instead, I pull out my old-school weapons. Wrapped in a cloth, a compound bow with an attached bow quiver. Attaching the sling, I put the bow on my back. Next, I pull out the whetstone. From my hip, I draw my bowie knife and make sure it’s sharp. Sliding the knife back into its sheath, I pull out the small tins of camouflage colored facepaints. Carefully, I cover my face, breaking up the recognizable contours of a face with the patterns. Returning the tins to my pack, I put the bag on my back and check the direction of the clearing one last time. With I sigh, I drop down.
Dropping from support beam to support beam, I fall elegantly to the ground, landing with a soft thud. Checking my compass yet again, I reorient myself clearing-ward and set out. I make sure I keep low, to the shadows. I may not be particularly close to the camp, but lookouts could be placed anywhere. My caution pays off. About five minutes from the fire lookout’s clearing, I spot a lookout. Sliding through the shadows around him, I grab his mouth and slide my knife between the third and fourth rib and rip. He reaches for something at his hip. I pull him to the ground, hard, stopping that motion. Whatever it was. It doesn’t take long for him to stop moving. Passing out, either from the pain, or the blood loss, or some combination thereof. Checking his equipment, I see what he was going for. A flare gun. I need to be even more wary of the lookouts. Running his pockets, I find nothing of particular use. Onto the camp.
Most people would expect taking out a fortified camp of armed people is difficult. Depending on the people, it can be. But when those people are a wonderful combination of overconfident and relatively untrained, it isn’t as hard as it seems. See, that sort of group sets lookouts not as forewarning, but so they do not need to keep an eye out for trouble themselves. Get yourself past the lookouts, and it’s smooth sailing. As I near the clearing, I see a second line of lookouts. Likely the normal lookouts, and the ones out in the forest were because of the trouble I caused earlier. It is no matter. Scouting around the camp, I see four lookouts, evenly spaced, each in a small, open stand attached to a tree. I pick one and go for it. Pulling out my bow, I notch an arrow, ready a second in my bow hand, breathe, and aim before drawing. Then, I draw back the first arrow, momentarily check the aim from the sight, and fire. I notch the second arrow with the same motion I use to grab the string and draw it back, move the sight slightly down, and fire a second time. The first arrow strikes the neck, roughly where one’s vocal cords should be. The second hits the heart. Heading up to the stand, I look out across the camp. The people here are calm, confident. This will almost be too easy.
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