The Hunted

by Steve Scheunemann

  “What?”

  “Matt, I was so scared that you’d feel this way. You’d already thought once that I’d betrayed you. That first time I’d thought that since looking at me distracted you, it was my fault you were dead.

  “Malone never expected that the baton in my hand was for him. I didn’t know what I was going to do until that message from Malone ordering your death. I knew then I needed to pick a side.

  “One thing about being raised as a Hunter, you are never allowed to become close to anyone, so you don’t feel any special loyalty to anyone, either.

  “It was time I started doing what I believed, not what they told me. I needed to like myself. I couldn’t do that and help Malone kill you. I’m only sorry I didn’t kill the bastard. He had called in a BGP uniformed squad to clean up the mess and they were on the way. So I grabbed you and ran.”

  “Why am I tied up if I’m not a prisoner, and if this isn’t a BGP facility where am I?”

  Matt was unwilling to even think about his other questions yet.

  Reaching to undo his bonds Abbey said, “You were thrashing around so much, and then too, I was afraid of how you might react when you saw me. We’re in New Zealand. Angus’ friends took us out of the monastery on a helicopter, then it was a long ride in a submarine. You were so badly hurt that you’ve been unconscious for almost a week.”

  “Matt, I’m sorry. When Angus died there was nothing I could do for him. They were sending a rescue mission for the two of you. They had orders to bring me too if they could. You’re not a prisoner, but I certainly am. We unknowingly avoided the first rescue slash capture mission in Japan, but when we activated the uplink in the mountains they came running. ”

  “Why?”

  “Why am I a prisoner, or why did they want to bring me?”

  “Both,” Matt said as his chest and hands were freed he sat up and undid his ankles.

  “I’m a prisoner for exactly the reason you suspect. They know I was a Hunter. I guess they believe I still am. I mean here comes the rescue mission and there I am talking with Depardieu like old friends standing over your unconscious body.”

  “Why did you hit me?”

  “Matt, the Troops on Rage were going to kill you. We knew Malone left my credentials active and we figured he had spun my being with you as some covert operation. That much you know. Anyway, when that gun was leveled at your head, all I could think of was ordering them to stop. With you on your feet and shooting them that wouldn’t work. We were right, by the way, Depardieu and the rest all took me for one of them.

  “No one had any idea the Resistance was about to arrive in force. Matt, did you know that the miners you mentioned were acting on orders from New Zealand for years? They are very impressive. I didn’t know anyone like them even existed. Bred to work in the mines, they have skin harder than granite and are so off the charts strong it’s scary. Their hands are big enough to grasp a normal persons head, and with a thumb on either side, when they do grab it, they don’t let go. Matt I watched flechettes bounce off of them while they crushed skulls like so many eggs. They were amazing.

  “There we were standing over you, four Hunters, the last 14 troops, and me when a wave of grey skinned behemoths came out of nowhere. Who would believe that anything that big could move so silently. You expect to hear rock grating with every step they take.

  “Their captain, these guys are military without a doubt, approached the Hunters claiming to be a mine foreman, which I guess he is, while the others were out of sight. Said he had heard all the gunfire and wanted to ask what was going on. Then when he got close enough he reached out and grabbed Delacruz’s head and squeezed it till it cracked. It took about one second. As McLeish, Depardieu, and Wallace all reacted he dropped down to cover your body with his own. That’s when the rest of them came storming in. The other three Hunters escaped, the troops were all killed and I was taken prisoner when I dropped to my knees and put my hands on my head.

  “They started moving to the mine near the Monastery the day we first activated the bunker. Matt, these guys came from all over the continent, and the others like them have been forced into hiding. They’ve been part of the Resistance from the very beginning, and now their cover is blown. Fifty-two of them stormed the Hunters in Colorado. Two died there. The flechettes bounce off, but the M-100, that’s the baton we took off Mtumbe, did manage to sever the head of one of them, and nine others lost a limb. That skin of theirs holds for a while, but with enough pressure the spider wire will cut them, too.

  “One of the dead ones is Griffon Dougherty, the captain who covered you. He was the only one shot. Depardieu’s ‘Eliminator’ apparently can puncture their skin.”

  “Another good man dead because of me.”

  “Matt, there are people here who know you, or at least about you. I’m not allowed to roam free too much, but I see the looks they give me because I came in with you. They are busting with curiosity. So many questions to ask and not sure if I can be trusted or not.

  “I think there might even be people here you know…” Abbey was interrupted by the arrival of a small, lean, dark-haired woman.

  “That there will be, several in fact. Some you’ve met in your travels with Angus, and even some from the monastery who made it out. You were correct in your assumption that there is a long-standing tie between your life at the Monastery and the Organization that Angus and I represent.”

  “Matt,” Abbey interrupted, “this is Colonel Vicki Rawlson, she was a friend of Angus’ and it was she who wrote the ‘Angus Companion’ after we released the ‘Chronicle’. You two are the hottest authors alive today.”

  “Yes, well, as to that, you could say other that Matthew here, I knew him best. Angus and I worked on several important operations together. Our promotions would have kept us together in a planning and supervisory capacity, something for which he had a real gift. In fact, he was to run one final field op. That was to contact you, lost these many years from our sight, after the attack on the monastery. Only he took it upon himself to extend those orders and to make you his apprentice in the ways of confounding the government. Everywhere you two went the government experienced chaos, records lost or altered, prime BGP targets disappeared, unbreakable codes suddenly broken or we’ve acquired an original copy and can now read the code as well as the enemy.

  “In reading your ‘Chronicles’ it appears Angus did it all while you were sleeping. Fortunately for us Angus was a pro and he left weekly or even daily data drops for us. We know the parts you played in some of the operations.

  “So here it is; Angus wanted you to join us. Brother Fidelis and the Abbot were raising you for that very purpose. You’ve got the skills we need and more. You are a leader. Men and women will follow you. They’ll follow you right to their own deaths. You might have to send them out knowing they will die, but they will look to you for direction.”

  “You make it sound like you want to hand over the entire military to me. I’m no general.”

  “Not the entire military, Matt….just a small command. Look, what you don’t know is that you have a reputation of your own. There are splinter cells all over the globe from many of the different factions that make up the Resistance that are declaring you as their new leader…..in some cases, more like Liege Lord. Many have sworn fealty if you can believe it. ”

  “How did this happen? They can’t possibly know me as anything other than Angus’ little tag-a-long friend. I’m nobody.”

  “Well….your friend Abbey helped us out with that one a little. You see along with the ‘Angus Files’ there now exists a rather compelling body of work on you. The man who fought the BGP’s best to a standstill and then despite a serious concussion made it half way around the world and uploaded revolutionary material through the government’s own net uplink. As if that weren’t enough, you finished off the BGP’s best tracker, and a man ranked quite highly in combat effectiveness, in a manner that made it look easy.

  “Finally cornered, by
no less than four Hunters, fifty troops, and five Great Hounds, you manage to kill all the hounds, more than two thirds of the troops and even one more Hunter.”

  “Most of that was luck, and I had lots of help. Hell, they had me if you guys hadn’t saved me.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Besides, we were able to fill in some stories from your early childhood too. Like your final test that left a naked 13-year-old boy high in the mountains in the face of a blizzard.

  “You are the new face of the revolution. It helps that the face is backed fully by substance. They believe in you all over the world. They are placing themselves at your orders never having met you before. They accept control from here as much as ever, but it is definitely tinged with impatience to see the man. Matt, they think you are the salvation of the world. I don’t mean in any kind of religious sense, but in a wholly secular sense, these people expect you to lead the world out of the dark ages.

  “There is a place for you in our organization, a place where you could do many great things, things that will aid all of mankind. I won’t lie though; we’d be trusting you with enormous power. Power that would allow you to pursue your own goals. You’ll have to think about it and when you’re ready I’ll introduce you to the rest of your team. There is a file in the public directory called ‘The Squad’, take a look at it. At them, the members of your team.”

  With that she was gone.

  “Abbey, I don’t know what to make of this all, or who to trust anymore. Can you give me some time to think it all through?”

  Hiding her sadness at being so easily dismissed Abbey replied, “Sure Matt. I’ll come check on you later, OK?”

  “Sure Abbey.” Matt noticed her demeanor. “Abbey…come here.”

  As Abbey approached his bedside Matt reached out with his now unrestrained had and took hers firmly, “I gave you my trust once, then thought you’d betrayed it and cost me Angus’ life. Then I found I’d been mistaken and I trusted you again. Again it appeared you had betrayed me. In neither case was the appearance the same as the fact. In fact, both times you saved my life at great risk to your own. I love you Abbey, I want to marry you, Abbey will you be my wife?”

  Tears streaming down her face, Abbey kissed him once, fiercely and sobbed “Matt you don’t want me, nobody trusts me and they’ll probably lock me up soon.” So saying, she fled Matt’s hospital room.

  38

  June 2, 2080

  Christchurch, New Zealand

  So, have you given our proposal any thought?”

  Matt sat looking across the table at Colonel Rawlson. She was a short, intense, dark beauty. She also had an unmistakable air of competence. Here was a woman used to command, and to not being questioned.

  “I know you think I should jump at the chance to join you, and I must admit you seem to have a pretty good setup here, but what do you really think you can do against the entire world? Do you think that one little island can stand against the rest of the planet?

  “I don’t care how well organized you are, or how pure your motives, what are you going to use against the might of the rest of the world, sheep dung? This is New Zealand. What have you got here besides sheep and timber?”

  “We’re somewhat better situated than you might think, Matt.”

  “Please. There is no way you can go toe-to-toe with Storm Troops and Hunters and hope to come out on the winning side. Raw numbers aside, they’ve got the tech base to field weapons and transport that you never could. You’re isolated on one relatively little island with limited raw materials, a decidedly inferior infrastructure, and nothing remotely approaching their military might. The only reason this island still exists at all is because the government did away with all their nukes. Heck, they could probably destroy the whole country with old-fashioned carpet-bombing, and never even stress their bomber squadrons.

  That doesn’t even take into account Hunters. Are there any in country right now? You can bet there are. How many of your local murders do you think they’ve accounted for? Geez, slipping a dozen Hunters in would probably be enough alone. What on earth do you hope to accomplish?”

  “The same could, and has, been said about you, Matt. You are bent on revenge and never stopped to think about why the brothers gave up their lives, many of them under torture, to protect you.

  “Do you think the abbot endured two months of torture, his body broken before his eyes bit by bit, so you could throw your life away to avenge his? Don’t you owe him more than that?

  “Look Matt, I could argue with you, I could tell you that the reason I’m so confident that there are no Hunters in New Zealand is because Abbey is not the first to join us, just the first to do it openly. We have people highly placed within the BGP. Yes, even there, you will find people who recognize the difference between right and wrong.

  “I could tell you that we have much more military might than you seem to think, that our tech base is actually superior to the government’s in some areas; that we manage quite well at stealing what we cannot manufacture on our own. I could even mention that carpet-bombing would not even be felt here, we’re 500 meters below ground.

  “I could say all that but I don’t think any of it would convince you. If Abbey’s pleas were unable to sway you to our cause then perhaps there is one who can, or maybe I should say two. As to the first, if you would take out your PDT and punch in the command ‘Fake Scot’ you’ll hear from the first.

  “Incidentally, I should mention that you need no longer fear any lethal injections from your PDT. We’ve changed its programming to recognize your blood, altered by the ‘potion’ or otherwise.

  “I’ll leave you to view the contents in peace.”

  Rising, Vicki Rawlson swiftly left the room before Matt could notice the tears glistening in her eyes as memory overtook her.

  Deciding to trust as far as the PDT went, Matt entered the requested command fearing he knew only too well whom he was about to hear from.

  “Matt, if you’re viewing this, I’m dead and you’re in New Zealand.”

  Matt noticed immediately the lack of accent that had always marked Angus’ speech and couldn’t help but smile. He’d always known Angus’ atrocious accent was fake; he just never had the heart to tell his friend he knew.

  “As you may have guessed I did not grow up in Scotland. I was raised in the Detroit Military Barracks. I’m not sure why I was different than my fellow soldiers, but things just seemed…wrong.

  “Eventually, I was recruited by the resistance. Ten brave people gave their lives the day I escaped from the Storm Troops, people who believed that one soldier joining their cause was more important than their very lives.

  “You see, I was living proof that the genetic manipulation and life-long conditioning were no guarantee of obedience.

  “I wasn’t even the first, but they still thought I was that important. I’ve tried ever since that day to be worthy of their sacrifice.

  “The day we met I was not sent to recruit you, but rather to bring you home. Only you weren’t ready. Even though you’ve never before been to New Zealand, the Resistance is your home. The Silent Heart Monastery was, from the earliest days, a part of it.

  “Brother Fidelis, the abbot, all of them were raising you to be a part of the team that would, with hope, save our world from the tyrants now running it. Provide the lever, so to speak, with which you could move the world.

  “I didn’t know Fidelis well, but I was privileged enough to visit the monastery once ten years ago. I spent some time with him, and Matt, he was so proud of you. Not of your martial prowess, although that was already apparent, but of your soul. Of the kind little boy who was so serious and wanted to help everyone.

  “I, too, have been proud of you. Proud to find that despite all the pain and loss you are a good man. You may want to strike out at the world right now, but that would be wrong.

  “Please think about those who have sacrificed so that you might live and consider this, as important as I was all those years ago,
we would give up me and any ten like me to bring you home. Matt, you are that important.

  “Trust them Matt, they want what’s best for you, and more importantly they want what you want, a world where all men are allowed to live as God made them.

  “Colonel Thibodaux, Colonel Rawlson, General McDougal, all of them can be trusted, but when you need someone to talk to, someone who will not expect you to be the hero in every story, talk to Ralph. He’s a librarian, and a researcher beyond compare. There is steel there even he is unaware of, and he will never judge you harshly for having human failings.

  “I have loved you as a brother Matt, never forget that. God speed, my brother.”

  Matt could no longer focus on the image of his friend. His vision was blurred as tears ran unchecked down his cheeks.

  First Brother Fidelis and now Angus, both gone, both expecting so much of him. They thought he was special, that he could somehow save mankind. He knew better. He was possessed of skills that made him an extremely dangerous man, but in no way qualified him to save anyone or anything. All he knew how to do was fight, fight and kill.

  Matt felt an upsurge of longing that ripped a ragged sob from his throat. He wanted so much to have them both back. Good men who’d died in order that he might live.

  After Matt’s sobs finally subsided, he was never sure how long after, there came a light knock at the door to Colonel Rawlson’s office. The door opened and admitted a woman. A woman who was very old, yet moved with an unhurried grace that many a younger woman would have admired. She had a presence that Matt had never experienced before. There was an aura of calm strength that surrounded her and made any blessed to be in her presence feel safe and secure. She exuded a mother’s love and fierce strength. She was a tiny thing, barely two inches over five feet, yet she seemed to tower over Matt, to enfold him in her spirit.

  “Matthew, my name is Mary. Do you mind if I sit with you awhile?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I knew him. Angus I mean. We all loved him. He was very important to us and many will feel his loss. Colonel Rawlson and Angus were especially close. Their relationship ended several years ago when the crush of duty kept them apart. Vicki’s duties kept her in New Zealand while Angus’ had him traveling into the dangers of the world at large. Sometimes he wouldn’t be back on the island for years at a time. She loved him very much, as much as you did.