Right to Rule: Hunter Wars Book Five (The Hunter Wars 5)

by SD Tanner

  Leanne poked her tongue out at Brett, but sat back and continued to survey the passing scenery. He sighed, not because their fight was a stupid one, but more because he missed the casual camaraderie he, Max and Benny once shared as young leaders. It had been only a year ago, but it felt like he’d lived a lifetime since then. In retrospect, he knew he’d volunteered to be infected to escape the silly love triangle he and Benny had with Lucie. It was such a big decision to be motivated by something so childish, but until he’d fallen in love with Max, he hadn’t realized how little he’d felt for Lucie. Stupid, he thought, but then maybe Ip wouldn’t have died and been reborn, and then they would have all died at the missile silo. His Uncle Jimmy always told him God worked in mysterious ways, and he hoped that was true, otherwise he was a bumbling idiot who was just getting lucky.

  Life had never been easy for him. His family were all immigrants trying to find the good life in America. Although his father carried the lofty title of janitor, both his parents worked as cleaners and he was one of six surviving children. His youngest sister had died of pneumonia when he was seven, and it was her death that prompted his father to immigrate. His father left home, got a green card and joined the U.S. Army, where he fought for a country he didn’t belong to. After serving for eight years as a basic combat soldier, his father applied for his citizenship and then for his family to join him. It was a long and drawn out process, but after ten years he, his mother, his two sisters and three brothers walked into the U.S. as citizens. In the ten years his father was gone, he’d seen him for a few weeks every year, but his father’s wages had kept them all fed and housed, and he was keenly aware of the sacrifices his parents made to give their children the chance of a better life. His father told him after his youngest daughter died of a disease that she should have survived, he made a promise on her grave to do better by them all. Even though he’d never been around much, his father had taught him everything he knew about love, loyalty and staying strong. He felt if he could be half the man his father was, then he would be a man worth the life God granted him.

  They were drawing close to the Marine supply base and his anxiety levels increased. In his vision, he hadn’t been able to work out where Max was to know where this terrible event might take place. Unlike his usual visions, this one was like a one-minute movie and he couldn’t move around the scene. Ever since he had the vision for the first time outside of New York, it played over and over again in his mind and he wanted it to stop. The endless loop where he killed the woman he loved and the baby he wanted, was driving him insane. He was glad Gears agreed to let him leave. With this terrifying movie playing endlessly through his mind, he was sure he would have been a liability in New York.

  The sentries recognized them, and when he waved them through, he thought security at the bases was becoming increasingly lax. Too many new people, too poorly trained, he thought. Maybe he and Max should stay at the bases and help Pax and Captain Ted maintain the standards. Now was not the time to lose control. As soon as they parked at the base, he immediately went to the radio room at the top of the main warehouse and asked the radio operator to contact Gerry on the ship. Gerry was their main radio guy and he knew the whereabouts of every key person.

  “Gerry, it’s Mac and I’m looking for Max.”

  Gerry’s smooth radio announcer voice came over the speaker. “She went with Mom, Lydia’s baby and some others to the Ranch three days ago. Last status I have from the Ranch is all is well.”

  “Uh, do you know if she’s scheduled to come back? I mean, why did she leave the ship? She wasn’t supposed to do that.”

  “She was supposed to come back the next day, but the pilot told me she’d decided to stay. We’ve had no reports of any problems out there, and the place is teeming with scavengers and combat shooters. I’m sure she’s safe. Mom and Pop are there too.”

  He rubbed his forehead as if it would soothe his worry. “I hear what you’re saying, but she should never have left the ship. Why did she go? What was she thinking?”

  “I saw her in the restaurant before she left with Mom and she said she was bored. Max is no lightweight, Mac. She’s good with a gun and she can take care of herself and others pretty well.”

  Gerry didn’t understand the whole problem. “Thanks Gerry, but I need to get to the Ranch right now.”

  “No problem. I’ll check who’s free and get you a ride now.”

  He thanked Gerry, deciding to leave the communications room, and head over to the helipads. When he arrived, two combat shooters strolled over to him and both were fully geared up for combat. They were wearing the trademark wraparound dark glasses they all seemed to favor now. He didn’t see the point. It was cold and the sun was hardly out, but he’d noticed the combat shooters were developing a culture and a branding of their own. He supposed they were no longer a desperate group trying to survive, but finally turning into the army that Gears and Pax intended them to be. A pilot appeared from inside of one of the birds that was parked on a helipad.

  “Hey, are you Mackenzie?”

  “Yeah, Gerry said he’d get me a bird to go to the Ranch asap,”

  “I’m Geoff. Your timing couldn’t be better. I was just heading out there with supplies and a couple more combat shooters. All you gotta do is hop on board.”

  He climbed into the helicopter and realized it was going to be a tight fit. The bird was loaded with supplies, including several large boxes of disposable nappies. That reminded him Mom had taken Lydia’s baby to the Ranch and he wondered why. It wasn’t as if the Ranch was ever safe and Ruler had already destroyed it twice. He squeezed himself in between the stacked boxes of diapers and another stack of boxes he recognized as MREs. With his back to the side of the bird, and wedged between the boxes that were securely tied down, he prepared for a long and uncomfortable flight. Stretching his legs out, he leaned his head against one stack of boxes and was asleep before the bird took off.

  When he woke again, he felt slightly cold and someone was dragging him out by his feet. Initially he thought maybe he was having another vision, but when his head thudded heavily onto the floor of the bird, he decided it was no dream. He raised his legs to kick whoever was pulling him by his ankles, and a body dropped solidly onto his chest and punched the air from his lungs. Suddenly he was looking into the blue on blue eyes of a demon super hunter, and realized it was one of the combat shooters who boarded the bird with him. Flicking his head from side to side, he tried to see where the other combat shooter was.

  The demon super hunter straddling his chest leaned forward until he could smell its stale breath on his face, and it smirked and licked its lips. “Tasty.”

  Realizing he was about to be possessed, he tried to force himself into a sitting position, but his broad shoulders were so tightly squeezed into the space he couldn’t get his arms behind him. Using only his core strength to leverage himself, he managed to half sit up, but the demon super hunter was faster. Leaning in as if to kiss him, the demon turned his head slightly to the right and bit his cheek. It didn’t hurt. It wouldn’t hurt. He was infected with the designer virus and was already part hunter.

  “Sonofabitch!”

  As he swore he became aware of an invasion of his mind and body. It was as if the cold started at the top of his head and slowly crept down him. He felt every hair on his body stand on end and a tingling sensation drifted through every inch of him. His heart rate slowed, he felt his blood pressure drop, and his head swam slightly as the virus the demon super hunter carried began to compete with his own designer virus. His stomach flipped over repeatedly and he fought the need to vomit. The demon super hunter’s now useless body was collapsed on top of him, and jammed between the towers of boxes, he was stuck.

  Well, hello you, a silky voice said inside his head.

  “Fuck off.”

  Oh no, that’s not how it works, you know that. No, no, no, your ass is mine and I’ll be driving from now on.

  Now he understood his vision. He did
n’t kill Max and his baby, this sonofabitch demon was going to kill them. His vision had led him into a trap. If he’d just stayed with Gears and his brothers in New York, he wouldn’t have been here to be possessed and kill the people he loved most in the world. Inwardly he raged at his own stupidity and arrogance to believe he could set everything right when he clearly couldn’t. While all these thoughts crashed into his consciousness, he felt his happiness drain away to nothing, leaving only a hollow emptiness in its wake. He was undone and he’d done it to himself.

  Without his consent, his body stood, patted itself down and he heard himself say, “Well, not a bad trade for once.”

  He could feel the bird was coming into land and it was bringing two demon super hunters to an already destroyed Ranch. Thinking hard, he wondered, if the demon possessed him then didn’t he in a way possess the demon? Their minds were joined, and if it could see his mind, then surely he could see into it. Losing control of his body was a shock, but he set the emotion aside and ignored what the demon was doing. It was like being on autopilot. He didn’t need to focus on his movement any more than he focused on his breathing or his heartbeat. Allowing his thoughts to roam, he began to explore his own mind. First he called up his memories. Scanning quickly, he ran through his memories as a young boy, the house he’d lived in, the faces of his parents and his siblings and their many happy moments. Next he explored his physical being. He was aware of the wind against his face, the pressure as his muscles moved, the taste in his mouth, the sounds of the rotors, the smell of the dust being thrown into the air and the movement of his limbs. Then he dug deeper and found his emotions. He was aware of the small, sharp spikes of anxiety, the underlying coolness of his confidence, and the steeliness of his determination not to kill the people he loved.

  I know every part of me, he thought. Having isolated himself in his mind, he went in search of that which was not a part of him and found it. There was a contempt and coldness that didn’t belong to him. He’d never held the world in contempt. His father’s choices taught him life was to be valued no matter how hard it was to live. His mother had never smothered them in obvious love, but every day she’d cared for them, tended to their needs, and never once complained about being without the man she loved so dearly. She’d never been effusive, but her steady commitment and willingness to do anything to give her children what they needed, filled him with more warmth than any words could have. He knew the contempt and the coldness he felt inside of him definitely was not his.

  He remembered the day his younger sister died. His mother had wrapped her body in a white muslin sheet and placed her in a tiny coffin. Being the eldest, he’d carried her with his father to the remote graveyard, and he’d looked around the gravestones dotted untidily in the dusty land. His sister had been a sweet child who loved to laugh, and the idea that her tiny body would be left alone in such a barren place filled him with pain. Without warning, the realization she was gone forever exploded in his young mind. He’d put her small coffin down on the dusty ground and sat on an old grave and wept. His father had crouched down, and putting his arm around him, he’d said, “Grief never dies. We learn to put it behind a wall, and we only visit it on special occasions when we need to remember.” It took him a few years to learn how to put a wall up inside his mind, but once learned it was a skill he’d never lost.

  The demon who possessed him was walking the short distance towards the main house with his fellow demon beside him. He could feel his face smiling. Max walking down the steps of the porch holding onto the rail carefully. She was looking at him, her face beaming with joy and a look of happy anticipation. He wanted to stop, turn and run, but instead he kept walking towards her, picking up his pace as he went. She’d reached the bottom of the stairs and was now almost trotting to meet him. Behind her, Mom had walked onto the porch holding a baby in a pouch against the front of her body. He sensed the demon super hunter by his side move, and heard the familiar sound of metal clunking as the demon swung his weapon from his shoulder. The vision warned him that he would kill Max as soon as she came close, but he hadn’t known there would be another demon super hunter ready to kill everyone else.

  Max was five feet away when she stopped, and looking at him, her eyes widened in horror. She’d seen his blue on blue eyes, and clutching her belly protectively, she cried, “No, Mac!”

  It was as if the scene was frozen. Mom with the baby in the pouch, strapped to her chest. Max just five feet from him, her mouth wide open in horror, and her arms protectively clutching their unborn child. The demon shooter was mid step beside him in the middle of pulling his gun into a firing position. He was reaching for Max with one hand, claw-like and grasping.

  No, he thought, this does not go down this way.

  Why ever not, the demon inside his mind replied?

  I have a say in this, he replied stubbornly, and you can’t make me kill the woman I love and my own child. There’s a limit to the power you have over me.

  Says who.

  I do, you don’t own me.

  With time stood still, he explored his own mind. Just as the stars had appeared in his mind when he was infected, now there was a coldness in his mind that was the demon who’d invaded his inner world. He didn’t have to talk to the stars when they opened in his head, and he didn’t see why he had to talk to this demon either. When he and Max ran away to the hills together, many of the Infected he saw as stars in his mind tried to talk to him. He ignored them all by simply refusing to acknowledge them, and he didn’t see why he couldn’t ignore this demon as well.

  You can’t do that, the demon said angrily.

  I’m doing it now and you should leave.

  I don’t have to and you can’t make me.

  He brought up the memory of his younger sister, the graveyard, and his father’s face when he comforted him. You don’t own me, he said to the cold part of his mind, these people do. He began to layer images of his father and sister over the coldness in his mind, as if he was wallpapering a crack in a wall. These were people he’d loved deeply who were now lost to him. Just as his father told him so long ago, he’d learned grief never went away, but it could be walled in and only explored when he needed to remember. Grief and coldness are much the same thing, he thought, both drain the spirit and lose the soul. Just as he’d once learned to do with his sister, he put a wall between himself and the demon possessing him.

  With his right hand, he reached down and pulled his KA-BAR from its sheath, and stopping, he waited for the demon super hunter by his side to move a step ahead of him. When it did, he grabbed it by the forehead and yanked it back firmly. He ran the razor sharp blade across its throat so quickly there was a suspended millisecond where there was no blood, only a gaping wound, and then blood exploded from its neck like a geyser. As its body fell heavily to the ground, Max rushed forward and grabbed the demon’s gun.

  Without hesitating, she aimed the gun at his head. “You’re dead, asshole!”

  The demon in his mind was walled in for now, but he wondered if he could keep it buried and he nodded. “It’s probably for the best. It wants to kill you and the baby.”

  She didn’t lower her gun, but her face softened. “Mac?”

  “Yeah, baby, I’m here, but I’m not alone. They got me in the bird.”

  “But you seem okay.”

  Pop appeared about ten feet to his left, and he also had a gun aimed at him. Staring menacingly down the barrel of his shotgun, he asked sternly, “What the hell is goin’ on here?”

  “I’ve been possessed by a demon. You might as well shoot me now. If it gets control of me again, it’ll kill everyone.”

  “But you got control of it now, right?”

  He did have control of it for now. In a sense, he was ignoring it and that seemed to be working, but he wasn’t sure he could keep control of it.

  “Yeah, I walled it in, but I don’t know if I can hold it down forever.”

  Pop eyed him closely and then shrugged. “Good en
ough.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me?”

  “Nope. There’s somethin’ funny about ya, Mac. You ain’t like everyone else. If anyone can have a demon in his head and keep it under control, it’ll be you.”

  Max walked up to him and wound her arms around his body. “That’s true, Mac. There’s definitely something funny about you.”

  Mom had walked over from the porch, and looking down at the bleeding super hunter lying in the dirt, she said in disgust, “Someone get this trash off my land.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The price of success (Captain Ted)

  He surveyed the aftermath of the battle and decided it was probably his worse screw up to date, and that included the time he’d managed to trap over six hundred combat shooters at Ruler’s camp. At least in that situation the combat shooters were prepared to die, but luckily they’d all survived. This time he estimated at least two thousand survivors had been killed by hunters, or were shot by their own shooters. He already knew this screw up was going to weigh heavily on him for a long time to come.

  He’d organized the medical teams to deal with the injured survivors, and he was working with the combat teams to kill the newly born, but downed hunters. The only way to kill them was to destroy the brain stem. Their priority was to get the living out of the reach of the hunters, and combat shooters were moving amongst the injured survivors and making an assessment of their needs. If their injuries were minor, they moved them away from the hunters. The more seriously injured in need of urgent medical attention were carried to the waiting medical teams, but with nearly a thousand bodies crammed onto the small wharf, they needed to move quickly. He had a hundred combat shooters working in teams of four. Once they severed the brain stem of any still able hunters, they would move the remaining injured survivors to the medical teams and then finish bringing down the hunters.

  The combat shooters in the lifeboats had already rescued most of the people in the water and taken them to land. Unfortunately it was winter, and many people rescued from the freezing water were at risk of hypothermia. Without power, there was no easy way to get them warm, but he could see there were several fires being started on the shores. They needed access to the electricity and medical services on the other transport ships. He’d ordered them to dock one of the transport ships at the larger of the two docks that was less than half a mile away, and Axel was organizing vehicles to take the severely injured and most vulnerable to the transport ship. He decided he would spend his time supporting the combat shooters who were destroying the brain stems of the hunters. It was a horrible job. Being newly turned, they still looked human, and in some cases, he recognized the faces of what were once people he’d sworn to protect.