Hunter Wars Omnibus Edition (Books 1 - 3)

by SD Tanner

  Chuckles bellowed, ‘Hey! Cut it out!’

  Sniggering, he said to Chuckles, ‘Oh, leave her alone. She’s just playing.’

  ‘She’s killing them!’ Chuckles exclaimed. ‘How is she even doing that?’

  He watched the hunters running about like startled chickens and sniggering again, he thought, the imp has a murderous streak, I rather like that. Relaxed, he said to Chuckles, ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I care,’ Chuckles replied sounding annoyed. ‘I have to get rid of the bodies.’

  ‘Why?’ He asked curiously.

  Chuckles looked at him as if he was mad and said, ‘Because they’ll rot.’

  He still couldn’t see the problem and said, ‘Leave her. She’ll wear herself out.’

  Ip continued to run around the Ranch dropping hunters with a touch. There were tens of thousands of hunters in the area and he didn’t understand why she was bothering. He decided that perhaps the imp was even stupider than he originally thought. Becoming bored watching her, he wondered how long it would take for her dogs to show up and claim her. The people at the Ranch were living at the far end of the property and now they were all watching Ip killing the hunters.

  Seeing the people standing about watching Ip, Chuckles complained, ‘It’s not good for control.’

  ‘Shut up or die, Chuckles,’ he replied amiably.

  Chuckles looked down at the ground and said nothing. By now Ip had killed over a hundred hunters and she didn’t seem inclined to stop and the hunter corpses were piling up in untidy heaps of tangled limbs. A woman in a long, white, slightly sheer dress walked up and stood next to him watching silently.

  ‘You need to stop her,’ Anna said bluntly.

  ‘Why?’ He asked, sounding as bored as he felt.

  ‘It’s a signal,’ Anna replied.

  Turning to her, he watched the slight wind blow against her dress and outline her naked body underneath and said, ‘Oh I see, so her dogs know she’s here.’

  Not so stupid then, he thought, but not smart enough. He wanted her dogs to find her as much as she wanted to be found. ‘Leave her and leave the bodies,’ he ordered. He turned to Anna and instructed, ‘When she’s done playing, bring her indoors and feed her. I want her kept in the house.’

  He was about to leave when he remembered how much he enjoyed Anna’s vicious streak. With one hand, he grabbed Anna around the throat and tightened his grip until he could hear her gasping for air and with his other hand, he stroked her breast under the light fabric and said amiably, ‘Don’t hurt her or I’ll cook you alive.’

  Letting go of Anna, he said gaily, ‘Must go. Got things to do.’ Knowing his orders would be followed, he walked off in the direction of the barn.

  ***

  Glaring at Ip as if it were she who strangled her, Anna turned to Chuckles and said, ‘I’m going kill them.’

  ‘Who?’ Chuckles asked sounding confused.

  Anna was gently massaging her throat to ease the pain and swallowing tentatively, she said croakily, ‘That little bitch and the three bastards she lives with. They’ll be coming to get her.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Chuckles asked warily.

  ‘I was with them before I came here,’ Anna replied. ‘They have several bases and a couple of islands.’

  Looking worried, Chuckles asked, ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Over ten thousand,’ Anna replied, but her voice was still slightly raspy.

  ‘Shit,’ Chuckles said. He looked at Anna and said, ‘We should leave.’

  Giving him a contemptuous look, Anna said ‘You can leave if you want, but I’m staying. I’m going to kill them.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: There ain’t no place like home (Gears)

  ‘What the hell is going on down there?’ TL asked, as they flew over Red River County.

  Below them were tens of thousands of hunters in daylight, but they weren’t doing anything. Some looked up at the Black Hawk as it flew low over their heads, but most appeared to be oblivious. He’d never seen anything like it. The hunters stretched out for miles and they were standing like idle soldiers without a master.

  Hatch said, ‘We got company. Commercial bird straight ahead.’

  Since the first month of the outbreak, they hadn’t seen a single thing in the skies, other than their own birds. Hatch banked to the left and they could see the white helicopter heading towards them. There were a lot of different types of commercial helicopters available and he didn’t know what he was looking at, but compared to the Black Hawk it was tiny. The white helicopter came alongside them and he saw someone open the side window and poke the barrel of a gun out.

  ‘Ya gotta be kiddin’ me,’ Pax said in disbelief.

  He knew how he felt. Everywhere they went, assholes kept trying to kill them and it was getting to be repetitive. Pax was behind the M240 machine gun and he asked, ‘Whatdaya wanna do, Gears?’

  It was unlikely the idiot with the peashooter could do any damage to the bird, but whoever it was had made their intentions clear. After the loss of so many at the island and losing Ip, he completely lost his sense of humor and said bluntly, ‘Take ‘em out, Pax.’

  Pax opened fire and the bullets ripped through the little helicopter as if it were made of paper. He wasn’t sure whether they shot the pilot first or they took out the helicopter itself. Either way, the little bird lost control and spiraled madly to the ground, exploding and skidding on impact and setting fire to hunters in its way. They all watched as burning hunters streaked across the dusty land oblivious to pain, but bumping carelessly into their brother hunters and setting them on fire too. It was like a forest fire of sorts and by the time the wrecked and burning little bird came to a halt, there was a ring of burning hunters dancing around it as if celebrating the loss.

  ‘Not feeling kind today, Gears?’ TL asked.

  ‘No, TL, I ain’t,’ he answered angrily. ‘Anythin’ gets in our way, we kill it, and don’t bother askin’ me again ’cos that’s the only answer I got.’

  Captain Ted looked across at him dubiously and he glared back at him, shrugging Captain Ted looked down at the ground below them. He was in a bad mood and not with Pax for losing track of Ip. That was easily done. She was willful and did as she pleased, but it was never a problem before. They seemed to be experiencing a run of bad luck and he didn’t believe in coincidences. In the past two days, they lost over one thousand people to a freak hunter attack, the Major turned up and lied about how BD was killed and now Ip was taken. It was if someone deliberately aimed to harm the things each of them cared about the most. As the person who enlisted survivors, TL took the welfare of the survivors who joined them personally. Pax was in love with BD and the idea that he could have killed her cut him hard. He’d sworn to protect Ip from the day he met her and now she’d been kidnapped. No, he did not believe in coincidences, but he was at a loss to explain how all these events could have taken place in just a few days.

  Whoever or whatever was behind all this had miscalculated badly. His reaction to being attacked in any way was to become more merciless than his enemy. He was not one to turn the other cheek or to seek the path of reasonable men. No, he’d survived by kicking back harder than he was kicked. That tactic worked in the schoolyard and it worked in the world of the big kids. All the past forty-eight hours had done was piss him off in the extreme and anything that got in his way now was likely to die. Peering down at the hordes of hunters below him, he recognized the area well. They’d lived in this region since they were ten years old and he knew exactly where they were. Calling to Hatch, he directed him to fly over the area where the Ranch was located.

  ‘What are you doin’, Gears?’ Pax asked.

  ‘Followin’ a hunch,’ he replied.

  He couldn’t explain it, but he had a feeling all of this activity was centered round the Ranch, yet he had no idea why it would be. Very quickly they were flying over the area near the Ranch and that was when they saw the Ranch itself. It was impossible. The hous
e, the stables, the barn and the fences were fully rebuilt, identical to the original build. The only hint this was not the original Ranch was nothing looked weathered enough, but otherwise it was a pretty good replica. He noted, the other thing missing were the horses. The paddocks were full of hunters and when he looked to the north of the Ranch, he also saw tents and trailer housing. People were standing around the properties, looking up at the Black Hawk as it flew low and slow over the Ranch.

  ‘Ya gotta be kiddin’ me!’ Pax exclaimed loudly.

  Why, he wondered, why would anyone rebuild the Ranch? It didn’t make any sense. To the south of the house, he saw piles of dead hunters clustered together on the bare ground.

  He called to Hatch, ‘Fly by those dead hunters.’

  Hatch did as he was asked and peering intently down at the dead hunters, he observed, ‘They’re not movin’. Only Ip’s people can do that. She’s gotta be here somewhere.’

  Other than the hunters and the people living in the trailers and tents, they saw no one else. There were a number of trucks and cars parked around the Ranch and for some reason, a highly polished black stretch limousine. On closer inspection, he saw there was a man tied to the post of one of the fences. Looking along the fence line, he saw he was not the only one, but none of them appeared to be moving.

  He called to Hatch, ‘Keep sweepin’ the area. I wanna recon wider out.’

  Hatch did as he was asked and using the Ranch as the central point, they circled slowly, gradually sweeping out in wider and wider circles from the Ranch. Flying in ever widening circles, he saw, behind a low hill, there was a body dump. When the bird flew over it, millions of flies appeared to lift into the air and then resettle down on the bodies.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ Captain Ted asked in disbelief.

  ‘Corpses,’ he replied succinctly. ‘A lot of ‘em.’

  On closer inspection, he wasn’t sure if it was corpses as much as it was human body parts. Hatch kept circling and he saw a large darkened pit that was still smoking slightly. In a wide circle around the pit, the earth was well trampled and in the middle of the pit there was a metal skewer suspended by bars. It was the kind of homemade spit they used at the island to roast the pigs, but this metal skewer looked to be longer and larger. He couldn’t work out what it was for, but judging by the blackness of the pit, it had been used many times.

  ‘What the hell are we looking at?’ TL asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ he replied honestly. Then he called to Hatch, ‘Take us up Hatch. I wanna see a wider view.’

  Hatch obliged and took the bird higher in the sky. He practically hung out of the bird and looked down on the scene. Once higher, he could see the Ranch was surrounded by tens of thousands of hunters and the trailers and tents were swamped by the sheer number of them. The hunters were idle and he assumed they were waiting for their masters, the super hunters. He was concerned by the complete lack of response to their flyby. It didn’t make sense. By now someone or something should have shown itself and at least taken a pot shot at them just as the person in the small bird had intended to.

  ‘I wanna strafe the site,’ he said. ‘See if we can wake ‘em up.’

  ‘Do we wanna wake them up, Gears?’ Captain Ted asked doubtfully. ‘We’re in no position to fight this many hunters.’

  ‘Hunters are no problem from the air,’ he replied bluntly. ‘I don’t think they’re the face of this enemy and I wanna see who we’re fightin’.’

  Pax and TL didn’t answer, but they each positioned themselves behind an M240. Reasoning if Ip was down there, she was probably in the house, he said, ‘Don’t hit the house.’

  ‘We’re not stupid, Gears,’ Pax replied.

  ‘You’re a little bit stupid, Pax,’ TL remarked. ‘You did lose her.’

  ‘Yeah, well, she doan take well to the leash,’ Pax retorted.

  ‘Shaddup both of ya,’ he said bluntly. ‘Concentrate on the job at hand.’

  ‘I’m surprised you aren’t more annoyed with Pax,’ TL persisted. ‘I am.’

  He shrugged and said, ‘We’ll let her slap him Ip-style when we get her back.’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ Pax replied sincerely.

  Hatch was now flying low and slow and they opened fire, ripping into hunters as they passed by. The hunters were being torn apart by the high caliber bullets and falling to the ground and the flight path of the bird could be followed by the lines of fallen, but still moving hunters. Having strafed the area, Hatch hovered near the house and they waited for a response, but there was none.

  ‘Screw this,’ he said and he fired a grenade from the M203 attached to his M4A1 at the limousine.

  The limousine bucked as the fuel in the tank caught fire and the long vehicle proceeded to burn with increasing enthusiasm. Captain Ted must have decided that it looked like fun and he fired his M203 at a truck. For the next few minutes, he and Captain Ted destroyed every vehicle in the area. Sitting back, they waited again for any response to their aggression and again, there was none.

  Irritated by the lack of response, he said, ‘This is fuckin’ ridiculous.’

  Clearly also fed up with the one-sided fight, Pax suggested, ‘Maybe we should land and check it out.’

  ‘That would be stupid,’ he replied sternly. ‘There are more hunters than we have weapons to deal with down there.’

  He now understood why Ip said she was home where the horses were. Every part of him, but his common sense wanted to land the bird, rush the house and rescue Ip, but he knew it wouldn’t work and would get them all killed.

  Pushing down his need to take immediate and conclusive action, he said, ‘Let’s go. We need to come back in force.’

  Captain Ted looked surprised and said incredulously, ‘You know she’s down there right now. We could be in and out faster than the hunters.’

  ‘No, we couldn’t,’ he said firmly. ‘The hunters have us outnumbered. Whatever’s got Ip down there is jus’ playin’ possum.’

  TL added, ‘He’s right. It’s screwing with us.’

  Decision made and agreed for once, sighing deeply, he said, ‘Hatch, get us outta here.’ He continued to scan from the bird as they flew higher and faster and away from the bizarreness of the Ranch.

  Once they stopped to refuel at the small airfield in Ruston, Louisiana, Pax asked, ‘What are ya thinking, Gears?’

  Standing with his back to the bird, glaring at the horizon, he replied grimly, ‘I want her back. Whatever the cost.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ TL confirmed.

  ‘Then we hit it with everythin’ we got,’ Pax said bluntly.

  Looking puzzled, Captain Ted said, ‘But there’s nothing there but a bunch of harmless looking civilians and hunters. What exactly are we hitting?’

  ‘Everything,’ he replied bluntly. ‘Scorched earth and then we go in.’

  ‘Yeah that’s the way,’ Pax agreed. ‘Burn the shit outta it and that’ll clear enough hunters to get in. We’ll need combat shooters to keep the area cleared of hunters and we get in and fetch our girl.’

  ‘Yep,’ he confirmed. ‘Scorched earth should get rid of any super hunters and the hunters’ll be rabid dumb dogs.’

  When they got back to the Marine supply base, they hunkered around a table in a meeting room in one of the buildings and planned the attack. Nelson joined them with Isaac. He had asked Isaac if Ip had heard them. She told Isaac their presence was noted and the people in the house at the Ranch were quite upset about the vehicles they had destroyed. He was relieved to know where she was, but remained frustrated that despite being so close, they couldn’t get to her and it would take them several days to get the convoy of combat shooters and weapons to the Ranch. He, TL and Pax didn’t intend to travel with the convoy. Their plan was to stay within a few miles of the Ranch and if Isaac said Ip needed them, he and his brothers would go in and get her or die trying.

  He laid out the plan of attack, ‘We attack early morning to maximize the daylight hours. I want Lyd
ia and the medics at the old CDC to act as the closest hospital for the wounded. We need to clear a half-mile radius around the Ranch of any super hunters that could control the hunters to act as an army in the daylight. We’ll set up mortars three miles away and we’ll need ten mortars with crews and fifty combat shooters for protection. We’ll have ten assault vehicles with twenty shooters in each. The ten assault vehicles with ten HUMVEEs will drive to within one mile of the Ranch. Black Hawks will fly over the Ranch to act as spotters. When they say go the mortars can fire. At the same time the HUMVEEs can start firin’ the MK 19 grenade launchers. Black Hawks can fire the Hydra rockets. Scorched earth should kill most of the super hunters in the area and a hell of a lot of the hunters. Black Hawks can tell the mortars and HUMVEEs when to ceasefire and when the assault vehicles should move to the Ranch. Once the assault vehicles are moving, they can fire their MK 19 grenade launchers. The Black Hawks can fire the Hellfire missiles closer to the Ranch. They’re the only ones accurate enough to fire that close. Assault vehicles go in as two columns of five. As they drive towards the Ranch, they can start firing the M2 .50-cal machines guns. Once they’re at the Ranch, they surround the house and shooters can get out of the vehicles to assume defensive positions to keep hunters away from the Ranch. We’ll land with Hatch and enter the house. We clear the house, get Ip and bug out. Everyone bugs out.’

  ‘That does mean we’re going to kill any survivors near the house,’ Nelson observed grimly.

  ‘They chose their side,’ he said, equally as grimly. ‘Ya shouldn’t sleep with the enemy.’

  Nelson said nothing, but Captain Ted said, ‘You guys don’t do anything by halves.’

  ‘And Marines do?’ Pax asked doubtfully.

  ‘Fuck no,’ Captain Ted replied honestly.

  ‘Alright, let’s not get into that,’ he said, abruptly shutting their banter. ‘Pax, TL and me will be with Isaac a few miles out, while Captain Ted and Nelson bring the convoy. If Isaac says there’s a problem for Ip, we’ll go straight in. If not, then Hatch ya gonna have to pick us up from there to drop us into the Ranch.’