October 5, 2053
SO: You see this shit?!
IC: God damn the media covering this hasn't been able to get good footage of this guy.
ML: He's like a Wraith in the woodlands.
RJ: Show them whose boss Woodland Wraith.
HR: As much as I'd love to see him win, he isn't a Samurai.
IC: True, the Worker's Party claims to be against capitalist corporations but the courts with their judges still side with the corps. He'll be arrested and jailed.
PL: Don't spread your misinformation you fascist fuck.
IC: How is it misinformation? In the last twelve cases against corps were the corp broke the law, the corp was found to be in the clear and laws were rewritten afterword.
PL: This is why freedom of speech is bad you'll have the ignorant masses believing your lies. People like you should be jailed you fascist pig.
IC: So, you're saying that when the MFC tries to press charges and sue the shit out of this guy the Party will back him?
PL: Well, what he is doing is against the law.
IC: So, you're saying that it is okay for corps to kidnap and exploit people, and we should not resist them?
PL: NO! don't twist my words you fascist asshole. He should have informed the Party and let them take care of it through the courts.
October 28, 2053:
RJ: You mean the courts in which most of the judges have been bribed by Lurkeroff Imports?
PL: More misinformation!!!
HR: This is why no one can trust the government. Each side claims the other is a lying devil and should be jailed, and at the end of the day the corps win.
October 31, 2053:
PL: I told you the Party wouldn't side with the corps.
IC: It hasn't gone to court you ass.
WG: What the fuck is all this shit?!
RJ: Welcome back to civilization.
*******
WILLIAM GRAZER
These god damned assholes. Kidnap my sister Mary, and say they'll only return her to us if we sign a contract to supply twice the damned number of pelts, we sold them last year, without monetary compensation.
We'll see who the fuck is the better predator. My parents took my little brother Robert, and went north, up past what the old fucking maps list as Halifax. They sent me a message that they arrived at the bunker great grandfather had built. I've been building traps, snares, and other surprises my grandpa taught me. These have fucking nothing to do with hunting.
The bastards that call themselves police won't lift a finger. Grandpa told me that, back in his dad's day, the police actually fucking protected the people, and there was enough damned wildlife that millions of people could hunt. Must have been fucking nice.
I walked up to a warehouse that Marcus uses to store finished coats. Using a program mother made, I got in easily. I sabotaged the fire suppression system and set the coats on fire. I started to walk out of the city and back into the woods. I received a call.
"Hey Billy, how are you?" Asked my friend Elizabeth Bertarelli.
"Oh, I am doing just fine. Getting ready for a big hunt. How is preparing for university going?"
"It is going well. We have a break coming up- Wait! What do you mean a big hunt? I thought you said your family already had enough meat for the winter."
"Yeah, we are fine, but someone fucking raided the Darrel's so I'm going to help them out."
"So, you won't be able to go hiking with me when I get back during break?"
"Sorry Liza, I know you were looking forward to the hike, but they need the help." It wasn't a necessarily a lie. The Darrel's had been raided, and several others were going on a big hunt to help them, just not me. My big hunt was far more challenging.
"Well, maybe we could go hiking during spring break?"
"Sounds nice. Look I got to get going. We can talk about it soon, okay?"
"Okay. Stay safe out there, Billy."
"I promise to be as careful as I can be. You should call Mellissa. I'm sure she'd love to take you shopping. Take care, Liza." With that we hung up.
MARIANNE MARCUS
I was sure the Grazers would have folded by now. I have had their precious daughter for a week, but I haven't heard anything from them yet. I mean what's the big deal? They hunt those things for food, so giving me the pelts shouldn't that big a problem. They are the last hold outs amongst the peasants that supply pelts. With them under my thumb, there won't be anyone that will be able to compete with me here in New Harrisburg. So why hadn't they folded. The opening of my office door broke me out of my ruminations.
"Ma'am! The warehouse in the Cameron District is on fire!" My secretary Rachel said.
"What? How did that happen? Who is crazy enough to mess with us?"
"I do not know yet, ma'am. The cameras only caught a blurred figure entering the building. Their face was covered, and they didn't have any aug signals."
"Well, that should narrow it down. There aren't many people running around without augs."
In fact, considering what I had been thinking about before she came in, I think I might have a pretty good idea who it was. I smiled. Once I had William arrested or killed, they would fold.
"Rachel, since you are here, why don't you help me with a problem I have under the desk?" My smile soon got larger for a different reason.
WILLIAM GRAZER
I set three more damned warehouses on fire. One had pelts that hadn't been processed at all yet. Another had pelts that had gone through the first step of tanning. The final had pelts that were ready to be made into coats. The bastards had tried to catch me, but I lost them all. Most of the time I lost them before I left the fucking city, the few times I didn't, I easily lost them in the woods.
That shitbag Marcus finally had enough and sent her goddamned security in force to my parents' house in the Fishing Creek Valley. She lost a fucking entire squad when the house exploded. I had been watching and opened fire with the Henry rifle my dad had given me before they left. I was able to take out two more members from a second damned squad. Then I retreated into the woods that had been labeled Boyd's Big Tree Farm on the old maps, where I had previously placed some of the surprises.
I had multiple areas all over the valley prepared. I already knew this was going to take a while. The squads followed the trail I intentionally left, anger overriding logic. If the fucking goons had been able to think rationally, they would have realized I was leading them into a trap. Over the last week as soon as the bastards had entered the woods, they hadn't been able to find me. Though they would try for hours before giving up.
I'm sure the media was reporting on the story at this point. It was time to embarrass the hell out of the fucking shitbags. They had separated and spread out by squads to find me. The first trap to spring was a snare that caught one of them by the neck and hauled him thirty feet into the air. His squad mates had no way to cut him down. There were only four left in this particular fucking squad. The next caught a sharpened stake to the thigh, they got the stake out and got him bandaged but two of them were required to carry him out. I shot the asshole that wasn't carrying the wounded man. I moved, knowing there was likely at least one other fucking squad coming. I wasn't wrong, all three remaining squads converged on the survivors. The remaining three squads retreated to their APCS for the night.
ELIZABETH BERTARELLI
I had just arrived home. Mom was waiting at the door, but father and my little brother were nowhere to be found. Which was not unusual, the worried look mom was trying to hide was.
"Honey, are you okay?" Mom asked me.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I got a call from Mellissa. She normally let me have an hour or two to say hello to my family before calling. "Hold on, Mom, I should probably take this."
"Lissa what's wrong? I just got back and haven't even gotten to talk to my parents yet." I said as I picked up.
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"Liza, babe you mean you haven't been watching the news feeds?" Mellissa asked.
"It was all the same stuff about someone setting fire to the Marcus family's warehouses that has been running since the beginning of the week. So, I stopped and tried to get caught up on work that has been piling up while I was at school."
"Honey, the Marcus company sent security forces to the Grazer's homestead, and It blew up." Mom interjected herself into the conversation again. I felt my world start to crumble.
"Once it exploded, with a squad of security forces inside, someone opened fire on the squads outside." Mellissa added
"We received a message from George and Lynn, at the beginning of the week, asking to keep an eye on William and help him find Mary if we could, and that they were taking Robert to safety." Mom continued quickly.
My world stopped crumbling. He would be fine he was in the woods. Woodland Billy was what I had called him when we were younger, when he had found Mellissa when she had gotten lost during a picnic with her family. However, William Grazer would still have some explaining to do. I focused on what I could do something about, finding Mary.
"Mom, Lissa thanks for making sure I was okay. It seems I have more work to do than I thought. Are dad and Junior already looking for Mary?"
"Yes, we know who took her, but finding where they are keeping her is proving difficult." Mom stated.
"My father has told me to stay out of it and away from you. With him looking over my shoulder there is little I'll be able to do to help. Sorry, babe." Mellissa said, she looked like she wanted to hit someone.
"It's okay Lissa, I don't think Marcus knows what she has gotten herself into this time. The fact someone opened fire on her goons means William is safe for now. While she's busy trying to deal with him, I'll open fire on her firewalls. Mom when this is over, we really should hire Lynn and George. Lynn would make our information security so much better, and if we can talk George into training our people, we'd basically have a PMC in a couple of years."
"I'll talk to your father about it, but you will need to talk to William about joining our company as well. If his family joins us, he may leave to find other hunting grounds. Everyone we've talked to has said the same thing. There just is not enough wildlife left out there to support the number of families that are hunting." Mom responded
My world started to shake but I took a couple of deep breathes. Billy leaving was a problem in the future that might not come to be. Marianne was the problem that needs attention right now. I went to my study/office and got started, Woodland Billy wasn't the only hunter. My weapons were different than his, but this time our prey was the same.
SANDRA OWENS
My ratings were going through the roof covering the "terrorist attacks" on the Marcus's Fur Company. Chances are whoever set fire to their buildings was a disgruntled former employee or former competitor.
I didn't care, the story was doing great for my career. A statement from the company stated it had found out who the responsible party was and had sent security forces to handle it. I and my viewers watched, as a house blew up with a squad inside and two more killed by gunfire. I focused my drone's cameras on the direction the gunfire had come from and saw a figure retreating into the woods.
The remaining forces followed. I sent my drone after a squad. Nothing happened for a while, then the squad I was following started running, then a single gunshot was heard. When my drone caught up, we saw two men carrying a third with a fourth dead on the ground. All of the squads moved back to their APCs. I had my drone sweep its cameras around the area but there was no sign of the figure that the squads had been following.
"Did the MFC piss off a Samurai? Two whole squads wiped out in the matter of an hours. We will keep an eye on this story as it develops. Sandra Owens signing off."
As I was getting ready to sleep, I got an email that put this story in a whole new light. Tomorrow my career was going to take off to even greater heights.
WILLIAM GRAZER
I dug another trap, a pit with sharpened spikes, not far from the APCs. Then I went to a somewhat camouflaged campsite to get a couple hours of sleep. When I woke up, I started a small fire and made some coffee. I heard the sounds of the damned security squads getting worked up as they spotted my fire. I filled my thermos and put out fire and began the hunt again.
I smiled at the screams when some of the incautious security shitbags fell into the pit. I climbed up in a tree and waited for the rest to pass. Once they passed, I went to the four remaining APCs and removed the lug nuts on the tires. One had left with the wounded. Then I took what food I could carry from their supplies and set fire to the rest. I headed north towards the creek that was the namesake of this valley.
I stopped while the APCs and the burning supplies were still in sight and waited. When they came back to put out the fire, I shot two more bastards and then started moving to walk in the creek toward the mountain. With the two I shot and whoever had fallen in the pit there was only three full fucking squads left.
As I headed up the mountain, running the squads into various traps and snares I had already prepared, and occasionally shooting some myself, a week passed. I had whittled them down to two full squads. They were a mix of all three of the fucking original squads as I had killed or injured people from all three. They weren't able to work together as well as they had before.
Then the god damned reinforcements showed up. Now I had seven squads to deal with.
SANDRA OWENS
"I am reporting live from what used to be Boyd's Big Tree Farm Nature Conservatory, where the man my viewers have dubbed the Woodland Wraith had his second encounter with the security forces of the Marcus Fur Company. The fight has moved away from here and we have been told by sources that five more squads have arrived to reinforce the remnants of the original squads sent to capture or kill him. Now MFC has refused to comment on the allegations that they abducted the young man's thirteen-year-old sister. The Commonwealth has also been silent on this issue. We will soon be sending multiple drones out to see if we find and talk to Woodland Wraith."
I watched as an army of drones took off and headed up the mountain. I watched the feeds, along with two other reporters. We saw the seven squads moving up the mountain, we started watching the feed from the drones even closer. The drones reached the top of the mountain, and we hadn't seen him.
"Damn where the hell is this guy? He's as elusive as a fucking Sasquatch." One of my fellow reporters exclaimed.
MARIANNE MARCUS
"Rachel, once we are done here, please call the media companies and have them fire those reporters."
Her response was a grunt which caused me pleasure. Once I had enough and she left I called the new commander of the troops hunting the Grazer brat.
"Commander, why haven't you found that terrorist yet?"
"Ma'am, he's a clever bastard. The media just had five hundred drones fly over the mountain and didn't see any sign of him."
"Yes, I saw, but you have better equipment. So, why haven't you found him?"
"Ma'am, you did give us better equipment, but it's limited number means the search is going to take longer."
"Fine, I will look into buying more equipment for you. I'll expect results soon, he has to be running out of food and ammo."
I ended the call and called my new cyber security chief.
"Leroy, have you figured out how they got that info about our guest?"
"Yes ma'am, they hacked your server for personal emails."
"Can you find who did this?"
"No ma'am we can't. It is your personal server. No one except you has the permissions to access the logs required to find out who gained access."
"Why is everyone in the cyber security division so incompetent? If the logs told me who had accessed my server, I wouldn't be asking you who hacked it."
"Yes ma'am, sorry we will do our best to find the hacker."
I ended that call as well. I was stressed again.
"Rachel would you be a dear and come help me with a problem again?"
WILLIAM GRAZER
I waited until I was sure the drones were gone. Then I crawled out from under a fallen tree and the pile of leaves that I had used to hide. I started back up the mountain.
I had been leading the seven shitbag squads all over the valley and mountain. I say seven but I haven't taken the time to actually count how many of them are left. I have led them through all of the traps and snares I had set up previously. So, I reached the top of the mountain and headed over the treacherous Stoney Creek side of the mountain. There are many dead falls and steep drop offs that I can turn into traps without much time or effort. The wind was howling through the trees, and I was thankful for the layers I was wearing. The wind could also knock down dead trees that were still standing, this place was dangerous to me as well.
The corpos were only a quarter mile away down the mountain. The sun was starting to set, and they were setting up camp for the night. In the preceding weeks I hadn't attacked their fucking camp at all, as a result their security around this camp was a god damned joke. Which I took advantage of this time. Once I was sure most of them were sleeping, I made my way into the camp. I cut open the back of one their tents. I slit the throats of every other man in the tent, I did the same in the next tent as well. I left the other tents alone as I needed to get back to a safer place, I had seen earlier to get some damned sleep as well.
I woke the next morning to hearing the screams and panicked yelling, as they woke to find the results of my raid. I watched though binoculars as some of them went up the mountain at a run following a trail I had left. I traveled west and made it to what used to be a long-distance electric power transmission tower and followed the line of them down the mountain. Hoping that the few fucking traps I had set, and the Stoney Creek side of the mountain itself would get a few more of the assholes. Looking for more places to place snares and traps, wishing I had the time and safety to make some more coffee.
ELIZABETH BERTARELLI
Once I had leaked the information about Mary to the media having hacked Marianne's email, I got to work disrupting her company. I tracked the finances of the men trying to hunt Billy. I found that while they were employees of MFC the money to pay them came directly from MFC's parent company Lurkeroff Imports. I started transferring some of their payroll into one Marianne's personal accounts, that it looks like she has forgotten about judging from the lack activity for funds entering and leaving. I also created an account with her head accountant's name on it and placed more of the money there as well.
I found some secrets that Lurkeroff Imports wouldn't want known. Instead of giving the to the media, I posted them on the mesh on a freshly created account that couldn't be traced to anyone. The fact that the judges installed by the Worker's Party had all been bribed was now public knowledge.
My brother was scouring Marianne's emails to see if there was any mention of where Mary was being held. My little brother's involvement was surprising as was his zeal to figure out where she was. He had skipped meals and fought with my parents to stay up late to go through more of the emails. It seems I might not be the only one in the family looking to date and possibly marry a Grazer.
My father was suing the MFC for damages as he had found info in their systems detailing sabotage, they had committed against two of our factories.
It wasn't long after I had moved the funds for that were supposed to pay the security goons that they left the mountain. Junior found where Mary was being held three days after they had left the mountain. They security goons while they had left the mountain, they hadn't returned to the city yet. There were only four squads left, and they all looked injured to some degree from what the media showed. So, father sent our security forces to get her.
WILLIAM GRAZER
I was hiding near the Fishing Creek again. I watched as the remaining squads came down the mountain. They entered their APC's and stayed there. Not knowing what the hell was going on I retreated to Boyd's Big Tree Farm again. They didn't move, then I saw them talking to the media. So, I made some more traps and snares, then took a huge fucking risk. I put my glasses on and turned them on, I found out that the bitch Marcus hadn't paid them.
The next day I worked my way through the valley again placing traps and snares again. I started a campfire and cooked some food and made some coffee. The squads stayed in their APC's. When I was done, I doused the fire and left. I took cover when I heard the buzz of incoming drones again. These looked like the media's drones still there was no reason to show myself to them.
The day after that, I saw new APC's coming up the valley from the direction of the Susquehanna River. These carrying the flags of the Commonwealth and Worker's Party. They reached the Marcus APCs and over a loudspeaker demanded that they surrender peacefully. Marcus's goons did so. Then everyone except the media left.
I moved to put the most traps between me and the APCs and put my glasses on again and checked some of the message boards. I got a call from Liza's little brother Reginold Jr.
"What's up RJ?" I asked when I picked up.
"We found Mary, she's staying with us for now. The Commonwealth is helping us demolish MFC. Just so you know Sis isn't happy with you right now."
"Thanks RJ. I guess I'll be seeing you all soon."
SANDRA OWENS
"In other news the Commonwealth has ordered the disbanding of the Marcus Fur Company and that its parent company is to pay settlements to the Grazer family and the personal secretary of Marianne Marcus. Who was forced to have illegal explosive charges implanted in her body and had not been paid for her time for the last two years."
November 10,2053
REGINOLD BERTARELLI SR.
"I want to offer you a job training my men to fight, and Lynn a job as our household cybersecurity expert. If you accept, we'll get your family a place to stay within the compound."
"That is a mighty generous offer I'll take the job bu-" George Grazer started and then was interrupted by his wife Lynn.
"We'll take the offer for staying in the compound as well. Look at them George they look relaxed and happy. I just wish William had stuck around." Their children and mine were in the next room. Their son Robert and my daughter Elizabeth were teasing Mary and Reginold Jr.
William had talked with Elizabeth for several hours when he had returned from the woods, and after getting a full meal and a day of rest he left again. He was off to find better hunting grounds. Elizabeth had tried to talk him out of it, but her arguments had been the same as his parent's. So, William had left with a promise that if there was something we needed that he could do all we had to do was call.
We tried calling once his parents agreed to our offer. He must have turned off his glasses or had already traveled out of range as we got sent to his voice message system immediately.