Silence was looming over the forest, the birds stopped singing, and the insects stopped screeching. The only thing breaking this tranquility was Zayn’s rapidly pounding heart ready to run away from his body. He took heavy breathes for minutes on end to calm the alarm of his ticker. He would close his eyes then open them again as if checking to see if the scene in front of him is reality or just a sinister hallucination.Suddenly his insides started to churn, and he could feel his breakfast ready to come out, running to some nearby bushes he started belching the contents of his stomach. At a certain point, tears began to flow from the small Zayn as he began sobbing. “Grandpa never told me …. That taking another person’s life would feel so …… terrible.” Muttered the poor boy out in between sobs.
After what seemed like ages the previous cold-blooded killer finally ceased his sobbing. Closing his eyes for another second to gather his resolve he walked to the one he had shot in the back of his head. Then Zayn bent down, turned him around and started combing through his pockets looking for anything useful while doing his best to avoid staring at the face of the one whom the boy had robbed of his life. He found a map, a couple of water bottles, a flashlight similar to his own and a couple of batteries for it as well as a couple of meat jerkies and biscuits. Hopefully, they will serve him better than their former owner.
Searching into the interior of his jacket he found a picture of the man and a young girl “Family huh.” sighed Zayn with a coarse voice from crying out and a small shake of his head. He started to think about his own family, mostly his grandfather who raised him alone and taught him everything he knows. Although he never met his parents his grandpa would tell him stories of how much they loved him and how they would be so proud of him if they could see him. Returning the picture, Zayn continued going deeper into his pockets finding a small knife with a sharp edge, a suitable replacement for the one he broke while sharpening the wooden log. He then took his weapon and ammo clips and placed them near a tree with curved branches to inspect them later.
Finishing with Marius he moved on to the tall mercenary, to his surprise he found a couple of bars of chocolate and some candy which caused Zayn’s downcast face to lighten up a little, he loved sweets. While going through the rest of his pockets chewing on a caramel candy, he found a silver pocket watch which instantly changed ownership to Zayn. “Hehe, I never owned something this expensive before, “ said the poor boy with a small self-deprecating chuckle. Searching through some more pockets, he found some more batteries another knife and rations which he stuffed inside his backpack. Just like before he took any ammo clip, he could see as well as his weapon and placed them near the tree where Marius’s was.
With uneasy steps, he walked towards the man dangling from the rope and started blindly rummaging with a pair of shaky hands and with his head turned down staring at the pool of blood that has formed. He didn’t find anything peculiar, so he just took his rations and ignored the blood-soaked weapon at his feet then ran back at the speed of light not daring to stay near the corpses anymore lest they somehow rise from the dead to enact their revenge.
Finishing robbing the dead the boy headed to the tree to examine the weapon of the one formerly known as Marius had. He recognized it as a sub-machine gun and judging from the large ‘T’ surrounded by a circle it must be a creation of the Tesla industries, clearly a high-quality product. This lightweight gun could empty it’s 50 bullet clips in less than 15 seconds and fire thousands of bullets for minutes on end without taking a break before needing to cool it down.
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While this gun had such amazing specs it wasn’t without flaws, the cost of such an explosive fire rate was a fierce recoil that could break an average man’s wrist unless one was a grade C Genetic or had a comparable arm strength. Unfortunately, this was a fatal flaw for Zayn considering his frail wrists would never handle the powerful recoil.
With a regretful sigh, he could only put it down and moved on to the next firearm. “WHA!” A gasp of surprise leaked out of the boy as he recognized the weapon, it was the third generation S2 rifle from Seltzer and sons. He knew of this particular gun from one of his grandfather’s old magazine stuffed inside the attic. It had a novel ‘dual form’ which allowed it to function as both an assault rifle and a marksman rifle with an effective range of at 1200m, to his delight it was also equipped with a Tesla thermal scope boasting a range of detection of 900M. Taking another look at the scope, he thanked his lucky stars for being alive. Had the mercenaries from before not been in such a state of distress he would've been easily spotted from this high-tech piece of equipment and then the hunter and the hunted would've changed places instantly.
Taking a moment to collect himself he ceased hugging the rifle and looked at the remaining blood-soaked weapon below Jerry then snapped back and looked at the S2. Zayn kept repeating this process before deciding not to approach that place ever again. Luckily for him, both Jerry’s and the other merc’s weapons shared the same ammo type, a caliber .22. What made the S2 special is that it could load both .22 as well as heavy use .50 caliber for its sniper mode capable of switching at will depending on the targets.
Finishing packing up and holstering the rifle around his neck the boy could finally take a sigh of relief as he could at last leave this small clearing. Although traveling at night in the forest was usually a dangerous endeavor this wasn’t an ordinary forest but an artificially created battleground. Most animals have been relocated elsewhere while the rest should’ve been scared away by the gunfire sounds.
As he carefully made his way through the unknown, Zayn kept thinking about the events that have completely changed his life. Before being dragged into all this mess, he was living with his grandfather in a remote village in the country of Varian. A state created after the grand Scattering following the fall of the US during the great disaster.
The boy and his grandpa lived a quiet life as hunters providing the village with pelts and excess meat in exchange for money or other supplies. However, all that got turned upside down five days ago when Zayn was returning from the forest after a successful hunting trip ready to sell a rabbit or two to the villagers in exchange for a bagful of candy. He could see the frantic looks of some villagers as they approached him with much haste to inform him that they, at last, found his grandfather.
Before this, his grandfather had been missing for a week but the boy wasn’t too worried, he knew his grandpa would pull this off once in a while then always return home with the most fantastic quarry such as the most prominent crowned deer anyone has ever seen or a mutated double headed giant boar. In fact, the boy was still a bit sour that his grandpa failed to bring him along again but seeing the agitation of the villagers he had a feeling that something was wrong.
Larian, the village’s baker, was the first to speak and announce him that some hunters have found his grandfather's remains. It took more than a few seconds for Zayn to process before he could utter with a dumbfounded look “W-What?”. The baker waited for a few moments before beginning to explain “The hunters from the village of Mayfield hunted a double-armed bear, after slaying the beast they headed to its lair where they found the body of a man whose height and clothes matched those of Mister Reynald.”
“NO! That’s impossible, Mayfield is south from here, grandpa was heading north ! “ rebutted the youth despite his red eyes with tears forming in them.
“Maybe he changed directions at some point, or perhaps he was ambushed by the bear and then dragged to his lair.” Larian tried explaining, but Zayn would take none of it.
“Grandpa would’ve told me if he headed south, no way 's him. Just you wait a few more days, he will show up and make everyone look like fools for mistaking him with some corpse. There’s no way a stinking bear would've beaten my grandpa. There’s no way !” argued the youth hysterically, towards the end even he wasn’t sure if his words were meant for the villagers or himself .
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Remembering till here the boy found tears start springing up in his eyes once more, wiping them away with his sleeves .“No matter what it takes I'll find grandpa” promised the boy softly to himself.