12 Years ago -- An Gort Rua, Co. Limerick, Ireland
Elsbeth checked her gun for the umpteenth time; a habit she had long since given up trying to break. Slinging the strap over her shoulder, she let it hang down out of her way as she pulled two frag grenades from her pack and pulled the door open. The only way she was going to make it to extraction, was if she got a move on right now, so she was going to have to make a run for it leaving her kills behind.
She eased the door of the abandoned cottage open and looked out into the overgrown yard. There was no sign of her attackers so she cautiously left the safety of the building and made her way outside. Seeing no movement, even after putting three yards between herself and safety, she broke her sneaky stride and bolted down the path to the gate.
The fleeing Feeder had barely reached the fence when the tall unkempt grass exploded with activity. Large snarling bodies threw themselves at her. Some aimed for her, others simply tossed themselves into her path. Elsbeth threw the grenades. Not waiting to see the explosions tear into the mass of bodies she put on a burst of speed, determined to escape and make it to her rendezvous point. Two steps outside of the gate, a pain lanced through her shin. She reached for the gun that hung from her shoulders, but it was ripped away as another set of fangs latched onto her arm. Beth struggled to free herself but was dragged under by a sea of furry bodies. All her skills counted for naught as she was weighed down by the mass of her attackers.
More teeth sank into her flesh. They didn’t chew, they didn’t gnaw, they simply latched on and held her immobile. Pain shot through her body from her legs; her arms; her everywhere.
For a moment Elsbeth Jones broke her most stringent rule; She wished for a normal life. No responsibilities. No feeding, no guns, and definitely no being a warrior. Just a chance to be a girl, and maybe to have a knight in shining armor. As a pain overtook her, a face popped into her mind. It wasn’t a smiling face, not a happy one. The color of rich soil, it had a grim set, but with humor sparkling in the odd lavender eyes. Her own choice for a knight in shining armor, the corporate Kull who’d helped her out two years ago. Q’s hard unsmiling expression was the last image Elsbeth took with her into the darkness.
**
He’d almost been too late; arriving as the MutaHares had swarmed the Feeder and overwhelmed her with their mass. Close enough to watch, but still too far away to assist, he’d had a front row view of the moment the fight had gone out of the girl and she’d succumbed to the venom in the hares’ fangs.
Even as he rushed towards her, he wondered what was it that she had seen that would let her give up with such a beatific smile on her face. It had to have been a doozy because the Elsbeth Jones he remembered was a fighter ‘til the end. It took him merely seconds to reach the gate where the hares lay piled on top of the young feeder. He knew how they worked. They would lay there until she suffocated, counting on their poison to keep her calm. Mattias was not about to let that happen.
Two years had not been long enough to forget the defiant young Feeder. In fact, it’d been really hard to get the girl off his mind. He was certain that she’d make a great Kull, if only she’d give up Feeding. That was why he’d come all the way to Ireland. He’d been certain that together they could finish the culling, and he’d have a chance to convince her to come to work for the Corporation. He didn’t really think she’d take the offer, but there was no way he’d lose her before he’d had a chance to test out his theory.
Pulling his knife from his boot, he laid about him in vicious strokes. He couldn’t shoot into the pile while the feeder was there, so his blade was the best option. He cut and slash his way through the group, fighting them as they abandoned their prey to take him on. A large hare sprung from the group aiming for his head. Mattias ducked low and spun, bringing his knife up in a high arc. He connected with the underbelly of the creature, and its momentum tore it open from throat to tail. The Kull didn’t stop to register the kill. He continued moving forward, the endangered Feeder his only concern. Two more hares attacked, one aiming for his legs, the other going high. A swift kick halted the first, as Q caught the other in mid-leap, snapped its neck and tossed it aside without breaking his stride. Two more steps would put him within reach of her; two more steps and he could touch her. He hadn’t thought much past that point.
**
Q lay the unconscious girl down on the table in the cottage’s main room. A quick search around the loft ensured that the house was secure, and yielded some abandoned medical supplies. Nothing that would counter the venom coursing through the Feeder’s veins, but enough to help. His own supplies hung in a tree about a quarter of a mile back, sacrificed for speed when he’d seen her disappear under the flurry of bunnies.
“Dumb move, Q.” he muttered to himself as he collected bandages and alcohol from the cottage’s bathroom.
Back in the main room, he moved the girl off the table. She’d been bitten five or six times, there was no way to tell how much venom she’d gotten in her bloodstream. Pulling off all her KevGear, he cleaned and bandaged her wounds. The skintight suit was torn and he had no way of fixing it so he tossed it aside, filing it away in his ‘worry later’ list. Wrapping the thermal blanket around her, he carried her up to the loft and put her in the bed.
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Closing the front door softly behind him, Q made his way into the yard. A quick perimeter check produced some good intel for him. The cottage stood in the middle of a vast farm. The fields were abandoned—no doubt when the dangers of farming after the Cure became known—and had been claimed by the MutaHares. The owners obviously had made a hasty departure when they realized that their new tenants were giant killer bunnies. Despite the abandonment, the cottage was in good repair. The owners had left much behind but had the presence of mind to lock the house and the gates behind them. The solid stone fence separated the yard from the farm’s fields and an iron gate served as an exit. Though the latch was broken, the Feeder and the Kull had dropped enough bodies in the vicinity for Q to build a sandbag-like wall in the way to prevent it from opening.
When the barrier of bunny bodies — Q chuckled in his head — was completed, he walked around to the back of the house. A shed, barn and a henhouse sat abandoned behind a small kitchen garden. The henhouse was open, all the birds long dead and reclaimed by the earth, but the nest yielded a score of cure-dead eggs. The fully formed but empty shells had been a sign of the coming times but fifteen years ago no one had the knowledge to understand that. So the shells stayed, empty and unbroken in nests that would never see another Retro-Hen. Using the basket abandoned at the door, Q carefully collected the eggs. With his pack out of reach, they would make handy grenades, if he could find anything to fill them with. He carried the eggs into the work shed. Here he found more evidence of the human-life-that-was. Bottles of chemicals, bleach, lye, drain cleaner and more, all outlawed for personal use by the treaties; all sitting here just waiting to be used. Q took stock of the contents and then closed the shed, continuing his walk. Back at the front gate he drew his knife and squatted among the dead.
The first flakes of snow fell, coating the piles of venom sacs that grew on the ground next to the Kull. He looked up at the sky, not surprised at the dark clouds that had rolled overhead. He’d known snow was coming, had hoped for it. Having missed her extraction, there would be no escape for the Feeder for at least a week. An unexpected blizzard would keep the MutaHares away from them for the duration. In the meantime he had to do what he could to keep them alive. A chittering sound to his left to his attention to the top of the wall. A Watcher sat there, noting his every move. Q was used to the spectators. As a soldier for the Treaty Center, there were times when the giant roaches were his only line of communication with his chain of command. Right now he had a question.
“I found chemicals. May I use them if necessary?” The Watcher chattered in acknowledgment and then went still. Mat knew that it was accessing the hive, waiting for response from the Data Center in New York. He finished skinning the rabbit he was working on. Picking up the other hides and venom sacs he walked back to the shed. He deposited the venom sacs into the egg basket then used the hand pump next to the garden to rinse off the rabbit hides. Movement in his peripheral vision had him turning swiftly, knife in hand, but it was only the Watcher coming with an answer.
Pictures of each of the bottles flashed through his mind, followed by a color: bleach, green; ammonia, green; lye, yellow; drain cleaner, orange. He had his answers. The drain cleaner was approved as a last-ditch solution, the lye only if necessary.
As he turned away from the Watcher, another image flashed in his mind; that of an owl attacking a rabbit. Q smiled in appreciation. The Watchers were supposed to be neutral, but every once in a while they would throw him a bone. If Elsbeth was here on a job for the owls, then she would have Talonine, the poison that the owls secreted from their claws. MutaHare venom would not work on the rabbits, but Talonine would.
Closing the shed back up, he turned back towards the house and stopped short. Through the window, he could see the Feeder in the kitchen. Q had not expected her to be awake as yet. The MutaHare venom had hallucinogenic properties, often leaving victims in a dream filled coma for days, even weeks, as it worked its way out of their system. Either the Feeder was stronger than she looked, or immune… like him. Remembering the look on her face as she went down he dismissed the latter. And based on what he was seeing now, the former was also in question. Q considered that without the restraints of a med center, the Feeder was simply living out her dream coma in a wakeful state.
Elsbeth had redressed but not in her KevGear. She wore a short nightgown which she must’ve found in the closet. The pale peach color shown against her dark skin as she moved about the room. Q wondered what it was that the girl dreamt of as she floated through the kitchen, her movement so vastly different from those of the mercenary he’d met in the Himalayas. What was Elsbeth Jones’s fantasy life?
Feeling like a voyeur, he watched her tidy up the room and set the table. Undaunted by an empty fridge and cold storage, she turned on the coffee maker and the oven. Neither of the electrical appliances worked, but Q knew that none of that would register in her dream state. She would live out her little domestic fantasy until the end. Whenever that was.
Watching her go through the motions of cooking brought to mind a new problem. Food!
There were a few cans of food in the kitchen, but nothing that would’ve lasted fifteen years. Q had not thought to take them out before, but now that Elsbeth was up and about he would have to. He didn’t want her poisoning herself in this state. Other than that, they needed food and there were no Ret-Farms nearby. It would be a full day before the blizzard was harsh enough to chase the hares into their warrens, which meant it would be at least that long before he could retrieve his pack and the food in it.
Chittering from the Watcher forced Q to give it his attention. A picture formed in his mind, and then the roach hovered on diaphanous wings and flew away. Q smiled grimly. The Treaty Keeper would not help him, but its parting message — a visual of a blindfolded and gagged roach — clearly said that it would carry no tales.
Turning his attention back to the vision in the peach négligée, the soldier made a few decisions. He would have to sneak in and remove the dangerous stuff, but then he’d have to go find food. He knew just where to start looking.