Bunden was struggling to hold up his rifle. His injuries impaired him from getting a good grip on the chunky hunk of polymer and metal. Walter was lying prone on the ground, the legs of his bipod digging into the hard rock and a belt laid out across the stone. Snow was crouching just to the left of Walter. She had grabbed her stone spear and had it pointed at the entrance. Everyone in that cave wasn’t making a peep. They tried to make everything as quiet as possible without any movements at all besides breathing, and even that was limited.
Crik, Crack, clatter. Outside the cave’s protective darkness, the noises seemed to be coming from the camp. Bunden slowly lowered himself down onto the rock cave floor. They all stayed entirely still after this slight movement. Bunden held his breath. Click, the metallic sound of a safety being manipulated. The sound seemed deafening in the silence. The sound came from Bunden’s right.
‘Walter is finally getting his head out of his ass.’ Bunden thought.
They waited in that cave for hours in tense silence. Each of them never knowing when violence would erupt. Finally, after hours of anxious waiting, the noises seemed to fade. Not falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book, they didn’t go out to see what had kept them awake for the night.
It was hours after the sounds had faded, Walter glanced down at his watch. 6 AM. Walter dragged his weary eyes back up to the tarp. The tarp had been lightening for the past couple of hours as the sunlight started appearing over the horizon. For what Walter felt was the 10,000th time, he glanced down at the rock and ruff edges of the cave. Bunden had essentially fallen asleep with his eyes open and finger on the trigger. Snow had just gone back to sleep after she saw that Walter and Bunden were keeping watch.
Walter had an idea for a bit of fun. He crawled over to Bunden and very slowly closed his eyelids. Almost immediately after having his eyes shut, Bunden groaned and rolled off to the right. Not being stupid, Walter flicked the safety back on Bunden’s gun, then Walter got to work taking some of the clay-like soil of the cave and using it to draw a fake mustache and monocle. Given enough time, Walter’s German brain could have probably rigged up a top hat for the sleeping vet.
Just as Walter finished up with his ‘Artwork’ Snow started to stir. She rolled onto her back, then lifted herself up into not quite a sitting pose. Just leaning back on locked arms. She sighed and began stretching out her legs to get out all the kinks that formed from sleeping on the cold, hard ground. Walter watched with tired eyes and stiff joints.
When Snow stopped stretching and sat cross-legged on the soft soil which made up a part of the floor of the cave. Walter, being more tired than a college student during exam week, said.
“Great, now that you’re awake, you can take over the watch.”
Snow tried to argue the point in a hushed tone, but Walter was already snoozing with his helmet in the sand. Snow deflated, she resigned herself to hours of idle watching. Snow glanced over to the two sleeping soldiers. When she reawakened in her new body, most memories had a fuzzy quality.
But she distinctly remembered herself and her hunting party coming across a lone human that had trespassed on their territory. Enraged that a human would dare enter their territory unannounced, the more hot-headed amongst the hunting prowl (a group of leopards) leaped into attacking the intruder without a challenge being issued. Snow had to admit to herself that she had been one of the most hot-headed ones there.
Snow tried to remember the face and scent of the human, but that had been covered in the same haze that most of her other memories were covered in. She remembered how another of her kin, a leopard with a black coat with white dots, leaped at the unsuspecting human. The claws of the leopard carving a gash that left blood pouring from the human.
The human had let out a cry of agony, but when a second brown leopard tried to take a chunk out of the human such as the first had, with a leaping swing of their claws. This time the human was prepared for the attack and had drawn a short sword that looked bent but was nonetheless sharp as any beast’s claws. The leaping attack of the leopard drove it onto the human blade, impaling it with the sound of the leopard’s blood splashing onto the ground.
The rest of the prowl backed off at this show of strength from the human.
A groan from the other side of the cave pulled her from the memories of a previous life.
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“Fuck”
Bunden said as he rolled over and stood up. When he finished getting to his feet, Bunden looked around the cave with bleary eyes to see what had happened while he was out. The first thing he noticed was Snow, awake and watching him. The second thing he noticed was Walter, who was snoozing happily on the dirt and dust floor. Bunden gently nudged Walter with a boot as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
As Walter groaned from being woken up, Bunden started thinking, ‘well, she didn’t kill us as soon as she got the chance. So let’s do this job, and then I’ll start worrying about the treachery Jones was talking about.’ Bunden wasn’t an intel spook. He was just an overworked grunt. So this was the only way he could compartmentalize and do his job. One thing at a time.
They ate a quick breakfast, during which Snow filled Walter and Bunden in on the stuff that needed killing. Apparently, a necromancer was causing problems and needed to be dealt with. According to Snow, he was held up in an abandoned village downstream that was filled to the brim with the undead. When this was mentioned, Bunden and Walter exchanged looks. Both were good soldiers, but zombies were not on the list of enemies one would have expected to fight back on earth. Unless you were talking about video games.
Bunden quickly spoke up during a lull in the briefing.
“That’s all well and good, but how exactly do we kill undead?”
Snow seemed to think about it for a second.
“All undead have a mana core. It should look like a small orb of dark greenish light. Every undead has one because they can’t get energy from food and water. The mana core is there to absorb energy directly from a source; this could be from a necromancer or a still-living creature.”
“Looks like we’ll have to put a couple rounds in them before they get the chance.”
Walter said matter-of-factly while racking his MG3. Bunden rolled his eyes ‘he really likes this girl. Typical military grunts, they want to put a ring on anything that looks at them and has a vag.’ Bunden thought to himself.
Sighing, Bunden scooped up his rifle, ‘even if I don’t like it, orders are orders. And our orders are to help Snow out and, if necessary, terminate any attempt at betrayal.’ Bunden thought darkly.
“Time to get a move on.”
Bunden said without showing any of the emotions he had to the situation.
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I only remember flashes of trees, mud puddles, and the hard-packed soil with knee-high shrubs. Then, finally, I remember bursting through a bunch of bushes, seeing Alexei and Kazamir then everything going black.
____________________________________________________________________________
Alexei was waiting for Harly to return after hearing a sound like a typhoon of explosions. He had gotten a lot more anxious. So when Harly came through a bush and into Alexei’s line of sight. Alexei got a massive rush of relief which turned to slight panic when Harly not-so-graciously face planted onto the ground.
‘Why is everything always my problem to clean up?’
Alexei thought as he rushed over to help Harly. As Alexei looked over Harly for wounds, he called over to Kazamir.
“Get over here and give me some fucking cover.”
Kazamir, who was already rushing over, nodded and peeled off to take a position to cover Alexei. The place he took was so bad even Alexei could have pointed out several flaws, but he wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, he was thinking about Harly and how fucked they would be if they got attacked by whatever made that infernal noise.
After a quick look over, he saw that Harly was covered in dirt, slowly drying mud, and had several places where he could see holes in the man’s uniform. But, lucky for the man on the ground in front of him. Alexei couldn’t see any blood.
Alexei stopped examining Harly so he could think about what to do. Alexei’s mind spun, trying to figure out what to do.
“Is he alright?”
The question made Alexei jump. The voice was young and male. Alexei looked up and saw Kazamir with his head turned, looking at him, waiting for a response.
“Yea, he doesn’t have any holes in him if that’s what you’re asking. But he isn’t alright; he is completely exhausted.”
Alexei said, then Alexei saw something over Kazamir’s shoulder. The settlement. Alexei spoke up again.
“Hey, Kazamir, how well do you know the people in that minor city over there?”
Kazamir looked around to where Alexei had started pointing at the small city/ large town.
“I know a few of them. Several times a year, people from our village would run across lost hunting parties and adventuring groups that said they were from there.”
“Good.”