Page 17 of Treasured By the Hunter

I carried the bins of water, all stacked up together, out to my shuttle. The water hose was still in the bin when my shuttle announced, “Incoming communication.”

“Thank you, Shuttle.” My shuttle wasn’t smart like Kan’n’s PIP model, or dumb like Nov’k’s ship. It was just a shuttle and had rudimentary intelligence. But after meeting Pip, I decided to bea lot nicer to it, just in case. It had, after all, gotten me this far. I stepped inside my shuttle.

Turr’k’s identification blinked on my screen. He was a hunter from a group stationed in the Rockies. They were officially labeled the Colorado group on the survivor forums, but that was a misnomer. Colorado was just the southern end of their range. His group managed the scourge population in the Rocky Mountains in the states the humans called Colorado, Wyoming, and the southern part of Idaho. Not knowing human geography, our mothership had sectioned Montana and the northern part of Idaho off with part of the Canadian Rockies and sent another team.

Other hunters, myself included, simply called them the Rockies Group since human territorial borders made little sense to us. Parts of the Rocky Mountains were now considered a wildlife reserve, though they still fought daily to keep it clear of scourge.

I hit accept, and the other hunter’s surly face appeared on my screen.

“Harb’k, you must be the one your group selected to look for the anomalies. I had the same bad luck.”

“I volunteered.” Anything was better than seeing all the happy couples at the camp and feeling left out. This mission gave me an excuse to stay out overnight for days without anyone worrying about me.

His scowl intensified. “I'd rather be hunting the scourge instead of watching them. Where are you planning to search? We can split up the area and get it done faster.”

“Good idea.” I sent him the log my ship had kept of the areas Zoey and I had searched. “We checked these areas, but I’m not sure where I’m headed next.”

“We?”

Krux! I’d let it slip. Turr’k’s mate, Sandy, was the matchmaking type. I sure hoped it hadn’t rubbed off on the hunter.

“I am traveling with a female.” Then, before he could ask for any details and because maybe Zoey would like to see a friendly face, I asked, “Is Sandy with you?”

“No. She isn’t. Sandy is helping our group get ready for the Trader’s Market. The whole lodge is excited to fly out to New Franklin and meet everyone. You’re lucky you convinced one of your group’s females to come along. But I guess with your base being so new, they wouldn’t have anything to trade at the market.”

I hesitated. Turr’k thought Zoey was from my group. Deciding to be completely honest, I said, “Many in our group are preparing for the market too. Zoey is not from my base. She is a lone nomad.”

Shock registered on Turr’k’s face. “A lone nomad!”

“She lost her group. That is why we are traveling together. Since I must search this area anyway, I did not want her to travel alone. I will ask where she needs to be next and we can use that information to split the territory up.”

I excused myself and stepped back into the building.

Zoey stood at the entrance, her hands on a heavy tool, ready to swing it at whoever walked through the door. She relaxed when she saw me. “Oh, it’s you. Sorry.”

“Where is your next location?” I asked.

“Next town over.”

That was the thing about fighting the scourge in the plains. There were tons of small towns dotted all around, but none of them quite big enough to support a nest. Instead, the scourge had gone for the millions upon millions of cows instead. As a result, the nests here were much larger than expected.

The tiny towns scattered over the near-featureless expanse of field after field after field made it difficult to fight the scourge during the summer swarms. It didn’t help that the humans here had been, on the whole, against working with Xarc’n hunters, forcing our initial group to settle down in the middle of nowhere.

I showed Zoey my communicator again, and she pointed to the location on the map.” And where are you going after?” I asked.

She pressed her lips in a thin line. “Sanctuary. My friend, Riley, is meeting me there.”

I frowned. Sanctuary was not Xarc’n friendly, no matter how much Heather insisted that Clark, their leader, was a good man. Though I had to agree with her assessment that of all the places a human could end up, it was one of the better ones.

Sanctuary was a settlement that actively fought the closest nest, doing controlled burns of scourge they trapped, and keeping the numbers manageable. If they hadn’t, the summer swarms would’ve overwhelmed them already.

Unlike the abandoned city around them, Sanctuary was a hive of activity. They’d secured several ways to power their buildings, including solar and wind energy. Moving the wind turbines to their location must have been quite a feat, especially since thesehumans were not working with Xarc’n hunters. They didn’t have access to our shuttles and other resources.

Sometimes, I wondered if humans could’ve eventually fought off the scourge without our help. Whatever they lacked in physical robustness, they made up for with ingenuity. Most were smarter than me or any hunter I knew, especially when it came to technology. It was too bad that so many of Earth’s official governments hadn’t wanted our help and had declared us the enemies instead.

Not Sanctuary, however. They didn’t want to work with “aliens.” This was abundantly clear by the signs painted on the roof of the largest building. The wordsNo Alienswere written in English in red letters.

And just in case we couldn’t read it, there was a crudely drawn purple face with brown horns and a big red X across it. Another pictogram showed a shuttle that looked eerily similar to one of our own being shot at. They’d added this last one after Nov’k’s less-than-friendly visit.

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