Page 8 of Treasured By the Hunter

“She refused to come with me. I did not wish to kidnap her.” That was a lie. I did. I’d wanted to pick her up, toss her over my shoulder, and march her right into my shuttle.

“Well, you must help her. Bring her back here. If she needs proof, call me. I’ll send a note with you in case she won’t stay around long enough to do a video call.”

“I will go find her,” I promised. “But first,”—I sniffed the air—“I smell food.”

Heather laughed. “Yes. We tried our hand at General Tso’s Faux Chicken. We used tenderized pieces of Xarc’n food bars instead of chicken. We don’t have old hens to butcher yet.”

“They are good,” Nov’k said.

“I can’t wait.”

Chapter 4: Zoey

“Come on! Come on! Hurry the fuck up!”

As if to spite me, the number on the display didn’t change. I’d made it to the safe house in one piece and found it exactly the way we’d left it last. There was plenty of clean water, collected straight from the sky and stored in huge plastic bins. They were several seasons old, but I trusted them to be free of the bugs’ fungus.

Yes, the bugs also had a fungus that turned people into zombies if ingested. Talk about an unfair advantage.

This would’ve been an ideal place to stay, except Corey knew about it.

I glanced out the window to the solar panels outside, remembering how Connor, Diego, and I had spent hours in the freezing rain setting them up. That had been my contribution. That had been my job before the apocalypse. I used to sell solar panels for a living, and when they needed an extra hand on site, I installed them too.

I’d been so passionate about trying to switch everyone and their grandma over to clean energy. My knowledge meant that our group had set up charging stations for ourselves all along our trade route.

Our little group built everything we had together. I loved them like family. And now, they were gone.

I wiped away the tears that rolled down my face. I had to get it together. I couldn’t break down now. Not until I got to Sanctuary.

I looked over at the number on my scooter’s display again. It was full! Yes! Fina-fucking-ly!

Now, to temporarily sabotage my own setup. The thing was, I wanted Riley and I to be able to use this again in the future, but I didn’t want to let Corey and his friends use it now, especially since he’d need to charge his vehicle. Hisstolenvehicle. I got to work, discharging the battery.

I disconnected the battery from the whole setup, then plugged the heater into it and turned it on. My goal was to drain the remainder of the battery so that by the time they arrived, they wouldn’t be able to charge their vehicle. Then, I started disassembling the connections.

Technically, they could just connect everything back together and use it. But they would have to find the wires, which I planned on hiding, and figure out how to do it on their own. I didn’t know about Corey’s friends, but Corey didn’t seem like the type who could figure out anything on his own.

As the battery discharged, I headed down into the basement to change the code to our safe. We kept weapons and ammo at every location. I considered picking up a rifle and some ammo, but decided that it wasn’t worth the extra weight since I needed to move quickly.

Besides, if I got desperate enough to shoot at anything, then I was screwed anyway. The alien bugs had learned to headstraight toward the sound of gunfire. It was like a dinner bell to them.

Next came the water. This hurt. Every ounce of my being cringed at the thought of purposefully dumping out clean, potable water just so I could fuck Corey over. Maybe I could save some.

I peered outside. The sun was already setting, and I didn’t have much time.

I dug in the cupboards and returned with two shallow salad bowls. I filled these bowls with water and carefully loaded them into the oven. I shoved the wires in there, too, then closed the door. In an ideal world, I’d be stashing clean water everywhere in the house, but time was ticking, and it wasn’t safe to stay any longer. I spilled the rest of the precious liquid onto the floor and leaped out of the way before the water touched the heater.

I hope one of those asshats steps in that and fries to a crisp.

With that done, I headed out to find a better place to stay for the night. I knew just the place. There was a small town with a row of homes that Diego, Tomas, and I had cleared out in one of our foraging trips. We’d left an emergency cache there since we couldn’t carry everything back, but Corey shouldn’t know about it at all. It had been Tomas’s first foraging trip out with the adults, and he’d been so proud of himself.

It wasn’t far, and with the fresh charge on my scooter, I’d get there in no time.

I made it to the town with almost no incident. I did have to scoot around a group of scuttlers and spitters stuck inside an extra-strength Xarc’n net. Spitters were particularly dangerous because of their ability to launch digestive acid at their foes, andI took extra precautions, taking a large detour around the road, just in case.

The fact that they were stuck there was a good thing for me since it would be more tedious for Corey, with his larger vehicle, to get around them than it was for me, especially with the ditches on either side of the road. Was it left there on purpose?

And that had me thinking about the purple warrior who’d visited me earlier today. Was that his net? Was I in his hunting grounds?

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