Page 1 of Hunter's Valentine

Chapter 1: Sara

I tiptoed silently around the trio of deadly space bugs as they fought over the rancid meat I’d dropped as a decoy. The creatures fought over the stinky morsel, their glossy, dark brown carapaces reflecting the orange glow of dawn. There were only scuttlers in this group. With beady eyes, eight legs, and two scythe-shaped front claws, scuttlers were about the size of a rottweiler and looked like the spawn of a mantis, ant, and spider love triangle.

They didn’t have great vision like the flying ones did, nor were they particularly smart. They did, however, have an amazing sense of smell, which was why I was currently drenched in enough Old Spice to deodorize an entire high school football team. The flesh-eating creatures didn’t find that scent very appetizing.

They had decent hearing too, but they were making such a racket competing for the rotten food that I doubted they’d hear me. The scuttlers had earned their name because their many feet made a horrible scuttling, scratching noise as they ran over the pavement. It had been that sound that had alerted me to their presence, giving me enough time to throw the bait and hide.

The trick to using decoys successfully was to make sure they were stinky enough to lure the bugs away when they got too close but not so potent that they attracted more creatures from afar. I still had one more, but it was triple-bagged, and the creatures paid me no attention, giving me lots of time to make it past them.

Buggy obstacle hurdled, I silently celebrated my first minor victory of the day, then hurried across the street to the diner where I’d stashed my extra supplies.

Once safely inside, I looked back at the mansion on the hill. The mansion—or rather, the bunker underneath it—had been my home for the last year and a half since the space bugs landed. But now it was time to say goodbye.

Leaving the bunker hadn’t been an easy decision, not with the world outside chin-deep in flesh-eating space bugs, desperate cannibals, and terrifying humanoid warriors—also aliens—who claimed they were here to fight the invertebrates. But I’d overheard the rest of the bunker’s inhabitants talking about kicking me out, so it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice.

It all began about two years ago, when the first alien space bugs landed on Earth and started their reign of terror. At first, people thought they were a hoax, or some elaborate, overdone marketing campaign for a new movie or videogame. But our group had started moving everything into the bunker anyway.

While some believed they could make it on their own, we knew that it was important to have allies when shit hit the fan. Safety in numbers and all that.

Besides, your average Joe couldn’t afford their own doomsday bunker, and those who had them didn’t always have the necessary personnel to keep everyone in it safe and healthy. Every survivor selected to join this particular bunker—we all meton a preparedness forum—had not only brought tons of supplies of their own to add to the stockpile, but also a skill that would help all those inside.

The couple who owned the bunker and the mansion above it, Mr. and Mrs. Willis, had been expecting their first child when society collapsed. That was how I got in; I’d been her midwife. Things had gone swimmingly until after the birth of their baby boy.

A few weeks post-partum, Mrs. Willis had caught her husband ogling me in the showers. It was bad enough that the man who owned the bunker I was surviving in was a creep and invading my privacy. But to make matters worse, Mrs. Willis blamed me, claiming I was trying to lure her husband away. Things had been tense since.

As the months went by, it became increasingly clear that I was no longer useful to them. She started accusing me of stealing from the supply room and made biting comments about me eating too much or doing things wrong.

No one stood up for me because she was the boss bitch on campus. Not to mention, some of the other inhabitants thought I was getting a free ride now that baby Willis was born, completely ignoring the fact that I also did alotof the maintenance tasks around the bunker.

Who crawled into the ducts to clean them last winter? Me. Who took care of the mice infestation? Me!

We weren’t the type of bunker that locked up and never opened our hatch since there was never such a thing as too many supplies. So once the crazy summer swarms were over last year, we started sending teams to look for more to add to our stockpile and to gather intel.

This winter, they’d started sending me out to forage on my own. They were probably hoping I’d get killed by a bug, be kidnapped by one of those alien warriors, or freeze to death. I’d spent Valentine’s Day, which was a little under two weeks ago, hiding in an attic, hoping I didn’t end up as bug food.

Should it have mattered? No. But there wasn’t much to do stuck inside a bunker, and we always made a big deal of every holiday. It had hurt that no one had come out to search for me when I didn’t return that evening.

Things had come to a head a few days later when I overheard people talking about kicking me out of the bunker for good. They seemed to believe, like Mrs. Willis, that I was stealing from them—when in reality I was bringing in more supplies and adding to our stash. They were going to do it at the end-of-month meeting.

Argh! It made me so angry I could cut a bitch.

It was time to go. Fuck these people! There was no point in staying somewhere I wasn’t wanted. So for the past week I’d been planning my escape, packing away everything I needed.

Ducking into the kitchen of the diner, I opened the now-defunct freezer to take out my ultra-light folding bike. I’d found it during one of my solo foraging trips in a nearby garage. It was one of those really expensive ones that only someone who lived in this neighborhood could afford. Welp, it was mine now.

There had still been snow on the ground when I first found it, and I hadn’t been able to use it. But the last few days had been unseasonably warm for mid-winter. This was both a good and bad thing. Bad, because it meant the bugs were more active than if it were colder. Good, because most of the snow had melted. The bike would be a great help in getting me to my destination: New Franklin.

I already had the bike unfolded and the storage bag strapped on. The others would be waking up now, and they’d realize I was gone soon enough since I was supposed to make the morning meal today. I wanted to get as far away from the bunker as possible. They had a vehicle, and when they realized I’d taken some of the antibiotics and a bunch of water filters, they’d probably come for me.

Did I feel bad about taking the supplies? Nope! First, I’d come in with tons of goodies. The food, the water, the medicine, the gun and ammo… it was all mine. And second, if they were going to punish me for something I didn’t do, then I might as well just do it anyway. Right? Plus, they were being assholes.

Inside the bike bag were all the non-essentials: extra food, extra ammo, and anything I’d thought I could use as trade, like the medicine and the filters. If I had to abandon it somewhere, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. In my backpack and hip bag was everything that I needed to survive: food for three days, as much water as I could comfortably carry, a water filter, my Ruger Mini-14 and ammo, a radio, that last decoy, and everything that might save my life in an emergency.

I’d chosen the lightest option for everything, which meant I was leaving my heavy winter coat behind. A shame, but it inhibited my movement too much. I’d opted for a windbreaker under a lightweight jacket instead. As I sped down the street, I shivered at the freezing gust of wind that went right through me.

Damn it! I should’ve left yesterday when it was still warm. Today was much colder, though the skies were clear. Great. I got to be cold,andthe flyers would be active.

No matter I’d just have to ride until I saw the first one. I hadn’t actually spotted anymore scuttlers since the group earlier, but as the day wore on, that would change.

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