Page 28 of Fated to the Hunter
Chapter 15: Kiera
Bael’k and I stared at the screen, waiting for the signal.
The original plan from the other warriors was to trigger a lure at the northeastern corner of the Dead Zone, drawing the scourge there while we slipped in from the west. It wasn’t a bad plan, but I had a better one.
The first issue was that the hunter shuttles and fences couldn’t hold for long, so the lure would need to be shut off fast, giving us very little time to travel unhindered. Second, the scourge near our entry point might not respond reliably to a lure that far away.
My fix? Use two lures. Start the first one at the edge of the Dead Zone north of Pasadena. Once the scourge swarmed, shut it off and trigger another a few miles east. Then rinse and repeat, leapfrogging the lure and leading the scourge across the map. It kept them moving, and a running scourge wasn’t tearing at the fence. We’d used the same tactic in New Franklin during the worst of the swarms, when killing them fast enough just wasn’t an option. So we kept them chasing a shifting target while we picked them off at our leisure.
There’d still be damage to the fence, but less of it, and spread across a wider area.
They were happy to try my idea.
The first lure was already active, and we watched the satellite feed as scourge from all directions swarmed in. It was fucking creepy and gave me the heebie jeebies.
The hunters here used the resulting chaos to thin the population before the summer swarms. Most were in their shuttles, firing at flyers and centicreeps. Others were stationed at the fences, masked and geared up, torching the scuttlers, spitters, and lungers that tried to break through.
“We’re activating the second lure,” someone said over the connection.
That was our cue.
“Alright, here goes nothing,” I muttered, settling into the padded passenger seat Curtis had helped Bael’k install. It was attached to the anchors usually used to secure heavy loads in the shuttle. I had a good view of the screen but couldn’t reach it.
But I could reach Bael’k.
I reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, enjoying the connection. It calmed me and stopped my brain from infinitely looping over and over all the things that could go wrong. And trust me, a whole lot could go wrong.
Bael’k hopped over the triple-layered fences, each made from the same indestructible material as the nets they used, and landed on the other side. From here on, we had to stay cloaked and travel low to the ground. It was slower, yes, and it forced us to choose routes his shuttle could traverse without lifting off, but it was safer.
Flyers had more difficulty detecting cloaked shuttles when they were on the ground. And if we drew any unwantedattention, all we had to do was stop immediately and stay still until they lost interest. It worked outside the Dead Zone. No reason to think the scourge were smarter in here.
“Where now?” he asked.
I might have looked like I was just zoning out and staring down at the ground yesterday during the second half of our trip here, but I was actually figuring out the best route to reach our location. That was just how my brain worked. Daydreaming? Thinking? Zoning out? One in the same. It had gotten me in trouble back in school, but I’d learned to trust it.
We were entering from the west through a state park, and it was the safest spot to be. Technically, we could just fly straight across some of the least scourge populated areas to our location, but that would require flying. And some of the flyers had stuck around, ignoring the lure. They’d be on us in a heartbeat. Our goal was to remain undetected for the whole mission.
That meant we had to loop north, following the highways up into a more populated area of the city and then back south again.
Another problem? The nest itself was just over the big hill to the southeast of us. In fact, the Griffith Observatory, the place I’d originally thought was our location, had a perfect view of it. Most of Los Angeles was covered in the downy white threads of mycelium from the scourge’s symbiotic fungus, and it feathered up the hill, reaching for but not quite touching the observatory.
I sure hoped we were correct and the key wasn’t in there after all.
Believe it or not, most of the 101 was empty. There were plenty of scourgeunder, andaround, but the highway itself was pretty clear thanks to the fences and the bridges. There was simply no reason for the scourge to make their way up here unless therewas food. That was, until we saw the giant mass of confused-looking scuttlers and lungers. They blocked the whole highway.
The nearest scuttler just stood there, looking just like you’d think a giant ant-spider-mantis hybrid would look, complete with toxin-edged claws. I knew it was alive, but it stood so still, I wondered if it was asleep. Did scourge sleep?
“What the hell are they doing?” I’d never seen scourge act this way before. They were always chasing after something or someone. These just stood there like zombies. They reminded me of the infected, which was what we called humans and other Earth animals dumb enough to eat the scourge and get infected by the fungus.
Could the fungus turn on the scourge themselves?
“This is strange behavior. But the hunters here report many strange behaviors. Dead Zones are different than other places.”
We tried to go around, but that was impossible, so we made the executive decision to do one hop up and over the zombified group.
The moment we lifted into the air, I gasped. The sight of thousands upon thousands of scourge all around us had bile rising up in my throat. We were completely surrounded. We’d been spoiled on the highway. I’d known there were scourge all around us, but I hadn’t expected to see this. And everywhere the scourge’s fungus took hold, the web of mycelium eating away at the buildings. The city was starting to crumble like old parchment left out the in sun.
“And we aren’t even anywhere near the nest,” I said.
