Yes, I know, I should be getting my own website for these. I'm working on it. ^.^; Here's the last place I posted them, incidentally:
LINK So if you've liked these stories, there's plenty more where they came from!
This one was another request by another friend of mine. If you clicked on the link, you can see that I used to be taking requests and commissions! I'd like to do so again at some point ... hopefully soon.
Anyway, this story was based on an idea I had for a silly web game ... a post-apocalyptic RPG where you'd venture into abandoned suburban houses, and ransack them for legendary (and randomly-generated) treasures, like bric-a-brac and big-screen TVs. I combined that idea with a new idea I had for TF mechanics, and came up with the following!
Spirit HunterMark let out his breath in a puff of white, used the sleeve of his coat to wipe the fog off the scope, and squinted through it again. It wasn't electronic, so all he could see were thin black crosshairs, and the target board through the snow-covered forest.
He fired, controlling the recoil with practiced hands. Twenty yards into the trees he saw wood splinter, and a tiny black mark where his shell had hit. He leaned his rifle on the sanded armrest, brushed his dark brown hair out of his face, and looked up ... and up ... and up, at the pile of furs and hides beside him.
At the top, two feet over his head, a white tiger's face grinned a cocky grin down at him. The tiger unshouldered an enormous rifle, then brought his snow boots apart and took aim at the target board, not even using the armrest down at his waist. His ears folded back; his tail went taut. Then he fired, and Mark jumped at the ear-cracking sound. When Mark looked up, he saw half of the target board still standing up, and a cloud of splinters slowly settling down to the snow behind it.
Mark gave the tiger a disgusted look. "How'd you get so big when you have to drink your kills through a straw? If that'd been a deer, you would've turned it to chunky salsa." He pointed out at the target board.
The tiger just laughed. "You think this is a hunting rifle?" He held it out for Mark to examine. "This thing's anti-tank. Russian-made."
Mark looked it over, trying not to show how envious he was. "Yeah, I bet those Russian tanks made really good eating."
"No." The tiger grinned. "Just the people inside."
"Oh you did
not."
He laughed. "I came close a couple of times! Crazy mercs guarding those Russian oilfields. They've still got oil out there, you know."
"That why you ran off to Siberia?" Mark leaned up against the armrest, curling his toes inside his boots and trying to unfreeze them. "More gasoline for the truck's engine?"
"Naw. I signed up to impress women." He flexed his arms, still covered thickly in furs. "You think the girls'll go for me now?"
"Yeah, if they like carpet salesmen."
The tiger gave him an unamused look, then broke off a tree limb and swung it playfully at him. Mark ducked underneath, then picked up a fallen branch and swung in fast, smacking his furs and hides twice before he could parry. The two of them "fought" for almost a minute, Mark swinging fast and the tiger blocking half of his hits, before the tiger caught Mark's stick in mid-swing and swung him into a snowdrift.
Mark crawled out, spitting snow out of his mouth and brushing it off of his coat and pants. "I'll have you know you used to be the smaller one!"
The tiger just smiled.
Mark walked back over to where he had dropped his rifle, and shouldered it. "You just wait. I'm gonna sign up for an Expeditionary Force-"
"Don't." The smile vanished. "I'm serious."
"Fine, I'll just walk to Siberia on my lonesome then. Or Greenland. Heck, I could make it to Africa if I wanted to. I'll find some mad, killer animal out there, and I'll come back
nine feet tall and kick your sorry tail into next week."
One massive paw ruffled the hair on Mark's head and nearly pushed him into the snow, before he shoved it off. "You can try, bro, you can try." He smacked him on the back, and walked past him. "C'mon, it's time for dinner."
Mark didn't come, straightening himself out and giving the tiger's back a disgusted look until he was almost out of sight. Then he got out a clear jewel from his pocket, and looked through it at his brother. The tiger shone an intense royal blue, wisps of energy radiating off of him and brushing the thin green strands inside each tree.
Mark put the gem away, and sighed before heading back towards home.
* * *
That night's dinner was sparse. The hunting expeditions had come back empty-handed, and the supply from last year's harvest was running low. Matilda insisted on making sure there was dinner for Mark's brother, though, and so he ate rich, warmed, salted venison, while Mark chewed on dry jerky and ignored the growl in his stomach.
It wasn't easy. No one else had come out to dinner because there wasn't any, so it was just Mark, his brother, and Matilda around the campfire, surrounded by canvas tents and RVs with missing hoods and wheels. And Mark listened to the two of them talk, while watching flakes of bark and old newspapers peel off of the pile of burning logs, and drift up into the tree shadows and the stars.
Matilda was a bison. Somehow, she'd managed to find one. Mark could still remember the diminutive girl she'd once been, almost as much shorter than him as he was compared to his brother now. And he remembered he'd used to tease her a lot.
Now she was even larger than his brother, with hooves and thick hand-paws, and a warm smile that went with her homemade calico dress. Mark had used to make fun of her "arts and crafts." But ever since she'd taken charge of the camp, they'd all learned how practical it was to make their own things and grow their own food. Instead of just hunting and foraging.
Mark still remembered the year before that ... the dry wolf meat, worn-out old blankets and leaky tents. Those had been some long nights.
Matilda had really changed since those days. And so had Mark's brother, he thought. He watched the two of them, sitting next to each other, but he wasn't listening to their words. He was watching their facial expressions. The way Matilda laughed, rocking back on the log and waving a hand as though to ward off his brother. And the way that he watched her intently, and smiled before saying something that set her off again. The two of them just seemed so ... confident. So full of life. Mark bet that they'd be glowing brighter than the fire if he looked at them both through the gem.
Enough waiting, Mark thought, and looked out at the trees in the distance.
Tomorrow it's my turn.But what to become? he wondered. There was no way he could outdo either of them.
Something tricky, he thought with a grin.
Like a fox. A vicious, savage fox-Somebody stepped out from behind an RV decked out in solar panels, and yawned before heading inside of it. It was Alvin, their tech support, and he was a red fox.
Just like half the people in this camp. Everyone wants to be a fox. So foxes are out.But Mark still wanted something tricky. What could out-trick a trickster?
He sat there for another few minutes, thinking. And when he finally decided, he laughed, and made the other two look over at him.
Mark waved them aside, and went off to his own tent.
* * *
The next morning, Mark waited outside of Al's camper, for the fox to come out and unlock the steel case on the side. There inside it were everyone's phones, freshly charged and ready to use.
Al nodded greetings to Mark, and Mark got his phone out while Al typed intently on his. From there Mark didn't wait for anyone else, but headed straight for the road into the suburbs.
It was a long walk, but the road was clear for miles. The cars has been cleared off already, so there was no place to hide. Mark didn't mind, and began whistling as he walked, making good time as the sun moistened the frost on the grass.
He turned on his phone and checked the GPS, for Google Maps' species markers. The one that he wanted was still there, and had last been checked just a week ago. There should be a healthy den.
Mark didn't need a whole den, he thought, and felt the weight of the rifle on his back. He just needed one of them.
It took him a couple of hours to get into town. Finally, Mark hopped down from the offramp and headed past the old restaurants, with smashed-in glass windows and posters of Ronald McDonald's face, and hiked down the forest road that led to the gated communities.
He looked out into the forest as he walked, at the dry leaves and dead branches covered with snow. Some deer were spooked by his approach, and he snapped his fingers and watched them go, stomach rumbling.
Oh well, he thought.
I've still got plenty of beef jerky.The place he arrived at was an upscale gated community, with the kind of houses that had a bathroom for every person and a garage door for every car. Mark stepped over the broken, wooden board that had once been lowered next to the guardhouse, and checked his phone to make sure of his destination. He thought he could see it from where he was at; it had an octagonal upper window, and blue walls.
Mark didn't go inside. Instead, he went to the house across the street, and tossed a few rocks in the door to make sure there was nothing inside. After that he pulled out a plastic chair from the dining room and set it up at the living room's picture window, where he had a good view of the blue house. Then he went through the rooms to see if there was anything else. The kitchen had already been cleaned out, but there was a stash of comic books in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He brought them downstairs, and leafed through them while waiting for movement outside.
It took longer than he had expected. Hours longer. Mark turned on his phone again, and checked Wikipedia. It said they were
mostly nocturnal, and he had been hoping. Mark sighed, and snacked on some fruit leather while reading about Spider-man's second marriage.
When it was getting close to suppertime he saw a buck deer, walking across the road. Then another, and pretty soon there was a whole family of them. Mark gave them a weird look.
This close to the den? he thought.
Can't they, like, smell it? He wondered if the marker had been correct, and thought of bagging one of them just so he didn't come back empty-handed. Mark's stomach gnawed at him, and he remembered what his brother's meal had smelled like.
Then he saw it. Like a miniature gray-and-red wolf, the coyote leaned inside the open doorway of the house across the street, crouched low and waiting for them to come closer. Mark slowly got up, standing inside the shadows, and unshouldered his rifle and aimed at it.
He would only get one shot. He just hoped that the glass didn't deflect the bullet too much.
Mark had just gotten the coyote lined up in the crosshairs, when his phone rang. Immediately the coyote's ears perked, as did the tails and ears of the deer outside.
Mark froze, in the seconds of silence afterwards. Then his phone rang again, and he found himself inwardly cursing whoever'd decided to call him.
It rang a third time. The deer finally bolted, and the coyote leaped out and chased after them. Disgusted, Mark got out his phone and pushed Send. "
What?"
It was Matilda's voice. "Mark, where are you? We're getting an expedition ready to go out hunting again."
"I'm in the suburbs. Okay? And I was
this close to bagging my prize." He heard squealing, and snarling, and loud bellows outside. "And a whole herd of deer, while I was at it."
She said something, but he couldn't hear it. The bellows had gotten louder. "Look, I'll call you back. Okay?"
He couldn't hear what she said.
"
Okay?"
"Okay!" he finally heard her exclaim.
He pushed Cancel, and stepped outside the front door. The herd was long-gone, but the coyote had downed one of the deer. It was snarling and tearing at it, and even at this distance Mark could hear the buck bellow in agony. It hurt his ears.
Mark unshouldered his rifle, took careful aim, and fired. The coyote dropped. A second shot, and the bellows stopped.
Mark ran over to where the two lay, only stopping ten feet away from them to smack himself on the forehead. "Argh!" he exclaimed, and followed it up with a few choice words. "What in the heck was I
thinking?" He looked down at the two entwined bodies, then got out his gem and looked at it. It'd already begun to absorb the stray wisps of energy, the ones escaping from their husks. And he thought that it felt a bit heavier, too.
For a moment, Mark stood there, weighing the options in his mind as the gem slowly changed colors. He thought of getting a new gem, however long that might take. Then he looked down at the buck deer and its antlers, and a thought came to Mark's mind.
He held the gem out over the animals, until it glowed and practically dripped with energy. Then he held it close to his chest ... and let it drop, to smash open on the pavement.
* * *
That evening whole families ate around the campfire. Human children sat on logs and kicked their feet, waiting anxiously, while their parents moved around getting plates set up on the wooden tables. Matilda wore a warm green dress and earmuffs, and carried a salad bowl to the table where two venison roasts already lay.
She nearly dropped it when she saw Mark come into camp. He was wearing the same coat, but he had the face of a coyote ... and the antlers of a buck deer.
Mark unshouldered a sack with two legs sticking out of it, and dropped it next to his hooves. He looked over at the cooked roasts on the table; then looked up at Matilda, and grinned. "What, did they go on without me?"
Matilda stared. "I ... "
"All the more for me, then." Mark picked back up his bag, and went to go get his cooking utensils.
