XX.10.202X - Headhunter V.3.0

“Motherfucker. Walking around like they own the place...” Mishka didn't take longer than a second to come up with a plan, and Sayori didn't care, not for those two. There will be no funerals.


“Range?” She was lying right beside Sayori, tweaking the zoom, making herself comfortable.


“Wait one. Seven-five-six meters.” Compass beside her, Sayori stuck her thumb into her mouth and held it up against the breeze. “Mild... eastern wind. Dunno if it does anything at this range.”


“Seven, five, six, tak tak. Wind is at our backs. Ready to spot Mishie some live targets?”


Sayori exhaled and fought the urge to light a cigarette. After you pop your murder cherry, not during.


“Ready. Two targets, corpse pile, standing. bearing two-six-five, west-southwest.”


“First shot.”

BANG

whine

“Uhh... Up five, left eight, targets running towards northern office.” They immediately ran for cover, not too unlike Mishka and her, but they wouldn't make it, Mishka was already dialed in.

“Up five left eight, copy distance and vector, second shot guy on right, upper back, standby-”

BANG

whine

“Hit! Kill! Up one, maybe? Motherfucker's really gunning for it-” The entry wound was clean, the exit had sprayed gore and bone splinters, painting a messy two-meter cone on the concrete where he fell.

BANG

whine

“Third shot, sorry.” She was off target, distracted, fucking fuck, this was not supposed to happen.


“Negative movement, I... uh...” I lost visual contact. I fucked up. This hillside is completely exposed

“Halfway indoors, tangled up in pile of trash, thirty or so from first.” Sayori could hear the smug grin in every syllable, a faint tink echoing through the air as the extractor tossed the casing up and away, brass catching sunlight until Mishka deftly caught the case in her palm, bringing the smoking metal to her lips.


“Oh shit... Oh yeah, good hit. Straight through the skull.” And just a second from safety. Probably wasn't such a good idea to try tagging us after all, was it, you dent head motherfucker?


“Up one was good advice, spasiba, maja rodnaja.” Sayori finally lit a cigarette, flicking the thermal camera back on and giving the canopy a once-over. “I collect my stuff, how about relocating to the forests east of the eastern parking lot? No fence there.”


“Shouldn't we check them out?”


“No hurry. Not too windy, dry air, a bit cold, so sound travels very far. First we wait and stay small and quiet to make sure we catch if somebody is trailing us.”


“Wait, how was it...” Normally they'd break contact first, then run the candy cane.

“Northeast, then loop back and find a good position for eliminating trackers. No streams here so just do quick and dirty. I come a little bit after, okay? Password is: Dickheads...”


“...everywhere. Why not just say a couple words on comms, or squelch a couple times, or something?”


“Worried about triangulating. Restrict pointless chatter, ponimaj? And check your targets. You can squint really hard if you have to, even. Maybe try those disgusting American snuff things instead of smoking, too. I can smell you from over half a kilometer.”

“Better mouth cancer than lung cancer, huh? Fuck me, maybe one of those guys has a can or something on him...”


“Better lungs that can run if needed. Please do not spit tobacco juice around, very easy to track. If no spit bottle, learn to swallow instead.”


“Go eat a dick. What do you even know about swallowing?”


“If you mean horizontal cohabitation, nothing. You see, maljushka maja, when he says liquid candy comes out of it, he is actually lying.”


Sayori snorted. “You know, talking to you never fails to make me lose faith in humanity. I meant swallowing your pride, for example, you just made it weird.”


“Well, that's too bad for humanity. Trust me, we all care so much, you have no idea.” Mishka's smirk grew wider and wider. “And, hey, we came here to not have me swallow my pride, remember?”

“...If we even flat-lined the same fuckers who shot at us then. Also, humanity is a bit unspecific, more specifically I lose all faith in you. At least as a conversational partner, for now – that third shot was really impressive. Even if it was mostly thanks to me.”


“You...” Mishka sighed and nodded. “Honestly, first time? That quick and intuitive? Yeah, you were... good. Really good. And there, no more compliments today. I am not warm or fuzzy. Can you please scout the path now?”

“Fine, fine.” Sayori slid her rangefinder into the pouch on her belt and dusted herself off. “But if I step on a tripwire I'm blaming you.”


“Can I please have even one thing to celebrate?” Mishka's smile was less sardonic and more genuine now. “Sorry. I... was just kidding. Try to keep all legs attached if possible.”

“I know, you dork. Christ, I wanna jump on a frag just to upset you now.

“...Ilij zasun granatu sjebje v pizdu...”


“Shindekudasai.” Sayori bowed politely.

Finally melting into the treeline, Sayori stalked along, taking careful, measured steps, eyes darting to and fro to avoid dry branches or patches of mud, occasionally taking a knee behind a suitable bush and observing silently. Every fifteen steps, her left hand would slide one of ten wooden beads up or down a thick loop of cord. Every down-up switch was a hundred meters, every reset was a two hundred, and after growing comfortable with the base method, she found herself navigating without bringing the GPS along, and doing so with confidence. The crisp cold and the sharp autumn sun both felt less stark there, the canopy almost like a blanket. Sayori was smiling, but she didn't know why.

Ah well.

A noise from behind her, fingernails tapping on something hard, four taps in total.

Sayori slapped the butt of her rifle in response, thrice. She'd had her doubts about the number system, but the more used she grew to it, the more it grew on her. Today's number was seven, the base concept was simple enough, when it seemed like Mishka was getting closer, Sayori struck the end of her drinking tube against a mag pocket, one-two-three-four-five.

A reply, a tongue clicking, perhaps, one-two, much closer than expected. But that was to be, well, expected. Sayori had started feeling at home in forests just under five months ago – Mishka likely never had a time before she liked forests and a time after she liked them, she appeared as much a part of it as any animal or thorny bush did, slinking from shadow to shadow, somehow managing a steady pace despite, she was never too far away.

Sayori's own efforts were hurried, loud, amateurish, and she went back to just creeping along in plain sight again. She'd take a knee, now and then, and just listen. This particular time she did so, Mishka responded with a smile, kneeling beside Sayori.

“Good instincts. Execution needs work, but nobody is perfect. How does the forest feel?”

“Peaceful, I suppose. Safe.” She shrugged, slightly embarrassed. “I dunno if there's any way to prove that, but the birds singing must mean something, right?”


“Bingo. No dead-men, no typical soldiers, no combat, at least within the hour. Longer if someone had stayed behind after. We might walk straight into somebody else, but the birds always reassure me.”

“Although... I wonder.” Mishka straightens, unhurried, and creeps at her pointwoman's pace for a while. “Predators scare birds away too, but I can not find many signs of either predators or prey living here, and the whole animal kingdom knows what happens around humans with rifles.”


“Maybe they just don't like the garage, the steel mill, or the pile of stinking corpses there?” Sayori grimaced. “There's likely cleaner and less risky real estate anywhere else. But there's always some guy actually enthused to live in a place that looks like a cross between Chernobyl and Slough. Y'ever hear about Slough before?”

“Never.”

“Lucky girl.”

“I prefer keeping it that way.”

“Fair. At least Croydon gets decent music.” Sayori crept along in silence for some minutes, then cleared her throat quietly. “What kind of music do you like? Never told me.”

“I do not really actively listen to music... I just hear... whatever. You know? Popular, military-adjacent and not censored.”

“This guy, Dima – Sergeant Akulov – d'you know him?”

“In passing, yes. But he was usually in a different squad. He was – VDV, sorry, paratrooper – qualified during the war. I was airborne recon too, but part of the marine most times. How so?”

“He liked to sing a lot, had a pretty nice voice too.”

“Remember anything?”

“Uh.” Sayori cleared her throat. “...Na Mozdok, na Mozdok... ...uhh... tri vertuchki something something,... no idea if that's right at all, but it's kind of stuck with me, and...”

“...dembelej, ut dverej, kommandirnij abnimaijot – vsyo prashaij, Khankala! Snjova vistrel za gorojo, njekakda, njekakda, moj nje uvidimsja s tobojo.

Apjat ukhodit v noch, desantnij vzvod, apjat na pamjat pjesni pra Afgan. Bereti vnov tjerjajot zdjes baichov – vsjo kak sho kak, druzhei terjalij tam...”

She stopped singing, content to just hum along, and as they looped back and moved southwest along the edge of the forest, her humming slowly died out as well.


“It is pretty simple, you just repeat the chorus again, but that is why so many people like it so much, I think. Even the censors let us listen to this one occasionally.”

“...what does it all mean? That phrase, you know which one, has been living rent free inside my head for half a year or so, and I have no idea what it even means...”


“To Mozdok, to Mozdok, three choppers fly away-

snap

Sayori and Mishka both froze, the latter mid-sentence, her left fist rising as she dropped to a knee. She splayed her fingers out twice behind her back – 10 meter dispersion – and pointed her rifle off towards her left, rocking it back and forth – contact at my 10 o'clock – before slowly going prone, flipping the lens protectors out of the way and habitually pulling the bolt half-open to check her chamber.

Sayori was crawling to a suitable-looking stump, pupils darting side-to-side as she slowly came abreast with Mishka. She pressed her thumb to the safety lever, slowly and gently, and the rifle flicked into fully automatic with a barely audible click. Holding her breath, she slowly tugged at the zipper of her rangefinder pouch, opening it practically one segment at a time, wiggling the body of the contraption to tease it free as the FLIR softly whined to life, her right hand frantically resetting the zoom before bringing the tube to her eyes.

The forest was a deep blue through her thermals, with occasional flashes of light blue and yellow here and there, the sun peeking in through the canopy. A few clicks later, the view was monochrome, shades of gray and black with brighter spots taking the place of the colored spots from before. White Hot felt more natural, somehow, and Sayori tensed slightly as she saw a brief flash of bright white disappear behind a tree. 

Her 11, now, the view zoomed in until she could almost make out the minor temperature variations in the bark, and a few seconds later a humanoid outline began to emerge from behind the trunk, first a head peeking out, carefully, then the rest, and the shape was both alive and holding something she couldn't quite make out, so she gently set down the monocular and brought her rifle up, the slender scope mounted onto the upper going to a sharp 6x magnification with the twist of a dial.

An older man, with a graying mousy brown beard, taking careful, measured steps, dressed in earthy browns and greens, the object now clearly a venerable wood-handled axe, carefully maintained over the years. Then, a squelch in her ComTacs – Mishka either wanted to transmit, or was trying to signal something to her. She glanced to her left – Mishka still had the bolt halfway open despite keeping her finger on the trigger. As she met Sayori's gaze, she pulled the bolt backwards just a little more, and Sayori breathed out. No sense in ambushing this old man. He was no threat to them, at least not yet, and Sayori hazarded a whisper into the microphone.

“Should we make contact?” A fresh face. “We have him zeroed in if he tries anything funny, over.”

Her headset crackled to life in response, just once. Is that a no? “Repeat all, over.”

She saw Mishka sigh, shake her head, and her headset crackled to life again. “Negative. Maybe not alone. Maybe sent by friends, maybe sent by someone with a bigger gun. Shift observation sector, your one-two to five, how copy?”


“Eyes to new sector, my one-two to my five, copy. Maybe he came from west of here. He might know what places to avoid, so on. Over.”


Mishka inhaled, paused, then found her voice again. “Negative as of now. Maintain observation for some time. Will consider option. End, over.”

“Copy all. Out.” Sayori sighed, frustrated, and got back to observing.

The factory grounds were more dead than disco. Birds knew not to eat from rotters, no matter how bountiful the feast looked from above. Maybe a pet bird would be a good project – like a canary in a mine-shaft, just more humane. Animals seemed to know by instinct when the rotters were close, almost like their existence was a crime against nature, one of such magnitude that most life refused to even exist nearby.

The wasps were an outlier – what had seemed like opportunistic parasitism had turned almost systemic later on, some rotters so infested and populated that one could hardly tell rotting skin from papery nest, teeming with wasps as it all was, and carrying an incendiary device had become the norm to both of them – white phosphorus grenades, homemade napalm in glass bottles, medical alcohol in a water gun, whatever – oftentimes several of the former, considering how many of those crimson cylinders they had found over the months.

With Styrofoam and gasoline in steady supply, their main bottleneck for making “anarchist's napalm” was, well, bottles. A steady brewing stock with spares took up a lot of volume, and the more batches they bottled, the more they needed. Brewing left a reusable bottle, at least, Molotov cocktails were use-and-lose.

But she'd rather use and lose every single one, as long as it did something to purge the worst infestations. ANFO bundled with propane tanks and TNT carefully recycled from anti-tank mines was their economically viable “nuclear option”, and every time they'd deemed it necessary, it had kaboomed hard enough to not only remove the problem, but also a respectable amount of infrastructure as it went. It was mostly remote places they hadn't hit yet that actually necessitated pyrotechnic surgery of this magnitude, old farmhouses tucked away along byroads and corn fields, past saving, a tumor they had to excise.

She kept Katie's old place clean. A visit once every couple weeks, more or less, was enough to keep the worst from taking root. Katie's room was nearly pristine – the furniture she'd “acquired” months ago was still there, still useful, and it felt nice to just wipe dust off windowsills and mop floors now and then. Maybe when Knox had finally been disinfected, she'd come back, Katie would, and stare in wonder at the stacks of birch logs, the full pantry, the impromptu clinic in the guest room...

Her headset crackled to life again. “Ribbon, status, over.”

“Ursa, Ribbon, negative contacts, no movement, no signs of life anywhere. Over.”

“Copy. Intercept and debrief. Contact heating up dinner, good time to work on your people skills. His beard is like my grand-uncle's, treat him kindly, maljutka maja. Two-zero-zero distance, one-five-two heading. Over.”

“Roger all. Any, uh... “guidelines” for this kind of thing? Over.”

The thermals were safely in their padded pouch again, the rifle hung from her shoulders, dry leaves crunched underfoot as Sayori switched places with Mishka. She took a long drink from the tube going into her hydration bladder, forced down a fistful of nuts and dried fruit, and then, still chewing, gently grasped her rifle, flicking the safety back on.

“Share a little to get the ball rolling No exact locations, details, names, not if it is personal information. Maintain distance, but be approachable. 'Yoshka, you are better with people than me, otherwise there would not be a fort to go home to. Don't worry. End, over.”

“Just need to work on personnel retention...” Sayori barked out a tired laugh, closing her eyes to recenter herself and drive off the rain-clouds. “Copy all. I'll squelch three times if things go downhill. Is your scope zeroed for twozerozero? End and over.”

“Tak tak, three squelches means trouble. Zero adjusted this morning. Go charm his beard off. Ursa out.”

“Ribbon out.”

“Hallo! Friendly?”

The figure jerked at the unexpected call, hunched over an old ethanol cooker, a pot of beans bubbling on the fire. The water, heated earlier, was probably in his thermos flask, a battered, forest green thing, the scent of fresh tea settling over the little clearing. Sayori slowed her pace, pulling down her mask and taking off the Gyurza hood, letting it rest on her aching shoulders. “Was wondering if you'd be up for a chat. Nothing serious, don't worry. Nice place you picked. Beautiful colors.”


The old man seemed no less perplexed, so Sayori sat down on the other side of the clearing, removing her backpack and pulling out a tin of corned beef from the side pocket.

“I think those beans might taste better with some beef, don't you?”

With that, the old man finally snapped back to reality, shaking his head while smiling nervously. “No... thank you... um, miss. I appreciate the offer, really do, but I've been a vegetarian for almost fifty years now, and... that's a good winning streak... just never won the lottery, too bad, back when they still... ran it.” He coughed, staring at her arsenal with apprehension. “...do you drink tea?”

“If you don't mind. I used to just drink tea back home, heh, coming to the U.S. was a bit of a shock... I drink mostly coffee nowadays, but I won't refuse. T-thank you, mister...?

“Not mister anything, just Linus, that's what everyone who knows me calls me, I've never married and I don't owns any company either, so don't use me no titles.” He – Linus? - paused, stroked his beard, and finished with an indifferent-sounding “...Yet.”

“Might be better that way, I think, with times like these.” Sayori reached a gloved hand for the thermos cup, inhaling greedily. It was strong, sweet, citrus-y maybe? “Probably not very good for the stock market, you know.”


“Well, I hates to be frank like this, but I wouldn't mind me a stock market going a bit topsy-turvy like this now and again.” He looked down, stirring the beans with renewed vigor. “...just... might give some folks a little... perspective. More folks know what bad times feel like, more folks're gonna care, except the ones that won't, but you can lead a horse to water. Just can't teach a horse how to fish.”

“...Yeah. I haven't tried, personally, but it sounds true. Um...” Sayori shook her head to dispel the mental images of seahorses, almost feeling compelled to ask Linus about seahorses, but stayed her tongue. “You... coming from out west? Rosewood or Ekron?”

“West to east, that's right now, yes miss. Came by way of the Atchley farm, actually, wondered if Catherine was here since I heard she turned out a doctor or something, got this thing on my foot that-”

“Nurse. Katie's a nurse, I mean, Sorry.” Why do you still care? “Stayed with her a bit half a year back, but she managed to get on an evac transport just in time with some others. She's probably with her grandpa in Tennessee now.”

“Oh! I didn't realize we had mutual acquaintances! Aw, last time I met lil' Catherine, she was maybe as tall as that there gun of yours. It sure has been a while, huh...” Linus slapped his forehead suddenly. “Son of a... the house was so neat I thought she might still be around, so I left her some gifts, darn it all.”

“Well, when she comes back she'll find it, right?”

“Iff'n.” Linus stirred the beans, sulking momentarily. “So y'all're traveling too? Where to?”

“Came from out east, actually. Behind the Pacific. Little town in Japan, near Kyoto, if that says anything.” Sayori exhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a few seconds. “Now I'm trying to get back. Was chasing a...”

“A mirage?”

“Never thought of it like that, but yeah, I guess. Came to Kentucky and got stranded here, too busy chasing mirages to notice. One after another, they'd appear and disappear, and now I just want to go back home. Just not like this.”

“I'd give my sympathy, but I've got this itch that y'all wouldn't feel any better. Maybe worse, even.” Linus tasted the soup and nodded to himself. “Just, that proverb about bootstraps, you know?”

“All too well.”

“Well, the thing is, you can't do it without a couple good folks there to actually lift ya. Iff'n ya go it alone, you'll just end up dragging your boots up your dang keister.”

Sayori chuckled. “That's me. On the ground, a pair of boots up my ass, pulling like a goddamn mule. You never fucking learn, do you?”

“Well, it's a bit hard for me, dependin' on the subject. If that was one of them rhetorical questions, then I have a little feeling that y'all're gonna' be mighty surprised when you finally let yourself be surprised.”

Linus winked.

“But this is actually why I never got united in holy matrimony – women are stubborn, like nothing else on God's green Earth, and I never put much stock in changin' another person t' be more like yourself. I don't have the temperament to be stubborn, but it's that kinda' thinkin' that moves mountains when left to its' own devices. I'd rather just wander around and admire what folks like that can do once they put their minds to it.”

“Hm. Thanks, I guess.” There was a slight edge to her voice, but not much more.


“Miss, y'all's either going to end up changing the world, or going to prison. Maybe both. Hard to say for sure.”

“So it's a coin toss for now, huh?”

“Any damn fool can flip a coin. Besides launch velocity, angular momentum and gravity there's not much to take into account. I hates to say it, but you, miss, you have choices in front of you. Keep what you need, leave the rest, learn when to give and when to take.”

Linus extinguished the fire, pouring a hearty serving of beans into a dented metal bowl.

“Oh, and when to leave. Sometimes that's the best thing you can do for someone else. Not for me, I like to see young folks with a proper fire in their bellies. Gives an old man hope.”