Focused entirely on what had to be done, the rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. The first thing I did when I got back to where I woke up was to rig a litter with some harvested branches and a healthy amount of paracord. After sorting what needed to go today and tarping down what had to wait, I spent most of the remaining daylight loading the litter and filling the cargo backpack I’d left behind earlier, then dragging it all up near the top of the ramp.
I got the last load up to the drop off with what might’ve been a bit over three hours of daylight left. For a long moment I was sorely tempted to try for another run, but I quickly realized I needed to stick to the plan. On one hand, I’d been saving the last stretch up to Fort Kickass for the tail end of the day so I’d have all the essentials up here at one time, just in case something unexpected happened. On the other, this hill had been kicking my ass all day and as beat up as I felt right then, getting everything to the top was almost certainly going to take most of what I had left to safely give. Climbing without proper gear is dangerous enough when you’re already tired, doing so when exhausted was a phenomenally bad idea. Stacking factors like doing it alone and in low light on top nudged things toward things you only did in the worst situations.
Thankfully, I’d found a place to tie off the rope I’d taken with me when I descended from Fort Kickass the first time, so going up with a full pack wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. A little creative knotwork helped me avoid a lot of climbing simply by using the rest of the rope I had on hand and rigging containers for lifting while I was at the bottom.
By the time I allowed myself to take an honest break the sun was nearly touching the horizon and the land below filled with shadow. I leaned up against the outer wall, right across from the top of the rise and slowly slid to the dirt, completely spent.
I had shelter. I had food and water. I’d also have everything else up here sometime tomorrow afternoon. What I’d do after that was an open question. With no idea what lay beyond the immediate open ground, the only thing that came to mind was that I needed to do a little recon. Maybe it was paranoia or the fact I hadn’t seen another living person since arriving, but starting about an hour ago I got this creeping feeling like someone was watching me and it’d only been getting worse.
At that thought, I headed back to my tent, grabbed the bulkiest pelican case sitting next to it, and lugged it to the courtyard. I grinned at the “Property of the Department of Defense” stencil on the case as I popped the latches.
“Best deal I’ve made in quite a while,” I commented while assembling the Aeryon SkyRanger. The drone was an old model that had been replaced and was a few minutes away from heading to DRMO when I spotted it in the stack. The series of deals I struck with the folks responsible that piece of kit were, perhaps, not strictly above board, but everybody who had to sign off on the unit’s final disposition happily did so, and as far as the Army was concerned, it was no longer part of inventory.
According to the reporting paperwork, the drone was old, out of date, beat up, and the batteries were flaky to the point it’d sat on a shelf for over a year. All of that had been true when I lugged it back to my car, but it’s amazing what you can do with a few grand worth of spare parts, some service manuals, and a couple cases of beer to trade.
The moment I got the tablet fired up, it bitched about not having GPS available. I suddenly realized I barely remembered how to get everything working for zero GPS and no local maps. A handful of whispered four letter words later and a buzzing whine filled the air which quickly receded as the drone rose overhead.
“God, tablet controls are such ass,” I murmured while I slewed the camera about and toggled a button on screen. The video blinked into the thermal camera’s monochrome black and white. “Let’s see who’s knocking about out there.”
The drone moved out in a lazy spiral, camera panning about starting from the west. Other than what looked like a pair of rabbits making tiny bunnies, nothing stood out from the west slope to the treeline. I had the drone descend as it followed the slope around to the south and then beyond to the east where I took it a bit lower to get an eye on everything I’d left behind. Nothing but small wildlife.
Onward my eyes in the sky went, directed toward the cluster of trees near the base of the ramp off to the north. The moment the trees came into view the large white blobs scattered between them were unmistakable. A tap of the finger zoomed the feed in.
“That’s a hell of a lot of deer.”
Content that I had simply been paranoid, I started the drone up and then quickly pushed it into hover mode when something caught my eye. Sudden digital static washed out the feed for a moment and when it came back, the hotspot I thought I’d seen was gone.
I sighed, triggered the return home feature, and laid the tablet down. “Gotta love military grade hardware, always as dependable as the lowest bidder.”
Paranoia or not, the little voice in the back of my head didn’t want to let it go that easily. By the time the drone settled down, I’d retrieved my AR chambered in .308 Winchester. I hooked the drone’s batteries up to the solar charger array, scooped up the ACH helmet I’d set out, and pulled down the PVS-14 monocle. It wasn’t quite dark just yet, so I did a battery check on my way to the ramp and pushed it back up.
I settled against the low wall, glanced up at the darkening sky, and my jaw slackened the moment my eyes met an unfamiliar sight. There was no man on the moon gazing back. A numb hand pulled my night vision down and thumbed off the safety cover. My skin tingled. The stars were wrong, too. I couldn’t identify a single constellation.
“The fuck.”
I took a deep drag from my camelback and resigned myself to a long night. Deeply unhappy, I returned to my tent to find some fishing line in the hope a few improvised tripwires might just give me enough peace of mind to actually sleep.
***
I drifted out of my dreamless combat nap about like anyone would expect: sore as hell and feeling like my body lagged a solid second or two behind thought. Tritium glow greeted my dominant eye when I cracked it open to find my point of aim hadn’t appreciably shifted away from the midpoint between doorway and tent. The keep was still dark, signaling the little campfire I’d set up near the tent had burnt out. The sky outside, however, was just bright enough to tinge the black of night blue.
I stilled my breathing and listened. Nothing. Only the wind met my ears, no different than it had the several hours I’d laid awake behind my rifle. Where there were deer there should be predators, yet I hadn’t heard a single yip or howl the entire night. I stifled a yawn while slowly rising to my knees to minimize how much sound the tarp made and pulled down my NOD.
Blinking away the sudden green dazzle from the monocle, I almost missed the blob of pure black just beyond the feeble glow of the dead campfire. I squeezed my offhand as I brought my rifle to bear and the pad under my palm activated another piece of kit that never found its way to DRMO. To the naked eye, nothing happened. Through the monocle the room bloomed with light from the IR illuminator, but the odd blob of darkness remained. Confused by the IR laser’s absence, I pulled my aim up momentarily, just enough to see the bright dot appear on the tent behind whatever this thing was.
Before I had a chance to question the sight before me, the sound of shifting gravel filled my ears and two squinting eyes appeared in the middle of the mass. Instinctively, my finger tightened on the trigger, but the plaintive noise the thing made as the dark mass shimmered delayed that impulse.
No sooner than I matched sound to animal, the shimmering suddenly gave depth to the mass that was now unmistakably a cat. A large cat. That slowly blinked at me and yawned. And then languidly stretched its hundred plus pound mass out almost playfully.
“Mrowf?”
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I blinked, knowing the only reason I hadn’t shot it was because the noise it made reminded me of the cat we had growing up.
It tilted its head at me. “Mrrow?”
That was the point I realized it saw me just as easily as I saw it. In almost complete darkness. Before I came to any decision, it pawed the air in front of it with both paws.
I blinked. Growing up, Scooter did that to beg for food. “Uhm. You’re hungry?”
The cat’s head tilted to the other side, and it mostly laid down, cat loaf style.
Not quite sure if I was hallucinating this from lack of sleep, I drew my pistol with one hand while laying the rifle down with the other. Keeping the pistol pointed just short of the cat, I used the other hand to dig out what I’d intended to be my breakfast, a slim packet of tuna.
The cat didn’t react when I tore the packet open with my teeth, but it suddenly perked up as I cautiously neared. I took a knee, squeezed the packet out on the ground, and backed up a decent distance.
To be honest, I backed up until I thumped up against the wall behind me. By that point, the big cat had padded over to my peace offering, sniffed it, cautiously licked it once, and immediately erupted in a loud, loping purr as it demolished the tuna.
“We good?”
It purred even louder and started padding toward me with its eyes lowered. I’m not going to lie, I like cats, but if the thing’s body language didn’t match half the cats I’d had when they were being friendly, I would’ve shot it. Hell, I almost shot it anyway when it got within hand’s reach. I mean, if it suddenly decided I was dinner from that range, there wasn’t shit I could do to contest the idea.
When it almost headbutted me off my feet while purring even louder, I reflexively scratched its head and grinned. Next thing I knew, I’d holstered my pistol and was using both hands.
“What am I going to call you, big guy?” I asked while it nuzzled me. I knew when I asked the question that it was purely rhetorical. This cat’s mannerisms were too close. “How about Scooter?”
The big cat seemed to accept the name and flopped to the ground at my feet.
“You really think I’m that dumb? I know a belly trap when I see one, Scooter,” I mused at the cat with a grin. “Well, since I gave you my breakfast, I need to find something.”
And find something I did. I just needed a rock or something, which were thankfully plentiful about. The rest of my breakfast went fairly quickly, self-heating MREs are pretty low-fuss after all.
That said, I did catch Scooter staring with intent at the corners of keep a time or three. Naturally, when I looked for what he was staring at I found nothing, so eventually I chalked it up as cat being cat. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of cat he was, though. I’d gotten into an argument with Jenna about whether or not black mountain lions existed. She said they didn’t and even Wikipedia backed her up. It’s not like I could just tell her I’d seen a black mountain lion while on a deployment that was never official to a country the US military was not nor had ever deployed to.
Still, black mountain lion is the closest match for Scooter I could think of. Though, Scooter had big ear tufts like a bobcat, and as the world progressively brightened as the sun rose, he looked more and more unworldly. His fur was simply too dark, like it lapped up every drop of sunlight. His coat was dark enough that the only discernable definition of shape came from the slight sheen on his fur that seemed to waver and shift based on the cat’s mood.
“Shame you’re so big, Scooter,” I told the cat once I’d finished eating and started to stand up. “I don’t really have any boxes big enough for you to play in. Speaking of, it’ll be light enough pretty soon.”
When I stepped outside, Scooter followed close behind. Given how clammy everything had felt, I was unsurprised to find the sky hazing up with a forming fog.
“We’re basically in a bowl with plenty of water somewhere, right Scooter? A morning without fog would be weird,” I muttered while the cat watched me replace the drone’s batteries with great interest. If this place acted anything like the bottoms near where I grew up, the fog would be nice and thick for a few hours.
I expected Scooter to react poorly when I kicked the electric motors on, but all he did was momentarily tense next to me before settling down and staring at the drone when it buzzed off into the sky.
I’d programmed the drone to run a similar pattern from yesterday, but thanks to previous telemetry data, I actually had a map to work off of on the nav screen. The moment I sat, Scooter leaned into me with his eyes on the tablet. For a second I got this preposterous thought that the cat understood what he was looking at.
Today’s recon proceeded the same as it had yesterday, largely just woodland critters on camera, so I let the drone return. Hooking everything back up to the charger, I bitched to myself about only having the one set of batteries.
“Nothing to be done about it though,” I groused to myself and looked over at Scooter. “Hey, I gotta go get the rest of my stuff. You want to come with?”
I swear the cat wagged its tail in answer. Scooter’s presence had dialed my paranoia back a bit, but I still followed through with one of the thoughts I had before falling asleep, which meant taking a rifle with me.
Generally speaking, if you aren’t finding common predators in an area that’s because something pushed them out of their range. That thought spurred a glance toward Scooter, and as much as I wanted to dismiss the follow-up, I had camera footage of the deer yesterday regularly looking up, and not at the drone. Deer don’t look up. The fact these ones did implied some sort of predation from the trees.
Thankfully, I’d set everything out yesterday, so getting today’s ensemble together took only moments. I tucked the butt of my AR into the cradle strapped into my backpack’s belt. A quick sinch of the strap at my shoulder and the rifle was going nowhere on its own. If I needed it, all I had to do was get a hand on the pistol grip and yank the strap to release it all.
A quick walk later and I was standing over where I’d draped the rope into the gap between the ramp and the keep proper. I took a slow, deep breath, and focused my thoughts on being able to take the rest of the day easy once I had everything up here. I’d use the drone to get a bit more overflight footage for the woods proper tomorrow.
I shot Scooter a grin, grabbed the rope, and started over the side.
Call it a comedy of errors, a series of unfortunate events, it doesn’t really matter. I’d taken a moment to adjust my grip because the rope was moist and out of nowhere I sneezed. Not a small one, but one of those massive full body sneezes that feels almost more seizure than just a violent bodily reaction. One boot slipped on the wet rock followed by the other. I had just enough time on the way down to realize if I’d grabbed my gloves this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Everything went white when I hit and the next thing I knew, Scooter was looking down at me from the top. It took a second to register the fact one of my ankles felt oddly numb, and another for me to do the infantryman’s primary diagnostic test: try to move it.
It wasn’t broken, near as I could tell. Specifically, the last time I’d fucked up an ankle, our medic pointed out that if I could move it without screaming and it didn’t feel like a bag of packed gravel I was probably good. This hurt like a sonofabitch, but I didn’t feel anything grinding. Of course, good only meant it wasn’t broken. It didn’t mean that I’d be able to stand on it. The army had terms for this when applied to vehicles: mobility or mission kill.
On the surface, it’s really easy to say that nobody gets into the Unit without walking on a broken ankle for a few miles. It’s basically true. It’s also true most of those guys end up medically retiring a lot sooner than the lucky ones who didn’t have to. The moment I tried to sit up and familiar electrical pinching stitched down my back it became starkly clear to me: there is no medical board here, no medical retirement. There are no medics. Furthermore, even though I knew it intellectually earlier, at that moment I knew in my heart there was no one coming. It was just me. And I just fucked myself.
“Fuck!” I growled and punched my leg. “Good job, Sam. Great fucking job.”
As self-defeating as that realization might have sounded, it was also remarkably freeing. Not a single inch of pain I felt at that moment was new. I’d likely recover if I did my best to stick with what worked before.
A cold nose poked the side of my head while I was bracing myself for the suck to come. Scooter didn’t really vocalize anything, but the way his eyes focused carried no small amount of concern. Or at least that’s how I interpreted it. I’m not the cat whisperer.
“I’m okay, Scooter.”
“Mrowf.” If Scooter was human, the intonation would’ve made the meaning clear: pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. The cat’s ears laid flat the moment I tried to move, and he placed one of his fist-sized paws on my chest. The rumble that came from his throat sounded only marginally friendly.
“Look buddy,” I reflexively told the cat.
Scooter put a smidge more weight on my chest to get his point across.
“I can’t believe I’m having an argument with a cat.”
Those yellow eyes narrowed moments before Scooter huffed at me like I was being retarded.
“I can’t just lay here.”
Scooter tilted his head ever so slightly and raised the paw on my chest just enough to warning tap me with it. I was still processing what had just happened when he turned and walked off with a purpose. I didn’t miss the fact that the cat paused long enough to eyeball one last time before breaking into a sprint down the ramp.
I laid there a good solid minute or two wrestling with the fact that I’d apparently just lost an argument with a cat that was far more intelligent than it should be.
It didn’t take long before the adrenaline smothering most of the pain started to fade, which was the point I decided I was going to try climbing back up regardless of Scooter’s opinion on things. Realizing the odds of getting back to camp were steadily dwindling, I took a deep breath in preparation and then froze. There were two people wearing something like ghillie suits standing over me that I hadn’t heard coming. For a moment, a bit of self-doubt crept into my thinking. Maybe I was in enough pain to distort perceptions and hadn’t quite caught on yet. That would explain why, when one of them bent over and offered me something to drink, it didn’t occur to me that they might not be friendlies.
The sickly sweet taste hit me about the same time I realized they were using some sort of leather-looking sack instead of a canteen, but by the time I felt my fingers touch pistol the lights were already going out.
