Hunt

Wars are never meant to be good – always horrible, utterly despicable – so that you may never come looking for them. But when you’re bound to a hospital bed because of some child’s-play piece of shrapnel, you feel robbed. Denied. Of what I don’t exactly know. And it was even worse when I learned that I was the only one left of Fireteam Metal.

So here I was, lying in the frozen dirt of Alaska, stalking wolves after wolves, predators after predators, preys after preys, always finding an excuse to be always pulling the trigger. I had wanted a war, and this was the closest thing to it I could get.

You would think I had it easy when I ‘retired’ here – that I had served, fired guns, killed people and assassinated some – but no. It wasn’t easy. Assassinating a target wasn’t so much as stalking and hunting an animal. But, at least, in theory, something overlapped, and I figured it from there.

I steadied the bolt-action. When you’re lying on your stomach an M14 doesn’t speak much of practicality with its magazine, so I just asked for a random bolt-action without giving much thought into it. I probably could have gone after the nostalgia factor and looked for the high-end stuff, but military-grade weapons mean looking where the sun doesn’t shine, and I wasn’t ready to be breaking the laws just yet. This rifle was rented, too, not bought. Not mine. I had decided not to procure any firearms for my own ever since I came here. All the filings and checks would give away something, and I was content with keeping a low profile among these parts.

Maybe I should have refused the offer of retirement and stayed in Delta, but Overlord insisted on it. Last one alive in a team of four where the other three all died at once – it’s not that hard to see that I shouldn’t be fighting wars for a good while. Plus, World War III was coming to an end.

But ever since I resigned myself to the snow-stricken Alaska, nothing had felt right for me. Come to think of it, if I had wanted another war, another chance to be fighting again, I should go back to the military instead of hunting in the frozen wild. I should convince Overlord, I should ask to be reinstated – one of these days my second thoughts will get the better of me eventually. 

But when your prey is a tiny mistake away from disappearing for days on end, there’s little else to think about. Every movement was a risk – an animal will more often than not look back at its own trail to make sure nothing is following them. I had been tracking this wolf all morning – first from a lake next to a dense forest, now to a clearing where the snow gently descended from the sky. One wolf, two wolves. The more the merrier.

I laid motionless. The snow fell slowly still. There was no wind. This was my chance.

(Winter is Here taken by Jared Rice on Unsplash)