Ten hours and two diversionary loops off the trail and we haven’t shaken the four Hybrids that are tracking us - one man and three women. They're good, no doubt, and even with Lainey’s seemingly unshakable belief that I’m some kind of a superhero, she’s beginning to sense my concern. As a hunter, I’m hardly a match for a Hybrid at my very best and our shortage of quality victuals as of late has left me less than ready for such an encounter.
I stop, raise my field glasses, and take a look back. Well-equipped with crossbows at their hips of a higher quality than mine, what do they want with the two of us? We obviously don’t have much to give up, so why have they been so persistent? We’ll have to lose them before the crevasse jog, or else we’ll be leading them to Upper Camp.
“Milo,” Lainey says with a look that melts my heart, “do you just shoot them when they get close?”
I restart our trek with no response. Spoken as if killing Hybrids is some kind of a game. As annoying as this waif can be, with a face as innocent and tender as a child, she’s too-often getting what she wants – repressed parenting urges on my part? But as free and easy as she is with sex, I shouldn’t complain.
Short of available clan members during the Beach Camp netting season, Darwin had paired newbie Lainey with me for this trip to prep Upper Camp for Elite Celebration. But where had she come from? Freshly off an isolated mountain farm three years into the aftertimes? I can’t remember seeing any wholesome aftertimes mountain farms here in Hawaii. But her sweet, pleading face deserves an answer, so I reply, “I’ve never killed, and I don’t want to start with a Hybrid.”
“They might as well be human, they’re so close,” she quips.
“But they’re not, and don’t you forget it,” I remind her.
Hybrids. Sleek and mysteriously attractive. No known spoken words or language but they somehow manage to communicate. I’d watched unafraid in awe as they had raided Beach Camp for food with a quick in and out where no one got hurt. And their physiques … the lines and shapes of the men are … what? Why am I even thinking of the men that way? And that begs the question of who the fuck I was before the Global Crash and how the hell I ended up in Hawaii. Damn, gotta’ get out of this homo-swooning mode and keep it in mind that Hybrids are dangerous opportunists. And then, double-dangerous because they usually appear when the biggest of the big killdogs are circling. But there’s been no evidence of killdogs up here in the mountains, thank God.
We’re a half-day from reaching the crevasse jog and the sun's setting. I’ve set our night-camp inside a mass of brambles knowing that the Hybrids likely know where we are, but there’s nothing that can be done about that because I have to get some sleep – at least a few hours. With my crossbow at ready, I’ve set Lainey to sit quietly on watch which is the best that I can do, so good night to all. I pull my sleeping bag over my shoulders with Lainey sitting nearby quietly humming a pleasant song.
