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Chapter 104 - The Bunker
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 08:30:15 +0000 UTCAlthough it was still night and several hours until dawn, the sound of the insects was a constant zipping to our ears, and was so annoying we were forced to reduce our heightened hearing to a normal level. We searched the barren soil around us for where the insects might be hiding, but couldn't spot them. We had continued on in our coiled up states, using our new elastic springiness to add even more speed and power behind our bounding movements.
It had been twenty minutes since we left the motorway behind us. Finally, we both came to hard stops, landing with our carry bags in hand. Our shins folded ever so slightly under the incredible pressure applied to them, but crucially held both firm and elastic enough for us not to worry about snapping any bones or tearing any ligaments.
I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the coarseness of the carry bag handles against my palms.
Holding them had become quite painful, since the high speed had caused the bags to pull and rub against my palm non-stop during the entire duration of our bout of sprinting and leaping.
Heal, I thought, and in response the soreness in my palms vanished.
Heal, I thought again, telling my body, which already felt recovered and great in terms of having plenty of stamina, to rejuvenate itself further than it already was. A massage-like feeling followed, with tiny aches and pains and tensions I hadn't fully known to be there vanishing.
Xandra, as usual, didn't stop for more than a few seconds. She caught her breath and powered on at a brisk pace.
The barren soil around us had dead tufts of grass and weeds and was littered with the debris of old weather-beaten tree branches long since separated from the trees they fell from.
Ahead of us lay a sparse forest with thin trees.
"This is it," said Xandra, "The bunker is somewhere in there."
"Right," I said, picking up my pace so that I was only a step behind her.
Although I wasn't tired physically, mentally the idea of having time to close my eyes and drift off to sleep sounded very appealing. If anything I craved the emptiness of sleep more than I ever had before coming into my powers. Every use of the power, though my body could handle it just fine since I wasn't asking it to go into dangerous transformative territory, seemed however to wear my mind out that little bit more; perhaps that was the reason why I felt so awful.
Dread, as was becoming quite common for me, gripped my mind and body. It was as if something inside me was screaming that there was something very wrong happening I had yet to acknowledge or take action against.
I looked about the barren field, seeing no sign of anyone. The zipping noise from all the unseen insects continued at the fringe of my hearing, to the point I was sure that I would likely not have been able to hear them if my hearing wasn't superhuman to begin with.
With each step closer to the forest the dread only grew worse.
I stopped in my tracks, causing Xandra to stop too. She looked over her shoulder at me.
Again I tried heightening my hearing to be sure there weren't any people around for a good distance. The bugs however zipped louder, as if screaming, the more I tried to hear beyond them.
I let out a pained rasp, dropped the carry bags, and held my ears.
"Burgess?" said Xandra, "What's wrong?"
"It's the bugs," I said, "They're all I can hear."
"Just ignore them," she said, "They'll probably go away come morning."
"How are we supposed to know if we're safe?" I said, once the pain in my ears stopped.
"We have eyes," said Xandra, "We'll see anyone coming so long as we're vigilant. Come on, we're so close."
Xandra continued on ahead, and I followed.
We entered into the sparse forest, going beyond one thin tree after another. I didn't like the look of the trees in the near pitch dark, because they seemed to me like the ones found in scary stories; once we were further in I realised what it was I didn't like about the trees; they had no leaves, and were more than likely dead, but still standing.
The barren soil, I thought, the grass is dead, and so are the trees.
Maybe this was why the bunker was going to be a good place to hide out. Because this wasn't a place where someone might enjoy passing by for a stroll.
"Is there anything near here?" I said.
"There's an old collection of abandoned factories a few miles North-West of here," said Xandra, "But we don't want to go there because it's probably littered with druggies and homeless."
We reached much deeper into the sparse forest, which didn't grow any more dense the further we continued within; each tree was spaced a few paces apart from another. There were plenty of fallen trees threatening to trip us up, though there wasn't much in the way of tree-roots to worry about like there had been in the forestation bordering Donald and Sienna's farm.
"There it is," said Xandra, jogging forward with her hefty carry bags with graceful springiness, as if she were running along a trampoline and not hard earth.
I picked up my pace, jogging along too, letting the springiness of my own legs also take me forward in an enjoyable gazelle-like motion.
My first impression of the bunker was that it wasn't at all impressive. I had imagined something much bigger than the small concrete structure poking out of the ground.
Xandra reached the entrance, crouched a little, and looked inside. It was easy enough to see what Xandra was doing despite how dark it was, because it was getting steadily closer to dawn, with the grayness of my vision slowly regaining colour.
"No way," said Xandra, her voice muffled from within the bunker.
"What is it?" I said.
"Someone's been living here," said Xandra.
I reached the entrance, crouched, and entered inside. The interior was low and narrow, like the inside of a limousine. The walls were made of stone, and looked sturdy enough, and the floor was lined with dirt but also was made of some kind of cement.
But there was also a sleeping bag on the ground and–
"Ooo, manga!" said Xandra, setting her carry bags to the ground and approaching a small tower of manga volumes.
Xandra's large eyes, like shiny dishes in the dark of the bunker, shined all the brighter upon looking at the manga volumes. She held one as if it were a priceless treasure.
"Mega Fighters M," she said, reading the cover, "Such a cool series."
"Oh," I said, "I love the anime of that, it was one of my favourites growing up."
"Me too!" said Xandra, "Looks like whoever was staying here has good taste."
I crouched low, inspecting the rest of the sleeping bag. There was an opened box stuffed with protein bar wrappers, the kind used to help athletes put on weight. And, lastly, I saw there was a lone navy-blue sweatband with a 'Z' symbol on it; the trademark symbol of the Zeba sports fashion brand common to plenty of sports stores across the United Kingdom.
"Well," I said, "It's either someone powered, or a homeless guy who takes his exercise goals seriously."
"Maybe whoever it is went on a supply run," said Xandra, "It'd make sense they would go at night."
I nodded.
"Well," I said, "We can get a lock on their scent. If they're powered then it might be good to meet up with them. The more of us that stick together the better. Maybe."
"Normally it might be a good idea to go it alone," said Xandra, "But I can make an exception for this guy."
Xandra settled onto the floor, using one of her carry bags as a backrest. She started reading the manga volume, which was an omnibus of the first three volumes of the series.
"We can't rest yet," I said, "We need to keep looking around to make sure the coast is clear."
"It's clear," said Xandra, "Nobody's around for miles."
"How'd you know that?" I said.
Xandra turned a page in the manga volume, reading it right to left as was the norm for manga reading. It seemed like she had turned on her 'Ignore Burgess Mode'.
It's whatever, I thought, and after setting my carry bags aside I went back to the bunker entrance.
The feeling of dread hadn't lessened at all the entire time Xandra and I were inside the bunker. If anything it grew steadily worse.
I strained my vision, heightening it to the max I could manage without going into my were-fox form. The pitch dark grayness of the forest exploded in a rush of more light, the grayness amplifying; the crispness of the things obscured by the dark greatly increased, so that every tiny movement caught my eyes and registered as a strange new visual indicator.
I moved my head quickly and wished I hadn't right after, because all the visual stimuli made me want to throw up from how dizzy it made me.
I closed my eyes, seeing the blood and vessels and all the tiny inner-eyelid materials there until I opened my eyes again.
This time I kept my gaze focused directly ahead.
And this time, among the stillness of the sparse forest, way out to the very beginning of the forest where Xandra and I had entered from; I caught signs of movement.
Someone was looking right at me.
I didn't know it, but I had three seconds to examine the watcher in the dark.
They were flat on their stomach, holding a gun, wearing a ghillie suit which, rather than help them blend in, set them at odds with the barren soil. Even then, given how dark it was, only by my vision being heightened to an incredible degree was I able to make out the faintest, grainy, unfocused outline of the person looking right back at me.
I had to force myself to look away from the ghillie-suited-man far off in the distance because, if it were possible, I needed to act like I hadn't seen him at all.
Lean your head back into the bunker and warn Xandra, I thought to myself.
The ghillie-suited-man however didn't give me that luxury.
Something was fired at me. The thing was, it wasn't my ears that heard the sound of the gunshot, because my ears couldn't hear much due to the awful constant zipping sound in the air.
And my eyes weren't much use because I was already faced away from the ghillie-suited-man in the dark by the time he fired his weapon.
For an instant I felt the prickling heat of the hours I had spent training, the soreness of the glass bottles beneath my feet, and the sense of the many objects thrown at me by the Chinese children.
It was as if the little shiny metal object fired at me by the ghillie-suited-man were among a maelstrom of rotten vegetables and one precocious kid's crowbar thrown straight for my head.
Remembering my training, I dipped my head to the left with intention.
Thwa-oonk!
A metal dart, looking like some tiny silver fish, lodged into the upper concrete doorframe of the bunker.
I dove into the bunker, landing on my chest.
Xandra, within, still sat back reading Mega Fighters M, looked over to me with a start.
"We're not alone!" I whisper-shouted, "We have to run!"
Xandra didn't need telling twice. She dropped the manga volume and leapt towards me, landing in a crouch.
"Where?" she said.
"Outside by the edge of the forest," I said, as quickly as I could, "There's bound to be more. We have to go now."
We started to move to the bunker exit.
Just before we stepped out I gripped onto Xandra's shoulder.
"Listen," I said, in a panic, "We need to split up, divide their numbers."
Xandra nodded.
"I've got your scent," I said, "And you've got mine. We'll meet up when we're safe."
Again Xandra nodded.
What I didn't expect was the hug which followed. It only lasted a fraction of a second before she eased off just as quickly, then sprang up out of the bunker entrance like a missile.
The sound of gunfire filled the night air.
The Pied Piper Task Force had finally found us.
