Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read Free

for the man to reach the top
of the first hill. Stryker ran down the third hill and up the next few until he
widened the gap by 1,200 meters.
    Moving off the trail, he hand-railed his
way through the trees and back to the depression between the last two hills by moving
parallel to the path he followed up, traveling through the concealment of the
trees that lined the trail. He plopped down beneath a scrub cedar. When he
finally got his breathing under control, he raised his M-4 and waited in a
prone position with his weapon pointed at the trail he just traversed.
    The man topped the third hill and
stopped to glass the trail ahead. He was 500 meters out; though tempted,
Stryker could not take the shot in his condition. His attacker moved forward,
obviously cautious and knowledgeable about how the tactical situation had
changed. Stryker knew the man understood he was now the hunted and not the
hunter, and his slow approach told Stryker he would be spotted and taken out in
a matter of minutes if he didn’t land the first blow.
    He remembered his grandfather, a World
War II vet that was hard as a woodpecker’s beak and gentle as a lamb. He once
told Stryker, who had just come home with a black eye from the first of many
schoolyard fights, that there were only two rules to fighting. The first was to
try to stay out of them. The second was get in the first blow and keep going
until your opponent is helpless; don’t give him the chance to mount an offence
against you. Stryker waited patiently for the man to reach the top of the next
hill. That would put him at 120 meters, and he was confident he could make that
shot. He switched the selector to burst and aimed at the spot where he expected
the guy to appear at the crest of the hill.
    He waited his breathing now normal.
    After a few minutes, he saw movement in
the tree line on the opposite side of the trail that he had followed through
the Breaks. The man was adopting the same tactics as Stryker had used, and was
moving through the concealment of the trees and bushes.
    “Damn, this guy is good,” Stryker
whispered with a note of exasperation. “I’m going to drive a stake into this
asshole’s heart when I’m done killing him.”
    Assess and evaluate. Options. Stryker
thought he might be able to let the man pass and quietly make his way back to the
Jeep and clear the area. He also knew that he could not take a chance on having
another round with the man. He was too good and might well track him back and
turn the existing ordeal into a saga of biblical proportions. Stryker was
running on fumes, badly needed water, and wasn’t built for this sort of
contest. It had to end now, he concluded. He had to get water and he had to
rest. Risk and reward.
    He sighed quietly, rose to his feet, and
moved up the slope to find some elevation and a spot to get a clear shot. He
moved slowly, careful to not disturb branches. He continued up the slope until
he saw a clearing that the pursuer would have to cross to continue moving in
the same direction. He again dropped to the prone position and pointed his M-4
toward the clearing.
    The first thing he saw entering the
clearing was the barrel of the .308, then the scope mounted on the weapon. The
man was moving very slowly, gun up, but looking over the scope, hoping to spot
him and get the shot. Stryker peered through his scope, his finger tightening
on the trigger. The man slowly fully emerged from the trees and traversed his
weapon toward Stryker’s position. He knew his opponent was somewhere on the
other side of the trail, but had not yet spotted Stryker.
    He softly exhaled, gently squeezed the
trigger, and three rounds exploded out the barrel of his weapon. They struck
the man center mass, creating a puff of pink haze from his chest. He fell to
the ground as though he had fallen through the hatch of a gallows, and in a sense,
he had. Stryker waited for a few moments and then watched the man roll over on
his back. His weapon had fallen a few