The Hunt Read Free

birthday.  It was very popular about a hundred years ago.   He had watched the entire series the first week he had it.  Still smiling, he finished up his breakfast and went to his bedroom. Large by normal standards, his bedroom had a king size bed on the far wall as you entered. Besides the entry door, the room had two doors on each side of the bed. The one on the right was the bathroom.  He walked over and went through the left hand door and traveled a hallway for ten feet and came to another door.
    “Thunder, four, one, zero, six, seven” He said quietly.
    There were a loud click and the sound of metal moving again and door swung open to a stairway leading down about twenty feet to another door. Marcus walked down the steps and went into what he called his “batcave”.  The lights came on automatically when he entered the room.  The room was about twenty feet square with a large bed on one wall.  Almost identical to the flat screen up stairs, another one stretched out on one wall with a large couch in front of it.  The right hand wall looked like something out of a military base.  Weapon after weapon lined the wall.  Rifles, pistols, machine guns, shotguns, grenades, knives, and of course… his favorite… the ZF7 Precision Sniper Rifle.  That thing could shoot the wings off of a fly at a thousand yards.  Provided of course, that the shooter knew how to handle a gun and Marcus did. It also packed enough punch to blow a hole through twelve inches of concrete.  He paused momentarily as he passed it but moved on to the antique Remington 700 rifle. It was in pristine condition. He was almost positive that he wouldn’t be able to take the cat today.  Today was primarily for tracking and setting up the killing field for taking the monster. Hopefully he wouldn’t run across any other problems.  He strapped the large twelve inch hunting knife to his right thigh.  He then took a .44 magnum classic Desert Eagle off the wall, placed it in its holster and strapped it to his waist.
    “Go ahead punk, make my day…” he said out loud and then laughed a little.  Then Marcus yanked the Eagle back out of his holster and drew down on his invisible foe.  Marcus thought, “Dirty Harry didn’t have anything on me” and he laughed some more. He sure did like the old movies.
    After looking over his assortment of solar powered micro cameras and sensors, he chose about 5 of the most reliable, put them in his backpack and strapped it on.  Then he took the 700 and using the strap, slung it across his right shoulder, grabbed the necessary ammo and went back upstairs. As he strode through the front door, he initiated lock down.
    “Dragon, one, five.”
    You could hear the internal doors, windows, and barriers locking into place.  As Marcus walked over the courtyard, he noted that today was going to be a windy, fall day.  That made it harder to tell if anything was approaching him.  The cat was stealthy anyways but this just made it worse.  It was better to be safe than sorry, so he decided to load one of the small military sensor arrays and a small solar defense shield on the four-wheeler.  The sensor array could detect any physical movement within a half mile radius.  Although it could protect you from attack, the portable shield didn’t keep you from wrecking or being knocked around by an outside force and if you were knocked around enough the shield could fail.  It was controlled by the main computer in his compound.
    After loading up, Marcus drove down a small path that branched off the main road through his compound and went about three quarters of a mile back through the wooded area behind his house. After topping a small hill in the woods, the area opened up to a small barn and pasture on the right.  Further on his right was a small stream that eventually flowed into the lake that covered the entire northeastern section of his canopy. He had built a small lot to the left rear of the barn where he had four