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Macy held the tranquilizer gun reluctantly, but with far more confidence than she would have before her new life as a cryptid-hunter. She crouched with Kim beneath a tangled mess of shrubbery so thick that she could barely see herself. Nearby, men trickled by. Some in pairs. One alone. Macy silently kept count.
Five. So far.
Kim crawled forward and stuck her head out quickly before drawing back in.
She held up a single finger to warn Macy of just one more guy coming. They couldn’t be sure others wouldn’t follow, but this was the plan. Wait for the last guy that they could see, take him out, and use his gear to free Miriam and Usa. It seemed like a good plan in an action movie kind of way, but not so much in a real world, Macy-might-actually-live-to-see-tomorrow kind of way. Nonetheless, it’s what they’d decided. Macy didn’t love that she was the trigger-man, but between the two of them, she’d at least fired a weapon before.
She worried that this action might cause her to take a life. She’d done that in Hogg Run, and had vowed never again. But this was a tranquilizer, not a gun, and these guys were big, strong men with thick muscles who easily weighed in far over two hundred pounds. If anyone could survive a shot from this gun, it was one of these fellas.
Kim held up three fingers, counted down to two, then one. Macy stood up, surprising the man approaching. He was absolutely massive. Close to seven-feet, muscles of legend. This man would not die from a tranq dart, Macy told herself. His eyes widened just as he reached for his sidearm, but by then a dart had already buried itself into his huge pectoral muscles. He managed to get his gun out, pulled it up to take aim at Macy, then blinked rapidly as he watched the gun fall from his hand and rattle against the forest floor.
Kim grinned as Macy shrugged back down into the bushes.
“Good job,” Kim whispered, before crawling out on her hands and knees. It was only a matter of seconds before she returned with her haul. A pistol meant for killing. A knife meant for cutting. A stick meant for beating. And a coil of sizable rope that Kim had to drag back into their hiding place. None of these things felt particularly helpful against a giant otter in a blood rage, but she didn’t figure these guys made a habit of fighting legendary creatures with a death wish.
“That leaves six guys at the camp,” Macy said. “The lead guy, and the five that walked in.”
Kim nodded while checking over the gun, fumbling with the safety and haphazardly ejecting the clip. She didn’t know her way around the gun very well, and that worried Macy. Kim might just as likely shoot herself than one of the poachers, and that wouldn’t serve anyone.
“We can’t take six guys,” Macy said.
“Not alone.”
Part of the plan relied on a lot of luck, and a lot of assumptions, one of which was that the only tranq gun now sat in Macy’s hand. Without it, they couldn’t subdue Usa if she woke up, and if they had any hope of taking on this small platoon, they’d need the assist.
“You’re sure none of them had one of these?” Macy asked, motioning to the one in her hand.
“Nope. Only pistols and rope.”
This group had to be the first of many. They’d need more than rope to get Usa out of the woods. That either meant Macy and Kim had no chance, or that they had to act fast.
“Come on,” Kim said, motioning as she crawled forward into another bunch of foliage. Macy followed behind, not nearly as quiet, but not so loud as to receive a reprimand from her guide-turned-freedom-fighter.
After a little ways, Kim motioned for Macy to stop. They’d drawn close enough that Macy’s lack of stealth became a liability. From here, Kim would go on to survey the situation.
Macy waited. She felt alone and scared and, despite the dense coverage afforded her by the shrubbery, exposed. Yet she felt a spark of confidence that they’d somehow pull this thing off. It had all happened so fast that Macy hadn’t really given much thought to potential other options, but now as she sat with her thoughts, she wished they’d just alerted the authorities instead. But that did mean Usa and Kawa would not just be unveiled, but announced to the world? A more preferable path would certainly be one where these monsters were kept hidden, but that went counter to what she and Miriam had gotten paid for, and seemed impossible anyway.
She pushed aside other options and the myriad of possibilities that played out in her mind. All she could do was focus on the now, and somehow that would work out. Whether skill or luck, she’d made it this far, and was finally starting to believe that she’d picked up a few tricks that helped her survive, even persevere.
As the minutes went by, though, and the time stretched on, she started to worry that something had gone wrong. Kim hadn’t returned, and Macy had heard nothing but the faint chatter of the men. How long should she wait before doing something?
And, maybe more importantly, what would she do?
