“You want to do what?” Davis asked me.
I had approached him with what I thought was a really cool idea.
He scratched his head, looked at me, and chuckled. “You’re nuts.” Then he proceeded to move about his office barking orders to the team.
“I’m serious.”
“Tanner, I commend you for being ambitious. I’m actually implementing one of your suggestions right now. We have the weapons, we have the manpower, and now you want to change it up?”
“In a way.”
Davis threw up his hands.
“No, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“A few hours ago, we didn’t have to do a thing to stop a Savage attack. We didn’t have to do a thing to stop a Day Stalker attack. They tore each other up. You suggested from day one, okay, maybe years later and day one, that we let them all battle it out and we clean up the mess. I didn’t think it would work until I saw the Savages and Day Stalkers destroy each other.”
“I told you that would happen all along.”
“The Savages are coming from somewhere. We established that. They have camp.”
“Camps. Plural. There is more than one.”
“Then we find them,” I said. “Instead of waiting for them to stalk us, we go get them.”
“You mean go after them like we are the Day Stalkers today? Get them while they sleep, burst a little sunlight into them?”
“Sort of. I think we should take one of the converted trailers and pack it with Day Stalkers, then take the Day Stalkers to the Savages.”
“Like I wanted to do to the Sybaris.”
“Yes.”
“Are you proposing we do this today? Instead of killing the Day Stalkers, we round them up, hold them somewhere, until we find a Savage Camp?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Well, no. You’ve got it backwards, Tanner. Taking the Stalkers to the Savages would be a viable plan if we already knew where the Savages were camped out.”
“Please, how hard can it be?’
Davis laughed. “Ha. How hard can it be? Do we know where any are?”
“No.”
“That ain’t for lack of trying. We’ve tried. Taking out the Savages during the day has been a goal, but unfortunately, we don’t know where they are. To accomplish that you have to follow them at night after they eat. That’s dangerous. In order to do so successfully, we need something else. We need Vala. She is the only one who could follow them.”
Davis handed out weapons to the gathered men then turned around and handed me a gun.
“Can I try?” I asked.
“To find them during the day? Sure. Later though.” He tossed me a spear. “First, we take out the road Stalkers.”