Chương 183: CDM 3, Chapter 59: Mission Parameters

"The sighting was at the intersection of King Coal Highway and Mountain Road," de Saint said, studying a map as we bounced along.

"They were moving south according to the tip, but our tipsters also drove the hell out of there as soon as they saw bugbears, so that's not really confirmed."

"I thought we were going to Red Jacket?" Giago asked.

"Near Red Jacket," de Saint replied.

"This spot is less than a mile north. Well, as the crow flies. These roads are crazy bendy. The actual travel length is definitely longer." A few minutes later, we parked where the bugbears were sighted. Nathan and de Saint put drones in the sky while the rest of us fanned out, looking for bugbear tracks. Mountain Road looked down on a wooded valley, surrounded on all sides by peaks of the Appalachian Mountains.

Clouds like cotton balls drifted by, casting distinct pools of shadow on the valley floor, and I stood there for a moment, watching those shadows creep from one mountainside to the next. Hornby whistled as he came up next to me.

"God damn. That's prettier than hell. Ain't Kentucky, but it ain't bad neither."

"The Kentucky border is on the other side of the mountains. It's pretty much right there."

"Still doesn't make this Kentucky. You'll see." I inhaled deeply. Air felt different when natural wonders were in sight. The beauty made each breath more refreshing and more meaningful somehow. Hornby took one more look, spat a brown glob of chew, and started searching for tracks. Yeah, I should probably do that too, though I wasn't hopeful about our prospects. This road was quite literally cut into the side of a mountain.

One side was a steep rockface going up, and the other side was a slightly less steep rockface going down. Bugbears had the athleticism to handle a climb, but I didn't care how strong they were. Bugbear tribes used sleds to haul their gear, and no creature would want to fight while dragging a sled up or down from here. If bugbears had come this way, following the road was by far the path of least resistance, so much so that it might have been the only viable route.

Cracked and crumbling asphalt wasn't ideal for tracks, however. Giago found some scuffs that could have been drag marks from a sled. Otherwise, the drones and our efforts on foot produced no other leads.

"This might end up being a bust," Megan announced.

"I say we make the drive down to Red Jacket and scope it out. If we don't find anything, we'll move on to the next tip, which is…" she paused to reference her notes.

"Toward Charleston."

"Kind of weird we haven't seen National Guard like we kept hearing about in the news," Nathan observed as we climbed back into the van.

"They made it sound like the state was flooded with them."

"Supposedly, the majority of those efforts are east of here in the Monongahela National Forest," Megan explained.

"We're chasing the smaller offshoots."

"Why do you say 'supposedly?'" Giago asked.

"Because I think it's weird too. The longer we're out here, the more I think we would be more helpful back home. Harrisburg had a goblin gate surge yesterday. We should be in fights like those." Giago shrugged.

"In the Army, you learn really quickly that most of your orders make no sense whatsoever. They probably do to someone, somewhere, but the boots on the ground? The picture's too small. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to guess what the brass might be thinking."

"Amen, brother," Hornby agreed. The road down to Red Jacket was a long and winding descent to the valley floor. When we started to see abandoned homes–bungalows and trailers, mostly–we parked and redeployed the drones. When those found no sign of anything meaningful, bugbears or otherwise, we drove the rest of the way into town and got out on foot to search the area more closely before we officially abandoned the lead. After an hour of poking around, we found no signs of bugbears.

When I returned to the van, I found Hornby intensely studying a map unfolded on the hood. Nathan and de Saint had their eyes on drone feeds, and Megan and Giago were on their way back.

"What is it?" I asked Hornby.

"Check this out," he said, and I followed him down the road going south out of Red Jacket. We stopped at the edge of what looked like a washout at first glance. A channel cut across the asphalt and spilled into the nearby creek. The channel was maybe four feet deep, but it struck me as having much cleaner, defined edges than other washouts I had seen on roads like these.

Hornby pointed across the gap at some thick pieces of timber and a few thick pieces of metal, the kind put down on roads to cover gaps, heavy and durable so as not to be moved out of place by traffic passing over it.

"We saw shit like this in Niger," Hornby said softly.

"Landslides were more common 'cause I think that's easier, but I saw a few roads dug out like this. It's small and dumb, but it sure does screw up a convoy for a while. See those scratches? Those are from a jackhammer." A creeping tingle climbed my spine.

"I think we're being watched." Hornby, ever the professional, didn't immediately lift his head and look around. After a pause, he said, "I think you're right. How do you feel about getting the fuck out of here?"

"I feel great about it." As nonchalantly as we could, we went back to the van and found the rest of our party waiting for us. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"We should go," I said. Megan saw my face and nodded.

"You heard him," she said.

"Load up." Once we had put some distance between us and Red Jacket, Hornby explained what we saw. Kimmy went back into the sky, and sure enough, her thermal imaging picked up a figure that looked humanoid, lying in the forest overlooking the spot Hornby had shown me.

"The shortest way around is more than 20 miles," de Saint reported.

"The next alternative is over 30." Megan put a hand over her mouth as she thought for a minute.

"We've seen bugbears use more and more sophisticated tactics. Their picking up a jackhammer doesn't sound very plausible, but this weirds me out too."

"The mountains do that to people," I added.

"If you spend enough time in them, you're bound to see something weird or spooky." Hornby nodded.

"They definitely mess with your head, but ain't no cryptid stopping to jackhammer a road."

"Let's see if we can drive around," Megan decided.

"I would never forgive myself if we walked away from something significant. I'd rather waste a few hours to be certain." After a bit of driving, we looped around Route 52 to the beginning of WV-49, a road that followed the odd twists and turns of the border between West Virginia and Kentucky. Tug Fork Creek and a set of railroad tracks did the same.

"Kentucky is on the other side of that crick," Hornby said.

"See how much prettier it is over there?" The view was serene, but it didn't strike me as being any different from the one we had just seen. Hornby was clearly proud of his home state, however, so I didn't argue the issue. A little farther down WV-49, we came to a rockslide that blocked the road completely. The stones in our path were large enough that even heavy machinery would struggle to move them.

"I think we can all agree that this is weird, right?" Nathan asked. Everyone else nodded. Megan opened the map again.

"What's the range on our drones?"

"15 miles is pushing it," Nathan replied.

"We sprung for the mana batteries, so we're only really limited by signal range. Should be good with that out here."

"Let's see what's down the road." While Nathan got his drone into the air, the rest of us drank water and nibbled on snacks. We saw the skeletons of a few hamlets as the drone followed the road, but they were quite obviously not in use. Unlike the abandoned houses I saw in the city, very few of these were fit to walk into, and several of them seemed to have caught fire at one point.

"Those look like crops," I said, pointing to the screen at a stretch of mostly flat land along the creek.

"Those are active. That's not an old field. Someone planted that." Hornby agreed, but it was too early in the season to say exactly what was growing. The drone followed another twist in the road, and we saw more than a dozen fields that had been plowed and planted, using up as much of the valley floor as possible.

"Do bugbears farm?" Nathan asked, but like the rest of us, he already knew the answer. No, they did not.

"What the fuck?" he gasped a few moments later. The drone was on the outskirts of Matewan at this point, and the camera pointed down on a person in a cage. They had enough room to stand and walk a few steps in either direction, but reinforced chain-link and thick posts trapped them on all sides. They had a half-full jug of water–the big kind you see in office buildings with the shitty little paper cups–and a few blankets. We didn't see food or any other items.

"He's gotta be like 15," Giago said.

"That's just a kid."

"Bring the drone back, now," Megan ordered. Nathan didn't hesitate. Giago turned to Megan.

"What are you cooking there, Osheski?"

"Let's drive back the way we came a few miles first." When we were well away from the landslide, Megan said, "This is a call we have to make together. I'm the party leader for hunting monsters, but what we saw is way different from any hunt we've done. The question: Do we report this and move on, or do we try to rescue the boy?"

"With everything happening, I don't know that anyone would come all the way out here to check on a weird tip like that," I answered.

"I mean, we have footage, I guess, but I'm not optimistic."

"And when they do send someone, will it be too late?" de Saint added.

"Say we play vigilante," Giago began, "how much shit could we get ourselves in if something went sideways? Because, let's be honest, anyone who locks a kid in a cage isn't going to invite us in for some tea and a good talk. We should assume they will fire on us, which means us firing back. I have a hard time imagining this adventure ending without bodies."

"SOP would be to pull back and wait for orders," Hornby replied.

"But?" I probed.

"But I got out of the Army so I didn't have to see kids getting fucked up anymore. Leaving this be doesn't sit right with me."

"I'm with Hornby," I announced.

"I think we head back to Red Jacket and follow all those bugbear tracks down to Matewan and see what we find."

"Dude, you're right," Nathan said, picking up on my ploy.

"We definitely missed some tracks the first time. If we're hunting bugbears, anything else that happens is just incidental." Megan looked from face to face.

"I'm good with that. Anyone opposed?" We were all in agreement.

"Alright then. Let's figure out how we do this. We know someone was watching the crossing at Red Jacket, so hopping over that and walking down the road to Matewan isn't going to work." She unfolded a map and made sure Hornby and Giago could see it. They were the only ones with actual experience with person-versus-person missions. Megan pointed to a zigzaggy line west of Red Jacket.

"They probably have these backroads blocked off too, or they might have fallen apart on their own, but there's no actual way to access them unless you're in Matewan already. What if we used the second one in? Doesn't seem likely they would have guards there. We can leave the main road here and hike across, and pick up a road they probably don't bother to guard."

"Those aren't the most hardcore mountains in the world," Hornby observed, "but it's still going to be a pain in the ass." Giago shrugged.

"It's a solid plan, though. Once we get to the road, even if it's shit, the walk won't be too bad. I have to ask: Can you guys kill a person if it comes to it? Our constitution scores should be enough that a bullet isn't automatically life-threatening if it hits something less important, but we can still get dead if we hesitate. That question applies to everyone, but to Gray especially. He's the most likely to do the majority of the killing because of what his bow can do."

"I'm not excited about it, but we did see a kid in a cage," I said.

"I'll figure out the emotional baggage part when he's safe." Giago looked me in the eyes.

"Can you kill a person?"

"Yes." He turned to Megan and asked her the same question. She also answered, "Yes."

"I'd ask Hornby, but we all know his aim is so shit that he can't hit someone if he tried," Giago joked.

"I'm not taking the bait. We both know my rifle scores smoke the hell out of yours." Megan interrupted.

"Let's finish game planning, and then we can go back to busting Hornby's balls."

"Yes, ma'am," Hornby and Giago said in unison.