Chapter 24: Wanderer

Mat was in trouble and he knew it. While he felt quite comfortable on his tree branch, the share amount of Z’s surrounding him was astonishing. When he had first started to shoot, the lion pride had runoff somewhere. Since then, he was alone surrounded by the groaning and moaning monsters who were trying to reach him.
In the tree, Mat was using the butt of his riffle to crack heads open and thus kill Z’s. It was an efficient and ammo saving way of doing thing. It was only tiring. On the comlink, he heard about the chopper getting shot at and that’s when he knew he was in trouble. Not only him but his team too. Mat took his weapon bag out and started to put his riffle, guns and other “tool of the trade” away as fast as he could. Being a captain, he knew what was likely to come: an air strike using either: a small nuclear war head bomb using the Nikawa-Okmankov technology which allowed for a limited radius of action but for a more powerful explosion. It also prevented high degree of radioactive contamination. That was protocol Alpha. It was unlikely though since, there was about between 700 and 1200 Z’s only. Protocol Beta and Charlie were around the same degree of destruction but used chemicals that destroyed human tissues and bone structure. No, the most probable was Delta.
Delta was a high particle beam explosion, not unlike a microwave oven. It accelerated particles in such a way that it could be directed on an area and it would generate a pressure equivalent to 10 times earth pressure in 0.04 second for 1 second. It was enough to crush almost anything man made that had not been built to withstand this kind of pressure. And with pressure comes heat. A wave off heat would roll off burning and incinerating almost everything on its way for almost 1.5 km. which meant him too. Mat figured he had about 10 minutes before they called the Protocol. So, he transformed himself and started running. Mat was almost out of the area of effect of the bomb when it hit. The explosion sent hum tumbling and severely hit his head on a rock.
It opened its eyes and looked around. There was no light. No direct light at least. The moon was up and some stars were showing. That was plenty for it to see his way around. It got on shaky legs and sat back on the ground, feeling nauseous. It saw the bag and remembered that it was Important. Why? It did not know but he had to keep it. It was hungry and thirsty. Maybe it could find something to eat? It struggled upward again and then, decided to use all four limbs and life was better.
It moved around in the cold searching for something to eat or drink when it smelled food. It came from around the grass dune and he heard a strange sound. Something that made his hair stands on his body. Then, the smell hit him: dark, pungent, repulsive. It growled and moved faster, there was no way it would let the Enemy alive. It ran to the source of the disgusting smell and attacked without delay, severing its head and crushing it against the ground. Then, looking around, he noticed several enemy around … humans!
It screamed a challenge and attacked the Enemy, killing all of them in almost no time. But it was too late. The Humans were dead. It was sad. It tried to nudge one of them awake but they were dead and it knew what it had to do. After crushing their heads, it prepared to move along when a small cry stopped it. Something was still alive here. The smell was almost to feeble for it to catch but there, on the nights wind it was. A human. A LIVE human. It made a strange sound between a purr and a bark and ran to the human. There it stopped short in his track. A strange contraption of tissue was in its way and the human was inside it. It made itself known but no one came out. Finally, impatient to receive its pat on the head for a job nicely done, it pocked its head inside. There was no one. Puzzled, it gave a great sniff and there it was; the human smell.
Looking around, it finally found the source of the smell: a tiny human was lying on its back sleeping soundly. It rocked its world. Human could be small? It carefully took the human it it’s paws and brought it to its eyes. The human was so small that it fitted in one of its great paws. The human awoke and started crying. It almost dropped it from fright but kept it in its paws wondering what to do whit it. It did not smell bad, and did not look hurt. Maybe it was hungry too? Searching for food, it found many things that could partially feed him but its instincts told it that it would not be good for the mini human. Then, it stumbled on a collection of bottles. One of them had a weird cap. The same instinct told it that it had found FOOD for the human. It brought the bottle to its mouth and the human feed hungrily. Then went back to sleep.
It was puzzled. What to do now? The sun would be up soon and it did not believe the human protected enough to withstand the heat. What to do?