D
Draconias Galactica
Guest
[font size=1" color="#FF0000]LAST EDITED ON Dec-29-01 AT 07:52PM (GMT)[p]Okay, here goes nothing again. If you see anything that's remarkably stupid in this fic, kindly tell me so I can stop doing it. Hope you enjoy it.
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By now, Hawks had come to belive Jake's story, about how the sun never
rose in the Shadowlands. It had been a day since he and Jake set out
twoards Crater Town, and the light had never changed from twilight. But
what was even odder was that, even at midnight, the light never got any
brighter _or_ darker than twilight. Arroyo came back to his thoughts,
even though he knew there was nothing he could do for his villiage
until he got out of this place. There had to be a way past those laser
turrets - he hadn't seen them yet, but he decided to take Jake's word
that they existed - but he didn't know where. He tried to take his mind
off of Arroyo by starting a conversation with Jake.
"Do you have any shrubs around here?" Hawks asked Jake, who was about
four feet ahead of him. "Maybe a blade of half-dead grass?"
"What do you have against rocks and dirt?"
"Makes for dull scenery. And your skyline sucks too."
"When we get to Crater Town, you should hook up with this bartender I
know. With your conversational skills and his prices, you'll both be
rich in no time." Their journey had been limited to this sort of event
thus far - they hadn't run into any other locals, critter or human.
They were roughly 40 miles away from Crater Town, another two day's
trip at their current rate.
"Are you saying I'm gloomy? That I'm not pleasent?"
"I'm saying I need a drink. Alcohol or water, it doesn't matter. Is
there any left?" Hawks took out the water flask the two had been
sharing.
"It's three fourths empty."
"If you were a less-gloomy person, you'd have said it was one fourth
full," Jake said, chuckling. "Pass it over." Hawks tossed the flask up
to Jake, who finished off the remaining water in one drink.
"Can I ask you a question? What do you normally do to keep yourself
occupied when you're traveling?"
"Usually, I hum, but you kept saying I was ruining your ear drums. Yep,
you're definatly _not_ a pleasent person."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Well what do you do? Have gloomy conversations with shrubs and grass?"
"I usually look at birds. They're fun to watch, not that you'd know
that. I can barely see the sky here, and I doubt you have any birds
either."
"Not the real type, and definatly not the fake type outside of the
Archives. There's this one old-timer there, Saul, who has a robo-bird
he built."
"What type?"
"A bird's a bird."
"Yeah, to _you_ maybe. You've only seen one bird in your life, and that
one wasn't even real."
"He sure _acts_ like he's real. Ate a bag of jerky I had like he was
real."
"But I know birds. There's about eight or so types that're definatly
not just oversized bugs where I come from."
"Maybe there would be more if you'd stop having such gloomy
conversations with them," Jake laughed.
"I don't talk to birds, they're too interested in eating me to have a
conversation. I just watch them. That's how I got my name, from
watching birds when I was little."
"Your parents must not have had much imagination."
"Maybe. How far away are we, anyways?"
"Um..." Jake looked down at his PipBoy. "Well, unless we run for the
rest of the day, we're not getting there for a while. About 37, 38
miles to go still."
"Right, thanks. Now what was that you were saying about my parents?"
Their trip was similar to that for the next 12 miles. Then, they
stopped at a small river. The GECKs used by both Vaults, acording to
Jake, had made the soil fertile and water plentiful. While fertile soil
just ment more potatoes and little else, the water was a very important
part of wasteland survival. Also, some bodies of water that had existed
before the war still remained, thanks to a lack of increase in the
temperature.
"This water tastes like piss," Hawks muttered.
"That's because there's more piss in the water than there is water,"
Jake explained, spitting out the handsfull he had taken from the river.
"Oh great. Can't those rats just do it in on the ground? So where's it
fresh, further up-stream?"
"It's not rat piss."
"I forgot, you're a master at determining what different types of
animal pisses taste like."
"Actually, I sort of am. Not something I'm too proud off. But _this_,
this is definatly human piss. Some bastard's trying to poison whoever
drinks from here, probably." Jake got up from where he had knelt down
by the river and sniffed the air.
"Sounds like a lot of people I met in Vault City."
"Quiet," Jake said, unsheiving his sword. He continued to sniff the
air, picking out specific scents. "Horses," he whispered to Hawks, who
had taken out his spear. "Not the riders, they wouldn't be this far
south of Crater Town. Definatly a group smell."
"Who're the riders? And what's a horse?" Hawks' ears picked up a noise
- though he didn't know what it was, it was the sound of horses
running.
"I didn't think they were in this area," Jake muttered. He turned to
Hawks. "We can't beat the raiders. We have to get hidden, _now_." He
dashed off twoards a nearby boulder, with Hawks only a few feet
behind. The sound of hoofbeats grew even stronger as the horses
aproached them.
"Wait a minute, tell me who these riders are already!" Jake put his
hand over Hawks' mouth, quickly silencing him.
"Keep your voice down and do everything I tell you. Otherwise, we'll
die. You understand? I'll explain that stuff later." Hawks nodded and
Jake pulled back his hand. Jake scanned over the area quickly, looking
for shelter of some sort. He found it in the form of a cave in the side
of a mountain. He didn't know how deep it was, but it was enough for a
temporary hiding spot. "Follow me, and keep low," he said, pointing to
the cave.
The hoofbeats came to a stop, very nearby, almost on the exact oposite
side of the bolder. Jake and Hawks could both hear some indistinct
dialouge going back and forth between about five people. Jake, without
a word and almost without a sound, took off for the cave. Hawks ran off
as well less than a second later. If the horseriders on the other side
of the boulder heard them, they didn't show it. Both of them ran
quickly, staying low to the ground and avoiding kicking up any rocks to
give them away. They made it to the indent in the hill without giving
themselves away.
"Why are we in here?" Hawks asked, quietly.
"To keep hidden. They're likely to kill us if they found us."
"Friends of yours?"
"Not really, they do that to eveyrone they meet." Jake stuck his head
out of the cave and scanned for any figures. There weren't any. "Nice
job with the running back there - I thought for sure you'd botch it
up."
"You've never seen a person run around packs of golden geckos then. You
don't mess up and live in that situation." Hawks put down his spear and
sat down on the ground, keeping as close to the back wall as he could.
"So who are they?"
"They're called the Shadow Raiders. You can guess their profession.
They're not like regular raiders, though - they keep moving from one
area to another. Plus, they can ride horses, something most local
raiders don't have the patientce to learn how to do."
"You made me do all this worrying over some _radiers_?"
"Like I said, they're not normal raiders. They're not even normal human
beings. Somehow, and don't ask me how because I don't know, they can
shoot straight. If they aimed their riffles at you from any respecatble
distance, nine out of ten times they'd hit you."
"Damn. Not much you can do against 'em with a sword I guess."
"Don't know. Me, I could take down two of them if I caught them off
guard. But five, even with two people making a suprise attack, is just
too many guns of a risk. Not good odds."
"I assume this means a delay in our trip?"
"Bingo."
"Great. How long do you think they'll hang around here? Waiting around
in a cave under threat of death isn't my idea of a good time."
"I don't know. There were only five, so it was probably just a scouting
party. That's how they work, they send a scouting party ahead of the
main group when they're ready to move into a new area for awhile. They
find a good place to stay, and then report back to the main group."
"If there's only five of them, we could just throw a rock, grab their
attention and then jump them. Even if they can shoot, it'll take them a
second or two to aim. All we have to do is keep moving. By the way, how
do you know how they work?"
"Um, it's mostly guess work but it usually seems right. But your plan
won't work, it takes just as long to kill somebody with a sword as it
does to aim. Plus, these guys are on horseback. They're too high up for
me to attack the way I like."
"So what's a horse?"
"It's this animal with four legs that you can ride really fast. If
you're sitting on one of their backs, then you're a good foot, half-
foot off the ground. It depends on the horse."
"That would be a problem for you," Hawks muttered, glancing down at his
spear. "Great, so we get some sleep in a cave then."
"That would be nice, but..."
"Oh for the love of, a but? I _hate_ buts! Fine, what is it?"
"If they're paying any atention at all, they've noticed our footprints
in the mud. They know somebody's been around here lately. And since I
have such nice looking boots, they've probably figured I have some good
stuff. You're just a bonus, though, with your shoes."
"I love it when I get such simple choices. We sit around here, wait for
them to hunt us down, and die, _or_ we attack them, take down one or
two, but ultimatly die."
"Got to love it."
"There has to be a way to get out of this alive."
"Says who?"
"My stubborn mind. I've just gotten the hang of living, I don't have
time to get the hang of being dead. Do these guys have any sort of
weakness we could exploit? Are they afraid of fire or something?"
"We could try to spook the horses - they'd get thrown off and we could
attack. But, with five of them, it's likely that at least two of them
will get their berrings back before they're dead and shoot us."
"Okay, so we just have to be sneaky. We don't have to attack right away
- we could whitle down their numbers. Spook one horse, then I fire a
few rounds at whoever fell off. If they're just lying there, I'm bound
to hit them eventually."
"How many bullets do you have?" Hawks pulled out his backpack and ran
through his inventory. His riffle was fully loaded, and there was about
35 rounds left.
"More than enough for these guys. I just need to get into a good
position."
"That would be a problem, how are you supposed to get into a good
position five times without being shot even once? No, I say we just
sneak out of here and stay low. We can't outrun them, but if we do it
right, they won't notice us run."
"I don't like doing nothing and putting it all on luck. Maybe there's
something in here we can use." Hawks got up and silently crept further
back into the cave. There wasn't much there, but every once and a while
he got lucky. So, he kept going. Jake, meanwhile, covered his face in
dirt and layed low to the ground. He crawled out, making a breif note
of what was out there. Two of the five or so raiders were there, still
mounted on their horses. They were right outside the cave, so they must
have traced their footprints back to it. The other three were out of
his line of sight, but he could definatly hear more than two voices.
And he could definatly hear more hoofbeats aproaching. He crawled back
into the cave.
"Jake," Hawks whispered as he came back in. "Come here." Jake picked up
his sword and followed the voice. Hawks was about ten feet back into
the cave, his back up against a wall.
"What is it?"
"We got lucky - there's a whole family of rats back there."
"Good, we don't have to worry about starving. But how are we supposed
to cook them without any fire? If we make one..."
"That's not what I ment. We can scare them, get them to run out of the
cave. There's about twenty, maybe thirty mole rats in there."
"We probably could run out with those if we stayed low. But if the rats
start attacking us, we won't be able to hold off that many."
"That's why we have to scare them good, and they can't know _we_ scared
them. I could throw a torch back there, and they'd run from it. They
wouldn't stop to attack, they'd just run. Can you make a fire?"
"Like I said, it'll give us away."
"That's why we're going to have to throw it immediatly. When those
raiders see that many rats running, they're going to be scared. All we
have to do is attack them, we'll catch them off guard. We might have a
chance."
"Well, we can't just run away, they're outside of the cave. I don't see
any other options right now. Can you attack fast enough to avoid being
shot?"
"Definatly."
"Okay. Now, find me some stuff to make a fire with." Hawks blinked for
a few seconds.
"Ah, damnit!"
"Yeah, a minor detail, but an important one." The chosen one quickly
turned back to his backpack and ran through it. He pulled out two
flares.
"Think these'll do?"
"If they don't, we'll find out. I hope this works. Let me do the
throwing, though - I have a better arm for this than you." Hawks
motioned for Jake to go further back into the cave. About twenty feet
back, there was a large family of mole rats. Most of them were
sleeping, so they didn't think about attacking. Hawks lit the flares
and handed them to Jake. He threw them to the rear of the pack. Just as
Hawks predicted, the awake mole rats scurried out. They also
accidentally woke the sleeping ones, who ran as soon as they saw the
unusual light. Jake and Hawks quickly pushed their backs up against the
wall, as the pack charged past them.
Outside the cave, the five Shadow Raiders saw the stampede of rats
aproaching, and it scared the hell out of them. "They're attacking,
fall back!" one yelled, aparently the leader of the group. The others
fired off a few shots, taking down some of the forward moles out of
instinct. The pack realized that they were under attack, and responded
in kind. The two forward raiders were quickly overwhelmed. The rear
three raiders turned and ran.
At this point, Hawks and Jake ran out of the cave, weapons drawn. They
hadn't found an opening to sneak into the pack, so they had to run out
after they were gone. But they didn't expect the raiders to be
attacking the mole rats, let alone for the rats to be attacking the
raiders.
"That...went very well," Hawks muttered, suprised that it had turned
out this way.
"Yeah. Of course, now the rats are going to attack _us_, you realize."
Hawks turned to face Jake.
"Then we should start running. Which way is Crater Town?"
"That way," Jake pointed, twoards their left. "Let's get going." The
two ran off, not anxious to attract atention from the rats. As they
ran, one raider managed to catch a glance of them before turning around
and charging off. He was the only one left, and the rats were
aproaching fast. They had overwhelmed the others, all of who were in
front of him. He had to get away from the rats right away, and didn't
have any time to go chasing off after the two. But he remembered their
faces. The main group - once he rendezvoused with them, they'd see to
it that those two payed for the death of four raiders and horses with
their lives. He rode off, far away from the rats, back to the main
group of the Shadow Raiders.
"See what happens when you think positively?" Jake asked, running
quickly. They had already put a quarter of a mile between the rats and
themselves.
"Positive, nothing. That was pure dumb luck."
"Well then keep that stuff coming, we could use some around here." They
ran for almost half a mile before stopping. "We lost them. I doubt
they'll come this way, they got lots of good meat already."
"Do horses taste good?"
"I was thinking more about the humans, but they might eat the horses
too. Waste of some good horses, though."
"Yeah." The two finished catching their breaths and then started back
up on their journey to Crater Town.
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By now, Hawks had come to belive Jake's story, about how the sun never
rose in the Shadowlands. It had been a day since he and Jake set out
twoards Crater Town, and the light had never changed from twilight. But
what was even odder was that, even at midnight, the light never got any
brighter _or_ darker than twilight. Arroyo came back to his thoughts,
even though he knew there was nothing he could do for his villiage
until he got out of this place. There had to be a way past those laser
turrets - he hadn't seen them yet, but he decided to take Jake's word
that they existed - but he didn't know where. He tried to take his mind
off of Arroyo by starting a conversation with Jake.
"Do you have any shrubs around here?" Hawks asked Jake, who was about
four feet ahead of him. "Maybe a blade of half-dead grass?"
"What do you have against rocks and dirt?"
"Makes for dull scenery. And your skyline sucks too."
"When we get to Crater Town, you should hook up with this bartender I
know. With your conversational skills and his prices, you'll both be
rich in no time." Their journey had been limited to this sort of event
thus far - they hadn't run into any other locals, critter or human.
They were roughly 40 miles away from Crater Town, another two day's
trip at their current rate.
"Are you saying I'm gloomy? That I'm not pleasent?"
"I'm saying I need a drink. Alcohol or water, it doesn't matter. Is
there any left?" Hawks took out the water flask the two had been
sharing.
"It's three fourths empty."
"If you were a less-gloomy person, you'd have said it was one fourth
full," Jake said, chuckling. "Pass it over." Hawks tossed the flask up
to Jake, who finished off the remaining water in one drink.
"Can I ask you a question? What do you normally do to keep yourself
occupied when you're traveling?"
"Usually, I hum, but you kept saying I was ruining your ear drums. Yep,
you're definatly _not_ a pleasent person."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Well what do you do? Have gloomy conversations with shrubs and grass?"
"I usually look at birds. They're fun to watch, not that you'd know
that. I can barely see the sky here, and I doubt you have any birds
either."
"Not the real type, and definatly not the fake type outside of the
Archives. There's this one old-timer there, Saul, who has a robo-bird
he built."
"What type?"
"A bird's a bird."
"Yeah, to _you_ maybe. You've only seen one bird in your life, and that
one wasn't even real."
"He sure _acts_ like he's real. Ate a bag of jerky I had like he was
real."
"But I know birds. There's about eight or so types that're definatly
not just oversized bugs where I come from."
"Maybe there would be more if you'd stop having such gloomy
conversations with them," Jake laughed.
"I don't talk to birds, they're too interested in eating me to have a
conversation. I just watch them. That's how I got my name, from
watching birds when I was little."
"Your parents must not have had much imagination."
"Maybe. How far away are we, anyways?"
"Um..." Jake looked down at his PipBoy. "Well, unless we run for the
rest of the day, we're not getting there for a while. About 37, 38
miles to go still."
"Right, thanks. Now what was that you were saying about my parents?"
Their trip was similar to that for the next 12 miles. Then, they
stopped at a small river. The GECKs used by both Vaults, acording to
Jake, had made the soil fertile and water plentiful. While fertile soil
just ment more potatoes and little else, the water was a very important
part of wasteland survival. Also, some bodies of water that had existed
before the war still remained, thanks to a lack of increase in the
temperature.
"This water tastes like piss," Hawks muttered.
"That's because there's more piss in the water than there is water,"
Jake explained, spitting out the handsfull he had taken from the river.
"Oh great. Can't those rats just do it in on the ground? So where's it
fresh, further up-stream?"
"It's not rat piss."
"I forgot, you're a master at determining what different types of
animal pisses taste like."
"Actually, I sort of am. Not something I'm too proud off. But _this_,
this is definatly human piss. Some bastard's trying to poison whoever
drinks from here, probably." Jake got up from where he had knelt down
by the river and sniffed the air.
"Sounds like a lot of people I met in Vault City."
"Quiet," Jake said, unsheiving his sword. He continued to sniff the
air, picking out specific scents. "Horses," he whispered to Hawks, who
had taken out his spear. "Not the riders, they wouldn't be this far
south of Crater Town. Definatly a group smell."
"Who're the riders? And what's a horse?" Hawks' ears picked up a noise
- though he didn't know what it was, it was the sound of horses
running.
"I didn't think they were in this area," Jake muttered. He turned to
Hawks. "We can't beat the raiders. We have to get hidden, _now_." He
dashed off twoards a nearby boulder, with Hawks only a few feet
behind. The sound of hoofbeats grew even stronger as the horses
aproached them.
"Wait a minute, tell me who these riders are already!" Jake put his
hand over Hawks' mouth, quickly silencing him.
"Keep your voice down and do everything I tell you. Otherwise, we'll
die. You understand? I'll explain that stuff later." Hawks nodded and
Jake pulled back his hand. Jake scanned over the area quickly, looking
for shelter of some sort. He found it in the form of a cave in the side
of a mountain. He didn't know how deep it was, but it was enough for a
temporary hiding spot. "Follow me, and keep low," he said, pointing to
the cave.
The hoofbeats came to a stop, very nearby, almost on the exact oposite
side of the bolder. Jake and Hawks could both hear some indistinct
dialouge going back and forth between about five people. Jake, without
a word and almost without a sound, took off for the cave. Hawks ran off
as well less than a second later. If the horseriders on the other side
of the boulder heard them, they didn't show it. Both of them ran
quickly, staying low to the ground and avoiding kicking up any rocks to
give them away. They made it to the indent in the hill without giving
themselves away.
"Why are we in here?" Hawks asked, quietly.
"To keep hidden. They're likely to kill us if they found us."
"Friends of yours?"
"Not really, they do that to eveyrone they meet." Jake stuck his head
out of the cave and scanned for any figures. There weren't any. "Nice
job with the running back there - I thought for sure you'd botch it
up."
"You've never seen a person run around packs of golden geckos then. You
don't mess up and live in that situation." Hawks put down his spear and
sat down on the ground, keeping as close to the back wall as he could.
"So who are they?"
"They're called the Shadow Raiders. You can guess their profession.
They're not like regular raiders, though - they keep moving from one
area to another. Plus, they can ride horses, something most local
raiders don't have the patientce to learn how to do."
"You made me do all this worrying over some _radiers_?"
"Like I said, they're not normal raiders. They're not even normal human
beings. Somehow, and don't ask me how because I don't know, they can
shoot straight. If they aimed their riffles at you from any respecatble
distance, nine out of ten times they'd hit you."
"Damn. Not much you can do against 'em with a sword I guess."
"Don't know. Me, I could take down two of them if I caught them off
guard. But five, even with two people making a suprise attack, is just
too many guns of a risk. Not good odds."
"I assume this means a delay in our trip?"
"Bingo."
"Great. How long do you think they'll hang around here? Waiting around
in a cave under threat of death isn't my idea of a good time."
"I don't know. There were only five, so it was probably just a scouting
party. That's how they work, they send a scouting party ahead of the
main group when they're ready to move into a new area for awhile. They
find a good place to stay, and then report back to the main group."
"If there's only five of them, we could just throw a rock, grab their
attention and then jump them. Even if they can shoot, it'll take them a
second or two to aim. All we have to do is keep moving. By the way, how
do you know how they work?"
"Um, it's mostly guess work but it usually seems right. But your plan
won't work, it takes just as long to kill somebody with a sword as it
does to aim. Plus, these guys are on horseback. They're too high up for
me to attack the way I like."
"So what's a horse?"
"It's this animal with four legs that you can ride really fast. If
you're sitting on one of their backs, then you're a good foot, half-
foot off the ground. It depends on the horse."
"That would be a problem for you," Hawks muttered, glancing down at his
spear. "Great, so we get some sleep in a cave then."
"That would be nice, but..."
"Oh for the love of, a but? I _hate_ buts! Fine, what is it?"
"If they're paying any atention at all, they've noticed our footprints
in the mud. They know somebody's been around here lately. And since I
have such nice looking boots, they've probably figured I have some good
stuff. You're just a bonus, though, with your shoes."
"I love it when I get such simple choices. We sit around here, wait for
them to hunt us down, and die, _or_ we attack them, take down one or
two, but ultimatly die."
"Got to love it."
"There has to be a way to get out of this alive."
"Says who?"
"My stubborn mind. I've just gotten the hang of living, I don't have
time to get the hang of being dead. Do these guys have any sort of
weakness we could exploit? Are they afraid of fire or something?"
"We could try to spook the horses - they'd get thrown off and we could
attack. But, with five of them, it's likely that at least two of them
will get their berrings back before they're dead and shoot us."
"Okay, so we just have to be sneaky. We don't have to attack right away
- we could whitle down their numbers. Spook one horse, then I fire a
few rounds at whoever fell off. If they're just lying there, I'm bound
to hit them eventually."
"How many bullets do you have?" Hawks pulled out his backpack and ran
through his inventory. His riffle was fully loaded, and there was about
35 rounds left.
"More than enough for these guys. I just need to get into a good
position."
"That would be a problem, how are you supposed to get into a good
position five times without being shot even once? No, I say we just
sneak out of here and stay low. We can't outrun them, but if we do it
right, they won't notice us run."
"I don't like doing nothing and putting it all on luck. Maybe there's
something in here we can use." Hawks got up and silently crept further
back into the cave. There wasn't much there, but every once and a while
he got lucky. So, he kept going. Jake, meanwhile, covered his face in
dirt and layed low to the ground. He crawled out, making a breif note
of what was out there. Two of the five or so raiders were there, still
mounted on their horses. They were right outside the cave, so they must
have traced their footprints back to it. The other three were out of
his line of sight, but he could definatly hear more than two voices.
And he could definatly hear more hoofbeats aproaching. He crawled back
into the cave.
"Jake," Hawks whispered as he came back in. "Come here." Jake picked up
his sword and followed the voice. Hawks was about ten feet back into
the cave, his back up against a wall.
"What is it?"
"We got lucky - there's a whole family of rats back there."
"Good, we don't have to worry about starving. But how are we supposed
to cook them without any fire? If we make one..."
"That's not what I ment. We can scare them, get them to run out of the
cave. There's about twenty, maybe thirty mole rats in there."
"We probably could run out with those if we stayed low. But if the rats
start attacking us, we won't be able to hold off that many."
"That's why we have to scare them good, and they can't know _we_ scared
them. I could throw a torch back there, and they'd run from it. They
wouldn't stop to attack, they'd just run. Can you make a fire?"
"Like I said, it'll give us away."
"That's why we're going to have to throw it immediatly. When those
raiders see that many rats running, they're going to be scared. All we
have to do is attack them, we'll catch them off guard. We might have a
chance."
"Well, we can't just run away, they're outside of the cave. I don't see
any other options right now. Can you attack fast enough to avoid being
shot?"
"Definatly."
"Okay. Now, find me some stuff to make a fire with." Hawks blinked for
a few seconds.
"Ah, damnit!"
"Yeah, a minor detail, but an important one." The chosen one quickly
turned back to his backpack and ran through it. He pulled out two
flares.
"Think these'll do?"
"If they don't, we'll find out. I hope this works. Let me do the
throwing, though - I have a better arm for this than you." Hawks
motioned for Jake to go further back into the cave. About twenty feet
back, there was a large family of mole rats. Most of them were
sleeping, so they didn't think about attacking. Hawks lit the flares
and handed them to Jake. He threw them to the rear of the pack. Just as
Hawks predicted, the awake mole rats scurried out. They also
accidentally woke the sleeping ones, who ran as soon as they saw the
unusual light. Jake and Hawks quickly pushed their backs up against the
wall, as the pack charged past them.
Outside the cave, the five Shadow Raiders saw the stampede of rats
aproaching, and it scared the hell out of them. "They're attacking,
fall back!" one yelled, aparently the leader of the group. The others
fired off a few shots, taking down some of the forward moles out of
instinct. The pack realized that they were under attack, and responded
in kind. The two forward raiders were quickly overwhelmed. The rear
three raiders turned and ran.
At this point, Hawks and Jake ran out of the cave, weapons drawn. They
hadn't found an opening to sneak into the pack, so they had to run out
after they were gone. But they didn't expect the raiders to be
attacking the mole rats, let alone for the rats to be attacking the
raiders.
"That...went very well," Hawks muttered, suprised that it had turned
out this way.
"Yeah. Of course, now the rats are going to attack _us_, you realize."
Hawks turned to face Jake.
"Then we should start running. Which way is Crater Town?"
"That way," Jake pointed, twoards their left. "Let's get going." The
two ran off, not anxious to attract atention from the rats. As they
ran, one raider managed to catch a glance of them before turning around
and charging off. He was the only one left, and the rats were
aproaching fast. They had overwhelmed the others, all of who were in
front of him. He had to get away from the rats right away, and didn't
have any time to go chasing off after the two. But he remembered their
faces. The main group - once he rendezvoused with them, they'd see to
it that those two payed for the death of four raiders and horses with
their lives. He rode off, far away from the rats, back to the main
group of the Shadow Raiders.
"See what happens when you think positively?" Jake asked, running
quickly. They had already put a quarter of a mile between the rats and
themselves.
"Positive, nothing. That was pure dumb luck."
"Well then keep that stuff coming, we could use some around here." They
ran for almost half a mile before stopping. "We lost them. I doubt
they'll come this way, they got lots of good meat already."
"Do horses taste good?"
"I was thinking more about the humans, but they might eat the horses
too. Waste of some good horses, though."
"Yeah." The two finished catching their breaths and then started back
up on their journey to Crater Town.
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