Day 183 - Scavenger- Chapter 4 - (1579 words)

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SCAVENGER

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 4

Aaron ducked behind the air-conditioning vent and started panicking again, heart thumping and head spinning as he heard a creak of the door opening and footsteps on the rooftop. He clicked the radio to off just in case another message came across the band and kept his head down and his arms crossed in front of him waiting to be discovered. There was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide once they moved another ten feet onto the roof.

“Target on the move, west on seventh. Heading West on seventh, he's running. Repeat target vector west on seventh. Over.”

The sound of men running was loud on the rough surface of the buildings roof and just like that he was alone again. The relief was a like a cold shower turning off and the air warming his body again. He had been incredibly lucky in getting the phone into the truck, even luckier that whoever was tracking him called his dogs off at just the right moment.

Aaron stood up very slowly, peeking over the top of the unit carefully to see if everyone had actually left the roof and he was indeed alone. As soon as he was satisfied he stood all the way and started moving normally, but was quickly overcome by a wave of nausea as his body dealt with the enormous stress his mind was under all of a sudden.

His mother had been kidnapped, his life was threatened as well as hers. He could not go to the cops, and he could not get any help. He had seven tasks to complete and this was only the second, and he wasn't sure that he would live through any of them. He had managed to bluff his way through the first task, and he made it to the second without being arrested or seriously hurt. The second one was a monumental step up and he had been running for hours now and it was still another four hours before dawn and the next task. If the learning curve from one to two was this hard, how the hell could he manage the next five? How much would he have to sacrifice and how far would he have to go to win.

Winning?

This was a game, but not one that was much fun for the boy who had to play it, and right now he felt very much like a boy playing a man's game. What kind of sixteen year old had to fight this hard to save his mother from the clutches of a maniac who would send armed soldiers after him, knowing that they could track him?

Tracking him, tracking?

What kind of resources did the Huntmaster have at his fingertips? How many men had been chasing him and what would they do when they discovered that one of their own was dead? Were all bets off at that point? Would they come after him anyway, despite the 'rules' whatever they were? Or would he get some respect for taking one of them down, a trained solider taken out by an inexperienced sixteen year old boy.

Aaron switched the radio back on and listened for any future updates but he heard nothing. By now the soldier-types must have left the building, he looked over the edge of the roof and did not see them exiting onto the road. Then he heard the roar of an engine coming to life and from the same alley where the garbage truck had picked up the dumpster, a four wheel drive flicked on it's lights and drove calmly out and on to the street following the same route as the truck.

It would only be a few minutes before they reached the garbage truck and work out what he had done. They'd either stop the truck and look for him on it, find the phone or they would realise he was never there and ditch the phone tracking and come back to the building. He needed to move on and get out of the building quickly, the on across the alley was too far to cross easily, the one behind that was a floor below them could have worked but he wanted greater distance.

There was a ladder in the storage room above the lift area, just inside the roof and it looked long enough to reach the other building. He walked with gentle steps to the door and peered inside, there was no one there. The ladder was quite tall and covered in splotches of paint, it had been used for redecorating, he recognised the colour from the bar on the ground floor, the one that rose up to the mezzanine where he had hidden from the gunfire. They had not spotted him but the knew he was there, randomly firing shells towards him, shattering glass and furniture in an effort to smoke him out or get lucky with blind firing.

The ladder was about three inches too short to bridge the gap between the roofs, even at full extension and laid flat it would not quite get there. The weight of it burned his forearms as he took the full torque of the ladders length with the minimum grip he could afford without dropping it. Another trip to the roof storage and he made a loop of rope and secured it as best he could to the top rung of the ladder, making a similar loop on the bottom end. There were crenelations that ran the edge of the roof opposite, giving the faux brick exterior the look of a castle, despite it being a modern building.

The loop he could get around the jutting upwards square between the crenelations, and then he let the ladder fall down and the rope held the weight of the makeshift bridge. The bottom end was also tied to a loop of rope but he had no such easy connection on this side. He unlooped the rope and tied the loose end to a steam vent near the edge, it was never going to hold his weight, but it held the ladder for a short time while he went and got something that would.

An office chair with a four pronged wheel base became his grappling hook and he wedged it in the space between the guttering and the small wall that ran the edge of the roof. The rope looped through the arms of the chair and the ladder held flat. The weight of the ladder was now pressing downwards and the way the rope was looped meant that the more weight was put on the ladder, the firmer the chair would wedge in position.

He now had a stable bridge, but it would leave a trail on how he had escaped. Unless he left a false trail behind of course to throw them off the scent. The bridge in place he climbed over the edge and put his full weight slowly on the ladder bridge that swung a little as it was only affixed by a rope and no stabilising elements at all. He held on to the edge of his roof for a long time, pushing and jumping his weight gingerly to test it out, expecting the whole thing to snap at any moment.

Eventually he got on his hands and knees and crawled across, very slowly at first trying not to look down. When he was about halfway he got braver and sped up, crossing the gap and clambering across the new roof top and lying flat on it, thankful not to have a half dozen stories below him to fall down any longer.

He still needed to leave a false trail, and he had a plan that could lead them in a totally different direction. The knife came out and he cut the rope loops that secured the ladder, then pulled it towards him, raising the entire thing as he removed all signs that it had been affixed to anything before letting it swing back and hit the wall opposite. There was a window and it fell against it, but the ladder was straight and he panes inset, so they did not break. He was hoping that would have smashed open that window, making it look like he was trying to sneak back inside the building from the roof if they came back and searched the area where they last had that clue of the busted door.

But the window was intact so he went with plan B and pulled out the gun he had taken from the dead 'Jack' and aimed it at the window, looking away he pulled the trigger there was an almighty crack and the kick from the gun threw it from his grip and stung his wrist.

Of course he missed and needed to try again, this time steadying his aim and holding his arm and wrist like he had seen in movies and TV when people were at gun ranges, hoping those random scenes were at least based on some sense of reality. He took three more shots before hitting the window frame and exploding the glass inwards into the room and gutting the window entirely, pushing a section in with the shattered glass.

It may not stand up to scrutiny in the daylight but he just needed a couple more hours to get far away and find his way until dawn and the next task.