Chapter 5: The Long Machete of the Law

I cleaned up and tossed the body outside. If I managed to free the people that were taken, a man with his head cut in half wouldn’t be the first thing they’d want to see on walking in the door. I looted the bodies of both him and the shooter and came away with a handful of 9mm rounds and a dozen .308s. I was also happy to find that the rooftop shooter and I shared a boot size and traded mine out for his.

The fight and interrogation had netted me another rank in long gun, melee weapons, and investigation, but I hadn’t received any PP for it. I assumed I wouldn’t receive any PP for the job objectives until I’d made it permanent.

Whatever the case, I had more walking to do. I made my way in the direction of where the raider I’d interrogated had said his group's camp was. I’d never been to Porto, or heard about it from another courier. I stayed just off the main roads and paths. If they’d had the idea to leave some people in the last settlement as an ambush, then they may also have patrols set up. I was disappointed that I didn’t run into any by the time Porto came into view. I’d hoped I’d be able to pick some of them off away from the main group.

It was night, and the camp was lit by electric lamps. Porto generally looked a lot like the other towns I’d seen. It was a broken mess of buildings half repaired for people to live in and clinging to ideas about what the world should be. The light of the lamps cast those buildings in deep shadows that were broken up by the people walking across the light.

My first goal became clear, turning off the lights. I began creeping closer to the settlement looking for an area where I could find a decent vantage on the entire place. Unfortunately the tallest thing to climb was a building almost halfway into the town that looked occupied based on the light I could see inside.

I crept along the edge of the camp. There were three men standing guard at various points and doing a disorganized kind of patrolling. I took off my pack and buried it, then slung the strange gun I’d gotten off the marshall over my shoulder and checked my pistol. I’d rely on the machete to keep quiet as long as I could and switch to my guns if things got dicey, which I knew they would. Then I hid my rifle in a bush, loaded with the safety off. I’d use that spot as a fallback location.

Once I was done I moved on the man patrolling at the far right. I crept along the woods as long as possible, and activated my new ability. He didn’t seem to notice, but after I used it he became highlighted in my vision. I was able to see him even when there were walls between us. I observed for a few more moments and waited for him to turn his back, when he did I ran as fast as I could toward him.

He must’ve heard me. He turned around and went to whip his gun around, but his movements were sluggish, and I could see some confusion on his face.

His hesitation was all I needed to slam my machete into his chest. His eyes widened, and he gasped, struggling to scream, but only letting out what little air remained in his lungs. I grabbed his body before it fell and moved it behind the remains of a small building. After that I went to work on the next two.

The middle guard had actually fallen asleep by the time I reached him. I sheathed my machete and drew a small knife I kept at my waist. I didn’t want to dull the blade on the machete more than I needed to. I dragged it across his throat quickly, then hid his body as well. The third one was the most alert. I climbed a building that sat behind him, and waited for him to cross under me. Once he did I leapt down, and drove my machete into his back as I landed.

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I let out a sigh. Good luck so far, three of roughly thirty down. I was already a tenth of the way done.

After hiding the final body I made my way to one of the standing halogen lamps. The cord extended deeper into the camp toward another of the lamps. From where I was standing I couldn’t tell exactly where it went, but the arrangement of the wires indicated that whatever was powering them was in the middle-west part of the town.

I climbed back up the building I’d leapt from to get a better vantage. It wasn’t as helpful as the tall one would’ve been, but it did get me my first decent view of the interior portion of Porto. It was about what I expected from a raider town. Men with guns drinking hooch, dragging men and women that I guessed had been taken from the nearby settlements into darkened buildings, and scattered fights. Blitz and redeye were being used freely and dangerously, it looked like an OD had already saved me the trouble of killing one of them. The only sign that there was organization of any kind was that one of the men was sitting on the top floor of a building that had lost its upper half. He was bent over some powdered redeye, snorting it with vigor, while two bored looking women sat at his feet. Across his back was what I assumed was one of the burning weapons. It had a round barrel that ended in a point, almost like a pencil. Unlike any other guns I’d seen, it shone brightly as if brand new, and I couldn't tell how it took ammunition.

I climbed back down with a much better mental map than I’d had before. I started sneaking as carefully as I could along the edge of buildings, rubble, or whatever other cover I could find. The area was well lit, but it seemed like the only men worried about an attack had been the ones they’d placed on watch. I ducked into a building just as one of the raiders passed by. I kept my breathing steady, I was about halfway to where all the wires seemed to be leading.

I heard movement and moved my eyes from the door. There were three people, two young women and a man. They looked up at me with terrified eyes, I could see a number of fresh bruises on them, and they were trembling. I held up a finger to my mouth, realizing that the hand was covered in blood as I did so. They didn’t respond, but they didn’t make any noise either, and that’s all I needed from them. After the space was clear I began moving back toward where the wires led. I got into the building without being detected and walked deeper inside. The building was nondescript, but there were a number of muddy footprints that indicated people were in and out of the room frequently.

I heard a noise, and flattened myself against the wall. Unlike the outside, the building itself wasn’t well lit and I hoped it would help me blend in to the wall. A man entered the hallway, his eyes blurry from drink, and walked past me. I slashed my machete across his neck, decapitating him. I used more strength than I’d meant to, but after seeing the captives the raiders had taken up close, I no longer had any restraint. I tossed the body and head into an empty room off the hallway and followed the cables back. They led me into a room in the back, in the center of which was a massive hatch that had been flung open, with stairs that led underground.

I warily made my way down, clearing rooms, but finding them all empty. The entire place was strange. The walls were cold metal, and cleaner than anything I’d ever seen before even with the muddy bootprints that led deeper into it. There were pictures on walls and laid on tables that were drawn on blue gridded paper in shapes I didn’t recognize. Computers with still intact monitors lined the walls in some rooms and filled the bunker with a kind of low hum. I was tempted to see what I could gain from booting one up. I’d managed to scrape together a working one at one point using pieces, and guidebooks I’d looted or purchased from merchants, so I knew how they worked, but now wasn’t the time.

I followed the wires further down into what was turning out to be a pretty big facility. It seemed stupid to me that the raiders didn’t simply live in these tunnels, but that wasn’t my problem. Eventually I made it to the source of the cords. There was what appeared to be some kind of generator, and a series of plugs had been crudely assembled in such a way that I wouldn’t be surprised if wiring them up had killed a few would be electricians as they’d worked on it. I hesitated. I’d have to move quickly after I shut it down, but shutting it down from within and trapping myself inside the bunker was a distinctly bad idea. I hadn’t expected the power source to be so distant from the surface. I made my way back out and grabbed a bundle of the wires arraying them next to each other. I slipped a leather glove onto my hand and held the handle of the machete tightly, triple checking that it had a wooden handle despite having used it for more than a year. I raised it and struck downward hard. There was a flash of sparks, and the lights died.

There were a few choice exclamations and some screaming. I calmly walked into the shadows of a nearby building and squatted down. It was time to take advantage of my natural night vision. I located each of the raiders and activated my arrest ability. By the time I was done my vision was filled with 23 highlighted raiders panicking, sobering up, and even finding one of the bodies of the men that I’d killed on the outskirts of the town. They were off balance, surprised, and scared. It was time to go to work.

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