Solace & Taproots

1.1 - Revised

Rebecca "Bex" Clinton heard the radio in her right ear click once, twice, and twice more, drawing her out of her afternoon heat induced reverie. She shifted her weight to swing her so useful, and oh so hated rifle to bear on the eastern approach to the intersection below. She'd gotten better, much smoother — the crosshairs in her scope bobbed less than a car length as it panned. She used to have to push up from prone, scooting laterally on her elbows and knees, and taking her eye away from the magnified optic it was her job to peer through, and if necessary, either save or end lives with.

Sometimes that distinction blurred as much as the heat waves over the pavement below; it depended on what the people at the business end did... or looked like they were about to do.

One click for "north or east", which meant she and her companion were the overwatch team that had better be awake when the signal came. Twice more for "east". The final pair of clicks meant two individuals making their way through the four-lane street cluttered with vehicles below. She lined up her view of the right area and chewed on her lip tensely. Someone still needs to figure out what to do about the goddamned FedEx truck three and a half blocks out, it blocks way too many sight lines...

Until that happened, she just had to wait. The impetus of the spotter team's warning came slowly, but oddly uncautiously, into view from behind the truck she'd been casting frustrated thoughts at. They didn't seem to be going through the scattered trash and discarded luggage, or looking in abandoned vehicles, so they weren't scavenging. Not looking around for signs of trouble either, so they were either clueless or a diversion.

Bex and her teammate Rhonda had been doing this together long enough to establish that subconscious hive mind, or mind meld, or whatever people wanted to call it that made a good team great, so she expected the quiet whisper — "Don't see anyone else yet."

The you keep watching those two was implied as she heard the soft rustling of her mentor's movement, predictably sweeping the surrounding rooftops, alleyways, and shadows with a pair of binoculars. On a fully trained team, Ronnie had taught Bex that a sniper's partner would be relaying ranges, winds, and other minutiae she only vaguely understood so far. Expected bullet drop and aim offset something something — the spotter would usually have a wider field of view, and if they were crunching all the numbers, that let the shooter focus on their scope and the target. Bex wouldn't know what to do with all of that information yet anyway, but she'd been staring down the nearby streets over the last several weeks enough to know how much to compensate her aim for each block's worth of distance and still get fairly precise hits with the oddball rifle's smaller, less powerful rounds.

Shortly after they started working together, "Ronnie" had explained to her that quirky bolt-action rifle she'd come to own under tragically bloody circumstances might not have the same knockdown power as a "real" sniper or hunting rifle, but that it was a heck of a lot easier to find ammunition for. Leadership considered it a valuable addition to the settlement's armory, and her apparent knack for it, developed the hard way, made her the obvious choice to wield it in their eyes. That was theoretically great, but really, it just meant that she still couldn't be rid of the goddamned thing.

Every day, she struggled to keep the relevant feelings stored away in the mental equivalent of a container wearing a "Danger, Hazardous Waste" label. She couldn't really get rid of them, and sure as hell didn't want to be up close... certainly not right now when she had something pressing to worry about.

One of the two strangers moseying into their neighborhood was pushing a shopping cart, so checking it for nasty surprises was her first priority. No tarp or blanket, thankfully. That made it much easier to rule out propane tanks, the shoulder stock of a large gun — most "big" threats. Worst case they might have a grenade or two in the fairly authentic looking medley of blankets, food & water, and one of those consumer first aid kits that probably came out of the trunk of someone's car.

Mr. or Mrs. Cart Driver had both hands on the push bar, and was leaning into the weight pretty hard. Bex figured if things got messy, they'd take a moment to move their hands from the cart to... whatever they'd reach for. That gave her time to study the other stranger about fifteen feet ahead. He was wearing a grubby field jacket that had seen better days and carrying a small non-military-looking sport rifle, but was keeping the muzzle low. It didn't have a sling, so she cut him a little mental slack for having it in his hands. But, if she saw the barrel come up, well. That would be that. He'd feel her shot a split second before he heard it.

Fortunately, the distant figures remained docile as they approached the guards posted at the checkpoint. Today it was skinny kid who looked barely old enough to shave (former National Guard, if she remembered correctly) and the doughy ex-cop whose cushy pension had been so rudely interrupted by the apocalypse. Just like the guns you made your snipers use — and in her case, the civilian twenty-somethings you put behind them — you couldn't be too picky about who you put on guard duty for your little pocket of humanity these days. Still, it probably made the poor saps feel better to have Bex, Rhonda, and the belt-fed monstrosity that Rhonda crouched behind watching over them from a shadowy corner office eight floors up.

World's most half-assed guardian angels? Well, maybe not these days, if you grade on the curve...

The hot, dirty, tired guardian angels relaxed and eased the grips on their flaming swords as the ex-cop ejected the magazine from the stranger's popgun —probably a .22 from how small it looked in Officer McDonut's hands — and cycled the bolt to remove any round in the chamber. He returned it to the other man, and two cursory frisks and one warrantless shopping cart search later, Officer McD turned to usher the newcomers into the visible portion of their little encampment — something resembling a kid's cobbled-together play fort writ large in scrap lumber and mismatched tarps on a four-lane bridge crossing a larger thoroughfare that dipped below street level for six blocks. Looked like they'd be having guests, or maybe even new residents... things were starting to get a bit tight in the "residential" areas, though.

That was the excitement for the day, the rest of the afternoon was uneventful, lingering in heat and mundanity. While the Darwinian portions of their brain watched for movement and unfamiliar shapes, the higher functioning parts of her mind inevitably busied themselves with idle thoughts in their efforts to keep her awake. She truly tried to avoid dwelling on painful things, but wondering what road had brought the pair below to the settlement made her mentally dust off and play back her own meandering path to where she was today.

Rhonda had taken great effort to protect her hearing over the course of her long military career — and it was still keen enough she heard Bex's first unconscious sigh. It was followed several minutes later by the inevitable quiet clicks of her idly toying with the mismatched gold St. Christopher's medallion on the dull silver, starkly utilitarian dog tag(-less) chain around her neck. Ronnie wasn't worried, Bex still flicked her gaze across the urban landscape while she wandered off into introspection, and there were plenty of others keeping watch out there too. Rhonda knew the atypical markswoman always came back to the present swiftly enough when it was time to "point and click", and left her friend and protégé to her thoughts.