Olivia loved being outdoors and
going out for a hunt. The spring was almost over she could feel the warmth and
knew that the oppressive summer was only a few weeks away. Now was one of her
final chances to get herself a test out one of her husband’s latest creations
and see if it lived up to the hype. Her husband had promised her that the gun
was his finest weapon to date and she’d done some target shooting and been
happy so far, but hunting live game was the true test.
The
wind picked up and she pushed away her red hair from her eyes. She thought
about hard dark it had become in her old age. When she was young she’d had
strawberry red hair and her father always called her “My firecracker.” She
loved that saying, now her hair was only a few shades away from brown. Her
fingers picked at the lines in her cheeks and blemishes on her forehead and she
sighed as she thought about the afflictions of old age and that beauty never
lasts.
She
smiled as she thought about her eyes, they hadn’t failed her yet. Her jade
green eyes still could see just as good as they ever had, and the scope on her
rifle only helped matters out. She reassured herself that if she wasn’t the
prettiest girl at the ball she was at least the most deadly of them. The moose
that had stumbled into her line of sight was to find that out the hard way.
While
her husband did what he could to keep her away from the new gun she had made
her conditions known. The scope was a simple cross hair, not a series of
circles or lines or other such nonsense all she ever wanted was to put the
target in the center of those two lines and pull the trigger. She felt the
calluses on her fingers as they ran over the bolt. The bolt had been smoother
than usual for Randy’s creations as he’d always ignored her about the need for
an easy re-load she hated having to fight with the belt to get the next bullet
into the chamber. This gun was the first he’d ever made that she didn’t have
that complaint.
As she
lined up the shot the moose turned and was now looking right at her. She took
one final deep breath and steadied herself as she aimed right at the beast’s
head. Her finger slowly pulling on the trigger until finally the shot happened.
The moose crumpled to the ground and lay motionless. Olivia gave a grim smile
as she walked over to the creature’s body.
She
pulled out her gutting knife and made a quick draw across the moose’s throat.
Blood poured from the moose’s throat and she was thankful the beast’s heart was
still beating even with the brain having been destroyed. Her next cut removed
the genitals of the moose to prevent their chemicals from ruining the meat.
After these surgical cuts she got to slicing open the belly of the moose. Slowly
she pushed the knife through the flesh of the beast until finally she’s cut
from end to end. Once that was done she held her breath as usually the insides
of such animals were not the nicest smelling of things. She reached into the
animal’s body and dug out its entrails. She walked twenty paces before throwing
the guts of the animal on the ground. As she walked back to the carcass she
cleaned her knife on her dark green dress. The dress had many dark stains from
blood all over it and she laughed as she thought about how she was wearing the
color of the Believers and how their religion was so bloody and horrible that
her dress seemed perfectly suited for them.
As she
started stripping the moose for food she couldn’t help but think about what she
was really doing. This was all practice for the war. One day she’d have to take
her husband’s gun and go off and murder people with it to prove that they were
right. The task would not fall to her two daughters, both mothers themselves
and neither had fired a gun since childhood. Her husband was nearly sixty, with
bad knees and a bad back he couldn’t walk a mile without being in agony, much
less follow an army and spend his days laying on his stomach for hours waiting
for a target.
She
wondered if she could really do it, if she could really shoot somebody and kill
them. Slicing off a section of meat from the moose’s side it depressed her to
think about what a human was. That we are all just a pile of meat and guts just
like the countless animals she’d shot. Yet killing a human would be so
different. She wondered if it really should be so different.
Olivia
kneeled down and stared into the glassy lifeless eyes of the moose. “So buddy,
you think I can do it? Can I put a bullet in these Believers? I don’t see why
not. I killed you and you were not threatening me. I mean I did it just because
I’m a cheap old lady looking to save a few bucks on meat, don’t have to go to
the market for a week now.”
She
quit talking and went about the work of removing as much meat as she could from
that side of the moose. When she flipped the animal over she decided to chat
some more with it. “You know they demand you convert when you stumble into
their lands. Sailors get swept onto their shores and are forced to swear
loyalty to their God or they are killed. They have to pass tests they have to
give up their wives since marriage doesn’t exist in their lands. It’s horrid
they are a bunch of monsters. Yet I wonder if I can do it. If I can pull the
trigger and kill a person.”
“It’s
all for pride. Me and my husband’s stupid pride. I could lie to you and tell
you I’m doing it to fight the good fight that I’m a proud follower of the
Suttons and all that bullshit but it’s not true. Randy knew the war would be
coming so he set about to make the best gun he could. He wanted to win the war
with his mind and be remembered as the genius who built the gun that defeated
the Believers. Problem is he won’t stop making them with all the finest parts
and the care some of them need is truly pathetic. Just a little sand in ‘em and
they have to be taken apart to the bare bones and cleaned out. The Senate won’t
buy the things, cost too much. He tries to kiss the king’s ass but that goes
nowhere so we’re stuck selling these guns to a buncha rich fucks who like to
show ‘em off. They are fucking status symbols, like a nice watch or a pure
breed horse.”
She swung the rifle around and
showed the butt of the gun to the dead moose. “See the word Brewer there? That’s
all that matters to these high society assholes. Gotta own a Brewer rifle,
finest rifle in all the Kingdom. Oh we’ve made more money than we know what to
do with, but it means nothing to my husband and I. I’ve never cared for
anything fancy and he just wants weapons that kill people. We’re a couple of
insufferable cunts that way. At least my daughters spend my money and have good
lives.” Olivia sighed and cut more meat
out of the moose.
“It’s coming soon. I know it,
Midpoint’s happened, they say a good man named Pete from the Kingdom met a
smart man named Jacob from Utopia and the two of them are running a tight ship
over there. It won’t last. I told you about the money those Brewer rifles make
us. Oh mister moose, you have no idea what real money is. It eats Randy up at
night looking at the budgets for the army. The contracts handed out for cheap
rifles that can be mass produced and replaced. He screams at me about the
millions of crownsmarks that go to these hacks, these talentless morons who
make shitty, third rate guns that the Senate can’t get enough of.”
As she
stuffed the moose meat into the satchel she’d brought with her she finished her
conversation. “And that’s just the guns. Never mind the uniforms, the grenades,
the cannons, the horses, payment for the army itself. The Believers are doing
it all the same as we are, so much money being spent preparing for a war, so
many decades of expecting a war. No matter how noble or just two men are they
can’t stop what’s coming. They might as well stand under a waterfall and try to
spit it all back up. It’s going to happen. The only question for me is, when
that first Believer ends up in my crosshairs, am I going to be able to pull the
trigger? This war is going to make a
killer out of thousands and thousands of men. Will it make a killer out of me?
Part of me wishes it wouldn’t, but another part of me knows it will.” Olivia
said as she left the body of the moose and walked back into the woods.
