prey
This is a nice spot. Rotten old couch, smashed up window frame, good view of the streets below. Enough concrete left to hide my heat signature. Sure the room is full of rotting bodies, but for some reason that seems to make it less likely to be spotted. It's like the drones smell death, and know they have already covered this sector. I'm used to the flies, and the stench is mitigated by the respirator. I always wear it anyway, you never know when they will spam the gas. The rubber strap that holds it tight to my face has rubbed the back of my neck raw, but after a few years, you get used to that. The twin filter cartridges smell as bad as my teeth now, but that has become old hat too. In the early days it was easier to find replacements, there was always the corpse of a navy seal or some other elite force, lying dead in full NBC gear, plasma hole burned through their sternum. All that youth, skill training, equipment, gone to waste.
Still not sure how I made it through the early days, I'm sure dumb luck had a big part to play. Cowardice helped too, the early models made a hell of a racket, always made me run like hell. Those crazy young brave soldiers ran right at them, shooting heavy caliber guns, firing rockets, hurling heat grenades. they put a hurtin to a lot of combat units, wreaked havoc on the shock troops, but they always ended up the same way, hearts burned right out of their chests. I'd crawl back later and loot the stiffs of their gear, weapons and those shitty dried rations the always seemed to have. That stuff tasted like ass, but it was packed with nutrients, and while I always felt hungry, I had lots of energy and didn't get sick off any of it.
Once the bulk of the survivors went underground, things got tight. Yeah, I hid out in sewers, bathrooms, even treatment plants, anywhere with running water even if it meant sucking puddles under a cracked soil pipe. The rat population boomed for a bit, and I lived off them while the getting was good. Those were the worst days though, the times when I got sick, vomited for days, leaked from both ends. Bad water, living off vermin that ate corpses, that was when I thought I wasn't going to make it. Lost some teeth, my hair was falling out in clumps, my brain was fevered and I am sure my sanity took a big hit as well. I may have acquired a parasite or two, but I think they jumped ship when I nearly starved to death.
That was bad, the closest I came to giving in. But that's when skynet sent me a lifeline. The surface hunting HKs, the big tractors and the airborne units started reporting smaller kill ratios. They were still encountering resistance, but they weren't finding camps, caravans, pockets of warlords hoarding women, people gathering in groups trying to breed and go on. Their prey had gone to ground, taking to tunnels, basements, fallout shelters. The folk had dug in like ticks, and the wary survivors had learned a thing or two. The big dumb killing machines were taking heavy losses when they tried to assault those underground strongholds. That is when Skynet fielded the T100 series.
In the interest of efficiency, the big brain learned that it could cause more damage with less resources by fooling the human trogs that were defying it. It could make a machine that would pass as human, at least long enough to slip past the defenses, causing maximum damage with minimal manufacture cost. Subterfuge replaced frontal assault as it's preferred strategy. To do this, it made human like skeletons, and covered them with a layer of biological material that resembled a human body in great detail. By studying captive humans, it learned how to recreate flesh, eyes, hair, even body odor. Enough tired, shell shocked human guards fell for this to change the face of the war, and once again, humanity was on the run.
But for me, this is where I say the big robot brain sent me a lifeline. The tunnelers, the cave dwellers, they would never take me in. Can't blame them, I was too far gone, to wild, feral, to ever be reintegrated into a society, even one of only a few hundred people. I wouldn't want me around anything like a child either. But that's why the T100 and further series left me alone, their abilities were wasted hunting solos in the junkyard. Why risk your cover to fight a single organism when you could get ten times your number before you are taken down? They could always count on the environment or outright starvation to do in guys like me anyway.
I adjust my field glasses and see one on the move now. I have been scouting this position for almost a week, and based on my observations, it was inevitable that this bunker would be targeted. It's ironic that my success has been based on observing friendly positions rather than hostile ones. I level the cross hairs just above eye level and squeeze the trigger slowly. The plasma round neatly removes the upper half of the creatures alloy cranium. Shoot for the chip, and they stay down. I stay in position and don't move forward until I am sure this is a lone unsupported unit, and no backup will arrive. Satisfied, I advance on my kill.
I take a moment to examine my prize, a monster with the appearance of a large man, of African descent, smoldering flesh where bushy eyebrows once sprouted. Skynet has done it's job too well. In recreating human tissue, it has actually improved on it. No parasites, harmful bacteria or viruses can infect the fleshy bio sheath. It can be ingested raw, without the drawbacks of consuming natural animals. Pulling a scalpel and a dental pick from my belt, I remove the eyes first and pop them into my mouth. The eyes are the easiest to digest, the quickest rush of nutrients and energy. I am salivating heavily as I ingest them, my body absorbing the proteins, amino acids and vitamins that it so craves. After carving the rest of the bio sheath into portable strips, starting with the face, I move on, leaving this area, and begin to hunt the next human enclave, the natural prey of the T100 and later series.
This one kill will sustain me for weeks, that should be plenty of time to stalk a new victim.
Fin.