The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

“I’ve never seen one killed,” Em admits.

“Nor I,” says Kainda.

“There’s no exit wounds,” Kat says. “So the bullets either bounced around inside the skull, turning the brain to pudding, or they fragmented on impact and, well, turned the brain to pudding. Plus, I aimed for the same spot where the big ones are vulnerable.”

But the gatherers are different from the warriors in every way except for their unnatural parentage. Who’s to say what they are capable of, if they have a weak spot or if they can heal. Certainly not any of us. It has purple blood like the warriors, but a warrior would have healed by now. I’ve suspected that only the warriors could heal rapidly, which enables them to rule the various tribes, but these lesser Nephilim could still heal, perhaps just more slowly.

“There is one way to end the debate,” Kainda says, lifting her hammer over the gatherer’s plump head.

“Wait!” I shout.

She holds her strike. I turn to Wright and Kat. “Do you have everything you need?”

Wright holds up a silenced pistol, and then turns around so I can see the silenced assault rifle slung over his back. Kat throws her beloved FAL over her shoulder and reveals that she has also found two sound suppressed handguns as well. She holds one out to me. “Sure you don’t want one?”

I hold up a hand. “Not a fan of guns.”

“And yet, you’re okay with your girlfriend bashing in a dead man’s head?”

“They’re not men,” I say with a touch of venom.

“What is girlfriend?” Kainda asks.

“Later,” I say. The classification of our relationship in modern terms might freak her out. It’s freaking me out. I would prefer to be just...us. Hunters. Together. It feels more natural just to be, without adding the social pressures of what is expected of girlfriends and boyfriends. Of course, Kainda is oblivious to those things, but I’m not.

“Suit yourself,” Kat says, before wrapping a dual holstered belt around her waist. She slips both weapons home. “I’m good.”

Kainda lifts her hammer again. She looks back at the group. “This could be...messy.”

We all step back. The hammer rises. Kainda’s muscles ripple as she tenses. Then she strikes.

In the fraction of a second that it takes the hammer to descend, I see a flicker of movement in the thing’s black eyes. Not dead. But then the hammer strikes and it is, without doubt, very, very dead.

The head implodes under the weight of Kainda’s strike. But there is no splatter of purple blood. The head, which is roughly the size of a watermelon, is also somewhat similar to the fruit on the inside. Where there should have been a brain, there is only a thick, purple gelatinous substance, like jelly donut filling.

“It has no brain,” Wright notes.

“Or blood,” Kat adds. “Not really.”

I turn to them. “Like I said. Not a man.”

“Doesn’t smell like a man, either,” Wright says.

While the gatherer might not be oozing gallons of blood, its jellied insides have a strong odor. Wright gathers some shotgun shells, pries them open and dowses the ruined cranium with gunpowder. The strong chemical smell quickly masks the scent of gatherer gore.

Kainda covers her nose, finding the modern odor more offensive than the insides of a dead Nephilim. “What is that smell?”

“Cordite,” I say.

“Not quite,” Wright says. “Cordite isn’t used in modern weapons. This is basically wood chips soaked in nitroglycerin and coated with graphite. Bigger bang for less buck and a much stronger odor.”

“Huh,” I say, feeling awkward. It’s not often that someone knows something I don’t. But I was never very interested in modern weapons before coming to Antarctica. My knowledge of the subject is limited to what’s in textbooks.

Armed and satisfied that the gatherer is now fully dead, we sneak back into the hallway. After closing the door to the armory behind us, I pause and sniff the air. There’s just a hint of the gatherer’s scent. But someone would have to walk right by the door to pick it up. And since the hall is still devoid of life, I don’t see that happening any time soon.

We quickly backtrack to the steps and then turn down the hallway leading to the cellblock. The scent of humanity is thick in the air, but the prisoners’ voices have faded to nothing. Are they all dead? I wonder. Have they been taken away? It doesn’t seem possible. We were in the armory for just ten minutes.