Nightingale

Chapter Three: Fifteen Hundred Meters? Easily.

This rifle is my own hand, reaching out and touching those who fall within my telescopic sight. She is part of my soul, without her I am nothing and with out me, she is nothing. When I pull her trigger, my finger moves less than a millimeter to send a tungsten carbide bullet careening over thousands of meters to a set of red eyes or threatening white. She yells out in a satisfying .338 calibre roar, and the target is dead in a third the time it takes for the bullet's sound to reach them over the steppe-land mountains. 

This rifle is my own hand, reaching out and touching those who fall within my telescopic sight, and I don't miss unless god is on my target's side, then maybe they deserve to live and I spare them for they just won the lottery. They leave with a scratch across their cheek, or chunk of their arm missing and bleeding heavily over their skin. Or perhaps in a rare event they feel simply the hot wind hiss by them and hear the whisper of my blade soar uninterrupted past them. But overwhelmingly my shots fall at the sweep spot right between their eyes, through their central cortex and through the Medulla to stop their breathing and heart, rendering them dead before slumping to the ground over their claws. 

Even with these infectious, glowing eyes and super human ability, they still function like any animal. Destroy the brain, end the organism. 

They glow with heat. I can see them for miles out through my infrared, telescopic sight as outlines of white against dark backdrops and deep grey trees or brush. They move as obvious as a shooting star across a midnight galaxy. 

This rifle is my own hand, reaching out and touching those who fall within my telescopic sight, and I can see brush move in three crosswinds as I aim at the target who looms downhill from me in the valley below. It is daylight and the Middle Eastern sun bares down on me like frying pan tipped upside down on my naked head. The first crosswind I see in front of me, moving to the east, across from left to right. The brush rustles only lightly, the single thirsting tree in my field of view sways only slightly. Three point five kilometers per hour. The next moves the brush a little more aggressively, jerking it from time to time and dislodging a dead leave and carrying it less than a meter. Six kilometers per hour in the opposite direction. The last is at a mid-ground between the two, moving the vegetation consistently in a smooth flow. Four point five kilometers per hour. The target lay in shade, on its grey back panting upwards and firmly asleep. 

I aim the cross hairs four point seven meters above his head to account for gravity, and point six a meter to the left to account for the cross winds. I exhale, listening to the sound of my heartbeat and on the third beat my finger moves a single millimeter towards me and I am kicked in my right shoulder. I can't see the bullet, but I know exactly how it moves. It falls and moves very slightly across the first cross wind. As it entered the next, it is pushed a little more vigorously back over the line of aim and moves to the left as it enters the final cross wind pushing it back over to the right where it joins the central line of aim exactly in time to rip the creatures head open just above the ear, jerking its body to the side. A mist of blood flies vertically and small pieces of bone and flesh rain back down to the ground. The spray stops, and a generous flow over the back of the creature's neck replaces it and the dry soil drinks it up before a pool has the chance to form.

This rifle is my own hand, reaching out and touching those who fall within my telescopic sight, and from sighting to death takes only nine seconds. Fifteen hundred meters? Easy. That is what my L115A1 Super Magnum is rated for with the .338 Lapua AP ammunition. However, I am rated for much farther with optical implants in my very eyes, and an observational skill naturally bestowed upon me beyond that of even many computer programs.

It is a shame really, that I broke the longest kill shot with a sniper rifle EVER after the world had ended: Three thousand seven hundred and eighty meters, give or take a few centimeters. I measured, sweated my arse off walking up that slope using carefully exact strides as my measure. I crunched the numbers for an hour using a my best guess sketch (perfect by most's standards) of how the topography was between me and the target, and the heights and falls of it.

I did it four times just to be sure I wasn't fooling myself. The creature was turning up quite a smell sitting in the idle sun by the time I was done, slumped face down with an acorn size hole through the back of its head. I had never seen the inside of a brain lit up quite like that before by the sun, pink and light red like a creamy cherry jello. 

This mountain valley was mine, cleared of everything that could pose a threat to me, and I like it that way. From time to time I venture twenty miles to the south down the other side of the valley via ATV to collect rations and ammunition from the dead American outpost where several thousand US soldier used to reside and conquer.

It was by luck of the draw that the USA decided to try and turn Afghanistan into the fifty first state only three months before the outbreak happened. I worked with them, as to why I was assigned here and why Britain was dicking in it all, I'll never understand.

It was somewhat of a pain in the arse near the beginning. So many of those things still wearing helmets and Kevlar vests that my shots would occasionally ricochet off of. It was quite frightening, really, when one would sneak up on me, close within a few meters and my Russian made PP-19 sub machine gun couldn't penetrate its core as it leaped and bounded in all directions erratically, evasively and screaming in a demonic voice through pointed teeth. 

When it would scream, more would be drawn as I moved through the mountain trees and bushland valleys. I had to kill one with an American military Tomahawk as it pinned me to the rocks, ready to sink its teeth into my neck. I imagine I'd be dead right now if I hadn't had the sense to drawn the weapon and stand my ground and coax the thing on. If I ran, I couldn't have sliced the side of the things head with an adequate gash. I'd be face down, a beast on my back digging its claws into my flesh.

I tend to fight, rather than fly. Must be the Scottish side my Father instilled me with.

My mind snapped back to where I truly was, still looking through my scope and lost in a blur of thought. The open held no fear for me as I imagine it did for most. Hard to fear a place where I've killed everything that could have possibly gotten me, now isn't it? I stood up and brushed the pale green and sand camo off of dust and tiny twigs, rock, anything that would have stuck. I picked up my rifle and snapped the bipod back carefully: would be a shame if it broke and I hurt my baby. She meant everything to me with no more people to talk to.

Call it unhealthy, I treat my rifle like a pet or a child in my lonesome.... I never did meet the lad who made it so incredible for me. Some Irish magic worker when it comes to rifles.

Hours passed as I hiked to various peaks and observed my valley with scrutiny through a pair of high powered binoculars. I was relieved in a way that no others had materialized by dusk to harass me later in the night. Yet at the same time, picking a target was relaxing and calming to my nerves in a way anyone who wasn't a sniper wouldn't understand in full. Imagine a build of excitement, time stopping and your own heartbeat audible in the bones of your ears. Then when the trigger is pulled, it is almost like an orgasmic relief to all the patience and care it took to achieve. 

'Least that is how I see it.

My eyes could see in levels of night very few could. The implants were more painful than a pit bull to the balls and blinded me for six months, but my was the world lovely and clear after my eyes had adapted to them. I've no idea quite how they work or how they're set up. But I have this lovely ring of ribbed steel around my Irish that focuses for me, looking similar to a small ring of steel guitar string. It reacts to my brain signals just like a natural Iris.

Plus they have retinal enhancers to let me see in five percent the light of a regular lad, and vision that is overall two over twenty. I see at twenty feet, what most have to be at two feet to see. The night was as bright as day to me, just colorless. Imagine walking outside during noon on a sunny day, making the sky black with stars and adding a black and white filter. Then you can imagine what is my dark.

My tent sat at the apex of the highest mountain I could find and climb, overlooking the rolling black and white hills for hundred of miles in all directions. I sighed and wondered if anyone else who didn't want to kill me were behind them. I wish only for a companion, a loud mouthed burly boxer or a fine female to keep me satisfied with life. I don't care. My rifle can only talk back in one way: Recoil...