Raised From The Wild-Chapter 129: The Aftermath

Amaya called her pets over. Strata and her mate were limping. Khalil has a big wound on his back. Amaya’s eyes reddened when she saw the state of her friends. She whimpered.

She took out more herbs from her backpack, pounded them and made a salve for Khalil. Then she stroked Khalil’s neck and talked to him in a soothing voice until the tiger closed his eyes to sleep.

She checked her wolves and she found out that they don’t have any external injuries. They would feel better after a night’s rest. She thanked her friends for saving their lives.

She looked up the tree and beckoned for Kong to come down. The ape obediently jumped down from the tree. "Good boy. That was a great shooting. You hit a lot of heads huh." Amaya patted his head and he grinned foolishly at her.

Marx looked at the animals that Amaya comforted. He was jealous of them. Why was he not comforted by Amaya? He also suffered from the attacks. He sat there gloomily while watching Amaya through the corner of his eyes.

The twelve of them did not dare to sleep. Enrico and Ricardo who were shocked by the attacked were still in a daze. They have climbed a lot of mountains and they did encountered difficulties but never this degree of danger.

"Maybe this is already a sign for me to stop climbing mountains and to find a good wife and settle down." Enrico said while staring at the embers from the bonfire.

"You are right. I will also go back to my family. It is time to face my problems with them and not keep on running away."

Two of the young soldiers went to the river to fill the kettle with water. They needed caffeine to calm their nerves. They still could not come to terms to what they had experienced.

Everyone was silent as they were all engrossed in their own thoughts. A shrill whistling sound startled some of them that they almost jumped on their feet.

One of the soldiers took out a foldable plastic cups from his backpack and distributed them to everyone along with coffee in sachets.

"I don’t think anybody can sleep after that so let’s have coffee." The soldier appeared enthusiastic as he passed the sachets to everyone.

Marx took two sachets from the soldier and put the contents of each into the reusable foldable paper cups and he added hot water. He stirred the coffee using the wooden stirrer that came along with the cups. He sat down beside Amaya and passed her one of the cups.

Dave sat down beside Marx.

"I checked the bodies. They are wolves, mutts and boars."

Marx and Amaya looked at Dave like what he said was stupid. Wasn’t it very obvious?

"Yeah, we know that while we were fighting." Marx said matter-of-factly.

"There is something wrong with the animals. Their eyes were unnaturally shiny. They were also very smart. The thing that bothered me is that, wolves normally attacked in packs and they have the leader or the alpha. But the one that attacked us, did not have a leader at all and yet their attacks were coordinated." Amaya was looking at the dead wolf nearest them.

"We can bring one of each kind to the laboratory for study. Or maybe let us take as many as we can."

Dave finished his coffee in one gulp. His hands were still trembling. He had not used guns for a long time, other than the occasional target shooting that he did with his friends. He did not know how many he killed with his 9mm hand gun. Was it eight or ten?

Amaya took a sip of the coffee. She was not a coffee drinker but tonight she indulged herself as she did not want to fall asleep. Marx held her hand and caressed it gently.

"Why do you think the animals attacked us?" Amaya threw the question to both Marx and Dave.

"Well, maybe our presence agitated them." Dave made a bold guess. But he doubted it. They did not come across those animals. It seemed that the animals sought them.

Marx was about to share his thoughts when Amaya interjected. "What if it was a planned attack? Someone was controlling the animals and orchestrating at the background?"

Dave looked at Marx. They were both silent.

Amaya from her peripheral vision saw that one of the mutt on the ground moved. She took an arrow and released it. The arrow perfectly nestled in between its eyes.

The stench of blood attracted an anaconda slithering nearby. It coiled on a mutt lying a few meters away. The moment it squeezed the mutt, it exploded causing flesh and blood to scatter around. It was a good thing, the mutt was farther away. The splatter of carcasses did not reach the camp site.

"What the hell is that?" Dave shouted in panic.

Everyone except the injured soldiers stood up aiming their guns to direction where the explosion came from.

Kong who was up the tree climbed down and went in front of Amaya. He told her what the snake did and the mutt just exploded with the snake.

Marx watched the ape made grunting sounds. He knew that he was communicating with Amaya.

"He said a big snake coiled its body on the mutt. When it squeezed it, the animal exploded."

"What? How could that be?" Enrico asked.

The team leader of the soldiers has a vague idea. He took a big rock and threw it to a boar lying farthest from them. The boar exploded when the rock made contact with its body.

"Don’t touch the animals. I think there is a tiny bomb planted in their bodies that gets activated when their heart stopped beating and detonates when a force is applied on its body."

Valdez froze. He was about to round the wolves and skin a few of them. He was lucky that the snake attacked first.

"How do you know about that?" Dave asked skeptically.

"Is that a technology used by the military?" Marx sized up the soldier. He could guess that he was the lieutenant that was sent to protect them.

"No. It is the tactic employed by a rebel faction from Uropa, but could have been copied by terrorists. This might be an assassination attempt on one of the you."