Colt 45's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The woman poured Colt a cup of something dark and sat across from her. She said the poster ink was cut with a marker chemical. The thing hunting the marks could smell it on a hunter's hands from a mile out. She said the last three men who went out carried standard sidearms. She said standard sidearms did not scratch it. Colt asked what did. The woman looked at the cat, then at the floor behind the counter. "I have one thing left in the case," she said. "My brother left it before he took a poster and didn't come back. You take it, you owe me a name when you're done." She unlocked a low cabinet and set a heavy pistol on the counter. It was white and grey, ringed with orange light, the barrel wide as a soup can. Colt lifted it. The grip warmed to her hand. The woman showed her the charge cell and the safety and told her it fired a compressed pulse that would burn through plate. "Two shots before it needs to rest," she said. "Make them count. And wash the ink off your fingers before you go anywhere near open ground." Colt scrubbed her hands raw at the sink. She loaded her rifle across her back for show and holstered the pulse gun under her coat. The tall cat watched from the doorway, tail curled, eyes steady. When Colt stepped out, the animal did not follow. That told her enough. She walked to the coordinates on the folded poster before the light changed. The courier was bait and she knew it. She crouched behind a fuel drum at the edge of a dry lot and waited. The thing came low and fast, four legs, no face she could name, hide the color of wet stone. It caught her scent and turned. Colt fired once. The pulse punched a hole through its shoulder and spun it sideways. It screamed and kept coming. She fired again. The second shot took its head. The body slid to a stop six feet from her boots. She stood in the quiet and listened. Nothing moved. Then, from the far side of the lot, a small speaker crackled to life on a post she hadn't seen. A voice she didn't know said her name, calm and pleased, and told her the real hunt was only starting now. The poster board had a new name on it by morning. Hers.