Barry was amazed at how many scents he was able to isolate now that he wasn’t stuck in San Francisco or some other large metropolitan city with literally millions of different smells, ranging from human waste to a woman wearing a spritz of Clive Christian NO.1 Imperial perfume, which retailed usually for about twelve thousand dollars per ounce. The human nose was incapable of keeping up with all the scents much less sorting and identifying them in the world of old.
Now he felt like an animal with a clearer sense of what he was passing through based on sight, sound, and now this newfound ability to smell. He wondered if, after a hundred years of humans creating no foul air conditions, mankind would begin to evolve its sense of smell even further. As a smell of something not off the nature menu accosted Barry’s nostrils, he nearly crashed trying to stop the bike. He killed the engine on the motorcycle, his head swiveling side to side, searching for whatever was responsible for the smell. It smelled of—well, it smelled of man, and this scared Barry.
After Jared made his peace with his loss at Bart’s grave, he walked back slowly in the direction of the ranch house, but decided he didn’t want the human interaction quite yet and instead diverted towards the OP. He knew Shannon would probably ask how he was and, well, he didn’t want to lie to her. Jared gave a low whistle as he approached the OP and saw John’s head come around. John nodded, then turned his gaze back out across the surrounding hills as Jared walked up and sat next to him.
“I’ll take over for a while to let you get some sleep or whatever,” Jared said through a sigh, the weight of the past twenty-four hours evident in his voice.
John looked at the younger man and almost asked if he was good, but caught himself. He knew how Jared was, so there was no need to ask. “How long you want out here before you get relief?” he asked, his voice low and steady.
“Till everyone’s asleep,” Jared responded.
John nodded and was about to get to his feet when both men heard the low rumbling of an engine. They scrambled to their feet just as the sound of the engine disappeared. Jared shot a quick look at John, who had his face buried in his binoculars, sweeping them back and forth across the countryside. Jared placed a hand on his rifle and ensured the magazine was seated properly, which was something he didn’t even know was a thing until three months ago. Three months ago he would have been checking his phone’s battery level; now he was checking to ensure a rifle magazine was properly seated.
John stopped scanning and shoved the binoculars into Jared’s chest. “Stay alert and stay here. I’m moving out there to see if I can get eyes on whoever is out there.”
Jared grabbed the binoculars, keeping them from falling to the ground, as John released his grip and took off at a dead run, vanishing into a thicket of brush. Jared pulled the optics to his face and peered out across the green rolling hillsides in search of anything that looked out of place. He found nothing in his first sweep of the hillside, so he carefully repeated the process, with the same results.
Jared remembered Bart explaining how to search an area during their walk up into the hills. Bart had always insisted on searching the area closest to oneself first. He had groused on and on about the closest thing being the most dangerous thing, so finding it before it found you was paramount to surviving. If nothing is there, push your search out a little farther and repeat until you either find something or are sure there is nothing. Jared lowered the optics to scan the area within fifty yards of the OP and began to work his search out from there.
John ran for a short period in the direction he’d heard the engine. After twenty-five or thirty yards, he cut to the left and moved out and away from the direction he had originally taken. He intended to flank the person or persons with the engine. Once John was about one hundred yards to the left of his original line, he straightened out and moved forward, following his original direction of travel.
After moving three hundred yards out in a flanking maneuver, John slowed and transitioned into a more stealthy posture, rifle up, searching his surroundings, his body tense, coiled and ready to launch him into battle at a moment’s notice. Something odd to his right caught his attention, and he moved toward it. As John moved within seventy-five yards of the thing he’d seen, he realized it was a riderless motorcycle laid over on its side, and what he’d seen was one of the handle bars sticking awkwardly up slightly higher than the height of the grass. John immediately dropped to his belly, searching frantically for the rider, but saw nothing.
After Barry caught the scent of man or whatever it was, he left the motorcycle and moved on foot, creeping forward, his nose sniffing and twitching like an English foxhound endeavoring to locate the source of what he had smelled. At a little knoll, Barry crawled on his belly until he could peer through the tall grass and see what was below. His heart leapt at the sight of Jared sitting in the OP. Barry froze as he stared at the other man, who sat not
