He glanced out to his right and saw Lopez moving with silky grace between the tall grasses, staying low and moving almost out of sight as Ethan crept into a glade of trees. A narrow path between the trees led to the base of the hill and the increased cover allowed him to move more quickly, but it also concealed from view his target.
Ethan reached the base of the hill and crouched low, not really seeking to see the target but listening instead. On the faint whisper of a breeze he could hear the sound of a blade cutting skin as the survivor prepared the animal they had caught for cooking later on. He distinctly heard the faint tearing of flesh as he crept slowly forwards through the glade. The sounds stopped as he reached the edge of the tree line, with the open grasses ahead glowing in the sunrise before him.
Ethan squinted and raised one hand to shield his eyes from the brilliant flare of the sunlight as he tried to see where the hunter was crouched.
‘Don’t move.’
Ethan remained silent and still, although he cursed himself as from his right he heard faint footsteps. He swivelled his gaze to see a tall figure completely enshrouded in a make — shift ghillie suit, a powerful — looking rifle in their grasp and a steely gaze directed at him.
‘I’m not here to hurt you.’ Ethan said.
‘Is that why you’re carrying?’ the figure asked, a female voice.
‘It’s licensed,’ Ethan explained. ‘I’m here to find out what happened to the town of Clearwater.’
The figure stood in silence, legs splayed and the rifle pointed unwaveringly between Ethan’s eyes.
‘What would you know about it?’
‘I know that recently this was a thriving little town,’ Ethan shrugged, holding his arms out to either side to show her that he was not about to draw his weapon. ‘Somebody’s made this place look like it’s fifty years old, and I want to know why.’
‘What’s it to you?’
Ethan managed a faint smile. ‘I was about to ask you the same question.’
‘Yeah? Well, I’m the one holding a rifle.’
The voice that replied didn’t belong to the hunter.
‘And I’m the one holding a pistol.’
Lopez eased out of the treeline from behind the hunter, a service pistol aimed at the back of their target’s head. Ethan smiled broadly as he got to his feet and saw the hunter rolled her eyes as she lowered the rifle.
Ethan took a pace toward her and yanked the rifle from her grasp. She put her hands in the air but stared into the distance rather than meeting Ethan’s gaze. Ethan check the rifle over, made it safe, and then looked into the hunter’s eyes and forced her to meet his.
‘If we were here to hurt you, I’d probably shoot you right now.’
Ethan turned the rifle over and pressed it back into her grasp. The woman stared at him with a slightly surprised gaze as she took hold of the rifle once more, and Ethan gestured for Lopez to lower her pistol.
‘Should have known you wouldn’t be out here alone,’ the woman said as she glanced over her shoulder and saw Lopez standing behind her.
‘Yes you should,’ Ethan agreed. ‘But you caught me out. Who are you?’
The woman reached up and pulled the hood of the ghillie suit off to reveal a surprisingly young face and long black hair tied tightly behind her head. A stud sparkled in her nose, and her eye liner was a little too heavy, a look that Ethan recalled as being referred to as emo. Her thick black hair, pale skin and permanently disgruntled expression made her a virtual poster — girl for teenage adolescence.
‘My name is Amber,’ she replied.
‘Does Amber have a second name?’ Lopez asked.
‘Not for now.’
Considering that her entire town appeared to have vanished, Ethan had some sympathy for her desire to remain anonymous until she had figured out who was confronting her.
‘We need to talk,’ Ethan said. ‘Do you have any idea what happened here?’
Amber sighed and then gestured for them to follow as she struck out of the glade across the hillside.
‘I was on a camping trip, part of my college break,’ she explained as they walked. ‘I came back through here four days ago, heading home ready to go back to college the following day. When I got here it was almost sunset, and the town was barricaded from both sides by troops and vehicles. They took something out of here, and when I got a glimpse of it on the back of a truck it was so bright that it blinded me.’
Ethan looked at Lopez, who shot him serious glance.
‘Jarvis mentioned something about an energy burst that got picked up by one of the local airbases.’
‘This energy or light that you saw,’ Ethan asked. ‘Do you have any idea what it was?’
Amber shook her head. ‘No. By the time I recovered my sight it was the following morning. The trucks were gone and the town looked like it does now. I don’t know what the hell happened and I felt like I was losing my mind, like I’d gone back in some bizarre time warp and been left here all alone. It was only when I saw airliners cruising through the sky that I knew something else must have happened.’
‘You’ve been staying out here all alone?’ Lopez asked. ‘You didn’t think to go for help?’
‘From here?’ Amber challenged. ‘Military troops made my entire town’s inhabitants disappear, and then went out of their way to make this town look like it’s been abandoned for half a century. I don’t know what happened to any of the people that lived here, but I have a suspicion it’s not good. I wasn’t about to reveal that I was still alive.’
‘They probably already know,’ Ethan said. ‘Whoever did this will have had a census of the town’s inhabitants, the entire population. They will know that you’re missing.’
‘Which is why I kept my head down and stayed out of sight,’ Amber agreed. ‘I was hoping that perhaps the townsfolk would come back eventually, that this was all some sort of mistake or that maybe Hollywood had hired the entire town to shoot some movie or something. Wishful thinking, I guess.’
Ethan was already thinking himself, although none of his thoughts were wishful at all. Military troops were involved in whatever had happened here and the town’s inhabitants were gone. Yet they had not sought to hunt for the missing Amber, and that suggested to him that they did not have the resources to conduct such an overt operation out here, despite the undoubted sensitivity of whatever it was they were trying to cover up.
‘Small unit, covert operations,’ he said as he looked at Lopez.
‘Paramilitary unit,’ Lopez replied in agreement. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll have wanted to attract attention to this operation using helicopters or heavy lift aircraft of any kind. This would have been a very quiet operation to get everybody out, make the town look old and then just disappear.’
Amber nodded her agreement.
‘I was never camped more than ten miles from the town, and I never heard any unusual aircraft in the area or anything that suggested there were major forces deployed. From what I did see I think there were no more than about fifty soldiers in all.’
Amber crouched down in the grass and lifted a dead rabbit, its skin already removed and its guts a slimy mess on a rock nearby. Lopez winced faintly as she watched Amber hook the carcass onto her belt.
‘You’re not going to be able to stay out here forever!’ Ethan pointed out to Amber. ‘Sooner or later we have to figure out what happened here.’
Amber turned to him and raised one delicate eyebrow.
‘How did you know about what happened here?’ she demanded. ‘Why has none of the emergency services or even the media come down here to report on this?’
‘We work for the Defense Intelligence Agency,’ Ethan explained. ‘It’s our job to figure out things like this. If you live here, then why don’t you take us to your home and maybe we can start trying to understand what’s going on?’