Chapter 73: The Caravan’s Vile Remnants

A moonless night and a high wind—the perfect weather for killing and burning.

Darkness lay heavy over the land. In the distance, the caravan camp was silent. Finn, Olivia, and Watcher crept along the edge of the brush, using the night as cover.

With her X-ray vision and the low-light night-vision goggles Finn had given her, Olivia had already gotten a clear picture of the camp.

The caravan had parked its vehicles in a circle. At the center lay a burned-out campfire and the scattered bones of a bison. There were ten people in all. Perhaps they had grown careless, because almost everyone was sound asleep. Only one yawning man remained awake on guard duty.

The three of them slipped up to the camp and crouched beside a truck covered in welded steel plates, waiting for their chance.

Finn wasn’t used to stealth missions like this. He preferred hitting enemies head-on and crushing them with superior firepower and rapid assaults.

Besides, as the saying went, no one could discover a stealth operation if there were no witnesses left alive.

The night watchman stood atop the tallest truck, yawning over and over. Perhaps his legs had gotten tired, because he finally sat down on the roof.

A black iron needle streaked silently through the darkness and pierced his skull. The man didn’t even manage a grunt before falling backward.

Watcher guided the needle back around, using it to catch the man by his clothes and ease him gently onto the truck roof. He sank into an eternal sleep from which he would never wake.

The infiltration went remarkably smoothly.

Two men woke up and tried to shout, but Olivia slit their throats before they could raise the alarm.

Finn tried to knock another man unconscious, but used too much force and smashed his skull instead. Watcher killed one who got up in the middle of the night to take a piss.

Working together, the three of them subdued the remaining five one by one—covering their mouths, pinning their legs, and binding their hands.

The five captives, wrapped up like mummies, were dumped together. Olivia switched on the truck’s headlights. Harsh white beams cut through the darkness, illuminating five terrified faces.

Her expression grim, Olivia walked around them and immediately recognized a middle-aged man with gray-brown hair and green eyes.

He was the leader of the Wilderness Rhino armed caravan—the man responsible for selling Black Mountain the nuclear reactor!

There could be no doubt. This was the Wilderness Rhino caravan!

Fury surged through Olivia. She punched the leader in the face, ripped the gag from his mouth, and demanded, “Why did the reactor you sold us explode?!”

His gray-brown hair fell across his face from the force of the blow, but he showed none of the fear, panic, or guilt one might expect from a crooked merchant caught red-handed. Instead, he lifted his head defiantly, looking ready to die.

“I recognize you. You’re from Black Mountain,” the caravan leader said, meeting Olivia’s gaze with his chin held high. “You’re very beautiful. That’s why I remember you.”

“And I recognize you. You’re the leader of the Wilderness Rhino caravan!” Olivia seized him by the collar, her fury blazing. “Do you have any idea how monstrous your crime is?!”

“I’m innocent. You’re the ones who are guilty.”

His voice was perfectly calm. He clearly knew what he had done, yet he made no attempt to defend himself. Worse, there was a strange sense of superiority in his tone.

Olivia gritted her teeth.

“I’m taking all of you back to Black Mountain! We’ll interrogate you until we uncover everything, then put you before a military tribunal. After that, we’ll hang you in front of the graves of the innocent people you murdered!”

“You’ll get nothing out of me. I’ll never talk.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his cheeks bulged. His jaws clamped down hard, as if he had bitten something off.

A sick smile spread across his face, and a drop of scarlet blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Startled, Olivia forced his mouth open and looked inside.

He had bitten off his own tongue!

The caravan leader threw back his head, mouth gaping. He sucked in sharp breaths through the excruciating pain while blood poured from the stump of his tongue. He had forced himself to swallow the severed piece, hoping to choke to death on it.

Meanwhile, blood continued to fill his mouth. With no tongue to redirect the flow, it was about to enter his windpipe and drown him in his own blood.

Even Finn was surprised. This man was utterly merciless, even to himself. He hadn’t begged or tried to defend himself. He had simply attempted suicide without hesitation.

Olivia struck him hard between the shoulder blades, forcing him to cough up the severed tongue, then hung him upside down to keep him from choking on the blood. But at this rate, he would still die from blood loss sooner or later.

“Lunatic…” Watcher muttered. “He’s completely insane…”

Olivia was furious, but with no medical equipment of her own, there was nothing she could do to stop the bleeding of a man determined to die.

Finn patted her shoulder and handed her a bottle of healing potion.

“We’ll have to heal this piece of shit first. Then we’ll gag him properly.”

“Thank you, Master!”

Delighted, Olivia accepted the bottle, pried open the leader’s mouth, and poured half the healing potion down his throat. She then wedged a wooden stick between his jaws and bound it firmly in place with strips of cloth.

Forced to bite down on the stick, the caravan leader could no longer bite his tongue. To his horror, his wounds began to heal—even his tongue grew back.

He groaned through the gag. His eyes burned with frustration and anguish: they had denied him death.

Four caravan captives remained. Olivia assumed they wouldn’t all try the same thing, but the moment she removed their gags, every one of them attempted to bite off their tongues.

One even spat in Olivia’s face, trying to provoke her into shooting him.

Her barely restrained rage erupted.

She did not disappoint him.

One punch crushed his face, shattering his brow ridge, nose, and eye sockets. Blood poured from the injuries. There was no chance he would survive.

The other three suicidal captives were saved for the moment. Olivia jammed wooden sticks between their jaws, bound them from head to toe, and secured them in the rear cargo area of the off-road vehicle to be taken back to Black Mountain.

Only after all this did Olivia’s fury gradually subside.

She turned uneasily toward Finn and lowered her head.

“I’m sorry, Master. I lost control.”

“It’s fine. Revenge feels good. What matters is that you’ve gotten some of that anger out of your system.”

Finn understood.

A sweet and charming blonde girl could also be a strong and unyielding warrior. There was no contradiction between the two.

“Why are they so desperate to kill themselves?” Olivia asked, confused. “What kind of terrible secret are they hiding?”

Their willingness to die unsettled her.

“There’s an old medicine woman back home who can read people’s memories,” Watcher Redhorn suggested. “I could take you to her.”

Among Watcher’s people, it was customary to refer to one’s tribe as “home.”

The captives refused to speak and tried to bite off their own tongues at the slightest opportunity, so even Finn’s veritaserum would be of little use. Their only option was to visit Watcher’s Redhorn tribe and seek out the old medicine woman.

After Finn agreed, Olivia drove in the direction Watcher indicated.

They traveled without rest for a full day and night before finally reaching the Redhorn tribe.

From a distance, they could see dozens of small wooden cabins scattered along the edge of a dense forest. A clean river wound through the settlement.

Before the off-road vehicle could get close, a bullet struck the windshield, spiderwebbing the laminated glass.

Watcher immediately climbed out through a side window, stood on the roof, and waved. Only then did several figures hidden among the trees lower their hunting rifles.

The vehicle slowed as it approached the settlement.

Seven or eight powerful mutant bison closed in around them. Each beast was as massive as a rhinoceros, with a fierce tribal warrior seated firmly on its back.

The riders were bare-chested, wearing bald-eagle feather headdresses and red-and-green stripes of paint across their faces. Every one of them carried a rifle or shotgun, their eyes sharp with suspicion.

According to Watcher Redhorn, the tribe was not isolated from the outside world. They often traded hides and meat from hunting and herding to neighboring towns in exchange for guns and ammunition.

Watcher jumped down from the vehicle and spoke rapidly to the bison riders in his people’s language. They soon moved aside and allowed the group through.

Finn, Olivia, and Watcher hauled the four surviving caravan captives across a log bridge over the river, then headed into the settlement to meet the tribe’s medicine woman, Mother Redhorn.

Mother Redhorn was a silver-haired woman in her fifties with a warm, gentle manner.

She set aside the straw sandals she had been weaving and first thanked Finn and Olivia for saving Watcher Redhorn’s life. Then she agreed to read the four captives’ memories.

Fortunately, Mother Redhorn spoke fluent English, sparing them from having to rely on Watcher’s halting translations.

The caravan leader, still determined to die but unable to succeed, was tied to a wooden post. His eyes were bulging as muffled growls came from behind his gag. By now, he seemed to be pinning his hopes on dying of thirst or starvation.

Mother Redhorn placed both hands on top of his head, closed her eyes, and began murmuring under her breath.

Suddenly, her eyes flew open.

Her wrinkled face twisted, and the veins at her temples throbbed. She launched into a furious tirade in her native language, snatched up a pair of straw sandals, and slapped the caravan leader across the face with them again and again.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

“What happened?” Olivia asked, bewildered. “Why is she so angry?”

“Mother is calling him a demon, a filthy hyena, and a bloodsucking parasite!” Watcher looked just as shocked. “I’ve never seen Mother this furious before! She’s always been so kind! What did she see in his memories?”