Sanjar Yasavi had identified the two specs in the distance as Mongol biker-scouts long before he had trained the scope of his rifle on them. From their current distance, at 4x magnification, they seemed like rickety dust-devils, their legless bodies held aloft by the tiny tornado billowing around them.

At 8x magnification, their features began to stand out: men dressed in long fur coats that covered their skin-tight body suits which shielded their bodies from the winds. Their faces obscured by shock-absorbing helmets, their facades adorned in the manner of grinning skulls on fire, their bikes decorated with pilfered human remains. Even from his vantage point, half a kilometer across, Sanjar could hear the sound the bleached human jaws made as they clickety-clacked on the bike’s chassis, the rickety-tickety sound that came from the bundle of severed human fingers laid across the vehicles’ bodies.

At 16x magnification, Sanjar could now make out the shapes of the biker-scouts, the illusion of their monstrous form finally dissolved: they were men of average height, lean and driven by primeval bloodlust, spurred on by the same fire in their bellies which had eliminated his brothers on the A353. Sanjar knew those men, without ever needing to meet them in person: they were feral dogs that walked upright and thought themselves human, their minds focused on the filling of their bellies, the quenching of the mindless need in their loins and in their brains.

At 32x magnification, Sanjar could have sworn those men seemed familiar: he had, after all, been just like them, known the same terror and bottomless hunger that had driven them so long ago, when the world keeled over and died. But then again, he had been a boy of 20. Now, he was an old, old man of 36. He leaned against his rifle’s recoil pad and gritted his teeth, as he undid the safety. Adjusting his sights, Sanjar brought the center of his scope’s crosshair down until they were level with the advancing biker-scout’s eyes. He began to count down, as his targets rode closer to his position.

At two kilometers distance, Sanjar rested his middle finger on the trigger, fighting against the itching of his phantom index with gritted teeth.

At one kilometer, as his targets entered a clearing, Sanjar took a deep breath and held it for what seemed like forever.

At five hundred meters, Sanjar gripped the rifle’s stock and fired.

There was a crack, there was the sound of distant lightning and that of a phantom snake, as big as the world whipping its tail and the first Mongol was dead, spurting red mist from the back of his helmet. Swiveling his sniper rifle, Sanjar aimed and fired again, at the second biker-scout, hard at work trying to run back at top speed. A tiny red dot appeared on his back and a same-colored lotus flower blossomed on his chest.

The third biker-scout did not turn to run. Instead, he revved his motorcycle, swerved just as Sanjar pulled the trigger and was flung to the side, dragged by his vehicle, as the high-caliber bullet tore through the axles of his front wheel. Cursing under his breath, Sanjar once again took aim and pulled the trigger. The last Mongol turned, the bullet missing him by inches and kicked at the bike, freeing his leg. Frantically pulling out his AK-47, the Mongol scout shot blindly at Sanjar’s position. A spray of lead and gravel shot up below Sanjar, missing him by several meters, obscuring the sniper's line of sight.

Sanjar jumped up and raised his gun, not bothering with aiming through the scope, instead shooting blindly at the figure hobbling away from him, looking for cover in the forest. The sniper gritted his teeth and spat on the ground. He couldn’t afford to let the Mongol get away, not even in his condition, not when they were so close to Saryozek.

But he was an Arystan-trained commando and his quarry was a limp Mongol. This wouldn’t be much of a challenge. Shouldering his weapon, Sanjar began to run down the hill in pursuit, feeling the excitement of the old days making his heart race once again.

***

The interior of Chuluun’s old RV was a jumbled mess of looted guns, flak jackets, stack upon stacks of packed ration boxes, pilfered books and stolen electronic equipment, all of it laid out on a pile under the stuffed snarling wolfshead set up between the cupboards.

Somewhere in the distance, unseen, a wind-up clock ticked away the seconds. Beneath the bunk bed, there was a worn suitcase, packed to the brim with an assortment of combat knives. There was a hidden stash of salted meat under the disassembled sink. There was a four-liter flask of fermented potato vodka in a hidden compartment under a couch. It smelled a lot like dead rats in a field.

There was a pile of something that Baraat knew weren’t rabbit hides in the fridge. He didn’t need to run his hands on the smooth-skinned underbelly to know that these had been flayed from the top of men’s heads by Chuluun himself in the bad old days.

He didn’t touch any of it, of course. Not the flak jacket with the inlaid human teeth, not the jar with the severed fingers, not the little metal chest that rattled eerily when he shook it. Baraat didn’t even dare think it, but this felt to him like the secret hoard in an ogre’s lair, piled with the fruits of a dead man’s life. This was no place for the living, he’d have thought, had he not been scared out of his mind and tired beyond words.

Instead, he lay on the bunk bed, not even touching the covers, his crutches held fast in his hands. He laid his saber across his chest like a dead man at his own funeral, doing his best to drift off to sleep. He would open his eyes, often times, disturbed by some creaking or cracking noise, desperately seeking the sound of armed patrols or the cat-calls of his fellow warriors at each other. But he’d find no comfort, inside this sound-proofed hell. He would close his eyes and pray for exhaustion, even as he sweated inside his clothes and stretched and scratched at himself. He fell asleep an eternity later, when he caught the faint sound of motors revving in the distance. The sound reminded him, faintly, of home.

He was rudely awakened an hour later by the mechanical clock that had jangled in the RV. He promptly grabbed from its hidden mantel behind a pile of pilfered three-piece suits, ran with it to the campfire and chucked it in without a word to his astonished subordinates.

He had buried, burned and thrown away most of Chuluun’s stash in time for his unit’s morning report.

***

The first rule of tracking is: know the lay of the land.

Sanjar had caught up with the wounded Mongol easily. The man was moving slowly, sluggishly, with his flak jacket and his suit still on him, leaving clearly discernible tracks on the earth. The blood trail from his wounded leg helped, when the rough ground obscured his trail. 

The Mongol had been moving like a great wounded animal: clumsy, careless, driven by fear. He had chosen the roughest path, thinking this would make finding him harder, perhaps considering he could lose his pursuer in the foliage and plan an ambush from there. But he had disturbed the vegetation, had crawled and crushed the bush beneath him in such a clumsy fashion that he might as well have left a breadcrumb trail for Sanjar to follow. 

The second rule of tracking is: know your enemy.

Sanjar knew of the Mongol ways. Their approach was one of shock and awe, backed by brute force and fueled by sheer, bloody-minded tenacity. It was the way of barbarians, of warlords of the warrior-kings that had risen from the ruins to conquer the world. It was the way that broke the spirit of peasants and untrained militia. But to a man like Sanjar, who had become numb and used to the horrors of war long before the world ended, they seemed more like feral dogs, an unstoppable mass of fur and fangs and claws made up of a thousand mangy curs.

This Mongol was no different: holding on to his façade of terror even in the face of imminent danger, investing no thought to the means and method of his hiding, perhaps plotting revenge for his dead brothers long before he had even ensured his own survival.

The third rule of tracking is: know how to read the spoors.

Sanjar followed the Mongol at a steady jog, the path laid out before him. He had heard his quarry stumbling through the foliage long before he had taken the fork in the road. He had unholstered his rifle and re-loaded it a whole minute before the Mongol had entered his field of vision.

As Sanjar saw the back of the Mongol’s head at the dead center of his crosshairs, he had silently lamented that this kill had not offered him any further sport. Sighing, he pulled the trigger.