The Late Summer Hunt

The day following her 17th birthday, Elena Volkova departs with her dog team for a late summer hunt. She'd gone on plenty of hunts before, both with others and on her own. This was bound to be as routine as all of those had been, right?
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“Easy. Easy!” Elena called out in Russian to her dog team, slowing the sled down, “Whoa!”
Her foot was on the brake now, the team coming to a halt in front of her. She hopped down off the back of the sled, trudged through the late-summer’s mud, paused next to her lead dog to pat his head as she leaned down, and took a read of the tracks. She grinned. Seems they’d stumbled upon a musk deer, and a pretty big one from how deep the imprints were.
Heading back to her sled, Elena removed the old hunting rifle that had been in her family for generations off of the equally old sled. Neither was the fanciest of tools, the rifle a treated composite and metal instrument—lacking any of the finicky electronics of the modern models—and the sled equally as plain, just titanium alloy and a kevlar basket. But they were cheap and they were sturdy, and that’s all her family needed. Even still, in the basket sat a drone of her own making. Her family may have only needed the rifle and sled to hunt, but Elena found the more antiquated methods lackluster. She needed some modern tech to go along with it. 
Trudging back through the mud, she called out to her lead dog as she passed, “Line out!” She didn’t know how far the deer was exactly, and she couldn’t have the dogs getting tangled if she needed to get back to them and head back out. 
Satisfied with the line as the dogs pulled it taut, she followed the trail of prints up the nearby ridge, pressing down low to the ground as she approached the lip. Pulling out her datapad, she called her drone forward from the sled, raising it silently over the top of the hill and grinning as she saw what it was filming on her screen. There stood the familiar silhouette of the musk deer she was tracking, not more than 50 meters away. Setting the datapad down next to her, she raised her rifle over the ridge, propping it up as she snuck forward to expose her head.
Spotting the deer visually now, she reached up to her rifle's bolt and slowly cycled it, quietly as possible. Leaning her cheek against the stock of the weapon, she pulled it up to her shoulder and braced it, scope pulling towards her left eye as her finger found its way back to the grip of the old rifle, index finger resting just off the trigger. Running through her breathing, she rested her sights on the target and…
Chau-Chau! ClickBANG!
The shot went wide, sending the musk deer scampering off and Elena cursing under her breath. It was only as she scrambled to cycle her bolt to fire again that she heard the growl behind her and realized it wasn’t her dogs whose barks she heard just before her shot. Swinging her rifle around, she pulled the trigger and pointed the barrel towards the leaping wolf. A beat, nothing fired, and the beast was on her.
Crying out in pain as the wolf clawed and bit at her, she flailed her rifle at it uselessly, the weapon too clumsy to make a club out of. Dropping it, Elena instead tried to grapple with the beast but found its attack joined by another, then a third. Seeing little else to do, she let out one more cry, this one forming into words, “HIKE! HIKE!”
Eyes shut and blind to the world, it seemed an eternity passed for Elena by the time her dogs reacted, but it was only seconds later when the lead dog, set upon the first wolf of the trio, biting at the scrawny beast’s neck. A few seconds more and the team managed to intimidate the hungry wolves scampering off their master and back into the woods. Letting out a weak “Whoa…” Elena called the dogs to a stop, keeping them from chasing after the creatures that had attacked her or running her over with the sled they still pulled.
Grabbing her rifle and datapad, Elena clawed herself into the sled’s basket, collapsing into it. Willing her eyes open, she found only her right able to respond and cursed under her breath. Bloody fingers smeared her screen to tap the ‘recall’ button on her drone’s controls, sending it back to her uncle’s house. Dropping the datapad as she saw the press finally register, she let out the best “Hike!” she could manage and let her eyes drift shut again. All she had now was trust in her dogs to follow the drone back home.
Category:The Weekly