I consider the direction of the main trail Edwin just ascended. Does that mean that somehow, even though I did not leave any tracks to reach this place—walking out of the heart of the mountain as I did, they still somehow knew to look for me up here? Maybe they are not totally like the Foolish People after all. Or maybe . . .
If I go down the trail about fifty yards, there’s a place where I can edge out onto a lip of stone and get a good view of most of the eastern trail that leads up here. There’s another, more precarious way off Place Where Birds Flew that involves maybe ten minutes of rock climbing, which wouldn’t be that hard for me. But I’m not going to take that yet. Better to see what my enemies are doing. And see just where and who my enemies are.
I walk down the trail to the lookout.
The last few yards before the stone lip, I drop down and crawl on my stomach, flattening myself out as much as possible. I can see almost as far from here as on the higher lookout—but this time at the backside of this peak, looking east onto the Sonoran plain below. And there they are, the little army assembled to come after me.
They’re a mile or more away. I take out my scope to get a clearer look. Right in the very middle of them is Ms. Evil herself, none other than Diablita Loca. She really does want to drink my blood. While it is still warm and flowing from my veins. Next to her are two tall, heavy-muscled men. I recognize Big Boy by the scars on his cheeks. The woodpecker crest of hair on the man next to him, along with the scarlet armband he’s wearing, tells me that Red has jumped ship from Lady Time’s crew to join what he sees as the winning team.
Everyone, including Diablita, is armed with rifles, the M-16s from Guy’s armory. Some of the best guns ever made for human combat. So easy to take apart and clean that I was able to strip one down and reassemble it in total darkness by the time I was ten. Lightweight weapons, too, their straps easy on the shoulder. You can snap shots off one at a time or click it over to automatic and empty a thirty-round magazine in no time flat. And M-16s almost never jam.
But what catches my attention most are the tube-shaped objects carried by the three men fanned out in front. AT-4s.
Crap. I didn’t know we had any of those. They were not in Guy’s armory for sure. Must have been part of Diablita’s private stash. Or maybe somebody just found them and brought them up from an armory down in what used to be old Mexico. My life has just gotten a bit harder.
An AT-4 is nothing to worry about unless getting blown up real good is one of your concerns. It’s an .84 mm portable single-shot recoilless missile. Used in the old days as a tank killer or to destroy enemy fortifications. Especially when loaded with high explosive dual-purpose pounds, which have a heavy nose cap that allows the projective to penetrate a wall and then blow up or be skipped off the ground for an airburst.
It could be worse. It could be a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, which can be reloaded. At least an AT-4 is only good for one shot before it’s discarded.
They’ve brought those things along for more than just hunting me. They’re to provide protection against a bulkier threat than just this one little Apache girl. Yet another monster lurks in that area, a huge one, somewhere out in the plain behind them. Its tracks had been seen there, not far at all from Haven, huge, deep footprints. It’s the critter that I’d heard rumors about, the one I expected I was going to be sent after on my last mission. And it is one reason why our flight from Haven two nights ago had been in the opposite direction of where Diablita and her little army now are.
Be that as it may, with that many people and weapons such as those AT-4s, a frontal approach on Diablita’s forces does not seem like such a good idea right now.
The image of that back trail down the mountain comes into my mind. I picture myself going down it, circling behind my enemies so I can either make an escape or start to pick them off. I hold up my hands. My palms are burning. More enemies coming up the trail that Edwin followed.
Which means they probably heard that gunshot.
Rock-climbing time.
“Don’t just see the mountain,” Uncle Chatto once said. “Be the mountain.”
That is what I have to do now as I start my descent. It’s harder with a pack on my back than it would be unburdened. But I make allowances for that weight as I feel my way from one toehold and fingerhold to the next.
I’m not just climbing this cliff, I’m part of it. It feels good as my palms move over its surface. Caressed by the touch of the sun, the old stone is as warm as the skin of a living being.
Reach out now. Touch the mountain. Feel what it feels.
And something begins to happen. I feel a sensation not of weight, but of immeasurable lightness, and I know that it is this mountain’s spirit. I can’t hold onto it long, this lightness that is heavier than anything I have ever known before, but as I hold it I begin to know some of what it knows, feel the life that shimmers all over it, every plant, every insect and small animal. It is a beautiful feeling, a feeling like being within a prayer.
And with the mountain’s spirit helping me, I take a deep breath and move. The next thing I know I’m halfway down.
I take another deep breath. A feeling of flowing into the stones, of feeling the air embracing every part of this mountain, of roots of stone sinking deep beneath the surface of the earth.
And as if no time at all has passed, I find myself all the way down at the base. Off a mile to my left is where I saw the main body of Diablita’s men. I can’t see them now because of the rise and fall of the scrub that grows here and there, screening my view. I chart the path I need to follow to get close to them without being seen.
The sun has moved the width of a hand across the sky by the time I reach the point I’ve chosen. I am well concealed here, behind a thick tangle of hopseed and sage bush. But I can still peer through and see what is before me. Fifty yards to my left is the mouth of a very narrow and brushy arroyo. It’s no more than twenty feet wide at its mouth. I’ve been through it before and I know all its twists and turns and choke points. That little valley was carved out of the living land by the many generations of flood waters that have come down every now and then after cloudbursts in the high country above here. It’s the sort of place where one person might be able to hold off a small army of attackers, retreating step by step, making her attackers pay their toll in casualties. But to get there I have to cross open ground and pass the right flank of Diablita’s men, including those with the three rocket launchers.
No need to try anything like that yet.
There, no more than a long stone’s throw away, Diablita is standing. Her posture is as impassive as the mask that hides her face.
CHAPTER FORTY
The Walking Hill
I watch, my presence still unnoticed, as Diablita turns to Big Boy.
“Take two more men,” she says. “See why the men we sent into that canyon over there haven’t returned.”
She’s talking about the narrow arroyo where I was planning to take refuge and lure them in after me. The arroyo over past that smooth brown hill a hundred feet from them.
A hill? I do not remember a hill being there in the past. Nor did I see it when I was looking down with the scope from the lookout. Then I realize why.
“AWWWROOOO!”
With an ear-splitting roar, that hill rears up, revealing itself to be a huge, earth-brown creature with a gigantic horned head.
Time to run.
I rapidly retreat back up into the relative safety of the big tumbled stones on the slope behind me. From there I watch the chaotic scene unfolding below. I’m above the bushes that screened me, but no one is about to look my way.
The beast, that same one that I might have been sent out to dispatch, has charged into the mass of men who are scattering in every direction. I no longer see Diablita Loca, Big Boy, or Red. They were the furthest from the monster and may have retreated back into the saguaro forest to my left. But I do see lots of other bodies on the ground. Six, now seven, now eight men, crushed
under the creature’s feet. At least thirty feet tall at its massive front shoulders, it resembles an immense American buffalo. Except the sides of its body are covered with thick plates like an armadillo’s.
Outside of viddies, I’ve never seen any living buffalo, those bison that once covered the plains of this continent like a great brown carpet, their thundering hooves raising dust clouds to the sky. They were all gone before I was alive. I heard that there were efforts to restore the herds from those that survived, but they carried some disease that killed domestic cattle. So a virus was bio-engineered to wipe out the buffalo a second time.
But some of their DNA was kept to create such unnatural beasts as the one wreaking havoc among Diablita’s unfortunate crew right now. It’s cutting through them like a scythe through weeds. Screaming men are being trampled by its wide hooves and tossed in the air by its huge sharp horns.
A bulky blond man who had been standing a few yards in front of Diablita, Red, and Big Boy didn’t retreat with them. He is holding his ground. Lars is his name. Another Chainer. He aims at the creature’s side and empties his thirty-shot magazine. When the bolt locks on the empty chamber, with the dextrous moves of an expert killer, Lars ejects and inverts the magazine to jam in the second magazine he jungle-clipped onto the first. He raises the gun and presses the trigger again.
Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!
I doubt that even one shot missed the mark, striking the creature’s side exactly where the heart should be. I also doubt that any of those small caliber rounds had any more effect than a peashooter.
Those heavy plates on its body seems to be impervious to small arms fire. But those shots do have one effect. They draw the giant gemod’s attention to Lars.
It sweeps its head to the side, piercing him in the belly with the sharp tip of one of its curved horns, tosses its head up, opens its mouth and . . . gulp! Bye-bye, Lars.
And although I am still running as fast as I can, I do notice that this monster’s biological antecedents are not those of normal hooved animals. Not with those fangs and that appetite. Part wolverine, maybe.
I reach the mouth of the canyon and stop for a moment. One benefit of not being the object of this lethal critter’s affection is that, for once, I have the opportunity to observe a monster’s mode of attack without being the target. It charges with its head down, hooks and gores with its horns, tramples with its massive hooves. It’s decimated about two-thirds of Diablita’s little army in the time it has taken me to count to twenty.
And now it is pausing to graze—if you could call crunching down corpses grazing. Time for me to study it for any weaknesses. It’s well protected in front by its heavy skull and its horns. Its side has that thick-plated skin. But as it turns away from me to pick up yet another body, I notice that its hindquarters look less protected. Maybe vulnerable to a high-explosive projectile.
I’d love to have one of those AT-4s in my hands right now. Like the three that lie discarded and unfired on the plain below, not far from the mouth of my rocky arroyo. The men carrying them were so panicked by that first charge that they lacked either the calmness or the time to deploy them. When one passing sweep of a deadly horn disemboweled the first AT-4 man and sent his weapon flying, the other two dropped their weapons and tried to run. But they didn’t get far before being flattened under those splayed hooves.
I’ve counted now to forty and one pony. That is all the time it has taken for the giant buffalo to complete its task of wiping out an entire little army. Every man out there is either dead or about to be deceased. Those who are wounded and moaning from the pain are the ones attracting the monster’s attention as it moves leisurely over the field of carnage.
It’s still turned away from me. The wind is blowing from its direction towards mine. Maybe a more cautious person would use this opportunity to escape further up the arroyo. But I have been given a task to fulfill in this life. It’s not just to please those who have used me as a human weapon. To preserve life, you must protect life. And as long as unnatural monsters such as this one are able to walk about on the earth, it will not be safe for life. I am Killer of Enemies. It is my job to slay this monster.
Or at least try.
I take a little pollen out of the pouch on my belt, offer it. Then I begin to sing very softly under my breath. Singing, singing, I make my way through the rocks, through the brush, and out onto the plain.
Let my enemy not see me.
Let mist cover its eyes.
Let me succeed in my task.
Let me help the People.
I stay low on my belly as I crawl toward the first AT-4. I lift it, draw it back to me very slowly to avoid any sound of metal scraping against stone. It’s the only one I can get to right now. The monster is between me and the other two rocket launchers.
I start to move back. The buffalo stays where it is. Wait! It is starting to shift its head in my direction.
“No! I don’t want to die,” someone moans.
The monster turns toward the bleeding and delirious man who’s just pushed himself up to his knees fifty yards away. The monster takes three big stalking steps.
“Noooooo! Aghhh!”
As the man’s cries are cut short, I start to crawl. Ten feet, twenty feet, fifty.
I continue back until I am again out of sight from the plain behind me. I scan my surroundings, the old sedimentary stones carved into pillars by wind and water over the long passing of time. There’s a spot deeper into the arroyo that looks perfect. It’s just a little above the floor of the small valley among the roots of an old pinon pine. I walk back in, climb up, move aside a few broken branches, shift a stone. Perfect. I remove the safety pin at the end of the tube, position the weapon where I can pick it up and aim it easily when I’m ready to fire it.
But one shot may not be enough. So I venture back out a second time. I leave the arroyo, softly chanting my song.
Let my enemy not see me.
Let mist cover its eyes.
Let me succeed in my task.
Let me help the People.
Once again the wind stays in my face. The giant buffalo is continuing its gruesome grazing. It’s moved away from the second AT-4. I lift the heavy weapon with its lethal rocket. It seems untouched. I retreat to the arroyo again, this time to a second spot I’ve picked out. It’s a hundred paces closer to the little canyon’s mouth and though on the same side of the canyon, at a forty-five degree angle to the first one. And I can reach the first AT-4 I placed near the pinon pine by scrambling through and under a jumble of stones that form something like a narrow tunnel.
I take out the safety pin from the second rocket launcher, position it.
That was the easy part. I take three deep breaths and return to the arroyo’s mouth. My careful movements, my song—and my luck—have worked thus far to avoid my being seen, but now I have to do just the opposite.
The third AT-4 is the one that was being carried by the man hooked by the giant buffalo’s horn. It’s the furthest from the arroyo. Fifty feet further. An eternity further. I stay as low to the ground as a sidewinder, move no more than a finger’s width at a time. I don’t bother to count.
Let my enemy not see me.
Let mist cover its eyes.
Let me succeed in my task.
Let me help the People.
Aside from my song I try to avoid any thought. The sun beats down on me. It makes my mouth dry, beads my forehead with sweat. The small breeze that was blowing has stopped. As I crawl, the sand beneath me is sticky from spilled blood. The stench of death is all around me. Spilled organs, voided bladders and bowels. It’s so quiet that I can hear every crunch of bone and flesh as the monster buffalo continues to feed on the bodies. It’s more than forty yards from me.
And then my hands are grasping the metal tube, so hot from the blazing sun that it burns my fingertips. I pull the AT-4 to me, pull out the firing pin. It makes a small click as I do so and I think I see one of the giant
buffalo’s ears move. I make sure that I am lying on my stomach with my legs well to the side so I won’t burn myself with the back blast—a mistake people sometimes make that is almost as bad as frying an unwary comrade behind you.
No worries about that, Lozen. You are on your own here, girl.
I move back the front and rear sight covers. With an all-too-audible click, the sights pop up in the firing positions. I remove the first safety by moving the firing rod cock lever on the left. Forward, then over the top to the right. Another click and another movement of that ear, back in my direction.
The giant buffalo starts to turn as I hold down the red safety lever in front of the cocking lever, my aim on its huge left hip. I press the firing button with my left thumb.
FWOOOOSH!
As the fin-stabilized projectile explodes from the front, a giant rooster tail of fire bursts out of the back of the firing tube over my back and I feel it searing the side of my right calf, despite the fact that my legs are off to the side.
WHOMP!
It hits the monster halfway through its turn, but more in its flank and less in the more vulnerable hindquarters than I’d hoped. The explosion staggers the creature but doesn’t knock it down.
Not enough.
I toss the empty tube, leap to my feet and sprint toward the arroyo.
“AWROOOO!”
The enraged bellow and the irregular thudding of hooves coming up from behind me is enough to chill my blood, but not enough to slow me down at all.
Dad once said that with my long limbs, my big lungs, and my fast-twitch reflexes I was built to be a world-class sprinter, and if they still had Olympic Games I could have been a gold medal winner. The only prize I want to win right now is the right to keep breathing.
I can hear the giant buffalo’s feet pounding behind me, feel its hot breath on my neck as I reach the arroyo’s mouth and veer down into it. That mouth is wide enough for me to pass through without pausing, but the big stones that choke its entrance are enough, I hope, to slow my pursuer.
Killer of Enemies Page 24
