Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  With a lithe leap, Hella sprang up onto Daisy's foreleg and vaulted into the saddle. The mountain boomer shifted restlessly and tossed her head. She didn't like being around dead things either, unless she was eating them, and Hella knew for a fact that Daisy would eat an armadillo biker. She'd seen Daisy do it before, and the experience had left her queasy for hours.

  Hella took first watch that night. She bedded Daisy down then took her sniper rifle, her low-light binocs, and a bag of food with her when she walked down the hill to take up a position outside camp. Halfway through the night, Stampede intended to relieve her.

  She wasn't as tired as she'd normally have been. Despite the battle at the trade camp and the nightmares, she'd gotten more sleep than she was used to. She already missed the bath. After hours of riding and walking the trails, she was covered in road dirt and had a few bites from insects that had refused to be scared off by the repellant Pardot insisted on being used around the expedition. She was back to situation normal.

  The repellant was a bad idea too. Most creatures would get a nose full of it and head for somewhere else, which could make for bad hunting if they needed it. But the scent would draw human or humanoid creatures that knew what it was.

  She unwrapped one of the journey cakes they'd purchased at the trade camp. Carnegie traded hams for corn and had the grain milled at a small town north of the camp. When the grain came back to Blossom Heat, they stored it and used it.

  The journey cake was cornbread seasoned with wild honey and blackberries and sprinkled with sausage. It was one of Hella's favorites, but it tended to go bad quickly, so it had to be eaten quickly. In two, three days at most, the cakes would be gone and they'd have to stop at a trade camp again to get them. They were also expensive, and if she hadn't salvaged as much as she had from the dead biker gang, she knew Stampede wouldn't have purchased as many as he had.

  She sat with her legs folded under herself, in the open under a spreading elm because she wanted to be able to hear the sounds of the night around her. Riley's men often tried to stand post up against a tree or a rock, doubtless thinking that they were getting shelter. Hella knew what they were also doing was blinding their senses because those shelters also blocked sight and sound.

  After she'd pinched the journey cake to pieces and fed herself, she sipped from her canteen and gazed at the stars. With all the bad weather gone for the time being, the black sky appeared shot full of diamonds.

  Except one of them was falling.

  Hella focused on the falling star. She'd seen them before but not often. The one she looked at was strange. It had appeared out of nowhere. The trajectory seemed slow; then she realized it wasn't slow at all because it was getting bigger and bigger.

  It took her only a moment longer to be certain that the falling star was streaking right for their position. She stood, knowing it was already too late to run.

  CHAPTER 13

  Stampede!" Hella held on to her rifle and watched as the meteor—she was certain that was what she was looking at—rushed closer. It looked like a fireball as it rocketed across the sky.

  Back at the camp, security lamps blazed to life and aimed at the sky. Tracking lasers from the security bots kicked on and strobed the night, finally intercepting the meteor.

  "I see it!" Stampede sounded anxious. "It's gonna miss us!"

  Hella saw that then, and she relaxed a little. In the next instant, the meteor hurtled by overhead, less than a hundred meters above them. Later she would have sworn she felt the heat of its passing, but she wasn't sure if that were just her imagination adding detail. Despite the fact that it zoomed past in an instant, time seemed frozen.

  Then the meteor was gone, rocketing into the horizon to the east. The sonic booms caught up with her then, cracking and thundering all around her. The ground quivered or maybe she was just shaking all over. She wasn't sure.

  The meteorite hit the ground in the distance. A huge eruption of flames lit up the night and stretched for the heavens. Then the fiery mass collapsed back to the ground. Less than a moment later, the horrendous boom of the meteorite striking the earth reached her ears.

  An orange glow remained visible on the eastern horizon.

  Then Colleen screamed into the night.

  At first Hella tried to remain out on guard duty. She didn't want anything to do with the madness taking part inside the camp. Riley's men rousted everyone from slumber and called a meeting together. All the voices, the yelling and the cursing, carried to Hella over Stampede's comm link.

  "Pardot wants to break camp and get moving." Stampede clearly wasn't happy about the possibility.

  "Why?"

  "He says this is the event they've been waiting for. This is the ripple Colleen saw in a vision that they came here for."

  "A hunk of fried space rock?"

  "I don't know." Stampede sighed tiredly. "Pardot's not saying what it is."

  "It could be anything, and whatever it was"—Hella emphasized the past tense of the word—"it's not that anymore. No way it could be anything after hitting the ground like that."

  "Doesn't matter. Pardot's convinced that this is what they want. Either we're going to lead him there or he's going to set off on his way without us."

  Hella stared at the burning glow in the distance. The meteorite wouldn't be impossible to find as long as it stayed on fire. And the longer it stayed on fire, Hella was certain, the less of whatever it was would be there to find.

  She walked back up to camp, ready to follow Stampede's lead.

  Less than twenty minutes later, Hella still couldn't believe how quickly Riley and his people could break camp or that the group was mobile. She sat astride Daisy and led the way along the trail to the east. They'd caught a break there: the way they wanted to travel and the trade route Stampede had elected to follow coincided with one another.

  She took her readings from a compass and plotted the course through instinct and memory. Stampede stayed more toward the middle of the caravan, where he could provide some cover in case Hella had to retreat from the front.

  Their path took them higher up into the Buckled Mountains. By the time morning tinted the eastern sky pink and gold, they'd gone into the highlands, out of the cover of the forest. Red-tailed hawks skated on the winds and watched over them. Carrion eaters, crows and vultures that had come up out of Texas, kept watch over the caravan as well.

  At the top of the rise, a good hundred meters in the lead, Hella took up her canteen from the strap around the saddle horn and gazed back the way they'd come. Some of the expedition's land-crawling vehicles struggled with the incline and the soft ground as they forced themselves upward. Every now and again, a supply wagon lost traction, skidded, and became a danger to everyone below it. Several guards walked alongside the supply wagons, helping keep them in motion.

  Although she looked for Colleen, Hella never spotted the woman. She assumed Pardot had Colleen locked down.

  Curiosity nagged at Hella as she wiped sleep from her eyes. No one had mentioned what the falling star might have been. She suspected Riley and his men didn't know either because they were full of questions as well.

  So far they'd been lucky with the Sheldons. The biker gang hadn't come around. She assumed the Purple Dragons had turned back to the south, maybe looking for action in the border towns where Mexico, Texas, and the Redblight crashed into each other along the Raider River.

  She climbed down from Daisy, got a water bag, and tied it to the mountain boomer's face. Glugging with slow deliberation, Daisy drank her fill then whined for a handful of treats till Hella gave them up.

  Then Hella remounted and they got under way again. She couldn't tell for certain how far away the impact site was, and either the fires had dimmed or the morning had leached their color away. She kept her rifle naked across her pommel and watched the surrounding land. There were a lot of hiding places behind the large rocks and in the crevasses caused by the earthquakes that had ripped through the land after the collider had exp
loded.

  She reached into a saddle and took out a crushable boonie hat that kept the sun off her head and neck. She pulled the hat on and kept going.

  An hour later they reached the main trade road that cut through the heart of the mountains. Little grass grew along the trail because it was constantly cut and shifted by horses' hooves and vehicles.

  An old man and three small children sat in the shade of an unfurled canvas tarp that stuck out from the mountainside along the road. The man's black skin didn't show any signs of disease, and the three children looked healthy, but they quickly hid back up in the rocks behind the old man, moving as sure-footedly as goats.

  "Hold up, Stampede." Hella glanced to her left and right and waved Riley's wingmen back.

  "What's going on?"

  "Looks like maybe we got someone stranded." Hella surveyed the mountainsides on either side of the trail. "Or he's bait in a trap."

  At one time, before the collider had exploded, the area had been a road. Rusted remnants of metal guides and blocky stumps of the highway remained. The broken pavement made the going hard for wheeled, tracked, and hoofed mounts. Daisy negotiated the path easily, one of the benefits of being a lizard and not a traditional horse.

  "I see him. Got my scope on him now."

  "I'm not worried about him as much as I am the three kids."

  "Did they have weps?"

  "None that I could see. Of course, they could have plenty in those rocks. This doesn't even have to be all of them."

  "Go slow."

  Hella put her heels to Daisy's sides, and the big lizard went forward slowly, just as she'd been trained. After wrapping the reins around her saddle pommel, Hella morphed her hands into weapons.

  Moving slowly, the old man slid out from under the canvas tarp and held his hands level with his shoulders to his sides. His clothing consisted of rags and red dust mixed in with the gray in his curly, black hair. He spoke in a hoarse voice. "If you intend mischief or murder, I'll tell you now that I've got nothing of value left to me. We've been robbed and all but killed these past few days. Them that took from us took all my weapons, everything worth anything. They left us just our lives, and I don't think that was done out of kindness." He touched a swollen spot over his right eye. "I only ask that you let these children be. They ain't harmed nobody and only had the bad luck of being practically born orphans."

  "Neither mischief nor murder." Hella repeated the old trade road hail from habit. "Just travel. I'm Hella. A scout. Who are you?"

  "DaBen. It's a simple name 'cause I'm a simple man."

  "Where are you from?"

  "Other side of the Buckled Mountains. Barely escaped with our lives, and we lost a lot of good people. Trade camp where me and these children lived done got burned out by a biker gang."

  "The Purple Dragons?"

  DaBen lifted an eyebrow in surprise. "That would be them. You know of 'em?"

  "They attacked Blossom Heat a couple days ago."

  "We were headed there." DaBen frowned. "Does it still stand?"

  "It does but we burned a lot of Purple Dragons along the wall."

  DaBen smiled. "Well, you done a good thing then, scout. Wish we could have made it there to be with you."

  "Where's your vehicle?"

  "Didn't have no vehicle. Had a mule, only he went lame nearly a week ago. We butchered him out as best we could then packed all the meat we were able to and came this way." DaBen pursed his lips, and dehydration showed in the cracks and blisters. "What meat we had went bad, and them little ones behind me ain't had any water in almost a day. The trade roads ain't been friendly to them that cain't take care of themselves."

  "Your luck's about to change." Hella slid down off the mountain boomer and switched her hands back before the man could notice them. She pulled her rifle down with her. Stampede had taught her to be charitable when she could be but never to be foolish.

  All of the children were younger than ten years. As she watched them stuffing their bellies with food she and Stampede had given them, Hella tried to remember what it was like to be that age and couldn't. Flashes of memory hit her, but all of them quickly faded.

  Two of the children were girls, one white and one black, and the boy was white as well. All of them were dressed in clothing equally as hard used as DaBen's.

  "Why are we stopping?" Pardot stood in front of Stampede while the bisonoid put together a kit of food and water.

  Stampede wrapped the food in a tanned hide and tucked the ends in before he rolled it. When he had everything in place, he tied rawhide strips around the ends so it would remain closed.

  Hella finished knotting a hide of her own. She felt guilty about the meager rations they were leaving the man and the children with, but Stampede had pointed out that the trio wouldn't be able to carry much in the way of supplies. DaBen was too weak, and the children were too small.

  And if we give them too much, they'll just become a target for someone else on the trade road that's willing to take advantage of weaker travelers, Hella told herself.

  "This man needs help with these kids." Stampede didn't stop his work.

  "That's none of our concern."

  "No, it's not. But I'm making it mine." Stampede stood and held the wrapped hide knobby with supplies.

  "You're giving them food?"

  "And water. Yes. It's mine and Hella's to give."

  "We've got to get moving."

  Stampede nodded. "We will."

  "Every minute we lose is another minute that someone else could beat us to that meteorite."

  "I know that but I also know that there's no reason to believe that someone hasn't already beaten us to it or that anything survived that impact."

  "It's there." Pardot was adamant.

  "What's there?"

  The three kids sat on the rocks and watched the argument with interest. Their quick, little fingers pinched bites of the journey cakes Hella had given them. She was going to miss those cakes, but it was good to see the children enjoying them.

  Colleen Trammell arrived, riding behind one of Riley's men on an ATV. For a moment she sat there and stared at the children. Then she slid off the vehicle a little unsteadily and reached into the travel carrier behind the ATV. She took out a medical bag and glanced at Hella. "Bring the children here. Let me see if they need anything."

  Hella didn't like being designated as nurse, but she knew the children would come closer to trusting her than they would Riley's men or women. The hardshells made the guards look dangerous.

  She crossed over to the children and to DaBen. "She's a doctor. She can check the little ones over for any kind of sickness."

  DaBen nodded and spoke briefly to the children, explaining that they should see the doctor. The children backed away despite DaBen's calm voice and his firmer tone.

  "Look." Hella fanned out flavored sugar sticks. The red, green yellow, and blue colors shone in the morning sun. "If you see the lady, I'll let you have these."

  One of the girls moved forward. "Sugar stick's okay but we want something else."

  "What?"

  "To pet your lizard."

  Hella smiled. "All right. But not till after Colleen's checked you over."

  One by one, Colleen examined the children. She bandaged a burn on the boy that was showing signs of infection then shot him up with antibiotics. She followed up with instructions to DaBen on how to continue to treat the wound.

  "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but I know how to treat wounds." DaBen seemed more embarrassed than affronted. "We just haven't had any meds."

  "Well, you do now." Colleen pressed a med kit into his hands.

  The little black girl had a cut down one forearm that would have required stitches. Instead of sewing her up, though, Colleen used some kind of glue that left a hard, protective surface.

  "Don't let her pick at that. As the wound heals, the glue will come off on its own." Colleen closed her medical bag and brushed a lock of hair back from her face. She looked pale and
sickly, and she shook a little bit. Hella guessed that she was still recovering from the drugs she'd been given.

  DaBen told her he would watch the children closely.

  Hella stood by Daisy's side as the three kids wandered around her, touching her skin and oohing and ahhing. Frustrated with standing in one spot and wanting a treat, Daisy bellowed her displeasure. The kids jumped back at once then—realizing that the monstrous lizard wasn't coming after them—unleashed gales of laughter, enjoying the sensation of being scared over something that ultimately wasn't scary.

  "Look at them." Colleen's whisper was full of amazement. "They're so innocent, even after all they've been through."

  Though it was hard, Hella held her tongue and didn't point out that innocence generally got a person killed as sure and as fast as anything. She knew that Colleen wasn't seeing those children. The woman was seeing Alice, and Hella was seeing that dead rodent bleeding from all orifices.

  "We can spare one pack animal." Stampede handed the reins of the small horse to DaBen. Most of the supplies the animal had carried had already been donated to the man and the children. "And if we weren't heading into more danger than you're in now I'd take you with us."

  Pardot stomped up at that, but a glare from Stampede sent the man into clanking retreat.

  "And there's this." Stampede handed DaBen an assault rifle, a pistol, and bandoliers of ammunition for both weapons. "I'm sorry we can't do more."

  Tears glistened in the old man's eyes. "You done enough, scout. It'll be a long ride from here to Blossom Heat, but I'll get these children there."

  Stampede smiled. "I know you will. When you get there, ask for Faust. Tell him Stampede and Hella sent you."

  "I'll do that. If you don't mind me asking, where are you headed?"