He leaned against Susan as they both stared into the throbbing orange and yellow embers. Their clothes smelled of sweat mixed with the musk of mammoths. Alex preferred this sharp but resonant aroma to the infrequent, expensive perfumes his wife felt obligated to wear at ecological fundraisers—like the recent one she’d skipped in Miami.
Under the stars, Alex helped with the bedding down chores, glad for the chance to get his hands dirty rather than just pound on a computer keyboard all day. It felt good, and safe, to be out here, “just like a real person.”
The crackling wood made him think of the prehistoric hunters, Cro-Magnon warriors who had tracked herds like this using spears and pits and cliffs to kill the giant animals for food, fur, and ivory.
Like the restored bison on the Great Plains, Susan’s dream-experiment might turn out to be so wildly successful that large numbers of these once-extinct creatures could roam the open Montana range. They might wander north into Saskatchewan and Alberta, heading up toward the subarctic regions for which their huge bodies were designed.
He had been so focused on working one generation after another, converging toward a full-blood woolly mammoth, that he had not let his mind wander far into future possibilities.
“Maybe one day we’ll have a large herd of mammoths that breed true and reproduce in the wild.” He ran fingers over Susan’s hair, recalling Kinsman’s concern (one of his few legitimate ones) about the impact a sizable group of such huge grazers would have on the landscape and environment. What if they had to thin the herd? “Can you imagine if we had enough of them that we could even sponsor a good old-fashioned mammoth hunt?”
Cassie, very protective of the animals, glared across the fire at him. “What! Use guns on my mammoths?” She had been working here only two years, but the mammoths were hers. “Not unless you play fair.” The girl’s firm lips curled into a devilish grin on her freckled face. “Dress your big-game hunters in furs, then send them out with stone axes and sapling spears. Pleistocene rules. I don’t think you’d get many takers.”
“Not me,” Susan said. “Not for all the testosterone in the world.”
Alex returned a noncommittal smile. He did not argue, but he knew both women were wrong. Over the years, he had encountered any number of too rich, too bored, dot-com millionaires or genetics patent holders—people who had delusions of immortality and an overblown sense of necessary machismo.
Even with Pleistocene rules, Alex knew he could find plenty of takers.…
As he bedded down next to Susan, the moon continued to rise, spilling silver light. Even here, as isolated as one could be in the continental US, he felt as if he were under a spotlight. He couldn’t sleep, and he knew Susan was awake and thinking beside him.
Below, the mammoths sounded restless. Snuffles and loud snorts rippled through the big animals. Most of them seemed awake. On the other side of the fire, young Cassie sat alone, her knees drawn up to her chin as she stared down into the valley, reflecting the animals’ uneasiness.
Alex couldn’t imagine what possible threats or predators could worry the gigantic prehistoric beasts this deep within ranch property. “Are they like this every night?”
Impishly, Cassie raised her eyebrows. “I do have quarters of my own back in the complex, Dr. Pierce. Sleeping outdoors is a treat for me, too.”
A bright meteor streaked overhead, low and horizontal, like a rocket on the Fourth of July. It came over the line of trees on the ridge, flying hot, traveling with a speed and deadly accuracy that surpassed any shooting star.
Make a wish …
Susan was already on her feet, leaping out of the blankets on the damp ground. “It’s heading toward the lab complex!”
The trail of fire faded into orange against midnight blue, and the incandescent arrow struck the valley behind them with a bright flash. The main Helyx compound. A muffled whump.
As Alex lurched to his feet, the implanted pager tingled again. “Boss, we’ve been hit down here. Somebody sent in a mini-cruise, I’d say. Hit the pines close to the Hospital … still trying to assess the damage.”
“A mini-what?” Alex subvocalized, and his words went back to Ralph.
“Backpack-sized cruise missile, Boss. Short-range, with a nose full of high explosive. A man can carry one a fair way, then launch it from a rack.”
Susan was already racing for her horse while Alex paused to get an update. “I’m going there!” she shouted and swung herself up bareback. “Short Stuff and Middle Man are still in the corral.”
“Wait! You can’t do anything—”
“Just work things out with Ralph,” she called over her shoulder, then raced her horse down the four-wheel-drive road and disappeared into the shadowed trees. He had never seen her ride like that before.
Reacting on instinct, Cassie was at their supply packs. She withdrew the two shotguns she had carried with them, ostensibly for protection against coyotes or bears.
Alex didn’t need to think hard about who might have done such a thing. “Kinsman was a decoy,” he said to Ralph. “Him and his supposedly reasonable discussion, he was just a plant to get inside. But how could they target the hospital in the dark and from so far away?”
“I’m willing to bet they targeted this place with those microwave echoes I keep hearing. If Kinsman planted some sort of passive echo locator—”
“His pen! Damn, I didn’t even think! He left it on purpose. They could have targeted from that. I’m packing up Cassie, and we’ll be right down there.”
Before Alex could switch off, the security chief said, “Wait—that’s gunfire. Jesus, those bastards are coming in from the south gate!” Ralph’s voice strayed for a moment as he barked orders to a security crew, who scrambled in response. “The Hospital’s in flames, Boss. We’re sending people in to try and rescue the animals.”
“Keep yourself safe,” Alex barked. “Susan’s already on her way.” He thought of the two adult mammophants in the corral, the wonderful dodos and moas, all the exotic and frightening animals he kept in the solid-wall pens in the back of the Hospital. And all of his people. He prayed his wife would be safer down there with Ralph and his crew than up here. “We’re coming in—”
Another thin patter of popgun shots rang out. Alex thought he was getting Ralph’s background noise until Cassie cried, “Just below us!”
“Ralph, we’ve got intruders up here, too.”
“Clement Valley! Jesus, do you want me to send a—”
“You just do your job there. And watch Susan’s back, dammit.”
He shut down his link and studied the shadowy trees. Another few shots, yes, nearby. One of the mammoths bellowed in surprise, or perhaps pain, sounding like a squeaky cannon.
“Hey!” Cassie tossed Alex one of the shotguns, and he caught it instinctively. The weapon felt hard and cold and strange in his hand. She looked at him with an anguished face. “Maybe that missile hitting the Hospital was just to get our forces away—so they could come up here and kill my mammoths.” She swung herself up onto her already frightened mare and bent low, snatching the tether rope. “I’m going down to the herd.”
The gunshots came faster as she rode hard down into the valley.
“Wait!” Alex called after her—pointlessly—then got his butt in gear.
He mounted his own gelding and followed her into the darkness. Here he was, the head of a gigantic international corporation—and his wife and a young girl had both jumped into action while he stood around and talked to himself.
The horses were already uneasy with the smell of the mammoths, and the pattering gunfire spooked his mount even more. He caught up to the young ranch hand as she tried to see down into the darkness. “You leave the mammoths alone!”
“Quiet!” he urged, fearing the shadowy attackers might target Cassie instead of the animals.
Sharp, flat shots from their left.
Alex saw dim shapes running, stalking closer, as if intimidated by coming so close to the prehistoric b
easts. Simple rifles would have little effect on a woolly mammoth, he thought—just before another round of muffled percussive bangs.
A few seconds, then distant explosions came from the open valley floor.
“Grenade launchers.”
“You bastards!” Cassie screamed.
“Hush! They don’t know we’re up here.” He and the young ranch hand were still on a slope above the trees, a hundred meters from the open grassland. They urged their horses closer. It was quiet for a moment, a deathly stillness.
The mammoths churned about, grunting, drawing closer like covered wagons circling against a Comanche attack. Amazingly, acting on instinct, the bigger bulls formed outer ranks, clearly to protect the rest of the herd. The alpha male, Bullwinkle, with its huge tusks and russet fur, snorted and moved forward like a locomotive, looking for an enemy.
No sign of the shadowy figures, but the fringe forests offered plenty of cover.
Alex knew that Cassie’s first thought was for Majestica, the pregnant female about to give birth to the first pure mammoth. They rode toward her, and Alex prayed the beasts could tell the difference between friendly humans and deadly ones.
Abruptly, scarlet fireballs burst a hundred meters away … and another right on top of them. One of the wild grenades struck Majestica between the shoulders, and the impact knocked even the giant female battleship flat to the ground, her upper body cratered with ragged, flash burn wounds.
Cassie screamed. She threw herself off her horse and raced to the fallen pregnant female.
Alex waved his shotgun around, then took a few high potshots, hoping the retaliatory gunfire would at least stall the attackers, send them scrambling for cover. But it was a pitiful gesture at this range. None of the terrorists came out of the tree line.
Gunshots rang out and ineffectual bullets peppered the mammoth-elephant hybrids, sending them trumpeting into a frenzy. Some charged, stopped, trumpeted. But the big male Bullwinkle thundered into the night, toward the attackers hiding in the trees.
Alex dismounted and came up beside a determined but weeping Cassie. His heart wrenched, knowing they had all been betrayed. The young woman impatiently swiped tears from her eyes and got to work. “Damn, Dr. Pierce—I don’t have the equipment for this!”
Back in the forest, startled shouts turned to shrieks. Alex could well imagine the giant bull trampling the bastards into paste on the ground. Bullwinkle hooted, a powerful bellow that brought more shrill screams. A grenade burst near the beast, then the big mammoth was into the trees, smashing branches, splintering trunks, following the panicked outcries.
More screams. He did not think further about what Bullwinkle was doing. He could see only the pregnant mammoth’s blood shining dark and wet in the moonlight. “Don’t worry. I’ll help,” he said to Cassie. Corporate CEO bullshit, but it seemed to be what she needed to hear. He knelt beside her, trying to anticipate what the young woman was trying to do. She worked with utter concentration, adrenaline, and desperation, staving off panic.
As he tore off his shirt and wadded it up into a large pad—nowhere near enough, he saw, as he pressed it into the gaping wound—he heard a faint sound and looked around. Other mammoth hybrids bellowed, but the gunfire had halted for the moment. Bullwinkle’s work?
The whispery sound of feet in the sedge grasses came nearer. Cassie didn’t notice it. Bare-chested, Alex backed away from the dying animal, leaving his shirt to soak up a gusher of blood. He smelled gunpowder and meat. “They’re coming back,” he said. Grabbing his shotgun from the trampled ground, he moved as quietly as he could around Majestica’s massive bulk.
“Keep them the hell away from my mammoths,” Cassie said, her voice thin. She didn’t even look up from Majestica.
Alex jacked a shell into the shotgun, hoping the flat clack-click sound would be enough of a deterrent. Never. Halfway around the heaving beast, he crouched down, looking across the moonlit expanse.
He cursed himself as much as the fanatics. He had underestimated their dedication, dismissing them entirely. He had scoffed at their mindset, never giving them credit for a zeal that would push them beyond theoretical protests. How could they be so vehement? There was a long, precarious bridge between waving signs and launching missiles, but Kinsman and his Evos had crossed it.
He’d considered the Luddites to be quaint, backward, even silly. Now they had proved deadly. Causes had always attracted violent crusaders whose actions seemed inexplicably extreme to most people—pro-lifers shooting abortion doctors, environmentalists “protecting the Arizona desert” by setting fire to luxury homes. Could any ends justify such means?
The Evo crusaders came out of the trees, hunched over as they emerged from the protective shadows. They were competent enough, moving quickly, not talking. But Alex saw the reflection of their eyes as they covered the last twenty meters. Three that he could see, two headed directly this way, weapons ready … thinking they had already won.
He raised the shotgun and a lot of thoughts ran through his mind. It was easy enough to think you could shoot at an enemy, someone with a grease-blackened face and cradling a grenade launcher, pistol strapped at his waist. But when it was a kid of maybe twenty …
The kid raised an arm to his comrades, who immediately squatted and aimed—at Majestica. And Cassie! They knew their target. They knew exactly what they intended to shoot.
And Alex had no time left for doubt. Executives, he often said to others, were people who could make decisions on time. Well, here was one. He shot the kid with a spray of pellets. He hit him in the legs, but square on.
Alex did not let himself hear the screaming as he jacked the next shell in, sighted on a man who had half-risen to his feet and was swinging a long-barreled weapon toward Alex. “Cassie, get down!” he yelled, then sighted and squeezed off the round. The feel of the gun was as natural as when he’d potted away at clay pigeons on weekends, long ago.
Now the third Evo, a woman—but she was already running away. He let the terrorist take three more strides to be sure she was out of lethal range. The blast of pellets against her shoulders and backpack did not knock her down, but she cried out, and ran even faster in a headlong stagger back toward the trees.
The first kid was yelling, rolling around with his bloody-hamburger legs drawn up to his chest. The second man lay still; Alex didn’t even know where he’d hit the terrorist. The woman made it to the trees, where Bullwinkle was still crashing around. Alex kept down—the Evos had plenty of distance weapons and would be looking toward the source of his shots.
“Dr. Pierce! I need your help here!” Cassie sounded closer to panic than he had ever heard her.
Slinging the shotgun low, ready to spin around and open fire again into the night, Alex scrambled back around the dying Majestica.
Susan rode hard, and her horse was hot, its mouth foaming as she careened down the bumpy jeep road. She could see the darkness of trees and night blended with probing beams of hard white surveillance lights ahead.
She and Alex had always talked about beefing up security in an apron covering the entire approach from the south gate. When the protesters had settled in, they’d brought their own lights, as well as coolers of food and drink, so they could squat down and begin chants and drum beating in a general disruptive “people power” party. They kept it up until the early hours, youthful idealism uniting with the universal instinct to party. Annoying, certainly, and frustrating—but nothing to be taken seriously.
That had been their biggest mistake.
Occasionally, those little protests had only been a distraction, a cover for one or two Evos to slip past the fencing and guard stations in the dark. Once inside, though, they had no good idea which targets to go for, what vandalism to accomplish. Inept commandos, they generally blundered into staff housing or maintenance sheds, which had been deliberately disguised to look like laboratories and stables.
But now, the log-fronted Pleistocene Hospital was on fire. They had struck directly to the
heart of the retrograde evolution project.
“Damn you,” she said. “Damn you all.” She kicked her horse, riding harder.
The tall pines surrounding the corral had become torches in the night, crackling resinous flames. From inside the high reinforced fences she heard a roar, an indescribable screaming cry that sounded like nothing human. Short Stuff and Middle Man, the first two mammophant hybrids, were still in there, far from the safety of the rest of their herd … brought back to the ranch buildings for regular health monitoring.
Susan dismounted from her gray mare before the horse had even come to a stop. She hit the ground running and, frightened by the noise and the smoke, the exhausted mare trotted away in confusion. The fire from the Ponderosa pines had already descended to the corral fence. Susan slammed through the gate, calling out to the two oldest mammophants.
Middle Man had backed to the far corner, away from the burning trees, away from the light. The big male trumpeted a sound like anguish, obviously frightened and confused. He bled from several wounds in his thick hide, but the injuries seemed relatively minor. Susan didn’t even stop to consider whether Middle Man might charge her.
In the center of the trampled enclosure lay Short Stuff, collapsed to the ground like a defeated calf in a rodeo spectacle. High-powered gunshots had blasted both of her forelegs, ripping gouges in muscle and bone until the female hybrid had crashed. Short Stuff chuffed and hooted as she struggled on the grass, her legs bloody and useless appendages.
In shock, revulsion, and helplessness, Susan swayed backward, grabbed for the corral fence to support herself, but missed. Watery-kneed, she sank down, and froze, utterly unable to do anything. Short Stuff trumpeted again in unspeakable pain.
Ralph Duncan strode into the corral, swinging his head from side to side, taking in details. His eyes had always looked world-wise, as if they’d already seen everything, but now his face had a disgusted horror. “God damn! God damn!”
He strode forward like an avenger, holding the powerful rifle at his side. Susan made a strangled sound, and he whirled, ready to shoot, but when he recognized her, his expression instantly changed. “Miz Pierce!”
Selected Stories: Volume 1 Page 25
