by James Axler
As the great beast leaped over a water-filled trench, scagworms dashed up an overhanging tilted slab of concrete and jumped. When the grave digger landed, the worms came down on its back.
Biting.
The men who had bet on the scagworms cheered while the worms sheared off great clumps of the grave digger’s fur with their jaws.
Whirling, the spiderlike monster shook off two of the black shapes. It scraped off two more with deft blows from its front legs. Then it jumped away before the rest of the pack could close in for the chill.
The worms riding on its back attacked its rear pair of legs at their join with the body. The power of the transverse jaws was immediately evident. In seconds they clipped those legs off cleanly, but in the process were thrown from the grave digger’s back. A creamy white fluid, perhaps blood, gushed from the still moving stumps.
The bucked-off scagworms fell upon the long limbs they had severed, cracking them like crab legs and digging out the meat.
The digger still had six legs to run on, and wasn’t noticeably slowed by the amputations. Twenty or thirty worms were in hot pursuit. Shiny black in the sun, they looked like fat, stubby snakes as they slithered over the broken ground in its wake.
Mildred watched the jittering, jerky, frenetic chase in fascination. It looked like a sped-up motion picture. Prey and predators splashed through pools and jumped over blocks of concrete. The worms showed no sign of real organization; they proceeded in straight lines over and through the obstacle course. Like radar-guided missiles. And it was every missile for itself. Instead of trying to encircle or trap their prey, instead of trying to bring it down, the worms were content to tear off manageable-size chunks for individual consumption.
Both species ignored the fodder bodies at their feet. Mildred couldn’t decide whether the worms were fighting over control of the turf and its spoils, or whether they just considered the grave digger dinner.
If the larger mutie was trying to defend its claim on the Sunspot body farm, the loss of its limbs changed its mind. It reversed course yet again, making for the relatively intact roadway leading out of the gorge. Mildred was astonished at the speed it made on flatter ground. She couldn’t even see its legs, they were moving so fast.
The grave digger quickly put distance between it and the low shapes in pursuit. It raced out of the mouth of the gorge and continued down the ruined highway, heading due west. As the distance increased between predator and prey, the horde of black specks gave up the chase. Their intended target left the interstate and disappeared over a rise in the desert scrub.
Along the berm top, the losers in the fighters’ betting pool cursed and kicked the dirt. The winners laughed and grinned as small quantities of jack and jolt changed hands.
If the scagworms were trannies, what the hell were they made of? Mildred asked herself. Instead of being a simple cross between two divergent species, they were more like a genetic stew. Of millipede. Giant cockroach. Rhinoceros beetle. Mebbe with a helping of anaconda on the side. Unlike the scagworms that had probably been protected in deeply buried, hardsited redoubt labs, the creatures that had provided snips of its component DNA hadn’t survived nukeday and the prolonged stresses of skydark.
Because of her training in predark science Mildred understood full well the danger of invasive species.
New life-form.
New attributes.
Bad news for existing organisms.
Even naturally occurring organisms had the potential for great harm. Killer bees, fire ants, zebra mussels had all taken their toll before Armageddon. In this case, the predator was much larger, and its limitations, if any, were unknown, and may well have been genetically engineered away. There was no information on the worm’s life history, nothing about maximum population densities or range size requirements. If what Sunspot had experienced so far was just the first wave of a much bigger invasion, a spear point driven into the belly of what once had been New Mexico, there was no telling how long it would last or how far it would penetrate.
Adaptation had no conscience and no foresight. It existed outside the individual organism. It was a mechanism of nature without the power of self-understanding or self-analysis. In the end, all that could be done was to cede territory to it, to set up boundaries and to try to maintain them.
“Look, they’re coming back,” Isabel said, pointing at the undulating black shapes flowing into the gorge. “Manna from heaven.”
Mildred turned on the ville’s head woman. “Are you out of your frigging mind?” she said. “Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
“What’s happening is that God has finally answered our prayers,” Isabel told her. “We will have plenty of food again.”
Hunter-gatherer wasteland becomes a hunter-gatherer paradise.
Hunter-gatherers had no obligation to look further than their next meal.
Sunspot ville was living proof that humanity hadn’t advanced an iota in the last fifteen thousand years.
“How can you be so stupid?” Mildred said.
“Easy, Mildred,” Ryan cautioned.
“Easy what? She sees the hand of God and I see extermination for every living thing within a thousand miles. What we’re looking at is a force of nature that can’t be anticipated or controlled. You won’t be eating the bugs, for long, lady. They’ll be eating you! Look down there!”
Back down on the field of death, the scagworms slithered into view. They began feeding at once. Not just on the bodies of the fodder. They also hunted down the living who hid among the rubble. The unarmed deserters, some mere children, screamed for help as they took to their heels. But there was no way for anyone on the berm to render help. The fastest, the youngest of fodder ran from the blown-up section of interstate, trying to escape the gorge.
“You ate scagworm flesh?” Mildred demanded of Doc.
The old man heard the question but didn’t respond. Perhaps because he was too busy fighting to keep down his dinner.
“It tasted like pork, huh?” Mildred said. “Maybe there’s a simple explanation for that. It’s called cannibalism, once removed.”
As they watched, the children and other deserters were chased down from behind and dragged to the ground. Five to ten worms set upon each victim, slashing great gashes in the torso then disappearing headfirst into the wounds. The deserters’ bodies jerked and flailed as they were tunneled and cored. The scagworms went in shiny black, but they emerged red and dripping
To Mildred, the mindless slaughter exemplified everything that was wrong with this world.
“Dammit to hell!” she cried.
She turned and half ran, half slid down the side of the berm. Blaster in hand, she barged past the fighters standing next to the gorge’s center gunpost entrance. She speed-crawled on hands and knees through the culvert, into the front seat of the half-buried Cadillac Escalade.
Seized by blind fury Mildred yanked the charging handle of the post’s M-60, dropped the sights and cut loose on the scagworms. She walked fire over the feeding muties, chewing up the rotten tarmac, blasting the worms to bits, shattering their carapaces. She managed to nail about half of the bastards before the rest slithered back to the blown-up section of road and solid cover.
Mildred eased off on the M-60’s trigger, her head wreathed in gunsmoke, spent brass piled around her feet. Breathing hard, heart pounding, she realized that someone was behind her in the SUV.
“Feel better now?” Ryan asked.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The gruesome show in the gorge over, Doc descended the berm with Isabel. She seemed withdrawn, subdued, pensive.
“Mildred made some cogent points about the danger, I thought,” he told her.
“You mean, your loose cannon girlfriend?”
“Mildred is hardly a romantic interest of mine. And I do believe an invasion by a hostile species like the scagworms could mean disaster for this ville.”
“I wouldn’t call what is happening an ‘invasion.’”
“But you said the number of scagworms has steadily and rapidly increased of late.”
“Yes.”
“I have witnessed their lethality, myself, in more than one arena. How can you deny the danger you and your people are in?”
“I don’t deny it. Sunspot folk are accustomed to danger. We’ve lived with it for many years, thanks to the barons. And we have learned how to handle the worms. And they can be handled, I assure you. We are top dog in the food chain in this corner of Deathlands.”
“Unless you count Malosh and Haldane.”
“We will defeat them, watch and see.”
“I trust you aren’t counting on the scagworms to help you do that. If you are, I must admit I am stunned.”
“And why shouldn’t we count on it?” Isabel snapped, her lovely eyes flashing. “The barons and their troops have no experience dealing with them. They don’t know anything about their defenses, their habits or breeding cycle. If the scagworms attack and chill the barons and their fighters, the people of Sunspot no longer have a problem.”
“My dear, you can’t possibly think you can domesticate a three-hundred-pound homicidal insectoid,” Doc replied. “These worm creatures won’t be made into pets or penned like livestock. They are nothing but killer instinct. It is hardwired into their nervous systems.”
Isabel turned her face away. Doc gently took hold of her chin and made her look into his eyes.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Even a tiger has some of the same urges as a human being. A tiger protects its offspring, it provides for them, and it teaches them the rudiments of making a living. Just as we try to do. These common urges create an empathetic bond between our two species. Mammalian species. We humans have nothing in common with scagworms. Their instincts are alien to us, and they are utterly incomprehensible. Worm sows teach their offspring nothing, nor do they protect them. And as a reward, the offspring eat their mothers alive.”
“We can herd the worms and we can hunt them,” the ville’s head woman insisted.
“Isabel, you are missing the point. Scagworms are carnivores, first and foremost. Yes, they will feed on one another when prey is scarce. But they will also eat everything else in their path. They will sweep over Sunspot like the nuke wind. You’ll never be able to contain them.”
“I don’t believe there are that many more of them coming,” she said. “There’s no proof that the numbers won’t level out, or even fall off. That the high point of the population isn’t already past. Scagworms haven’t been around long enough for us to know whether they will all stay here or move on. Or whether just a few will stay.
“We have suffered for so long, Doc. Because you weren’t here, you can’t understand or even imagine our situation. Our hopelessness. We are owed this chance. This is the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Indeed, I know you have been hard set upon by fate, and you are correct, I cannot put myself in your place. But you cannot put yourself in mine, either. I have good reason to respect Mildred’s scientific opinion. She knows whereof she speaks.”
“Perhaps that’s true, but I know what I feel in my heart. And I know what I must do.”
“Ah, yes,” Doc said sadly. “Must do. Two of the most regrettable words in the English language.”
“It seems we have come to a parting of the ways.”
Doc reached out and softly stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “You set fire to my ancient heart, madam,” he said. “I had forgotten how warmly it could burn.”
“Not so ancient, then.”
“My dear, if you only knew.”
“Some things are not meant to be.”
Doc nodded. After a pause he said, “I wonder if my companions and I might use your caves to take our leave of Sunspot?”
“When will you go?”
“Shortly, I fear.”
“Kiss me goodbye, then.”
Doc leaned down and she raised her face to meet his. Their lips touched tenderly. Again the sensation was exquisite and riveting.
“I could have loved you, Isabel,” Doc said as he pulled back.
“And I could have loved you.”
WHEN DOC RETURNED to the companions, Krysty was telling the others about what she’d learned of the ridge’s cave system.
“What do you think, Doc?” Ryan said. “You were down there, too. Can we retreat through the caves and reach the desert floor?”
“It is possible if we have a knowledgeable guide,” Doc said. “Impossible if we do not. The caves are natural fissures in the rock. Many of them branch off or narrow down to dead ends. Some of them terminate in sheer drops of untold depth. The geology of the ridge is very unstable, as well. I saw a man most horribly crushed by falling rock.”
“Where are we going to get a guide?” Mildred said.
“Guides,” Krysty corrected her. “Follow me.”
The companions trooped after Krysty as she headed away from the Welcome Center.
“Do you know what she’s up to, Jak?” Ryan asked.
“Wait, see,” the albino replied.
No one stopped or challenged them as they crossed to the lanes of shanties. As long as the conscripts remained inside the berm, they were free to move around as they wished.
Krysty walked up to a pair of blond boys, perhaps twins, certainly brothers, who were sitting back-to-back on a tireless truck wheel lying on its side in the dirt. The boys stared wide-eyed at Ryan and J.B., whose crusty, grizzled, blood-spattered masculine charm had a powerful appeal to ten-year-old aspiring road warriors.
“Will you help us through the caves?” Krysty asked them. “Do you know the way to the bottom of the ridge?”
“We know the way,” one of the boys admitted.
“What do you want in return for guiding us there?” Krysty said.
“You saved us twice,” the other boy said. “We don’t want anything from you.”
“We’ve got to be careful, though,” the first boy said. “We’re not supposed to take strangers down there. If anyone sees us, we’ll be punished and you’ll be stopped.”
“We don’t want that to happen,” Ryan told them. “Where’s the tunnel entrance?”
“Over in that cargo container, the third from the end.”
“Go ahead of us,” Ryan said. “We’ll follow you by twos.”
But before they could move, volleys of blasterfire erupted from the gates and the top of the berm, directed into the gorge.
“Rad blazes, they’re comin’!” shouted a man on the berm’s crest. “Get the baron. The bastards are comin’!”
“Stay here, close to the cave entrance,” Ryan told the others. “Let’s go have a look-see, J.B.”
The two of them ran back to the berm and scrambled up to its crest.
“Nukin’ hell!” J.B. exclaimed as he surveyed the gorge.
It was just as Mildred had predicted.
The main thrust of the scagworm invasion hadn’t arrived yet, but that arrival was only minutes away. Ryan and J.B. could see them coming from the south across the desert, up the interstate and into the gorge. There were tens of thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them. They were moving so quickly their numbers were impossible to estimate. There were so many of them they turned the sand black; and the front edge of the wave was already slithering up the side of the gorge.
Blasterfire crackled along the top of the berm.
“Stop shooting!” baron cried as he, too, mounted the summit. “You’re just wasting bullets. Wait until they get closer before you fire. Then blow their fucking heads off.”
Under other circumstances, it was sound advice.
Under these circumstances, it was easier said than done.
Ryan knew firsthand how hard the scagworms were to hit with small-arms fire. And how hard they were to chill even when hit.
“Get up here!” Baron Malosh shouted at the mass of his troops milling around the Welcome Center. He waved them forward to defend the berm alongside hi
m.
Ryan and J.B. did just the opposite. As the soldiers rushed up the slope, they rushed down. They ran across the compound, going against the flow of fighters hurrying into action.
The flow had dwindled to nothing by the time they reached the companions and the two boys.
“It’s the scagworms,” Ryan told Mildred, Krysty, Doc and Jak. “Thousands of them are coming up the gorge. Malosh’s troopers will never beat them back. They’re going to overrun the berm. We’ve got to get out of here before they do that.”
As they turned down the lane, they came face-to-face with the ville’s head woman. Isabel was carrying a folding stock Kalashnikov. Extra mags stuck out of her pants’ pockets. She wasn’t alone. There were at least forty other armed ville folk behind her. The rest of the Sunspot population had once again vanished.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Doc said. “You can’t fight off the worms. There are too many of them.”
“Who said anything about fighting worms?” Isabel replied as she walked past him. “We’re seizing the moment. It’s Malosh and his men we’re after. And this is our chance to get them.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” Ryan said to her back.
Too late.
Kneeling at the end of the lane, Isabel and her followers opened fire on the troopers strung out along the berm top. Their assault rifles clattered and bullet impacts swept across the line of fighters. Ten or so died in that first burst, shot in the back. The survivors, Malosh included, clambered to the gorge side of the berm crest and returned withering fire.
Before the companions’ eyes three of the ville folk, two men and a woman, were chopped down at the mouth of the lane by multiple bullet strikes. Isabel and the others quickly moved to the cover of a Winnebago’s rear end and continued to fire.
Ryan stepped up behind the ville head woman.
“Face it, you’ve shot your wad,” he told Isabel as she reloaded her AK. “You’re not going to get them all. You’ve got to pull back to the caves. Let the scagworms have them.”
“Are you going to talk or shoot?” she said.
