by Ryder Stacy
It was Shecter’s Field Operations Staff’s idea that they needed a freshly stunned, undamaged body of one of the huge bears to test out a theory of Shecter’s—the theory of retro-evolution. It proposed the radioactivity, the radical reordering of genetics after the nuke war, were all Nature’s way of returning to the past, of simplifying things, making a world where animals might be once again balanced among themselves. Only, many of these “new” animals were nightmares. Most of the old creatures were dying out. The “normal” ones. Only “normal” had no meaning anymore. Not in a gamma-rayed, beta-rayed, every-goddamned-rayed-and-waved world—where not a living thing could find a place to hide from the radiation.
No, it was the mutants that would survive. The mutants like Rock—with his mismatched aqua and violet eyes, the stark streak of white down the middle of his jet black hair. Rockson was a Star-Patterned mutant, as they were called because of the star shape that appeared on some part of the body. Rona, too, was mutant, but Shecter and many of the others in homebase—Century City—mostly the older ones, were normals, Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens vs. Homo mutatiens. Which one would win—which would die out, as extinct as any dinosaur that had once shaken the earth?
“The mission would be a combination vacation/specimen hunting expedition—” Dr. Hart, chief of Shecter’s Biological Labs had naively suggested. And Rock had agreed, had set off into the wilds with Rona. They had set out with a team of six hybrid horses, sturdy ones, to find the N’hokari, as the Indians called the redhide bear. Plus bring back some meat for Century City’s larders!
“Rock, maybe we should skip this one,” Rona said softly, slipping the glasses back to him in a somewhat subdued fashion. Men—Russians, cannibals, mountain bandits, these she could handle. But huge mountain monsters with jaws that looked like they could slaver down a Volksvagen without burping were not her idea of a nice summer vacation in the Rockies.
“Forget it, sugar,” the Doomsday Warrior replied with a little I-told-you-so grin. For he had told her so. That hunting N’hokari was not a stag shoot, or a rabbit hunt. And now she was starting to see what he meant. “You’re along for the ride,” Rock said in a whisper, not wanting to take the slightest chance that the carnivore might hear them. He knew the creatures had uncannily good senses. “And that’s the one we’re going after. And fast—while we’re downwind. Once that son of a bitch catches our scent—forget it. It’ll come charging in like a goddamned bull.” He grabbed the tranq-rifle that the C.C. tech’s had given him—had said a single dose of the stuff could take out dinosaurs. Only it wasn’t a dinosaur Rockson was after. Something meaner.
“Come on,” Rock said, leaping up when he saw that it was rising on its hind legs, looking away from them as it clawed and ripped at some branches of a tree, tearing at the thing as if it hated it. Rona looked up, reluctant to rise from the ground as Rock rushed forward across the steeply angled slope of the 8,000-foot mountain they were on, and toward the grizzly some two hundred yards off atop a little plateau of trees and bushes. She was more afraid of staying alone, Rona suddenly decided as she heard a noise from behind her in the woods. She jumped up, unslinging the Liberator automatic rifle from her shoulder, this one a new variation on an old theme—super-short barrel and stock, so that it handled more like a snub-nosed submachine gun than a combat rifle. It fired .50-caliber slugs, super-grooved and silicon-coated so they could go through quarter-inch steel. Holding the weapon firmly in her sweating palms, she rushed after the rapidly departing Rockson.
Somehow, as they drew closer, even with her finger on the trigger of the banana-clip death machine, Rona didn’t feel too secure. For as they got nearer, it got bigger and bigger. Even Rockson was a little taken aback as he got to within about twenty-five yards of the beast, crouching down low behind a boulder so the thing couldn’t see him. The bears had notoriously bad eyesight—almost like a rhino’s. But their sense of smell, and hearing, were acute. It was tremendous—stretched up on its back legs, growling and slamming away at the fir tree with both claws, it must have stood twelve feet high. It’s immense red and maroon striped head was as big as a tire, while its red and orange spotted body was stark and almost mesmerizing with its dayglo coloration. The long arms of the carnivore must have stretched out six feet on a side—as tall as Rock.
Its claws were meat hooks, steel-like daggers that tore into the bark in the middle of the tree, ripping it open like a hyena tearing at the flesh of the newly dead.
The tree it was attacking was a good two feet thick, and seemed impossible to fell without a chainsaw. It stood a good 75 feet high, stretching out with high, thick branches. But the bear didn’t seem to know that it shouldn’t have been able to knock down whole trees—for it had already slammed through half the thickness, sending splinters and bark flying off in every direction. It was working its way down to the center of the conifer, to its core, biting away at the innards with its immense salivating jaws like some sort of beaver gone mad. And from the wasteland of tumbled smaller trees behind it every twenty feet or so, it appeared that the thing could well finish what it had set out to do. What was it after? Bees flew everywhere. Honey.
Suddenly there was a snap. Rockson didn’t know if it was he who made it as he shifted his leg, or Rona breaking a twig as she slid down behind the boulder alongside of him. But whoever made the noise—the redhide grizzly heard it. That was for sure. The thing’s ears instantly perked up like little radar scopes as it stood stock-still, not making a sound. It froze like a statue for a second, its eyes turned clearly toward them so they could see its terrifying majesty in full face. And what a face. Its saucer-sized eyes tried to focus, and then it seemed to come to rest on the two of them, and a low growl hissed from between its hardly opened jaws. It swung its head far back and let out an unearthly howl, more like a timber wolf than a damned bear. The thing didn’t seem to know what the hell it was. That’s the trouble with these damned mutations, Rockson thought darkly to himself, They were all mixed up—and took it out on the world. The grizzly let the immense striped head drop down again, like the blade of a guillotine falling into place. Then it slammed down on all fours and came straight toward them.
“Oh, shit,” Rock muttered under his breath as he raised the tranq-rifle and prayed to the gods-that-be that the damned thing worked.
“Get that blunderbuss ready,” Rock yelled to Rona, glancing around at her for a second. She seemed half paralyzed, terrified of the charging meateater—already halfway toward them and accelerating by the second. “Snap to it, lady!” Rock screamed out. Her eyes opened and she seemed to come out of a trance.
“All right, Rockson, you bastard—you don’t have to yell,” Rona screamed back, her green Irish eyes sparkling like glowing emeralds. But she raised the .50 caliber autofire and waited—in case. “In case” looked like it was about to happen pretty damned soon. Rock fired—the bear roared like a lion as a huge hypodermic bolt ripped from the wide muzzle. The prong found the mutant grizzly dead center in the chest and the hypo shot its 1000-mil load right into the predator’s nervous system. But if it felt anything, it sure as hell wasn’t letting on. For the animal only seemed to come faster at them, as if angered by the sting of the needle.
“Let him have it,” Rock snapped angrily at Rona. Angry at himself that the mission was going to be a failure. That they hadn’t been able to get the monster alive.
Rona fired but the slugs dug a trench along one side of the charging carnivore, missing it as the creature jumped two yards to the side without breaking stride. The thing was incredibly fast and, apparently, smart. Rock could sense a consciousness in those raging red eyes that were almost upon them.
“Back, back!” he screamed out, firing another load of the tranquilizer that had autopopped into firing position, carrying a total of four loads. He fired yet again, this shot catching the grizzly square in the nose at a distance of about twenty yards. That at least stopped it. Even a N’hokari has a tender spot, and its bowl-sized black nose—with the n
eedle imbedded squarely in it—was just the thing to give it pause. The grizzly came to a screeching stop, half rolling over in the dirt. It reached up to pull the offending protruberances from its flesh, moaning groggily like a drunk.
“Run!” Rock yelled, pulling Rona as he rushed away from the struggling predator. They ran back along the slope, half stumbling down the sides but somehow holding each other up, and headed back toward the ’brids that were standing around, tethered to a tree, acting very nervous and skittish as they sensed what was happening.
Then the great bear pulled the needle from its snout and let out a deafening roar of pain and anger. It started toward them. The ’brids grew more anxious, rearing and letting out whinnies of sheer animal terror as the grizzly closed in.
“Jesus Christ,” Rock spat out, “I don’t know if we can stop the bastard.” He grabbed for his shotgun-pistol, setting it on autofire so it could release all seven loads of super .12 gauge in an instant. He’d at least take away some of its good looks before it had human dinner. Shecter’s little party was turning into a deathtrap of the first order. Rock glanced over to Rona, who seemed petrified by the rapidly advancing creature. But she slammed another banana clip into the bottom of the sleek .50 caliber and raised it up, ready to fire to the last. And suddenly Rockson felt love for her. For in the midst of it all, in spite of all the stark fear, she was tough—and would go out fighting to the very end. Like him. She fired point blank. The bullets bounced off.
“Bye, baby,” Rock whispered, hardly a word audible above the howling scream of the charging maneater.
A flicker of a smile twisted across her face. And in a strange way she relaxed. It was not so bad after all, something inside of her suddenly decided. To go out with the man you love. Together, eternity together. And she breathed a metaphysical sigh of relief inside of her at her impending death. Rockson too emptied his weapon, to no effect.
Suddenly there was a terrible ripping sound, as if the very earth were being rent asunder. All three players in the little drama of life and death stopped and listened. For the sound was too powerful, too near, not to listen. And as they watched, the towering fir that the grizzly had gnawed halfway through suddenly began to topple. It was as if it were seeking out the bear, reaching out for revenge. For the tree came unerringly through the branch-filled sky, cutting and slamming its way through the outstretched arms of its brothers all around. Its roots tore up with a grinding, crunching sound, and then, as if its countless cone-tipped arms were reaching out to hug it, the tree came down on top of the grizzly.
Rockson and Rona covered their heads as the giant fir came toward them. There was a loud cracking sound like a drawn-out peal of thunder, and bark and pine needles seemed to cover their bodies and fill their mouths as they breathed in the debris of the falling fir. After about ten seconds they realized they were both still alive and slowly rose up to see just what the hell had happened.
The tree had succeeded in its anointed task. The grizzly was dead, crushed beneath the fir’s harsh branches. The broken carnivore lay twitching, stopped in its tracks only ten feet from the two humans it had been about to turn into a pleasant snack. The very tips of the top branches just reached them—stopping perhaps a foot away. But the bear hadn’t made it. It’s powerful head was pulled back, broken, so that it lay at a near right angle to the rest of the body. And through its chest the end of a thick branch had gone like a spear, crucifying the carnivore to the bloody grass covered ground.
“Well, I’ll be,” Rockson said, holding Rona to him. “Impervious to bullets, but a spear of wood—kills it. Who can figure it?”
“It’s dead. That’s all that matters.”
Three
“Christ, this thing is heavy,” Rona grunted as she helped Rockson hoist the huge carnivore up onto an odd sort of carrying structure they had rigged atop four of the pack ’brids roped side by side. Even so, it was rough going. The damned thing must have weighed upwards of 1800 pounds—and loading it up involved hours of makeshift pulleys, baying hybrids that didn’t at all like the idea of carrying said cargo, and about a million bees that gathered in the air as the sun went down, their funereal buzz incessant as they hovered over the great corpse, licking at the blood-soaked spots here and there on the hide that marred the pure red-orange pelt’s perfection.
Rock and Rona kept slapping at their faces as the damned black bees seemed to be trying to fly right into their noses, eyes, and ears—and every other sticky place they could find to smash their annoying, droning bodies. But at last the huge carnivore was loaded up atop four unsteady mutant horses and the “expedition” started back the fifty or so miles to Century City—while the going was good. Rock had planned to do some additional hunting. But that would have to wait. This thing would draw wolves and all sorts of smaller meateaters eager for some of the leftovers. They had to move—and fast. He hoped they could make it back before nightfall, but that was wishful thinking, as it was already heading on past two.
The going, thank God, was almost entirely in a downward direction, at least for the first 20 miles or so as they moved into the lower mountains. The ’brids, once they saw that they weren’t all dying or croaking from heart attacks from the heavy load, got up some good speed going down mountain trails carved out by nothing more than goats’ feet and elk hooves. Rona was only too glad to get out of the woods. She was afraid she’d never quite have the same cheerful feeling about this part of the territory again—after their run-in with “Clyde.” She watched his bleeding snout whipping back and forth at the side of one of the hybrids, coating its dark-furred hide with streaks of red as they rode.
They had just about reached the halfway point to home base when Rock first heard it—a distinct droning sound coming from the cloud-shrouded horizon.
“Hide—fast!” he yelled, motioning for her to grab the reins of the second bunch of pack ’brids following behind his group, which he led with tight reins. Rock scouted around quickly and saw a rock shelter created by a long overhang, some hundred yards to the left of them. He headed for it, making the ’brids do double-time, so that the huge bear bounced up and down on their backs. They let out wheezing grunts of air each time, their flared nostrils snorting hot steam. Rockson reached the overhang and got them into the semi-darkness. Rona followed fast with her six-head pack, just as the pilotless Soviet drone emerged from some scattered clouds and flew overhead, a thousand feet up. Rock hoped it hadn’t gotten a pic of them.
Rock hadn’t seen any of the spy planes in this area for a while. He had thought—or hoped—that the Red Army’s technical equipment and support was starting to fall apart. But this one buzzed along in fine fashion, its spy camera, he knew, transmitting images of the mountainous terrain back to a central video headquarters. There the data was sent on to a Central Western Territory Information Center, where computers matched and compared random drone sightings from ten states. It was actually a crude arrangement. But it had helped the Reds track down many a careless Freefighting band.
This one passed overhead without slowing or zeroing in on them for a closer look. But past experience told him to wait a minute or two before heading out. And as usual, his intuition was 100 percent. For hardly had the buzz of the pilotless drone vanished than a second sound quickly filled the afternoon sky. A gargantuan bomber, ancient from the looks of it, with long, hanging wings instead of the swept-back configuration of the supersonic Van Allen Belt dartjets that the Reds used now. Apparently this one was on a sort of hunting mission itself: As Rock and Rona peered out from the darkness of the granite overhang they saw leaflets begin falling from the jet’s bomb-bay doors, which had suddenly flown open. Just a few at first, then a hurricane, then a blizzard of whirling and spinning pieces of paper about a foot square came sailing down, filling the entire sky above them as if with snowflakes.
The plane deposited its load over the entire mountainside—and then flew past as Russian troops inside the metal bird continued to shovel out the leaflets by the thousa
nds. Litterbugs on a grand scale.
“Bastards,” Rock muttered as the plane disappeared over a far ridge still shitting out its load of propaganda. He walked out figuring there were no more aircraft, and caught one of the falling announcements in his outstretched hand. He read,
AMERICAN FREEFIGHTERS:
IT IS TIME FOR PEACE. WE HAVE ALL HAD ENOUGH OF THIS FIGHTING, THIS WAR. PRESIDENT ZHABNOV AND PREMIER VASSILY HIMSELF, WHO IS FLYING OVER FROM RUSSIA, WANT TO MEET WITH THE LEADERS OF THE FREEFIGHTING FORCES, PARTICULARLY TED ROCKSON, WHO WE KNOW IS AUTHORIZED TO NEGOTIATE TERMS FOR ALL REBEL FORCES.
THIS IS NOT A TRICK, BUT A REAL OFFER. A NEW CHANCE FOR WORLD PEACE. AS OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN WE IMPLORE YOU TO MEET US AT WASHINGTON, D.C. ON JULY 28, 2095 A.D. THERE YOU WILL BE FETED AS BEFITS YOUR STATION. AND A NEW DAY MAY BEGIN. A DAY WHEN RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN WILL WORK HAND-IN-HAND AND TURN THE AMERICAN-SOVIET SOCIALIST STATES INTO A PARADISE ON EARTH.”
It was signed PRESIDENT ZHABNOV, LEADER OF THE UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF AMERICA, and PREMIER VASSILY, PREMIER OF ALL THE RUSSIAS.
“What kind of manure are they shoveling this time?” Rona asked, stepping up alongside him as she caught one of the paper snowflakes herself.
“The usual,” Rock said with disgust, squeezing the paper into a ball in his clenched fist. He started to throw it angrily to the ground and then saw all the others lying there, ten thousand pieces of garbage. So he held it—and put it in his pocket for later disposal. As if the land needed any more debris. Assholes. When—not if—but when the Freefighters at last took back control of America, he would personally march every son of a bitch who had littered something under these spacious skies and make him pick it up with his hands and take it back to the Motherland, throw it in the Volga, the Tolga or the Holga—but not in the goddamned Rocky Mountains! There wasn’t a hell of a lot that Rockson was attached to—but these mountains, these granite peaks reaching impossibly high into the sky, daring the very clouds to stop them, these ridges with eagles soaring around their breadths, slopes covered with a green-firred flesh that almost blinded the eye with its beauty when the rays of the noonday sun or the midnight moon swept down over it all . . . These lands he would fight to protect to the last cell of his body.
