Anywhere but here

by Jerry Oltion

  Now that he was on the driver's side, he could see why the pickup was listing so far over. It wasn't just the slope of the hill; the left front wheel was missing, too. With only one lug nut holding it on, and loosely at that, it was no wonder. The first sideways impact had probably stripped the nut right off the bolt, and the tire had bounded down the hill on its own.

  He looked for signs of it below. There were marks on the trunks of some of the trees where stuff had tumbled down the slope and smacked into them, but it was hard to tell what was done by rocks and what might have been from the tire. Wherever it had gone, though, it was a long ways downhill. Donna came up beside him. "I was trying for that flat stuff out there," she said, pointing, "but we were so close to the atmosphere and so far inland that it was almost on the horizon by the time I could get the crosshairs lined up on it. The computer must have thought I was pointing at the mountains." Trent shivered at the memory of hanging onto the door frame while the top of the atmosphere tried to blow him loose. He said, "Given how fast you had to pick a place, I'd say you did pretty damned good."

  "Well, thanks for saying so." She turned once around, taking in their surroundings. "So now what?"

  "Parachute first," he said, setting his beer on a rock. The rock shifted a little, and he thought better of using it for a table, digging the can into the dirt beside it instead. He and Donna lifted the nylon parachute free of the bushes and stretched it out along the hill beside the pickup, then folded it up. The pickup was leaning over so far that Trent was able to pack the chute into its pod without climbing up onto the cab, which was a good thing because he wouldn't have trusted the rope to hold it with his weight on there as well. As it was, he got the job done as fast as he could and backed away again. Last thing he needed was to get crushed by his own pickup after all the other things that had happened today. He looked for his beer, found it a foot or so farther away from the rock than he'd remembered setting it, but didn't give it a second thought. His mind was on the pickup.

  "We need to lift this thing up and get it level again," he said. He set his beer back down next to the rock, went around to the back and got the jack out of the camper, then pulled the tire out and laid it flat on the ground, too. If he put that on the left front side, the pickup would be nearly level. He had to go around front to find a spot where he could fit the jack in under the shock mount, thanking his lucky stars that he had a screw jack. There was just room to slide it in between the dirt and the flange. He fit the crank into the slot, then backed out as far as he could and spun it a couple of times until it started to lift, but just as he expected, the pickup began to slide forward. He would need to chock the tires—well, the one remaining tire—to keep it from taking off downhill. The rock he'd set his beer next to would be perfect. He went around to the back and picked it up, surprised at how light it was. Was the gravity lower here than on Earth? He hadn't noticed much difference in his own weight, but then he was so pumped on adrenaline at the moment that he wasn't sure he could tell.

  Light or not, the rock had a good flat bottom. It was shaped a little like an army helmet, only half again that size. It was smooth as a river rock, which made Trent wonder what it was doing on a mountainside, but that didn't matter as long as it would serve as a wheel chock. He carried it around to the passenger side, where he wedged it in front of the tire, then he went back to the camper for a handful of lug nuts and the wrench. Might as well snug down the tire that was already mounted before he put any more weight on it and snapped off its stud, too.

  The rock had shifted an inch or so. Probably came loose when he went into the camper. He nudged it up snug again, then spun lug nuts on the four open studs and cinched them down with the wrench, along with the one that had been holding the wheel on by itself. That one was pretty badly stripped, but he managed to get it snug again.

  The rock was loose again when he finished. He shoved it tight against the tire, then went around and started jacking up the pickup, which crept forward until the right front tire was tight against the rock, but then it stayed put.

  It took quite a bit of cranking to get the hub up high enough to fit the wheel on it, but the jack had just enough reach. Trent bolted the wheel in place as quickly as he could, then found another rock and wedged that in front of the tire before he lowered the jack. This rock was practically identical to the other one: helmet shaped and flat bottomed. A perfect wheel chock. He lowered the tire onto it, and was glad to see it sink into the dirt an inch or so under the pickup's weight. With both front wheels blocked like that, the truck shouldn't go anywhere now.

  Just in case, he climbed up to the cab and set the emergency brake, grabbed his hat from the dashboard, and jumped back to the ground. He was going to need to get that other tire out of there before long, but he didn't want to mount it until he had the mate for it. Now he regretted letting that spare go.

  At least the truck was sitting level now. The tire he had just mounted was kind of low, but not flat, which was actually about perfect to match the slope. The rear bumper was touching ground all the way across now, and the rope that Donna had tied to the tree was slack. Trent hiked up and untied it, then coiled it up and tossed it into the camper.

  Donna had been sipping her beer and watching the whole proceedings with amusement.

  "What?" he asked.

  She grinned. "You're never happier than when you're messing around with mechanical stuff."

  "True," he said. He walked over and put his arms around her. "Except maybe when I'm messing around with you."

  He heard a swish and a thunk just behind him, and Donna's eyes widened like camera irises. He turned around to see a four-foot arrow quivering in the ground right where he'd been standing. 21

  "Into the camper!" he hollered, giving her a swat on the butt. "The pistols in the clothing drawer." He jumped up to the cab and pulled open the door, unhooked the bungees holding the rifle in the gun rack, then leaped back down, jacked a round into the chamber, and fired uphill. He didn't bother to aim; he just wanted to make whoever was shooting at them duck until Donna was safely under cover. The gunshot echoed away to silence. Trent ran a couple of steps to spoil the aim of anybody who might be thinking of taking a second shot, then glanced back at the arrow in the ground to see if he could tell from the angle it hit where the archer was, but it was pointing almost straight up. He looked into the treetops, thinking maybe they had a sniper up in one of the tufts of branches at the top, but there didn't seem to be much room for anybody in those trees. A gray bird about the size of a turkey vulture was flapping down to land on one, but there was no sign of anybody with a bow.

  "Trent, get in here!" Donna called out from the camper.

  He took a couple fast steps to the side, swirling around to look in as many directions as he could, but he couldn't spot any movement. Just the bird, which was too heavy for the branch it was trying to land on. The branch snapped off at the base, and the bird flapped away with it clutched in its claws. Had someone been shooting at the bird? That arrow had come almost straight down; not likely if Trent had been the target. But who would be shooting at birds when a pickup truck with two aliens in it had just dropped out of the sky?

  He didn't hear any battle cries, or even any animal noises that might be natives communicating with fake bird calls. The only noise on the hillside was the pounding of his own heart. He jumped to the left another two steps, putting himself just one leap away from the camper door, but he didn't really want to reduce his field of vision to a two-foot-wide rectangle, especially one that faced into a hillside. A whole army could sneak up on them and they'd never know it from in there.

  He looked up at the bird, just in time to see it drop the branch. It had carried it quite a ways before letting go, circling halfway around and rising another thirty or forty feet above the treetop. Trent watched the branch arch downward, not tumbling the way he would expect. The tufts of needles at the end stabilized it so it came straight down—straight at Trent.

  He leaped back
ward, tripped over a rock, and sprawled on his back, firing a wild shot into the air when he hit. The branch thunked into the ground right where he'd been standing, just like the first one.

  "Trent!" Donna yelled, rushing out of the camper. She grabbed him by the arm with her left hand and tugged him toward the doorway, the pistol waving wildly in her right hand, but she stopped when he began laughing.

  "It's not funny!"

  "Look," he said, pointing upward.

  The bird circled around and flapped in for a landing atop another tree, picking one of the dry branches at the base of the tuft. The branch broke off under its weight and it flapped away with it, spiraling upward until it was about twice as high as the treetop before straightening out and dropping it.

  "Stand back!" Trent warned, rolling to his feet and backing away another few feet. Donna backed away with him, keeping her eyes trained upward, until the arrow shwonked into the dirt right where she had been standing.

  "That . . . that bird just tried to kill us!" she said, her voice rising in indignation.

  "It does seem pretty deliberate," Trent said. He raised his rifle and followed its flight as it swept toward another tree, but he didn't fire. "You think it's intelligent?" he asked. "We're pretty much stuck here; I don't want to go pissin' off the locals if I can help it."

  "It's already trying to kill us," Donna said. "I don't know how much worse it can get."

  "A hundred of 'em at once," Trent said, but she had a good point. They were already under attack. They had to show these birds, intelligent or not, that you couldn't try killing a human without consequences.

  "Sorry, buddy," Trent whispered, bringing the rifle up to his shoulder and sighting through the scope, keeping his left eye open to track the bird as it flapped in to land on another arrow branch. There was a half-second of stillness while the branch bore its weight; Trent brought the scope to bear directly in the middle of its body and squeezed off a shot.

  The bird's chest exploded in a shower of silver disks, as if it had been stuffed with quarters. The branch broke at the same moment, and bird and branch both fell straight to the ground, the disks fluttering down like leaves after them.

  The tree was maybe fifty feet upslope. "Keep your eye out for more," Trent said to Donna, and he started climbing up toward it, kicking his boots sideways into the hill for better footing and looking upward every few steps.

  The branch had arrowed into the ground like the others. The bird lay on its back just a few feet away, dead. The bullet had punched right through its body, not doing a whole lot of external damage, but thick, dark blood—almost black it was so dark—oozed like molasses out of the bullet hole, and there was a big bare patch of gray-blue skin where a bunch of quarter-sized translucent scales had been knocked loose. The remaining ones overlapped like fish scales, giving the bird an aerodynamic, almost metallic look. The scales were smaller on the wings and head, and curved to match the contours of its body. Its head was about the size of a hawks, with the same kind of beak. Good for tearing flesh. It didn't look like there was room for much brainpower in there, but Trent wasn't going to jump to conclusions just yet.

  He picked the body up by a clawed foot and carried it back to the pickup. Donna was turning slowly around, like a radar dish, her eyes never leaving the sky.

  "You're going to make yourself dizzy doing that," he said.

  "Better dizzy than dead."

  "Have a look at this," he said, laying the bird at her feet. "I'll keep watch." While she examined their would-be killer, he pulled one of the arrows out of the ground. It was much harder to free than he expected, and when he looked at the tip he saw why: it was barbed. The whole shaft was that way. It was probably just the leftover flanges from needles that had sloughed off as the branch grew, but it made an effective arrow. Most likely an effective seed, too. Trent bet that the barbs at the tip would develop into roots if he'd left the arrow in the ground. And the pointed end would probably grow into a taproot, though there might not be any need for it, as sharp as it was. This one had buried itself six inches deep, anyway.

  He looked into the sky. No more birds. Plenty of arrows, though. Fifty or sixty per tree, at least.

  "Which came first," he said, "the arrow or the archer?"

  "Hmm?" Donna was stretching out one of the bird's wings. It had about a three-foot span just on that one side. Up close, its scales made a soft rustling sound.

  "I'd bet anything these arrows are how the trees reproduce," Trent said. "Because they make good arrows, birds carry them farther than seeds would go on their own, and if they don't hit a target, they plant themselves instantly, ready to grow."

  "Could be," Donna said. "They certainly work as arrows, anyway." She looked up, then around at the hillside, then back at the bird. "I think its just a bird," she said at last. "There's nothing artificial here, no clothing or paint or jewelry or anything like that. And with hunting weapons growing wild, they wouldn't have to develop intelligence."

  "How do you figure that?" Trent hefted the arrow like a spear, then gave it a high lob downhill. It arched over beautifully, perfectly balanced, and stuck when it hit.

  She shrugged. "Just a theory, but I was thinking that if you hand a species everything they need, there's no incentive to work for it."

  Trent snorted. "Seems to be that way in humans, anyway." He looked for his beer, found it in the dirt where he'd picked up the rock to chock the tires with, and took a long swig. "Weird to think that evolution could keep something from developing intelligence, but I can see how it might." He scanned the sky again. "I imagine we'll find out for sure soon enough, but in the meantime, we're going to need some protection."

  He tried to think what might work. A hardhat would be a good start, but they hadn't brought any, and a hardhat wouldn't protect the shoulders or chest or back anyway. They needed chain mail, or maybe even full plate armor, if they planned to spend much time outdoors. Or they needed to get out of the woods. Those arrows were fairly heavy; he was willing to bet a bird this size couldn't carry one more than a mile or so. He looked out into the flatland beyond the mountains. It might be possible to drive that far. The pickup could probably make it down the slope they were on with just three tires, and the regenerative brakes in the wheel motors would generate power on the way, which would give them a little extra battery juice to make a few miles on flat ground. They would need the fourth tire once they got there, but he was willing to bet they would find it down at the bottom of the slope.

  He looked upward. Still no birds. Even so, the back of his neck itched with anxiety. What else would turn out to be dangerous around here? The mountainside had taken on a more sinister cast in the last few minutes.

  He loosened the rifle's strap and slung it over his shoulder, then went into the camper and got the holster for the pistol. "Here you go," he said, handing it to Donna. "Until we're sure what's safe and what's not, we should both stay armed."

  She didn't protest. Trent kept an eye out while she belted the holster around her waist and slid the pistol into it.

  When he had first looked out of the camper after their landing, he had thought they had come to rest in a pretty good pile of rocks, but now that he had a minute, he could see that they were actually pretty lucky. There were plenty of rocks around, but the pickup seemed to be sitting in the middle of a clear spot maybe thirty feet across. It looked almost as if they had been blasted away by the impact of the pickups landing, except that the real impact zone was uphill a ways.

  One of the rocks shifted a little. Settling, apparently, from being dislodged in the crash, except it was at least ten feet away from the pickup. Why would it have been dislodged way over there?

  Another rock shifted. Trent heard a soft click just behind him and whirled around, unslinging his rifle in the same motion, but he saw nothing that might have made the noise. The rock he'd tripped over during the arrow attack was the only thing even close.

  But hadn't it been right in front of the camper door? Now it w
as a couple feet beyond it. He couldn't have kicked it that far when he'd fallen or he'd have landed on it.

  "What's the matter?" Donna asked.

  "I'm not sure," he said, unwilling to voice his suspicion without more evidence. He kept his eye on the rock, glancing up into the sky every few seconds to watch for more birds, too. He nearly missed it when the motion came, but he caught it out of the corner of his eye: the rock lifted up about an inch and fell forward with a soft thump.

  "Son of a bitch," Trent whispered. "They're alive."

  "What are?" Donna hadn't seen it.

  "The rocks. Watch." He pointed at the one in front of him.

  "The rocks?" Her tone of voice made it clear how little she believed that.

  "Just watch." Trent waited, not quite aiming his rifle at the rock. He heard a soft thump off to the side, and then another quite a ways behind him, but he didn't take his eyes off the one in front of him, except to glance overhead and make sure there weren't any more birds with arrows up there. Now that he was listening for them, he heard a steady patter of little thumps from all around. After maybe twenty seconds, the rock he and Donna were watching lifted up and scooted forward again.

  "My god, you're right!" Donna said. "They are alive." Trent looked out at the others, most of them at least ten feet from the pickup and receding an inch at a time, and he couldn't help laughing. "Not only that, but they're running like hell. We probably scared the shit out of them when we crashed down here in the middle of 'em." He pulled loose the second arrow that the bird had tried to spear him with, stuck the tip under the edge of the rock at his feet, and flipped it over, but it rolled right on around and flopped back onto its flat bottom. Now Trent knew why they were round on top, but he wanted to see how they moved. He flipped it over again, this time slopping it with the arrow before it could roll all the way. The underside was smooth and bony, like the underside of a turtle, with three little ovals spaced evenly around it about an inch in from the rim. As he watched, the ovals flipped up in front and down in back, pivoted through a 180-degree turn, and closed up smooth with the rest of the shell again. The rock did that a couple more times, then it started wobbling from side to side. Trent let it go, and the wobble intensified until the rock rolled back upright.