A hand dropped on Hackwork’s right shoulder.
“Think it has our scent?” Blade asked.
“I reckon,” Hickok laconically responded.
“Let’s move.”
They carefully edged backwards and rejoined Geronimo, patiently waiting with the buck draped over his shoulder.
“It knows we’re here,” Geronimo said, immediately assessing the situation.
“Think so,” Hickok said.
They hurried, Blade leading, Geronimo in the center, Hickok bringing up the rear. They had been heading in a southeasterly direction. With the mutate blocking their path they were forced to bear south, hoping to strike an easterly course later on. The Home was only a mile and a half distant.
That fact worried Blade.
A mutate this close to the Home was disturbing and a potential danger to the Family, a very real and extremely deadly menace. Thank the Spirit that the Founder had erected the walls! Without the encircling protection afforded by the twenty-foot-high brick walls, the Family would have long since been overrun by the proliferation of wild animals evident in the area in recent years. The surge in wildlife was inevitable with the decline of man.
“Maybe we’ve lost it,” Hickok suggested.
The underbrush behind them crackled and snapped and loud snorts punctuated the mutates determined advance.
“Damn!” Blade fumed, enraged. He thoroughly detested the mutates, in all their varieties and manifestations. An ordinary black bear would usually avoid contact with humans, fearing the two-legged horrors as if they were walking death. But mutates, in whatever form, deviated from the norm. Every mutate, whether it had once been a bear, a horse, or even a frog, inexplicably craved meat and stalked living flesh with an insatiable appetite. No one, not even Plato, knew exactly what caused a mutate.
Plato was particularly desirous of locating, capturing, or killing a young mutate, a mutate not in adult stages of growth. No one had ever seen any but an adult mutate. Plato had speculated, many times, that mutates were the result of the widespread chemical warfare initiated during the nuclear conflict. If radiation alone was the cause, then logic would dictate that humans would be affected, and there was not a single report in the entire Family history of a solitary human mutate. Plato had emphasized over and over that discovering the reason for the mutates must be a Family priority. Within the past decade the mutates population had increased drastically—apparently by geometric progression, according to Plato—and this fact was fraught with devastating implications.
Blade paused, considering his options. If they continued on their course, even if they reached the safety of the Home, the mutate would follow them to the walls, would know where the Family was based, and it might linger outside, waiting for someone, anyone, to venture outside. Or it might return from time to time, hoping to catch a human out in the open, exposed and vulnerable. Blade couldn’t allow that to happen.
Hickok and Geronimo were standing still, watching him.
Blade surveyed their surroundings. They had stopped in a small ravine, no more than a shallow depression, encircled by trees on every side. The Spirit smiled on them.
“We make our stand here,” Blade announced.
Hickok smiled.
Geronimo, knowing what was expected, dropped the deer carcass in the middle of the ravine.
“Find your spots,” Blade advised.
“You better take this,” Hickok said, and tossed Blade his rifle.
Blade caught it with his right hand.
“At this range,” Hickok went on, “my pistols will be just as effective as the long gun. Besides, your bow wouldn’t hardly scratch a mutate that big.”
Blade grinned and nodded. If the mutate followed their path into the ravine, and there was every reason to believe it would, then it would enter from the north, as they had done. That left three points to fire from.
Geronimo was already climbing the west wall, his sturdy legs pumping.
He reached the top and glanced back, his green pants and shirt, sewn together from the remains of an old tent, making excellent camouflage.
Geronimo disappeared into some trees.
Hickok started up the east slope. “Aim for the head,” he said over his shoulder.
Blade nodded. Frequently, whenever Warriors were socializing, the subject turned to killing, to the best techniques for downing prey or foe alike. Some advocated the heart shot, a few the neck, but Hickok was adamant in his defense of the head shot as the only viable shot to take, whether with a firearm, a bow, or a slingshot. “If you’re aiming to kill,” Hickok had said one night when the Warriors were gathered around a roaring fire, “then aim to kill. Any shot but a head shot in a waste of time, not to mention a danger to yourself and those you’re protecting. If you hit a man or an animal in the chest or neck, or anywhere else except the head, they can still shoot back or keep coming. It takes several seconds, sometimes, for the shock of being hit to register, and those seconds can be fatal for you. But when you hit them in the head, on the other hand, the impact stuns them immediately, and if you take out their brain, you snuff them instantly. No mess, no fuss.”
Sometimes, Blade reflected, Hickok could be as cold as ice.
Hickok was perched on the rim of the depression, his buckskin-clad frame hunched over as he intently studied the back trail. He motioned for Blade to hurry, then vanished behind a boulder.
The mutate must be getting close.
Blade slung his bow over his left shoulder, gripped the rifle in both hands, and ran up the south slope, the lowest. Dense brush covered the slope, right up to the tree line. Blade swung behind the first tree and crouched.
Not a moment too soon.
The mutate appeared at the north end of the ravine. It hesitated, scanning the terrain, uncertain. Its eyes rested on the dead buck.
Come and get it, gruesome! Blade hefted the rifle, eager for the kill.
Mutates gave him the willies!
This one ambled forward slowly, cautiously, not satisfied with the setup, raw animal instincts warning it that something was wrong.
Eventually, Blade knew, the thing would approach the deer. Mutates, like those tiny terrors, shrews, could never get enough to eat. They even ate one another. That fact, Plato maintained, was the primary reason the mutates had not taken over the land. Yet.
The thing grunted, evidently deciding it was safe after all, and it lumbered towards the buck.
Blade silently debated the wisest course of action. He only had seconds to decide. If he waited for the thing to reach the dead buck, they would have the best, clearest shot. But if the mutate touched the deer, came in contact with the meat in any way, it would be useless as food for the Family. The carcass would be irretrievably contaminated. Anything a mutate handled had to be destroyed or removed from all possible human proximity. Could the Family afford the loss of this meat?
No!
The thing was five yards from the buck, head held low, concentrating on its meal.
Blade stood and raised the rifle to his shoulder, quickly sighting, aiming for the head as Hickok advised.
A glint of sunlight on the barrel of the 30-06 alerted the beast, and it immediately threw itself to the left, sensing an ambush, making for cover.
For its bulk and size, the mutate was lightning fast.
Blade was forced to hurry his shot. The gun bucked and boomed, and his shot ripped into the mutate’s neck, blood and yellowish-green pus spurting every which way.
The mutate twisted, snarling, and Geronimo opened up from the west rim, his bullet tearing a furrow out of the top of the mutate’s head.
The thing was furious! It wanted to attack, to rend and tear and crush, but searing pain racked every cell in its body, and it elected to run, to seek cover, then circle and pounce when its quarry would be off guard. The mutate charged up the east wall of the ravine, bellowing with rage and frustration.