"Charlie, do you know you're being followed?" From left to right, she set names on the intruders: "Ayatollah, Khadafi, Jack, Son of Sam..." Too long. "Mareta." Mareta Lupoff was the only single human being ever to set off a hydrogen bomb within a city.
Charlie was much too close: two hundred meters away, plodding along at a speed somewhat greater than the horses could manage.
The horses were holding up well, moving a little slower because they were tired. They hadn't smelled anything yet. Carolyn kept them moving, but she kept watch too.
Twenty horses in a line, linked by rope. Should she free them from the rope? Let them fight their own war?
Grendels. Creatures of mystery and fear, and the more you learned, the more terrifying they were. Those four at the fog level... three? One must have turned back. Was it Jack?
They don't cooperate. That's not what Beowulf, excuse me, Weyland, would call a flanking action. It's just grendels trying to stay away from each other. But that near one—Charlie's almost close enough to shoot, and I bet I can guess what it wants.
Carolyn had listened, she wasn't stupid, but it was hard to think of grendels as she. Picture Jack the Ripper or Muammar Khadafi as a woman: it was silly.
Those rock knobs had the look of boulders deposited by a glacier—intruders dropped on land scraped flat. That one a hundred meters ahead, twice her height: that would do.
When White Lightnin' was alongside the boulder (and the near grendel was a hundred and fifty meters downslope), she dismounted. She took all four harpoons and the harpoon gun from the saddlebags. She slapped Lightnin' to get her moving.
Lightnin' didn't move.
Patiently, with no overt sign of panic, Carolyn walked down to the end of the line (toward the grendel, toward Charlie). She shouted and slapped the trailing horse, Gorgeous George. The young stallion glared at her, but he moved. She slapped him again and, jogging ahead of him, repeated the slap on the next horse, who was already moving. The tail of the line moved; the wave moved forward; the grendel was a hundred meters distant and watching curiously. Carolyn reached the rock. The line of horses moved past her as she climbed. The grendel was seventy meters away.
Forty. Twenty. Jesus, it was on speed. The horses screamed. Carolyn smelled it herself, a whiff on the wind, bestial and chemical both. She was halfway up the rock, and the grendel had reached the horses.
She set her back solidly against the rock and lifted the gun while...
Gorgeous George reared back on his hind legs, forelegs pawing the air, prepared to stamp holes in an enemy. A black torpedo shot under the forelegs and snapped at one of George's ankles without ever slowing. George was yanked backward hard enough to snap the line that bound him. The grendel was behind the rock before Carolyn could fire. George fell downhill, tumbling, screaming, and his left hind leg was gone below the knee. Where was the grendel?
Coming up the rock behind her?
Carolyn jumped. She landed without breaking an ankle. She ran away from the rock, trying to see the rock and the horse both—
The grendel was downhill, dragging Gorgeous George. George was very much alive, screaming, thrashing. Carolyn aimed carefully and fired.
She'd have hit it. She would! Charlie must have seen something coming; she saw it shy. The harpoon exploded against George's chest. It ripped the horse wide open. The grendel looked at her for the barest particle of an instant, then dodged behind the dying horse.
The other horses were on the run. Carolyn was reloading. Wait? Watch the grendel? But the horses couldn't be left alone. She ran after them. If she scared them they'd keep running: fine, she'd catch them eventually.
But death was behind her, and she kept looking back. Where was the grendel? As fast as it moved, it could be anywhere.
The grendel was in no hurry. She was overheated, yes, but not to the point of distress. She was small, and had been on speed for less than half a minute.
The horse was not much fun. The grendel fed, trying to avoid tearing vitals for the moment; but the beast had stopped moving almost immediately.
The taste was far better than grendel meat.
Three of her siblings were in sight. They came in a line. Vectors of attraction and repulsion held them in position: fear of each other, fear of the one above them, smell of speed, mist of horse's blood in the air. Hunger was winning.
Charlie tore into the horse. She ate with some haste now. When her belly was full to the point of pain, she ripped one of the horse's hind legs loose and moved uphill, dragging it with her tail. The other grendels closed in behind.
They would eat and grow strong. Let them. Perhaps they would fight. But they would not catch up. Meanwhile nineteen animals moved upslope with their alien guard to tend them. Well and good.
Terry sighted carefully and squeezed off another shot as a second grendel poked its head up over the edge of the bluff. He caught it between the eyes: its head snapped back violently and was gone. Blood in the water. He wiped his forehead. Dammit, I did wait. It was on dry land. When I hit it, it went on speed, of course, and overheated, of course, and went back to the creek. Of course.
Omar and Rick arrived first. They looked, crazily, like some vintage comedy team: Omar the tallest man on the planet, Rick the shortest. There was nothing comical about them as they poked at the dead grendel, then clubbed its head with an ax when the tail jittered. They hauled it out of the water. Its corpse leaked blood.
Something blurred near the lip of the drop-off, and Omar spun, swinging his ax.
By luck, surely by blind luck, the ax struck the grendel in its open mouth. Its death spasm ripped the tool out of Omar's hand as it flipped back down the hill.
They ran uphill. A dark shape burst from the water behind them. Terry sighted over the top of the scope, firing by instinct. Once. Twice. The grendel leaped, turned, looked directly at Terry. It knew. It moved at blinding speed toward Snail Head. Terry fired again. The grendel continued—and ran directly into the rock. It fell and twitched. Omar and Rick were halfway to the house now, and running hard. Omar's legs were almost twice the length of Rick's, but Rick was winning the race.
Alarms went off all over the stronghold. Up at the house the dogs snarled and bayed. Cadmann's horses whinnied in terror. Down below grendels screamed challenge.
Terry felt great. Adrenaline flowed. A year of calm, two years, and we'd have rebuilt all the hospital stuff. I'd have new legs. And a working prick.
Downstream the water parted in strange places, new ripples and eddies where there weren't any before.
His comcard buzzed.
"Terry. Stay still. Maybe they won't notice you." Joe Sikes was trying to talk like Cadmann, but he couldn't manage that unholy calm. "Just sit still."
"Not if I can shoot something."
They weren't just eddies in the Amazon now. They were dark shapes, dark shapes coming upstream. I called them. General Weyland, sir, we've lured the enemy within range.
"Terry!"
There were shapes on both sides of him now. "I'm cut off. Watch out for the little stream! They'll be in your living room!"
"Terry, hold on, we'll get someone down there."
Someone. There's only one someone who'd come here, now. "Don't. You're about to be up to your neck in grendels, you idiot!" Terry turned and faced up the small stream. His spine was barely that flexible above his immobile legs. He fired toward the house. Something exploded from the water. Another shape shot forward and grabbed it. There was gunfire from the veranda.
He turned back to the Amazon. "There's a lot of them. In the Amazon, and up on both sides of it. You are infested!"
"Any on speed?"
Cadmann's voice: "I see half a dozen."
"I see shadows," Terry reported. "The ones you can't see, they're not on speed. Fifty, and that's just near the house."