Arena (9 page)

The thought of dreaming reminded her of how she’d awakened this morning, which brought the blood back to her cheeks. She averted her eyes, studying the distant folds of landscape.

“There were mutants up here, all right, but not close. Like I said, sound carries a long way out here.”

He pulled two packages of nuts from his vest pocket and handed one to her. “You filled your water bottles at the seep, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “What happened to your stuff?”

“I left the lizard carcass as bait and hid the pack. If I’m lucky, they won’t have found it.”

Soon they were headed toward the mountains again, angling sharply left from their previous course. Callie was not nearly as energetic as she’d been yesterday. Her legs creaked with stiffness, and her collarbone protested the renewed burden of the pack, light though it was.

Presently they came to a place where something had gouged a great wound in the land. Rocks were upended, sagebrush uprooted and half consumed. A nearby juniper had been ravaged, limbs stripped of leaves or torn off altogether, trunk gored, bark shredded to expose the white cambium beneath. As before, the place reeked of urine.

“Well, they found the carcass,” Pierce said, squatting over a dark, scuffed place scattered with chips of bone.

Callie gaped at the spot. “They ate all of it?”

He rose and continued up the drainage. “After they pass through the fire, they eat everything they can get their hands on.”

“What do you mean, ‘pass through the fire’?” She glanced around uneasily.

“They have a device that generates a curtain of energy. I have no idea what it is—some kind of radioactivity, I’d guess. It gives them a rush of power, a shot of super-strength. If they’re injured, it’ll heal them—for days afterward their flesh regenerates at a hyperaccelerated rate. If you don’t kill them right off with a clean head shot, you usually don’t kill them. It also makes them crazy hungry. For food and . . . other things.”

A rustle drew the barrel of his weapon, but it was only a sand mite. Surprisingly, he refrained from shooting it. Ascending a gentle rise, they found another mutilated juniper, shoved onto its side, its roots clawing the sky. Branches littered the ground and mingled among them was the frame on which Pierce had strung the lizard hide, now splintered and gnawed. The skin was gone.

Callie stared at the naked frame. “They ate the hide, too?” She was beginning to understand why Pierce was afraid of them.

“Ah!” His cry of satisfaction drew her gaze. Standing in the crown foliage of the downed tree, he bent out of sight and re-emerged with the pack. “I tied it in the middle where they’d have to think to get it,” he explained. “The fire curtain makes them irrational, too. Maybe it’s the hunger. Anyway, I hoped the hide would distract them and—oh. Look here.” He crouched beside a scraped patch of sand and picked up a bloody curl of dragon skin. “This is probably the same youngster that came past our lair. Looks like two or three mutants. You can see where they ate the bloody dirt.”

She came up beside him, gripping the shoulder pads of her pack. “I guess they don’t take prisoners, then?”

He stood. “Better to be eaten.”

His gaze fixed on the light-washed hollow ahead and went briefly blank. Then he said, “They probably rejoined the main group before daybreak. Come on.”

As they gained elevation the juniper and sage gave way to oak and pine. Patches of knee-high grass waved in every clearing, hiding a multitude of sand mites. Repeatedly they had to stop and pick the creatures off their legs, yet Pierce continued to refrain from shooting them—to save E-cubes, he said—stomping them to death instead.

Midmorning Pierce found a scuff in the dirt he called a footprint. He pointed out another scuff soon after, then a crumpled weed and a black mark on the shoulder of a rock. But it was the clear, ridged sole print at the base of a young oak that finally convinced Callie. Their pace slowed now, and she welcomed the opportunities to rest. Her feet were killing her, and the harry bite in her side ached. Her thumb, swollen and purple, still throbbed, to say nothing of her stiff shoulders, her tender collarbone, her overworked back, and her head, which was pounding dully.

Gradually, tall straight-trunked evergreens replaced the oaks. The ground grew softer, dustier, matted with pine needles, the air redolent with warm sap. Pierce talked of meeting his friends before nightfall.

They stopped for lunch on a rock overlooking a dry stream bed. Rough-barked pines marched up the opposing slope, and a particularly massive specimen curved out of the rocky bank below them and to the right. A stand of oak blocked Callie’s downstream view, but she wasn’t about to get closer to the drop-off than the ten feet she already was. Pierce, nearer the edge, could keep watch.

“At least one of them’s hurt,” he said, portioning out the last of his jerky and hardtack. “That’s why we’re gaining on them.”

Callie glanced at him sidelong. “Your friends?”

He nodded, studying the ravine.

“You’re pretty good at this stuff, aren’t you?”

“I grew up tracking deer and cattle in country not much different from this.”

“You lived on a ranch?”

“Just outside Durango.”

Somehow she hadn’t taken him for a cowboy. She supposed it fit, though—the tracking, the familiarity with weapons, the ease with outdoor life. “So how’d you end up here?”

His sky-colored eyes glanced at her and quickly shifted away. He bit off a piece of hardtack. “I was riding fence line. Came upon this white panel truck parked in the middle of nowhere. The guys with it said they were doing a survey, and I figured they were Division of Wildlife. They asked for my help.” He crunched down the last of his hardtack. “Next thing I knew I was here.”

He didn’t ask how she’d gotten hooked, so they sat in silence, listening to the birds calling from the trees. A bee droned toward them, inspected a crumb on the rock, and floated off. With a sigh, Pierce stretched out on his back, cradled his head in his hands, and closed his eyes.

Callie watched him surreptitiously, taking in the lean form, the broad shoulders and narrow hips, the corded, muscular forearms. He was a far cry from Lisa’s lawyers and MBAs. More like one of the heroes in the cherished Zane Grey novels of her adolescence.

A cowboy.

His breathing deepened. He shifted against the rock’s gritty surface and turned his face toward her. Asleep, he looked almost boyish. Perversely her mind snapped back to this morning when she’d awakened in his embrace.

Hers was not a touching family. Expressions of affection were not explicitly discouraged, they just never occurred. She couldn’t recall more than a handful of times when her mother had hugged her, and she had no recollection of any such demonstrations from her father. Lisa, the consummate psychologist, had initiated more physical contact in recent years, but it was an uphill battle. And as hard as it was to touch each other, they certainly didn’t throw themselves on strangers. The way she was snuggling with a man she hardly knew this morning made her feel almost . . . dirty.

Of course, she’d been desperately afraid last night, and he
was
her only hope of survival. The thought of going it alone in this wretched world was not one she liked to contemplate.

And yet, I must
. Callie frowned across the sun-dappled ravine.
Because the longer I stay with him, the farther from the Gate I get
.

Downstream a flock of birds took flight in an explosion of wing beats. They wheeled overhead and vanished beyond the spiring trees.

Maybe one of his friends will help me
. . . .

No. They were
his
friends, out here for the same reason he was. If anything, they’d be less cooperative in a group. But if they meant to trade their lizard parts with the townspeople maybe they’d— Pierce leapt to his feet, snatching up his rifle as he did, astounding her with his ability to come instantly and thoroughly awake. Now he stared downstream with that eerie not-quite-here expression on his face. “They’re after us,” he whispered.

A shrill scream split the air, punctuating his words. Whatever made the sound was coming up the draw behind the oaks.

Pierce pulled her off the rock, scrambled around the trees, and flung himself flat on the needled ground. “Get down!” he hissed, inching forward on belly and elbows.

Callie dropped beside him, leaf tips pricking her forearms. Dust tickled her nose, and she fought off the sneeze as she searched the drainage bottom for their pursuers.
There!
Three tall figures with grotesquely overdeveloped brows and jaws stalked into view. Bearded, shaggy-haired, and furry, with their arms dangling to their knees, they looked like protohumans. Trousers covered their lower bodies, each garment a different color—red, orange, brown. All three carried crossbows and quivers of short arrows—
quarrels
she thought they were called—hung across their backs.

Pierce had them in his sights. “You take the one on the right,” he said. “On my word.”

She looked at the SLuB in her hand—when had she pulled it from her belt?—then at the approaching men. “You mean . . . shoot him?”

“Dead center. Forehead shot if you can.”

Though the air was cool, sweat beaded his brow. Below, the ugly trio moved toward them, following the stream bed, gazes on the ground.

“Pierce, they’re people, I can’t—”

“They’re not people,” he growled. “If they catch you, they’ll kill you. But in their own good time. Now would you aim that thing?”

The leader dropped to all fours, sniffing the ground like a dog. Then he threw back his head, loosed another hair-raising howl, and took off on three legs, carrying the crossbow in one hand. He was leading his companions along the very route she and Pierce had taken less than half an hour before.

Callie thumbed on the SLuB and braced her elbows against the ground, holding the weapon in both hands as Pierce had taught her. Notch and peg bobbled on a hairy shoulder. She edged the barrel left, aiming for midchest. Her heart beat rabbit-fast, and she sought to slow her breathing.
“Squeeze the trigger,”
he’d said.
“Don’t jerk it.”

“On three,” he murmured. “One . . .”

Callie’s SLuB wandered off target.

“Two . . .”

She brought it back, hands trembling.

“Three!”

I can’t do this!
She let the SLuB’s barrel fall as Pierce’s rifle spat its blue-green fire. His victim crumpled. He fired again, and the second Neanderthal fell, howling and writhing on the ground. It was the first time she’d seen Pierce fail to hit a target dead on.

Before he could fire again, the third Trog dodged behind a rock.

“Come on!” Pierce pulled her up the hill.

“I couldn’t do it,” she lamented.

His face was grim. “The hurt one’ll need help. If we’re lucky, he’ll distract the other.”

Behind them an earsplitting double wail rose from the ravine.

They were well up the mountainside when it dawned on Callie that Pierce’s second shot hadn’t been off at all. With both companions killed, the third mutant—the one she’d failed to take down—would have had no reason not to continue the chase.

She glanced at Pierce, respect for him rising another notch.

They rested in an open area surrounded by the tall pines. Callie stood gasping as her companion unzipped her pack—still on her back— and drew out a single bottle to share. His eyes never left the trees around them.

“Surely you don’t think they’re following,” Callie said.

“They heal
fast
after the firewalk. And they cover ground like you wouldn’t believe. We’re way too close.”

He took the bottle from her, gulped a mouthful of water, then screwed on the lid and slipped it back into her pack. The zipper whined shut.

“They’re not howling anymore,” she said.

“That’s what worries me.”

They continued upslope at a stiff pace. A thicket of underbrush gave them the option of following a game trail or circling into the open, and Pierce opted for the game trail. As they pressed through the sharp-tipped leaves, Callie became aware of the deep quiet around them. No birdsong, no insect noises, not even a breeze. Ahead Pierce eased into a clearing. She followed closely, hands trembling, every sense alert. A sudden animal odor provided an instant of warning before a hairy form reared out of the bush beside them.

Pierce fired as the beast howled and smacked the rifle from his grasp. He staggered back, and the thing leaped upon him. Off-balance, Callie stumbled sideways into the sudden hot awareness of another attacker on the off side. She glimpsed deep-set eyes, a flat nose, and a jaw full of dagger-sharp teeth. As she pivoted to avoid his grasp her heel caught on a root, and she pitched backward to the ground. Instantly the creature dropped upon her, straddling her hips. Seconds stretched into what seemed like long, nightmarish minutes as the clawed hand swung lazily up and back—

And she realized that by some miracle she still gripped her SLuB.

The hand floated down. With limbs turned to rubber, she brought up the SluB, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked. Heat seared her belly and the backs of her hands as she sensed the beast recoil above her.

She opened her eyes. A bloody wound creased the Trog’s side, but it seemed not to matter. The mutant reached angrily for her hands and the weapon in them. She fired again, into its chest this time. The creature’s black eyes flashed, narrowed, fixed upon her own—

She shot it a third time, the SLuB’s green fire drilling a hole between its eyes. As its head rolled backward, the beast collapsed forward, the full weight of its massive body pinning her to the ground. Gagging on the stench, hardly able to breathe for the weight on her chest, Callie struggled weakly to free herself. From somewhere close came the snarling of the second beast, and odd rasping whimpers that couldn’t be Pierce—but must be.

In rising desperation, she gave a mighty heave and wriggled partly free of the dead Trog’s body. Another heave and jerk and she was out, staggering upright—and still gripping the SLuB. Across the clearing, Pierce’s rifle gleamed against gray humus. Between it and Callie, a black-haired monster had him pinned to the ground. She could see only his boots, part of one leg, and way too much blood.