Onio (27 page)

Two
nights previously, Iron Hands and fourteen other sasq warriors had crept under
the chain-link fence that encircled the temporary military housing, located
just outside of the newest testing facility in the furthermost northern
quadrant of the Fort Bliss Army reservation.

Eighteen
soldiers from the Army Corps of Engineers and one squad of enlisted men were
sleeping when the sasquatches swarmed into the mobile barracks, screaming
inarticulately, tearing into flimsy construction and human flesh with equal
enthusiasm. Twenty-nine soldiers were killed in the fray.

Most
of the sasq warriors were at least seven and a half feet tall and weighed in at
around five hundred pounds each; the human soldiers were no match against the
creatures that savaged them. The MPs set to guard the soldiers only knew that
something was amiss when they heard the screams and saw the gigantic shadowy
shapes of monsters through their infrared binoculars. They were able to send
out an S.O.S. before they were overrun by the beasts, but died knowing that
monsters really do exist on this planet.

Iron
Hands and his new tribe would have enjoyed their victory much longer had they
left quickly and made their escape underground. Instead they celebrated their
blood lust, dancing in the ruins and the bones of their defeated enemies. If
they had kept their heads, they might have been able to rescue almost seven
hundred captured sasquatches that were being held in a buried bunker, the
entrance of which was only a hundred feet away from them by the base of a stony
cliff.

Instead,
while they ripped limbs off deceased soldiers and broke the humans’ weapons
into pieces in a frenzy of savage joy, Apache attack choppers flew up from out
of nowhere and leveled the ground around them in a blistering assault of rocket
fire and machine gun scatter.

Iron
Hands took a round in his right shoulder but managed to run and hide behind a
giant pile of rocks. Crouching low, he avoided the initial assault but was
unprepared for the rear attack of Delta Force soldiers that streamed through
the broken fencing like a silent but deadly black snake with fangs of fire and
steel. Within minutes, all but three of the sasq warriors lay dead on the
ground. The three remaining sasquatches were transported under heavy guard to
an underground bunker thirty miles away, and were now undergoing information
extraction techniques that were not sanctioned by the U.N.

“Where
are they?” O’Dell barked. “The only reason you are alive now is that we know
you know the whereabouts of the rest of the sasquatches. If you don’t tell us
where they are, I will turn this machine up so high your brains will boil like
soup!”

Iron
Hands eyes grew wide and his head shook frantically as he tried to spit the
heavy tooth guard out from between his parched lips. The torture expert removed
the tooth guard, carefully avoiding the beast’s large, bloody fangs, and handed
the wounded sasq a glass of water. After he had drunk, Iron Hands was given the
small chalkboard and another piece of chalk.

The
scientists had finally figured out that most of the sasquatches could read and
communicate telepathically. Their vocal chords were ill-equipped for
intelligible speech, but that only meant the humans needed to find a different
way of speaking to the beasts. O’Dell found that with the right kind of stimuli,
the beasts responded best to simple correspondence on the stock of small,
portable chalkboards they rounded up from local day-care centers.

It
seemed that most of the sasq understood rudimentary English and some Spanish. They
knew simple arithmetic, and comprehended directional indicators such as road
maps, signs and signals.
It’s like working with a bunch of preschoolers
,
O’Dell mused, but knew also that there was a wealth of knowledge lost somewhere
in the communication gap between his people and those of the sasquatches he
questioned. The wisdom he saw swirling within those brownish-green eyes
unnerved him and fed his rage.

Turning
once again to the technician, he growled, “Two more joules…that ought to get
its attention.” Iron Hands screeched as the electrical currents coursed through
his body, and he howled in impotent fury.

***

How
did it come to this
,
Iron Hands thought, as the lightning bolts set his blood on fire and made his
eyeballs bulge from their sockets. Everything had gone so well since he was
asked to leave the conclave. He had run to the exiled band of sasquatches and
sworn his allegiance. He had enjoyed a week or so of anonymity, while he
awaited his chance to rid that rag-tag band of its leader, an old, weak sasq warrior
named Sand, who seemed more inclined to mourn his band’s exclusion from the
conclave than seek retribution against the king who did the deed.

Iron
Hands plotted the best way to kill the leader for a few days and then, happily,
the old sasquatch committed suicide, leaving the rest of the tribe leaderless. It
wasn’t hard at all to convince the others to revolt against the small humans.
Within days of reaching their decision to take the fight to the smalls, Iron
Hands’s new tribe had made their way to this base.

They
had achieved their objective, but even Iron Hands was shocked at the small
soldiers’ sophistication and savagery on the battlefield. Now, here he sat,
bolts of lightning racking his bones, being asked to give the location of the
rest of the sasquatch nation.

He
hated the sasquatch people and the high king most of all. ‘So why not?’ One part
of his mind screamed, while another, deeper part of his consciousness argued, ‘No…the
sasq are not my enemies; these smalls are the enemy and will kill us all if I
give away their position!’ Iron Hands sat, grinning silently, as smoke singed
the air and his eyeballs began to rain tears of blood.

***

Unfortunately,
the female was not as strong as the failed leader Iron Hands was before he died
and was carted downstairs to the crematorium. She started writing quickly on
her little chalkboard when the soldiers threatened to slit her son’s throat as
she watched. She did not fully comprehend the mileage markers, or actual
latitudes or longitudes needed to pinpoint the king’s conclave, but her hasty
scrawls were enough to make the lieutenant colonel grin in triumph.

Neither
the female nor her son were safe from O’Dell’s revenge, though. Even as the
cartographers mapped out the quickest route to the deep heart of the Rocky
Mountains, based on the female’s scrawled map, raw recruits were ordered to
shoot the female and her offspring dead, which they did with ruthless
efficiency.

***

It
had been weeks since Onio and his companions came to the king’s conclave and
Onio was growing frustrated. On the one hand, he had never been happier. His
new wife was everything he could have hoped for...a deft and sensuous lover,
intelligent, joyful, and eager to learn the sasquatch way. Although his days
were filled with worry and doubts, his nights were alight with passion.

On
the other hand, although he didn’t think that attacking the small humans
outright was the way to go, like so many of the more militant sasq warriors
urged, he could somehow feel the noose tightening. Every day a scouting party
was sent out to test the lay of the land. In the past, sasq trails were so well
hidden they were almost impossible to detect with the human eye.

Now,
however, the scouts hardly stepped foot out of the tunnel before they heard the
distinctive clop, clop of chopper blades hovering just beyond the horizon. The
previous week, smoke had started rolling down one of the tunnels, filling the
main cavern with chemical-laden toxic fumes. Twenty of the largest sasq warriors
were dispatched to collapse the tunnel entrance, and then sent north to do the
same to two others.

Onio
felt like a honeybee smoked out of its comb, and knew that the time of waiting
was over. He, personally, thought that the sasq nation might do better in the
far north. He understood that the American armies had little jurisdiction in
the northern lands, and although the cold weather was not too much of a problem
for the sasq, it would be bothersome, even deadly, to the soldiers that chased
them.

What
about Melody, though
?
Onio thought, uneasily. He had seen the joy and contentment that came over her
features when she turned her face to the sun. Also, her flesh was not nearly as
impervious to weather as the sasquatches skin was. She would have to live
underground, like a mole, bundled up against the chill on a daily basis, in
order to survive.

He
studied his wife’s profile as she sat by the fire with his mother and
grandmother by her side. She was laughing at something and her pale cheeks were
flushed pink with pleasure and the heat of the flames. His heart skipped a beat
as she caught his eye and winked. He adored the little human woman with every
fiber of his being, but he knew that their timing could not have been worse.
The small human soldiers would find them, and soon, if he was any judge!

He
saw Wolf and his father, Hunter, approaching and rose to meet them. It was time
to go to the king’s chambers for the next round of debates. Onio stifled a sigh
and smiled at the approaching males. Just as they turned to head into New Moon’s
private council hall, he heard a panicked shouting coming from the east end of
the cavern. Onio also heard the sound of frantic barking.

The
sasquatches owned and cared for many dogs, but he recognized this dog’s cry, as
Smiles owned a particularly hushed and bashful voice due, he thought, to her
neglect-filled upbringing. Looking to his left, he saw his wife get up, along
with Petal and Rain, and run toward the commotion.
Something is wrong,
he thought with sudden certainty,
and we are in peril
!

Onio,
Wolf and Hunter ran to see what had happened, making their way through the
crowd of solemn onlookers to their females’ sides. Mel stood sobbing and Onio
put his arm around her shoulders while staring down at the small human boy who
lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor.

It
was the boy named Tiki. His father knelt at the boy’s side and wept as Rain
turned his foster son over, and they all saw the horrible gunshot wounds that
etched a deadly path across his back.

Onio
heard the whispered comments; it seemed that the boy and dog had left to play
and when the boy was shot, Smiles had dragged Tiki by one sleeve back to the
safety of the cave. Now she cowered by his side, tail tucked hard up under her
belly. A moment later, a number of scouts ran through the tunnel entrance.

Most
of the king’s guards were picked for their strength, stature and cool wit.
These guards, however, looked almost hysterical with fear. The head guard,
whose name was Willow, exclaimed, “They are coming…the small human army, many
hundreds of soldiers, are coming down the tunnels! Hurry, hurry, we must seal
this tunnel now or we will all die this day!”

With
a cry of alarm the sasq warriors started pulling the support beams and rocks
around the tunnel entrance down. Onio knew, with his heart sinking like a stone
in his chest, that all of their options had just been narrowed down to one. The
sasquatches would go to war.

Chapter 32

The
sasquatches packed their belongings with solemn efficiency, and within minutes
of the guards warning, they were walking en mass down the northeastern tunnel
that led towards Wyoming and Montana.

Warriors
took up the vanguard and the rear of the column, surrounding the king, females
and children on all sides. They walked in complete silence, alert to the
booming sounds of cannon fire behind them and the teeth rattling percussion of
falling rocks that accompanied each assault on the abandoned cave. Every
hundred feet or so, the sasq’s stopped and waited while the bigger warriors
collapsed yet another tunnel entrance.

Dust
rolled through the air, bringing tears to Mel’s eyes and causing the little
ones to weep in fear. Onio, Blue, Wolf, Tanah and Two Horses walked in front of
Mel, Petal, and Onio’s aunt, Sunshine. Rain walked beside her husband, Bouldar,
who was being carried on a litter. He looked disgusted with himself, as though
he was heartily sick of feeling like a burden to his tribe. Onio told Mel
though, of all the voices heard in the king’s chamber, it was Bouldar’s voice
New Moon sought most often.

Mel
listened to her husband, and his friend, Blue Sky, talk about the king’s plans.
It seemed that they would be going down into the underworld again. Mel’s heart quivered
with dread. She had only recently stopped having nightmares about her first
journey there…and now they were being forced to go back. She shuddered and
listened to the two males’ conversation.

Onio
asked Rain if there were enough antidotes to go around and Mel’s skin crawled
with anxiety.
Antidote for what
? She wondered, and heard Rain reply, “Yes,
Grandson, there should be.” Mel turned and looked at her new grandmother, who
simply shook her head and glanced down at Sunshine’s two children, who were
obviously listening to every word the adults said.

“We
need to go north!” Onio insisted, as if he was continuing an unresolved
argument.

Blue
Sky sighed and shrugged. “As always, I agree with you, my brother, but our
words carry no weight! New Moon has made his decision and we must abide by it.”