by Steve Perry
Take the other hunt leader, Hans Beinz.
“Ja. Ve haf der pheromone tracker on high. She is in our sights.” Big teeth shone through a scowl on the Wiener-schnitzel face.
A fake German accent, no doubt learned from old World War II films.
Give me a break, thought Brookings.
Then again, maybe it made the excitement and uncertainty more entertaining for the others. For Brookings, though, it was like being in a bad VirtReal Adventure.
Oh, well, when the actual shooting started, real reality would take over.
“Good,” asserted one of the newbies, a twitchy little geek in glitter-blue sunglasses and mousy mustache. Name of Sherman something, and he’d drunk milk the night before at dinner. “I… I can’t wait for the action to start.”
“You sound as though you’re trying to convince yourself, friend,” said Brookings, unable to resist the opening.
“Going to be nasty, I can just feel it,” said Petra. “I just hope we all coughed up the insurance premiums that were strongly suggested. Particularly the mauling-and-lost-limbs charge.”
That got some eyes bugging.
“Hey, goofball,” said Hank. “We don’t need none of that, now. Everybody’s gonna be safe, long as they follow the rules. And rule number nine is, Keep your big mouths shut if your group head tells you to.” Glare. “And I’m tellin’ you.”
Petra shook her head and laughed. She looked over to Brookings for backup, but the lawyer just gave her a “This is your shit you just stepped in, colleague” look that he’d perfected with partners in court.
Petra shut her mouth.
After a while Hans looked up from his machine-encumbered arm, a puzzled expression knit over his meaty face. “Funny. I’m not getting anything on the motion sensors.”
“Maybe the zangoid is asleep.”
“What? With the sun up? The thing had a good rest last night. Morning is its most active period.”
“Maybe it’s caught something, and it’s chowin’ down.”
Hans tongue-probed his cheek thoughtfully. “Ja. Ja. Must be!” His eyes, though, did not look sanguine.
“What you think, Petra?” said Brookings, drolly. “Perhaps the fearsome critter has found a perch on a tree somewhere and is presently patiently waiting to feast on your liver.”
Petra smiled. “No, on your brain, good buddy. It likes soft food.”
Brookings let off a hearty chuckle and slapped his colleague on the back. “That’s the spirit. Stupid jokes. Bonhomie. Bonding. That’s what makes this a hunting safari of some quality and note.”
With renewed vigor they advanced to the forefront of the party, following immediately behind the two leaders. The others in the group, though, did not look so reassured. In fact, the general consensus, if expressions were to be read, was that perhaps they should all just go back and play something lighter and less troublesome, like a few holes of golf.
The zangoid had been beacon marked. Hans and Hank followed their sensors and tracers into a large copse of tall trees, a denser part of junglelike terrain. The smells were more pungent here, the rising damp steam more oppressive.
They filled out into a small clearing.
There was something in the middle of a clearing, and Brookings could see the digitals and dials grow excited.
Hans pointed. “Ja. There.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Just lying there,” said Hans.
“Odd,” said the other leader. “Zangoids prefer to remain in the brush. You generally have to flush them out What’s it doing in the open?”
“Maybe it’s a retarded specimen,” said Brookings.
Both leaders flashed dirty looks at the lawyer. They were big and dominating enough that Brookings cringed a bit at their obvious displeasure. He’d have to be a little more discreet with his quips out here. He couldn’t hide behind the robes of a judge, and these boys could kick his tail, easy.
Still, it gave him a little thrill to be so saucy with them; a part of the dare of this whole expedition.
They approached the zangoid.
The beast was lying prone on the ground, on its back, quivering.
Zangoids are generally feline in principle, with a lizardy head and hide and six limbs—four legs and two arms. Some called them “snake centaurs” because of their resemblance to creatures of Greek mythology. They were fearsome beasts with talons on mobile limbs, claws on their “hands,” and sharp teeth in their head. They were most definitely carnivores, preferring their meat from the fresh, quivering, and bloody counter. Although they hunted in packs, a zangoid on its own was a far more fearsome and dangerous beastie, which made it an ideal hunting animal. Thus it had been imported to Blior, and thus it was being used for preliminary safaris. The leaders had hunted lots of zangoids before and knew their habits, making this a reasonably safe expedition, despite the obvious snarling viciousness of the things.
However, Abner Brookings could tell from the expressions on Hank’s and Hans’s faces that lying down on its back in the middle of a clearing was not generally one of the zangoid’s known habits.
“What’s it doing?” piped one of the subamateurs.
“Is it having some kind of attack?” asked another.
“Maybe it’s sick.”
There were other suggestions, including calling it a day and going home. However, Hank put up his hand for silence.
With his gun poked forward, he took a few steps closer to the creature.
Brookings watched, his own safety off, as the zangoid, went through what appeared to be a series of seizures. Its wide eyes were rolled back in its head, and its splayed legs trembled spastically.
“Look. There’s something growing in its chest,” whispered Petra.
“Looks likes a pulsing growth or something,” added another hunter.
“Shhhh!” said Hans with full Germanic sibilance.
Brookings watched with interest and disappointment. There was plainly something wrong with the zangoid, which, while interesting enough, meant that in all likelihood they weren’t going to be able to hunt the thing.
A bulge had indeed formed in the creature’s lower chest, and it seemed to pulse, as though the zangoid’s heart was beating far too hard. The animal’s mouth had opened and snapped closed, and it had bit off part of its tongue. Rich red blood streamed down its side.
Every movement of the beast screamed its clear state of delirious agony. Its lizard eyes seemed expanded to the point of popping out of their sockets. It stank of blood and urine and feral fear.
The whole atmosphere around it was charged with an electric precognition of terror and violence; Brookings could feel it thrumming through the very ground. It raised his hackles.
He thrilled.
He could tell that Petra felt it as well. The young, stocky woman looked on the verge of bolting and running. Brookings placed a comforting grip on her arm, staying her. Then he turned his attention back to the event at hand.
“Stay back,” cautioned Hans. “We don’t have any idea what’s happened.”
“Shit, man. The Boss pays a lot of money for dese things,” said Hank. “He’s gonna wanna know just what went wrong with dis one and—”
“Jesus Christ!” cried one of the new women.
With good reason.
The chest was expanding again, this time not retracting, just growing like some fleshy, bony balloon. A bulbous, puslike, veiny head formed at its peak, as though it were some kind of gigantic carbuncle in bad need of lancing.
It burst.
Blood spattered in all directions, a particularly large splatter falling and drenching Hank. But this was all peripheral to the main show, which Brookings watched with horrified fascination, rifle down and ready.
Emerging from the hole came a crimson-drenched wormlike creature the size of a heftily muscled arm.
“What the hell is that?” cried Petra.
“Some kind of parasite, it would seem,” said Brookings. “Some
kind of creature on this world they don’t know about? If so, it has an amazing gestation period if the beast was just let loose this morning.”
“Nein,” said Hans. “This zangoid was let loose several days ago to adjust to the environment. Experiment.”
Both the hunter-guides looked as though they were undecided about whether to try to capture the creature or just blast it.
The creature didn’t wait for their decision. It squiggled out of its host—clearly dead now, damaged tongue lolling, ribs spoked up like tombstones—and scurried for cover.
“Quick,” cried Hans. “Hank—shoot it!” He raised his own blaster.
Hank wiped off a layer of blood and raised his own weapon.
Before either could twitch a trigger, however, something tore through the shrubbery. It was going almost too fast to see, but Brookings, who had excellent eyesight, made out the dim outline of some kind of boomeranglike device.
It whooshed through the air.
It sliced into the thick worm creature, cleanly lopping off its head.
The wormthing writhed in death throes.
The device that had killed it whisked back into the bushes, disappearing from sight.
“What the hell—” said Hans.
Brookings crouched, looking around. “It looks as though we’re not the only ones hunting today.”
“What do we do?”
“For right now, we just stay put and see what happens.”
The others, however, paid no heed to this advice.
Two men broke and ran back in the direction in which they’d come.
“No, you idiots. Wait!” cried Hans. “There could be danger! Stay together!”
Neither listened. They cut through the quickest way back to the savanna, to civilization.
“Let ’em go, man,” said Hank. “We’ve got our own problems.”
“What’s happening—”
“I dunno. Those weird signals we been getting. The tech boys have been saying that something weird’s been going on for a while now, but the head honchos have been just forging on, you know. Turn on the cameras. We better get this down for posterity.”
“And posterior holes, from the sounds of it,” said Brookings.
“Camera’s been on ever since I saw that thing,” said Hans, backing away slightly, as though just in case something else was going to blow out of that chest cavity, or even the head maybe. “Bad stuff.” His blaster was up, and his eyes were easing back and forth, catching a wide arc of vision. Feet apart, ready. A professional’s stance.
“What do we do?” asked Petra.
“I suggest we see how our guinea pigs do in their path, eh?” said Brookings.
“Stalking horses of their own making?”
“Precisely.”
The stalking horses were galloping along, indeed, at a rapid clip.
However, they did not make it.
Before they were halfway through the glade, immediately under a large palmlike tree, something shuddered in the foliage, and something black, something netlike folded around them from beneath, hoisting them into an elastic-gripped ride. They bounced in their tree-prison only once, before other things rippled through the foliage.
Spears.
Simultaneously these javelins transfixed the attempted escapees. One through the head. The other from shoulder through groin.
Both men had just enough time to let off a yelping screech and wiggle a little bit before the streams of blood started streaming out like beet juice through a colander.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” cried one of the newbies.
“Shit and damnation. That fuckin’ tears it!” said Hank. “This ain’t supposed to be happenin’.”
“Hank! Stay in formation!”
Ignoring his fellow hunter, the well-muscled man ran forward, spraying a huge plume of energy up into the treetops from where the javelins had emerged. Defoliation on a massive scale. The leaves did not even have time to burst into flame. They were simply blown into carbon along with many of the surrounding trees, leaving only blackened skeletons behind.
Hank turned around, a satisfied smile broadening his lug’s mug. “There. That should hold the bastards down awhile, so we can see what the hell’s going on. Hans, what are you showing on your sensors?”
“Nothing.”
“Can’t see anything up in the trees, either,” added Petra.
“Maybe we got whoever it was,” said Hank.
“I thought I saw something hopping from tree to tree up there,” said a slender, bespectacled woman, who in Brookings’s estimation wasn’t quite as geeky as the others.
“What—now?”
“No, before.”
Hank shrugged. “I guess we’re just going to have to sift through the ashes. What do you think, Hans? Some kind of assassination attempt on one of dese worthies here with us?”
“I don’t know. Any of you have reason to think somebody’s after you?”
“Maybe they were after Blake and Alvarez,” suggested Petra.
“Those guys. Unlikely,” added a jowly man named Gustavson, profusely sweating.
“May I, as a lawyer, remind you gentlemen that we are presently all on audio and video, and doubtless this may be used in some sort of hearing,” said Brookings.
“You can turn that off, buddy,” said Hank. “There’s no law out here but The Man’s.”
Brookings shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I’m just on automatic.”
“What are we going to do? Take the bodies back with us?” said Hans.
“I’m afraid that I kind of blew them apart as well.”
“Pick up the pieces, then.”
“May I suggest that we pick up our own pieces and get out while the getting’s good?” said Gustavson.
“We could send back an armored vehicle to paw through the wreckage,” said Hans.
“I think that would be wise.”
“I just can’t figure out what went on there,” said Hans.
“I really think we should leave that to the experts,” said Hank. “We’ll just get the data on this situation now, then get the hell out of here.”
“Ja. I’m working on it, I’m working on it.”
“Christ, you rube. You’re going to have to get a little closer than that to get anything.”
All this time Abner Brookings had been growing increasingly nervous. Before, the prey had certainly been capable of turning back and biting, but that was all part of the fun. Before, this place had been alien and strange, but that had been the frosting on the cake, fun stuff as well.
Now, though…
Now, with an armed and civilized menace mysteriously skulking about among the trees, things were profoundly altered into the truly unknown. Abner Brookings generally faced intelligent opponents in court, and those were not armed. Now he was in quite uncomfortable territory, and the threat to his mortality was not thrilling; it was unsettling on a deeper level than he knew he had.
“Perhaps you should be thinking about a higher calling, gentlemen,” said Brookings.
“Yeah?” said Hank absently and brusquely as he made his way closer to the unharmed trees, holding out his sensors to get the best possible reading. “Like what?”
“I’m talking about your charges. You’re responsible for twelve lives here, two of which have been extinguished.”
Hank shrugged. “Look, buster—you signed the agreement. Did you read the thing?”
Brookings was a lawyer. Brookings read everything he signed. Only as a consultant of the corporation, he hadn’t signed anything—this trip was free for him and was all included under his umbrella agreement with the corporation.
“Well—er…”
“What it says, Shylock, is you fucking pay your money, you fucking take your chances.”
Voices raised among the group. Voices that seemed to be in general disagreement with that sentiment.
“Shit. Fuckin’ Sunday hunters.”
Hank shook his head sorrowfully and waded out i
nto the unknown. He directed the sensors in a wide arc.
He stopped in his tracks.
“Shit, Hans.”
“Vat?”
“There ain’t just something out there… there’s several somethings out there, moving, and I can’t see a goddamned one of them.”
“Look—over there…” cried one of the Sunday hunters.
Brookings followed the pointed finger.
Yes. There looked like something fuzzy and displaced among the trees. Leaves shook and a branch visibly bowed.
“Get your asses down here,” shouted Hank. He pointed his blaster up at the trees. “Or I’m going to mow those trees, down, just like I did—”
There was only a brief flicker.
A thunk, and a tearing.
A sharp intake of breath.
The next thing Brookings knew, Hank staggered, equipped with a new appendage.
A javelin just like the one that had killed the others had almost magically appeared, transfixed in his chest, bloody barb sticking out of his side.
Hank looked down at the spear.
For a moment he tried to pull it out of his body, and then he keeled over dead.
“Damn!” Hans said no other words of benediction for poor Hank’s departing soul. He just ran forward, screaming, pouring out a blast of energy from his gun.
For his trouble he was rewarded with one of the boomerang devices. It sailed through the air, again seemingly out of nowhere, and cleanly sliced through most of his neck.
The head whipped back on the remaining strands of skin and muscle. A fountain of blood whooshed up into the air. The blaster scorched the earth harmlessly under Hans’s clenched fingers. Upside down, horrified and stunned eyes stared at the party for a moment, aware…
And then the light died in them.
The body toppled over, still twitching. A gout of fire churned up some more dirt.
And then it was over.
For Hans…
A rush of adrenaline and panic suffused every cubic centimeter of Brookings’s body. He looked down at his antique, expert rifle—and it seemed as useless as some stick.