Their squirming was extremely cute but Lincoln roared with real fury, “Do you even know what would happen to you if we were poachers, you stupid little mutts? Being eaten alive doesn’t even describe the horror! You’d be slaves! They would put you in a box! And make you do stupid monkey tricks for however long they remember to feed you!”
As the cubs began to cry, Rhodes was surprised by how hard the reality of what Lincoln had just described struck him. Sobbing with regret, the juvenile Starrletts tried to speak, but neither could manage anything intelligible.
Despite his best efforts to remain angry, Lincoln found the tykes’ warbling hilariously adorable, and he cracked a smile. Pushing down on Jake’s chest slightly with his paw, the boy let out a wheezing, high-pitched feline moan that sounded like some sort of reed instrument. Reaching over with his other paw, he leaned on Mara and began rocking between the two to play a miserable little harmony. It only took a few notes to make all four of them laugh so hard that he had to stop. Releasing their younger siblings, Lincoln wiped tears from his eyes before glancing over at Rhodes sheepishly.
Mara and Jake just lay there catching their breath until Mara recovered enough to say angrily, “You bullies! We’re not your toys!”
Instantly back at level ten, Lincoln got right in her face with a primal yell. “You think I was kidding?! Do you want to be some fat man’s toy in a city somewhere?! It’s not a joke!”
Mara crumpled in fear and started sobbing again.
Lincoln turned away and tried to calm himself down.
They all sat in relative silence for a good while.
Trying to break the tension, Rhodes assumed a twangy poacher’s accent and posture. “Which one of you manimals was the one playin’ that sweet melody earlier? Are y’all some sort of, family band or sumfin?”
Baring his teeth, Lincoln lunged at Rhodes and punched him again in the nose, knocking him flat onto his back. “Now you think this is a joke!?!”
Already realizing that he had messed up, Rhodes put up his hands to say so.
Unconsoled, Lincoln continued to yell, “Humans don’t get to make jokes like that!” Shaking his head angrily at his brother’s apologetic gaze, he turned back to his gorillion siblings and continued savagely, “You two need to take your safety more seriously! I cannot believe you followed us out here.” Lincoln could feel his father’s temper raging inside him and took several long breaths in an attempt to cool down, but it didn’t work. He charged into some nearby shrubs and tore a few out by the roots. Seething, he somehow had the presence of mind to worry that Rhodes might take another setback poorly, and mustered as much calm confidence as he could to say through clenched teeth, “We have to take them back.”
“Definitely,” Rhodes agreed without hesitation. Trying to prove his understanding, he looked at Jake and Mara and said, “I don’t think they realize how much trouble they’re going to be in. Did you two dinguses even bring anything to eat?”
Jake and Mara shook their heads no.
Lincoln made a frustrated gorilla noise and stormed off.
Without another word, all four of them assumed a well-practiced foraging formation, collected breakfast, and sat down to eat. As the silent feeding began, Mara and Jake both seemed to realize what a gift this last meal was. They ate hungrily and asked for more. Lincoln caught them another little weasel that had been sleeping in a nearby burrow, they ate it, and when their older brother said it was time to go, they didn’t argue.
On the trek back, Mara tried to explain why they had followed in the first place. Starting with lavish compliments about how they were such great role models, she shifted into a subtle pitch for help in developing an excuse to lessen their mother’s punishment. Lincoln realized she was a better liar than he thought, but just as she was hitting her verbal stride, Jake completely derailed her. Although the two were the same age, he was obviously less developed when it came to persuasive argument. He started blathering some nonsense about how he knew what they did was wrong and would never do it again. Mara screeched at her brother and the two of them got lost in their bickering. Rhodes and Lincoln just laughed and increased their pace.
About an hour later, when they started to approach the point where it would be safe to send the kids back alone, Lincoln slowed down to say, “Alright, kiddos. Remember. Your best bet is to tell the truth. You’ll–”
Mara cut him off, “We’re not good enough at lying yet, you’re right! But you are. Please come back with us and tell her something that makes us seem stupid instead of bad... Please? I’ll do anything!”
Lincoln laughed and said, “If you really want to try lying, go with that premise. You’re stupid. Not bad. Nice and simple.” He laughed again. “Or, instead of trying to outsmart me, you could try listening to my advice. Tell the truth. I know it’s–”
This time Lincoln was interrupted by the warm static hum of a stun cannon—he sprang into the closest tree and moved to an offensive position.
Mara and Jake had never seen poachers before, but just as their mother had taught them, they dropped straight to the jungle floor.
Sprinting at full speed, Rhodes drew the warclub from its strap and disintegrated a translucent concussive blast with a vicious backhand. With a forward roll, he disappeared into some underbrush before popping up next to a team of three shooters that he found in a predictable flank. With a few quick movements, he disemboweled them and went looking for the cannon that had fired at them. Running up to the position that the poachers he had just killed had been supporting, he silently gutted three more shooters without leaving his leafy cover. Thus far, it had been a standard poacher formation, but there were still a lot of subtle noises coming from the jungle between them and the Starrlett camp that indicated many more humans to kill.
Lincoln had found the sniper that typically came with teams like this and rode him back down towards the jungle floor, not far from his human brother. Two energy blasts came at them from elevated positions—Rhodes ran a slant route for cover while Lincoln leapt back into the trees. Swinging up from underneath one of the cannon operators, the gorillion grabbed the human’s feet from either side of the branch he was standing on and let gravity pull him downwards, breaking the man at the hip. Two teams of four shooters began firing at him as he landed on the ground. With a bloody roar, Lincoln charged towards the closer group through the thick underbrush, but Rhodes had beat him there.
Running in with a spinning-upward swing, the tribesman cut through three of them with one blow from the warclub, sending a spattering of blood all over the leafy canopy. With momentum leftover, he transitioned into a downward chop that landed on top of the fourth poacher’s skull, hammering him into the ground with the sound of splintering bones.
Lincoln vaulted over a leaning tree, landing on two of the poachers and crushing their rib cages flat. Grabbing another man by the wrist, he slapped the poacher’s body around a tree like a wet towel. The last man in their formation tried to run, but Lincoln caught him by the skull and crushed it in his palm before jumping back up into the trees in search of more snipers.
Rhodes dropped flat and put his ear to the ground—listening to vibrations, he had a pretty good idea of where the closest vehicles were. Standing up, he took two steps forward in a discus-style spin to fling his warclub.
Hearing the dangerous low-whooping sound below him, Lincoln jumped onto a safe branch to watch as the whirling weapon crashed through two giant trees which started to fall slowly in its wake. The gorillion used the falling trees to his advantage and took out two more distracted snipers before swinging towards where the warclub had landed.
Sprinting to the same spot, Rhodes eviscerated another string of shooters with his hands. He found his club lodged in the hood of the large carrier vehicle, having torn through half of the cab and its driver along the way. In the distance, they heard Goliath’s battle cry, and as terrifying as the call was, Rhodes and Lincoln were both invigorated. Then they heard the sounds of the rest of the gori
lla troop beginning to attack, which gave scale to how large the battle really was. Rhodes shouted over to Lincoln, “You might sound like that once your balls drop.”
Before the gorillion could reply, they heard two more stun cannons warming up. The first one fired just as Rhodes dove to retrieve his warclub and missed. Yanking his weapon from the wreck, the tribesman spun with fancy footwork and used the club’s momentum to launch himself straight at the cannon—crashing through the machine, he reached for the throat of its operator and tore it out.
The second cannon was sitting on a metal rack roughly five meters off the ground, fastened to a tree. Leaping from branch to branch to get there, Lincoln plowed into its operator and smashed her head against the tree trunk with his palm. Then, with a swift kick, he knocked the rack and cannon to the ground then dropped back down to stand next to Rhodes. With surprising calm, he asked, “What in the world is going on here?”
“I know, right?!” Rhodes replied, a little wide-eyed. “There are so many of them.”
They could hear Goliath and his troop getting closer—it sounded as though they had the poachers loosely encircled. Neither of them knew what to do, but Lincoln said hastily, “Okay, try to push this part of the perimeter in and meet up with Goliath. I’m going to check on Jake and Mara.”
Rhodes nodded and was already turning to re-engage when they heard a scattering of tinny plinking sounds all around them. After a short delay, there was a series of loud pops accompanied by pink smoke that immediately blurred their vision. Lincoln grabbed Rhodes by the shoulder and flung him up into the trees before leaping up himself. Sitting relatively safely on the same branch, Rhodes looked at his rescuer with surprise and said, “Whoa, that stuff tastes awful.”
Lincoln grinned at him and said hurriedly, “Change of plans,” before swinging through a few trees, jumping down onto the grenadier who had lobbed the volley of poisonous pills and tearing off his arms. More of the surrounded poachers began to fire at them, and Lincoln charged in fearlessly. He bit down hard into one’s shoulder and felt the life flow out of him.Stepping on the foot of the woman behind him, he grabbed her by the arm and yanked upwards, tearing the poacher at her midsection. A third poacher got off a lucky shot that grazed the gorillion’s shoulder. Lincoln let out a bellowing roar as he smashed the man's skull between the palms of his hands with a massive clap.
Rhodes had only inhaled a little of the pink smoke but was still recovering from its effects—he could only watch as the gorillion continued to dismember more humans. With short breaths and blurred vision, he sat and listened as the other gorillas in the jungle called back with their own roars and shouts. It had been a while since he had seen his gorillion brother fight this seriously, and he was impressed by how much Lincoln had matured. With a laugh, he shouted out a compliment, “I just want you to know, you’re one fine piece of gorillion gold!”
Lincoln’s bloodlust was too much for him to smile, so instead he shouted back, “Jake and Mara are fine. Let’s get some more kills before Goliath takes them all.”
Tearing through a few more patches of poachers, Rhodes figured there must have been hundreds of humans fighting in total. Eventually, they came upon some of Lincoln’s full-gorilla half-siblings as they were dragging the driver and gunner out of their respective hatches on a little skimmer, taking huge bites of their flesh as they did. Lincoln laughed, “You guys are eating meat?”
Rhodes and Lincoln were running towards what looked like one of the final clusters of poachers who were bunkered down between three large carriers, when without warning, Goliath dropped down from the canopy above. Crushing three poachers with his landing, the ground shook upon impact, and the massive ape let loose another terrifying roar that made the leaves around him quiver. Even though they were on the same side, a fearful tear escaped from one of Rhodes’ eyes as he watched the gorilla pulverize what was left of the poachers with incredible speed and brutality, flipping two of the carriers over in the process. After tearing the final human limb from limb, Goliath looked around with a ravenous bloodlust. Not finding more people to kill, he howled his excess fury into the sky.
Aside from a few cuts, bruises, and burns, not a single animal seemed to have been injured. There were still a few animals scurrying about to make sure all threats had been subdued, but very quickly, the jungle became quiet again. The handful of human survivors had been stripped and dragged into a dense patch of thorny vines. Sitting in the tree branches above the briar patch, Jake and Mara howled with laughter as they spit and shit down onto their captives.
Bleeding from the wounds they had sustained, as well as where the plants continued to tear deeper into their flesh as they squirmed, only two humans were alive by the time Marion arrived. Both of them were making horrible noises of fear and pain as the lioness walked unflinchingly into the bramble. With a sinister purr, she asked, “Why are you here?”
One of them started screaming hysterically, while the other laughed maniacally, “To eat your babies, you stupid manimal bitch! What else?”
Unfazed, Marion continued in the same silky tone, “Oh, you misunderstood me.” She put her mouth around the laughing man’s head and bit it gently—one tooth punctured his skull with a crunch, ending his life instantly. Moving slowly towards the man in hysterics, she purred, “You understand me though. Don’t you?”
He kept screaming.
With a smile just as warm as her voice, she said consolingly, “Aww, stop crying.”
He could not.
“I would like you to answer some questions for me. Once you do, I will put you out of your misery...” Still, he kept screaming, so Marion pounced onto the man’s lap and began batting at his face with her heavy paws until he was a silent, bloody mess. Casually, she walked away.
Jake and Mara dropped down to eat the meal their mother had prepared for them. Every species physically able to contest humans had come for the fight, and most of them had already disappeared into the surrounding jungle, but scavengers were just starting to arrive. After exchanging some brief eye contact with Marion, Goliath and his gorilla offspring swung back into the trees. The youngest gorillions started crowding around Mara and Jake to find out what had happened. Lincoln smiled over at Rhodes but the human was lost in a thousand-meter stare.
Painfully aware that he was the only human left alive, Rhodes wished he wasn’t. Thinking about what the unprecedented attack meant for the Starrletts, he cursed his genetic heritage and feared how the Starrletts might now perceive him.
Noticing how perturbed her human cub looked, Marion walked over to him and said, with a mother’s love, “You should stay with the herd for a few more days while we get this all figured out.”
Rhodes collapsed onto the nape of her neck, sobbing uncontrollably.
Worried about the message this would send to the herd, Marion wished she hadn’t released the gorilla troop so quickly. Tucking him under her massive paw, the lioness sat down, curling herself into a proud and relaxed pose as if she hadn’t a fear in the world. With her loudest, most commanding voice, she roared, “Starrletts!” After waiting a few moments for the remaining animals to gather around, she said with a loud and regal calm, “Today’s battle was won, but this can only be a sign of worse to come.” Shaking Rhodes under her paw idly, she continued, “This is the only human I ever want to see breathing again. He is my son and you are to treat him as such. Aside from my kin, you are to kill all humans on sight. We are at war.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Crater
Well, the Marshal said to herself silently, that was an enormous waste of time. The sheer size of it was impressive, which gave scale to how much energy had gone into the dispersion, but that much had been clear from the Matron’s reports. The concave depression had been cauterized by heat and the earthen wound was still devoid of vegetation, but no other evidence had been preserved. One team of independent investigators claimed to have found tracks leading away from the crater, which grew significantly with each ste
p before disappearing into the White River, but a full-spectrum scan of the area found no trace of them.
At least it was fun to look at, she replied.
Are you kidding? It’s literally a giant hole in the ground.
Yeah. Huge. You’re still thinking about Officer Brennan, aren’t you?
Rather than argue with herself, the Marshal got back on the Longcoat and began the search for Studebaker Hawk. Her blood felt hotter than the sun beating down on her back, and even with the wind slapping overtop and around the unshielded bike, she could not drown out her regret over what had happened in Buena Vista. Part of her hoped that someone high up on the USi totem pole would see the Peacekeeper’s execution as a sign of how rotten things were on Earth, but she knew that was wishful thinking. Maybe we should up the ante. Do something even more drastic. Let’s go straight to New York and murder a bunch of city folk. Send up as many red flags as we can. See who comes to stop us.
We have to at least try to find Studebaker Hawk before we get ourselves decommissioned. The Marshal knew she was right, but didn’t want to talk about it. Even though locating the migrant would be a major breakthrough for their investigation, she didn’t feel excited. Part of her was worried that it would be a wild goose chase, but a bulk of her focus was still on Officer Brennan. I’m sure Stu was right about there being two Brennans. She couldn’t tell if the voice inside her head was being conciliatory or practical. And the Marshal was right too. Even if he was a good guy, he was a liability. And he was drunk.
Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever Page 17