Moonfeast

by James Axler

  “Musta been a nukestorm of a fight,” another sec man commented, wiping his dirty face and neck with a soiled handkerchief. The trickles of sweat were replaced by smears of engine grease.

  “We going after them, Baron?” a fat sec man asked, checking the load in his new longblaster. The wooden stock of the BAR was wrapped in canvas strips to prevent any slippage from sweaty hands, as was the trigger and arming bolt.

  Once the weapon had had a telescopic sight, but the sec man had traded that to a pretty young gaudy slut for a month of her favors. It was a good deal, since he hadn’t used the scope in years. The man was a natural gunner, and lead always seemed to hit whatever he wanted it to.

  “Not across those open fields,” the baron scoffed, tucking away the bincos. “There’s nothing out there but stickies, screamers and thunder kings.” He frowned in thought. “Mebbe Carlton can summon a king, but there’s no nuking way to control one, or to make it stop once it gets the smell of blood.”

  “I’d rather face a live nuke than a king,” a burly sec man said with feeling, cracking his knuckles. His arms were covered with a zoo of crude tattoos depicting everything he had chilled: norm, animal or mutie.

  “Agreed! We’ll stay in the jungle, where it’s safe,” Lady Veronica added blandly.

  The troops chuckled at that. The only place safe on Clemente Island was in the grave.

  “If Carlton and his sailors manage to reach high ground alive, we’ll ambush them in PacCom,” the baron declared, starting the big knucklehead engine again. It rattled and belched, then settled into a steady purr of power.

  “Everybody good on juice?” Lady Veronica asked. “Got enough oil? Air pressure?” There came an answering chorus. “Good. Now, stay in formation!”

  “And watch for jumpers!” the baron shouted, revving the knucklehead bike to the red line, then twisting the handlebar controls.

  The gang of caged hogs surged back into the thick jungle, smashing through the thick foliage, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Gradually the crushed plants began to rise again, ever so slowly returning to their former positions. In less than an hour there was no sign that people and bikes had ever passed this way. The dense jungle fully returned to its original pristine condition.

  REACHING OUT, Ryan snatched the item and gave it a cursory glance before tossing it to Mildred. “Is that what I think it is?” he demanded.

  Making the catch, Mildred looked at the tiny metal pipe and was startled to see it was a predark item. She had owned one for a while as an intern just to annoy her neighbors when they played rap music too loud for her to study. Then the implications hit her, and the physician cast away the thing as if it were white-hot.

  “Horses!” she bellowed, turning to sprint for the trees. “We have to find the horses right fucking now!”

  Without hesitation, the rest of the companions took flight after the woman.

  “Millie, what is that thing?” J.B. demanded, hugging his munitions bag close to his chest.

  “A dog whistle!” she shouted, pelting along. “An ultrasonic dog whistle!”

  “We can handle a pack of dogs, madam,” Doc retorted, starting to slow down, then his pace quickened. “By the Three Kennedys, you mean an ultrasonic rhino whistle!”

  “Exactly!”

  As if on cue, there came a thunderous roar in the distance, closely followed by a soft pounding in the ground that grew louder every second.

  Unfortunately it was soon painfully obvious to the companions that the horses hadn’t stopped, and were still running for the horizon.

  “Fireblast! We’re not going to catch them until hunger brings them back,” Ryan panted, slowing to a halt.

  “If ever,” Krysty agreed, looking around quickly. If there had been a cliff for them to climb, or even some boulders, the companions might have stood a chance at making a stand. But the gentle rolling hills offered no natural protection. Just a lot of wide-open fields, a shallow river and pine trees that a rhino could knock over as easily as stomping on a dandelion.

  “Dark night, we’re well and truly nuked!” J.B. muttered, reaching into the bag to haul out a stick of TNT. The long cylinder was wrapped in duct tape to hold a double row of predark roofing nails in place. He had cobbled the junk bomb together the previous night in anticipation of fighting another of the armored giants. There were two more of the junk bombs in his bag, the last reserved for him to shove down the throat of the biowep as it trampled him flat. If this was his day to board the last train west, then the man would go down fighting!

  “Still got stick?” Jak asked, jerking out the ammo clip of the M-16 rapidfire.

  “Sure,” Mildred said in confusion, then dug out the bag to carefully smear the sticky poison along the top bullet.

  The vibrations in the earth were coming closer together now, and there was a hard pounding sound like an advancing machine.

  With a grim expression, Jak slammed the clip back into place and wrapped the carrying strap around his forearm to help steady his aim. He would have only one chance at this, and couldn’t afford a miss.

  “Okay, we don’t have a choice this time,” Ryan growled. “J.B., Krysty, use your implo grens. Everybody else, start running back toward the ruins! Mebbe you can trick the thing to fall into a basement. That won’t hold the bastard for long, but it’ll give you a chance to reach the ville again.”

  “Never stop firing!” Krysty added, yanking the tape off the gren. “That at least slows down the mutie!”

  Suddenly a flock of birds erupted from the forest and a pine tree toppled over to the sound of splintering wood as the ugly head of a rhino appeared from the laurel bushes. Its piggy eyes glanced around to lock upon the companions, and the biowep lumbered forward, each step coming a little faster.

  Instantly the companions cut loose with their blasters, but the barrage of soft lead rounds ricocheted off the armored mutie as if they were throwing autumn leaves. Only Jak didn’t fire. Kneeling, he was tracking the advance of the beast, trying to get a clear shot of the mouth.

  “I’ll make it whimper!” J.B. snarled, lighting the fuse of a pipe bomb.

  “No, wait, I’ve got an idea!” Mildred cried, but it was too late.

  The cylinder went tumbling forward to land directly in front of the beast. Incredibly the mutie swerved and the charge detonated loudly a yard away, the hail of nails hissing through the air, smacking into the rocks and trees and peppering the side of the rhino. It grunted from the impacts, and Jak fired, the poisoned bullet glancing off the creature’s jaw to spin away crazily.

  Incredibly, Ryan’s stallion charged out of the woods, the horse throating a challenge at the racing mutie. Turning fast, the rhino headed straight toward the new danger. Rearing onto both hind legs, the horse pawed the air, an iron-clad hoof scoring a furrow across the forehead of the rhino, narrowly missing an eye.

  Ducking low, the mutie used its main horn to protect its face from another strike, and the two combatants circled each other, the rhino thrusting the horn for the vulnerable throat of the horse, while the stallion snapped at the brutish enemy with his large teeth, nipping at one ear, then the other.

  The rhino unexpectedly reared up, its broad toes digging into the soil, and the mutie rammed the horse with a stout leg. Knocked dizzy, the horse stumbled, and the rhino gored the stunned animal with its main horn, the curved length going in all the way. Mortally wounded, the horse screamed in pain, then the rhino jerked its brute head aside, ripping open the belly, the ropy intestines slithering out to fall onto the ground.

  Collapsing into the dirt, the stallion weakly pawed its legs at the enemy, but the rhino climbed onto the other animal and began stomping it flat. The horse briefly screamed, then went silent, and there was only the juicy crushing of warm flesh and the splintering of bones.

  Quickly, J.B. threw a second pipe bomb at the dead horse. As the sizzling charge landed, the rhino snapped at the bomb and started chewing it when both animals vanished in a thunderclap of f
lame and smoke.

  As the fumes cleared, the horse was gone, blown into pieces. But the accursed rhino was still standing, although with both horns removed. Its face was a mottled array of bleeding wounds and nail holes, strips of torn flesh dangling loosely.

  Thrusting its head down, the rhino started chomping on random bits of the horse, feeding the voracious engine of its body as the damage started to be repaired.

  “Okay, everybody start running,” Ryan commanded.

  “No, don’t!” Mildred stated, placing a hand on his fist. “Head for the river!”

  Annoyed, Ryan stared at the woman as if she had been smoking wolfweed.

  “Trust me on this,” Mildred said, looking him in the face.

  After a moment Ryan nodded his acceptance and turned to race for the nearby river, with the others close behind.

  “Now what, madam?” Doc asked, stopping at the edge of the water.

  “Get on the island, you fool!” she shouted, sloshing forward.

  “Island, what island?” J.B. shouted. “That is a fragging sandbar, Millie!”

  “Just get into the fucking river!” she yelled over a shoulder, the rushing water rising only to her waist before it started dropping once more.

  Following her lead, the rest of the companions crossed the shallow river and rejoined on the tiny strip of damp sand. They needed to stand very close together, and the grim companions could feel the body heat of the person next to them.

  “What next?” Jak demanded.

  But just then, the rhino appeared from the trees, its gore-streaked face still reforming as it charged once more toward the companions.

  Stepping knee-deep into the river, Ryan lifted a pipe bomb high.

  “Don’t bother, we’re safe now,” Mildred panted, a sly smile crossing her face. “Watch this.”

  Lumbering on like an express train, the rhino crossed the forest clearing in only a few seconds, running directly over the campfire as if not even noticing the flames. But as it approached the muddy bank, the mutie abruptly slammed to a halt. Hesitantly, the rhino took a step forward, a squat leg touching the water. But it immediately withdrew and loudly roared in frustration, its double horns slashing the air wildly.

  “See this, not believe,” Jak said, trying to figure out if the rhino was playing some sort of trick.

  Once more, the rhino dipped a foot into the river and hastily withdrew. Radiating fury the way a furnace did heat, the mutie once more bellowed in unbridle rage and began to march along the shoreline, only yards from the cluster of people.

  “Good Lord, the beast will not enter the water,” Doc whispered in amazement, lowering his two blasters. “Madam, how did you know?”

  “Basic science,” Mildred said, massaging the back of her neck. “The creature is armor-plated, built like a tank. But it’s too small to have any real buoyancy, way too dense, which means it can’t possibly swim. Deep water would chill that thing faster than shoving it off a cliff.”

  “But the water isn’t deep,” Krysty said hesitantly, securing the tape on the implo gren.

  The physician smiled. “Yeah, but it doesn’t know that.”

  “The mutie can smash through granite, but it fears water?” Ryan said slowly, almost lowering his fist.

  “Of course! It was the pounding of the legs that reminded me of a documentary I once saw about elephants. It explained how they can swim, but just barely. Any heavier, and it would be impossible.” Mildred gestured with a palm. “And behold, there is your proof. Anything that could survive a pipe bomb in its mouth would have to be denser than concrete.”

  Waddling over to one of the chilled sec men, the rhino started to noisily eat the body—boots, blaster and all going into the chomping jaws.

  “Hold breath?” Jak asked, covering his mouth with a palm for no sane reason.

  “No, the metabolism is too fast,” Mildred answered confidently, finally holstering her blaster. “See how fast it breathes? The mutie would suffocate under water in only a few seconds trying to supply oxygen to its heart. Too big, too muscled, too bad.”

  Finished with the first corpse, the rhino glared at the companions huddled on the sandbar and stomped the ground a few times defiantly before going to the next body.

  “What should we do now, my dear Ryan?” Doc asked, rummaging in his pockets. The man found two replacement brass and slipped them into the cylinder of the Webley, closing the blaster with fingertip pressure.

  “Get to the other side of the river,” Ryan said, walking into the rushing water, “and start looking for those bastard horses!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sloshing to the opposite bank, the companions went to check the bodies of the chilled, while Ryan stood guard. Steadily munching, the rhino hatefully watched them from the other side of the shallow river, its piggy eyes never leaving the big man.

  Untouched by the rhino, the blasters were in fine condition, just old and dirty. The sec men had been heavily armed and carrying a wide assortment of blasters, several of them crude affairs built from old lavatory plumbing and iron bailing wire. Since they already had better weapons than these, the companions concentrated on recovering any live brass.

  “Keep the very best, dump the rest,” Krysty commanded. “We’re carrying enough deadweight as it is.”

  “Never enough brass, though.” J.B. chuckled, pouring a handful of loose 9 mm rounds into his munitions bag. The jingling was music to his ears.

  “Pity there was no black powder,” Doc rumbled, rotating the cylinder of the LeMat. Then he dry fired the gun a few times to check the action.

  Along with the blasters and brass, there was an abundance of whips, knives and boomerangs, all of which was left behind. However, the companions discovered a host of other useful items: a small compass, a couple of wax candles, beef jerky, beans and five more self-heats.

  “Must have been saving these for something special,” J.B. said, tucking the cans into his munitions bag.

  “What better celebration than their own demise, eh, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, carefully adding a copper percussion nipple to the LeMat before holstering the weapon. Now he was fully armed, with almost more ammunition for the two blasters than he could carry. It was a delightful feeling, and one that he wished to experience more often.

  “No sign of the horses yet,” Ryan announced, resting a combat boot on a fallen log. “All right, make camp and let’s have some chow.”

  “Right here, Ryan?” Doc asked askance, glancing at the bloody corpses strewed around. Flies were starting to arrive in droves, along with new swarms of mosquitoes.

  “Don’t know about you, but I was hungry before this fight started,” Ryan replied, never taking his gaze off the rhino. “Now, I’m bastard famished. Besides which, it is getting dark and a campfire might attract the horses.”

  “We’ll just move upwind,” Mildred added, “and build an extra fire between us and the dearly departed.”

  Soon enough, the two fires were crackling away, and the air was filled with the smell of frying fish, coffee sub, bacon and beans from the self-heats.

  “Ah, pure ambrosia!” Doc exclaimed, inhaling deeply. “A meal fit for a baron.”

  “Just beans.” Jak grinned, adding a dash of shine to the bubbling legumes.

  “My dear Jak, you seriously underestimate your skills as a culinary expert,” Doc said, smiling as he squatted down on his heels. “You could make even the best French chef jealous.”

  “Prefer MRE,” Jak said honestly, taking a taste with a wooden spoon. Then he frowned.

  “Needs some garlic?” Mildred asked with a grin.

  “No, filia powder,” the teenager replied. “But good enough for now.”

  Accepting the M-16 from Krysty, Doc took his turn as guard, and Ryan came back to wash and have dinner with the others. In the middle of the meal, Mildred replaced Doc, who dived into the meal with obvious gusto.

  Across the river, the rhino snorted at the smells of the cooking food and pounded th
e ground to show its displeasure. The companions ignored the beast as much as possible.

  As true night arrived, the companions could see a soft glow on the western horizon and the vague outline of a predark city, hundreds of lights twinkling among the crumbling buildings.

  As expected, the horses individually started coming back during the night, and soon all five had returned, hungry, dirty, their manes full of burrs.

  Tending to the animals, the companions gave them food, combed out the burrs and treated some deep scratches with witch hazel. The horses nickered at the sting of the antiseptic fluid, but clearly had been treated this way before, and none of them bolted.

  “We were lucky and didn’t lose much,” Krysty stated, checking the contents of a saddlebag. “But now that we are down a horse, somebody is going to have to pair up in the morning.”

  “Millie can ride with me,” J.B. said, looking up from thumbing fresh rounds into an exhausted clip for the Uzi. “Plenty of room on my saddle.”

  “I’ll say!” Mildred replied in a lusty voice that made the man blush and the rest of the companions roar with laughter.

  Across the river, the rhino snorted in frank disapproval at the sound of merriment and went back to eating the dead.

  Taking the first shift, Jak settled in with a rapidfire and a cup of hot coffee sub, while the others banked the two fires with extra wood. Crawling into their patched bedrolls, the companions were warm enough, and made sure that their weapons were close at hand. Just in case of trouble. At first, it was difficult for them to get to sleep over the steady munching from the other side of the river, but eventually their tired bodies yielded to the demands of nature, and soon a chorus of gentle snoring mixed with the nearby rush of the water and the breaking of bones.