“Maybe one of these days you’ll—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. Sheryl Lee’s arm shot out in front of his chest, halting him. As he glanced at her, he heard rather than saw the reason for her reaction. He turned to the right, seeking the source of the faint buzzing sound that whispered beneath the wind.
“God!” His eyes widened when his gaze alighted on the bundle of brown- and-black-mottled coils ten feet to his side.
“Yep.” Sheryl Lee eased him away from the coiled snake. “That’s a rattler.”
“I didn’t know they came in the two-headed variety.” Rick watched the poisonous snake’s twin heads weave slowly from side to side. Behind those heads a tail with two rattlers vibrated angrily.
“Don’t usually,” the redhead answered. “But ever since the red dust was released, there have been more and more weird creatures like that poppin’ up in this part of the country.”
“A mutation?” Rick cast the young woman a sideways glance as they circled the two-headed reptile, giving it wide berth. “But I thought the bacteria wasn’t harmful to terrestrial life forms.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.” Sheryl Lee looked over her shoulder at the still-coiled rattlesnake, then proceeded northward at Rick’s side. “Maybe once we released it in the atmosphere, it changed the way the virus did in that movie Andromeda Strain. But it’s not just the rattlers that are affected. It’s the coyotes, jackrabbits, prairie dogs—-all the wildlife. I’ve heard reports of cows and horses suddenly gone sterile.” Rick listened, uncertain of what he heard. If the red dust humankind had used to combat the Visitors was causing the mutations, then the biological weapon was as dangerous to Earth’s denizens as it was to the alien invaders. And without the red dust, what defense did the world have against the snakes’ superior technology?
His stomach lurched and churned. What was the use of fighting and freeing the world if the weapons man created would eventually destroy the planet? Sheryl Lee had to be wrong about the effects of the red dust. She had to be!
Once again Rick surveyed the arid plain they were walking on. Was this the future that awaited the rest of the world? Would the green forests and prairies slowly die, killed by a bacteria developed to slay an enemy not bom of this planet?
No! Rick refused to accept that vision of the future. Even if the red dust caused the mutations Sheryl Lee detailed, there had to be a way to reverse its deadly effects. Those who had developed the toxin could destroy it—after the Visitors were driven from the world once again.
“Surfer Boy.” Sheryl Lee nudged his shoulder. “I think we underestimated the distance we traveled before Wanda Sue was shot down.”
“Huh?” Rick looked up, coming out of his dark reflections. “Damn!”
Ahead of them the ground abruptly opened. A canyon dropping at least eight hundred feet to its floor stretched for a mile before them.
“How?” Rick doubted his eyes. “This wasn’t here a minute ago. How could it just appear?”
Sheryl Lee’s mouth gave a funny little twist, and she shrugged. “It’s the country’s flatness. It hides even the smallest depression in the land. Whole armies of Comanche Indians used to hide from their pursuers in gullies. They weren’t detected until it was too late.” Rick half listened to the redhead’s history of this portion of Texas. In truth, he didn’t give a damn about Comanches or how they used the land. The question was how were they going to cross this ragged trench that wind and water had cut into the earth?
Stepping to the edge of the canyon, he peered down and realized that the answer to his unspoken question was that they weren’t!
A sheer face of limestone dropped four hundred feet below him before disappearing into a steep slope of sand and talus that fell to the canyon floor. Without mountain-climbing gear, or at least a stout rope, there was no way to make it down that first four hundred feet.
“This is the edge of the Caprock, isn’t it?” he asked, looking east, then west. The canyon sliced through the land for as far as he could see in both directions.
“No.” Sheryl Lee’s head moved from side to side. “This is just one of several canyons that cut into the Caprock.”
While she described the difficulties pioneers had in acsending the escarpmentlike walls of the Caprock, Rick studied the canyon floor. It appeared no more hospitable than the sheer faces of the walls. Rugged ravines and hills covered in thickly growing mesquite were everywhere. Even if they could reach the floor, it would take hours to cross a mile of imposing terrain below.
“What do we do now?” He stepped from the canyon’s edge and looked at the fiery-haired beauty.
Sheryl Lee didn’t answer. Her gaze focused on a distant finger of dust that rose from the flatlands behind them.
“What is it?” Rick squinted, but couldn’t make out anything.
“Don’t know, Surfer Boy,” Sheryl Lee said, her voice no more than a whisper. “But I reckon we’re fixin’ to find out. It’s cornin’ this way.”
Chapter 8
The canary’s head tilted from side to side. Its tiny dark eyes homed in on the fingers that flipped the latch to the cage and eased the door wide. It chirped and hopped about on its perch until it faced the unbarricaded avenue to freedom.
Garth’s slitted eyes, human-imitating contact lenses abandoned in the solitude of his own quarters, narrowed so that only a hint of the reptilian orange sparked behind his eyelids. His lips pursed, and he whistled a weak imitation of the small bird’s song.
“It’s the only chance you’ll get,” he crooned gently to the canary. “Fly from your cage and you’re free. Remain and ...”
The delicate bird ruffled yellow feathers and once again cocked its head from side to side, cautiously examining the open door. Garth’s alien heart quickened. The canary was going to try for freedom!
The bird’s wings fluttered. It launched itself toward the gaping opening. Across the large wire cage it darted, intent only on escape from the metal prison.
Like a scene viewed in super slow motion, Garth watched the colorful creature’s flight. He saw the strain of its tiny wings as they carried the plump body toward the open door. He watched in wonderment while tail feathers shifted to accommodate the bird’s trajectory. Each small movement was beauty itself, a poem to the
majesty of nature. Garth’s heart felt as though it might explode from his chest.
The canary’s head, then wings, fluttered through the open door. Its angle of flight abruptly changed as the fragile bird swerved upward to seek the safety of height.
At that same instant Garth’s mouth snapped open. His tongue, red and moist, flicked out, a miniature biological whip. It struck, wrapping itself around the bird, before the canary’s tail cleared the door. Then it coiled back, bringing the struggling morsel of yellow into waiting jaws that chomped once.
Then Garth swallowed.
It remains. . . . The primitive hunting instinct remains as sharp and focused as always. Garth, as he had done countless times in his life, tried to imagine himself climbing from the prehistoric swamps of his home world when his distant ancestors had ruled. They had survived, and were he thrown into similar circumstances, so would he—of that he was certain!
Beneath the thin veneer of civilization, the hunter dwelled in the soul of his people. That and only that sparked and fanned their greatness. Those who denied the hunter were destined to be no more than slaves. Those who worshiped the hunter—not even the stars were a limit to them.
Garth sank into the cushions of his chair. The hunter ruled his soul. This little game he played with bird and rodent was a daily sacrifice he offered up to his bloody god, a prayer that he laid at the feet of the force that molded the race humans called the Visitors.
Usually after the small game a deep sense of satisfaction suffused every cell of his body. For a moment he could forget the constant demands placed on the shoulders of a Mother Ship commander. Today that calming relaxation was denied him.
D
amn the red-haired human bitch! he thought, cursing the source of his unrest. For months he had mentally
savored and relished the method by which he would make the female pay for the hand she had cost him. Now the woman had robbed him of that pleasure. He viewed her death as a personal slap in the face. It was as though she had walked into the beam of one of his shock troopers’ rifles to spit in his eye one last time.
Damn! He slammed a balled fist into the arm of his chair. How he regretted leaving her body on that table back in Dallas. The least he could have done was to have brought the corpse with him and dined on it this night.
Garth’s head moved from side to side. There would have been only bitterness in such a meal. Besides, the bitch was probably stringy!
The thought provided no comfort. With vengeance so close, victory had been snatched from his hand. And like it or not, nothing remained to quiet the fury that consumed his breast.
“Commander Garth,” a female voice imposed itself on the silence of his quarters.
Garth glared at the intercom grille set into his desk. “I left specific orders not to be disturbed for an hour.”
“My apologies, Commander, but your standing orders call for immediate notification of any missing ship.”
Swallowing a string of curses that would have ended with a double-rank demotion for the woman on the other end of the intercom, Garth asked, “Missing ship? Where?”
“Lubbock sector,” the grille hissed the answer. “Two-person skyfighter on routine reconnaissance out of the Abilene Processing Center is reported two hours overdue in its return to base.”
“You call this immediate reporting?” Garth’s fury grew.
Five skyfighters had been mysteriously shot down in that sector in the past two months. The only hint of the cause that had brought down those ships was the fragmented communique that reported one of the vessels had engaged a propeller-powered human aircraft in combat. The wreckage of each of the five ships had eventually been found—all riddled by large-caliber machine guns.
“Commander, the communique from Abilene just arrived, I assure you,” the woman on the intercom replied.
“And their plans for search and rescue?”
“No plans were included in the message, Commander,” the woman said. “Abilene reports that all its skyfighters are presently assigned as escorts for the squad-vehicle wing en route to the Mother Ship.” Garth swung about, fingers dancing over the keys of a computer terminal on his desk. The screen above the keyboard flickered. Flight plans for every craft in his command scrolled onto the monitor.
He cursed. As evening approached, the majority of his ships, skyfighters and squad vehicles were returning to the Houston Mother Ship with their precious food cargo—humans neatly packed away and sealed in their cold-storage capsules.
“Very well,” Garth said when he returned to the intercom. “Transmit my orders to Abilene. I want a full search for the missing ship the moment the skyfighters return to the base. And this time I want some answers. Make certain they understand that heads will roll unless an explanation for the losses is presented to me. Six ships shot down in two months is far too many to tolerate!” “Yes, sir. Your orders will be transmitted immediately.” The intercom clicked off.
Garth sank back into his chair. The image of a dead woman stretched atop a table in Dallas pushed thoughts of the missing skyfighters from his mind.
Chapter 9
The finger of dust grew to a minor cloud that approached closer with each heartbeat. Rick and Sheryl Lee edged behind the tough, gnarled tranks of a clump of mesquite trees and squatted there. With eyes glued on the swirling dust, Uzi and liberated Visitor energy pistols ready, they waited.
The dark form heading the dust cloud slowly became the distinct silhouette of an open jeep with a lone man behind the wheel. The dust rose from a long bundle of mesquite branches dragging behind the vehicle as it bounced and rattled across the rocky flatlands.
Rick raised the Uzi, held it stiff-armed before him, and braced his right arm at the wrist with his left hand. He lined up the jeep’s driver in the sight. His finger tightened around the trigger, ready to squeeze the moment the man was in range.
Sheryl Lee reached up and tugged his arms down. She gave him a stern scowl.
“He’s alone. Let’s at least give him a chance to talk before ybu fill him full of holes, Surfer Boy.”
“He could be a Visitor in radio contact with his superiors.” Rick jerked away from the redhead and lifted the Uzi once more.
“And he could be human!” Sheryl Lee wrenched his arms down a second time. “There’s still people in this part of the country. He might be able to help us. Which is
a hell of a lot more than you’ve managed to do.” Her eyes darted to the canyon at their backs.
“We can’t ...” Rick started, then gulped.
The firm barrel of an energy pistol jammed into the young man’s ribs.
“Don’t try me,” Sheryl Lee said before Rick could utter another word. “This country breeds some mighty tough old buzzards. Right now a live one could get our fat out of the fire. Understand?”
Rick nodded and lowered the Uzi. With Sheryl Lee’s stolen gun nestled against his ribs, he watched the sand-colored jeep brake twenty feet from the mesquites. The driver rose so that a head topped by a red and white “gimme” cap poked over a dusty windshield.
“You two have covered more ground than two jackrabbits with coyotes on their tails,” a man’s voice, with the same thick drawl Joe Bob had possessed, called to them. “I didn’t think I’d catch up with you before the lizards did. Come on out. You’re among friends.” Sheryl Lee’s pistol came away from Rick’s side when she stood and stepped from the mesquites. The barrel immediately leaped up, and she held the lone man in her sights.
“I think it’s you who better step out, friend,” she said in that arctic voice Rick had heard once before. He preferred it when it was directed at someone else, especially now that he realized how deadly the redhead was with the pistol. “Fd also suggest you hold your hands above your head as you step out, friend.” “Right. I’m movin’ nice and easy. I wouldn’t want you to bum a hole through the man that’s driven all day just to rescue such a pretty li’F lady.”
With hands stretched high, a man in his late fifties or early sixties stepped from the jeep and walked toward the mesquites. He halted when Sheryl Lee’s pistol jerked nervously.
“Take the gun from our friend here, Surfer Boy.” Sheryl Lee gave her head a toss in Rick’s direction.
Uzi leveled to spray a burst of angry lead, Rick hastened to the man’s side. Except for the gimme cap that proclaimed Wayne Feeds on its front, the jeep’s driver might have stepped out of some grade-B western. He wore a white western shirt complete with mother-of-pearl snap buttons, faded jeans that were more gray than blue, and round-toed cowboy boots scarred and scuffed from years of hard wear. About his hip was holstered a chrome-plated pistol. Rick grasped the gun’s butt and slipped it from a tooled-leather sheath.
“Handle that real gentle like, son,” the man said with a smile that deeply creased a narrow, sun-and-wind-weathered face. “Thai hogleg’s a bit of history. Used to belong to my great-granddaddy Scoggin. A genuine Colt forty-five Peacemaker. Haven’t made them like that in over a century.”
The heavy revolver felt like the genuine article in Rick’s hand. Teflon-coated bullets were visible within the weapon’s cylinder. He showed them to Sheryl Lee as she stepped closer with the energy pistol still aimed at the stranger’s chest.
“The only thing that seems to work these days when a man goes snake huntin’,” the man said when he noticed what drew their interest. “Those and a good Mustang.” Rick’s jaw sagged. “Mustang? You?”
“One and the same.” The man’s grin widened so that it seemed to split his narrow face in two. Blue-gray eyes sparkled with delight beneath tufts of salt-and-pepper hair, which poked from under his cap. “Reckon I left in a mite of a hurry this mornin’.
Was running low on fuel or I’d have tried to make a landin’. Thought you two would have sense enough to stay by that belly-floundered C-47 until someone came along.”
Sheryl Lee poked at his chest when he attempted to lower his arms. “A few bullets and a mention of some
old fighter plane aren’t enough to convince me you’re real, friend. Surfer Boy, check the jeep for a radio.” “Name’s Scoggin, Charlie Scoggin.” The man’s eyes followed Rick to the dusty jeep. “Couldn’t we talk about this on the way back to my place? Ain’t safe out here. Surprised the Visitors haven’t come along ’fore now, lookin’ for that skyfighter I brought down this momin’.” “No radio,” Rick called after a quick search of the jeep. “And I can’t find any other weapons.”
“We’re really wastin’ precious time, liT lady,” Charlie Scoggin urged. “I didn’t come all the way out here just to end up in some lizard’s fry in’ pan. I can talk while I drive.”
“Whadya think?” Sheryl Lee asked when Rick returned to her side.
“He’s unarmed, and he can drive,” Rick mused aloud. “And like the man said, we run the risk of Visitors every minute we’re in the open.”
“Okay, Charlie Scoggin, back into the jeep.” Sheryl Lee motioned him toward the vehicle with the pistol’s barrel. “And please, no funny business. Surfer Boy here and I aren’t in a very humorous mood.”
With two pistols following his every move, the old man eased into the driver’s seat and sat there with his hands on the wheel until Sheryl Lee and Rick climbed into the jeep. When the redhead nodded, he twisted the key in the ignition and brought the jeep to life with a tap of his foot on the gas pedal.
“I’d feel a mite better if ya’ll point those things elsewheres.” Scoggin eased the jeep into first gear and did a slow 180-degree turn to head it back in the direction it had come.
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