Old Hunters on the New Wild

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 8 – Punishments of the First Creation…

  “Take your eyes out of the scope, boy. Use your own senses for once and see what surrounds you.”

  Cayden gently set the rail-rifle upon its short tripod, careful that impact didn’t jar the delicate settings he had spent the last ten minutes fine-tuning on his scope. Cayden hadn’t forgotten his previous failure, and the image of that genolope – tension stiffening the animal’s form – continued to appear in his mind. So while he waited for the mudders to ignite the tall grass to flush game his direction, Cayden gently set his rifle upon the tripod, worried that coming genolope would appear beyond the edge of his weapon’s range.

  “Why are the clones taking so long to light their fires?”

  “The grass is much thicker this deep into the veld,” Wyatt answered. “They must be cautious so that they do not become trapped by the flames should the wind shift. I’ve seen it happen. You’re expecting them to chase another genolope your way.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Wyatt’s nostrils flared. “You fidget too much with your scope. You’re thinking you’re going to have to depend on its range.”

  “You think I need to prepare for something else?”

  “I do. The savanna is filled with surprises. It’s one of the things that makes the grasses so wonderful.” Wyatt suddenly went rigid. “Hold a breath. You can smell what’s coming if you learn to concentrate.”

  Cayden filled his nostrils with air, but he smelled nothing more than dirt and dust. His fingers twitched, tempting his hand to reach for the spectrum binoculars stored in his backpack, so that he might scan the grass to find the heat signature of whatever animal his father seemed to sense nearing them. But he refrained from grabbing another piece of equipment. Wyatt was trying to discourage his son’s dependence on tools and gadgets. So Cayden held a breath, and he did his best to stand as a stone, so that a trip of his feet or the sound of a cough wouldn’t frighten whatever game Wyatt smelled in the grass.

  “Grab the needle-sprayer,” Wyatt whispered.

  “But I’ve never shot one before.”

  A sound of metallic chimes lifted suddenly into the air a moment before the grass swayed. Cayden’s reflexes locked. His hands could move towards no weapon as a flock of rainbow peacock scurried out from the grass and raced through Cayden’s position, their long, brilliant feathers chiming as they brushed against Cayden’s hip. The flightless birds moved quickly, their bright colors blurring their individual shapes into a larger, more intimidating mass meant to confuse whatever predator looked for an individual morsel to soothe a hungry stomach. The clanging chimes produced as the peacocks’ feathers swayed against the grass enhanced the confusion with sound, and in that din of noise, Cayden forgot his father asked anything of him at all.

  “Dammit, boy!” Wyatt’s eyes burned. “Grab the needle-sprayer while you still can. Just grab it and pull the trigger. You don’t need to aim a sprayer.”

  “They’re gone now.”

  “I’m not worried about peacocks! Hurry and grab your sprayer.”

  Cayden cringed as he slammed an ammunition pack into the handle of his needle-sprayer, afraid that the noise of him so clumsily filling that gun with miniature needles would scatter whatever game was approaching their location. Wyatt hurried into a nearby thicket of tall grass and jumped upon his stomach, pressing the whiskers of his mustache against the ground. Cayden watched his father’s arms extend from his body. He watched his father’s hands stretch into the grass to feel for movement. The wind gusted, and Cayden’s heart hammered in his ears by the time the breeze silenced.

  “Raise the gun, son, and be ready to pull the trigger.”

  The mudders whistled a warning before the clones screamed with their strong throats. Cayden’s eyes widened as the grass in front of him swayed as though the ground itself quaked. Much fear filled that young hunter’s face as he glanced at his experienced father.

  “Razor boar!” Wyatt shouted as the first of the snarls and growls reached Cayden’e ears. “Remember, you don’t have to worry about aiming that sprayer! They’ll be on top of us before we see them, so you’re not going to have any time to look through a scope. You just have to be willing to pull the trigger.”

  Cayden’s arm trembled as he raised that weapon and pointed its snub barrel at the waving grass. The dark, grunting creatures that erupted from the savanna nonetheless surprised Cayden with their speed. Cayden felt so certain he faced the coming tusks and bristles, but the boars leapt at his back all the same.

  Cayden had listened to so many of his father’s stories regarding the razor boar, and he had often pulled the bed’s covers over his head at night, with his dreams filled with the new wild’s species of boar flooding into his room and ripping through his home. The short animal with the thick legs offered little threat on its own, but when that little monster gathered into a frenzy during the mating season, the razor boar blended together to create a devastating current of destruction. The long hairs that bristled along the boar’s flanks turned rigid following the dry season, and their edges turned so sharp that the mass of the boar swarm mowed trails through the savanna grass.

  He suddenly stood in the middle of that grunting swarm, and fear overwhelmed Cayden as he watched the grass fall to that rushing horde of snarls. The boars raced across the savanna without a care to the victims who found themselves in their path. The scent of sex turned the boars’ blood wild, and so they whirled and snorted in their dances that invited the mating. Together, the boar seemed like a terrible thresher, thinning the grasses so that the lightning strikes that followed the dry season didn’t devour the land with fire. The largest of the new wild’s creatures fled from that boar swarm, their senses keen enough to detect the razor boar before becoming mauled by the stampede of knives. Even the splicer-lynx sought shelter from the razor boar that rutted when the dry season gave way to the rains.

  Cayden Holmes stood in the middle of that snorting mass. He swung the barrel of the needle-sprayer to his left and to his right, but none of the boar settled for a shot. The sunlight shimmered off of the animals’ sharp hides and played tricks on Cayden’s eyes. They were beautiful creations to Cayden, and a sentiment welled within him that urged him not to fire that weapon and destroy what was so incredibly crafted to bring life back to a land filled only with extinction a short time ago.

  “Shoot! Shoot, Cayden! Shoot!”

  Wyatt jumped from the ground and rushed towards his pack that lay several meters out of his reach. The razor boar darted towards the old hunter, and the animals surrounded Wyatt before he could reach his weapon. Wyatt grunted and fell to the ground, both of his legs torn open by razor boar hides and tusks. Cayden swooned when he saw a glimpse of sinew and bone in his father’s hurt.

  “Throw the gun to me, son! Throw it!”

  His muscles finally fired, and Cayden did as his father demanded. Wyatt deftly caught the weapon by its handle, regardless of the pain that must’ve been burning through his system. Wyatt raised the weapon in an instant. In a wink, Cayden heard the electric surge of that weapon vomit a spray of fine needles into the rampaging beasts. Razor boar howled and shrieked. They squealed as the mist of their blood lifted into the air. A dozen of the animals dropped in the hail of miniature darts. And then, the swarm vanished, rushing beyond Cayden and his father as suddenly as they had appeared, leaving the savanna again quiet.

  A mudder’s whistle cracked in the air, and Wyatt lifted his bloody fingers to his mouth to answer that call with a whistle of his own. Cayden thought the mudder guides appeared instantly the moment his father returned their call. Cayden no longer thought it possible that the clones could be beings hatched in a test tube. They seemed to him now to be beings whose kind evolved for generations upon the savanna, until they moved through the grass as quietly as did the wind, until they were no more or less ancient than any of the animals who ever possessed a wild home.

  Jarvis hurried to Wyatt’s side and i
mmediately began tending to the hunter’s wounds.

  “A wonderful kill, Mother-son,” Jarvis grinned. “The mudders will eat very well tonight.”

  Cayden burned with anger. “He’s hurt, and all you care to comment about is the flesh you’ll push down your throat.”

  Wyatt sighed at his son. Such disappointment filled his father’s face that Cayden once again buried his gaze upon his boots.

  “Eat your anger, boy. Perhaps it’ll taste a bit sweeter than the shame you’ve been gorging on since you arrived on this hunt. The feeding’s all that matters to the mudders. This isn’t some kind of game to them. It doesn’t get any more important to a clone. It might help you pull the trigger if you ever learned that fact.”

  Jarvis frowned. “Be still, Mother-son. Your wounds are deep, but they’re nothing we cannot mend. Be still and relax. There is no need to shame the boy. He has every right to feel upset when he sees that you are hurt. So calm your heart so that more blood doesn’t spill.”

  “The razor boar could’ve killed you,” Cayden growled.

  “They did not,” Wyatt rebutted. “The mating frenzy controlled them. They held no resentments toward an old hunter. They only snorted, growled and ran as the blood told them to do. The boar knew no reason to kill me.”

  “So it’s only luck that kept you alive?”

  Wyatt winked. “What more do you expect the wild to hold?”

  It took little time for the mudders to dress the fallen boar. They left such little blood behind. Only the grass remained red to mark where the boar had fallen by the time the clones finished with their work, and Cayden wondered if even the splicer-lynx would find the location of that killing. The mudders dressed Wyatt’s wounds just as quickly, offering no anesthetic to the aging man while their strong hands held the revered hunter still so that they could clean, disinfect and stitch the gashes that circled his legs. Wyatt betrayed only an occasional grunt or moan as the clones worked their needle and thread. Cayden wondered how much pain his father had endured in his past to make the discomfort he felt while those clones attended to his injuries so bearable.

  Cayden noticed when Jarvis placed down the needle and thread to point a finger toward the spent sprayer gun lying upon the ground. He saw the question in the clone’s eyes as the clone turned his face towards Wyatt’s. Cayden saw his father sigh and shake his head, and Cayden felt his hands ball into fists when Jarvis betrayed a moment of pity towards his direction. But then other mudders arrived to help lift Wyatt’s body upon a palanquin’s cushions, the old man’s injuries finally forcing that hunter to accept the pillows and cushions so freely enjoyed by his peers, none of whom yet pulled a weapon’s trigger to take what the savanna offered.

  In a look, Jarvis had asked Wyatt if his son had pulled the trigger and killed the razor boar, and Cayden knew that his father had answered by shaking his head. He had again failed to kill, regardless of his vow. For one more night, he would still not hear the song the mudders sang to celebrate the making of a new hunter.