Ten
The farmer had a loud rolling laugh that boomed out over the fields and was audible among the smooth dark trunks of the horkwoods. It was the loud laugh that killed him. Thinking that the sound was a warning, that perhaps the vertebrates had somehow detected it, the killbeast altered course toward the farm. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered with this farm, as there was a relatively small herd of food-animals huddled in the barn. Its orders, however, were clear on the subject of detection: there could be none. Any enemy attempting to sound the alarm had to be silenced.
Reaching the edge of the trees, the killbeast paused to investigate a crude electric fence. Clearly, it had been designed to keep unintelligent animals in and out. With a single, contemptuous spasm of its powerful hind legs, it vaulted the ten-foot barrier and landed in the moonlit fields. Slinking toward the unknown and misunderstood sounds of laughter, it slid from shadow to shadow, nothing but another ripple in the waving fields of grain. Using the radio crystals grown in its thorax, it sent a single burst transmission. The chirp of data signaled the trachs waiting back in the forest to advance, there would be much protoplasm to carry back to the Parent’s digesters very soon.
The jax herd in the barn lowed mournfully at the strange and frightening smells that came from the woods. Inside the shelter of their barn, they shoved and grunted their way into a huge circle of tightly packed animals, forming a single mass of woolly bodies. The ones in the center were soon crushed near to death and bucked up above their comrades, scarring the others with their stone-sharpened hooves and trying to walk on the lumpy, woolly sea of jax backs.
* * *
“The jaxes are balling up again!” cried little Jimmy Herkart, trotting into the harvester garage where his father and Uncle Rolf were smoking a bit of swamp-reed in their long-stemmed pipes. “Daddy, they’ll kill themselves this time, it’s real bad. They’ll be deaders in the middle for sure!”
The two men stopped laughing abruptly at the news. “Damned morons,” muttered Jimmy’s Uncle Rolf as they set aside their pipes and followed Jimmy out of the garage. They were a bit unsteady on their feet, and Dev Herkart, Jimmy’s father, almost fell into the old dried-up well shaft as he staggered across the yard.
“Where the hell are the dogs?” Dev demanded, rubbing bleary eyes. He shook his head to clear it, and seemed to stand straighter.
“They ran off into the fields, barking at something out there. They haven’t come back yet,” explained Jimmy, pointing toward the shadowy treeline. The silvery wires of the electric fence glimmered in the bluish light of Gopus.
“Probably after a tree-yeckler, or maybe a landshark pup that the patrols missed. If the herd’s been harmed, I’ll take the lot of them to the auction tomorrow,” said Dev with a growl. As the two men and the excited boy approached the barn, the frightened lowing turned to a terrific screaming. The scream of a Jax, despite its great size, had a disturbingly human sound to it, and all three of them recoiled.
“Sounds like a slaughter!” shouted Uncle Rolf, clapping his hands over his ears.
Dev broke into a run, and the others followed. As they passed the toolshed, the farmer stopped to throw open the door and pull out a long-barreled Wu shotgun and a box of shells. He shoved shells into the breach as they all trotted up to the barn door, cursing his absent dogs with each step.
“It’s a landshark, sure as shit.” said Uncle Rolf with just a hint of nervous fear in his voice. “It’s got to be.”
Inside the barn, the unmistakable sounds of a slaughter in progress continued. If anything, they had heightened. The very walls of the barn shuddered with the impact of heavy bodies charging about in blind panic. The leaves of the doors buckled, and the chain across the opening went taunt with a rattling sound. Human-sounding shrieks, wild grunts and the heavy thumping of hooves filled the night air.
Dev didn’t bother with the chains; he simply blew the lock and the chain apart with his shotgun. Inside, a jax buckled against the doors and the body rolled out into the yard, forcing the doors open wide. The leaves opened with such force that they smacked against the wooden walls. The jax was dead, its head half-blown away by the shotgun blast.
Then the herd charged for freedom, but fortunately they had been expecting this and had stepped out of the way. Eyes rolling with terror, tusks wet with blood from chewing their own tongues, the jaxes poured out of the barn in an avalanche of woolly bodies.
“Only forty?” howled Dev as the last of the jaxes able to move staggered out. “I have ninety head in there!”
Rage took over and drowned out all caution. Dev rushed into the barn, finding and snapping on the overhead lights. They flickered into life and illuminated a scene of dreadful carnage. More than half the herd lay twitching, all obviously victims of violent death. Throats had been ripped out and left exposed, entrails had been pulled from soft bellies and splattered on the walls. One nearby jax, its front legs both severed at the midpoint, tried repeatedly to stand on its remaining stumps. Blood covered the walls and ran in rivers on the concrete floor. There was an overpowering odor of excrement and death.
The humans were speechless for a moment. Then they all choked on their dinners, near to vomiting. Dev held back the urge, however, too angry to give in to retching. Instead he walked into the ruin of his barn and his livelihood, shouting inarticulately for whatever had done this to come out.
Uncle Rolf put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “You go back to the house now, boy,” he said. “You tell your mom to get the militia on the net and bring them out here.”
Jimmy nodded and stumbled back toward the light and safety of the house. On the way, he vomited into the well shaft.
The two men squinted up at the roof and examined the loft carefully. “There,” said Uncle Rolf, pointed toward a patch of black sky visible through a hole in the roof. He wiped acidic bile from his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Whatever it was, it probably entered and left through that hole.”
“Not big enough for a landshark, not even a small one,” said Dev doubtfully. “Besides, a ‘shark couldn’t climb up there.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Uncle Rolf while the two men warily approached the hole and stood beneath it. “I’ve seen ‘em scuttle right up a hork tree after a howler. Anyway, it must have jumped down into the orchard on that side of the barn. Probably, used one of the trees to get up there.”
Uncle Rolf would have said more, but Dev held up his hand for silence. Both of them listened. There came a sound from the trees outside the barn, the sound of crackling branches. Walking quickly and quietly, the two men left the barn. Uncle Rolf paused to grab up a heavy wrecking bar that hung near the entrance. He hefted it experimentally, feeling the weight of it.
Outside it was cold and a fresh breeze had come up. The cool air blowing in their faces helped lift the drug-induced fog from their minds. They stalked the source of the sound, following it into the orchard. Gopus was just coming over the peaks of the Polar Range to the north, and it provided a bluish light that filtered through the finger-like branches. A tree creaked with the weight of a moving body, the sound coming from deeper in the orchard. Perspiring despite the cold, they followed it.
Dev saw something ahead, a shadowy form that flittered from behind one tree trunk to another, crossing their path. He halted, raising his gun.
“What is it?” whispered his brother.
Dev didn’t answer. Above them a branch creaked, then snapped. A few twigs fluttered down from above, swirling about in the wind.
“It’s above us!” shouted Rolf, holding his wrecking bar over his head.
Dev’ shotgun boomed, more twigs showered down and a dark shape fell out of the tree and landed with a heavy thump.
They jogged forward to the fallen body. “It’s one of your dogs.”
“The head’s missing,” Rolf pointed out unnecessarily. “Where’s the head?”
They found it laying a few feet away. The lips were curled back in a permanent snarl.
“It’s Shaker, dammit,” said Dev, “a good dog.”
Rolf was examining the tree above them. “Look,” he said, pointing to more shapes up in the tree. “They’re all hanging by wires. The same wire you use to run the fences, I’d warrant.”
For the first time they knew real fear. Above them hung Dev’s whole pack of seven dogs, minus Shaker who lay at their feet. Dev swung the shotgun barrel about in wide arcs, aiming into the trees and cursing.
There were more sounds of creaking branches directly ahead of them. Almost immediately afterward, a gray shape moved through the shadows off to the left. Another rustling sound came from the trees to the right a moment later. “There must be more than one, I just saw something up ahead a second ago. Nothing could move back up into the trees so fast.”
“They’re stalking us,” said Rolf with mild surprise in his voice.
Without thinking, the two men stood back to back, their boots buried in wet grass. They breathed in visible gushes of white mist. Their heads swiveled rapidly, trying to pick up any significant movement in the dim light.
Suddenly, a shape dropped down from a nearby tree and ran toward them for a moment before darting behind another tree trunk.
“What the hell—” Dev said, swinging his shotgun into line. He fired, scarring the tree trunk with a gash of white wood in the dark pool of bark. They advanced on the tree the creature had gone behind, wrecking bar and shotgun upraised. Dev jerked his head, indicating that Rolf should go forward and flush the creature from behind the tree trunk with his wrecking bar. Rolf hesitated for a moment, but as he was the younger of the two and accustomed to following Dev’s lead, he did it. He moved through the grass with the wrecking bar cocked over his shoulder like a rayball player swinging for a double.
He came around the far side of the tree with a growl, swinging the wrecking bar with killing force. It struck the bark with a dull thunk, stinging his hands. There was nothing there.
“Did you get it?” asked Dev.
“It’s gone.”
“Gone?” Dev said in amazement, stepping around the tree with the shotgun leveled. While Rolf sagged against the trunk and waited for his heart to slow down, Dev examined the bark and the dirt at the foot of the tree. “It was here, see these claw marks? And they go up the tree, too. The thing just ran up this tree like a goddamn howler.”
Rolf snapped erect and backed away from the tree quickly. “Do you see it up there?”
Both of them stared up into the treetops, but saw nothing. Rolf heard a swishing sound off to his right, behind Dev. Dev stiffened, making a strange sound. A gray blade-like object protruded from his belly for a moment, and then it was withdrawn. Slumping against the tree trunk, he sagged down to his knees. Behind him stood the creature.
It resembled a giant lizard of some kind, with gray reptilian skin. There was no visible hair, horns or claws except for the blades of hard black material that sheathed the feet. It had run Dev through with one of these machete-like blades. The creature stood at least seven feet high on long powerful hind legs. Two short, wiry forelimbs each ended in three opposing fingers that had a sinuous, rubbery look to them. It had no head, but rather from the top of its torso sprouted several ropy-looking stalks and a cluster of mandibles above an open maw for eating. The stalks floated about and appeared to direct themselves in unison. Their behavior immediately suggested that the bulbs terminating the stalks were eyes or at least that they were sensory organs of some kind.
Rolf swung his wrecking bar for the creature’s head-area, or at least for the spot where the waving stalks sprouted. The creature danced away and disappeared into the trees.
Snatching up his shotgun, Rolf took a moment to check on his brother.
Still hugging the rough black bark, pressing his cheek against it, Dev was dying. He choked on blood, then stopped breathing altogether. The light of Gopus glinted in his dead eyes.
Too scared to feel grief, Rolf snatched up Dev’s shotgun. He began to run for the house. Something came up behind him, and then it paced him, running through the trees to his right. Then it vanished again, and appeared over to the left. With sudden clarity of thought, he realized it was playing with him, that it had been simply probing—testing for reaction the whole time.
He fired a wild blast at the dark shape, hoping for luck. He got it. The creature was bowled off its odd feet. It rolled through the wet grass that carpeted the orchard. Showing a horrible vitality, it sprang back up again, like a tumbler at the end of a run.
Rolf stopped and tried to take advantage of his lucky shot. He fired again, but this time he missed. Black dirt and grass fountained behind the creature. It charged him. Even as he heard the click of the next shell being automatically spring-loaded into the firing chamber, he realized he would never get off another shot. Perhaps if he hadn’t smoked the second pipeful of swamp-reed, or if he had been less surprised, he wouldn’t have missed so badly. But he had and now the thing was on him.
The thing snatched the shotgun from his grasp as effortlessly as Rolf himself had snatched a jax-goad from Jimmy’s hands earlier that very day. In almost the same fluid motion, the thing made a flying kick for his head. The bladed foot swept up, caught Rolf under the chin, and cleanly decapitated him. His head and body fell in separate directions.