Feast (14 page)

18

Peter swerved hard to the left, tires squealing as he nearly drove headlong into the swamp on the left side of the road. He cut the wheel back before plunging into the inky black waters, and since they were still on the road, and not being crushed by monstrous jaws, he assumed his last ditch maneuver had worked, pulling them just out of the creature’s reach.

He looked in the rearview and saw the last of it careen over the far side of the road. The massive beast was a blur one moment, and then concealed by an enormous splash that hid its dark body from view the next. Peter didn’t see much of it, but what he did see urged his foot to push on the gas pedal a little harder. Not that it did much good. He already had the pedal pushed against the floor.

“What in the name of St. Peter’s shit was that?” Boone shouted, eyes wide with surprise, a hint of a grin on his lips. Peter understood that the smile wasn’t some kind of mania or psychotic thrill-seeking rush, but a genuine delight at still being alive.

Peter was smiling, too. A brush with death, and the adrenaline that brings, can leave survivors feeling elated for a bit. The numbing shock, body shakes and sleepless nights of fear-induced sweat would come later. “Apex.”

“That worse than those hairy things?” Boone looked up over the seat through the rear window. “Which, by the way, are still on our tail.”

Peter looked in the rearview again. Four of the six Woolies and two of the Riders had already passed the creature in the swamp, cloaked in shadow. If the Riders were operating under the normal guiding force that drove most ExoGenetic species—insatiable hunger—they would have turned on the newcomer. Instead, they’d continued pursuing Peter and Boone, which meant they had objectives. They were coordinated. Thinking. Evolving intelligence that could guide their hunger. But more than all of that, it meant the attack was something else. Something that confirmed Peter’s fears.

It was personal.

This wasn’t random.

Wasn’t hunger-driven.

This was revenge. Against him. Against his family.

He pushed the pedal even harder, but it still did nothing to help. The Dodge Ram was a powerful vehicle, but weighed down with armor, weapons and ammunition, it was closer to a tank than a dragster. Acceleration was a slog, but once it got going, there wasn’t much that could stand in its way. Unfortunately, both a Woolie and whatever had lunged across the road, were big enough to stand up to the truck. Fortunately, they were all still in the rearview. But Peter suspected there would be more between them and the camp.

That’s where Ella is,
he thought,
that’s where Kenyon will be.

“There it is!” Boone shouted. “I see it in the swamp! Keeping pace with the stragglers!”

Peter glanced from the rearview to the side-view mirror. He flinched when a massive shape exploded from the swamp, clutched the last Woolie and Rider in its jaws and plunged back into the water on the far side of the road. The fifty-foot-long creature was easy to identify this time. The long body and ridged tail were familiar to anyone who had spent time in the swamps of the South.

“Gall dang, that’s a croc!” Boone’s smile had faded. He’d spent enough time in the swamps to have a healthy fear of the average American alligator, which grew to a maximum length of fifteen feet and weighed five hundred pounds. They were man-eaters capable of dismembering, consuming and crapping out even the largest and strongest human male. But this thing...it was worse. And not just because it was larger.

“It’s coming back!” Boone shouted.

Peter watched the action in the mirror. Trees burst and toppled over, giving way to the largest ExoGen Apex he had ever seen, larger and more intimidating than even the matriarch Stalker. It didn’t have a pack to add to its strength, but it didn’t need one. The jaws were large enough and powerful enough to snatch up a Woolie the size of
Beastmaster
and kill it with a quick squeeze. Alligators can bite down with the force of 2125 pounds per square inch, strong enough to flatten a human skull or shatter the intensely strong shell of a snapping turtle. The Nile Crocodile can take down even tougher prey with its 5000 PSI bite, but even that monster, at 20 feet long was dwarfed by the Apex surging back onto the road. It probably could crush down with 30,000 PSI—more than enough to mash the armored truck, but that, at least, would be a merciful end. Anything human caught in those jaws would be instantly reduced to paste. There would be no pain, just an immediate lack of existence.

The ExoGator hit the pavement running.

Not running
, Peter thought,
galloping.

Alligators were one of the most perfectly evolved species on the planet. They’d been around for a hundred and fifty million years without needing to evolve. While other species came and went, alligators and crocodiles, dominated their habitats. They were already Apex predators when the Change began, and even with RC-714 unlocking their genetic potential, they didn’t have much need to evolve. That was, until food became scarce and they had to move over land. So this alligator reached back into its past, found an ancestor with long limbs, and evolved to run. Fast.

The second Woolie was snatched up from behind, mewling briefly as its backside was flattened inside the mighty jaws. When the hairy beast fell limp, the alligator gave two shakes of its head, severing its prey in two. While still running, the creature tipped its head back and swallowed the Woolie’s ass-end whole. Then it set its sights on the rest of them.

“Here!” Boone shouted. “Here, here, here! Turn left!”

Peter slammed the brakes and turned the wheels. Tires squealed out a high-pitched staccato rhythm as they bounced over the pavement. A lighter vehicle would have flipped. Facing the wide dirt road, Peter accelerated, kicking up a cloud of dust that would let their pursuers know exactly where they’d fled.

The cabin filled with the grinding rumble of loose rocks beneath the tires. Peter’s hands tingled as the steering wheel shook in his iron grip. He twitched the wheel back and forth, eyes glued to the winding dirt road, delicately balancing between speed and control. One wrong move and they’d slam into a tree or plunge into the swampy waters. Whether or not they perished on impact, stopping would be a death sentence.

When Boone climbed into the back seat, Peter tried his hardest to not look at the man. “What are you doing?”

“Manning the big gun, right?”

Peter’s instinct was to argue. To call it what it was: too dangerous. But Boone wasn’t his family. The man was a fighter and, if Peter was honest, expendable. They had bonded as warriors in the heat of battle, but family still came first, and a hail of 5.56 X 44mm bullets spraying from the backside of
Beastmaster
would increase his odds of reaching them. “Do it.”

The rear window slid open just in time to allow a pain-wracked bellow to fully permeate the cabin. They’d just rounded a bend and couldn’t see the ExoGator or the Woolies, but it sounded like the alligator was continuing its mobile smorgasbord. On one hand, Peter was glad for the help, on the other, he knew the line of entrées ended with him and Boone.

Peter focused on the wheel, slowing a bit as they approached a sharp turn. Boone was half way through the small opening in the back window, worming his way into the truck bed. If the truck turned too hard, the man might fly off the side. Peter wished he’d had time to explain the rubber band system he’d repaired with Jakob. Once strapped in, the machine-gunner could be jounced around without fear of falling away. But there wasn’t time.

Peter heard Boone chamber the first round. A few seconds after rounding the bend, the machine gun beat a rhythm in the air, keeping time with a frenetic metronome. Fifteen rounds later, the weapon went quiet, replaced by a string of curses.

“What’s happening?” Peter asked. The side-view mirror revealed three Woolies still in pursuit, two with riders. They were a hundred feet back and gaining with each thunderous foot fall.

“I can’t hit shit while we’re moving around,” Boone called, his voice nearly inaudible as wind whipped the words away.

“You want me to stop?” Peter asked with a grin.

“You shitt’n me? Fuck no!”

Soldiers joked. In the quiet times. In the face of bullets. Even in the face of death. Humor kept them human. Kept them sane. At least until they went home. Humor tended to stay behind, on the battlefield.

A second blast of machine gun fire ripped through the air. The lead Woolie twitched, stumbled and then kept on coming. But its rider, flailed back in a burst of red, toppled through the air and rolled to a ragdoll stop in the dirt road. The man-thing lay still for just a moment before the last thunderous shaggy beast crushed him beneath its feet, leaving a trail of gooey red in its wake.

Peter shouted in surprise as the alligator catapulted out of the swamp beside the road and snapped at the Woolie, which leaned to the side, evading the bite. Then, instead of continuing the pursuit, the Woolie turned to face its adversary and charged, its deadly, scooped horn leading the way. The horn was no doubt sharp enough to pierce the gator’s thick flesh, and the Woolie powerful enough to drive it deep, but would it be enough to kill the monster?

Not even close.

The ExoGator twisted its head around toward the Woolie. Instead of plunging the horn into the gator’s side, it ran headlong into those gaping jaws. Teeth impaled flesh. Blood sprayed. And with a quick upward snap, the Woolie was sent cartwheeling through the air, dropping back down far out of sight.

Boone adjusted his aim.

Puffs of dirt raced up the road, making a line toward the gator and then striking it. The struck flesh rippled like water, but there were no holes. No spurts of red. No explosions of gore from the far side. The gator flinched, but was not injured. It clamped its empty jaws together, the clomp loud enough to hurt Peter’s ears. Then it was up, resuming its horrible gallop.

As Peter followed the bending road to the left, he saw the ExoGator run straight, plunging back into the swamp. While
Beastmaster
and the short-legged, hairy Woolies were confined to the road, the gator moved freely through the swamp, instinct guiding it to follow the old adage: the fastest route between two points is a straight line.

“Hang on!” Peter said, pushing the truck toward unsafe speeds and then beyond. The curving road took them directly into the gator’s path, and he didn’t want to be there when it arrived.

The roadside crumbled as the truck skirted the edge. The rear tire slipped over the side for a moment before jouncing back up, nearly knocking Boone from his post. He shouted a string of Southern obscenities, most of which Peter didn’t understand, but he held on. When the road straightened out, they picked up speed, and just in time.

“Here it comes!” Boone shouted. His voice was followed by the machine gun’s roar. Peter looked out the side window. The gator was lunging toward them, mouth open, loping through the four foot water like it was a road. Small red spots pocked its pink tongue, the bullets punching through, but doing nothing to slow the behemoth.

Movement in the side-view got Peter’s attention. Two Woolies and a single Rider were right behind them. The Rider was on his feet, legs bent, clutching handfuls of clumpy hair.

He’s going to jump,
Peter thought.

But then the view became a mass of tangled and tumbling limbs. The croc missed the truck and slammed into the two Woolies. All three beasts went down in a writhing mass of angry limbs. The impact and subsequent battle would give Peter and Boone time to escape, or at least increase their lead. Peter focused once more on the road ahead, until he heard thumping in the back.

“You okay?” Peter shouted back over his shoulder.

There was a thump and a gasped shout. “H-help!”

The rearview showed Boone in the clutches of a Rider, its arms wrapped around his back, squeezing him tight. The hairy man-thing had its mouth open so wide that it looked dislocated, the hooked four-inch-long spears it had for lower teeth just inches from Boone’s neck. The only reason it hadn’t taken a bite was because Boone had both hands on the creature’s face, holding it back, but inch by inch, he was losing ground with each beat of his heart. The man had just seconds to live, and then Peter would be next.