Iron Mike (11 page)

They were getting there. Mike was just starting to hope they had it. He glanced down at the predatory ground just in time to see it solidify and then ... suck. Nathan shrieked as he was pulled back down, the ground now up to his knees.

Mike released the rope and ran his fingers through his hair, pacing furiously. “What the fuck!” he yelled to the worm. “You want a Big Mac, or you want a chicken nugget? Trade, you son-of-a-bitch!”

Then, he walked right onto the gelatin, reaching down for Nathan. The boy reached up, not mentioning that Mike used
two
really bad words, and Mike bent further, wrapping his arms around the boy. He tried to stand with Nathan, but Nathan didn’t budge. The ground under Mike’s feet was as solid as concrete.

Mike pulled until Nathan began sobbing again, and then he knelt and kissed the boy on the forehead. “Don’t you worry, Nathan. We aren’t done yet. We’ll get you, buddy.”

Nathan nodded through his tears. “It burns,” he whispered to Mike.

Mike blanched at the words, his eyes flying to Kari’s. She hadn’t heard the little boy’s words, but she could tell by his expression the news was not good.

Mike stood up and backed away from the ground, which immediately liquefied into gelatin again. He pulled the Ruger from the small of his back. “Okay, everybody, you need to put your hands over your ears and close your eyes,” he ordered. Nathan’s eyes got huge, but he obeyed, as did the rest of the children. Stephen carried Anthony several feet away, Jenn following with Kayli and little Sasha picking up Ariel.

Mike shot ten rounds in a circle around Nathan, emptying the pistol. He watched in disbelief as the gelatin absorbed each round, quivering as the bullets hit. He didn’t hear some of the children start to cry. He knelt down, looking for blood or any sign at all the beast was injured. Nathan took his hands off his ears and looked up at Mike hopefully. “Is it dead?”

“I don’t think so, buddy,” Mike said softly. The ground quivered abruptly, and Mike hoped for a moment he
had
wounded the damned thing. Then Nathan sank down to his thighs. He gasped in surprise and pain. His face was already dirty and tear-stained, but he looked up at Mike. His little face tightened in resolve, as though he had all the confidence in the world Iron Mike would get him out.

“It’s eating him!” Kayli screamed, sobbing. Mike realized with a start that all of the children were standing on the snow covered soil.

He looked at Kari in alarm. “Get them onto the blacktop!” he ordered harshly. “Everyone! Everyone get on the road – you do NOT go into the woods for anything, you understand? Not to pee, not to poop, nothing!”

The children shrank back from the anger in Mike’s voice, and Kari quickly uncoiled herself from the rope. She, Stephen, and Jenn herded all of the children back to the blacktop. Kari frowned, and Mike was pretty sure she was going to have words with him soon. Mike didn't like yelling at her, and he was fully prepared to apologize. On the other hand … there was never a cause more just.

“Is it eating me, Iron Mike?” Nathan asked quietly, his breath coming in hitches.

“No,” Mike snapped immediately, his attention turning back to the boy. “I’m not going to let that happen.” He moved back onto the gelatinous surface, which hardened under his feet. He knelt down beside Nathan, stroking the hair back from the boy’s sweaty forehead. He waited several minutes, hoping the mass would soften to try to take him – if it did, and he was fast enough, he could get Nathan out. Nothing happened. The mass stayed as solid as the ground itself. Mike drew his hunting knife from its hilt and stabbed into the ground. The knife sunk to the hilt. Mike twisted it, and then tried to draw it toward him. It was like trying to cut steel. He drew the knife out, glancing at the dulled edge and stuck it back on his hip. He sat beside the beast that held Nathan, while the little boy cried softly.

Several minutes later, the ground around Nathan sucked again, and the boy sunk to his waist. His eyes got wide with fear … and with genuine pain.

“It’s burning!” Nathan sobbed. “It hurts, Iron Mike!”

“Where does it hurt, Nathan?” Mike asked, his voice shaking so badly he could barely get the words out.

“My legs, and now my tummy!” Nathan gasped. “It’s getting hotter! Make it stop!”

Nathan began screaming again, this time more from pain than terror. Mike stood, pacing angrily. He ran over to a pine tree and jumped, grabbing one of the limbs and pulling hard. The limb cracked and Mike fell, rolling back up onto his feet with the make-shift javelin.

Nathan watched, crying, as Mike stabbed the viscous surface again and again. It was like stabbing a giant gummy bear.

Tears of frustration and grief welled in Mike’s eyes, and he brushed them away impatiently.

“Make it stop!” Nathan sobbed. “Please, it hurts, it hurts! Make it stop, Iron Mike!”

The realization of the only option left to him hit Mike in the gut like a lead-filled sucker punch. He gasped and backed away, staring in horror.

“It burns!” Nathan cried, sobbing in hiccups now. The boy was in exquisite pain. Mike was out of options, but his brain refused to consider his only choice.

“Please, God, no,” Mike prayed softly. His eyes locked on Nathan’s face, the boy’s baby features twisted in pain from a predator literally eating him alive.

Mike stared for another moment, praying for a miracle he knew wasn’t coming. Finally, he stood numbly and walked over to his overturned backpack. He found the takedown kit and screwed each piece of the bow together, his fingers moving deftly while he stared at nothing. He strung the bow and tested the string, standing again, and pulling an arrow from his quiver. He nocked the arrow and turned to Nathan, seeing the little boy’s eyes grow wide. He raised the bow, pulling the string back in one fluid motion, and aimed. He exhaled, and released.

Nathan’s screams died, and the forest was silent.

January 4.

Scientist-Farmer

Scientist-Farmer stilled. The images from the Spotter played before him, the sounds of the creature in pain as horrifying and immediate as if he were watching in corporeal form. The day before, he sent the Spotter to follow the animal he wounded. He told himself it was a matter of scientific study and curiosity, but he knew it was really because he was the one who had hurt the beast. The animal wasn’t sapient; there was no way to convey to it that Scientist-Farmer regretted the accident.

He sent a thought to the Spotter and the images started again, playing more slowly. The animal’s youngling screamed in pain, the sound disturbing Scientist-Farmer to his core. The adult animal’s roar of frustration was equally disturbing, and the sounds he made held the most rudimentary characteristics of language. Scientist-Farmer set one of his brains to work on translation as he continued watching the images. That the animals could talk greatly troubled Scientist-Farmer. Communicating was one of the thirty-six requirements of Classification Eight sapience. If these animals – humans, Scientist-Farmer recalled, glancing at the translation image as the word was pushed into his mind – if these humans reached Classification Eight sapience, then the harvesting of the planet must stop immediately.

Scientist-Farmer’s attention returned to the Spotter. He slowed the images and sped them up, noting each guttural grunt and pitch of the humans’ sounds. The youngling’s cries were obviously distress and pain, but the adult human’s sounds were more complex. There was anger and grief, as well as distress. Scientist-Farmer frowned. The human pair had a large litter – was this youngling somehow superior to the others?

The images slowed to a crawl as Scientist-Farmer reached the point that most concerned him. Human-Male used a primitive weapon and killed his own youngling. The Mother was relieved; the animal’s squeals of distress were troubling to her as well, even as she had done as nature intended and taken in the protein to nourish her young.

Scientist-Farmer stopped the images at the moment that most intrigued him. When Human-Male stood, his weapon enabled, the expression on his face – there. He froze the image. The look on the human’s face changed drastically. It seemed almost as though Human-Male lost all emotion. It seemed as though he … distanced himself from the task. That was another of the requirements of Classification Eight sapience.

Scientist-Farmer frowned, shuffling back through his last dozen thoughts. He still needed a translation for “Big Mac.” And … since when had he given Human-Male a unique designation?

Kari

The sun was moving toward the western part of the sky when Mike stepped out of the woods. Kari had started to go after him three times, but each time Stephen put a hand on her arm, encouraging her to wait. She didn’t know when she started taking advice from ten-year-olds, but when she saw Mike’s face, she was glad she waited.

The screams had stopped almost an hour ago, and the waiting afterward was absolute hell. She couldn’t – didn’t want to – imagine what Mike had been through.

Kari hoped desperately to see him carrying a sobbing Nathan in his arms, even though a part of her knew that would be too much of a miracle to expect. Instead, she saw him step out from the trees empty-handed, pale and drawn. For the first time, she saw defeat in his eyes. There was a dark, wet stain covering most of the left arm and chest of his red Louisville Cardinals jacket.

Kari stepped toward him and he shook his head. “No,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, but the tone was as clear as a slap. Kari stepped back inadvertently and Mike’s voice softened. She could tell it took a deliberate effort. “No, please, Kari. Let’s just get moving as long as daylight holds.”

She nodded and picked up her backpack, unable to swallow past the lump in her throat. The children gathered around and picked up their loads, everyone strangely silent. Mike settled Kayli on his shoulders, blanching with pain, and Kari looked away from him quickly.

“Remember everyone, stay only on the road,” Kari reminded the children quietly. There were nods and quiet murmurs, but no one spoke up. They started out, as grim as if they were walking the Trail of Tears.

Even with Mike pushing the pace, they didn’t make it before full dark. They were less than halfway up Muldraugh Hill, which put them about six miles from the gate. The children were dead on their feet, stumbling as they walked. Finally, when there was no light left, Mike called a halt. He set Kayli down with a groan of relief and shrugged out of his backpack.

“Keep everyone moving, please, Kari,” he asked. “Just walking in circles is good. I’ll be right back.”

Kari nodded reluctantly. She didn’t like the idea of Mike being away from the group at all, much less after dark. She swallowed her fear and put on a cheerful voice to encourage the children to walk on the blacktop. The snow was melted from the roadway, at least. Kari walked beside Stephen, and impulsively took his hand. He looked at her in surprise, then smiled, and took Jenn’s hand.

When Mike came back fifteen minutes later, he saw a chain of moving children snaking in figure-eights on the blacktop, a long conga line of follow-the-leader. Mike smiled tiredly. Kari managed to make it a game, to keep the children up and moving so the sweat on their clothes wouldn’t turn to ice.

“Okay, guys, this way,” he called. The children came to him, and he led them to the minivan, its front end accordianed into the tree it hit when the driver died.

Kari looked, but saw no evidence of a body or bodies. Mike had dragged them into the woods! She swallowed the terror that thought gave her; the boy was an idiot! A competent – and lucky – idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

The children stumbled into the minivan, several of them simply dropping onto the floorboard and falling asleep. Anthony didn’t move when Jenn changed him, and Ariel’s cries were half-hearted. Kari got food out, having to shake several of the children awake to get them to eat. Mike pulled out the sleeping bags, unzipping them and using them as blankets for the kids, and he pushed the children closer together so they would share body heat. Most of the kids slept in a pile between the second seat and the driver’s seat. Stephen stretched out on the middle seat and Jenn moved in beside him, dragging her sleeping bag over them. Mike noticed, but at the moment he was too tired to intimidate a ten-year-old for hitting on his nine-year-old sister. He’d take care of that tomorrow.

“Share body heat?” he asked Kari as he moved to the bench seat in the back of the van. He was also too tired and too sick to flirt. The wound in his arm throbbed with every beat of his pulse, and he was also in pain from an ugly headache.

“Will you eat first?” she asked.

Mike shook his head tiredly. “I won’t keep it down,” he mumbled. “Ibuprofen?”

“Of course,” Kari said quickly, reaching for the first-aid kit. She started to hand Mike two pills, and he looked at her levelly.

“Four,” he said softly. “And Gatorade.”

Kari gave him the extra pills and the bottle of red Gatorade, which he seemed to prefer to the green. She touched his forehead while he drank, ignoring his scowl. He was burning up … and shivering.

“Please hang on, Mike,” she whispered as she carefully adjusted herself on the bench seat, lying against him. His legs were bent to give him enough room, so she entwined her legs with his, surprised he didn’t comment. Mike’s breathing leveled out within minutes, but Kari stayed awake for a long time, her eyes open and watching.