Point Apocalypse (18 page)

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We passed through the bayou keeping nice and quiet until we came out into the open. Grunt let out a sigh of relief. Georgie grinned and began restarting the motor. Wladas had slept through the whole thing. I'd decided against asking him to help and gestured to the others to leave him well alone. Hungover, untrained and unaccustomed to long journeys, he needed his rest.

The boat motor whirred to life, and
Grunt steered her slowly down river. He sat at the wheel staring in front of him. Jim crouched next to him; Wong and myself took the middle bench. Wladas and Georgie stayed at the stern. Jim lifted a bag into his lap and started taking out food.

I asked Georgie how
long it would take us to reach the riggers. Tomorrow morning we'd arrive at their camp, he said.

"Will we have to sail at night?" I
asked.

"No,"
Grunt answered. "We need some rest. We'll get to the desert and drop anchor. Then at dawn we'll head for their camp."

"Why can't we go there now?" I took
a packet of food from Jim. "We can spend the night at their camp."

"We can't,"
Georgie shook his head. He asked Wladas to hold his food packet and leaned overboard to tweak the motor.

"Why?" I chewed on a slice of dried meat - or fish, judging by the taste,
all life salted out of it. "Why do we need to stop for the night?"

"Because by midda
y, the sun will scorch your ass, river or no river. You'll beg for some shadow. You'll even beg for a tree," he nodded at the thinning rainforest lining the right bank. To our left, it still stood thick and strong but Grunt went on, "We'll get to the desert by midday. There we'll wait up until the heat subsides and play a bit of catch-up. Once it starts getting dark, we'll stop again.

"But why can't we
move at night?" I lost it and raised my voice. "What's there to be afraid of?"

"H
umpbacks," Georgie spoke. "They hunt at night."

"What's that?" W
ladas turned to him, his food untouched.

"It's a fish. A predator," Georgie bared his teeth and spread his arms wide.
I thought he showed us the fish's size, but he added, "It's got teeth this big! It'll make quick work of a boat. This clone's ass will swallow you without even knowing it."

Wladas
' eyes opened wide.

"
You eat," Georgie reached for the slice in Wladas' hand, broke some off and volleyed it into his own mouth. "Cheer up. No humpbacks here. They usually hunt by waterholes and on sandbanks. They'll take out an antelope, but not a tiger. Only when it's stupid enough to get into the water."

His words reminded me of the
food in my own lap. I finished off the meat and opened the flask. "This fish, what's it like? Compared to terrestrial species."

"Fuck knows,"
Georgie picked his teeth with a crooked fingernail, took the flask from me, spat and took a large swig. "It looks a bit like a haddock but waaaay bigger. And they have a large hump instead of a dorsal fin. That's why we call them humpbacks. It's flat-shaped like a shark so it can run aground easily. Its scales are brown and so thick that a bullet won't touch it. Neumann used to say they're a deve... lopmental species on their way to evolving into reptiles."

"We won't live to see
the day," I said and turned away.

The Information wasn't too forthcoming with more
data on humpbacks. Most likely, the file only included a few key modules relevant to the mission. I didn't like it. Too many unpredictable situations. Too much ad libbing.

The sun was
getting hotter by the minute. The morning freshness was all but gone. We could speed up of course, but what was the point? We were about to stop for the day, anyway. Pointless wasting gas.

Grunt
kept the vessel steady as she crept forward hugging the middle of the river. I stared in front listening to the motor and watching the right bank, almost bare by now: trees few and far between, the thickets interspersed with bald patches revealing the hills beyond.

Twice the boat had to skirt
shallows coming close to the bank. Georgie pointed out an antelope: a strange-looking animal, a bit bigger than a sheep, covered in thick curly hair. Its horns were about a meter long, sharp and slightly curved; his tail, short with a fat tuft of hair at its end.

When the antelope sheep heard the boat,
it disappeared into the thicket. Amid much bleating and rustling, the branches parted as a few more animals emerged. They ran along the bank leaving the boat behind. The leader pranced in front, shaking his head. A few moments later, the small flock reentered the thicket and disappeared. I glanced at the sky and wiped the sweat off my face. The heat nearly melted me. I leaned overboard, scooped a handful of water and sprinkled my face.

Wladas
did the same. Georgie grinned, immune to the local heat after years on Pangea. Wong stirred in his seat. He pulled off his tank top, wrung it like a towel and lowered it in the water, then put it back on without wringing the water out.

"Aha,"
Wladas quickly pulled off his.

Geogie chuckled.
Grunt glanced at us over his shoulder. "Round the bend there's a good place to stop. We'll camp there."

Once the boat reached the bend, we saw the flat right bank.
There, the antelopes were waiting, their heads hung low. I recognized them by the large dark spot on their leader's flank.

The boat
being still at a safe distance from the bank, the antelopes apparently didn't consider us a threat. The leader walked into the water and shook his horns at us, indignant at our intrusion of the flock's usual watering hole.

"Just look at him,"
Georgie rose and raised his carbine. "That's one hell of a dinner," he said slowly taking aim.

He didn't shoot. The animals
raised their heads, alerted to the sound of a truck engine from the bank.

A
truck? Was it possible? Who owned it?

The next moment the water
in front of the flock leader parted with a slap. A dark lithe shape lashed out of the depths toward the antelope. A murky blue-black fish eye glinted in the sun. The fish's teeth snapped the animal's neck and the antelope collapsed in the water raising a wave.

The water seethed.
Here and there, more humpbacks were arriving trying to grab the animals' legs. But the antelopes had already darted away, wild with fear, leaving their unlucky leader behind.

Grunt
cursed and stepped on the gas. Jim dropped his oar and barely made it back to his seat. Georgie cried out and very nearly fell overboard. Wladas grabbed his hand at the last moment.

"Didn't you say they hunted at night?" I didn't take my eyes off the shallow
s foaming red. The leader's head appeared for an instant, agonizing fear glistening in his eyes. Then the waters closed in above him.

"Hold on tight!"
Grunt ordered.

I turned to him. We were heading for
more shallows. There, a humped back ploughed through the water toward the boat.

Out of
instinct, we opened fire, carbine bullets creating splashes of water all around the powerful fish.

"Hold on tight!"
Grunt repeated.

It finally dawned on me that h
e knew best. I dropped the gun and grasped the side of the vessel. The boat took a sharp turn, its prow aiming at the fish. The next moment, the hump disappeared. A flipper-like tail rose and fell as the fish escaped into the depths. Grunt jerked the boat the other way to avoid the shallows and slid between them and the bank.

"
Raise the motor!" the captain shouted. "Do it! We'll fuck the propeller!"

Wladas
hugged the motor cap and struggled to lift it out of the water. Georgie grazed his fingers raw as he undid the screws. I couldn't help them, and neither could Wong.

The
keel scraped the sand bank throwing us face down. The motor stood up horizontally on its own, the screw still spinning sloshing water all around. The boat literally jumped across the shallows and landed in deeper water.

"Lower the motor!"
Grunt yelled.

Geor
gie and Wladas slammed the motor down against the backboard. The boat jerked and glided forward.

We grabbed the carbines from
the floor and looked back. The predator had chosen not to chase us.

Grunt
cursed out loud, wiped his bald head glistening with sweat and steered the boat toward the opposite bank. We tied up.

"I know,"
Grunt turned to Georgie. "Isn't it spawning season soon? The fucking fish is out of its mind then, hunting day and night. But I thought we had another week before it started?"

"Has to be climate change," Georgie mumbled.

We dragged the boat halfway out of the water and tied the mooring line to a tree. Then we stretched a canopy between some tree branches, and Jim started setting up camp. Wladas volunteered to help him. Wong stayed on the bank watching the river through his field glasses. I called out to Georgie and Grunt,

"Did you hear that
engine? Just before the humpbacks attacked. The deer seemed to cock their heads to the sound."

Grunt
shook his head. "I was watching the river."

Georgie
nodded. "I did."

"Are there trucks here?" I asked.

"Could be raiders," Georgie suggested, then added in reply to my silent question, "Not necessarily McLean's men. There's a penal settlement a few miles upriver. A shepherd and his wife live there. They raise ostriches and goats and keep a whole gang of free workers. They take turns selling their wares in New Pang while the other half raid the area looking for artifacts. Could be them."

I looked at
Wong with his field glasses. "All right then. Let's have lunch and some rest. Grunt? Any more humpbacks ahead?"

He scratched
at the tattoo on his shoulder. "Dunno. Could be a couple more places where we might find them."

"You think you can bypass them?"

"We'll have to."

There was no fear in his eye
s. Wladas, on the contrary, kept casting scared glances in our direction as he helped Jim.

"So let's do it this way," I said to
Grunt. "When we sail off, I'll sit in front with you. Georgie in the back with Jim, Wong and Wladas in the middle."

"Deal,"
Grunt nodded.

Chap
ter Two

God Loves the Infantry

W
e traveled to the night camp without further incident. This time we decided to moor the boat on the right bank: the rainforest to our left had given way to an expanse of brown and yellow. The desert. The river washed its southern edge: sand dunes lay to our portside while to our right rose a hill range covered by wilted grass, brushwood and occasional tufts of low gnarly trees.

Grunt
steered on, the motor almost idling as he looked for a place to tie up. Under the high crumbling bank, lumps of eroded soil showed above the water line. The captain explained that the riggers' water-jet barge created a strong wake that undercut the bank.

The warm setting sun caressed the skin. The heat subsided
; the water started giving off a light chill. I looked up at the cloudless sky hoping for a calm night.

I turned to
Grunt. "You think it's gonna rain?"

He didn't answer. Georgie spoke
instead, "Don't think so. Not after yesterday's downpour. The thing to worry about here is sandstorms. Not "worry" worry, you know. Not yet. Another ten miles to the east, that's where the desert really starts and that's where you should keep your eyes peeled."

"There we are,"
Grunt stretched out his arm. "We'll land over there."

He pointed at a large
mound of soil by the water's edge, an uprooted shrub still clinging to it. The place was good. Here, a hollow ran down the slope, once grown over but now bare and muddy, easy to climb up the foothill for a bit of recce and to post a lookout for the night. Alternatively, you could walk further away from the river - a good preventive measure considering that the other hills were higher than this one.

A truck appeared on a
distant incline. We froze. We couldn't hear the engine: from where we were, it seemed as if the truck rolled out onto the hilltop by itself and then headed down, soundless.

"
Wong, the glasses!" I reached out for them without taking my eyes from the hills.

Finally I heard
the sound of an engine. The wretched hills worked like highway noise barriers. Now we'd missed the truck!

It was quite a long way away
still so nothing said they'd seen us. Before I could raise the field glasses to my eyes, the truck had rolled down the slope and disappeared behind the range. We stared at where a cloud of dust was now settling. The truck didn't reappear.