Second Chances (36 page)

“So what do we do?”

“Kill them of course,” Miles said. He issued orders to kill the beasts on sight. Lights were rigged in the corrals; the animals clustered fearfully in the light. Ciara even pulled out some of those dollar solar lights she'd gotten at a thrift store and rigged them on poles around the perimeter. The sentiment was good, but it didn't do much to help.

“Well, hell, some light is better than no light,” Ciara said with a shrug. “It's the thought that counts,” she said.

Miles shook his head. They found that the animals didn't attack when all five moons were in the sky at night. They preferred the darkest hours of the long nights. Accordingly he arranged the watch schedule to put the most manpower on the walls during those times.

They'd finally figured out the planet had a twenty-eight hour day. That was queer. Miles and a few people didn't understand why it didn't have a normal day, but they had to work with what they got. That meant fourteen hours of light, fourteen of dark.

They used spotlights at night to blind the animals, then shot them from the wall. They tried to limit the ammunition they expended, Miles came down hard on anyone who panic fired. “We don't have ammo to waste!” he snarled, snatching a battered M-1 from a spic. The idiot had fired six shots at one animal and hadn't hit it once. “Stupid,” Miles snarled, storming off.

They had to mount some defense, but even what they could do wasn't enough. The herds were being trimmed almost with impunity. The animals were just too smart; they apparently learned where the lights were and attacked from the shadows.

Miles rigged torches, but they couldn't do anything about keeping them lit during the long night. Joe rigged a couple of his powerful spotlights, but they couldn't last an hour before they drained his batteries.

After a week and nine more kills, they switched to bows, slings and spears, but the damn things dodged the slower moving bolts. They were smart enough to realize the direction of the attacks and backtrack it to its source. Some attacked the base, they savaged a few of the animals huddled under the lights terrifying everyone until they were driven off by Joe and his prototype flamethrower.

Finally Joe had enough of the bitching and grabbed a couple of guys to help him in the junkyard. They came back with headlights and batteries from junkers. Miles watched as they rigged them to motion sensors and switches around the perimeter of the herds and yard. There was a pair of lights in a rig every twenty feet, set up to cover an arch. There was a bit of an overlap between each light too. They didn't have enough to light the herds themselves as Joe apparently planned, but it was enough to give the damn sharks a scare when they came calling later that evening.

Two more nights of trying to get through the lights made them turn tail and head further upstream. After that the reports of the animals on the perimeter ceased.

“Bout damn time, I'm bushed,” Miles grumbled. “Burning a candle at two ends. It's like I'm back in the army all over again,” he grumbled. Abe nodded.

Chapter 20

Miles bigotry was confronted again when he got into an argument while a little drunk. They'd decided since it was raining out it was a perfect time to call a rest day...and with nothing better to do and bored to tears Miles like a lot of the guys had gotten together in the community center to test out the latest products from the still. He'd gotten mouthy about immigration, which apparently pissed a few people off. Tough for them or so he thought.

Finally, Carlos had enough and acted. “Dude, I'm not just any spic. I'm from Albuquerque so chill. My parents were Americans, and my ancestry can be traced to the southwest a hell of a lot longer than yours I bet,” Carlos growled. “And if it hasn't occurred to you, we're not on Earth anymore. We're
all
immigrants now dumb ass,” he snarled.

“Who you calling a dumb ass?” Miles snarled back, fists clenching. What followed was a good old fashioned brawl. Fists and improvised furniture flew. When they were finished both were on the floor laughing, bruised and bloody. Juanita looked at them, then shook her head and went about her business.

Carlos got to his feet, then held out a hand to Miles. Miles looked at it for a second, then took it. Carlos helped him unsteadily to his feet, then slapped him on the shoulder. “For a racist bigot, you've got a mean punch.”

“For a spic, you've got a good one too,” Miles said, rubbing his sore jaw.

“Hey man, can we drop that racist crap? We're all human here, no matter where we came from or what we look like. Life's too hard here to get into that sort of shit,” Kevin Thorn urged. “Who cares what skin color you are here?” he demanded. “The dinos don't, do they? So why should we? What does it matter? What matters is what we're doing to stay
alive
,” he said. A few people nodded along with him.

Miles hunched his shoulders, feeling put upon. He hated that.

“No truer words have ever been spoken,” Carlos said, wiping blood and drool from his mouth. Kevin nodded to the farmer.

Miles looked at him, then looked away.

“I dunno, jefe; some people can't change easily,” Carlos said, coming to his rescue. “A lifetime of bullshit spoon fed to you...”

“I'll...try to...not spout off,” Miles finally said, rather grudgingly. It sounded like a hard admission, something that was like pulling teeth out of him. “
Try
.”

“Good,” Carlos said. “Now come on, we need another drink.”

“I'm going to feel that in the morning,” Miles admitted, rolling his shoulder.

“Not if you have two drinks,” Carlos snorted, setting up a pair of shots.

\------{}------/

Miles was not much of a handyman. He'd done a bit back on Earth, but he didn't have the tools or so he said. But he had some stuff from the militia, improvised weapons including potato guns, RPGs and other weapons. After the incident with the Demon Sharks and other predators, he dug them out and handed them off to Joe, their best machinist and mechanic. Joe puzzled over them, then got to work making what he could out of what they had on hand. He already had his flamethrower made from a propane tank and section of pipe, but these other weapons were harder to make, but “Very effing cool,” he said. “Wish you'd thought of these before,” he said in mild reproof to Miles.

“I think an RPG is a bit much to kill one of those sharks. If we could hit it,” Miles said. “

“True,” Joe said. “Heard about the flight?”

“Flight?” Miles asked, just in time to hear a motor start up. His jaw practically dropped as a Cessna rolled out of the eastern gate and into history.

Their two pilots took their battered Cessna up the eastern dirt road and took off one sunny morning. They flew around the area in a spiral, moving out and taking pictures. They made notes of where various things were and tracked the herds in the area.

When they landed Miles and others were there to greet them. Vicky was amused and Abe chuckled at the cheers, but Miles didn't see what the fun was all about. He had been ready to cuss them out over the damn fuel loss, but Irma held up a restraining hand and then pulled out her laptop. She grinned a gap-toothed grin when she turned it around for the others to see. “I've got a printer too. We can print maps of the area. It's not perfect, but if I convert it to gray scale and then do some photoshoping I should be able to get a pretty good map of the area for us to use.”

“And we were doing that already,” Miles said, hands behind his back.

Irma looked up to him then back to Vicky. “Yeah, but this identifies where the herds are going right now, and we've managed to get high enough to see much further than we've gone on the ground,” she said. “See here?” She said, pointing to distant hills. “I'm betting we'll find iron there.”

“You wasted fuel and put your lives on the line for a maybe? If it hasn't occurred to you, we've got plenty of iron, steel alloy, aluminum, copper...” Miles pointed in disgust to the junkyard.

“Yeah, well, there's more stuff; we can plan routes out. And I
think
we may have found something interesting. Smoke on the horizon,” Irma said, undeterred.

Miles looked at her, then nodded.

“It's distant though, at least two hundred kilometers away. Pretty far and it could be a brush fire or something,” Irma's husband, Jesus said. Miles grunted.

“It's a start. I like the map; we can get topographical information off of it if we play with it properly. It's not as good as a satellite, but it's a start,” Abe said.

When they had free time and material, the Indians made healing drums and other Native American artifacts. They were made with wood and animal hide and painted with material from the surrounding area. According to Angeni Dakota, the woman who made the drums, the rhythmic drumming and singing induced a meditative state which aides healing.

Miles wasn't about to tell them they were full of shit, not when he was no longer certain of things himself. Besides, if they preferred drumming and chanting over modern medicine, that meant the good stuff would last longer for those who needed it.

\------{}------/

Abe surveyed the field, feeling the light breeze. It was early morning, only an hour after daybreak, perfect to hunt. Most of the major predators were bedded down with their kills; others were looking for shady spots to wait out the coming sun.

He tipped his hat back, looking at the long grass around them, then off to the herd of theropod dinosaurs in the morning haze and fog. They had found that three of the man-sized animals were enough to feed the community for a day with a bit left over to smoke or store in the few working fridges they had.

When he took his turn as hunting guide he tried to get at least four, possibly six animals, or one of the larger Hadrosaurs. They were a bit gamey, a lot of dark meat in those thunder thighs, but they did a good job feeding everyone for almost a week. That meant less exposure to the critters in the area.

He was starting to agree with Dunn...Colonel Dunn that they needed to thin out the predators in the area. With fewer predators they'd have less competition for the herds, and it would be a tad safer to go about in the bush.

He heard a rustling in the grass off to his left and looked, but it was just the wind making the long fronds dance. He shook his head. “Mind playing tricks on you,” he murmured to himself.

“What's that?” Kevin asked from his right side. He had the binoculars out and was trying to plot the best way to get to the herd and then out while avoiding the tree line where the predators were probably at. Most of the predators were also downwind of the herd too, to avoid being scented.

“Nothin,” Abe said.

“I heard Joe's got a water turbine almost done. How are we going to rig that in the river with those shark and croc things around?” Kevin asked.

“I have no idea,” Abe sighed. “I'm starting to think a bunch of wind turbines would have been smarter.”

“Safer,” Kevin agreed with a snort. “But I heard Joe and the colonel going on about the blades. Something about balancing them,” he said then shrugged.

“Yeah, it's a problem,” Abe sighed, just as the winds picked up. The rustling increased in volume as well. He smelled something odd, but couldn't place it.

“Think they'll get back with the truck soon?” Kevin asked quietly. “I think we're going to have to reposition if we want another kill this morning,” he said. “They aren't coming back to the river to drink like we thought,” he said. “Killing that doe probably dried them up,” he said.

“Hen,” Abe rebuked absently. “The male is the cock,” he said.

Kevin snorted. Then he paused when the area went quiet. “That the guys coming up behind us?”

“What?” Abe said, turning just in time to see something rush out of the grass fast. He saw a mouth full of crocodile teeth and scales before all thought ended.

Kevin saw a flash of scaly flesh hit the man beside him and screamed in surprise. He felt something hit him hard in the left arm and chest, throwing him to the side like a rag doll. He fell on his ass, but recovered enough to get his rifle up.

He nearly puked when he saw the thing tearing into poor Abe. He fired, but the scales on the six legged croc was like armor. The tail thrashed and it raised its maw to rumble. It even sounded like a croc, he thought as he chambered another round.

The thing serpentined the tail then turned on him. He saw the red underbelly and throat as it lifted its head. He tried to back up on his ass, but it moved too fast. In desperation he dropped the rifle down low and shot again. The round tore up through the soft throat sack and up into the brain, killing it. It fell at his feet, dead almost instantly.

He sat there, panting, letting his body catch up to his brain as the others arrived.

\------{}------/

Abe's death in the late spring was a shock. No one had died since Nicole the month before; the assumption was that they were getting a handle on adapting to the planet. His death proved that assumption was unfounded.

Vicky took his death hard. She cried with Ciara, who ended up getting her drunk after the funeral. At least they had a body to bury Miles thought. This time. Miles hadn't liked the law man, but he'd respected him as a hunter and provider. Only grudgingly did he admit the man had lived up to his reputation as fair and honest. His death made morale in the community plummet.