The Fox Run Read online

  “Damn!” Blade fumed, enraged. He thoroughly detested the mutates, in all their varieties and manifestations. An ordinary black bear would usually avoid contact with humans, fearing the two-legged horrors as if they were walking death. But mutates, in whatever form, deviated from the norm. Every mutate, whether it had once been a bear, a horse, or even a frog, inexplicably craved meat and stalked living flesh with an insatiable appetite. No one, not even Plato, knew exactly what caused a mutate.

  Plato was particularly desirous of locating, capturing, or killing a young mutate, a mutate not in adult stages of growth. No one had ever seen any but an adult mutate. Plato had speculated, many times, that mutates were the result of the widespread chemical warfare initiated during the nuclear conflict. If radiation alone was the cause, then logic would dictate that humans would be affected, and there was not a single report in the entire Family history of a solitary human mutate. Plato had emphasized over and over that discovering the reason for the mutates must be a Family priority. Within the past decade the mutates population had increased drastically—apparently by geometric progression, according to Plato—and this fact was fraught with devastating implications.

  Blade paused, considering his options. If they continued on their course, even if they reached the safety of the Home, the mutate would follow them to the walls, would know where the Family was based, and it might linger outside, waiting for someone, anyone, to venture outside. Or it might return from time to time, hoping to catch a human out in the open, exposed and vulnerable. Blade couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Hickok and Geronimo were standing still, watching him.

  Blade surveyed their surroundings. They had stopped in a small ravine, no more than a shallow depression, encircled by trees on every side. The Spirit smiled on them.

  “We make our stand here,” Blade announced.

  Hickok smiled.

  Geronimo, knowing what was expected, dropped the deer carcass in the middle of the ravine.

  “Find your spots,” Blade advised.

  “You better take this,” Hickok said, and tossed Blade his rifle.

  Blade caught it with his right hand.

  “At this range,” Hickok went on, “my pistols will be just as effective as the long gun. Besides, your bow wouldn’t hardly scratch a mutate that big.”

  Blade grinned and nodded. If the mutate followed their path into the ravine, and there was every reason to believe it would, then it would enter from the north, as they had done. That left three points to fire from.

  Geronimo was already climbing the west wall, his sturdy legs pumping.

  He reached the top and glanced back, his green pants and shirt, sewn together from the remains of an old tent, making excellent camouflage.

  Geronimo disappeared into some trees.

  Hickok started up the east slope. “Aim for the head,” he said over his shoulder.

  Blade nodded. Frequently, whenever Warriors were socializing, the subject turned to killing, to the best techniques for downing prey or foe alike. Some advocated the heart shot, a few the neck, but Hickok was adamant in his defense of the head shot as the only viable shot to take, whether with a firearm, a bow, or a slingshot. “If you’re aiming to kill,” Hickok had said one night when the Warriors were gathered around a roaring fire, “then aim to kill. Any shot but a head shot in a waste of time, not to mention a danger to yourself and those you’re protecting. If you hit a man or an animal in the chest or neck, or anywhere else except the head, they can still shoot back or keep coming. It takes several seconds, sometimes, for the shock of being hit to register, and those seconds can be fatal for you. But when you hit them in the head, on the other hand, the impact stuns them immediately, and if you take out their brain, you snuff them instantly. No mess, no fuss.”

  Sometimes, Blade reflected, Hickok could be as cold as ice.

  Hickok was perched on the rim of the depression, his buckskin-clad frame hunched over as he intently studied the back trail. He motioned for Blade to hurry, then vanished behind a boulder.

  The mutate must be getting close.

  Blade slung his bow over his left shoulder, gripped the rifle in both hands, and ran up the south slope, the lowest. Dense brush covered the slope, right up to the tree line. Blade swung behind the first tree and crouched.

  Not a moment too soon.

  The mutate appeared at the north end of the ravine. It hesitated, scanning the terrain, uncertain. Its eyes rested on the dead buck.

  Come and get it, gruesome! Blade hefted the rifle, eager for the kill.

  Mutates gave him the willies!

  This one ambled forward slowly, cautiously, not satisfied with the setup, raw animal instincts warning it that something was wrong.

  Eventually, Blade knew, the thing would approach the deer. Mutates, like those tiny terrors, shrews, could never get enough to eat. They even ate one another. That fact, Plato maintained, was the primary reason the mutates had not taken over the land. Yet.

  The thing grunted, evidently deciding it was safe after all, and it lumbered towards the buck.

  Blade silently debated the wisest course of action. He only had seconds to decide. If he waited for the thing to reach the dead buck, they would have the best, clearest shot. But if the mutate touched the deer, came in contact with the meat in any way, it would be useless as food for the Family. The carcass would be irretrievably contaminated. Anything a mutate handled had to be destroyed or removed from all possible human proximity. Could the Family afford the loss of this meat?

  No!

  The thing was five yards from the buck, head held low, concentrating on its meal.

  Blade stood and raised the rifle to his shoulder, quickly sighting, aiming for the head as Hickok advised.

  A glint of sunlight on the barrel of the 30-06 alerted the beast, and it immediately threw itself to the left, sensing an ambush, making for cover.

  For its bulk and size, the mutate was lightning fast.

  Blade was forced to hurry his shot. The gun bucked and boomed, and his shot ripped into the mutate’s neck, blood and yellowish-green pus spurting every which way.

  The mutate twisted, snarling, and Geronimo opened up from the west rim, his bullet tearing a furrow out of the top of the mutate’s head.

  The thing was furious! It wanted to attack, to rend and tear and crush, but searing pain racked every cell in its body, and it elected to run, to seek cover, then circle and pounce when its quarry would be off guard. The mutate charged up the east wall of the ravine, bellowing with rage and frustration.

  That was when Hickok closed the trap. He calmly came into view, his feet firmly planted, his hands on his Colts.

  The mutate was twenty yards from Hickok and it roared when it spied him blocking its escape route.

  Hickok did not draw his .357’s.

  The mutate was closing, the mouth wide open, the horrible teeth exposed.

  Hickok remained immobile.

  The mutate was pouring on the speed.

  “Now!” Blade screamed, wondering why Hickok was waiting and knowing the answer, knowing that Hickok thrived on excitement, that he reveled in danger and adventure, and dreading that, this time, Hickok had gone too far, that the gunman had overestimated his ability.

  But he was wrong!

  Hickok drew, the Colts clearing leather simultaneously, the two shots as one, the slugs striking the mutate’s forehead, and the thing stumbled, recovered, and continued to charge, even as the Colts cracked again, and a third time, and the mutate was dead on its feet, carried forward by the force of its own momentum, up and over the top of the east wall.

  Hickok leaped to one side.

  The mutate plowed into a large tree and dropped on the spot. There was a final, wheezing gasp, then silence.

  Hickok stared at the dead creature for a moment, smiling. He casually twirled the Colts and replaced them in their holsters in a quick, fluid motion.

  Blade and Geronimo were running towards the buck. Hick
ok joined them.

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” Blade snapped when they regrouped.

  “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Hickok simply shrugged.

  “You take too many chances,” Geronimo asserted.

  “Why do you do it, Nathan?” Blade asked, suppressing his anger. “Don’t you realize that one day your grand plays will be the death of you?”

  Hickok glanced at the mutate, at the ground, and at his friends. “Can you think of a better way to go? I’d rather die in a fight, with my guns in my hands, than old, sick, and decrepit.” Hickok lowered his voice, and his companions were surprised by an insight into his character they’d never glimpsed before. “You both heard Plato. About six or seven months ago.

  The Family records show that each generation is not living longer, like it used to be in the old days, before the Big Blast. Each generation has a shorter life expectancy now. Plato said it’s more than our constant fight for survival, more than our lives being a lot harder than life was in the old days. He said he wasn’t sure what was causing our shorter life spans, our aging earlier and earlier in each successive generation. He suspected some form of radiation-induced genetic imbalance just might have something to do with it, but he doesn’t have the equipment he needs to be certain.”

  Hickok absently drew a circle in the dirt with the toe of his right moccasin.

  “Don’t you see?” he continued. “Look at Plato. He’s a prime example.

  He’s… what? Not quite fifty? And look at him! Already he’s gray and wrinkled, old way before his time. I went and did some checking in the library. I’ve compared pictures in the different books. Plato looks the way a man of seventy or more would have looked before the nuclear war. And that’s going to happen to us, sure enough.”

  Hickok angrily slammed his right fist into his left palm.

  “Well, I’m not about to let it happen to me!” he brusquely declared. “I’m going to go out while I’ve still got my senses about me!” He fell quiet for a moment, then resumed. “Besides, it really doesn’t matter how we go.

  Plato’s convinced me that we’ll survive this world, that there is a higher plane of existence. It isn’t important how we get there, just so we get there.”

  Blade was disturbed. He could see the logic in Hickok’s argument, and it bothered him, but he completely disagreed. “What if you marry some day?” he asked Hickok. “What then?”

  Hickok shrugged. “Cross that hill when I get to it.”

  “And when you do,” Geronimo chipped in, “I predict you’ll change your tune.”

  “We’ll see,” was as far as Hickok was willing to commit himself.

  Blade wanted to change the conversation and dispel the moodiness settling in.

  “My wrist is bothering me,” he announced, and it was. “I better have it tended before dirt gets in the wound and it becomes infected.”

  “Yeah.” Hickok drew his right Magnum and began reloading the spent cartridges from his cartridge belt. “And the old man did say he wanted us back as soon as we could manage it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t refer to him like that,” Blade said stiffly.

  “The old man?” Hickok grinned. “I like Plato, sure. But he’s not my favorite person like he is yours. I don’t mean anything personal by it.”

  They had discussed Hickok’s apparent lack of respect for Plato before, and Blade was about to wade in again, to defend his mentor, when Geronimo sighed.

  “Why am I doing all the carrying today?” he demanded. He slung his rifle over his left arm, stooped, and lifted the buck onto his right shoulder.

  “Glad you’re not much of a hunter, white man.” He smiled at Blade.

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  Geronimo started walking. “Look at this buck.” He gave the carcass a whack. “All skin and bones. Not much more than a year or two old.”

  “We need the meat and the hide,” Blade reminded him, following.

  “I’m not complaining,” Geronimo said. “Makes it easier for me. If this thing was full grown, you’d be helping me right now, sore wrist or not.”

  “You want me to lend a hand, pard?” Hickok had loaded his revolvers.

  “I can manage,” Geronimo snapped indignantly. “And why do you persist in using that phony Wild West talk? You were taught in the same school we were, by the same teacher. So where do you get off talking like you really were Wild Bill Hickok?”

  Hickok pretended to be hurt by the rebuke. “What is this?

  Pick-on-Hickok Day or something?”

  “Now that Geronimo mentions it,” Blade interjected, “I’ve often wondered about the same thing myself. Why do you talk that way sometimes?”

  “Just count your lucky stars I’m not partial to that Shakespeare dude,” Hickok replied. “What a loser! Imagine anyone talking like that! As for me…” He paused. “I feel comfortable dressing like Hickok and talking like Hickok…”

  “Like you think he talked,” Geronimo corrected.

  “…and if it makes me feel good, what’s wrong with that? Maybe it helps me forget.”

  “Forget what?” Blade wanted to know.

  “Forget who I am, and where I am, and the utter senselessness of it all.”

  Blade was sorry he had asked.

  Chapter Two

  The Founder, as the Family called him, had built well.

  Kurt Carpenter, as revealed in his other legacy, the diary he left behind, had been a filmmaker, an environmentalist, yet practical, an idealist and a visionary, all the while retaining a mature, firm grasp on reality. When others had said that the world’s leaders would never blow up the planet.

  Carpenter had smiled and shook his head in disagreement. When the talks had broken off and the media had offered hope that peace could still be maintained. Carpenter had known better. When his many friends had gently derided him for spending so much time and his considerable fortune on his pet project, Carpenter had wisely ignored their barbs and proceeded anyway.

  Yes, Kurt Carpenter had been extraordinary and, like the majority of forward-looking individuals in the course of human history, he had been ridiculed and sneered at, castigated behind his back, and mocked to his face.

  Ironically, Carpenter, in a sense, had had the last laugh.

  When World War Three finally had erupted, when the misguided political madness known variously and collectively as government had attained inevitable fruition, Carpenter and those relatives and friends he had gathered about him at his carefully selected survival site actually had outlasted his many detractors.

  The horror of the aftermath of global nuclear devastation had precluded any urge to gloat; conversely, Carpenter had often wished he had perished in the holocaust, that he had not lived to see the world as he knew it come to an abrupt end. Living had become a bitter experience, an excruciating conflict for the simple basic necessities. The world had done a radioactive flip-flop, and the terrifying results were worse than anyone had predicted they would be. For instance, Carpenter had never anticipated chemical warfare would be extensively employed, never envisioned the outcome, and had failed to include chemical contingencies in his master plan. In the end, one of the clouds had gotten him.

  Still, all in all, Carpenter had built well.

  The Home, as Carpenter dubbed his survival site—and the name stuck—was built on a thirty-acre plot. First, he had surrounded his site with sturdy brick walls, twenty feet high. Later, his followers would string barbed wire all around the top of this first fortification. Next, along the inside of the wall, he had dug a twenty-foot trench. A large stream flowed across his property, entering from the northwest and exiting towards the southeast. Using aqueducts, the walls had been constructed over the stream. He had diverted part of the flow to the inside trench, creating another effective barrier, a moat. He knew human nature, knew that with the decline of civilization, culture, and law, society would revert to primitive, bestial levels, and he wanted his Fa
mily, as he affectionately called his followers, to be prepared to defend itself if the need arose.

  Carpenter’s buildings had been fabricated with strength and durability in mind, from reinforced concrete. The Home would have never survived a direct nuclear hit, or even a near miss, but he had selected his isolated site with that possibility in mind. He had located his survival site as far as possible from primary military targets, and the nearest civilian metropolis had been hundreds of miles distant. His buildings, both above and below ground, had been built according to scientifically calculated specifications for optimum impenetrability. He had been confident the Home would not be destroyed in the initial attack.

  Carpenter’s main worry had been the fallout. He had realized the pattern of fallout would be dictated by the targets hit, the number and type of weapons used, and, more importantly, the prevailing wind currents and other weather conditions. His fear of fallout had been his reason for building the underground chambers, well stocked with provisions, oxygen tanks and masks, an internal ventilation system, and the special equipment required for the monitoring of gamma rays. Fortunately, the direct fallout the site received had been minimal, and within a month of the nuclear war the Family had been able to come above ground again.

  All these facts, and more, Kurt Carpenter had detailed in his diary. They were taught to every child in the Family during their schooling years.

  Blade was thoroughly versed in the story of Kurt Carpenter’s life and lasting triumph, and he ruminated on the implications as the Alpha Triad descended the hill west of the Home.

  A strident horn sounded inside the Home.

  “They’ve seen us,” Hickok commented.

  They could distinguish figures scurrying along the rampart on the upper level of the wall. Most of them were congregating above the drawbridge placed in the center of the western wall. The fields surrounding the Home were kept cleared of all vegetation except grass, a necessary precaution against surprise attack for human and bestial foes.

  As they crossed the field nearest the drawbridge, Geronimo scanned the people on the wall. “Jenny is waiting for you,” he said to Blade.