Straub was licking his lips with his long, reptilian tongue. “Been no lightning to set a fire. It’s a trick from that one-eyed whoreson, Cawdor. But what good does a fire do?” He cocked his head to one side, his silver-spangled eyes opening wide as his keen hearing caught the first sound of pounding hooves, overlaid with a high-pitched squealing.
He relaxed, half smiling. “Of course,” he whispered. “The mutie pigs.”
RYAN AND HIS SON RAN behind the pigs, losing distance to them, following the trampled trail along the canyon. They passed three or four animals, dead or dying, all hideously mangled by the hooves of the other panicked animals.
“Close now?” Dean called, glancing back over his shoulder for his father to catch up with him.
“Yeah. Don’t get ahead. Fog’s thickening again. Some of the brushwooders might manage to get around the herd and come this way. Keep ready.”
An almost invisible path snaked off to the right, only a foot or so wide, leading to a bluff that overlooked the brushwooders’ settlement.
“There,” Ryan said. “Get a grandstand view from up there.”
THEY HAD NO TIME to collect any possessions, no time to gather any viable defenses against the raging torrent of ferocious animals.
Ditchdown staggered around the camp, yelling at the top of his voice to rouse the brushwooders, hesitating by the main fire, his AK-74 on his shoulder, unfired.
“Straub!” he shouted. “Where are you? Use your skills and save us all.”
But the shaved-headed man was nowhere to be seen.
The place was in a turmoil of panic, with women scooping up bawling brats, carrying them under their arms, dashing here and there, staring wildly and hopelessly at the steep hills that cupped the camp.
One or two of the more drink-sodden men couldn’t be roused from their stupor, and their relatives left them sleeping to face their fate.
“Straub! You bastard! Save us!”
DEAN SCRAMBLED UP the trail like an agile mountain goat, crouching on the lip of the dead ground, beckoning to his father, who was panting along a few yards behind.
“Pigs are nearly there!”
Ryan dropped flat on the top of the bluff, staring down through the wreathing bank of mist that was creeping silently inland from the ocean.
It was the best seat in the house.
Below him and to his left, the vanguard of the stampede was pouring through the ravine like a gray-pink tidal wave, dust rising around the unstoppable column.
They were now within a hundred yards of the edges of the brushwood settlement, where the lords of chaos held total sway.
Like ants scurrying around when their castle has been destroyed, the inhabitants of the settlement were dashing in all directions. Above the sound of the pounding hooves of the giant mutie creatures, Ryan could clearly hear the noise of screaming, high and thin, and futile.
DITCHDOWN WAS STANDING still, a fixed point in the milling idiocy of the confusion. He held his blaster at the hip, staring toward the place where he knew that the pigs would be appearing.
He ignored the yelling and screams from all around him, steadying the powerful blaster, wishing that the vanished Straub was still somewhere around him, so that he could have chilled the outland bastard. No time for that.
If there had been a few minutes of warning, then it might have been possible to guide some of the settlement up into the sheer hills around them.
Now the only hope was to run west, toward the ocean. But that meant the territory of the scabbies, then into the yellow land of boiling mud.
Ditchdown just didn’t feel much like taking up either of those options. “That’s enough,” he said quietly. The pigs were already at the outskirts of the village, hundreds of them, most of them weighing well over the five-hundred-pound mark, tusks gleaming through the dust. They charged clear across the camp, their attention turning toward the trail that continued out the far side, barreling straight through anything that was in their way.
RYAN’S ATTENTION WAS on the white streak that ran through Ditchdown’s dark hair, blazing like a beacon in the cloudy, misty gloom.
There was the brief muzzle-flash from the Kalashnikov, and several of the leading boars went toppling over in a tangle of hooves. But it was like trying to stop a crumbling dam with your finger and thumb.