James Axler – Shadowfall

“Reason I told you. They’ll get tired and move off. They know they can’t reach us.”

The huge boar seemed to have heard Ryan as it dropped back to its four feet, head turned at an angle, tiny furious eyes glowering at the nine people in the tree.

But the herd of pigs still showed no immediate interest in moving away.

Altogether Ryan counted thirty-eight or -nine of the brutes. It was difficult to be totally accurate because they kept milling around among the trees. There were only a few piglets, the rest of them being mainly young sows and boars, with a scattering of older animals.

The sun was now up, behind the jagged peaks of the Sierras, with the promise of a fine day to come.

“When they goin’ to give up, Dad?” Dean asked plaintively from among the leaves.

At the sound, nearly all of the pigs stopped their rooting around and looked up into the tree.

“Soon, Dean. Real soon.”

Ryan wished he felt more certain of that.

Chapter Twenty

Another hour had drifted by. The pleasant morning was being ruined by the presenceand the stenchof the mutie pigs. They were still all gathered around the oak tree where Ryan and the other eight friends were clustered. Every time anyone in the branches made any sort of noise, the pigs would stop and stare hungrily upward.

The leader of the herd had started pushing against the scarred trunk of the tree, snorting and snuffling to the others, seeming as though it were trying to organize some of the larger young boars to help him.

Mildred guessed first what the creatures were trying to do. “For the Lord’s sake! I never thought that I’d be threatened by ten tons of bacon on the hoof. They’re going to try to rock the tree clean out of the ground. Look! Some of them’re burrowing away around the roots.”

There was the harsh metallic click of Trader readying the Armalite.

Ryan hesitated a moment. “Not yet,” he decided.

“You mean to wait until the tree falls down and drops us among those fucking pigs?”

“No. I mean to wait a little longer. Most animals don’t have the patience to hang around for too long.”

“Most animals don’t have nine ready-made meals sitting up a tree just waiting to be eaten.”

“I said we’d wait. If there’s a real danger of them felling the tree, then we can take them out easily enough. But it’ll take a mess of ammo and make too much noise.”

For twenty minutes or so, nobody spoke.

Ryan watched the pigs, fascinated by their grim dedication. A number of the younger boars were digging away at the base of the live oak, tunneling into the moist earth and gnawing or snapping through any roots that they encountered.

The old boar was organizing the sows to keep pushing at the trunk, rocking it back and forth, the upper branches and leaves swishing with the jerking movement.

The animals were enormously, freakishly powerful. Their skin was coarse and thick, covered in long bristles, scarred with the wounds from old injuries and dappled with a leprous scaly condition. Hooves were sharp, suited for digging or trampling, and they all had vicious teeth and tusks.

From where he was perched, Ryan could see a little way across the forest, toward the east, where they believed the ville of Baron Weyman lay. He could just make out a thin column of white smoke rising into the morning sky, about two miles off that he guessed might be the cooking fires for first food.

While he stared toward the mountains, Ryan was picking off bits of dry, dead twigs, flicking them down onto the backs of the pigs.

One piece hit the huge boar with the broken tusk on the ear, making it give a roar of rage. It charged the tree square-on with its shoulder, making the whole thing shudder.

There was no warning of the disaster, just a sharp cracking sound from above Ryan and a cry of shock and despair from Abe.

The little gunner rode the snapped branch down, clinging to it as it bounced off other, lower branches, slowing its progress. Jak tried to grab Abe as he plummeted by, but he couldn’t quite reach him.