“I thought you wanted to take samples from these people?” Ockerman said as he stepped up.
“Look at this.” Hylander showed him the coyote’s teeth.
The biologist couldn’t read the other man’s expression through the black helmet, but Ockerman immediately knelt. Without Hylander’s suggesting it, he removed his gauntlet to feel the points of the fangs and to stroke the furry ears.
After a moment, the pilot straightened. “We’d better get on with it,” he said, gesturing a thumb at the unconscious people. “Don’t want them to come around before we get them bagged.”
As they rolled the tall red-haired woman off the top of the pile, Ockerman jerked his hand back in surprise. “Her hair moved! It’s still moving! Would you look at that!”
Hylander watched the tendrils slowly retract.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ockerman said, “but hair isn’t supposed to do that.”
The biologist leaned closer and touched a tendril with a gloved finger. It sprang back into a tight coil.
“She’s mutated,” Hylander said. “Her hair’s actually got nerves and muscle tissue. Really bizarre.”
“Shouldn’t we terminate her right here?” Ockerman said.’ ‘If she’s got that kind of radiation damage, why drag her all the way back to the camp? If we’re going to kill her anyway, why not do it here, while she’s out cold? We can leave her body for the coyotes to eat.”
Hylander knew that protocol said that was what they had to do.
But the men who had made up the rules were in another universe.
“No, the killing can wait,” Hylander said. “We’ll take them all back, as planned. I’ll bet she’s got some interesting genetics.”
The two men took hold of Krysty’s hands and feet and lifted her over to the open net. They handled each of the companions in the same way. When they had all the bodies stacked in the middle, they folded over the sides of the net. Ockerman cinched up the cable that ran around the edge, making a bag out of it. Then he connected the end of the cable to the mechanical claw on the underside of the gyroplane.
Hylander started to walk toward the aircraft’s door, but stopped when he saw that Ockerman was heading back to the lakeside. The pilot bent down and started picking up the weapons the Shadow people had dropped.
“What are you doing?” Hylander asked.
“Thought the colonel might like to see this stuff,” Ockerman said. He snatched up the cane and the fallen sword and took a couple of practice cuts in the air with it. “No sense in just leaving it all here.”
Hylander gathered up a stubby submachine gun and a short-barreled pump shotgun. Then they lugged the stuff back to the gyro.
“Better give Connors another try,” Ockerman said after they’d climbed back into their respective chairs. “Let him know that we’re heading for base camp and that he missed the party.”
Hylander still got no answer.
“Do you think the dumbfuck managed to get himself lost out there?” he said “He could’ve had an accident, maybe even gotten himself killed.”
“Anything’s possible,” Ockerman agreed. “He could also have had a case of comm trouble and turned back, figuring there was no way to find us without it. Let’s take the long way back, swing wide around the ridge, and see if we can pick him up.”
CAPTAIN CONNORS WASN’T LOST and he hadn’t been killed by mutie coyotes, or mutie anything else for that matter. When the assault gyro flew over, searching for him, he was sitting in the ATV, which he’d parked under one of the few overpasses still standing on Highway 15. He waited there with his eyes closed, leaning on the steering wheel, until the sound of the props faded away in the distance.
He hadn’t even considered the possibility of deserting when he’d climbed into the ATV. In fact, the idea only occurred to him as he roared down the road out of the hammered little town. The mouth of the canyon opened up before him, and beyond it, the tilted plain sweeping down to the interstate. Overhead were the pinpoints of starlight and the cold white moon.
He remembered looking down at the fuel level indicator and seeing that the tanks were topped up. He remembered thinking that the vehicle had a range of close to a thousand miles, depending on how hard it was pushed.