Dies the Fire

Unless they've got another one decently concealed, and that fool is maskirovka, Havel thought, unshipping his binoculars. After a moment: Nope. Unless I'm missing it completely, that's their one and only.

Smoke drifted up, carrying the scent of roasting meat from the ca

A faint scream came from beyond the ridge, then a series of them, shrill-a woman, or an adolescent, he thought. And the sentry was looking back over his shoulder at his own camp more than down at the approaches to it.

"I'll take him," Havel whispered, handing Pamela the binoculars. "When he goes down, both of you join me pronto."

Eric looked as if he wanted to volunteer, and Pamela looked at the younger Larsson with the wondering gaze you gave the insane; neither of them said anything aloud as Havel slipped out of the hollow and began to crawl upward.

I'll do it because I'm the only one who's hunted men, he added silently to himself. It's not quite like being in a fight. Killing in cold blood's a lot harder on the nerves.

There was a secret to stalking, arid wasn't much different with deer or humans: Don't move when they're looking at you. Deer were harder, since their noses and ears were a lot keener, although they were a lot less likely to kill you.

Back before the Change in a situation like this, back when he was in Force Recon, he'd have gotten close and used a sound-suppressed pistol, or even closer and used a knife and his hands. Now there was an alternative, if he could pull it off.

Closer. Move and freeze, move and freeze-gently, gently, nothing abrupt.

Don't stare. People can feel that. Use your peripheral vision. Think rock, think grass, think sage.

He moved again, a swift steady crawl, completely controlled; his mind was a diamond point of concentration, but open also to every quiver of breeze and rustle of noise, as if he was the land he moved over. It wasn't really something you learned; you learned to stop not doing it. He'd gotten that in the woods from his father, and from Grandma's brothers and nephews, and from his own heart, without putting it into words until he went into the Corps and got his final polish from experts.

All you had to do was stop the part of your mind that was always telling itself stories. Humans had been predators for a very long time, after all, long before language. Just be.

The wind was from the target towards him; the nauseatingly good smell of meat roasting got strong, and then there was a strong whiff of sweat and human waste. It was too rank to be from one man; the campsite must be very bad to smell like this so far away, even compared to the squalor they'd often met after the Change.

Closer, a hundred feet, and he was behind a boulder half buried in the thinly grassed rocky soil. The sun was lower, and he had to squint as he checked slowly around the edge of the lump of basalt.

There.

The ca

Now.

Havel rose, feet stamping down into the archer's T. The powerful recurved bow came up, stave creaking as he drew to the ear-ninety pounds draw, horn and sinew and wood of the bois d'arc tree. The triangle-shaped arrowhead touched the outer edge of the riser, and he lowered his left hand until the head met the black outline a hundred feet above him. Instinct spoke and the string rolled off his fingers…

Snap.

The string slapped against his arm guard, and the arrow blurred out in a flickering shallow curve, the razor edges of the broadhead glinting as the slight curve in the fletching made the shaft twirl like a rifle bullet. Almost instantly came the flat heavy smack of steel striking flesh, a thick wet sound.

Havel was moving as the shaft left the string; he could feel that the shot was a hit. He covered the hundred feet uphill in a near-silent panther rush, already close enough to see the sentry pivoting, eyes wide in a filthy, hairy sun-scorched face, blood coughing out between his bearded lips in a bright fan of arterial red. The gray goose-feather fletching danced behind his left shoulder blade, and the point and eighteen inches of the shaft dripped red from his chest.

Havel dropped his bow and grabbed the man by the beard with his right hand, burying his left in the tangled hair at the base of his skull. A single wrenching twist, a sound like a green branch snapping, and the body jerked and went limp. He snatched up the spear-it was a sharpened shovel head on a pole-and lowered the body to the ground. Then he drew the arrow free with a single strong pull-he might need it-and hastily pushed the filthy carcass downslope behind him, wiping his gloved hands on the dirt.

The lice and fleas would be looking for a new home, and he didn't feel hospitable.

Eric and Pamela dodged the rolling body as they followed him and flattened themselves below the ridgeline. Havel stood in the sentry's place, leaning on the spear and studying the enemy camp. It wasn't far away; a little nook with a spring trickling down an almost-cliff and some cottonwoods-most cut down for firewood now. There weren't any tents, just arrangements of plastic sheeting and blankets propped on crudely tied branches, and some car seats and improvised bedrolls. A fair-sized fire was popping and flaring beneath pieces of meat on a grill that looked as if it came from a barbecue.

Even from here the stink was enough to make him gag, and he could see the swarm of flies on bits of bodies and casual heaps of human shit-one of the ca

Nearby was the source of the screams. It was a half-bowshot away, but he could see that the woman-girl- was in her teens. An older man with shaggy mouse-colored hair and beard was trying to make her eat something, grabbing at her hair and pushing it towards her face; she fought with dreadful concentrated intensity, screaming when she broke free.

That never took her far, because her ankles were tied with a cord that gave her only about a foot of movement, like a horse-hobble. Several of the watchers were crowing laughter, but the man shouted angrily as she managed to rake his face with her nails. He hit her seriously then, and turned to pull an ax out of a stump as she slumped to the ground.

"Oh, I hate it when I have to be a hero," Havel said, tossing the spear aside. "And I'd have just as much chance of hitting her as him if I tried a shot at this distance. Here goes."

He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hey! You down there! Yes, you, asshole! The Bearkillers are here-here to kill you all!"

The camp below froze like a tableau behind glass. Waxwork figures in some unimaginable future museum…

Evolution of the post-Change ca