"We're sending up the Skeeter. Look, Terry—"
"I've figured it out, Cadmann. Without you nobody lives. See you in hell, hotshot. Tell Sylvia—" He grimaced to himself. Tell her I don't release her from her promise. "Tell her any damn thing you like. Out." He set the card on the rock and took aim. Half a dozen grendels clustered in the water, twenty meters away: he couldn't miss. The solid kick of the rifle felt just right.
The grendel jumped at the impact. It was instantly on speed, charging from the water. The rest charged after it, tore it apart, and, shying from each other, lowed pieces of their sibling back into the stream. The water foamed red. Terry snarled to himself, at himself. Then he took out the card again. "About forty left the water. Some are fighting, some are coming your way. Do you hear?"
"I hear," Joe Sikes said.
"Good." Quite deliberately, he bent his comcard in half, destroying it. Never liked the damn things. Whatever happened to solitude?
Gunfire from above. Off to the side more grendels, grendels on speed, grendels blurring over the lip of the bluff. More shadows in the water, lying low, avoiding each other. And two grendels in line coming upriver toward him. One looked up. Its eyes met his. Then it moved.
A gray-brown dust plume whizzed over the rocks, headed directly for him. Terry squeezed off one shot, a second, with no effect. He threw the change lever over to full automatic and held the trigger down. Shots rippled out. The barrel heated. The grendel leaped straight into the air, blood streaming from its back and shoulders. Two others snapped at it, then began rushing in frantic circles. Others came up the stream.
Terry aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked the breech. Empty.
Quite calmly, he searched his pockets. There were no more clips, but it was always best to be sure.
More grendels below him now. They fought. Fighting to see who gets me. He wished there were some way to disappoint them. He wished he'd asked them to patch him through to Geographic, to Sylvia, before it was too late. But they'd said everything there was to say.
He wished he could see Justin again, but at least the child was safe.
One of the grendels had won the battle below.
It moved up the rock. Terry didn't want to look at it. He turned to look toward the house. Skeeter One was rising from behind the house.
The Skeeter floated downslope. Stu kept it low enough to gain some advantage from the ground effect. He had only a quarter charge, and when that was gone they'd be down there with the grendels.
Mits was behind him, sitting on one of the tanks of speed soup. He said, "When you give the word."
"Hold off."
"Lots of grendels below."
Stu could see that. Thirty or forty grendels on speed were streaking out of the water, snapping at the corpses of grendels already dead, snapping at each other, circling back to the stream. Several clustered around a white rock: Terry must be dead already. A few slow ones crawled upslope at their leisure, following the scent of men and cattle.
He said, "Keep your head, Mits. We don't want grendels going on speed near the house. We want them on speed down there, where they'll burn themselves out."
"Yeah. Sorry. The goddamned stream is seething with them. I would have bet anything it was too small for that."
"Really? Anything?"
"... No. O-o-oh, Lord."
Stu looked back. Grendels were into the minefield now. He could see the explosions—and a line of grendels tracing the zigzag that marked the safe path. Following the markers. Following the smell left by men's shoes.
The house receded. The water was growing denser with grendels. A few must have followed the taste of human garbage in the water, but the rest had followed garbage and grendel blood too: the taste of territory to be taken.
They were almost halfway to the drop-off. "Now," said Stu.
He didn't have to look. The stink told him: Mits had the stopcock open and was spraying along the river. The Skeeter blades scattered the stuff; it must be falling over a path a hundred meters wide.
And every speed sac they'd put through the blender had been quite flat. Grendels used up their speed when they were dying. That mist must be as thin as hope.
Grendels surged from the water. It worked beautifully! Half the grendels were murdering the other half! No, not quite. But the flying was easy, and Stu freed one hand to touch his comcard.
"Anyone there?"
"We're kind of busy," said Joe Sikes. "They're coming through the fucking mine field."
"I'm halfway down to the bluff. We're spraying. The grendels are all on speed. This stuff is magic. I'd say only about half of them are reacting to it, but they set the others off. We're going to lose about two thirds of them in an orgy of murder."
"Good news."
"Bad news is, about a third of them are just running away from each other. Say, just guessing now, four hundred are now fighting and two hundred just scattering, the cowards, and of the two hundred, a hundred and fifty are going up. Toward you."
"I read you. A hundred and fifty coming."
"We're getting close to the drop-off and... the batteries read dead. I think—"
Mits called from aft. "I've got the other tank in place. It's running."
"Sure is. Joe, we'll stay up as long as we can and then try to get away from the stream."
"I copy. You think the Skeeter cabin will hold?"
"Sure."
"That's a relief." Trace of sarcasm there? "Stu, Mits... ah... on behalf of all of us and world civilization, I want to express our thanks."
"Don't be pompous, Joe. Save it for the victory speeches."
Joe shouted something incoherent. Then there was only the popcorn sound of gunfire, and not enough of that, and it was dwindling.
Grendels seethed in an orgy of murder. Some of the warier grendels had sprinted away from the water before the spray reached them. At a good, safe distance from the battle, far from the stream, they watched the Skeeter. More and more of them, left and right of the river, watched Stu in the Skeeter cockpit.
The batteries had to be on their last gasp. Stu veered left, away from the stream, and angled uphill too. Grendels that had been watching were suddenly in the spray pattern. Stu grinned: half of them were streaking away, escaping, but they did it by going on speed.
Then the power was gone. Stu called, "Dump it!"
The tank tumbled out.
The ground came up hard.
"Button us up." He'd done the best he could. The tank was spraying its remaining speed juice into one square meter of ground, and that was between the Amazon and the Skeeter. Grendels would go crazy before they got here. It might be enough.
Cadmann slammed a rifle into Mary Ann's hands and spun her toward the steps. "Get in the goddamned house!"
By the time she scrambled past the deadfall to the house, the rifle fire was a steady crackle.
In the living room, a dozen of the weak and wounded were sequestered.
They huddled in clumps, eyes huge. They stared out the clerestory slits. Outside, the actions of other men and women decided their fates. "Everyone away from the spring!" she screamed. "Against the far wall!"
They pushed into the far corner. Mary Ann's mind fought the panic.
Somehow, in a hurricane of terror, she found an eye of calm.
The house shuddered as mines exploded to the west: the grendels were coming over the wall! Dirt and shattered rock rained on the roof above her. A grendel leg slid through the clerestory and thudded to the ground in front of them. It twitched.
Next to her, Jill screamed and screamed. Mary Ann savagely backhanded her. Jill reeled back, stunned.