James Smith - The Flock

"One more thing," Dodd said. He reached into the front pocket of his pants, a big pocket that zippered up to hold excess paraphernalia. He held out his hand, palm down, and hesitated.

"What?" Ron asked. His voice quavered, Dodd's nervousness infecting him.

"Take this," Dodd told him, whispering. "Take it and put it in your pocket. Quickly. Don't look at it."

"Okay." Ron did as he was asked. He didn't look. Whatever it was, it wasn't very large or very heavy. Some kind of disk, he figured as he dumped it into his own left front pocket. The exchange had been quick, smooth. It would have looked, to the casual observer, like a last handshake.

"Just keep it for me. Until this evening. Just hold it, okay?"

Ron shrugged. "Sure. I'm just holding it until this evening. No problem."

"See you around, then." Dodd retreated to his Buick as Riggs turned, finally, and walked off, back to his truck.

Mary gave Ron a questioning look when he climbed into the truck, but said nothing. She generally wasn't the type to pry much into someone's business. If information was forthcoming, so be it. Otherwise, it was none of her affair. But she was curious about the final whispered bit of conversation she'd witnessed. "What was that all about?" she asked. "Anything to do with us going to see Tatum?"

Riggs chuckled, trying to put it into words. "Hell, I don't know. Could just be dramatized grandstanding on Dodd's part. But he says someone's watching him and he wants me to meet him in Orlando tonight." He laughed again, trying not to make it look so serious for Mary.

"You gonna do it? Meet him?"

"Hell, I guess so."

"You want some company along? I mean, just to be riding along?"

Ron cleared his throat uncomfortably. He'd never really told Mary of his true reasons for ending their relationship. In fact, he'd never quite admitted it to himself. But however poor and dishonest those reasons, he couldn't bring himself to try to get things going again. "I think I'd just like to go alone. You know. I'm just not in the mood to make a date out of it tonight."

"Okay. Sure," she told him. "Only I wasn't really thinking of it as a date. But that's okay. I understand what you're saying."

Ron hoped she did. He started the truck and backed out into the street, letting Dodd pull out, and he watched as the small man's car headed away from them. He watched until the Buick went down two blocks and hung a left. "Well, we're off to see Bill Tatum, now. Tell him what we've got. What we think happened to the dogs. The ball will be in their court, now."

Walks Backward was finding it increasingly difficult to obey the First Command. He was certain that the Flock's leaders were wrong in how they were handling this most basic problem. There was something that needed to be uttered, and they were not doing it. The existence of the Flock was in jeopardy. Despite fighting the urges to act, to continue to do the job for which he had been born, he was feeling a deeper need to do the unthinkable.

If something did not happen soon, he was going to have to challenge Egg Father for supremacy of the Flock. And, following that, would be forced to destroy the Flock's Egg Mother and choose a mate.

The signs were there, although at this point only he recognized them in himself. He had already chosen a prospective mate. It was the Third. She was a young, but mature female who corralled the chicks when it looked as if they might stray. She did her job well, and had never lost one of the young to any predator or accident. She would make at least as fine a breeder and nurturer as Egg Mother. Walks Backward had picked her, had chosen her, and would mark her as his mate if something did not soon occur to bar that path.

But, he was willing to wait for just a bit more. The Flock was now in the midst of their range. They knew the wilderness well. Knew this place of no-Man, where only the things that were woven together existed. Before, over all of the lives of all of the living members of the Flock, Man had been present around the edges of the forest and streams and wetlands. But Man had only rarely come into their domain, for purposes it was hard for them to understand. Man did not hunt there. Did not kill there. Only seemed to play strange games among themselves, and send the Screamers overhead. When he was a hatchling, the Egg Mother of his day had given the command to hunt some men who had threatened the Flock's chicks. In the Song of History, it was the first moment in many lifetimes that such a thing had happened, and it had been the last.

This one-who watched the path that his fellows left behind, destroying all trace of their passing-was ready to continue his task in another way. He would cease to be Walks Backward, and would take a new name. He would become Egg Father. The latest Egg Father. So that he would not be the last Egg Father.

He thought, that for a small time more, the Flock would be safe. They were north of the new, sprawling nests that Man had begun to build at the verge of their homeland. This was not good, but he (and the others) had thought that they could continue their ways, as long as Man did not venture into the forest and eat it as they ate everything else. There were stories, in abundance, of how Man consumed the world. Walks Backward was acutely aware of the threat.

And, worse, was that now, at this time, the one they called the Scarlet would be born. The rogue had appeared to the Flock the previous night. He was singing a song of confusion when he came running along the edge of the track they had made, to hunt one of the pigs that were present in these forests since the second wave of Man had come. The first Man, the ones who had been here for two hundred lifetimes, had been difficult to deal with and had forced the Flock to change its ways of living. But the next Man, the ones who came in such huge numbers only six lifetimes ago-they had brought with them new creatures, while destroying as many as the first men had decimated. If the Man from whom they now hid ever discovered them, Walks Backward knew they would be doomed. Their only hope lay in retaining their effective invisibility. The Scarlet was going to reveal them. He knew this just as surely as he knew that in a few hours the Sun would rise up from its nest in the Earth.

During the previous night, the Scarlet had trailed the Flock for hours. Walks Backward, of course, had spotted him first. Initially they all hoped that he was rejoining them, that he had abandoned his ways and would once more sing with them, hunt with them, obey the leaders. But he had not. He had stubbornly nagged at them, trailing behind and making short dashes up to the west and east flanks of the Flock. Tunes of confusion had chirped up from the youngster and the adolescents, as they had not understood. Nor, even, had some of the adults.

However, Walks Backward had understood, seeing in the Scarlet some of the signs of what he was beginning to sense in himself. What the rogue was doing, even if he himself did not quite grasp the fact, was making the false steps that would soon develop into a mating dance. He was going to cull some females from the Flock. He was going to choose young males to act as his supporters. The possibility existed that he might, indeed, challenge Egg Father for supremacy, or else try to form a new Flock.

It was only that the Scarlet was so stupid that had so far spared them either of those particular scenarios. If a challenge did occur, he would be able to destroy the current Egg Father. Of that, Walks Backward was certain. No other in the Flock was nearly as tall, as heavy, as powerfully built. Not even Walks Backward. The Scarlet might be injured in such a battle, but he would certainly kill Egg Father in a struggle. His reach was greater. He could pounce higher and slash with speed, his mass behind each blow. And his gigantic head…a single bite could end any confrontation as quickly as one could blink an eye.