James Smith - The Flock

"Hell, yes," Riggs told him. He reached for the door handle and jumped in beside the old man. "Sorry about the upholstery," he said as he smeared his way across the seat.

"Don't worry about it, son. Just get in and I'll take you in the general direction of where they were headed." Brill waited while Mary hopped in and made a similar mess of his back seat. And then he peeled away from the shoulder of the road and was soon doing a good sixty-five. His passengers seemed to wilt, luxuriating in the cool air flowing over and around them. There was a moment in which he actually heard them sigh in pleasure.

"What happened to your truck?" Brill asked.

"Huh? Oh. My truck. Left it back at Vance Holcomb's compound."

"Holcomb, huh? I thought that crazy jillionaire probably had something to do with this. Wonder where he found those things?" Tires squealed as he took a turn a bit too sharply. People pointed from big picture windows in big houses. Some braver citizens stood on front steps to watch.

"How many? How many of these birds did you see?" Mary asked.

"Saw two of them. A red one being chased by a brown one. The red one's bigger, but the brown one is doing all the chasing." He grunted, gripped the steering wheel and took another turn. "Those things are what ate my dog? Aren't they? Huh?"

"Well, probably."

"You told me it was a snake. Isn't that just like the government? Hide things. Cover them up." He took half a second to scowl at Ron.

"Truthfully, sir. We didn't know it was a giant bird at the time. I really did think it was a python. I swear. We only found out later what was going on." Ron had his left hand raised as if taking an oath; his right hand was gripped firmly around the rifle rather than resting on a Bible.

"What is going on, anyway? What are they? Where'd they come from? They look like dinosaurs for God's sake. I thought they were some kind of allosaurus or something until I saw the feathers." They were coming in close to downtown Salutations.

"Well, they're phorusrachids," Ron said. "Big predatory ground dwelling birds that we thought had been extinct for a long time. Either a million years or fifteen thousand years depending on which paleontologist you talk to."

"They don't look extinct."

"Obviously not. And apparently they've been here all along. Living here on what was the military base and bombing range. Kind of protected by the base, strangely enough."

Brill slowed the car, his big hands gripping the wheel. His faced looked sober and very serious. He had slowed the auto to a more sedate thirty miles per hour, still over the posted limit. "I'll be damned," he said. "You know…it kind of makes sense." Then he turned and stared directly at Riggs. "What's going to happen?"

"What do you mean?" Ron said.

"With these things here. There must be more than two of them. Right?"

"I'd say so, although we only actually saw one. But you say you saw two. Where there's two, there's probably more, I'd say."

"Right. Right. So, what's going to happen to this place, now? Isn't this some job for the EPA, or some agency like that?"

"Department of the Interior, most likely," Ron told him. "Some branch of it, anyway."

"Right. So, what's going to happen to us? What's going to happen to Salutations?"

And if Ron had had any doubts as to what had been going on for the previous two days, they were gone. Mr. Brill was no dope. He turned in his seat and looked back at Mary who had leaned forward. They nodded at one another.

"I'd think," Mary told Mr. Brill, "that the media will gather in vast numbers here. Other than that, I couldn't tell you. I reckon we'll all find out."

Suddenly, the old man braked the car. Ron, who had not been buckled in, slipped forward and slammed against the dash, making a big black mark there. Brill was going to have to pay some bucks to clean his car, unfortunately. "Look," the driver said, pointing.

In front of them, at the next intersection, at least thirty cars clogged the streets. They were parked everywhere and in every conceivable angle. Most of the people who'd brought them there were still inside, locked safely behind a shield of safety glass and whatever currently passed for auto steel. A few, perhaps foolhardy, souls had gotten out to stand outside their cars and watch. The only clear area was the intersection itself, now a roughly circular spot of black asphalt and pale concrete sidewalks and curbing. In the center of that hard-surfaced ring, something like the ultimate cockfight was going on. Walks Backward had finally caught up to the Scarlet rogue. One of them was going to go down.

Walks Backward had not obeyed the orders of the Egg Parents. For the first time in his life he had failed to follow their dictates. It wasn't that he thought that he could continue to keep the Flock a secret from Man. That was done and over. The Scarlet had ultimately and completely seen to that. No, what he wanted, what he needed at this point was to satisfy his hatred. He wanted and needed to kill the Scarlet rogue. Nothing less than that could satisfy him.

And so he had left the path of retreat the others had made. It had been his job to scour that path, to close it off to pursuit to any who tracked them. He hoped that another had now taken up the name he had lived with for so long. But beyond that he had no concern other than to catch and kill the rogue who had put him in this position and who had possibly doomed the Flock.

Initially, the Scarlet had not detected that he was being followed. That was good for Walks Backward. If possible, he wanted to attack from a position of complete surprise. The rogue had proven wilier and a bit wiser than any of them had supposed. In the warning oaths communicated by his Flock elders, he had detected some perverse pride in the confusion the Scarlet had brought on them. But that pride was canceled by the danger he had created for them by allowing Man to discover their presence. Initially the Flock had suspected that the one man, the one they called The Watcher, had seen them, but later they had decided that he had not actually spotted them and only suspected their presence. Now there was no doubt. Man knew of them.

For some miles Walks Backward had trailed the rogue. The larger bird had moved closer and closer to the new abode Man had placed at the edge of their domain. The other was going to get as close as possible and bed down there at that dangerous place. That much he supposed. It had been his intention to wait until a time when the Scarlet would rest; then he'd strike. This surprise, coupled with his experience of longer years, would enable him to achieve the kill. It was what he hoped.

Almost, his plan had worked. As he'd thought, the rogue had worked closer and closer to the place where humans made their huge nests. On the very edge of the forest, where it gave way to the great paths on which the humans moved and to the short, grassy spaces that surrounded their nests, the Scarlet had found a sheltered patch of shade where he had stopped. There, he had settled down and actually rested his great head on the forest floor. At that instant, still undetected, Walks Backward had struck.

The smaller bird had sprinted in, covering the fifty-yard distance between them. He'd been happy that he had been able to creep that close without being seen, but the wind had been with him and the Scarlet had not been able to gather his scent. With the rogue still trying to rise to a defense posture, Walks Backward had kicked with his left leg, rising into the air to deliver a single downward slash with his right talon. The blow had been a good one, claws meeting solidly along the rogue's left side, tearing away a good swatch of those red-tinged feathers and leaving a deep furrow with his sturdy middle claw.

After that, the battle had not been so easy. The Scarlet had found his footing and had risen quickly to full height. Even though his adversary was the second largest member of the Flock, the rogue was considerably taller and roughly one hundred pounds heavier. From a standing posture he could look down on the feathered crown of Walks Backward. This gave him an attack advantage based on leverage, and the added weight meant that each blow he delivered would connect with that much more force. Screaming a return challenge, the rogue joined the battle. He did not intend to lose, despite having suffered the first wound.