James Smith - The Flock

Both birds were aware of the short, quick explosion of sound.

Walks Backward felt a sudden, sharp pain in his side. It was just a prick. Like the times he had been stung by hornets-it was nothing serious. But almost immediately his legs felt weak and there seemed to be a cool numbness running through his muscles. He buckled and went down, seeing the great claws of the Scarlet rogue waiting just beyond his head, which now lay prone against the hard earth. With one eye he could see his adversary standing over him, and there was nothing he could do.

For a held breath, the Scarlet rogue realized something was wrong with his enemy. Walks Backward shuddered where he lay and he could not even kick out in defense. The rogue stood and peered in amazement. Death from a distance, just as the histories had said.

The Scarlet turned his head back, and he saw the human standing there. It was The Man Who Watches, and in his grasp was one of the things humans sometimes held. Other humans were standing with him, similarly armed. He drew his huge legs beneath him in a sudden moment of desperation and fear. Screaming one of the human sounds at them, he sprang forward, away from the man who had felled Walks Backward.

Ron and Mary and the dinosaur expert all ducked as the gigantic terror bird jumped and sailed over them in a long, fluid leap. It landed beyond them, impacting on the hood of a Caddy and leaving a cratered dimple there before it leaped again. In a second it had gained the yard beyond the car and it was sprinting, down the street, headed for the forest that beckoned down the way.

Looking toward Holcomb, Ron saw one of the security guards trying to draw a bead on the retreating bird. But even if there had been no one in his line of sight, it would have done him no good. For once again Holcomb was there to force the barrel toward the ground. Holcomb and the guard glared at one another.

And soon the bird was gone.

For a time, there was almost complete silence. Then, tentatively, first Holcomb, and then Ron and Mary crept up to the still form of the giant bird lying upon the dark pavement. And finally, the crowd held at bay by the guards and the others who were now arriving to back them up, the people began to mutter.

"Did you hear it?"

"I didn't imagine it."

"It talked. It said something."

"Did you hear what it said?"

Irons sat in his office atop the Berg Brothers tower in downtown Orlando. He was calm. He was cool. The news was pouring into him by the second. His fax machines whirred constantly and his e-mail was logjammed and his other lines rang incessantly.

But he was cool.

He had picked up the phone and he had made a phone call. One was all it would take. Now he would just have to wait. He sighed and buzzed his secretary.

A day later.

Davis Cauthen was there. He sat in Grisham's office, the two of them with Cauthen's own assistant, a willowy man named Morgan, and Redmond was there. They had things to talk about before Grisham went out once again to wipe out those damned birds.

"It's too late for this kind of action, Winston," Cauthen told him. "The word's out. Too many people saw them. The government is already down here like white on rice, and you know it. There's nothing you can do, now."

Colonel Grisham sat and steamed. His face was pale with rage. "Well, I'm not taking the fall for this bull. My men were supposed to clean Holcomb's place, mop it up, leave nothing. But those damned birds took my men out. All of them." He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his military-cut head in disbelief.

"They're going to be here to question you, soon, Winston. And there are things you're going to have to say. You're going to have to take some of the heat for this. You know that." Senator Cauthen looked grimly at his old friend. His expression was not without some pity.

"No way. I'm not taking any heat for this. I have the proof of who ordered this action, how I was bribed and entrapped into it. And I'm going to cough it all up to the media. I won't play their stinking games. Do you hear me?" He smashed his hard fists down on the desk to punctuate his threat.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Win. You don't really mean it, do you?"

"You're damned right I mean it. I'm not playing any games with these Yankee assholes. They don't know who I am or what I am. They know nothing of the things we deal with on a daily basis: our word, and the loyalty of our fellows. I've got the proposal they offered me, and I have the information they already had concerning the existence of these damned monsters."

"That's your final word then," Cauthen said.

"It is. You can take that back to them. We'll see how this ends up. You have my word on it. And I have my men. Men like Redmond here, who will always stand up for me."

"Well, then." Cauthen cleared his throat.

At that signal, Cauthen's assistant and Redmond were on Grisham in a flash. The younger men each rushed forward and held him down. The old colonel stared in complete shock at the two, then at his old friend. "What? What's the meaning, Davis? What are you do-"

But he never finished the question. For Cauthen produced and had jammed the barrel of a.44 magnum into Grisham's opened mouth and pulled the trigger. All three men were spattered with blood and tissue as the bullet emerged from the top of the colonel's skull and lodged in one of the old books on a shelf just behind his head.

"What happened here, Redmond?" Cauthen asked as he straightened.

"We tried to stop him. That's why he called you down here. To help him out of the jam he'd gotten himself into. He ordered the attack on Holcomb's compound, to try to get rid of the commie eco-freak. And while you were sitting here trying to talk him into turning himself in, he blew his brains out. We tried to stop him, but it was just no good. He was a determined man."

Wiping the pistol clean of his prints, the senator placed it in the hand of his old friend. "Very good, son. I'm sure you'll find your life enriched by your testimony. You keep mind of that each time you buy something nice for your kids or that new house for your wife."

"Don't give it another thought, sir."

No one did.

In Irons' office, a special line rang for him. Only three people had that number, and he always picked it up. On the other end a familiar voice spoke to him.

"It's taken care of," the voice said. "Grisham ordered it alone."

"Thanks for the news," Irons said. And he hung up.

Looking back on it, Ron had to be amused.

After the brown one went down and the red one ran off, the place had almost become the media-driven madhouse Mary had predicted. As if what had happened already had not been bad enough.

The first thing that happened was that Holcomb seemed to take command, despite the fact that most of the officials who showed up were employed by a company that thought of him as an implacable foe. It was rather funny, or would have been in a world in which true justice exits. A large truck with a large cage was needed, Holcomb had informed the security boys. And somehow, some way, just such a contraption was located. And before Big Bird woke up. It was all so comforting to see the truck arrive and the bird be locked safely behind iron bars just before it began to stir.

And that's when Holcomb noticed Ron and Mary. Really noticed them.

"What are you doing with those guns?" he asked, pointing at the rifles with the very fancy nightscopes mounted on.

Ron and Mary stammered for a bit, the hired cops looking upon them with suspicion now that the resident jillionaire had singled them out for questioning. Their cop brows went up in what amounted to curiosity behind their thick skulls. What came out of Ron and Mary was, basically, "We got them from dead guys." They were quickly disarmed and handcuffed.