David Robbins - Twin Cities Run

He winked at Bertha and she laughed.

Hickok had reached the line of trees and he glanced over his shoulder.

The SEAL, resembling for all the world the picture of a vehicle called a van he had seen in an automotive book in the enormous Family library, was parked in the center of Highway 59, or what was left of the roadway after a century of neglect and pounding by the elements. If all went as planned, after a quick repast, they would continue north until they hit Highway 11, head east, and be at the Home by dark.

The vegetation at the side of the road was dense. Hickok pushed his way through, searching for a suitable tree. While still a youngster, he had developed a penchant for urinating on the biggest, tallest tree he could find. The habit had become almost a ritual, his way of telling life to get screwed for the bum steer he’d been handed. Why couldn’t he have been born before the Big Blast, before everything bit the dust?

Several chickadees were chirping nearby, and two flies buzzed around his head as he approached his intended target.

Why, he wondered, was he suddenly peeing so frequently? Did it have something to do with the constant bouncing around in the SEAL? Maybe he should have the Healers check him over after they returned to Home.

Hickok reached the towering Northern Red oak he’d selected and stared up into the branches high above his head. Had this particular tree been standing before World War III? Would it still be here a hundred years after he passed on to the higher worlds, as Plato referred to them?

What would it…

The chickadees abruptly ceased their singing, and the entire forest went quiet.

Danger.

Something made a snorting sound, and before the gunman could react, before he could even think about concealing himself, the terror of the woods, the scourge of the land since the Big Blast, ambled around the expansive trunk of the Northern Red oak and stopped four feet away.

Hickok froze.

The creature was a mutate.

No one, not even the wise Family Elders, not even Plato, knew what caused the dreaded mutates. There was speculation the mutates were the result of the combined impact on the environment of the radiation and the chemical weapons unleashed during World War III. But no one really knew, for sure. It was common knowledge the mutates were once reptiles, mammals, or amphibians, transformed into deformed, rampaging killers possessing insatiable appetites. While the animals retained their former size and shape, their entire bodies were covered with large sores, oozing pus everywhere, their skin turning brownish and dehydrated, cracked and peeling. Their ears were mucus-covered stumps, and they breathed in great wheezing gasps. Mutates attacked and consumed any living thing they could catch, and they were utterly fearless. A mutated frog once hopped out of the moat within the Family Home and immediately pounced on the first Family member it saw.

Hickok vividly recalled that incident, and others, and mentally ordered his body to remain immobile. His hands were holding the rawhide tie string to his buckskin pants, and he debated whether he could draw and kill the mutate before it reached him. He enjoyed unquestioned confidence in his speed and ability with his Pythons, but if the mutate didn’t die instantly and managed to bite him before it expired, he was as good as dead. Over the years, several Family members had been charged by mutates and survived. Or so they thought. Because if any of the mutate pus managed to enter the human bloodstream, that person died a slow, agonizing death. The pus seemed to cover the area near the mutate’s mouths, so any mutate bite was invariably fatal.

What the blazes do I do? Hickok asked himself. Go for his guns and hope he blew the critter away before it sank its gleaming teeth into him?

Or wait and see if the mutate noticed him?

This mutate hadn’t. Yet. It appeared to have been a fox, probably a red fox, before the mysterious transformation. With its ears covered by the reeking pus, its hearing was diminished, leaving its nose as its primary organ for detection and identification. The mutate’s eyesight was unimpaired but, like many animals, it relied on motion to pinpoint other creatures.

I may be in luck here, Hickok speculated. The air was deathly still and would not carry his scent to the mutate. The former fox was not looking at him, but was warily eyeing a leafy bush in the opposite direction. If he didn’t move, the mutate might actually walk away.

Instead, the bestial demon turned and looked directly at him.

Hickok involuntarily tensed. He could see the beady brown eyes studying him, the tiny nostrils quivering, as the mutate strove to register this new presence. Maybe the thing would decide he was another tree and leave. He watched the mutate’s eyes, anticipating a reaction.

He got it.

The mutate’s eyes suddenly widened, the fox snarled, and it came at him, leaping.

His hands a blur, Hickok drew the Colts, using his thumbs to pull back the hammers as he leveled the Pythons, his fingers pulling their respective triggers as the mutate reached the apex of its jump. The blast of the .357

Magnums shattered the forest, the slugs catching the mutate in the face and causing it to tumble to the ground at Hickok’s feet.

The demented beast snapped at his moccasins.

Hickok stepped back, already cocking the Pythons again.

The mutate thrashed and rose to its feet, wobbly, growling and hissing.

It prepared for another spring.

The Colts bucked as Hickok fired each gun twice more, the bullets slamming the mutate to the turf.

The fox twitched briefly, wheezed, and expired.

Close, brother! Too close! Hickok leaned against the tree and sighed, relieved.

“Over here!” someone shouted. Sounded like Joshua.

“No!” another person yelled, and this time Hickok definitely identified Geronimo’s voice. “It came from over here!”

There was a crashing in the underbrush, and Blade, Geronimo, Joshua, and Bertha broke from cover and abruptly stopped at the sight of Hickok and the dead mutate.

“Lordy!” Bertha exclaimed, grimacing. “An Ugly!” The residents of the Twin Cities referred to the mutates as Uglies. Her vocabulary was peppered with street slang and what Joshua called “cute colloquialism.”

She was carrying a Smith and Wesson Model 3000 Pump shotgun taken from a Watcher Geronimo had killed.

“Thank the Spirit you’re not injured!” Joshua stated, his right hand holding a Ruger Redhawk .44 Magnum.

Blade was frowning at the body of the mutate, cradling his Commando Arms Carbine in his arms. He hated the mutates; one of them had been responsible for slaying his father. In addition to the Commando and his Bowie knives. Blade carried two Solingen throwing knives in a leather sheath fastened to his belt, secured in the small of his broad back. Never satisfied with just a few blades, he also had a folding Buck knife in his right front pocket as well as a dagger strapped to his right calf and another to his left wrist. Fortunately, he had been able to retrieve most of his weapons after the battle in Thief River Falls.

“What happened?” Geronimo asked Hickok. “Did you take a leak on it?” He was armed with a Browning B-80 Automatic Shotgun, an Arminius .357 in a shoulder holster under his right arm, and two genuine Apache tomahawks tucked under his belt.

Hickok grinned. “Not quite, pard,” he replied. “We argued over which of us was going to use the tree first, and he lost.”

“Did it bite you?” Blade inquired, concerned.

“Nope,” Hickok answered.

“Are you positive?” Blade pressed him.

“Don’t you think I’d know if it did?” Hickok retorted.

“I don’t see why we’re worried,” Geronimo noted.