Nick Cole - The Wasteland Saga

The ground sloped into a gentle half bowl and he could see Freeway beyond.

I should never have left the road. We could have found a jackknifed trailer to hide in. Sergeant Presley said those were always the best places to sleep. We did many times.

He patted Horse once more on the neck whispering, “We’ll sprint for the road beyond the bowl. We’ll find a place there.”

Horse reared impolitely as if to say they should already be moving.

Halfway down the slope at a good canter, watching for squirrel and snake holes, places where Horse could easily snap one of his long legs, the Boy saw the trap.

There were five of them. All like the sleeker, mane-less lion. Females. Hunters. They were crouched low in a wide semicircle off to his right. All of them were watching him. He’d come into the left edge of their trap.

You know what to do, Boy! barked Sergeant Presley in his teaching voice. His drill sergeant voice. The voice with which he’d taught the Boy to fight, to survive, to live just one more day.

Assault through the ambush .

Horse roared with fear. Angry fear.

The Boy guided Horse toward the extreme left edge of the trap, coaxing him with his knee as he unhooked the crossbow, cocked a bolt, and raised it upward with his withered left hand.

Not the best to shoot with. But I’ll need the tomahawk for the other.

The sleek females darted in toward him, dashing through the dust, every golden muscle rippling, jaws clenched tight in determination.

This is bad.

The fear crept into the Boy as it always did before combat.

Ain’t nothin’ but a thang, Boy. Ain’t nothin’ but a thang. Mind over matter; you don’t mind, it don’t matter .

The closest cat charged forward, its fangs out, and in that instant the Boy knew it would leap. Its desire to leap and clutch at Horse’s flanks telegraphed in the cat’s wicked burst of speed.

The Boy lowered the crossbow onto the flat of his good arm holding the tomahawk, aimed on the fly, and sent a bolt into the flurry of dust and claws from which the terrible fanged mouth and triangular head watched him through cold eyes.

He heard a sharp, ripping yowl and kicked Horse to climb the small ridge at the edge of the bowl. On the other side he could see frames of half-built buildings below on the plain before the city.

Half-built buildings.

Construction site .

Maybe houses being built on the last day of the old world. Houses that would never be finished.

If I can stay ahead of them for just a moment…

Horse screamed and the Boy felt the weight of something angry tearing at Horse’s left flank.

One of the female lions had gone wide and raced for the lip of the ridgeline. Once on top, it had thrown everything into a leap that brought it right down onto Horse’s flank.

The Boy cursed as he swiped at the fierce cat with his tomahawk. But the lioness had landed on Horse’s left side and his axe was in his right hand. The Boy batted at the lioness with the crossbow. Its mouth was open, its fangs ready to sink into Horse’s spine, the Boy shoved the crossbow into the cat’s open jaws. Gagging and choking, the lioness released Horse’s torn flesh as its paws attempted to remove the crossbow. It fell away into the dust and Horse continued forward. Already the Boy could feel Horse slowing. His own feet, bent back onto Horse’s flanks, were dripping with warm blood.

“Don’t slow down,” he pleaded into Horse’s pinned ears, doubting whether he was heard at all. “Just make it into those ruins.”

When Horse didn’t respond with his usual snort, the Boy knew the wound was bad.

The Boy drove Horse hard through the drifting sand of the old ruins. Rotting frames of sun-bleached gray and bone-white wood, warped by forty years of savage heat and cruel ice seemed to offer little protection from the roaring lions now trotting downslope in a bouncing, almost expectant, gait.

They wove deeper into the dry fingers of wood erupting from the sand of Construction Site. The Boy heard the crack of ragged wooden snaps beneath Horse’s hooves. He hoped they might find a hole or even a completed building to hide in. But there was nothing. Behind them he could hear the cats beginning to growl, unsure how to proceed through the rotting forest of ancient lumber. The Big Lion gave a roar and the Boy knew they would be coming into the maze after them.

Near the far edge of the spreading ruins, the Boy found a half-constructed bell tower ringed with ancient scaffolding over a narrow opening. It was their only hope. He steered Horse in under the rickety scaffolding still clinging to its long unfinished exterior. In the shadowy dark he dismounted Horse and raced back outside. He swung his tomahawk at the ancient scaffolding, cutting through a rusty bar with one stroke. He stepped back inside once he’d smashed the other support bar. The scaffolding began to collapse across the entrance as he saw the Big Lion come crashing through the warped and bent forest of dry wood, charging directly at him.

The scaffolding slanted down across the entrance as shafts of fading daylight shot through the dust.

The Big Lion crossed the ground between them in bounds.

Focus, Boy .

The Boy reached up and crushed another support with his tomahawk and more abandoned building material came crashing down across the entrance. Dust and sand swallowed the world and the Boy closed his eyes and didn’t breathe. Horse screeched in fear as the Boy hoped the collapsed scaffolding would be enough to block the entrance.

When he opened his eyes he could see soft light filtering through the debris-cluttered opening.

He put his good hand on Horse, conveying calm where the Boy felt none, willing the terror-stricken animal to understand that they were safe for now.

Then he looked at the wound.

Claw marks straight down the side. The whole flank all the way to the hock was shaking. He took some of his water and washed the wound. Horse trembled, and the Boy placed his face near Horse’s neck, whispering.

“It will be okay.

“I will take care of you.”

The wound is still bleeding, so I’ll have to make a bandage.

He poured some water into the sand and made mud. He didn’t have much water, but it was vital to get the bleeding stopped.

He can’t bleed forever, Boy .

When the mixture was ready he packed it into the wound, steadying Horse as he went, murmuring above the lion’s roar as he applied the wet mud.

SHE PACED BACK and forth outside the never-to-be-finished bell tower.

Horse was definitely inside. She could smell it. She could smell its fear.

At the top of the bell tower, fifteen feet high, she could see narrow arches. If she could leap from another structure she might get in there and make the kill.

The male rose up on his hind legs and began to bat away at the collapsed opening. Wood splintered and cracked as he put all of his four hundred pounds onto the pile of debris. As usual he tired quickly and went to lie down, content to merely wait and watch the entrance. The sisters came up to him one by one, trying to reassure him that all would be well, but he seemed embarrassed—or frustrated. Normally expressive, his great face remained immobile, which the young usually took for thinking. But she knew he was merely tired and mostly out of ideas and generally unconcerned at how things might turn out.

She knew him—and loved him.

She paced away from the tower and then turned, gave two energetic bounds, and leapt. She almost made the top. Her claws extended, ripping into the dry stucco of the bell tower, revealing ancient dry wood beneath. She began to climb toward the opening, and a moment later a sheet of stucco ripped away and she fell backward.