James Axler - Hell Road Warriors

The last half-ton hog fell to Ryan’s longblaster only twenty yards from the firing line.

The entire convoy watched the plain shake with the convulsions and screams of the wounded and dying monster hogs in a picture of porcine hell. Ryan rose and drew his SIG-Sauer. He went forward to finish off the crippled and dying animals. Six drew his handblaster and nodded at two of his rattled sec men. “Sylvan, Alain with me.” Six and his men joined Ryan in the mercy killings. There was plenty of ammo available, so why leave the animals to suffer?

Toulalan walked up beside Ryan as he put a bullet-riddled, trembling sow down. “I saw you shoot. You are incredible.”

Ryan ignored the compliment. “Pigs like this normal up here?”

“I don’t know about Ontario.” Toulalan shrugged. “But in Quebec we don’t allow our pigs the luxury of this kind of behavior.”

Ryan had to admit Toulalan and his people had a certain sense of style. Right now Ryan wasn’t laughing.

Doc pursed his lips at a specimen that had taken one of Ryan’s bullets through the heart. “I am reminded of the wild boar of Argentine Andes. They were known for their size and aggression, and as famous for a carnivorous bent in their diet. Large males were known to break into chicken coups and sheep enclosures and wreak great slaughter. It was endlessly argued whether the boar were so large and aggressive because they ate meat, or they were naturally large and aggressive and it led to carnivorous behaviors. Nearly every village had a legend about someone’s friend’s, third uncle’s grandmother who everyone knew had been eaten by one.”

Six pushed fresh shells into his rifle. “Perhaps they were attracted by the smell of the pancakes, no?”

“No.” Ryan knew that wasn’t true. “They came for us.”

Mildred’s stomach got the better of her and she smiled at Six. “Pork chops for dinner?”

Six unveiled a mouthful of gold and silver teeth. “But of course. Whatever the lady wishes, the lady gets.”

J.B. glowered.

Ryan shook his head at the slaughter. There was no way a herd of beasts behaving like that could be allowed to reach the convoy, but he hated wasting meat. Something between forty and fifty thousand pounds of pork was steaming in the morning light.

Six shrugged out of his sheepskins. Beneath them he wore a tomahawk and an enormous bowie knife. He drew his blade and cut into a boar’s belly. The boar’s flesh parted like butter beneath the razor-sharp steel. Six leaped back as squirming black horror spilled forth. “Merde!”

Mildred threw up.

Ryan raised his SIG-Sauer.

Doc peered at the ropey, viscous, black masses of foot-long worms as they tried to crawl back into the boar’s carcass. “Surpassingly peculiar.”

Mildred staggered away. “I’m never eating pork again.”

Doc cocked his head as he watched the flesh of the dead boar ripple in waves. “Monsieur Six, with utmost caution, a few more cuts, if you do not mind?”

Six scowled but he stepped around the boar, his knife slashing a leg, making a cut along the spine and opening the head from jowl to ear. Ryan took note of his artistry with the blade. Six stepped away from the pulsating carcass and spit in disgust. “Parasites! Vileness! Val-d’Or is clean! We should never have left!” The sec man gave Ryan an accusing scowl. “You see! We’re too close to the river! This is Deathlands filth!”

Ryan put a fresh clip into the Scout and reserved comment.

Doc leaned into the mess a little too closely for everyone’s comfort. “No, Monsieur Six. These are not parasites. Parasites feed off their host, and to their host’s detriment. When the host is dead, parasites flee if they are able, they do not crawl back within.” Doc scratched his chin in thought. “Can they be commensals? Commensals receive benefit from their host but do no harm, and yet…”

Ryan gazed at the slices Six had inflicted in the pork. The writhing black worms squirmed through the dead boar’s muscles and squeezed around its bones and spine. Ryan had seen plenty of rotting corpses. Whatever was going on, the worms didn’t appear to be feeding. There was almost some other kind of…

Ryan’s single eyes narrowed.

Intention.

“Doc,” Ryan warned, “step away.”

“What? Oh, yes. Unknown infection, of course.” Doc took several prudent steps back but continued his scientific musings. He pointed his swordstick at the writhing masses within the mutated hog. “Observe! No living creature could survive such a cataclysmic infestation, unless somehow it derived some sort of benefit from it in return. This is neither parasitism nor commensalism. This must be symbiosis of some sort. I believe it must somehow work to— Oh dear!” Doc leaped back adroitly as every visible worm in the dead boar’s wounds contracted in unison.

The swine corpse rolled over and lurched to its feet.

The boar’s eyes burst as horror pushed through its pupils. The thumb-thick worms in its eye sockets waved like feelers and stiffened like pointers at Doc. The boar’s head swiveled in response, its tusks rasping against each other as its mouth fell open and its tongue lolled out, accompanied by an orgy of wriggling filth.

“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed.

“Mon Dieu!” Toulalan cried out.

“Merde!” Six reiterated.

Mildred screamed.

Ryan fired three 9 mm hollowpoint rounds through the dead boar’s head.

The boar’s skull broke apart, spewing broken lengths of black worm. The porcine behemoth staggered but didn’t fall. Fresh worms waved forth from the shattered cranium and snout as if tasting the air. The boar corpse tottered toward the humans. Ryan holstered his SIG-Sauer and spun the Scout off of his shoulder. He flicked the bolt as he backed up. “Fireblast…”

The entire fifty-strong herd of giant, newly dead, mutie wild boars began rolling over and rising up.

“J.B....” Ryan kept backing up. “Get to the LAV. Load HE. Jak, get behind the wheel.”

It took a lot to shake up J.B. The Armorer’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates behind his glasses as he backed up alongside Ryan. “Right.”

“Run!” Ryan roared.

J.B. ran. Jak was already gone.

Six’s guide gun thundered as he put a .45-70 shell into the hog’s sagging skull. The pig kept coming. Ryan raised his rifle. “Forget the head!” The Scout bucked against the one-eyed man’s shoulder, and the pig formed a porcine tripod as the bullet shattered its shoulder blade. He flicked the bolt and his next bullet crushed the hog’s opposite collarbone. The undead pig went snout-first into the dirt. “Take their wheels!”

“Oui, Ryan!” Six flicked the lever of his rifle and blasted apart a corpulent, pulsating sow’s femur. “Everyone! Back to the convoy! Allez! Allez!”

Humans ran.

The pigs shambled forward. There was no squealing. The only noise the dead animals made was the thud of their huge hooves in the soft soil and the sickening crackle of their muscles, joints and fascia as their corpses were manipulated from within. Mildred and Doc began shooting pig knees. Ryan flicked his bolt and fired with mechanical precision. “Yoann! Get your people in the wags! Button up!”

Toulalan shouted to his people in French and they scattered. Six and his men kept shooting. Ryan fired his clip dry and clawed for a fresh one. “J.B.!” A thousand-pound pig tottered toward Ryan, worms waving out of its eyes like flesh-detecting divining rods. “J.B.!”

The closest hog burst like a balloon as it took J.B.’s 25 mm high-explosive shell broadside. “Everyone! Up on wags! Go! Go! Go!” The firing line ran for the convoy as J.B. cut loose. The LAV’s automatic cannon slammed in slow, aimed fire. Hogs exploded in sprays of blood, bone and black worms. Ryan leaped up into the bed of an ancient Toyota Tacoma jacked up on off-road wheels. He pulled Krysty up after him. The pickup had a MAG machine gun mounted on a post. Ryan got behind it and racked a round into the chamber.