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.
Doc stood in front of the march of the monster hogs with his LeMat forgotten in his fist. He stared at the oncoming creatures quizzically and discoursed to no one in particular. “I have never seen nor heard of such coordinated effort among an invertebrate species. Well, bees, ants and some other social species, yes, but among annelids imbedded in a host animal? Truly this species is—”
“Doc, get out of there!” Ryan roared.
Doc suddenly seemed to notice a pair of pigs lurching toward him for the first time. “Ah! Yes! Right! Very good!” Doc turned as Ryan began putting bursts into the offending animals. Doc pulled up short as another pig tottered between him and Ryan. “Oh bother.”
“Here!” Mildred shouted. She stood on the hood of an old police cruiser covered with hillbilly armor with Six twenty yards away. “Here!”
Doc hightailed it with his coat flapping behind him. Six grabbed him by his collar and heaved him to the roof. The pigs were among the convoy. It was too close for cannon work. Jak sent the LAV rolling forward and ground several hogs into hamburger under the LAV’s eight massive road wheels.
“Six!” Toulalan shouted from the top of his camper wag and pointed at the engineering LAV. “Le LAV! Le LAV!”
Six shoved his rifle into Mildred’s startled hands. She shook her head in horror. “No! Six! Don’t—”
Six jumped from the hood and ran for the other LAV. He wove through the hulking, undead horrors like a fullback breaking tackles. He literally ran up the engineering vehicle’s dozer blade and jammed down the driver’s hatch. The engine roared into the life and the dozer blade rose with a whine. Six followed Jak’s example of pitting 34,000 pounds of steel against half-ton worm-controlled meat puppets.
Steel won.
The people of the convoy huddled on the hoods and roofs of their wags and fired down into their attackers. A vast amount of the fire was doing little good.
“Toulalan!” Ryan bellowed over the sound of battle. “Get the wags rolling! Pull away and let the LAVs finish it!”
“Oui, Ryan!” Toulalan jumped from the top of his wag and slammed the driver’s door closed seconds behind the snapping tusks of a sow.
