"Fran won't move from the camp till she hears from us," Jo said. Her straw-colored hair was pulled back under a forage cap, wisps trailing over her upturned collar. "Where do they find the diesel fuel to run a tank, for God's sake? You'd think they'd find a better use for it, to generate power or even to keep a fire going. They must--"
Dan silenced her with a wave of his gloved hand and at the same time ducked down. Somebody shrieked below them, a cry that sounded hardly human at all. The crack and echoing reverberation of a gunshot rolled along the valley.
"What's happening?" Jo said, craning to see.
"The mutes decided to rush them and somebody in the tank opened fire with a rifle. Keep down, we don't want to be spotted."
Carefully they peered over the rock and saw three men emerging from the turret. They were unshaven and wore patched-up army fatigues but were otherwise normal in appearance. The mutes--about a dozen of them--were crouched behind rocks and bushes, armed with crude spears, cudgels, and bows and arrows. One of them lay sprawled on the bank with half his face missing.
It looked to be such a one-sided contest that Dan was loath to watch. The three men were armed with rifles and pistols, the mutes with primitive homemade weapons: It was the twenty-first century versus the Stone Age. But what were they fighting
As they moved forward, dodging the missiles casually, almost indifferently, the three men picked off the mutes like plaster ducks in a shooting gallery. Dan gripped his own rifle in a paroxysm of frustration and despair. This was cold-blooded slaughter.
Jo said needlessly, "There's nothing we can do." She reached out and he felt her fingers tighten on his arm. "Come on, Dan, let's go back. We don't have to watch this."
She moved back, and as he squirmed around on his haunches to follow her, they both froze as a grunting, gibbering snarl seemed to tear the air apart. From out of the cavelike opening in the riverbank came a small bundle of fur and teeth that moved in a blur through the rocks and leaped at the throat of one of the men before he had time to sight his gun. In seconds the riverbed was swarming with the creatures. They moved so fast that Dan couldn't make out what they were--a kind of rodent, he guessed, but with an insatiable ferocity he'd never seen before.
They systematically tore the three men apart, attacking the head first and working downward. Now able to see them properly for the first time, Dan realized what they were, and his blood chilled. Ground squirrels. In the past one of the most timid and docile of creatures, almost domesticated and fed from picnic tables by generations of American kids, these descendants had mutated into voracious wild animals with a taste for human meat.
And something else he realized, amazed and fearful.
"They've been trained," he whispered numbly. "The mutes have trained the squirrels. It was a trap. They lured those guys out of the tank so that the squirrels could get at them."
Jo stared at him through the tinted goggles. "But some of the mutes were killed."
"It doesn't seem to.matter to them," Dan said. "They don't think like we do. Maybe they don't think at all--it's just instinct."
There were three writhing mounds of gray fur where the bodies had been. The clicking and snapping of tiny teeth could be heard, strangely peaceful after the gunfire and the screams. Three of the mutes had climbed up onto the tank and were poking their spears into the open hatch. Dan hoped there was no one hiding inside.
Once over the ridge they straightened up and loped down the hill to the camp, about a mile away. The raw sunlight scoured the bleached landscape and the air tasted metallic. They were reaching the point at which further exposure would be dangerous, though this wasn't the reason Dan was anxious to return to the Tomb. Six months ago there hadn't been an incident within a hundred miles. As the skirmishes got closer, the threat of discovery became more likely, and it was vital that the Tomb was alerted and prepared. It was safe from attack by prims and mutes, but now somebody--and who the hell were they?--had tanks. And tanks meant explosives. Even perhaps a nuke warhead. He shrank from the thought.
The tent was still up. The lazy bastards were still asleep or lingering over a late breakfast.
Dan pushed aside the light brush they had piled up as camouflage and raised the tent flap. It was very quiet inside and he felt a twinge of unease until he saw an outstretched leg wearing a knee-high brown boot, which he recognized as Fran's. The leg wasn't attached to her body. Next to it lay a hand, fingers curled, like a discarded glove.
