Revolution (23 page)

The question had been asked with no malice.
Harry realized that the man simply wanted to know, so he gave him
the
Cliff Notes
version. “The Russians we’re looking for,
there’s a scientist who started a project, to, uh, change people
years ago. I want to find him and stop him. I also want to get
Szabo. He’s helping the scientist.”

A nod came from the other man. “Okay, I no
need to know more. General Slobovic tell me how bad these people
are. I see pictures. Other men talk about the attacks. I do not
know so much, but those things, they kill people. They kill Serbs
and others. We will find them.”

Just then, a rare smile formed on his face,
showing off two rows of straight white teeth. “Let’s get pig-man
up.”

Harry walked over and shook Istvan’s
shoulder. “Hey, get up, we have to move out.”

Istvan blinked his eyes, narrowed them at the
sudden influx of sunlight, and got to his feet. A second later, he
dropped to all fours. His voice came out in a very nasal tone, less
distinct than before. “Do we have some food to eat for
breakfast?”

He would have to ask, Harry thought.
Our
chief tracker has to be fed before doing his job.
“We don’t
have any food,” he answered. “We might find some berries along the
way.”

Swiveling around to face the pilot, he asked,
“Which way?”

The pilot pointed to the mountain range
beyond. “That is the only area I would go to. There is no other
place to hide, unless there is big hole in fields. Closest signal
over border was near mountain. If I am hiding, I go there.”

Turning his gaze on Istvan, the pilot dug
into his pocket and came with a slightly mashed candy bar. He
tossed it to Istvan. “Eat up, little piggy. We have long
journey.”

A sour expression appeared on Istvan’s face,
but apparently hunger won out over a possible angry retort and he
quickly tore off the wrapping and scarfed the chocolate down.

Since they had no better plan, going to the
mountains seemed like the best thing to do. They set off riding in
the jeep once again, with Istvan doing his sniffing routine while
on the ground and in the lead. He put his head down, snuffled this
way and that and grunted out tiny noises of either satisfaction or
frustration. Harry couldn’t tell which.

However, he did notice that Istvan had become
even more porcine now. His ears were more pronounced and he tended
to stay on all fours. His body had also become rounder and his
hooves broader. The devolving process had somehow accelerated.
Harry didn’t know why, but he’d figure it out someday. He wondered
if Istvan truly knew what was going to happen. Later, he thought.
I’ll tell him later when the time is right.

After ten more minutes, though, the jeep
started to sputter. “We are out of gas,” the pilot said and smacked
the wheel. “We must walk.”

They abandoned the jeep and the pilot took
both machine guns and slung them around his shoulders. “We go
now.”

A cold wind blew across the fields, carrying
with it smells of flowers, wheat and something else Harry couldn’t
figure out. He despaired of picking up any new clues when Istvan
stopped and pawed the ground. “I smell something,” he announced. He
pointed with his hoof toward the mountain. “The trail stop before,
but it start here again. I do not know why.”

“What are those mountains, anyway?” Harry
asked. “What’s so special about them?”

The pilot arched his eyebrows. “You do not
know? They are Lena Mountains, for tourists. This place in Siberia
is near Volga River. I remember studying this place when I join
army. Many tourists take trips up and down river.”

Looking more closely at it, distant though it
was, Harry’s vision enabled him to see four distinct columns.
“Yeah, I see them.”

A wave from Istvan got his attention. The
little pig-man pointed to some footprints in the earth. They looked
like paw prints, but much larger. “These are more creatures?” the
pilot asked.

Harry nodded. On the surface, they resembled
a dog’s footprints with long, narrow toes and claws, but he saw
other marks as well. Talons... he saw talons. Apparently, Istvan
also saw the marks, as he started to shiver. His voice came out
somewhat garbled, but Harry made it out as
vadasz.

Hunter. Right now, it became a matter of who
hunted best. They continued walking, searching, and Istvan
continued smelling. He started to speak, mumbled something
incoherent and then slurred out, “The trail, it continues to
mountains.”

“Keep on going,” said Harry as he picked up
the pace.

Although many hours passed, the mountains
seemed to be the same distance as before, even though the sun
overhead showed that it was at least noon if not later. Istvan
began to complain about not having had anything to eat. Harry felt
his stomach rumble as well. Still, nothing but empty farmland
greeted them. “We keep walking,” he said, feeling tired, but
knowing there was no other choice but to continue on.

Fortunately, a few minutes later, the pilot
halted. He shaded his eyes with a meaty hand and asked, “What is
that in distance?”

Harry squinted. A structure that appeared to
be a farmhouse lay in the distance. “I think it’s a barn or
farmhouse,” he said. “I’m not sure which.”

“We go,” said the pilot. “Maybe they give us
food.”

Immediately, he set off at a fast trot with
Harry urging the complaining Istvan along. Once they got within ten
yards of it, though, the little man balked. “What’s wrong?” Harry
asked.

Istvan shook his head. “I smell blood,” he
said.

“Fah,” the pilot offered as a retort. “It is
still cold, I am hungry and thirsty and we need to eat. We enter,”
he said with a sneer and pushed the door open.

However, Istvan stood his ground. “I smell
something... something bad,” he whined. “This is bad place.”

Making a rolling eyes gesture, the pilot
said, “I check,” and took out his pistol. He walked in, his head
darting left to right. A couple of minutes later he came back
again, his face white. “You were right,” he said and swallowed. It
looked as though he’d puke any second. “There is blood here, lots
of it.” He pointed with his gun to the second floor.

Harry took the cue and ran inside and up the
stairs. The first room he came to—a bedroom—had been smashed, with
the furniture ripped apart and crushed. The remains of two bodies
lay around the room. From what he could make out, they were
elderly, a man and a woman. They’d been torn apart. The smell of
blood and entrails was horrible. A note lay at their feet.
We
are waiting for you.

Sick at the brutality of the attackers, he
found a blanket and covered the corpses up as best he could. Job
done, he picked up the note and wandered downstairs again. The
pilot was in the kitchen and Istvan stood at the doorway. “They
were here,” the little pig-man said in a flat voice.

“Yeah, they were,” replied Harry and showed
him the paper. “They left a message. We’re close... but they’re
closer.”

Crumpling up the note and tossing it away, he
went into the kitchen and found the pilot in the process of raiding
the cupboards. A loaf of half-eaten bread and a jam jar sat on a
rickety wooden table in the center of the small room. “It is not
much, but it is food,” he said. “It is bad upstairs, but we must
eat.”

Pulling out a drawer, he rummaged around and
took out a knife with which he sliced the bread into three
sections. After handing Harry two of them, he stuffed the last
piece in his mouth, chewed it rapidly and turned on the faucet.
Water came out and he drank it down thirstily, using his hands as a
cup. “This is good. Your friend must eat.”

Wordlessly, Harry took the bread out to
Istvan and took the jam jar as well. Istvan walked inside the
doorway, but remained in his position as if unwilling to view the
carnage. He ate slowly this time, a look of shock on his face.
“They want us to know,” he said. “They want us to be scared.”

“They’re doing a good job of it,” replied
Harry, chewing on the bread. It was dry, stale and tasteless.
Nevertheless, he choked it down. Inside the kitchen, he guzzled
some water from the tap. It tasted clear and sweet and the influx
of food made him feel a little more normal.

Semi-full now, he sat down on a rickety chair
and wondered what to do next. The pilot sat across the table from
him, lit a cigarette and puffed contentedly away. “We should stay
here tonight,” he said, drawing on his cigarette. “We have food and
water. I see more bread and tin of biscuits in cupboard. Anyway, we
must walk and it will take another day to get to mountain.”

“Will they come back?” asked Istvan in a
fearful voice. He’d hesitantly entered and stood fidgeting in the
doorway.

A harsh chuckle came from the pilot. “What
you think?”

He took out his pistol, thumbed back the
hammer and laid it on the table. He then went through the same
process with the machine guns, checking to see if the action was
smooth. Satisfied, he smiled grimly. “They will come back and we
will be ready for them.”

In a situation where there was nothing to
say, Harry said nothing. The enemy was out there, taunting him.
With a sense of the inevitable, he realized that there was nothing
he could do about it. He promised himself, though, that when the
time came, he would not hold back. He would tear the man-shark’s
head off.

Darkness came early in this part of Siberia
so they made a fire from the simple stove. It was a signal, and the
enemy would surely see it, but Harry wanted them to see it. “We
need something else, though.”

Istvan looked up at him. “What do you
need?”

“Do you know what bait means?”

“Oh no... no,” he repeated. “This is just
like guard house at the border.”

The pilot shoved him out the door—gently—and
said he’d be waiting, guns at the ready. Harry stayed on the alert
up on top of the roof. These things might have night vision, but
one way or the other he was going to deal out some payback.

The night grew quiet and the wind died away.
Soon, the smell of unwashed fur and leathery skin wafted through
the air. From its foul smell, he knew it was one of the
transgenics... but what type, he wasn’t sure.

Below him, Istvan quivered in fear and looked
up at the roof. “They are coming.”

Right, great way to give away my location,
Harry thought. “Don’t look at me,” he hissed back. “Let them come
to you.”

Listening for the sounds of approaching feet,
he heard only two pairs of legs striding unevenly over the ground.
They were moving fast, though, and he wondered what he’d be
facing.

“They come,” the pilot said in a hoarse
whisper. “I think one of them is monkey. The other... I don’t
know.”

Harry took a closer look. It was definitely
the monkey-man. Regeneration was indeed a wondrous thing. The
monkey-man’s eyes, formerly blinded by Anastasia, had healed. This
was going to be harder than he thought.

Mutant number two resembled a cross between a
rat and a kangaroo. It had the latter’s massive thighs and sprang
across the hard-packed earth, but the head was all rat, along with
a pointy nose, whiskers and beady eyes.

Both of them didn’t appear to be armed, but
they had wicked-looking claws and enhanced strength, so perhaps
they felt confident no one would oppose them. Overconfidence—Harry
was counting on that.

“Well, what is here?” the monkey-man said
once he saw the shaking Istvan. “We have been searching for you,
pig-man. You come with us.”

“I do not think so,” Istvan replied and in a
surprise move, he stamped on the monkey-man’s foot, before bolting
from the scene, squealing like a pig.

Monkey-man howled more in surprise than pain,
but let out another howl, this time of real pain when the pilot
appeared, machine gun at the ready. “Die!” he screamed out and
riddled his opponent’s shoulder and upper chest with bullets. The
mutant bellowed with rage and the pilot’s eyes widened with
surprise. “Why not you die?” he cried.

Regeneration was the key thing here. Even as
the pilot uttered those words, the skin began to knit and the
monkey-man lunged toward the pilot and tore both machine guns away
from him. Wrapping his hand around the pilot’s throat, he began to
squeeze with a wicked grin on his face. A horrid gurgle came from
the man’s throat as he fought back against certain death. He kicked
and thrashed under the monster’s grip while the kanga-rat stood by
and laughed.

“Laugh at this!” Harry yelled and leaped off
the roof, claws fully extended. The kanga-rat looked up in
surprise, which left his throat exposed. Harry opened up his
opponent’s throat with a massive swipe of his claws. That gave the
kanga-rat another smile, but it didn’t have time to scream.

It did have time to die, though and sank to
the ground with a soft sigh.

“I kill you!” the monkey-man screamed and
hurled the limp body of the pilot away.

He ran over in a blur of speed. Harry, now
enraged, met him head on and proceeded to beat him to a pulp.
Laying him out with a series of right hand smashes, Harry was about
to choke him when Istvan came creeping back. His voice was very
indistinct. “Harry, stop your killing. We need him.”

Reason entered the picture and Harry
reluctantly took his hands away from the monkey-man’s throat. He
was unconscious, and Istvan ran inside the farmhouse and came back
with a length of stout rope, which he used to tie up the thing
securely. “Go check on pilot,” he said.

The pilot’s throat had been crushed. Even in
the darkness, Harry saw the mottling and purpling of damaged flesh.
He knelt down at the man’s side. “Hey, hang tight. You’re going to
be okay.”

“My name...” the pilot whispered, “my name is
Peter.”

His head lolled to one side. He was dead.
Hanging his head, Harry went to the side of the barn, found a
shovel and began to dig a grave. The man deserved a decent
burial.