The Omnivore Wars

  Tuskers III

  The Omnivore Wars

  Duncan McGeary

  © 2016

  Edited by Lara Milton, Spectrum Editing

  Additional Edits by Linda Robertson

  Cover Artwork by M.S. Corley

  Cover Design by M.S. Corley and Shawn T. King

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Worldwide Rights

  Created in the United States of America

  Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com

  Editor-In-Chief: Tim Marquitz | Creative Director: J.M. Martin

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Tuskers III

  The Omnivore Wars

  Chapter One

  Saguaro, Arizona, Two Days Before the Pulse

  For hundreds of miles the news crew hadn’t seen any wildlife at all other than the occasional hawk or jackrabbit. So they were incredibly lucky to encounter their first wild pigs immediately upon crossing the Arizona border. A whole pack of them, a couple dozen or more, grunting as they meandered across the road, oblivious to traffic.

  What’s the plural? Seth wondered. Oh, yeah. A “passel.” That sounds about right. A whole passel of hogs.

  “Pull over, Gary!” Kathy shouted.

  “Want me to get the camera, boss?” The driver asked, throwing the limo into park, ready to jump out and grab his camera from the back.

  “Not this time,” she said, grabbing the small opera glasses she kept in the door pocket and scrutinizing the pigs intently. She held perfectly still, propping her elbows on the dashboard to steady herself.

  “You know, Seth,” she mused out of the side of her mouth. “I’d never even heard of javelinas until you told me about them.”

  “They’re kind of skittish, usually,” he mumbled.

  Seth could see her burning the whole scene into her memory to be replayed later in the studio, the sensationalized, descriptive flow for which Kathy Comfort was famous. He could almost hear it:

  “Here in the Arizona desert lives a creature many viewers have neither seen nor heard of—Javelinas, wild pigs. Javelinas have always been more nuisance than danger, unless you’re a house cat. Until now. These so-called skunk pigs are suddenly becoming dangerous. They rampaged through the streets of the isolated town of Saguaro, killing and maiming dozens. The authorities would have us believe it was a simple case of rabies.”

  She would turn, staring into the camera with her trademark contempt, then intone, “I doubt this. The so-called experts are involved in a cover-up. Kathy Comfort’s Justice intends to get to the bottom of it.”

  Her act was hokey and melodramatic, but her audience ate it up.

  Seth now regretted ever bringing the javelina attacks to her attention in the first place. For his part, he’d hoped to never see the damn pigs again. His gardening-loving mom cursed them every spring, while his macho father enjoyed hunting them in the fall.

  The passel of skunk pigs had ambled into the road and didn’t seem in hurry to get out of the way.

  “They’re rather brazen aren’t they? Not the least bit scared of us.”

  Almost as if he’d overheard them, the pack leader, big and black with a huge barrel chest, turned toward them. For a second, Seth thought the damn thing was going to charge. Then the big brute turned its rear end to the car and the javelinas scurried off, their heads low to the ground, their tails upright as if giving the humans a curly one-finger salute.

  “Vaguely threatening,” Kathy said with the accusatory tone she often took with Seth. “You said they’re harmless.”

  “Not harmless, exactly, but they usually avoid people,” Seth stuttered. “I mean, they always have before. But that’s why we’re here, right? To find out?”

  Kathy frowned and motioned for Gary to go on.

  As they drove down the long, straight highways, Seth felt as empty as the landscape. He stared out across the flat terrain, miles and miles of dull-green brush, cactus, and yellow dust. He’d hoped never to return to the desert, ever. Right out of college, as soon as he arrived in Hollywood, he knew he’d found his true home. After that, he never left the bustle of the city except when he was reassured that the place he was visiting was equally big. He wanted – no, he needed—the constant noise and motion, the rush of traffic, the pungent smells and garish colors, the frenzied jostling of crowds. Everything about city life was better than this fucking desolation.

  “That’s because you don’t have to think in all the noise,” Mary Benford, his last girlfriend had complained five years ago. “You’ve let Kathy Comfort take over your life.”

  Here in the middle of nowhere, Seth had to admit she was right. The lonely memories of sitting alone in his room as a kid with his own thoughts in the empty silence washed over him with the force of a life he’d barely escaped.

  The limo was smallish but comfortable. The network would grumble about the cost, but she was spoiled, not stupid, it was smallish with better gas mileage than some. In the end, they would let it slide, like always. Right now she was ignoring Seth, which was her usual mode and which he frankly preferred. Somehow conversations with her almost always ended up making him feel inadequate, one way or another.

  He watched her leaf through the briefing papers as if she would find something new in them. She was thorough, he had to give her that. She read more, prepared more, and rehearsed more than anyone he’d ever met.

  But he wasn’t the only one feeling the power of the landscape. Seth watched his boss’s face tense up the closer it got to six o’clock, the time her live show usually started. It didn’t matter that they were hundreds of miles away from their Los Angeles studio. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t broadcast again for several weeks. The timing of the show was in Kathy Comfort’s genetic makeup by now, to be passed down to future little monsters. And she was trying hard to create those future little monsters.

  He should know.

  Seth himself wouldn’t tense up until close to bedtime, never knowing when or if she would throw open his door, wearing a ridiculous teddy, stride to his bed, and mount him as soon as she’d perfunctorily massaged him to hardness.

  He took it back: he was tensing up
just thinking about it. Close your eyes and think of the ratings, was his mantra. Think of the ratings!

  But Kathy was only three days gone from the studio makeup artists, and already she was losing her looks. On camera, she looked pretty good. You couldn’t see her thick ankles, and the slight bulge around her middle. But Seth saw some of her early broadcasts, when she was affiliated with a small Sacramento station as the local law expert, having just lost her job as district attorney. She was as sharp then as she was now, though maybe a little less unctuous.

  It was amazing what the network makeup artists could do.

  He knew he was being harsh. She wasn’t really that bad; in fact, most people thought she was attractive. But there was something about being forced to fuck her that made her seem like a gargoyle.

  The image intruded on him at the most inconvenient times, like while she humped him, grinding against him with a frightening determination. Then Seth would glimpse that gargoyle face and instantly lose his erection. It took a lot of effort on her part, with her face out of sight sucking away at him to regain his former glory so that she might surmount and conquer it. He’d have to reset his mental image to the fierce intelligence and sexy voice of her onscreen persona, the things that drew him to her in the first place. That was the image that made him cum in the end.

  Funny thing was, Kathy was exactly as she seemed on TV: implacable, smarmy, sentimental, and yet completely even-handed. She treated guilty and innocent with the same harsh glare. She sent the guilty to jail and freed the innocent. When she was wrong, she’d admit it. But she was rarely wrong.

  She had an eerie sense for partial truths and when to dig for more of the story.

  Seth had shown her the article about the great pig invasion of Saguaro, Arizona, as a joke. Javelinas had overrun the small town. The locals had somehow managed to round them all up into one place and blow them to ham nuggets, but not until after a dozen deaths. When he’d first handed her the news report, Kathy perused it and grudgingly gave him an impatient smile, before setting it aside. But later that night, after lovemaking, (gag), she’d gone to his desk and picked up the article, stood there naked like a Rubens nude and perused the story again, frowning.

  That was almost two years ago, but for some reason, she never forgot it. To Seth’s great surprise, she’d recently decided to visit the “scene of the crime,” as she always put it. As they approached their first two-week break of the season, Kathy planned the visit down to the last detail. There was a nice bed-and-breakfast near the river that ran through the Morrow Valley, she told him, barely restraining a leer. She planned for them to stay an entire week and interview everyone in the town of Saguaro, if she had to. She snagged Gary as both driver and cameraman and told Seth he was coming too, even though, strictly speaking, it was his time off.

  Seth grimaced. He was anything but that. He was Kathy Comfort’s work slave, her sex slave and – the only thing keeping him there—her only confidant. He treasured being a confidant enough to put up with the slave thing. He was kicking around the lower levels of the network long enough to know that it was that kind of ruthless single-mindedness that got you places. When Kathy had crooked her finger, he’d jumped aboard, and stuck it out. Someday, with or without her help, he’d have his own show. But for now, she was teaching him how to get what he wanted, even as she used him.

  The drop-off from the desert into the Morrow Valley was abrupt. His stomach lurched a little at the sight of the steep cliff on one side. Until then, they followed a small creek to one side of the road, lined by small trees and lush grasses. But everywhere else was a rolling, rocky desert landscape, in places without the slightest sign of life. Suddenly, the two-lane highway wound down a steep cliff with a waterfall to a green valley dotted with farmland. As they neared the bottom, they passed through what appeared to be newer, but abandoned subdivisions in the Southwest style, with stucco walls and red tiled roofs.

  At the end of the valley was a small town, with the creek running through it. It felt cooler all of a sudden. The green made everything less barren. It beckoned like an oasis to a Bedouin at the end of a long journey. He gave a short laugh and Kathy looked over at him with a delighted smile, as if she understood.

  Their bed-and-breakfast awaited them, a big Spanish style house that was spruced up, with a sign in front announcing that it once was the home of a railroad tycoon. The news crew soon realized they were the only ones there. “It’s still early in the season for us,” the proprietor said, as if apologizing. Big mistake. Kathy Comfort quickly used her prosecutorial skills to talk down the price, a victory she was certain to trumpet to the network accountants.

  They had separate rooms, just in case the network guys checked on them later. It was an open secret that Kathy was screwing her male assistants, and any other male that moved, in a long battle to conceive a little TV baby. It would add so much more to her broadcasts about the killer moms and abusive husbands and murdering uncles.

  Kathy pounded on Seth’s door before he had a chance to lie down and close his eyes. The bed was invitingly big and modern. While the outside of the B & B looked appropriately old-fashioned Western, the inside had all the modern amenities with a western flair with cattle hides, stretched and framed hanging on the wall and a saddle in the corner. He groaned and got up.

  “Let’s go, Seth,” she snapped. “I want to check this place out, ASAP.”

  He splashed some water on his face, tucked in his shirt, and followed her out the door.

  They made a wrong turn at the first corner, ending up near some old railroad tracks. Main Street, as it turned out, was the next street over. Seth started to turn around when Kathy said, “Wait.”

  It was her ‘newsy’ voice, her voice of discovery, and Seth turned with trepidation.

  “Will you fucking look at that,” Kathy said.

  Dozens of boar’s heads, in various stages of decomposition, were mounted on the side of an abandoned warehouse. It was an unsettling, macabre sight.

  “Welcome to Saguaro,” Kathy said.

  Chapter Two

  Six Months Before the Pulse

  The nameless young Tusker was awed by the maturity and poise of Marie, despite her youth.

  Marie sat at the front of the class, asking the teacher question after question while he sat at the back, just trying to follow the discussion. Only the teacher had a desk; the Tuskers sat up on their haunches, their front hooves covered in the mechanical gloves, gripping pencils awkwardly, writing notes on small tablets.

  The Tuskers tussled for status, and the young Tusker was the runt of his litter. He probably wouldn’t have survived in the wild, but the Kinfolk nurtured him until he was strong enough to be on his own. Then, bewilderingly, he was separated from his brothers and sisters and thrust into this small room carved into the side of a hill, where a tall, spindly creature stood and lectured them. The young Tusker assumed he was another breed of Kin. The language was strange, and it was several days before the young Tusker began to understand it. He soon discovered that the Kinfolk outside of the class didn’t understand the language at all.

  Tuskers, much like their wild cousins, the boars and javelinas, matured rapidly—even more rapidly, considering how much smarter they were and how much they had to catch up. The Great One insisted that all Kinfolk be treated equally in the school, the physically weak as well as the strong, the females as well as the males. Brains counted for more than brawn when it came to classes.

  Not all Tuskers went to school, however. Many of the Folk were put in charge of the Kin, those lesser animal subjects that could be controlled; the ravens, the coyotes, and the wild javelinas. They were preparing for the day when the humans found them.

  He still remembered his great surprise when he realized that Martin, their teacher, was one of them: the human enemy! He’d pictured humans as enormous monsters with glowing eyes and huge claws, not this weak and gangly thing.

  This realization happened on the sa
me day the young Tusker received his name.

  Up until then, he’d sat in class daily, absorbing everything Martin said, but understanding little. He often felt like he was in the wrong place – that he should be with the Kin, rather than the Folk. But one day he finally summoned the courage to speak.

  “Why do humans hate us?” he asked, half surprised himself to be speaking.

  Martin looked startled, both at the question and that the silent presence finally spoke. Everyone in the class turned and stared at him, including Marie. He blushed under her gaze.

  “Most humans don’t even know you exist,” Martin said. My kind? He wondered. Your kind?

  Then the truth dawned on him, and he almost grunted his surprise – which would have been embarrassing. It staggered him that this rather soft skinny teacher was one of the Great Enemy, the bane of the Kinfolk. Two-legged, without tusks, hands that grasped: it matched all the descriptions. He’d just never thought it possible that one could and would coexist with them. The language they spoke – it must be the English that was so often referenced.

  Martin appeared deep in thought and oblivious to the nameless Tusker’s shock. He frowned, his eyes unfocused.

  “At first, my people probably won’t accept your existence. Even if they find you, they’d probably dismiss you as a curiosity until they discover your true nature. But when mankind finally understands the threat you represent, they will hunt you down. They will kill you or imprison you. They will do experiments on you, or enslave you, turning your talents to their own benefit, but your freedom will be over.”

  “But why?” the young Tusker asked. “Why can’t we live together in peace?”

  “Because they will fear you, and because of that fear, they will hate you,” Martin continued. “You Kinfolk are right to hide from their notice.”

  The nameless Tusker didn’t understand the answer, so he asked the other question that nagged him, day after day. “Then why do they—you humans—fight each other?” he asked, returning to their previous discussion. “Why did the monarchies of Europe attack France after the revolution? What business was it of theirs?”