The Omnivore Wars Read online

  Napoleon bowed his head and turned to leave.

  “Napoleon,” Genghis said, his voice unusually soft.

  Napoleon turned. “Yes, sir?”

  “I understand your doubts. It is one of the reasons you are valuable to me. Very few Tuskers question my orders. As your namesake, Bonaparte, said, ‘The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.’”

  Napoleon tried not to show his alarm. He’d thought he was doing a good job of masking his true feelings. Does Genghis hear the voice of Bonaparte, as I do? Or does he have his own demons?

  “If things go wrong, Napoleon,” Genghis continued, “you will need to continue the fight. I think you’ll come around to my way of thinking when you’re in charge. We really have no choice. Our survival depends on us prevailing.”

  For the first time, Napoleon realized that the Great One had his own doubts. If he were supremely confident of victory, he wouldn’t be sending his chief lieutenant away.

  Napoleon didn’t bother to hide his thoughts. There are not enough of us. There are too many humans.

  I agree, came a returning thought. But we cannot hide our existence any longer. The humans who are about to attack us are proof of that.

  “Leave immediately,” Genghis said out loud. “I want you and Marie safely away before the battle begins.”

  #

  Despite Genghis’s order, Napoleon tried to talk Marie out of going with him. Marie would have none of it. “It’s my Machine. Of course I want to see if it works!”

  Napoleon was torn. He wanted her with him. If humans were going to attack Pigstown, she might be safer away from here. On the other hand, the wilderness was a dangerous place for Tuskers, especially those like Marie who had never ventured very far from the Tusker settlement.

  “Only if you do as I tell you,” he grumbled.

  “Don’t I always?” she asked sweetly. Marie was so much smarter than him that he was never sure when she was just humoring him.

  Hannibal was waiting for them at the base of the North Hill, looking annoyed. He gave them the coordinates of the town Genghis had chosen to observe. Napoleon asked for a security detail of a half dozen Tuskers, enough to protect them, but not so many that it would be noticed. Hannibal grudgingly agreed.

  Napoleon, Marie, and their troops left the North Hill and marched away from Pigstown. The guard was along for Marie’s sake. They could, of course, command any of the coyotes and ravens they encountered along the way. Napoleon would send them out as scouts.

  As they reached the top of a small rise, Napoleon looked back and saw a small group emerge from the South Hill. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have paid much attention, but the sight of humans amid the Tuskers made him pause. He made out the short, rotund body of Martin, his teacher, and the tall, gaunt shape of the man called Roger, as well as the female captive, whose name he couldn’t remember. Accompanying them was the little crew who was assigned to guard them, including the giant Tusker, Goliath. There was something furtive in their movements.

  They’re trying to escape, he thought.

  “Should we report them?” Marie asked quietly beside him, having apparently come to the same conclusion.

  He hesitated. He wished no harm to the pet humans. Napoleon also knew what happened in wartime: very soon it would be a matter of Us versus Them. As soon as the Tuskers suffered their first casualties, Martin and the others wouldn’t be safe in Pigstown anymore.

  “No time,” he said, knowing that she wouldn’t buy the explanation. After all, Napoleon need only reach out with his mind to contact Genghis.

  “Good,” Marie said quietly. She nuzzled him with her snout in approval.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Enrique’s heart sank as they drove through the wreckage of Saguaro. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he accelerated as much as he dared. His heart was pounding, and everything that had happened over the last few days, as bad as it was, faded in importance. He’d left Alicia at the compound, thinking she was safe.

  Did they sucker us into this? he asked himself.

  If it was this bad in town, he shuddered to think what was happening at the Pederson ranch. If the Tuskers wanted revenge, Saguaro was just collateral damage. The barn would be the primary target.

  I should have been here protecting my own, he thought angrily, instead of in enemy territory.

  The Tuskers had kicked their butt. There was no sugarcoating it. They’d walked right into an ambush. Of the more than twenty men they’d started out with, only a third were still alive. Among the missing was his father-in-law, Flaco Morales. Alicia…God, how was he going to tell Alicia?

  How the hell did the Tuskers know we were coming?

  It was supposed to have been only a scouting expedition. It was obvious to Enrique that what they had run into wasn’t a bunch of wild animals, but an organized and heavily defended encampment. No, more than that. They’d run into a town, with its own population and culture.

  The Tuskers may have had cruder weapons, but they were deadly effective. That was an eye opener: Tuskers with guns. Barry had tried to warn Enrique about how smart they were, but he simply hadn’t been able to envision such a thing. Worse, the Tuskers had kept on attacking, with the aid of the ravens and coyotes they somehow mentally controlled. Even Barry hadn’t known they could do that.

  All might still have gone according to plan if the electromagnetic pulse hadn’t disabled their high-tech gear. An EMP! How the hell did they do that?

  Even some of the rifles had stopped operating correctly. The bigger weapons, which included electronic chips in their specs, were fried completely.

  They sped through town. As they left the outskirts and headed up the valley to the Pederson ranch, Enrique’s focus snapped back to his surroundings. They hadn’t seen any citizens of Saguaro, who had been through such an attack once before and knew better than to leave their homes. But several of the buildings were still burning, and windows and doors were broken down, and while he hadn’t seen any bodies, there were blood streaks where they’d been dragged away.

  If the Tuskers could construct weapons, they could certainly find ways to break into buildings. God knows what they can do.

  Enrique had thought old man Pederson was crazy, that the defenses he’d built around the barn were over the top. Now, as he saw more fires in the distance, he only hoped they were enough.

  They were so close to home, he could almost see it—and yet it seemed to be farther away than ever. It was so hard to be so close to his family, and yet still not be there. Each mile seemed twice as long as the one before.

  And yet—and Enrique hated himself for this—he felt a strange hesitancy. Without his responsibility to his surviving men, he might have simply circled his home, never quite getting there, seeking out Tuskers wherever he could find them and killing them: killing them until they killed him. Then he’d never have to face Alicia and explain why he’d left her father behind.

  The tires squealed winding through the hills, and he accelerated past stalled and ruined cars, seeing Tusker bodies littering the road.

  Someone’s been fighting them off.

  A dark cloud swirled over the trees in the distance. His heart sank as he realized it was ravens. The sound of explosions and the smell of gunpowder penetrated through the closed windows of the vehicle.

  We’re too late, he thought, and took the last corner of the highway to the ranch so fast he almost spun off the road.

  He glanced over at Barry in the passenger’s seat, who, though pale and tense, didn’t object. Thank God he’d listened to Barry—at least, about some things. Enrique had wanted to take all his men on the expedition. Luckily, the older man had talked him into leaving a couple of soldiers behind.

  There was still a chance. The barn was practically a fortress.

  As they came to the gate, he wanted to crash through it, but slammed on the br
akes, swerving to a stop just inches from the metal bars. Barry jumped out and quickly unlocked the barrier. Enrique drove through, tempted to just keep going. Barry scrambled into the seat, giving him a glance as if he guessed what Enrique had almost done. They reached the meadow where the barn was, and despite himself, Enrique slowed nearly to a stop.

  The bodies of Tuskers and coyotes surrounded the barn. Draped over them, wings outspread as if to shroud them in death, were thousands of dead ravens. An acrid cloud of mist hovered over the battlefield. A wisp of the white vapor seemed to reach out to them, and Enrique suddenly felt dizzy.

  “Gas masks!” he cried.

  He fumbled for his own mask, which was in a pouch on the back left-hand side of his belt. He’d only used the damn thing in training, but the training had been thorough, and he quickly removed the flimsy material and stretched it over his face. It seemed so thin and insubstantial; he couldn’t believe it would work, but his dizziness receded, leaving a faint headache.

  Beside him, Barry moaned and slumped over. He didn’t have the soldiers’ full gear, and didn’t know about the gas masks.

  The SUV slid to a stop in front of the barn. His men tumbled out, guns at the ready. Enrique sprinted to the passenger’s side and dragged Barry’s unmoving body out of the vehicle, checking his pulse. He looked a little green, but he was breathing. The gas, whatever it was, wasn’t lethal. He carried Barry over to the door of the barn, set him down, and looked up the hill, where he saw movement. Tuskers lined the top of the ridge.

  To hell with defense; take the fight to them.

  The Tuskers at the top of the hill were apparently the only ones still alive. Everywhere else were unmoving bodies, humans, javelina, coyotes and ravens, whether felled in the fight or by the gas, Enrique couldn’t tell.

  The remaining Tuskers wore bulky gas masks. The biggest of them was standing upright, pointing a hoof at the humans. Once Enrique might have laughed. Instead, he felt a chill. One of the Tuskers lifted one of the huge guns that fired bazooka-like projectiles.

  “Take the hill!” he shouted. “Drive them off!”

  Without waiting to see if his men were following, he sprinted across the flats, toward the steep embankment. Excited shouting followed him, muffled by gas masks. As he passed the corner of the barn, he recognized the sprawled, unmoving body of Corporal Pensky, one of the men he’d left behind. He grabbed the dead man’s weapon and ammo and tossed the extra clips to the men nearest him.

  Behind them, the SUV exploded into the air. Enrique didn’t look back. The gas was dissipating. The Tuskers suddenly seemed to realize their prey was striking back. They seemed surprised, almost panicked by the charging humans, as if such a turn of events had never occurred to them.

  Enrique and the three men who now had ammunition in their guns started firing, aiming for the Tuskers who were holding weapons. Another bazooka shoot went over their heads as the Tuskers underestimated their speed, and that lent strength to their legs.

  “Bayonets!” Enrique cried out, pulling the blade from his belt and attaching it as he ran.

  As they neared the top, blades glittering, the last of the Tuskers retreated, but the men ran them down, cornering them on a small plateau on the other side of the hill. The drop-off was steep, and there was nowhere to run.

  There was no thought of giving quarter.

  Grunting and shouting, both sides depleted of ammunition, the battle was fought between the razor tusks of the pigs and the long blades at the ends of the men’s rifles. The Tuskers glared with hate in their eyes as they realized they were going to die.

  One by one, they went down.

  The last and biggest of the Tuskers charged Enrique, as if sensing he was in command. Enrique pulled out his pistol, which had one cartridge left, the one he saved for if worse came to worst. The bullet struck the Tusker between the eyes, and for a moment, Enrique thought he’d missed.

  I couldn’t have missed, he thought. Did the bullet bounce off?

  Then the Tusker’s legs buckled, and it tumbled forward. Enrique kicked out at the body, and it tumbled over the side of the cliff.

  The battlefield fell silent. Enrique leaned on his rifle, his blade in the dirt, suddenly so exhausted he could barely stand. None of his remaining men were injured in the charge. They too plunged their bayonets in the dirt, something that Enrique might ordinarily order them to avoid.

  He laughed at the thought, a vast relief washing through him. His men joined him one by one, looking around at the huge creatures, which looked like alien beings with the huge goggly-eyed gas masks over their snouts. Some of them had gloves over their hooves, with opposable thumbs. One Tusker, who had fallen backward against a rock, was standing upright, a weapon clutched in one glove, the gas mask on his head pointed directly at Enrique as if watching him.

  Enrique abruptly stopped laughing.

  Alicia!

  The barn doors opened below them. He turned and nearly ran down the hill, almost losing his balance, reaching the door just as a man stepped out.

  Enrique vaguely recognized the man as one of the movers and shakers in the local government. A banker, or something like that. There were four other men behind him, all of whom were only now removing their gas masks. Enrique didn’t know who they were or how they’d gotten there, he was just glad they had.

  The one surviving soldier he’d left behind came up to him and saluted.

  “Where’s my wife?” Enrique demanded.

  “She’s safe, sir,” the soldier said.

  Enrique pushed past him. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness inside. Across from him, Barry knelt beside the body of his wife, Jenny. She was stirring, looking up at her husband.

  “You’re back!” she cried, and pulled him down to her. They hugged. There were tears in Barry’s eyes.

  “Did we win?” Jenny asked.

  “Well, we’re alive,” Barry answered, and he stood up as if to avoid fully answering the question. “We made it back just in time.”

  “Thank God,” she said, raising her arms. He leaned down and helped her to her feet. She buried her head in his shoulder, crying.

  “Where’s Alicia?” Enrique said. He scanned the inside of the barn, turning so quickly he felt dizzy.

  “Back here!” came his wife’s soft, gentle voice. He staggered in relief as all the energy and fear that had kept him going evaporated. He managed to keep his feet. Alicia was at the back of the barn, crouched over their son, Felix, a pistol in her hands. As he took off his gas mask, she cried out and ran toward him, jumping into his arms.

  He buried his face in her neck, and tears came his eyes. Then came the question he had dreaded every mile of the long retreat.

  “Where’s Papa?” she asked.

  Enrique looked down into her face. He didn’t have to say anything.

  “Enrique!” she cried. “Where’s Papa?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Explosions boomed from the upper part of the valley. It was hard to tell from the echoes, but Andy guessed they were coming from the Pederson farm. At about the same time, the Tuskers disappeared from the town of Saguaro, as though they’d all been drawn away by the distant battle.

  So much for going up there when this is all over. Maybe instead, we should stay as far away as possible. While the people up there seem prepared, they also seemed to be a target…maybe even the cause of all this.

  Kathy was sitting next to him by the entrance to the diner. Seth had taken over cuddling Sherry, trying to warm her up.

  “Is that the Pederson place?” Kathy asked after a particularly loud explosion.

  “I think so,” Andy said.

  “Maybe we should go there,” she said. “They seem to know what’s going on. That barn looked like a fortress.”

  “Or maybe they’re the cause of it,” Andy said. “You saw them…they were completely surrounded.”

  “One way or another, we need to
find out,” she replied.

  Another huge boom echoed down the valley. Sherry let out a little whimper. Seth said in a low voice, “It’s OK. We’re safe.” He kept repeating the words.

  “Sounds like they’re in a battle for their lives,” Andy said. “There might not be any place left for us to go.”

  Kathy nodded thoughtfully, then looked up at him with an unmistakable resolve in her eyes. “I’m going. This is the biggest story I’ve ever come across, and those people are in the middle of it. If they aren’t the cause, they know what is.”

  Andy stared at her. Never get between her and a story, he thought. “Didn’t you interview them already?”

  She flushed and looked away. “I didn’t believe them. Hell, I quit asking questions after the first couple of minutes. I only stayed long enough to be polite—to not alarm the crazy people.”

  Andy laughed. “Yeah, rampaging pigs are something you have to see with your own eyes to believe.”

  “Even then…” she added, leaving the it’s hard to believe unspoken.

  “You think this is also happening elsewhere?” Andy asked. The thought had never occurred to him until now. Then again, that SUV with Barry and the paramilitary-looking types had come from somewhere.

  Kathy raised her eyebrows. “How come there hasn’t been any help from the outside? Why aren’t the cellphones working, even the ones that weren’t caught by the EMP? I have a feeling this cataclysm is happening well beyond Morrow Valley. Either way, I’m betting Barry and Jenny Hunter know.”

  “I agree,” Andy nodded. “But let’s wait until the coast is clear.”

  “And when will that be?” Kathy demanded. “I’d rather not wait until those things—what do you call them, Tuskers?—come back.”

  Andy didn’t want to walk into the middle of a battle, but waiting helplessly for the Tuskers to return might be worse. He realized that no further large explosions had happened in the last few minutes, but they could hear small arms fire. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.