The Omnivore Wars Read online

  Instead, they seemed entirely oblivious of each other.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Big Pulse

  The closest human town was only a few hours’ journey across the desert.

  Marie and Napoleon reached the site in the late afternoon. Despite her pregnancy, Marie could move nearly as fast as he could. Wild pigs don’t have the luxury of stopping to have their piglets, Napoleon thought. At least we’ve inherited that part.

  They found a spot on the red bluffs above a bustling and vibrant Utah city and sat down to wait. It was a cloudy day, and the streetlights below in the valley were already turned on.

  Napoleon removed his backpack and extracted a human watch. It’s Martin’s, he realized. Did the human have any idea what it was being used for?

  “Any minute,” he said to Marie, who got to her feet and started pacing, unable to sit still.

  The Big Pulse surged overhead. Silent, invisible, and yet impossible to miss. Napoleon felt the Pulse pass through him, rattling his very bones, shaking his flesh. The clouds above blew apart, roiling across the sky. In the valley below, the lights abruptly vanished. The background noise of machines and TVs and cars suddenly fell silent—just stopped—as if they had never existed. There was an eerie hush.

  It’s as if everything has ended, Napoleon marveled. Or…is it that everything is just beginning?

  Moments later, metallic screeching echoed off the red bluffs as uncontrolled vehicles slammed violently into each other. Louder than even than the crashes, human screams rose over the valley, rising, falling, rising even higher.

  A whistling sound passed over them, a heavy rush of air.

  Napoleon ducked involuntarily.

  A passing airplane fell out of the sky, huge and majestic in its last moments of defying gravity. It appeared to be coming down right on top of them. Napoleon held his breath as it passed overhead. Seconds later, it slammed nose first into the outskirts of town with a fiery explosion.

  It was a strange and terrible sight. It was far more violent than even his imagination had conjured. A strange regret came over Napoleon, though the humans were his enemy. None of these humans realized yet that their world was changed forever. If Marie and Tesla’s calculations were right, most of the human’s machines had just been utterly destroyed, fried or melted beyond repair.

  This wasn’t a temporary inconvenience. No one was going to come to mankind’s rescue. They would have to survive without the benefit of technology, and most humans weren’t equipped to do that.

  Above them, pulsating colors drove away what was left of the clouds: vivid reds and greens swirled through the sky. Some of the human scientists at Los Alamos had wondered if the first atomic bomb test would set fire to the sky. It was as if the Tuskers had succeeded in doing what the humans had failed to do.

  “It’s an aurora,” Marie said, sounding awed.

  Within minutes, fires were starting all over the city. A series of explosions pulled their attention back to the valley below. Entire houses were blowing up, sending splinters of wood high into the air.

  “What’s causing that?” Napoleon asked.

  Marie said, “Gas leaks? I don’t know.”

  The town below was descending into chaos. People were running through the streets, too panicked to help each other. Stores were being broken into: no doubt at first the looters were hoping to find emergency supplies, but it soon became an orgy of destruction. No long after, there was a flurry of gunshots as people tried to protect their property.

  “The Pulse was even stronger than Tesla and I thought possible,” Marie breathed. She sounded both gratified and horrified.

  “Will it do the job?” Napoleon asked. “Will it bring them to their knees?”

  His greatest fear was that they would only wound the humans, that mankind would be angered but still strong enough to retaliate—much as the Americans had after Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

  Marie nodded firmly, then shook her head slightly, as if not quite sure she liked her own answer. “Their civilization is gone…though they may not yet understand that. They will never reach their former glory. Not if we Tuskers have anything to say about it.”

  “Will we replace it with something better, I wonder?” Napoleon said. How easy it was to destroy them. Take away their toys, their machines, and they were just animals, just like Tuskers, or indeed, not so different from javelinas or coyotes or any other creature.

  There was a bright flash to the north. He began to turn in that direction.

  “Look away!” Marie cried.

  The flash of light bloomed, obliterating the sky. A warm wave of air flowed over them moments later, and the ground shook. Then a blast of air slammed into them, throwing them to the ground.

  Marie got up and stared to the north. “That was Salt Lake City,” she said.

  “What’s happened?” Napoleon asked, alarmed.

  “We hoped their nuclear weapons would be disabled,” Marie said. “We didn’t expect the Pulse to set them off…” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t finish the thought.

  Napoleon was horrified. Yes, he’d been prepared for war. His secret hope was that they would convince the humans to leave them alone, perhaps even treat them as equals. In his heart, he’d hoped it wouldn’t turn into a war of extinction for either species. He’d just wanted to warn them off.

  That hope was gone. If nuclear bombs were going off all over the world, tens of millions had just died, and hundreds of millions more would soon die. Perhaps billions.

  “What about radioactivity?” he asked.

  Marie shook her head. “It depends. But it isn’t good, for either humans or Tuskers. We may have just sealed both our fates.”

  And it was then that Napoleon knew the war would never end, that they would never be forgiven, that they would fight until either humans or Tuskers were extinct.

  #

  That night, a messenger raven arrived from Pigstown. Napoleon turned the written note toward the light of the fires and read the instructions.

  Come back. The attack on Genesis Valley has failed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Big Pulse

  Barry checked a few of the houses in the subdivisions on the way back, but most of them had already been ransacked. There was no sign of Tuskers or the coyotes and javelinas that accompanied them. There were lots of ravens, but they were acting normal, cawing at each other, swooping from tree to tree in noisy swarms.

  It was strange. Barry was pretty sure the Morrow Valley was on its own, that no help was coming. Why had the Tuskers stopped attacking? Just as they succeeded in softening the humans up, they’d suddenly disappeared.

  Something big must be happening to draw them away—something outside the valley. He looked down at the gas gauge. There was plenty of gas back at the barn. Tomorrow he’d head out and find out how the neighboring communities were faring. Maybe one of them had more information or had some way of communicating with the outside world.

  Barry looked up. The sun was going down over the horizon. He decided he’d done enough for one day. He roared up the highway, back toward the barn, and was just entering the long driveway when the motorcycle shuddered beneath him. The bike almost bucked him off, and an odor of burning oil and hot metal nearly overwhelmed him. He felt an uncomfortable warmth a second later around his boots and lower leg. The engine shut down violently. Barry leaped off the bike as it slowed.

  The motorcycle kept going for a few more yards, now in flames.

  Barry batted at the flames around his boots. Luckily, the fire had ignited only spilled surface fuel and hadn’t penetrated his clothing.

  He looked around. It was eerily dark and silent but for the burning motorcycle. Background noise that he’d only been vaguely aware of was suddenly gone. There were no lights, no sounds anywhere.

  The big floodlights of the Pederson barn had been beckoning, but now they were extinguished.

  Anothe
r electromagnetic pulse, Barry thought. This EMP was much bigger than the first one.

  As Barry stood there in the middle of the road trying to make sense of it, the motorcycle exploded, throwing him backward off his feet. His head bounced off the ground from the force of the blast, shards of metal passing over him. A huge chunk of the engine landed within inches of his ear.

  He got to his knees, checking for injuries. He’d learned he didn’t always immediately feel the wounds of battle—his body had a way of fooling him, letting him think he was all right, at least long enough for fight or flight. But no blooms of blood sprouted, and no pinpricks of pain appeared.

  Barry got to his feet. The shotgun and everything else on the bike was a complete loss. He pulled his pistol from the holster and started jogging toward the barn. Before he’d gone very far, the landscape around him began to light up with a strange tint. He stopped and looked up. The skies glowed with bright reds and greens and wavering yellows. He felt the hair on his head and arms rising as though lightning was about to strike.

  He started running.

  Barry made it to the barn without lightning striking. The guards saw him coming and opened the door. As soon as he was inside, he felt the electricity in the air start to dissipate. Someone had set a lantern on a table near the middle of the barn, but the vast expanse swallowed up most of the light.

  “Where’s Enrique?” he asked. “We’ve got trouble.”

  “No shit, Barry?” one of the soldiers, Oliver, asked. The sarcasm was actually a compliment, Barry knew; a sign he was one of them. Not long ago they would have addressed him as “sir” and interacted with him as little as possible.

  “Just tell me where he is, Ollie. None of your bullshit.”

  The three men guarding the door looked uneasy.

  “What is it?” Barry demanded. “What’s happened? Just tell me where he is, dammit.”

  “Enrique went looking for Flaco,” one of them said reluctantly. “We couldn’t stop him.”

  “Alone?” Barry asked in alarm—alarm, but not surprise.

  He should have seen it coming. Alicia had been giving her husband the silent treatment ever since they’d gotten back. Since Enrique was already feeling guilty, it probably hadn’t taken much to convince him to go looking for his lost father-in-law.

  “He wouldn’t let any of us go with him,” another of the soldiers said, sounding defensive. “He told us to stay and take care of Alicia and Felix.”

  A soft voice somehow penetrated the loud discussion. “Who said that?”

  Alicia had come from the back of the barn without any of them seeing her. All three guards looked at Barry as if stricken. You explain, their expressions said.

  Barry turned to face her. “He’s gone after Flaco.”

  “What?” she cried. “How could you let him?”

  What did you expect? Barry almost shouted back at her. He took a deep breath. “He knows what he’s doing,” he said. On the expedition to Utah, Enrique had opened up one night. He’d been on reconnaissance in Afghanistan, often alone. “I’m good at it,” he’d said. “They don’t see me if I don’t want them to.”

  But will the same thing be true of Tuskers?

  Alicia was quiet, but Barry could see her guilt blooming. Her eyes looked anguished.

  Barry hid his doubts. “He’ll be fine. It was bothering him to leave Flaco behind. I’m not sure you could have stopped him.”

  She put her hands to her face. Barry went to her side, and after a moment’s hesitation, put his arm around her shoulders.

  “It’s my fault,” she said softly, “I let myself be angry at him just so I’d feel better. If anything happens to him…”

  “Mama?” Felix was walking toward them, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, wearing cute little pajamas.

  “Don’t say anything,” Alicia said, giving the men a warning glare. She turned and scooped up her son. “It’s off to bed with you. Tell you what: I’ll sleep right next to you tonight, how does that sound?”

  “Where’s Papa?”

  “He’s coming back soon,” Alicia said. “He’s out scouting. What he does best.”

  “Okay,” Felix said, and rested his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. It seemed to Barry that he fell asleep even as they watched.

  Barry shook his head. He was going to wish he could fall asleep that easily before the night was through. Jenny would be waiting for him in the crow’s nest.

  He started climbing the spiral staircase. They would wait for Enrique’s return together.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was fully dark by the time Napoleon and Marie returned to Pigstown. It had been getting darker all the way back. The Big Pulse had turned off the electricity everywhere. The moon was just full enough for them to follow the road back.

  Another thing Tuskers shared with humans was their inability to see well in the dark. The Tuskers, as had the humans before them, were discovering that fire was the answer. Most of Pigstown appeared to be empty. There were bonfires lit all around the South Hill of the Witch’s Tits. Beyond its open doors, the council chamber was brightly lit.

  But the North Hill was dark, and it was only as they came near that they saw the devastation. Where The Machine had once stood was a smoldering pile of earth and stone, as if the entire top of the hill had collapsed. Marie spotted someone they knew near one of the bonfires and approached him.

  The Tusker turned slowly. It took him several seconds to respond to their greeting.

  Napoleon resisted the urge to step backward. There’s something wrong with this Tusker, Napoleon thought. Marie shot him a troubled glance.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  The Tusker’s eyes cleared, though they dripped with a yellow liquid. “A bug of some kind,” he answered. “Everyone seems to be getting it.”

  “What happened here?”

  “The Machine exploded,” the Tusker said. “You’re lucky, Marie. Tesla and the others are still buried under there.”

  Marie looked distraught. “Did you try to get them out?”

  The other Tusker waggled his head, the pig equivalent of a shrug. “No point. You’ll see in the daylight. They’re gone.”

  Napoleon felt a surge of relief running through him, followed immediately by a feeling of guilt. He gently nudged Marie’s shoulder to remind her that he was by her side. Marie normally would have been there when The Machine was activated. Thank the fates, she was with him instead.

  “Where is everyone?” Marie asked.

  “Genghis has called a general assembly,” said the Tusker. “You’d better hurry.”

  They were about to enter the South Hill when Napoleon saw movement to one side, in the flickering light.

  He held back. Marie stayed with him while the other Tusker went on in. His eyes adjusted to the darkness just in time to see the humans, Martin and Roger, along with their Tusker friends, Goliath and the others, being led by armed guards into the side entrance.

  So they got caught, Napoleon thought. It was a shame. There was no way Genghis was going to let them go now. With the war starting, Genghis would have no need of the humans—nor of any Tuskers he couldn’t completely trust.

  Marie was looking in the same direction. Napoleon saw the same pity he was feeling in her eyes. “Maybe we should say something,” she said. “Maybe Genghis will let them go.”

  Marie had never really understood how ruthless Genghis was. She bought into the Great One image she’d been taught. Napoleon just shook his head. Not likely. Their leader had tolerated the human captives until now, but he’d never liked or trusted them, no matter how helpful they were.

  The noise was increasing from inside the hill, which seemed to swell with the sound. Reluctantly, Napoleon and Marie turned away and entered the chamber.

  Inside were hundreds of Tuskers, most of those remaining in Pigstown. The Kin were excited, issuing grunting sounds that they were usually too di
gnified to make. There was something primeval in the air, as if they were being thrown back in time, to before they had gained self-awareness and were only animals. Like the Tusker they’d met outside, many of them looked feverish. Several Tuskers were lying on the ground, breathing heavily.

  Why isn’t anyone helping them? Napoleon wondered.

  Within a few minutes, he understood. They were gripped by a war fever, one that was overwhelming everything else. Perhaps because he’d arrived late, Napoleon saw only the craziness.

  He remembered Martin laughing when asked why humans did such stupid things in the name of patriotism. “Just think of us as apes, and it explains everything. We’re only civilized on the outside,” he’d said.

  And we’re just pigs, under it all.

  There was a lone human standing in front of the dais at the end of the hall. His hands were tied in front of him, and he was battered and bruised. But from his posture, he was still defiant.

  The human woman they had captured was standing between Genghis and the human, acting as translator. She was telling the story of the First Mother.

  “…our First Mother was raised on a factory farm, in a stall barely bigger than herself, where she was impregnated again and again. She may not have been the first of our kind to have self-awareness. There is the terrible possibility that there had already been generations in our kind who fully understood the horror of what was being inflicted upon them; trapped, unable to communicate their intelligence. If any of their keepers suspected, they kept it to themselves.”

  The human captive interrupted the monologue. “When you have the power, you will be no different.”

  Genghis’s grunt was loud and final. The woman jumped a little at the forcefulness of it. “No,” she translated. “We will not follow your example.”

  Then she began translate the Tale of Razorback, which every Tusker learned from the moment they first became aware: how Razorback had learned to control the Folk, but had attacked the humans too soon. Only Genghis had survived.