tactical superiority

Berg saw the white car off in the distance only after staring until his eyesight nearly became a blaze of after-image and persistence. Slow going for the little coupe as it trundled over unsure, pathless ground. His ragged hand reaching up and scratching at the beard matted with the filth of weeks. The eyes with their dim red glow smoldering just bright enough in the shade of his wide-brimmed hat to cast a sure warning to onlookers. Every movement and sound out in the total silence of that place was the shattering of a stone facade, the features of those man-shaped silhouettes etched into the marble by the unrelenting heat.

One of the others up on the plateau shouted over to him. We hittin' 'em er not?

He reached down and laid a hand on the machine pistol – an ugly thing that looked cobbled together out of a machinist's nightmare. Spat on a rock and did not answer.

Quit bein' a sonuvabitch and is we or ain't we hittin' 'em, buttfucker?

Yancy, will you shut the hell up and leave Berg be?

I'll shut YOU the fuck up you keep on!

Berg saw the car was a little beater with a hatchback. Close enough now on the flat hardpan to make out some features. The other four were arguing, their voices rising. He turned, and spoke without his mouth. Y'all shudfugup.

They did. He talked regular, since he had their attention.

We short, so we goan. Theys wimmen. Snarls of anticipation from them. They were on the horses and stampeding down the opposite side. The car couldn't make fifty, they could see as they rounded the other side of the plateau and surrounded it. The look of panic on the girl driver's face was medicine to him. They came up even with the old car, boxing it in, and he drank in her face for a moment. Looked at it until he could feel himself peer into her mind, even if it wasn't possible to do so to one of the dull ones.

He shot out the tire and the car went skidding out as the riders parted away from it, coordinated perfectly by his guiding thoughts. Fuck Shep – fuck his fancy shooting and his smooth talking, he can't keep them in line like I can. Get a couple more on my side and the gang'll be mine, and we'll leave his ass in the sun without a shirt.

The car came to a halt, disappearing in the wake of its own dust cloud. In the airless day, it hung there for one surreal moment before the horsemen descended on it. They made such commotion as they shattered the window and dragged the girl screaming from her seat that none, not even Berg, took notice of the bang and the flash of red up in the sky, nor the bird of prey arcing away from it.

---

The clerk let out a short sigh as he saw the flare. Miles away. Damn it. Miles and miles away. Fucking shit. Danny curled up on the hospital bed, and there was blood from everywhere – no nurse, no doctor, machines and machines and machines and in the next bay there was another kid screaming who had not stopped screaming for what seemed like three hours.

Too far away.

The two fingers came up to his lips and he let the whistle out with all the air in his stomach. By the time he'd made it down from the roof, the horse that bounded out of the cardboard town in answer to his call had come to a dust-kicking stop before the store. The man Eli came out at the sound of it.

Where you going? She in trouble?

Whatever in the world would give you that idea?

I'll get the rifle.

You're staying here and keeping the rifle.

How you going to...

How, indeed.

The clerk was inside the store and back at the pharmacy in a few seconds. The coat fluttering behind him with the speed of his passage. No part of his conscious mind fully sure of why any of it was so pressing. Michael's face, the eyes empty. It was not fair. It was a joke.

He went right past all the other complicated bottles and droppers and boxes and sprayers and inhalers to the machine in back. It was different than the other separators and mixers. It was about the size of an elaborate coffee-maker, plugged into the wall. It had one button and a small screen on the side of it, and from the inside a tube lead out to a little dish no larger than an ashtray, inside which sat three small black pills with no cypher on them.

Only three, he sighed. My oversight. He pressed the button and the machine started up again. 24 hours at least until another few came rolling out. Three. Three would simply have to do. He shucked them into an orange pill bottle, rattled it at his ear because he liked the sound it made, and then had it in his pocket.

He found the man Eli standing right where he'd been. The clerk mounted up, his pistol dangling from that strap, still looking like a decoration rather than a weapon. Eli approached him as he fiddled with some of the horse's mane controls.

I'll be right back, and when I am, you'd better have the dishes done if you know what's good for you.

---

The old woman seemed to think it was the girl's fault for crashing, for when Berg opened up the driver's door and slashed her seatbelt apart, the crone was screaming not at him, but at her. The girl stared at him with those perfectly round rabbit's eyes.

He grabbed a dirty tangle of her hair and dragged her out into the dust. She started to scream. Berg saw his men move forward. With his gaze he stopped them.

We under contract. 'sides... barely even a titty on her, nahmean?

They chuckled, and the girl watched as one of them circled around the car. When his hands darted to her grandmother's body and pulled her from the car, she let out a wail and Berg struck her.

You goan shudfugUP, hear? They take you for more if I keep you clean. 'wise I'd tear you all up down there. But they'll take you. No matter what. Don't want that, you shudfugup.

With his boot he pushed her into the side of his horse. She fell to her knees, her hair covering her face. Tears. All of it was over with, only it wasn't. She had an eternity to suffer at the hands of these men. One of them kicked dirt onto her and she recoiled, expecting to be struck, and he laughed. The sound of her gramma complimenting one of them on his dancing as he loudly belted out some filthy song and swayed her about, playing along with her dementia as two of them clapped and hooted at her to take her clothes off.

---

The horse got up to sixty when the ear bud pulsed again. Five hostile subjects identified. At your present speed, you will arrive within tactical striking distance in three hours.

He swore before speaking. Analyze hostile combat capabilities. Execute.

Hostiles possess tactical superiority.

Defend subject Fox priority one. Draw hostile fire. Do not disengage for any reason. Self preservation override. Execute.

---

The shout that came from the sky immobilized everyone, even the crazy old woman.

ALLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHU AKBAR!

Berg was screaming. Couldn't see. It struck him in a single blinding instant, clawing, biting, shrieking, speakers blaring in his ears and the body searing hot. The impact had thrown the man to the ground, and he felt his own blood running hot across his face and down his neck and chest, more blood than he'd ever thought he had, and it was stabbing his head and it wouldn't stop.

When he threw it off of him, his left ear went came off in its beak and went sailing away with it, trailing gore. Couldn't see through the blood. Dizzy. He let loose the machine pistol, spraying where he thought he'd thrown the creature, the chattering burst deafening him. He heard the girl scream, his men shout in panic – guns going off, running. The old woman was shrieking over all of it, telling them to behave, to be quiet, the neighbors would call the police. He roared at her to shut her mouth, but it had torn his right cheek open and shattered one of his teeth and he couldn't talk, so he pointed the gun at the sound of her and sprayed and he missed because she was still fucking shouting...

The sound of Yancy's shotgun going off was followed by that crass man's howls and the horrible sound of flesh shredding. He could see, all of a sudden. As if he'd needed more blood to flow up to his head, it ghosted back in, fogging in as his eyes filled back up. The falcon had slashed across Yancy's arm with its talons in passing. Meat hung off his arm in dripping chunks, and he'd dropped the shotgun to the ground and stood howling as the mechanical bird circled around for another pass, the other three firing wildly into the air.

Shudfugup. Conc'trate, fuggers. Gotta think to shoot. He couldn't say it, not out of his mouth that was bleeding and destroyed, not with his head, because he couldn't focus long enough to rein them in. It soared up into the air above them as they kept unloading on it, heedless of the fact their own bullets might rain down on them, and then he heard the pressurized pop of something going off.

It fell out of the sky. About as big as a lighter. The others knew enough to try to get clear – Berg knew enough that there wasn't any chance of it. The magnesium bomb went off, and the concussion brought the world to a flashing, fiery end for what seemed like hours. Berg slipped in and out. In long enough each time to crawl away from the sound of bullets and the tinny shrieks of the bird of prey as it came down again and again to strike.

He came back long enough to see Lige fall to the ground next him, rifle spitting bullets errantly as the bird tore Lige's nose off and stabbed out his eyes with the beak, and still it did not stop, even as Lige's screams became a bloody, throat-less burble. Berg pulled his knife and wound his arm back to stab it, but at the sound of the blade clearing leather, the thing's face snapped to his. Mechanical eyes perfectly round and red. Soaked in gore. He could not move.

From some internal speaker, it bombarded him with a noise so loud and so high-pitched that the force of it paralyzed him, drilled straight to the center of his brain and his stomach. He curled into a cringing ball and vomited.

He felt himself being dragged, and when he came back, he was there behind the car with the old woman and Yancy was crying and bleeding everywhere. The others seemed unharmed, but they were shouting. He could hear the bird's speakers shouting something in another language at them, perched on a rock the size of the car. No sign of the girl.

Berg what the fuck is that thing?

He coughed the blood out of his throat and sat up. Finally, he found enough of his mouth to speak.

Dunno. But we goan kill it, and then tear up that little cunt fer bringing it down on us.