The Legacy of Heorot
Chapter 32

THE KEEP

I have paid my price to live with myself on terms that I will.
RUDYARD KIPLING, Epitaphs: The Refined Man

    There were five grendels below Carolyn. Four were just clear of the mist; to the naked eye they were mere specks, wide apart and still separating.
    "Charlie, do you know you're being followed?" From left to right, she set names on the intruders: "Ayatollah, Khadafi, Jack, Son of Sam . . ." Too long. "Mareta." Mareta Lupoff was the only single human being ever to set off a hydrogen bomb within a city.
    Charlie was much too close: two hundred meters away, plodding along at a speed somewhat greater than the horses could manage.
    The horses were holding up well, moving a little slower because they were tired. They hadn't smelled anything yet. Carolyn kept them moving, but she kept watch too.
    Twenty horses in a line, linked by rope. Should she free them from the rope? Let them fight their own war?
    Grendels. Creatures of mystery and fear, and the more you learned, the more terrifying they were. Those four at the fog level . . . three? One must have turned back. Was it Jack?
    They don't cooperate. That's not what Beowulf, excuse me, Weyland, would call a flanking action. It's just grendels trying to stay away from each other. But that near one--Charlie's almost close enough to shoot, and I bet I can guess what it wants.
    Carolyn had listened, she wasn't stupid, but it was hard to think of grendels as she. Picture Jack the Ripper or Muammar Khadafi as a woman: it was silly.
    Those rock knobs had the look of boulders deposited by a glacier--intruders dropped on land scraped flat. That one a hundred meters ahead, twice her height: that would do.
    When White Lightnin' was alongside the boulder (and the near grendel was a hundred and fifty meters downslope), she dismounted. She took all four harpoons and the harpoon gun from the saddlebags. She slapped Lightnin' to get her moving. 
    Lightnin' didn't move.
    Patiently, with no overt sign of panic, Carolyn walked down to the end of the line (toward the grendel, toward Charlie). She shouted and slapped the trailing horse, Gorgeous George. The young stallion glared at her, but he moved. She slapped him again and, jogging ahead of him, repeated the slap on the next horse, who was already moving. The tail of the line moved; the wave moved forward; the grendel was a hundred meters distant and watching curiously. Carolyn reached the rock. The line of horses moved past her as she climbed. The grendel was seventy meters away.
    Forty. Twenty. Jesus, it was on speed. The horses screamed. Carolyn smelled it herself, a whiff on the wind, bestial and chemical both. She was halfway up the rock, and the grendel had reached the horses.
    She set her back solidly against the rock and lifted the gun while . . .
    Gorgeous George reared back on his hind legs, forelegs pawing the air, prepared to stamp holes in an enemy. A black torpedo shot under the forelegs and snapped at one of George's ankles without ever slowing. George was yanked backward hard enough to snap the line that bound him. The grendel was behind the rock before Carolyn could fire. George fell downhill, tumbling, screaming, and his left hind leg was gone below the knee. Where was the grendel? 
    Coming up the rock behind her?
    Carolyn jumped. She landed without breaking an ankle. She ran away from the rock, trying to see the rock and the horse both--
    The grendel was downhill, dragging Gorgeous George. George was very much alive, screaming, thrashing. Carolyn aimed carefully and fired.
    She'd have hit it. She would! Charlie must have seen something coming; she saw it shy. The harpoon exploded against George's chest. It ripped the horse wide open. The grendel looked at her for the barest particle of an instant, then dodged behind the dying horse.
    The other horses were on the run. Carolyn was reloading. Wait? Watch the grendel? But the horses couldn't be left alone. She ran after them. If she scared them they'd keep running: fine, she'd catch them eventually.
    But death was behind her, and she kept looking back. Where was the grendel? As fast as it moved, it could be anywhere.

    The grendel was in no hurry. She was overheated, yes, but not to the point of distress. She was small, and had been on speed for less than half a minute.
    The horse was not much fun. The grendel fed, trying to avoid tearing vitals for the moment; but the beast had stopped moving almost immediately.
    The taste was far better than grendel meat.
    Three of her siblings were in sight. They came in a line. Vectors of attraction and repulsion held them in position: fear of each other, fear of the one above them, smell of speed, mist of horse's blood in the air. Hunger was winning.
    Charlie tore into the horse. She ate with some haste now. When her belly was full to the point of pain, she ripped one of the horse's hind legs loose and moved uphill, dragging it with her tail. The other grendels closed in behind.
    They would eat and grow strong. Let them. Perhaps they would fight. But they would not catch up. Meanwhile nineteen animals moved upslope with their alien guard to tend them. Well and good.

    Terry sighted carefully and squeezed off another shot as a second grendel poked its head up over the edge of the bluff. He caught it between the eyes: its head snapped back violently and was gone. Blood in the water. He wiped his forehead. Dammit, I did wait. It was on dry land. When I hit it, it went on speed, of course, and overheated, of course, and went back to the creek. Of course.
    Omar and Rick arrived first. They looked, crazily, like some vintage comedy team: Omar the tallest man on the planet, Rick the shortest. There was nothing comical about them as they poked at the dead grendel, then clubbed its head with an ax when the tail jittered. They hauled it out of the water. Its corpse leaked blood.
    Something blurred near the lip of the drop-off, and Omar spun, swinging his ax.
    By luck, surely by blind luck, the ax struck the grendel in its open mouth. Its death spasm ripped the tool out of Omar's hand as it flipped back down the hill.
    They ran uphill. A dark shape burst from the water behind them. Terry sighted over the top of the scope, firing by instinct. Once. Twice. The grendel leaped, turned, looked directly at Terry. It knew. It moved at blinding speed toward Snail Head. Terry fired again. The grendel continued--and ran directly into the rock. It fell and twitched. Omar and Rick were halfway to the house now, and running hard. Omar's legs were almost twice the length of Rick's, but Rick was winning the race.
    Alarms went off all over the stronghold. Up at the house the dogs snarled and bayed. Cadmann's horses whinnied in terror. Down below grendels screamed challenge.
    Terry felt great. Adrenaline flowed. A year of calm, two years, and we'd have rebuilt all the hospital stuff. I'd have new legs. And a working prick.
    Downstream the water parted in strange places, new ripples and eddies where there weren't any before.
    His comcard buzzed.
    "Terry. Stay still. Maybe they won't notice you." Joe Sikes was trying to talk like Cadmann, but he couldn't manage that unholy calm. "Just sit still." 
    "Not if I can shoot something."
    They weren't just eddies in the Amazon now. They were dark shapes, dark shapes coming upstream. I called them. General Weyland, sir, we've lured the enemy within range. 
    "Terry!"
    There were shapes on both sides of him now. "I'm cut off. Watch out for the little stream! They'll be in your living room!" 
    "Terry, hold on, we'll get someone down there." 
    Someone. There's only one someone who'd come here, now. "Don't. You're about to be up to your neck in grendels, you idiot!" Terry turned and faced up the small stream. His spine was barely that flexible above his immobile legs. He fired toward the house. Something exploded from the water. Another shape shot forward and grabbed it. There was gunfire from the veranda.
    He turned back to the Amazon. "There's a lot of them. In the Amazon, and up on both sides of it. You are infested!" 
    "Any on speed?" 
    Cadmann's voice: "I see half a dozen."
    "I see shadows," Terry reported. "The ones you can't see, they're not on speed. Fifty, and that's just near the house." 
    "We're sending up the Skeeter. Look, Terry--" 
    "I've figured it out, Cadmann. Without you nobody lives. See you in hell, hotshot. Tell Sylvia--" He grimaced to himself. Tell her I don't release her from her promise. "Tell her any damn thing you like. Out." He set the card on the rock and took aim. Half a dozen grendels clustered in the water, twenty meters away: he couldn't miss. The solid kick of the rifle felt just right.
    The grendel jumped at the impact. It was instantly on speed, charging from the water. The rest charged after it, tore it apart, and, shying from each other, lowed pieces of their sibling back into the stream. The water foamed red. Terry snarled to himself, at himself. Then he took out the card again. "About forty left the water. Some are fighting, some are coming your way. Do you hear?" 
    "I hear," Joe Sikes said.
    "Good." Quite deliberately, he bent his comcard in half, destroying it. Never liked the damn things. Whatever happened to solitude?
    Gunfire from above. Off to the side more grendels, grendels on speed, grendels blurring over the lip of the bluff. More shadows in the water, lying low, avoiding each other. And two grendels in line coming upriver toward him. One looked up. Its eyes met his. Then it moved.
    A gray-brown dust plume whizzed over the rocks, headed directly for him. Terry squeezed off one shot, a second, with no effect. He threw the change lever over to full automatic and held the trigger down. Shots rippled out. The barrel heated. The grendel leaped straight into the air, blood streaming from its back and shoulders. Two others snapped at it, then began rushing in frantic circles. Others came up the stream.
    Terry aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked the breech. Empty.
    Quite calmly, he searched his pockets. There were no more clips, but it was always best to be sure.
    More grendels below him now. They fought. Fighting to see who gets me. He wished there were some way to disappoint them. He wished he'd asked them to patch him through to Geographic, to Sylvia, before it was too late. But they'd said everything there was to say.
    He wished he could see Justin again, but at least the child was safe.
    One of the grendels had won the battle below.
    It moved up the rock. Terry didn't want to look at it. He turned to look toward the house. Skeeter One was rising from behind the house.

    The Skeeter floated downslope. Stu kept it low enough to gain some advantage from the ground effect. He had only a quarter charge, and when that was gone they'd be down there with the grendels.
    Mits was behind him, sitting on one of the tanks of speed soup. He said, "When you give the word." 
    "Hold off." 
    "Lots of grendels below."
    Stu could see that. Thirty or forty grendels on speed were streaking out of the water, snapping at the corpses of grendels already dead, snapping at each other, circling back to the stream. Several clustered around a white rock: Terry must be dead already. A few slow ones crawled upslope at their leisure, following the scent of men and cattle.
    He said, "Keep your head, Mits. We don't want grendels going on speed near the house. We want them on speed down there, where they'll burn themselves out."
    "Yeah. Sorry. The goddamned stream is seething with them. I would have bet anything it was too small for that." 
    "Really? Anything?" 
    " . . . No. O-o-oh, Lord."
    Stu looked back. Grendels were into the minefield now. He could see the explosions--and a line of grendels tracing the zigzag that marked the safe path. Following the markers. Following the smell left by men's shoes.
    The house receded. The water was growing denser with grendels. A few must have followed the taste of human garbage in the water, but the rest had followed garbage and grendel blood too: the taste of territory to be taken.
    They were almost halfway to the drop-off. "Now," said Stu.
    He didn't have to look. The stink told him: Mits had the stopcock open and was spraying along the river. The Skeeter blades scattered the stuff; it must be falling over a path a hundred meters wide.
    And every speed sac they'd put through the blender had been quite flat. Grendels used up their speed when they were dying. That mist must be as thin as hope.
    Grendels surged from the water. It worked beautifully! Half the grendels were murdering the other half! No, not quite. But the flying was easy, and Stu freed one hand to touch his comcard.
    "Anyone there?"
    "We're kind of busy," said Joe Sikes. "They're coming through the fucking mine field."
    "I'm halfway down to the bluff. We're spraying. The grendels are all on speed. This stuff is magic. I'd say only about half of them are reacting to it, but they set the others off. We're going to lose about two thirds of them in an orgy of murder." 
    "Good news."
    "Bad news is, about a third of them are just running away from each other. Say, just guessing now, four hundred are now fighting and two hundred just scattering, the cowards, and of the two hundred, a hundred and fifty are going up. Toward you." 
    "I read you. A hundred and fifty coming."
    "We're getting close to the drop-off and . . . the batteries read dead. I think--"
    Mits called from aft. "I've got the other tank in place. It's running."
    "Sure is. Joe, we'll stay up as long as we can and then try to get away from the stream." 
    "I copy. You think the Skeeter cabin will hold?" 
    "Sure."
    "That's a relief." Trace of sarcasm there? "Stu, Mits . . . ah . . . on behalf of all of us and world civilization, I want to express our thanks." 
    "Don't be pompous, Joe. Save it for the victory speeches." 
    Joe shouted something incoherent. Then there was only the popcorn sound of gunfire, and not enough of that, and it was dwindling.
    Grendels seethed in an orgy of murder. Some of the warier grendels had sprinted away from the water before the spray reached them. At a good, safe distance from the battle, far from the stream, they watched the Skeeter. More and more of them, left and right of the river, watched Stu in the Skeeter cockpit.
    The batteries had to be on their last gasp. Stu veered left, away from the stream, and angled uphill too. Grendels that had been watching were suddenly in the spray pattern. Stu grinned: half of them were streaking away, escaping, but they did it by going on speed.
    Then the power was gone. Stu called, "Dump it!" 
    The tank tumbled out.
    The ground came up hard.
    "Button us up." He'd done the best he could. The tank was spraying its remaining speed juice into one square meter of ground, and that was between the Amazon and the Skeeter. Grendels would go crazy before they got here. It might be enough.

    Cadmann slammed a rifle into Mary Ann's hands and spun her toward the steps. "Get in the goddamned house!" 
    By the time she scrambled past the deadfall to the house, the rifle fire was a steady crackle.
    In the living room, a dozen of the weak and wounded were sequestered. They huddled in clumps, eyes huge. They stared out the clerestory slits. Outside, the actions of other men and women decided their fates. "Everyone away from the spring!" she screamed. "Against the far wall!"
    They pushed into the far corner. Mary Ann's mind fought the panic. Somehow, in a hurricane of terror, she found an eye of calm.
    The house shuddered as mines exploded to the west: the grendels were coming over the wall! Dirt and shattered rock rained on the roof above her. A grendel leg slid through the clerestory and thudded to the ground in front of them. It twitched.
    Next to her, Jill screamed and screamed. Mary Ann savagely backhanded her. Jill reeled back, stunned.
    Mary Ann flexed her hand. It hurt. Then she hunkered down, tucked the rifle butt into her shoulder, and waited.