Apocalyptic Organ Grinder Read Free Page B

within it.  She saw his hand reaching for her through the veil of time, quivering with the last of his strength before falling limply to his side.
    The second gunshot snapped Lila firmly back into the present.  The ghost of her late husband disappeared and she snatched her spear from the ground in a single, fluid movement as she broke into a run.  Her leather sandals padded against the earth as silently as rabbit’s feet and the straps that wrapped around her calves fluttered behind her like streamers.  She leapt across an outcropping of rocks, never breaking stride or stumbling as she bounded from one craggy stone to the next.
    The direction the shots had come from was locked in her mind and the forest blurred by.  Weaving in and out of trees, she sprang over fallen logs and ducked under low hanging branches.  Her face was set in a tightlipped expression that narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow with wrinkles.  The entire time, however, her breathing was steady and rhythmic, as though the breakneck dash through the woods was no more strenuous than a leisurely stroll.
    Her subconscious calculated distance and velocity without effort and when she neared the area where the shot had originated, Lila instinctively slowed her pace.  No longer running, she slinked from tree to tree, staying low and quick with her hands firmly wrapped around the shaft of the spear.  Her eyes took in the entire forest in a single glance, though the details looked slightly blurry.  She’d relaxed her focus and allowed her vision to slip into what The People called Cougar Eyes .  The flowering bushes, pine cones dangling from conifers, and bark rubbed away by rutting deer were of no concern.  What she watched for was movement, for something that seemed foreign in the natural workings of the forest and stood out against an otherwise motionless backdrop.
    The first thing she saw was a flash of white through a grove of trees about twenty yards to her left.  As soon as her mind identified this anomaly, the minutia of the forest was thrown back into sharp focus.   She knew where the dry twigs that would betray her presence were, which sections of foliage would offer her the most coverage if the man in white happened to look in her direction.  Though her breath had slowed to the point that her chest didn’t even seem to rise and fall, she was acutely aware of the scents in the air.  The strongest of these, she knew well.  It was a metallic tang with a hint of saltiness and an odor that was unmistakable to anyone who’d ever known the glory of the hunt:  blood.
    More faintly, she could smell traces of body odor waft through the aromas of the forest and it conjured images of sweat and grime in her mind.  But it wasn’t the unique scent of The People she detected.  No, this particular smell was the one which oozed from the pores of the clear skins, the ones who called themselves Settlers and lived in small communities on the outskirts of overgrown cities.  The ones who had made her a widow in the prime of her life.
    She stalked forward slowly, her footfalls as soft as leaves falling to the forest floor as her grip on the spear tightened to the point that her fingernails carved crescent moons into the wood.  As she inched forward, her target’s uniform resolved.  She could see the silver tape that secured the wrists and ankles of the wrinkled, plastic suit to the boots and gloves.  The straps of the mask and goggles wrapping around the hood of the garment.  The walnut stock of the rifle cradled in his arms.
    Tolek appeared in her mind again.  His body fell in slow motion, each drop of blood suspended in the air and reflecting the morning sun in pinpoints of radiance.  His spear tumbled end over end as sulfuric smelling smoke rose like a gray demon from the muzzle that had unleashed it.  The man on the other side of the river had been dressed so similarly to the one who now ducked behind a tree that it almost seemed as if