Peace in an Age of Metal and Men Read Free

with laughter. It felt good, like a huge weight coming off of my chest.
    We moved on along the path, silent for a while. The air grew cooler, gently tickling me where my clothes were ripped.
    The wind changed direction and brought a heavy musk, warm and thick.
    Mina must have sensed my tension because she stopped.
    Long moments stretched on. We were up on a rise, overlooking Overpass. From this angle, the town was nearly invisible. Scrub bushes and dead grass made for plenty of cover for critters up there. A layer of dirt and dust had covered and reclaimed the asphalt of the ancient highway. My ears strained against the constant whisper of the wind.
    Nothing moved for several minutes. I motioned Mina to follow and saw that she’d already pulled out her rifle. Good. There wasn’t likely going to be any trouble, but it was better to be ready for it.
    Crouching low, I sniffed the air. The musk hung on the wind like a piss-soaked blanket, moving heavily in from the north. Slowly, I crept closer to one of the thicker patches of grass. Something had rested there; something big had trampled the area. Starting there, I crept in a circle, looking for more signs of disturbance. Some grasses were crushed. In another place, there was a branch chewed down to bare wood. I took it and stuck it in my duster pocket. The teeth marks might be interesting, but in the moonlight there was no way to properly look at it.
    One fat, well-formed print sat perfectly formed in a section of soft soil several meters away from the trampled grass. It had four small pads and marks of long, wicked claws.
    “Coyote,” I said.
    Mina moved up behind me and peered at the print.
    “Big coyote. Probably more than one.” I bit my lip. “They bedded down over there for a bit. At some point one of them pissed right here and another one stepped in it. That’s how we got that print.”
    “It’s not a wolf?”
    I shook my head. “Not quite right for wolf. Size is right, but the claws are wrong. It’s coyote, but probably bio-engineered. Maybe escaped or something.”
    “We walk this path all the time, though. We’d have noticed giant coyotes this close.”
    Coyotes coming this close meant there was something odd about them. A coyote was likely to see just about anything as food, but they were smart enough to fear humans. Maybe whoever was walking the path hadn’t noticed them, but those coyotes had been there a while. The grasses might have concealed them, or maybe the creatures had moved away when they heard people coming. It was like a coyote to be cowardly.
    “Folks ought to walk in twos for a while,” I said. “Might be safer.”
    Mina nodded. “You think they’ll come back?”
    “All that noise we made might have scared them off. If they like it here, they’ll come back.”
    “You can tell Broadfeather what you saw when you go see him tomorrow.”
    “Pardon?” I said.
    “Elder Broadfeather said that you should speak with him when you get back. It’s very important.”
    “Thanks for the message.”
    She slung her rifle back over her shoulder. Her expression got deadly serious. Mina put her hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eyes.
    “J.D.,” she said. “There’s just one thing I’m gonna ask you about today and I want a straight answer.”
    “Sure.”
    “Can you please tell me the reason that your ass crack is showing out the back of your ripped-up pants?”

Chapter 3
    My back creaked in protest at the mere thought of movement. Bruises lined my legs and arms, tying the muscles into rock-hard knots. My very bones ached, like maybe coyotes had chewed them on. It was luck that kept those bones from getting broken in my fall off the skidder, but I sure as hell didn’t feel lucky.
    One advantage of a metal arm is that it doesn’t have the same vulnerabilities as the rest of my body. It could drop from the sky into an active volcano and not show so much as a scratch while the rest of me lit up like a bonfire. I had some