Free Doomsday Warrior 11 - American Eden by Ryder Stacy

“Ookayyy?”
    Rockson thought a bit, then said, “No, old fellow. We need you to watch over the teams. The dogs love you. We can’t handle them without you near.”
    Archer’s chest swelled. “Meee goooddd,” he stated, and he pounded on his chest so loud it sounded like a bass drum.
    “Thanks, pal, I knew I could count on you.”
    Rockson considered their ad hoc camp a good one. Behind winterberry brambles, a natural shield of thorns.
    “Rona and I will use some arrows and get the venison,” he promised.
    Rockson took up his compound bow—a plastic and steel marvel of engineering with a hundred-ninety-pound pull. “Ready, Rona?” She had her bow on her shoulder. “Sure, lead on.”
    Rock wanted Rona as backup. Rock had to admit she was equal to him in skill if not in sheer power of draw. He couldn’t afford to miss. And firearms were out. No sense alerting any chance Soviet patrol.
    Three hours of trekking and the couple was in sight of the eight-point buck and his doe. The problem was getting downwind from the gentle creatures nuzzling on the evergreen branches.
    It took another hour for Rockson and Rona to get in position in the boulderfield directly north of the pair of deer. Rockson carefully notched his arrow and let fly the shot at the buck, but the stag had suddenly started.
    There was a movement in the narga grass—and one of Post-nuke America’s plethora of wildswine appeared. The supersensitive snout of the beast stuck high into the air. The four-tusked three-hundred-pound beast snorted. It had caught the scent of the two Freefighters.
    “Damn,” said Rona as the alerted deer darted away, jumping into the copse of trees. “There goes our venison steaks.”
    “How about some pork chops,” Rockson said angrily, swiveling his bow and letting loose a good shot at the spoiler of their hunt.
    But the wildswine had suddenly darted sideward with a sharp squeal. The super-swift porker, a dangerous crossbreed of wild Asian swine and the domestic hog of the twentieth century, also avoided the frying pan.
    “Shit,” Rock said, reaching into his quiver and taking out another steel-tipped arrow. He notched it and said, “The pig is over in that jumble of rocks—let’s get it. Rona, you go around the other way. We’ll have pork tonight, or my name isn’t Ted Rockson.”
    But as the couple gradually, silently moved to encircle the wildswine, there was a sudden shaking of the ground. Rock swiveled on his heels to see a giant version of the swine he was stalking tear through a copse of trees the size of telephone poles, knocking them down like toothpicks. The thing was a pig—but it stood twelve or thirteen feet at its shoulders and was at least twice that length. It stopped in its tracks, snorted a twin stream of hot steam out of its flaring nostrils. And then it turned its ugly snout directly in the direction of Rockson and roared out a challenge.
    Rona and Rock let fly their arrows, each hitting one of the beast’s huge eyes. But the arrows just bounced. “Rona—head for cover in the rocks, I’ll lead it away.” With that admonition, the twenty-first-century warrior took off at a lope. The giant swine started pawing the ground, it lowered its head like a bull. Then it took off after him, like a freight train chasing a stray cat.
    “Rock,” Rona yelled, “be careful.”
    Rockson was being careful. He had made for a second outcropping of sharper, tumbled rocks, and now dove in among the boulders, rolled into a crevice. He removed his shotpistol from his holster and took the safety off. Just in time. The giant swine screeched to a stop and leaned its steamy snout down into Rock’s hiding place. Its huge tongue licked down at the Doomsday Warrior. Naturally, he fired. Point-blank.
    The lower incisors and molars of the beast exploded into chalky fragments tinged with red, and the X-pattern of explosive pellets peppered the sinewy red throat beyond. But the thing didn’t die. It pulled back,