Free In Silence Waiting by Nikki McCormack Page B

smell it too. They may be close now, surveying the caravan camp with their dead black eyes. They are native to this planet. Humanity drove them into the New Gobi, assuming they would die in the harsh climate. Lir are a hardy species. They adapted. Scarce water and food makes them savage. Intelligent and efficient predators to begin with, now they are cruel as well.
    With the New Gobi splitting the land, people needed to cross to access necessary resources. A society of warriors might have devised a different solution. The settlers of this planet know medicine and genetics. In order to cross the New Gobi by avoiding the lir they made cynta and created brutes to control us. I am the best at this crossing. With me, Laurin hasn’t had an incident in twelve years. How ironic that a mere child should destroy that illustrious record.
    Darkness falls. My awareness drifts in and out. The brutes left me beside Laurin’s wagon, my chains staked into the dry soil. My mind wanders, flowing through the ground and riding my sense to a nearby presence. My consciousness becomes a passenger to the creatures hidden in the darkness. They stalk, ever-cautious, through the night.
    The drug keeps my fear of them at a distance, allowing me to ride along with the lir objectively. I see the camp through their eyes in monochromatic flashes, their vision responding to the heat of living flesh. The pack moves in perfect synchronicity, each creature a distinct physical being, but also an integral part of a single mind.
    The pack lurks outside the firelight, downwind from the nervous draft animals. They wait for the perfect moment then, in a single fluid movement, they surge forward.
    I narrow my sense to the lead male. It uses one exaggerated claw on its leathery foreleg to sever the hamstring of an unsuspecting man near the edge of the camp. The man falls with a shriek of fear and agony. His cry rises in concert with others from that side of the camp. The lir slashes open his abdomen, further crippling him, and drags him into the dark.
    They do not kill their victims yet. The wounded are left in the dark, too injured to save themselves. Panicked cries rise around the camp while the lir regroup for a second attack. I return to myself, drawn by the sound of Laurin’s voice calling orders, trying to establish organized defense.
    “Pull together. Form a tight circle. Put anyone with a weapon on the outside.”
    Laurin’s commands cut off with an agonized wail. Despairing emptiness fills me. Without the wagon master, whose livelihood depends upon me, I will be forgotten. Being eaten alive doesn’t appeal to me. I try struggling against my chains, but drugged muscles won’t respond to my need. I give up and wait for slow death to find me.
    When something does find me, it isn’t teeth, but hands that take hold, wrapping under my arms. Someone dislodges the stake and takes hold of my legs. Fear pulsates off the two humans like stifling waves of heat. After a short, uncomfortable trip, they drop me unceremoniously amidst a circle of people radiating the same suffocating fear.
    On the ground again, I can sense lir approaching the circle of human flesh. One darts in and a desperately wielded hunting knife drives it back. A gun fires. The lir retreat. They have food and are intelligent enough to know that they needn’t risk the pack for more. They disappear into the dark and the howling of their victims fills the night for some time. In the circle, a fog of sorrow and terror thickens the air.
    A woman’s sharp voice cuts the stillness. “We should do something.”
    She is older, with fine wrinkled skin and dark eyes that have lost their reason. When no one moves, she starts to push her way out. Several men force her back.
    “We cannot, Imara.” A young man wraps his arms around her, trying to calm her. “The lir will pick us off if we leave the circle. We stand no chance in the dark.”
    Imara struggles free and turns on him. “You’re