Free Early Byrd by Phil Geusz Page B

showed from the outside—still housed two
armed guards, and I gulped. They weren't the same two we'd seen
earlier, so therefore I was forced to raise our enemy count to at
least seven. Seven was a lot more than five, in practical
terms at least. But what could we do? Rapput and Li had to be
sinking every hour.
    "Call of nature, gentlemen," Yukon explained
to the guards. Then he pointed to Tim. "Plus this one isn't feeling
well. We could be out a little longer than normal."
    "Right, boss," the larger of the two agreed
with a slight nod. His face was mostly covered by both a shaggy red
beard. "Standard password?"
     
    "Yes," Yukon agreed with a final nod. Then
he leaned on the door. It swung open . . .
    . . . and the prettiest, most inviting beam
of sunlight I'd ever seen came pouring in through. A bird was
singing, and the nearby river burbled and gurgled mere yards away.
The cabin would've been a really nice place to relax and hunt or
fish from under other circumstances.
    Yukon nudged me forward. "Follow the
path."
    I nodded and went first, even though where I
really wanted to be was behind him. "Wow!" I said, looking around.
"Where are all the animals?"
    "Oh," Yukon replied with a smile. "They're
around. It's not like you see on the cartoons, though, where they
just walk up to you and act cute. In real life they hide as much as
they can from humans and aren't usually nice at all." He hefted the
super-short pump-action shotgun he kept eternally slung on his left
shoulder. "Bears can especially be a problem up here. That's why
you should never visit the latrine without a guard carrying one of
these."
    "I can shoot!" I countered. "I have a BB
gun!"
    "Heh!" he replied. "Well, that's a
start!"
    The outhouse was a two-holer, and Tim was
still gagging and choking as Yukon opened the door for him. So I
stepped closer and examined Yukon's weapon more carefully. "Is that
a rifle?" I asked at last. "Or a machine-gun?"
    "Not exactly," he began. "In fact..."
    I was still listening to the technical
details with wide-eyed attention when Tim screamed like a little
girl. "Eeeee! Help meI Please, someone!"
    Yukon
sprang forward, or he would've if I hadn't grabbed his ankle
and tripped him flat. Then, before I could regain my feet to help,
Tim had slammed him in the back of the head with a rock. Hard.
    He didn't move after that. I figured he was
dead. Tim and I were both pretty strong for our age, and my brother
had held nothing back.
    "Jeez," I muttered. "I didn't want to . . .
I mean . . ."
    "You'd rather I'd just hit him hard enough
to piss him off?" my brother asked. "Then where would Li and Rapput
be?" He scowled then tossed the bloody stone into the woods. "Give
me the shotgun."
    I felt my face go hard. "It's my turn to
take the next shot."
    Tim shook his head. "As I said, the deer ran
off. So that one doesn't count. And as for this time—" He waved his
hand at Yukon. "—we both pretty much hit him at once. So, it's my turn. For real."
    I frowned—he could easily have bagged the
doe if he hadn't dragged things out so long. But now wasn't the
time to argue about it, so instead I unslung the gun the rest of
the way from Yukon's inert shoulder and handed it to Tim. "Dad says
you can like shooting and killing things too much," I reminded him, "and
it's a really bad thing when that happens. Pretty awful, even."
    He shrugged. "What do you think the Artemu
intend to teach us to do? Sew fancy lace dresses and dance around
Maypoles?" He worked the weapon's action and a fat, bright-red
shell dropped to the ground.
    I picked it up. "Wow! It's double-ought
buckshot. A magnum load." Then I handed it to Tim, who effortlessly
returned it to the magazine.
    "It's liable to break my shoulder," Tim
complained as he raised the too-large and too-heavy weapon and
sighted down the barrel.
    "Or make you feel like it did," I replied.
Then I frowned. "You won't be able to make a quick second shot, for
sure. Maybe not at all. So we can't count on it."
    "No," he