Doomsday Warrior 16 - American Overthrow by Ryder Stacy

disappeared, into the teens. Detroit disappeared into the woods surrounding them and they heard the sharp crack of a grenade going off. The three Freefighters jumped to their feet, fearing the worst as they reached for their weapons, and started toward the explosions. But before they’d gone more than a few yards the black Freefighter emerged from the woods holding the bloody carcass of a sabre toothed raccoon, a good-sized one that must have weighed fifty pounds.
    “I saw him and happened to have a grenade with me,” Detroit smirked as the others relaxed, seeing he was okay. “Couldn’t resist—though I’m afraid I did mess him up a little.” He held the red-soaked creature up by the tail.
    The animals was similar to raccoons of old but three times larger, and its mouth was full of dagger teeth. They were all just as glad it was dead.
    Archer’s eyes widened in delight and he grabbed it from Detroit’s hand and rushed the raccoon over to the fire. The near mute’s idea of cookery wasn’t the most refined, as he threw the creature into the blaze, fur and all. It smoked and sent up acrid odors from the burning fur. Then the skin sizzled, crackling like a steak in the broiler. After ten minutes he took out the thing and cut it up with his huge woods knife, handing out immense smoking slabs to each of the men. They took it a little nervously, coon not being their usual fare. But lo and behold, after a few hesitant bites, all four men were digging into the treat. They asked for seconds. It was that good.
    They slept soundly that night, glad to be alive and thankful for full stomachs. They took turns on guard duty as it was too dangerous out here in the wilds for them all to sleep, each man doing two hours. Eyes peered in from all around them but none dared approach the fire. Howls and grunts came out occasionally as if the carnivorous nightlife was having fervent discussions about how tasty the humans were.
    When they arose the next morning the skies were overcast with a greenish tint as the high strontium clouds migrated overhead with a dark vengeance. They had some raccoon steak and even a few eggs. Chen had found the eggs—species uncertain—in a low branch when he had been out doing his tai chi exercises a few hundred yards from camp at the break of day. Then they set off again.
    They headed across the mountain plateau and down the long drop off to the east. It was a breathtaking view out a good thirty miles, even with the low drifting mists. Like a vast Fauvist painting, hardly real with rivers as narrow as pieces of string and forests dotting the wastelands here and there like hair on a bald man’s head. They had to go slowly down the slopes which ran for a thousand feet before leveling off to another plateau which ran a few hundred before beginning the next descent. It was like a set of stairs for giants. The grade was rocky, gravel covered here and there, and the ’brids moved very cautiously as they descended.
    It took the recon party a good three hours to reach the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills and then the plain stretched off ahead of them into salt flats. It was barren of course, and almost white, like chalk. The ’brids didn’t seem all that overjoyed about heading out into it, but they had no choice. Each clomp of a wide hoof sent up little swirls of the salt-laden dust. Before long they were all coated with the stuff. The land all around them was covered with the skulls and bones of countless generations of deceased animals. Bison and steer skulls, piles of bones which had been licked clean by carnivores, bacteria, and the unrelenting sun itself, shining the bones down to an ivory, smooth sheen.
    As they pushed on farther, chasms appeared on all sides of them. At first just spiderweb cracks in the ground, but as they headed on the cracks turned to real gullies and then ravines. It made the going that much harder as they often had to turn and twist all over the place to get around some of the