The Savage Boy Read Online Free

desert.
    There is nothing in this land. It’s been hunted clean.
    The Boy, used to little, felt the ache in his belly beginning to rumble. It had been two days since the last of a crow he’d roasted over a thin fire of brush and scrub wood.
    So what’s that tell you, Boy?
    Death in some form. Either predators who will see me as prey, or poison from the war.
    That’s right, he heard Sergeant Presley say in the way he’d always pronounced the words “That” and “is,” making them one and removing the final “t.”
    A place called Reno is in front of me. Maybe another day’s ride.
    All cities are dead. The war saw to that, Boy.
    Some cities. Remember the one called Memphis. It wasn’t poisoned.
    Might as well have been, Boy. Might as well have been.
    The big roar came from behind them. Horse turned as if to snarl, but when his large nostrils caught the scent of the predator he gave a short, fearful warning. The Boy patted Horse’s neck, calming him.
    I’ve never heard an animal make a sound like that. Sounds like a big cat. But bigger than anything I’ve ever heard before.
    He scanned the dusty hills behind him.
    He saw movement in the fingers of the ridge he’d just passed.
    And then he saw the lion. It trotted down a small ridge kicking up dust as it neared the bottom. For a moment the Boy wondered if the big cat might be after something else, until it came straight toward him. Behind the big lion, almost crouching, a smaller lion, sleeker—no great mane surrounding its triangular head—danced forward, scrambling through the dusty wake of the big lion.
    He wheeled Horse about to the west, facing the place once called Reno, and screamed “Hyahhh!” as he drove the two of them forward.

 
    7
    T HE IDIOT, THOUGHT the lioness. She’d only made him come along so he could roar at just the right moment and drive the horse into her sisters and the young lying in wait ahead. Instead he’d cried out in hunger at the first sight of the meaty flanks of the horse. She could hear the saliva in his roar. The cubs would be lucky to get any of this meal.
    His cry had been early and she knew from the moment the horse began to gallop that her run would never catch the beast. For a short time she could be fast. But not for long. Not in a race. Her only hope now was that her sisters and the young were in a wide half circle ahead, and that the horse would continue its course into their trap.
    The idiot, she thought again, as she slowed to a trot. He’s only good for fighting other males. For that, he is the best.
    T HE B OY RACED down alongside the ancient crumbling highway, but Horse was slowing as the ground required caution. A broken leg would be the death of them both. He reined in Horse hard at an off-ramp and sent them down onto an old road that seemed to head off to the south. Ahead, a slope rose into a series of sharp little hills, the ground smooth, windblown sand and hardpack. He spurred Horse forward up onto the rising slope. At the top he stopped and scanned behind him.
    In the shadow of a crag, he could see the big lion doggedly trotting along the ridgeline. Ahead of the lion, crouched low and crawling, the sleeker lion had stopped. The Boy could feel its eyes on him.
    “It’s us they’re after, Horse. I don’t think they’re going to take no for an answer.”
    Horse snorted derisively and then began to shift as if wanting to turn and fight.
    That’s jes big talk, Boy! Those lions’ll kill him dead and you with him. Don’t pay no attention to him, Horse’s jes big talk. Always has been.
    Ahead to the west he could see a bleached and tired city on the horizon. But it was too far off to be of any use now.
    And it could be poisoned, Boy. Radiation. Kill you later like it did me.
    The Boy turned Horse and raced below the ridgeline, skirting its summit. They rounded the outmost tip of the rise, and beyond it lay a vast open space, empty and without comfort.
    The ground sloped into a gentle half bowl and he