The Savage Boy Read Online Free Page A

could see the Freeway beyond.
    I should never have left the road. We could have found a jackknifed trailer to hide in. Sergeant Presley said those were always the best places to sleep. We did many times.
    He patted Horse once more on the neck whispering, “We’ll sprint for the road beyond the bowl. We’ll find a place there.”
    Horse reared impolitely as if to say they should already be moving.
    Halfway down the slope at a good canter, watching for squirrel and snake holes, places where Horse could easily snap one of his long legs, the Boy saw the trap.
    There were five of them. All like the sleeker, mane-less lion. Females. Hunters. They were crouched low in a wide semicircle off to his right. All of them were watching him. He’d come into the left edge of their trap.
    You know what to do, Boy! Barked Sergeant Presley in his teaching voice. His drill sergeant voice. The voice with which he’d taught the Boy to fight, to survive, to live just one more day.
    Assault through the ambush.
    Horse roared with fear. Angry fear.
    The Boy guided Horse toward the extreme left edge of the trap, coaxing him with his knee as he unhooked the crossbow, cocked a bolt and raised it upward with his withered left hand.
    Not the best to shoot with. But I’ll need the tomahawk for the other.
    The sleek females darted in toward him, dashing through the dust, every golden muscle rippling, jaws clenched tight in determination.
    This is bad.
    The fear crept into the Boy as it always did before combat.
    Ain’t nothin’ but a thang, Boy. Ain’t nothin’ but a thang. Mind over matter; you don’t mind, it don’t matter.
    The closest cat charged forward, its fangs out, and in that instant the Boy knew it would leap. Its desire to leap and clutch at Horse’s flanks telegraphed in the cat’s wicked burst of speed.
    The Boy lowered the crossbow onto the flat of his good arm holding the tomahawk, aimed on the fly, and sent a bolt into the flurry of dust and claws from which the terrible fanged mouth and triangular head watched him through cold eyes.
    He heard a sharp, ripping yowl and kicked Horse to climb the small ridge at the edge of the bowl. On the other side he could see frames of half-built buildings below on the plain before the city.
    Half-built buildings.
    Construction site.
    Maybe houses being built on the last day of the old world. Houses that would never be finished.
    If I can stay ahead of them for just a moment . . .
    Horse screamed and the Boy felt the weight of something angry tearing at Horse’s left flank.
    One of the female lions had gone wide and raced for the lip of the ridgeline. Once on top, it had thrown everything into a leap that brought it right down onto Horse’s flank.
    The Boy cursed as he swiped at the fierce cat with his tomahawk. But the lioness had landed on Horse’s left side and his axe was in his right hand. The Boy batted at the lioness with the crossbow. Its mouth was open, its fangs ready to sink into Horse’s spine, the Boy shoved the crossbow into the cat’s open jaws. Gagging and choking, the lioness released Horse’s torn flesh as its paws attempted to remove the crossbow. It fell away into the dust and Horse continued forward. Already the Boy could feel Horse slowing. His own feet, bent back onto Horse’s flanks, were dripping with warm blood.
    “Don’t slow down,” he pleaded into Horse’s pinned ears, doubting whether he was heard at all. “Just make it into those ruins.”
    When Horse didn’t respond with his usual snort, the Boy knew the wound was bad.

 
    8
    T HE B OY DROVE Horse hard through the drifting sand of the old ruins. Rotting frames of sun-bleached gray and bone-white wood, warped by forty years of savage heat and cruel ice seemed to offer little protection from the roaring lions now trotting downslope in a bouncing, almost expectant, gait.
    They wove deeper into the dry fingers of wood erupting from the sand of Construction Site. The Boy heard the crack of ragged