WE DID SHOT BY HORSRYDERS
"We didn't understand what you meant when you said 'leave woods.'"
N O MUCH S P E A K ME N
The ratbit removed that and started again.
N I E D WOOD FOR K I L M O N S T E R S
"The thing is, you took quite a few saplings. We need them. Understand?"
Y E S
"We can leave you a few, and some wood, and some seeds, to grow more trees. Good enough?"
The ratbit did not rearrange the letters. It just pointed to yes again.
"Deal. Someday I'd like to hear about what happened. How did you drive the Kurians out of this part of the land?"
W R E K T H E A L L S O W E N O T D I E
"Do your people have a name?"
B A T C H F I V E T E E N
The ratbits put on a feast that night, in the center of a wide half-crescent of oaks and elms. Traces of a foundation stood in the yellowed grass, smoke-darkened conduit pipes and junction boxes stood among the wildflowers like scarecrows. Later Valentine learned that beneath the soil there was a thriving town of tunnels and dens.
The humans only nibbled from the Batch Fifteen banquet. A proper feast, to the hundreds of gathered ratbits, meant piling anything edible-to a ratbit-in a great heap in the center of the clearing and then burrowing within the pile in a race for the choicest tidbits: a bone with a bit of marrow, still-ripe fall fruits and melons, an ear of corn still only partially eaten. It was a bit like dining from a restaurant kitchen at the end of the night, fresh food, leftovers, and garbage all for the taking.
The dinner looked to be a disaster, at least from the human point of view, until the ratbits dragged a series of still-sealed cartons from a clogged stairwell hidden in the grass. In them were candy bars and chips and fruit-flavored drinks in shiny plastic packets, only a few years old and therefore still edible. Valentine ate something called a Chocdelite that was almost eye-crossing in its sweetness.
Zacharias joined him, and they sat on one of the wagons, next to Baltz's orange tomcat, who was scrunched into a back-arched ball under the seat as he watched the ratbits go to and fro. Zacharias offered Valentine a taste of some orange-and-pineapple flavored drink.
"I'm thinking vending machines," Zacharias said, examining the label. "Says it's from Florida."
"Nothing but the best for the scientists. Or the honored guests."
A faint sputtering from the sky made them both look up. An arrow shape, like an oversize kite with an engine attached, flew overhead and buzzed away a pair of circling buzzards. Another aerial visitor, a hawk, flapped hard to gain altitude and avoided the airborne prowler. A ratbit worked the controls from a tiny seat.
"I'll be-," Zacharias began. "Clever varmints."
"That they are."
"Did you have any schooling, Valentine?"
"Yes. About as good as I could get in the Minnesota backwoods. An old Jesuit still ran a one-room schoolhouse. I lived in his library."
"I remember when I was learning maths from ol' Miss Gage. We were studying multiplication, and she showed us how one pair of breeding rabbits could produce-well, I don't remember exactly, but it was over a thousand-other rabbits once you counted their offspring ... in just a year. Makes you wonder."
Valentine nodded, troubled by the evidence on the Ranch that the Kurians had gone to so much effort to find a replacement for the human race.
The Piney Woods, December of the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: East Texas is covered with timber, a wood-scape more extensive than all of New England. The pines stand as straight as Baptists on Easter Sunday, their evenly spaced branches ascending the trunk like ladder rungs.
Texas saw its first oil boom in this part of the state, but before that a timber boom brought white men to sculpt the land with its first roads and towns. After mankind's fall, the gently rolling landscape went fallow, and vigorous young forests have sprung up again from the old ranches and farms scattered around Lake Texoma to Sabine Lake in the Gulf.
The Texas Rangers are active here, as well, raising hell all along the informal border with the Kurian Zone that runs the length of the Neches River and along the road-and-rail "Sabine Corridor" the Kurians maintain from Shreveport to Dallas. The Lifeweavers are present to help the Texans in this part of the country. The Rangers have organized their own teams of Wolves, Cats, and Bears to hunt the Reapers, passing material and information to and from Southern Command through the network of Logistics Commandos.
The far north of the region, between the Red and Sulphur rivers, sees the least guerrilla activity. There is little human habitation to speak of. Southern Command proper patrols this area from its forward bases along the Red River. A few hunter-gatherer communities-usually Native American or Louisiana Creole-wander the area, pulling up stakes every few months to avoid the depredations of the Reapers