Beastchild

off on the pedal until the blades whirred softly, then tramped it down hard. The shuttle started like an animal, wiggled. He eased up, slammed down again. The craft jolted free and swept backwards, sliding sideways toward the guardrails and the long, deadly embankment.
        Hulann let up on the pedal, but too quickly as… … the engine died and the blades choked and he no longer had control of his machine…
        They struck the rails, tilted, went over.
        The car hung there, caught on some projection, teetering. Then it fell.
        Glass shattered.
        And they were rolling down, down…

Chapter Five
        
        It was a hundred and five minutes before dawn of that day.
        In the city that had once been called Atlanta when there were men to make with names, one of the few human metropolises not destroyed by its owners in the last convulsions of their defeat, Sara Laramie moved through the iron castings in the foundry yard, keeping low so that she was at all times concealed from view on at least three sides. The Hunter Relemar was in pursuit of her, had been for some days. She did not know that he was called a Hunter by his kind or that his name was Relemar. It was obvious, however, that he was different from other naoli.
        He moved quietly, stealthily, like a wraith. She had watched him prowl a street from a vantage point on the roof of a department store. At times, she had even lost sight of him, though there was damned little he could hide behind in an open avenue. She had been glad she was not down there, running. She saw, for the first time, why she had not been able to lose him before this. He was not a naoli. Not really.
        He was something else. Something more.
        A special breed of animal.
        While she had been watching, he suddenly turned and scanned the rooftops along the street, as if some extra sense had warned him of her whereabouts. She had ducked behind the parapet, breathless, trembling. Her hands had begun to shake, and she felt a scream building up in her lungs that she could not allow into her throat.
        Time passed.
        She looked out.
        Relemar the Hunter with the Fourth Division of the naoli occupation forces, was still there, standing in his dark clothes-the only naoli she had ever seen dressed- and watched, listened, felt the darkened buildings for her presence.
        Then he moved, crossing toward the department store… Deep scream, lovely scream, wanting out…
        At the last minute, he veered from his projected path and went into the building next door.
        She breathed out, swallowed the scream, digested it. Then she moved fast, down through the department store, into the street and away before he could return.
        Now, in the foundry yard, she slipped from hulk to hulk until she reached the thousand-gallon storage tank in which she now made her home. She went to the end, pulled open the entry plate as gently as possible (it squeaked; Relemar the Hunter listened for squeaks) and went inside, deposited her burlap sack of food on the metal floor. She had found a rare little grocery that dealt in specially still packaged foods-of all things! She was not partial to such exotic, weird items for her menu, but it was all she could find. With the destruction of the city generators, the dial-kitchens no longer functioned.
        Behind her, farther back in the single room of the hollow tank, there was a scraping noise.
        Rats, she thought. They found their way in through the entry plate which had no lock, of course-and which would have been sealed had the tank ever been completed. Rats did not bother her as much as they once would have. She would have run screaming only a year ago. Now she had learned how to beat them, how to avoid their lunges. Not the mutated kind, of course. Just the friendly little earth normal breeds. She had not seen a mutated rat since shortly after the fall of the city.
        She bent and found the glow lamp next to the entrance, fumbled with it in the utter pitch.
        The tank brightened to a warm yellow.
        She turned to locate the rat, choked, and dropped the glow lamp. It fell to the floor, making shadows dance on the walls, was still, unbroken.
        "Hello," said Relemar the Hunter.
        He walked slowly forward from the rear of the room.
        He was smiling. Or trying to.
        This time, she did not suppress the scream…
        It