Feast by Jeremiah Knight Page B

people who deserved better lives, free of subjugation to racist assholes. Leaving them like this...
    He just couldn’t.
    As Peter followed Boone down the hallway, old wooden floorboards creaking underfoot, he came to the conclusion that he was, without a doubt, a Questionable. But the real question was, could he keep that from Mason long enough to kill the man?

 
     
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    Eddie Kenyon had gone native. With the exception of eating ExoGen crops, he had completely abandoned civility and decorum. He rode bareback upon a massive wooly steed, like something out of the last ice age. The brutes could travel for days without food or water, though both were plentiful. Their powerful bodies and rhino-like horns that split at the ends into an array of sharp, scooped blades, fended off all manner of creatures. Alone, the creatures might fall to an Apex predator, but their strength was in numbers, like the tribe’s.
    They called themselves Chunta, and they had a kind of language. Most was grunts and shouts, but there were words and phrases spoken by the males. Still, this was a matriarchal tribe. The three women stood a foot taller than Kenyon, who was just as much taller than the other males. The males were mostly covered in hair, ran with a sideways galumph and attended to the females’ every need.
    Kenyon, while male, held a position of prestige. The matriarch, Feesa, who spoke stilted English, understood that Kenyon was smarter than the rest of them. And he understood that she could rend his arms from his body as easily as he could petals from a flower. He had become an advisor, helping them defeat enemies, find sufficient food and shelter and most importantly, track their prey.
    While Kenyon was still fully human, and he managed to remain so by foraging non-ExoGen foods, his thirst for vengeance matched the feral woman’s. The Chunta were fiercely loyal to each other. Kenyon suspected that the Change had happened late in these people, when most everything else had already turned into ravenous killing machines. They’d banded together in the early days, forging a bond that remained, even after the Change. Instead of evolving into individual monsters, they had evolved as a group. As did their steeds, which Kenyon thought might have been bison from a farm. Copulation was frequent and polyamorous, often devolving into sweaty, hairy orgies that Kenyon had trouble stomaching. But he did his part, using his knowledge of female anatomy to help maintain his high stature.
    Over the weeks, he had shed his clothing, and thrown himself into tribal living. There were times he even enjoyed the primal comradery. But he never forgot the reason for his devolution and long sojourn across the country: Ella Masse. She had used him, betrayed him, broken his heart and left him for dead. She could have returned to ExoGen with him and Anne. Could have been safe. Could have made things right. Instead, she chose a life on the run, in the wild, with the fucker who had nearly killed him. Peter Crane.
    When Kenyon caught up with them, he was going to kill Jakob, Peter’s son. Make his father and Ella watch. Then he’d do Ella. Make the bitch pay. He’d kill her, but not Anne. That was Ella’s deepest fear, that her precious Anne would have to live in this screwed-up world without a mother. And then it would be Peter’s turn. But Kenyon wouldn’t get the pleasure of taking that asshole’s life. That fell to Feesa, the matriarch, who had been close to the previous matriarch, known as Kristen in her life before the Change. She had been Peter’s wife, whom he killed in front of his son, and the tribe. It was an offense that Feesa would not forgive, and the others followed her lead.
    Kenyon appreciated that about Feesa, and even believed that should he be slain, she would seek vengeance for his life. He wasn’t sure he would do the same, but he had grown fond of her, as much as a man could for a woman like her...if she could really be considered a