the impact of his bullet and roll across the slick ground, away from its elderly victim. Then Ryan felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he saw the creature scramble around on the ground for a moment before, remarkably, pulling itself up, a bloody hole pulsing at the right-hand side of its head. The crazy mutie dog was still alive, shaking off the effect of the bullet’s impact!
J.B. watched through his binoculars as he stood by Ryan’s shoulder, and the one-eyed man heard his friend’s incredulous mutter of “Dark night” as the canine stood. A few paces ahead of Ryan, Jak broke from the group, sprinting into the field in the direction of the settlement.
The wolf’s long head turned and, for a moment, the dark-furred creature seemed to be peering down the scope of the rifle, its feral, yellow-eyed glare boring directly into Ryan’s right eye as its black lips pulled back from blood-washed teeth.
Ryan didn’t flinch. Settling himself into a stable, kneeling position on the water-slicked blacktop, he squeezed the trigger again, feeling the Steyr drum against his shoulder as it blasted another bullet at the beast. The slug whipped through the air just above the ground until it met with the monster, directly between its rage-filled eyes. Blood erupted from the creature’s face in a red mist, mixing immediately with the drizzling rain.
Ryan didn’t stay to try a third shot. He rolled the rifle from his shoulder and turned to instruct his companions. “Some kind of mutie dogs, mebbe wolves,” he grunted, getting up and leading the way across the broken highway at a fast trot. The others followed, all except Jak, who had already disappeared into the fields, taking it upon himself to get closer to the action in his own way.
Taking deep breaths as he jogged at Ryan’s side, J.B. pulled his M-4000 scattergun from beneath his coat. “Those bastards,” he growled, “are gonna take a little something extra.”
“Any ideas?” Ryan asked.
The Armorer turned to Ryan, loading the scattergun one-handed as they ran along the slippery, broken tarmac toward the settlement. “Keep your eye open,” he instructed with a humorless grin.
AS SOON AS THE BLASTERSHOTS rang out, Jak’s senses went to high alert. His keen mind was already considering options by the time Ryan blasted his first shot from the Steyr, and he had disappeared among the avenues of high wheat crop before Ryan had pumped his second shot into the monstrous creature.
Jak was closer now, his Colt Python clenched in his bone-white hand, as he weaved through the anemic-looking rows of wheat, making his way toward the shacks. The spindly wheat drooped, weighed down by the raindrops that had settled upon it.
It looked like a pack of wolves—at least a dozen, heavy creatures with muscular legs and lean, hungry bodies. Their fur was fecal brown with black streaks, which made them hard to keep track of in the ebbing daylight.
Even as Jak watched, another of the monstrous creatures sprang away from the pack, rushing at a dark-haired woman holding a baby in her arms. The woman jogged backward as the creature howled as it raced at her, arching its back menacingly. Then it leaped, and Jak watched—emotionless—as its jaws clamped around the woman’s neck, rending a hunk of flesh from just below her throat in a dark stain of red. Then it shook its head, tossing her bleeding body aside, blood splashed across its sharp, daggerlike teeth. The woman flopped in a heap on the ground, letting go of her child as she collapsed, mud splattering all around her.
Sec men were scrambling about, trying to frighten away the beasts by firing into the air and firing at the near-impervious monsters themselves, but no one had time—or inclination—to assist in the woman’s plight.
She wasn’t dead yet however, that was what Jak knew. She wasn’t dead, nor was the baby. So Jak ran, head down, arms pumping at his sides, feet striking the rain-soaked soil, rushing to get into a position where he might help her.
Emerging from the field, Jak scanned the scene ahead. The woman was lying still, just a few feet from the monstrous wolf as its jaws widened around the bundled baby that lay wailing on the ground, its pink blanket splattered with mud. The other people from the caravan and three sec men of the ville were running about, desperately fending off the rest of the pack, ducking behind the sheltering walls of the nearby buildings. Jak spotted the bloody remains of another sec man beside the pillbox sentry post, two of the gigantic wolves feasting on his entrails as he kicked and screamed.
Sprinting through the field, Jak turned his attention back to the woman with the baby. He raised the heavy revolver in his hand, sighting down the length of his arm and pulling the trigger as he ran. There was a boom, a flash and the smell of cordite hung in the air as his first shot blasted into the wolf’s flank. Staggered, the foul creature turned its long-muzzled head to face Jak, the baby still clamped, drooping from its jaws.
Jak stopped, his boot heels sliding momentarily in the wet soil, and he reeled off three more shots at the wolf as it began to race toward him, its feet striking the earth in a drumming tarantella, its pace increasing with every step. The first .357 Magnum bullet merely clipped the monster’s ear, but the second and third found their target, drilling into the beast’s right eye, exploding the eyeball and powering onward into its brainpan.
The dark-furred monstrosity staggered a moment, its legs giving way under it like a ville drunk on free hooch night, before opening its jaws and dropping the child to the ground with a thump. The child rolled over and over, howling in shock, and the beast followed, its body sagging into a clump at Jak’s feet. The albino teen warily watched the creature’s legs spasm, kicking out in awful jerking movements as its dying form lay in the soaking, muddy earth.
Then he leaned close, placing the muzzle of the Colt flush against the side of the monster’s head, and pulled the trigger once more. After that, the hulking thing stopped twitching.
Leaning down, Jak picked up the baby. The pink blanket that it was wrapped in was stained with mud and disheveled from the creature’s attack, but the child seemed intact, its eyes screwing up as it wailed. Jak rocked the baby back and forth as he made his way toward the wounded woman who was lying in the mud.
WITH A FINAL BURST of speed, Ryan raced ahead of his companions, the scoped Steyr rifle slapping against his back where he’d slung it, his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster now clenched in his right fist. The Armorer raced to keep up with his longtime friend, sweeping the area with the Smith & Wesson scattergun as the pack of wolves lunged at the locals with the savagery of a raging river bursting its banks. As soon as the pair reached the half-buried pillbox, their weapons spit fire, blasting shot after shot into the crowd of mutie hounds. The dismembered sec man lay there, an explosion of blood where his torso had once been.
A little way back, the remaining companions took up static positions on the cracked blacktop. Doc wielded his deadly LeMat, an ancient percussion pistol that had been adapted to include an additional shotgun barrel capable of unleashing a single, devastating .63-caliber shot. To either side of the white-haired man, Krysty and Mildred were scanning the fields along the sights of their own handguns. Krysty favored a small revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 640, a stubby gun with plenty of stopping power. Across from her, Mildred had her double-action ZKR 551 targeting revolver in her hand.
Mildred’s heart was pounding, and she steadied her grip by placing her free hand tightly beneath the wrist of her right hand. In her other life, a hundred years before, Mildred had been an Olympic free-shooting silver medalist, and she valued the need for a still mind and a steady aim when facing a target, even one as savage and unpredictable as the oversize wolves.
There was a risk that more of the pack were hidden in the crops surrounding them, and the two women were meticulous as they eyeballed the fields in the ebbing light.
“Incoming!”
