fury and fear—fear that seemed to be coming off them in waves, and was driving them onward. The mass of mutie flesh filled the clearing in less than a few seconds.
Fingers had twitched on triggers, tensing and untensing for the moment when they would have to squeeze to unleash a barrage of blasterfire at the optimum moment to cause the most damage.
And now that moment had arrived.
“Fire!” Ryan yelled. “Aim at their heads.”
The roar of blasterfire was intense, so loud that it washed over the noise made by the pack, drowning everything in the liquid shout of the pistol and machine-pistol action. The screams of the first stickies to feel the impact were lost in the hurricane of sound, but the reactions of their fellows showed that the initial burst had registered through the ranks.
Jak’s Colt Python had the force of a Magnum round. The slugs he squeezed off ripped through their initial target, the rippling force of the bullets causing fatal damage almost instantaneously, the exit velocity such that the slugs cannoned into the head of the next stickie in line, taking it out at the same time.
Krysty, Mildred and Ryan had blasters that demanded more precision: the Smith & Wesson, the ZKR and Ryan’s favored Steyr all taking out one stickie at a time with rapidly delivered single shots that ran true and chilled.
But it was J.B. and Doc who could do the most damage. The LeMat percussion pistol’s second chamber, with its heavy ball, could do a similar job as the Colt Python, the heavily charged ball driving through one stickie and taking out the mutie directly behind as it retained enough momentum to cause lethal damage. It was, inevitably, the shot chamber that was the most deadly, the pellets striking home at a number of targets. Those that it didn’t chill immediately were either trampled beneath the feet of others as they fell, or turned and lashed out in blind anger and pain, fighting with their own.
However, it took valuable time to reload the LeMat, so it was as well that J.B. could fire repeatedly from his Smith & Wesson M-4000, each cartridge load of barbed-metal fléchettes causing damage to the stickie hordes. The pump action enabled him to fire swiftly, and his natural skill and affinity with weapons made reloading a fluid and fast motion, which seemed to come as second nature.
The channel into the small clearing was soon filling with the chilled and the injured, forming a block to the other muties. That should have been the end of matters. Stickies were normally cowardly and would run if attacked by any kind of superior force.
Not this time. Whatever had frightened and agitated them scared them far more than the prospect of being chilled by weapons fire. Instead of turning back to something that terrified them more than the blasterfire, they continued to advance. And if they couldn’t move in a straight line, they would try to find a way through the denser foliage.
Ryan cursed under his breath when he saw them begin to divert. It was always a risk to stand and fight such a large number of stickies simply because of the sheer weight of their numbers. The only advantage that made it even feasible was that the stickies would be likely to follow the same route through the woods and thus would be concentrated in a small area.
The fact that they were now spreading out, moving into areas where it would be hard for the companions to hit them in bulk, and would be able to use the cover of the trees, made it a much more difficult task—one that verged on impossible at the best of times, let alone now. The companions had been marching all day and hadn’t had time to recover from the previous night’s fight with the mutie raccoons. This had been—they had hoped—a similar situation. Not now.
“Spread out,” Ryan yelled.
“There’s a lot down, they’re thinned out,” J.B. shouted. “Watch for them circling…Jak, what can you see?”
“Less half left,” the albino mutie replied pithily. “Still moving blind,” he added.
“So are we,” Krysty yelled at the Armorer and Jak. “Be our eyes.”
Down on the forest floor, Krysty was right. The dense foliage echoed with the sounds of chilled and chilling stickies, mingling with the enraged cries of the remaining pack and the rustle of the foliage as it was disturbed. There were sounds from all around, making it hard to pinpoint the danger. The light was poor, the woodland in shadow and it was almost impossible to pick out movement through the density and the dark. She, Ryan, Doc and Mildred were blinded at ground level. But J.B. and Jak were still in position up trees and had a better view of what was going on around.
Better, but still not great.
“Shit, can’t see too much,” J.B. yelled over the noise. “Three of them to your right, Millie, about three o’clock.”
Mildred furrowed her brow, frowning heavily as she tried to pick out one noise from another. At the Armorer’s words she turned to her right and squeezed out three shots at the first noises she heard. Screams of pain confirmed that she had found a target with at least two of the shells. But the third hadn’t quite finished the job. An enraged stickie, pouring blood from a neck wound, crashed through the undergrowth and was upon her before she had a chance to move. It crashed into her, driving her backward into the bole of a tree and knocking the breath from her. Her lungs ached for oxygen and lights danced in front of her eyes as she was momentarily stunned. She felt the creature’s hot, fetid breath on her face and, as the lights cleared, could see the blind hate in its pinprick black eyes, all the more intense for the white and hairless skull surrounding them. The stench from its body made her mouth fill with bile. The feel of the suckers on its fingers made her flesh crawl.
It was the gag response that brought her just enough time to react. The stickie made her so nauseous that she projectile vomited into its face. The hot stream of bile and puke hit it squarely, filling its mouth and nostrils, stinging its eyes. The stickie screamed, suddenly blinded, and released its grip, staggering back and clawing at its face. Dragging air into her lungs with a painful, rasping gasp, Mildred brought up the Czech ZKR so that it was level with the creature’s face as it managed to blinkingly clear its eyes. The last thing it would have seen was the barrel and dark maw of the 551 as Mildred squeezed the trigger to release a slug. The exit wound took half of the creature’s thin, eggshell skull with it.
Mildred spit onto the ground, trying to clear her head and the bitter taste of bile from her mouth. That had been too close for comfort.
She dragged herself upright from the bole of the tree, shook her head to clear it and entered the fray once more. She was needed….
Doc was having problems. The LeMat was difficult to reload in a hurry and a cry from the Armorer had alerted him to the fact that a couple of stickies were headed in his direction. Realizing that he wouldn’t have the time to reload the cumbersome percussion blaster, he rapidly holstered it and withdrew the sword from within the silver lion’s-head swordstick that contained the blade tempered and made from the finest Toledo steel. The seemingly old and frail man was deft and quick with the blade, as many had found to their detriment, and he had to use all his skills when one of the stickies burst through the undergrowth and was on him before he had a chance to drag the blade fully from its sheath.
“By the Three Kennedys, I’m not falling that easily,” he breathed, putting his weight on his back foot to stabilize himself as he flicked his wrist, the tendons straining as he rolled the blade emerging from the stick, changing its upward trajectory into an arc so that, as the tip cleared the sheath it flew toward the stickie, arcing across its throat and slicing into the thin, pliable flesh. It parted like rotting meat, the carotid artery severed. The creature stopped in its tracks, mutely clutching its torn neck before tumbling to the ground.
Meanwhile,
