Ryan was glad for the strength of the wire-thin nylon rope as he felt it strain along its short length as Doc teetered above him. He wasn’t so pleased as he looked at the scrub tree.
“Good heavens!” Doc exclaimed as he steadied himself, his feet finding solid purchase beneath him, his balance regained. For the tree bent under his grip to reveal a bird’s nest in the center. And in the nest were four jet-black chicks of a young age, their mouths open automatically for food at the movement of their nest. Their voices broke the quiet of the air with harsh, strident cries that belied their small size. He peered over them, momentarily enchanted and forgetting his precarious position.
As one, they snapped at his face with strident cries, panic and fear of attack overtaking their desire to feed.
The loud cries were echoed by a deeper, much more strident call. Doc looked up, and the only impression he received was of a black shape swooping down on him at great speed. He barely had time to raise an arm to protect himself before the bird was upon him, screeching loudly and pecking at him with a beak as hard as the rocks to which Doc clung.
Doc hugged in close to the rocks, his face contorted in a rictus of pain as the flesh of his hand, clinging to the scrub, was ripped and torn by the slashing cross of the bird’s beak, the stench of its body and the shiny black glare of its feathers filling his vision as the rhythmic beating of its wings and the hideous eardrum-splitting screech of its anger filled his ears.
“Fireblast! Move away from the bastard, Doc,” Ryan yelled as he drew the SIG-Sauer from its holster and tried to aim at the bird. It was mutated somewhere along its lineage from hawk, but the beak had developed into a honed knife-edge slashing machine. Its dark eyes gleamed dull hatred as it bobbed and weaved around Doc, hovering close to him, its ten-foot wingspan obscuring the man’s huddled form. Ryan bobbed and weaved like the bird, trying to line up a shot that wouldn’t risk hitting Doc, but it was proving impossible.
Below the one-eyed warrior, Dean, Krysty and Mildred had all drawn their blasters. All were good target pistols, but the bird was saving itself by the sheer ferocity of its attack, staying too close to its prey for them to risk loosing a shot without hitting Doc.
At the bottom of the rope, J.B. and Jak exchanged a hurried glance.
“Too close for a shot,” the Armorer yelled.
Jak nodded his understanding, and was already scrambling up the rock face, the rope pulling tight against J.B. as the albino passed him. From the patched and ragged camou jacket, Jak palmed one of the lethal and razor-sharp leaf-bladed knives with which he was so deadly. Taking aim, he let fly with a throw that propelled the knife straight and true for the flapping creature’s vital organs.
Jak was astonished to see the knife hit the black hawk’s feathers and bounce harmlessly away. The bird didn’t even seem to notice the knife’s impact.
“Hot pipe! The mutie must have armor for feathers,” Dean exclaimed.
“Figures,” Mildred said. “If it rains like this, it’d be a protection against the acid.”
“Nice theory, Mildred, but it doesn’t help Doc,” Ryan shouted down to her, still trying to get in a clean shot at the bird. “Doc’ll have to try and deal with this himself.”
Which was something Doc was attempting. His hand had almost gone numb on the scrub from the overload of nerve damage and pain he was feeling. He felt his frock-coat sleeve ripped by the iron-hard beak, and the similarly armored claws plucked at his pants, tearing through to the flesh beneath. He knew that unless he acted swiftly, he would be forced to let go of the scrub, let his other arm fall and leave his face and eyes vulnerable to attack.
He had to chance all on one throw of the dice. Doc had not, in his youth, been a gambling man, recognizing the innate losing chance stacked against the fates. But since arriving in the Deathlands, he had learned that sometimes the long odds were the only ones.
Like now…
The bird’s attack had been insistent and concentrated, yet not truly effective. Something at the back of Doc’s mind told him that, sooner or later, the bird would have to fly away from him or change the angle of its attack in an attempt to penetrate his feeble defenses. When that happened, then he would have the briefest of moments in which to launch his own attack, or for his companions to come to his defense. Yet he knew he couldn’t leave it to them, as they may be undergoing the same trial as himself.
This was something he had to do alone. And it had to be soon. He prayed that his chance would come soon.
As Doc’s mind raced to formulate some plan of action, the black hawk screeched once more. But was that a note of irritation or frustration he could hear in its cry?
His moment had come. The bird, tired of mounting a seemingly ineffective attack, had drawn back in order to change the angle at which it attacked the prone figure. As it hovered just a few feet away from him, shining black wings flapping loudly and remorselessly in the air, blocking the sun, Doc used his few seconds’ respite in which to act.
Still keeping his handhold on the scrub—for in truth his shredded flesh was too numb to move with any speed—Doc moved the arm that had been flung protectively across his face.
It seemed to him that it moved in slow motion, but with a relentless inevitability. He didn’t take his eyes from the bird as it hovered, and could see in the glittering dark eyes the recognition that he had made himself vulnerable to it. It wheeled in the air, rotating its body to swoop back and attack the unprotected face.
All the while, Doc’s free arm moved across his body to the LeMat, which he kept in his belt. The heavy double-barreled percussion pistol came up in his hand, leveled at the bird as it flew toward him.
The black creature filled his vision, the heavy dark feathers gleaming in the light and rain with an oily, almost metallic sheen. The screech of the bird’s cries were almost symphonic, so close to Doc that he could hear strange and wonderful voices in the cacophony that filled his ears. The razor-sharp, armored beak opened, exposing the red maw and fetid breath that was close enough to hit Doc in hot waves as it cried out. Underneath the bird’s body, its claws were raised, ready to grip, tear and rend.
It took an almost arrogant patience to wait until the barrels of the LeMat were nearly touching the beak as it closed in, a perfect grasp of timing as his strained arm muscles were trembling, causing the pistol to waver slightly. Just a moment too soon, and some of the shot may have missed the bird. A moment too late, and the talons would have caused serious—perhaps fatal—injury before he had discharged his shot.
But Doc’s timing was perfect. As the pistol touched the tip of the beak, his fingers tightened, gripping the stock of the pistol and squeezing the trigger. First one barrel, then the other, in succession so rapid that it almost sounded as one shot. A shot muffled by the explosion’s enclosure in the bird’s mouth.
Ball and grape at enormous velocity discharged into the maw of the mutie bird. Although its outer feathers, and possibly the skin underneath, had become hardened and mutated to protect itself against the acid rains of the area, the inside of its body was still soft and fleshy. Even the armored beak could prove no protection against ball and grape at such close range.
The bird screeched a high, almost inaudible note that was choked short as its throat disappeared in a spray of tangled flesh, blood and feather. The beak was ripped into sharp ribbons that whipped up into the glittering eyes, tearing them as it had torn at Doc and all its prey. The eyes, perhaps, registered surprise at its own natural advantage being turned against itself.
