style="font-size:15px;"> “Hold on!”
Ryan was jerked off his feet as more bugs swarmed into the area. He took out the nearest two with head shots as three more ran toward him. Ryan brought his legs up just as they lunged at his feet, pushing off the rock face as Jak hauled him up, reaching the top ahead of several more that were already climbing in pursuit.
“Son of a—” Jak had his own blaster in hand and blew two of the ascending insects off the wall, sending them crashing down on the rest. “Time go.”
“You’ve got that right.” Ryan dug out his amphetamine pill and swallowed it, then sent a trio of 9 mm slugs down into the mass, killing two more and injuring one so that all it could to was shriek and writhe on the ground, before his blaster’s action locked back. “Go, go, go!”
Fortunately, the slash on Ryan’s leg was shallow, and he could run with little impairment. He took off after Jak, who was like a white-haired ghost flitting from rock to shadow to rock again.
“Where the...hell’re we...going?” Ryan panted as they ran.
“Just follow,” Jak replied, not even breathing hard. “Got surprise waitin’ for bugs.”
Ryan glanced over his shoulder to find the ground behind them covered with bugs as far as he could see. “Better be a damn good one.”
Jak flashed a death’s-head smile at him. “Is.”
The pill kicked in now, reducing Ryan’s various aches and pains to dull, faraway throbs. His flagging energy level spiked, and soon he’d drawn abreast of Jak, who skidded to a stop beside him. “Head there.”
“There” was a deep, narrow gulch carved out of the rock by wind and water over hundreds of years, snaking up the hill a good sixty or seventy yards. Not waiting for an answer, Jak began to climb, moving so fast up the steep surface he resembled an albino mountain goat.
Ryan followed him, still favoring his injured shoulder. The floor was steep, making the climb difficult, but not impossible. The only question was whether Ryan could reach the top before the burrow-bugs reached him.
It was a close call. Near the summit, the gulch turned almost vertical, making Ryan seek out hand-and footholds to propel himself the last dozen or so feet. Aided by Jak and Ricky, he was half pulled, half dragged onto the top, where he rolled over, breathing heavily.
“You old man,” Jak said, still pulling on his arm.
“Watch it, youngblood,” Ryan said as he pushed himself to his feet. “What’s the plan, hold them off again here?”
“Nope.” Ricky’s teeth gleamed white in the moonlight. “J.B. planned something way better.”
Ryan peeked over the edge to see a large knot of the bugs boiling furiously up the arroyo toward them. “Whatever he’s doing, he better do it fast.”
“Would, if we off this piece rock,” Jak said, dragging him farther back. “Come on!”
Ryan allowed himself to be led away from the edge to the other side of the hilltop, where the rest of the group crouched behind a small outcropping.
“Got Ryan,” Jak said.
“Now look who’s taking his sweet time,” J.B. remarked.
“Yeah, you,” Ryan replied. “Those bugs chased Jak and me clear up here and are going to be coming at us any minute now. What?” he asked on seeing the broad smiles on his friends’ faces.
“Are they, now?” J.B. asked.
As he said that, Ryan heard a dull crump that he felt in the soles of his feet and the pit of his stomach. The ground around them began to shake, and Ryan heard the patter of gravel, followed by the rumble of much larger rocks breaking loose. The noise grew until it was impossible to think, much less talk. A large cloud of dust billowed over everyone, making Ryan and the others cough. After about thirty seconds, the commotion died down, with only scattered falling pebbles and acrid dust hanging in the air left over.
Ryan walked back to the gully’s edge, now several feet farther back from where Jak and he had climbed up. J.B.’s controlled blast had brought down the entire cliff face, turning several tons of rock into a lethal landslide. Waving drifting dust away, Ryan squinted through it to look down the hillside. Other than scattered parts of burrow-bugs—a leg here, a smashed thorax there—sticking out of the large pile of jumbled rocks several stories below, there was no living sign of the small insectile army that had been pursuing them.
“Ricky came up with the idea,” J.B. said as he came up beside him. “Then it was just a matter of finding the right place to set it off.”
“Plus, if fortune smiles on us, the resulting blast should cause no little consternation among those damnably persistent insects,” Doc said.
“Yeah, but even that isn’t the best news,” Krysty said. Taking Ryan’s hand, she led him to the far side of the hill, where the sun was just beginning to rise over the eastern horizon. Across a few foothills below them, he looked out onto a barren wasteland that, although sun-parched and desolate, didn’t contain any sign of the burrowing horde.
Wiping his face free of blood and bug goo, Ryan smiled. “We’re out of the valley.”
One day later, Ryan would have happily taken on one of those bugs again. He was so thirsty he would have hacked its head off with one swing and gulped down its thick, black blood as if it were fine wine.
His swollen tongue flicked out to try to moisten his parched, split lips, but retreated the moment it touched them. From the arid, cracked ground to the sullen, cloudless, crimson-red sky, everywhere he looked, there wasn’t a drop of water to be found. Or plants. Or animals. Once, they heard a long, far-off shriek of some kind of bird, but never saw any sign of it. Doc had grunted that it was staying out of the heat, proving that even a birdbrain was smarter than all of them. Save for the seven people trudging across the bleak landscape, there was no sign of life anywhere—just the endless horizon, wavering and blurry in the relentless heat.
The large lemon-yellow sun beat down mercilessly on them, sapping strength and making it hard to think, much less walk. True to Mildred’s prediction, Doc had crashed after the effects of the amphetamine had worn off. He was now being hauled by J.B., who plodded along with the older man’s arm slung across his shoulders. Mildred was also favoring her injured arm, bound in a crude sling across her chest. Ryan had also felt the slowness and exhaustion of the pill wearing off, but he powered through it, just as he did every other day of his life. His entire body hurt as if someone had beaten each inch of it with a club, but he walked on, determined not to show any weakness.
Even the normally indefatigable Jak was showing signs of wearing down. “Got find shelter soon...gonna cook, we stay out any longer.” His red eyes peered out from the folds of the dingy bright pink T-shirt wrapped around his head and neck, making him look like some kind of demented Bedouin.
“Just...like the...proverbial goose...my milk-haired friend....” Doc wheezed with every limping step.
“Save your strength, Doc,” J.B. said. “Need every bit of it to get through this.”
