by James Axler
"Don't waste the lead," J.B. said, and pulled a glass bottle from his munitions bag. It was filled with a pale tan fluid, with a greasy rag tied about the neck. "Thought we might have trouble with this thing again, so I made a few Molotov cocktails."
Krysty understood. There had been plenty of empty whiskey bottles in Langford's trunks, and the PT boat had carried more coal oil than they could ever need for the turbine. Then a new sound caught her attention, and she strained to hear it again, but there was nothing audible above the cries of the struggling mutie.
"Use it!" Ryan ordered, pumping in a few rounds with the 9 mm SIG-Sauer. No wonder the locals had leashed cougars to the bridge to hold off the insect. Axes and flintlocks were useless against this monster.
Lighting the rag, J.B. tossed the Molotov overhand and it hit the ground in front of the spider. As the bug retreated from the pool of fire, the Armorer withdrew another from his bag.
"Let it die," Mildred said, touching his arm. "There could be a lot more of these on the island. We might need every Molotov to reach the mesa."
J.B. lit another rag and threw the bottle. It crashed on the upper girders of the bridge, raining liquid fire onto the spider. Squealing in agony, the insect rammed the trestle, trying to squeeze inside. Black blood mixed with the flames as the colossal bug extended its head on a segmented neck, the mandibles snapping at the tiny humans.
The SIG-Sauer coughed in response as Ryan put a slug into its head. Squealing, the huge spider fought free of the narrow opening to now climb on top of the trestle, stabbing at the norms with its clawed legs. The light of the burning mutie illuminated the entire expanse of the ancient bridge, casting nightmarish shadows on both of the island cliffs.
"Son of a bitch!" J.B. growled, craning his neck. "Can't use a Molotov with it up there!"
Having no other choice, the companions cut loose with their blasters, the barrage of slugs tearing chunks from its mottled flesh. Hissing in unbridled fury, the giant shook the entire length of the bridge as it strove to break the steel girders and reach the defiant food.
Nearly falling into a pothole, Mildred shot a leg as it stabbed toward her, and it quickly withdrew. But another reached for Doc, and he hacked it off with his sword. Pouring forth blood, the stump withdrew and a different leg reached between the girders to slam the whitehair from behind. With a cry, he fell onto the cracked pavement and lay very still.
Searching for loose rounds in her bearskin coat, Krysty heard the odd sound again, clearer and closer this time. Some sort of a mechanical noise. Another PT boat?
The woman shouted a warning, just as the far end of the bridge violently detonated, the support girders screeching in protest as the bridge tilted to the side, the concrete cracking into a million pieces. The companions were thrown from their feet and hit the side girders hard. As they clung for dear life to keep from falling, the burning spider plummeted into the dark waters below, and Ryan cursed as he saw a Petey steaming through the moonlit waters, numerous flashes coming from its rocket pod.
"They found us!" he snarled, trying to reach the Steyr, tangled in the straps of his backpack and canteen.
"DO IT AGAIN!" Brandon shouted, leaning forward over the controls. "Launch them all! Everything we got!"
Fuses were lit, and the rest of the Firebirds rustled out of the pod spraying smoke and hot sparks in their wake. Fiery explosions dotted the entire length of the bridge as the rockets hit, tearing the rusty structure apart. The twisting metal screeching, the trestle fell away from the opposite cliffs, breaking apart as it hurtled into the choppy waves. The assorted tons of predark steel crashed down on top of each other for what seemed an eternity.
"They're aced," the pilot stated with a grin when peace and quiet finally returned. "Ain't nobody coulda lived through that!"
The crew cheered in victory.
"Mebbe, but they have escaped us before," Brandon growled, and the jubilation raggedly stopped. "Bosun, launch a torpedo at the wreckage. No, launch both of them. Afterwards we hit the island."
"The island, sir?" a sec man asked, confused.
"The bastards were fighting a mutie to get to the other side of that bridge," the lieutenant stated. "Not running away from us, but headed toward something. Hell, there might be more of them hidden in the jungle. I want half of the remaining Firebirds launched at anything in sight."
"Ain't nothing there but some ruins," the pilot offered.
"We'll start with those, then hit that tall mesa," Brandon said, pointing at one surrounded by a flock of condors. "It'll make a good base camp for a recce. Then at dawn, we'll land and see exactly what those people were running toward."
"Who knows? It could even be something the lord baron might have a use for," the lieutenant added thoughtfully.
Epilogue
"Here they come again!" a sec man cried, firing his flintlock.
The rest of the sec men and civilians hacked at the muties scrambling through the smashed gate of Cold Harbor ville, but without any black powder for their blaster, the clubs and axes did little to stem the invading horde.
Once inside the ville, the stickies spread out, hooting wildly and attacking anything that moved with their stone clubs: horses, dogs, children, it made no difference. Red blood flowed along the muddy streets of the ville as the slaughter became absolute.
A small group of norms had taken refuge behind the sandbag wall surrounding the locked armory. While a blacksmith pounded on the lock with a sledgehammer, the rest valiantly fought off the stickies with crossbows, knives and crude spears. As the dead piled at the wall, a sec man cried out and plucked a sliver of bamboo from his hand. Trying to toss it away, the sec man discovered that he couldn't open his numb ringers. Then a terrible cold flowed up his veins and into his chest. Breathing became labored, then impossible, and the ville guard fell with his mouth flapping, as if trying to chew air into his dead lungs.
More bamboo darts hit the last defenders and, as they fell, the stickies swarmed over the people in savage abandonment, their writhing tentacles tearing the norms into bloody gobbets.
Strolling among the carnage were a dozen barefoot girls in loose clothing. Oddly, aside from some scars and length of hair, the strange females looked almost identical, an unnatural similarity far beyond that of sisters, or even twins.
"Bitches!" a sec man cried, wielding an ax as he ran at them, swinging his dire weapon. "You did this to us!"
Casually, one of the girls shot him in the throat with a blowpipe. He stopped instantly, then tumbled to the filthy ground, his ax still clenched in a paralyzed fist.
"No, human," she whispered. "Your race did it to yourselves."
As the strange females turned a corner, a stickie blindly charged at the two-legs until it got close, then the creature darted away, hooting in terror. Amused, they continued walking, watching the norms and muties battle to the death, then stopped to observe the stickies rip skin off the human and mutie corpses alike to reach the tender organs inside. The feeding was very noisy, almost bestial in manner.
"How disgusting," a girl sniffed in disdain, stepping over the bodies of the slain. "Look at the mess they're making!"
"Oh, let them feed," Silver chuckled, tucking her blowpipe away. "The extra food will nicely fatten the mindless ones for when they go into our cooking pots."
"No wonder the Maker created us," she hissed in amusement. "Norms are completely helpless without their weapons."
"Most, but not all, sister," Silver corrected, remembering the fight at sea between the two PT boats.
"Some might even be as dangerous as us," she added grimly.
A forked tongue dangling from lush lips, one of the clones shrugged in response, while another knelt to knife a wounded man trying to crawl under a toppled wheelbarrow. He feebly tried to fight back, and so the chuckling mutie took her time finishing the gory job.
EVENTUALLY a bloodred dawn rose over the Pacific islands, the dim sunlight revealing six bodies sprawled on a distant shore, the
only movement coming from the gentle swells cresting over the deathly still forms.
