Judas Strike

by James Axler

  Only Ryan found that he still couldn’t get it out of the holster. There still wasn’t enough room to pull the blaster free. The crab scuttled from the weeds, and he turned to keep it in view. The creature was going to attack again, and Ryan couldn’t chance another strike from its tail.

  Having no choice, Ryan fell on his back and started to pull the trigger of the blaster, shooting through the bottom of the old leather holster. Caught in the open, the crab paused at the gentle cough of the silenced weapon, then jumped as it was hit by a 9 mm Parabellum round. The soft lead slug punched completely through the shell, shattering the chitin and exposing the pulsating organs inside. But instead of running, the mutie actually charged, the undamaged stinger lashing about insanely.

  Firing nonstop, Ryan swung his legs after the side walker, tracking as best he could. The first couple of shots only scored furrows in its hard shell, but then a round slammed into the gaping shoulder wound. Organs burst apart as the slug plowed through the mutie. The barbed tail went instantly limp, the crab shuddered violently, then toppled over and went very still.

  Keeping a close watch on the creature, a grunting Ryan reclaimed his knife and without any further interruptions was soon free from the imprisoning white goo.

  “Tough bastard,” he growled, pocketing the spent clip and sliding in one of his few remaining reloads. There was more ammo in his backpack, wherever the hell that was. It had to have fallen into the sea along with everybody else. He could only hope the others had also washed up on the same shore that he had. But he knew the backpack and the extra ammo were long gone. He had to save every round he could.

  Then his oddly numb knee buckled, and the man got busy cutting away a section of his pants until the stab wound was exposed. The skin was white and puckered at the center, a bright red all around and very tender to the touch. Not good.

  Wiping the blade clean on his shirt, Ryan played the flame of a predark butane lighter along the blade to sterilize it. Then he carefully sliced open the skin and a clear oily fluid oozed out. Good, the poison was still in the wound, not in his blood yet. He had a chance. Squeezing the area hard, Ryan kneaded the numb flesh until more transparent fluid came out, then some yellow pus and finally red blood.

  Some feeling was returning, and the man braced himself for the next part. This was going to be bad, but without anybody to suck out any remaining poison he had no choice. Jacking the slide on his blaster, Ryan ejected a few rounds, cut off the wads of lead and poured the silvery powder directly into the raw wound. The nitro stung slightly, then he flicked the butane lighter into life and ignited the powder.

  There was a sharp flash without smoke, and Ryan heard or saw nothing for several minutes as he rode out the explosion of pain. Slowly, the throbbing waves of hot torture ebbed, leaving his leg wrapped in throbbing anguish. Wiping the sweat off his face, Ryan inspected the wound. All of the hair was burned off his thigh, and the flesh around the puncture was puckered with white ridges. Gently touching it, he found the area hurt like hell, but that only meant he had moved fast enough. The poison appeared to be gone.

  Reaching for his canteen, Ryan cursed to find it missing, and made do with sucking a smooth pebble to curb his thirst. Using a clean handkerchief to bind the cauterized wound, he tried to stand and found that normal walking was impossible. The best he could do was a slow step and drag. He’d have to find a stick or something to use as a crutch if he was going to do much traveling. His longblaster would have been perfect, but that was with his backpack.

  Shuffling over to the corpse of the mutie crab, Ryan saw its remaining legs were faintly twitching. A hunter since childhood, Ryan knew that lots of things moved slightly after they were chilled, but he had no intention of taking a chance on this bastard. Ruthlessly, he stomped the corpse, grinding the thing under the heel of his combat boot until there was no chance it could regenerate.

  Satisfied for the moment, Ryan stood tall and glanced around. His next move was to find the others, and hopefully his backpack. But only low swells of sand with some patches of dry weeds were visible in every direction. Nothing else. Rubbing his chin, Ryan wondered how long he had been unconscious. Could the crab have eaten six other people, and he was simply the last? But checking his beard, Ryan decided it had only been a day or two. Nowhere near long enough, unless there were a hell of a lot more of these crabs.

  The sounds of the ocean came from several directions, and Ryan headed for the loudest waves. That should be the closest, and the beach was a logical place to start a recce. At first, the going was slow, his wounded leg stiff and unable to carry his full weight, but the pain diminished and strength returned after only a few dozen yards.

  Reaching the crest of a dune, Ryan paused as his stomach loudly announced its emptiness with a long sustained rumble. Yeah, it had to have been a while since that big meal at Cold Harbor ville. Ryan searched his pockets for anything edible and found only sand. Turning, he glanced at the dead crab and saw that it was already covered with a flock of seagulls tearing the corpse apart with their needle-sharp beaks. The man touched his blaster, then decided against it. Raw gull tasted like he imagined used underwear would. He wasn’t quite that hungry yet. Besides, he was down to the last full clip for the SIG-Sauer. Best to save every round until absolutely necessary. If he didn’t find his backpack, there might not be any more.

  Hobbling down the far side of the dune, Ryan found the tracks where he had been dragged into the weeds and followed the marks with his blaster firmly in hand. The dune was cut with a rain gully that ended in a fan of small rocks, which extended across a pristine white beach. A hundred or so feet away lay a lone figure sprawled on the sand. Long flame-red hair covered the features, but the woman was wearing Khaki coveralls, a bearskin coat and blue Western boots decorated with the outline of a spread-winged falcon. There was no question it was Krysty Wroth, and her chest rose and fell in a regular pattern. She was alive.

  As Ryan worked his way across the beach, a fat blue crab crawled into view from the other side of the supine woman and started dribbling white goo from its segmented mouth onto her right arm. In one smooth move, Ryan aimed and fired. The distance was fifty yards, but the soft-lead slug slammed the crab off the top of her breast and sent it tumbling into the ocean. The mutie hit with a splash and sank out of sight, leaving a trail of green blood in its descending wake.

  Reaching the woman, Ryan checked her over quickly and was relieved when there were no signs of damage. “Krysty, it’s me,” he said softly, shaking her shoulder.

  Her eyelids fluttered, then opened wide. “Ryan?” she croaked, her long hair flexing and moving around her lovely face as if the red filaments were endowed with a life of their own.

  “Alive and well, lover,” he answered gently.

  Coughing hard, she tried to sit up and became instantly wide-awake. “Gaia! What’s wrong with my arm?”

  Drawing his knife, Ryan brought her up to date while cutting away the tacky goop. When he was finished, Krysty pulled her arm free from the white residue smeared on her coveralls. The material stretched but didn’t rip. Rising carefully, she swayed for a moment, then stood easily, her animated hair a wild corona in the breeze.

  “Any sign of the others?” Krysty asked, drawing her blaster and checking the weapon. Safe in its leather holster, the S&W .38 revolver was undamaged, the stainless-steel piece still shiny with oil. Cracking the cylinder, she ejected four spent shells and tucked them into a pocket of her bearskin coat before thumbing in fresh rounds. Without her pack, the woman was down to only five spare rounds for the revolver.

  “Not yet,” Ryan answered truthfully. “But we can search for them later. Gotta find some shelter for the night. It’s getting dark, and those crabs will be a triple bitch to ace in the dark.”

  “Could use some food, too,” Krysty said over the growling of her stomach. Briefly, her hands checked pockets and came up empty. Not even a used piece of gum. “Got your canteen? Mine was in my backpack.”

  He
shook his head. “Same here.”

  “Gaia! Hopefully those washed onto the same island as us,” Krysty said, remembering only a few days ago when the precious supplies had sunk into a shark-filled harbor. They had gotten them back, but at a terrible cost.

  “Hell, I’m surprised any of us survived that rocket attack from the PT boat,” he stated. “Got no idea how we stayed afloat in the water for so long.”

  Grunting in agreement, Krysty looked along the beach in both directions. The clean white sand was perfectly flat where the waves reached. Not a footprint was in sight.

  “We could split up,” Krysty suggested. “Go both ways and save time.”

  “Trader always said never to divide your forces in unknown territory,” Ryan said, quoting his old teacher. “We’ll go a hundred yards toward that dune, and if we don’t find anything, we’ll try the other way. Folks almost always turn to the right, do it automatically if they’re hurt or confused.”

  Brushing some loose sand from her shaggy coat, Krysty studied Ryan for a moment, then smiled.

  “Sounds good, lover,” she agreed, putting some feeling into the words. “Lead the way.”

  The compact sand of the beach made for easy walking in spite of Ryan’s bad leg, and the couple reached the turnback point in only a short time. After glancing around, Ryan started back when a motion in the sky caught Krysty’s attention.

  “Gulls,” she said, pointing. “Might be circling a kill.”

  “Probably only some dead fish, but we better check,” he agreed, rubbing the wound on his thigh. It was throbbing now, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

  Continuing onward, the man and woman went past a stinking pile of rotting seaweed. Just beyond that, the beach started to rise in irregular mounds of what they could tell were pieces of predark buildings and broken sidewalks. Wreckage from skydark. A fallen collection of marble and bricks blocked the way, and the pair was forced to wade waist deep into the surf to get past. Both kept a sharp watch for crabs, but none was in sight below the foamy waves.

  Once back on the shore, Krysty stopped in her tracks and Ryan scowled as they saw the corpse of a gigantic spider sprawled in the wet sand farther down the beach. The mound of flesh rose more than six feet high, the splayed legs dangling loosely in the shallows. Its head was completely gone, the yellow-and-black body fur charred as if by fire, loose strips of flesh hanging off the gleaming white bones of an internal skeleton. And its entire length was covered with dozens of the blue crabs. Sharp pincers ripped away strips of the rotting flesh as the shelled scavengers steadily tore the spider apart. The skin writhed from endless motion inside the body, and a crab wiggled into view from the neck stump to pass out a glistening length of entrails. Some small crabs danced around the crowd of larger blues, occasionally darting forward to grab a morsel of food for themselves. The rest of the meat was being carried into the shoals by the bigger crabs. They disappeared beneath the waves, only to return moments later with empty pincers.

  Frowning deeply, Ryan saw that he had fought one of the small crabs. These new ones were huge, and looked brutishly strong, their legs as thick as soup cans. He wondered if the companions had ridden the dead insect like a raft. Made sense.

  In a flash of white, a gull dived from the sky toward the ripe corpse and a crab perched on the spider’s back leaped into the air, slashing with both stingers. A spray of feathers went swirling, but the undamaged gull winged once more into the sky, crying loudly in frustration.

  They fought in teams, Ryan realized, and with assigned tasks. Just how smart were the creatures?

  “Too damn smart,” Krysty said aloud, as if reading his thoughts.

  “No sign of the others,” Ryan said, studying the area for strips of cloth or human bones. “Best we check the other side. Just to be sure.”

  Thumbing back the hammer on her blaster, Krysty started to walk inland to go around the feeding ground. Ryan limped along as best he could, but a couple of the smaller crabs scuttled over to investigate. Once they were in the weeds and out of sight of their brethren, Ryan dispatched the muties with his silenced pistol, then Krysty crushed their heads under her boots to make sure the crabs stayed dead.

  The muffled crunches of splintering chitin caught the attention of the large blue patrolling on top of the spider, and its eye stalks extended fully to watch as the two-legs traveled around the precious lump of food. Since they kept their distance and didn’t threaten the horde, the big male saw no reason to attack them and continued its vigil against the winged predators in the sky.

  Stopping on the crest of the dune, Ryan and Krysty could see there was nothing on the lee side of the huge corpse to indicate that any human had been slain by the crabs. But the lack of physical remains didn’t raise any false hopes. It didn’t mean the others were alive; it simply showed that their friends hadn’t been chilled and eaten here.

  “Back we go,” Krysty said listlessly, holstering her piece.

  “Later,” Ryan countered, walking along the top of the dune heading toward a ragged cliff. “First, we eat.”

  Shielding her face with a cupped hand against the setting sun, Krysty soon spied what he was referring to. Food, and lots of it.

  Working their way back to the shore along a rocky arroyo, Krysty and Ryan splashed into an irregular bay dotted with hundreds of small tide pools. Basins of seawater had been trapped in depressions in the hard ground as the tide withdrew, accidentally leaving behind some of the bounty of the sea. Most of the puddles contained only water and colorful shells, but several were impromptu aquariums housing an assortment of small marine life, tiny fish, sea horses or waving kelp.

  Kneeling in a pool, Ryan reached into the inches of water and came up with a fat oyster. “Dinner,” he announced, tossing over the mollusk.

  Krysty made the catch and eagerly pulled out a knife to open the hard shell. The oyster resisted and failed. “There must be hundreds of them,” she stated, chewing steadily. “Enough food for months!” The raw meat was slimy but delicious. However, her stomach rumbled unabated, the tiny morsel barely denting her ravenous appetite.

  Tossing her another, Ryan readily agreed. He took the third oyster himself, splitting the shell and slurping down the creature intact. Chewing would have only wasted time. Casting the empty shell aside, he started to pass Krysty another when he saw the woman was already splitting an oyster she had located.

  Together, the couple waded across the basin raiding every tide pool, devouring the oysters equally. They almost feasted on a small squid, but the nimble creature squirted out oily black ink when captured and squirmed from Ryan’s grasp to escape back into the rising sea.

  “Too bad,” Ryan said, washing his hands clean in a puddle. “They taste like chicken.”

  Spitting out a flawless pearl, Krysty started to make a comment when she was interrupted by the crackle of distant gunfire, closely followed by the dull thud of a black-powder gren.

  “Sounds like us,” she stated, sheathing the blade.

  “Could be. Let’s go see,” Ryan said, and they began to splash toward the sounds of combat.

  Chapter Two

  Not far away, a group of armed people strode around the base of a predark lighthouse. Located at the far end of a sandbar that jutted into the ocean, the hundred-year-old structure was intact and undamaged from war or weather. The sloping walls of granite blocks were as strong as the day it was built, and the resilient Plexiglas panels unbroken around the crystal-and-glass beacon atop the tower.

  The roof was covered with bird droppings, and piles of seaweed and driftwood partially buried under windblown sand were banked against the base of the tower. The white paint had been removed by sheer passage of time to expose the blue-veined granite blocks composing the building. Unfortunately, there was no door in sight, and fat blue crabs were underfoot everywhere. It seemed as if the more the companions shot, the more crawled out of the water. It was as if the damn creatures were attracted to explosions.

  Swinging his s
hotgun off his shoulder, J. B. Dix rammed the stock of the weapon against the side of the lighthouse. The resulting thud gave no indication of weakness, or even of empty space beyond the adamantine material. The lighthouse was a fortress.

  Adjusting his glasses, the wiry man returned the shotgun to its usual position over his shoulder slung opposite the Uzi machine pistol.

  “Nothing,” he said, rubbing his unshaved chin. “Anybody got some ideas?”

  “Well, the balcony is too high to reach,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth stated, her hand resting on a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. The faded lettering M*A*S*H was almost unreadable, but the bag was neatly patched and contained a meagre store of medical supplies.

  Held at her side was a sleek Czech ZKR target pistol, a state trooper gun belt with attached holster strapped over her regular belt. Loops for extra ammo ringed the gun belt, but most of them were empty. The vacant sheath of a small knife peeked from her left boot, and a long thin dagger bearing the logo of the Navy SEALs hung from her belt.

  Just then, something blue scuttled around the side of the lighthouse, closely followed by three men armed with blasters, their faces grim and unsmiling. As the crab came close, J.B. crushed it underfoot. The shell burst apart, and the hideously mangled mutie started thrashing about.

  “Bastard things are everywhere,” Dean Cawdor complained, kicking the bleeding creature into the waves. It disappeared with a splash. “I killed six more on the other side.”