James Axler - Child Of Slaughter

Ricky shook his head at the sight. “What the hell is that?”

“Something I’m pretty sure shouldn’t be here,” Ryan told him.

Some fifty yards in the distance, on the same side of the lava channel as Ricky and the others, a plume of steam shot straight up from the ground, climbing at least thirty feet into the sky.

“First lava in Nebraska, now geysers,” Ryan said. “What next? A volcano?”

“Careful what wish for,” Jak stated.

Just then, a second geyser erupted from the ground on the opposite side of the channel, ten yards closer than the first.

That was enough to drive Ryan into action. “Incoming!” He shouted the words over his shoulder, making sure everyone behind him could hear.

But they didn’t really need to. Just as Ryan yelled his warning, Krysty let loose with her latest bloodcurdling scream.

“Form up!” Ryan charged back to Krysty’s side, leaving Jak and Ricky to hold the point of the column.

“Ready test theory?” Jak cocked the Python with one hand and balanced a throwing knife by the tip with the other. “Not fight back, mebbe hallucination not kill?”

Ricky’s eyes danced over the landscape, watching for the first hostile movement. “Not a chance.”

“Thought you say that,” Jak said. “Not believe own theory, huh?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ricky told him. “But even if this is all a hallucination, there’s no way I’m going to let it kick my ass.”

Ryan swept his longblaster left and right, waiting for whoever was coming—or whatever unnatural phenomenon was on the way, in which case, the blaster would be useless.

Behind him, Mildred supported Krysty with her left arm while brandishing her .38 ZKR 551 revolver in her right hand. “Another geyser at two o’clock.”

“I see it.” Ryan wondered if the geysers were a prelude to an attack or disaster…or perhaps the only manifestation of the phenomenon this time. “That makes three.”

“At least we’re out in the open,” said J.B., who was at the rear flank with his Mini-Uzi at the ready. “Not too many hills in this spot, either. Not many places for an ambush.”

“No shock wave yet…” Krysty forced out the words between clenched teeth. “No flash…of light…”

“So the worst might still be coming.” J.B. checked the Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun slung at his back and reassured himself it would be there when he needed it. Then he straightened his fedora hat, tipping the brim up just enough to clear his line of sight.

“Oh, no.” Krysty sucked in her breath. “It’s coming. I feel it.”

J.B. felt nothing, then suddenly he did. Like both times before, he felt caught between forces that were pulling and pushing him simultaneously. His heart hammered, because he knew what was next.

He tried to brace himself, but the shock wave still blew him around and threw him down on one knee. There was a hum, then a rumble, and he squinted against the flash he knew was coming, but it did him no good. The light still caught him by surprise; he clamped his eyes shut, but it still seared his vision, replacing the texture and color of sight with a curtain of featureless white.

J.B. held his Mini-Uzi tightly, though, and listened hard for the sounds of approaching enemies. He knew his comrades’ footsteps by heart; those of attacking strangers would stand out like drumbeats in a parade of flutes.

But the only new sound he heard had nothing to do with footsteps. It was a creaking sound, coming from nearby… very nearby. It was like the creaking of a tall tree as it bent and shifted in a stiff wind.

He listened closer as his eyes began to clear. The sound was getting louder, even closer than he had thought.

Then he felt the ground move, and he leaped aside. The creaking was as plain as day now; it had been coming from under his own feet.

His vision cleared just in time to see a spike of white stone shoot up from the ground where he’d been standing. It pushed straight upward, stopping only when it reached a height of more than ten feet.

J.B. blew out his breath in a quick sigh of relief. If he hadn’t jumped when he did, he would have ended up speared on the tip of that spike.

As he stood there, he heard shouting from his teammates and spun, swinging his Mini-Uzi into firing position. But the threat they were reacting to wouldn’t be fazed by a barrage of 9 mm rounds.

It was another pale pillar, bigger than the first, rising from the ground among Ryan, Krysty and Mildred. Luckily, no one had been impaled by the monstrous spike as it leaped toward the sky.

Again and again, he heard the creaking sounds, followed by the whoosh of sand giving way to climbing pillars of stone. He saw one of them flash upward near Ricky, sending him rolling toward the lava channel, his pell-mell tumble halted just in time by a sprinting Jak.

“So it’s these things now?” Mildred hollered. “Stalagmites outside of a cave?”

Just as she said it, another spike shot up from the ground near J.B. He backpedaled out of its way, then turned in a circle, trying to decide where to go next. If those things could punch out of the ground anywhere without warning, there wasn’t a safe place to be found.

Furthermore, what if they weren’t the only threat? “Look alive!” he called out to the rest of the team. “Get ready for incoming!” He knew it was good advice. There were no signs of attacking muties, and they hadn’t come when the sinkhole opened up that morning, but they’d used the upheaval once before to attack.

Looking around at the landscape, J.B. saw many more stalagmites bursting aboveground, studding the plain and even stabbing at crazy angles from distant hillsides. Before his eyes, the sparse terrain was becoming a forest of pale towers, each one gleaming like a predark bleached church spire in the blazing midday sun.

What had once been mostly open space with few places to hide was quickly turning into the perfect setting for a sneak attack by enemy forces.

In which case, J.B. and his comrades wouldn’t be hard to find at all. Krysty couldn’t help herself; she kept screaming as her inner torment continued.

“Anybody else get the feeling we’re sitting ducks?” J.B. shouted.

Just then, Ryan opened up with his best take-charge voice. “Three groups! Krysty and Mildred in the middle! Jak and I at twelve o’clock, J.B. and Ricky at six o’clock!”

“Seen anyone yet?” Ricky asked as he took up position by the nearest stalagmite.

“Nope.” J.B. set up on the other side of the same pillar, facing in the opposite direction. They needed to catch whoever came at them from either side and be ready to pivot quickly to help the others. “You?”

“Just the ones in my imagination.” Ricky braced his shoulder against the stone pillar and slowly combed the barrel of his De Lisle carbine from side to side. “But they have to be coming, don’t they?”

“Indubitably, as Doc might say.” J.B. listened for approaching footsteps but just heard more of the distant creaking and whooshing. The stalagmite forest’s growth spurt seemed to be nowhere near an end.

Then, suddenly, there was a loud creaking from just a few feet away. J.B. turned with weapon in hand, expecting another spike to erupt from the ground, but he got more than he counted on this time.

A fresh spike did indeed launch skyward with a whooshing sound of displaced sand. It was well away from J.B. and Ricky, so neither of them was at risk of being speared, but they were both in very real danger nonetheless.

For there was a crimson-skinned mutie rising up along with it, one arm wrapped around the pillar’s pale girth, the other arm bracing a slightly rusted AK-47 assault longblaster that was pointing at J.B.’s head.