James Axler - Plague Lords

Under the rippling smack of bullet impacts, the center of the stickie front wave crumpled and folded. Half of the closely following second rank crashed to earth, as well; some from high-velocity through-and-throughs, but most were simply tripped up, unable to avoid the sudden tangle of legs and torsos. Which, momentarily at least, saved their wretched lives.

The third, fourth and fifth rows of attackers split down the middle and veered around their own fallen, like a torrent flowing around a boulder field. The smell and taste of the aerosolized gore, the shrill cries of pain made them all the more frantic. As they reformed their inhuman wave, the companions’ blasters roared again.

The few muties in front who had escaped the first volley—heedless of their exposure, driven by urges too powerful to deny—high-kicked to close distance on the companions. As a result, the second round of fire was at near point-blank range, a cross-chest barrage that swept the stickies off their bare feet.

Ryan advanced on the mutie flank, holding the SIG-Sauer in a solid, two-handed grip. Because both he and his targets were moving, it wasn’t the time for fine shooting. The blaster barked and bucked again and again, action cycling. Ryan punched out rapid-fire, center body shots as the tripped muties tried to scramble to their feet. The mutie bastards were so pumped up by the prospect of more chilling, that unless it was a head shot it took two slugs to put some of them down.

A round punched through a scrambler and slammed the runner behind it in the side of the head. The others dashed past like they had blinders on, even as Ryan blew their packmates to hell.

His next shot smacked a sprinting stickie high in the upper arm, and the impact spun it around ninety degrees. It then launched itself at him, banshee wild, mouth gaping, needle teeth bared, open palms leaking strands of milky adhesive. Body language notwithstanding, the stickie’s black eyes were devoid of emotion, like a shark’s or a doll’s.

Ryan fired the SIG-Sauer into the center of the open yap. The mutie’s hairless head snapped back as if it had been poleaxed, eyes skyward as a glistening strawberry mist gusted from the back of its skull. Bright arterial blood shot from the creature’s nose holes as it crashed onto its back, the soles of its trembling feet black with crusted grime.

There wasn’t enough time to dump the SIG’s spent mag, reload, aim and fire at the stickies veering his way. He could have unslung the Steyr from his back and gotten off one or two shots before they were on him. Not enough to make a difference. Shifting the pistol to his left hand, Ryan whipped his eighteen-inch panga from its leg sheath.

He glanced to the left as the LeMat’s shotgun barrel thundered. Along with a plume of caustic smoke it spewed forth the combination of broken glass and potmetal fragments that Doc called his “facelifter” load—at a range of ten feet, that’s exactly what it did. It was his last shot. Doc immediately raised his edged weapon, neatly sidestepping to avoid an oncoming stickie, simultaneously rolling the wrist of his sword hand. With surgical precision and speed too quick for the eye to follow, the point of his rapier blade opened a second, grinning mouth three inches below the spike-rimmed maw the mutie had been born with. Blood sheeting down its naked chest, the hellspawn dropped to its knees in the dirt, then onto all fours.

Also out of cartridges, J.B. used the barrel of his M-4000 scattergun like a short club to bash and smash the heads of the monsters that lunged for him, beating back the horde, providing cover and time for Krysty, Mildred and Jak to reload.

From the git-go, based on the companions’ rate of fire, their weapons’ mag capacities, the stickie numbers and the size of the battlefield, Ryan had figured that combat would devolve to hand-to-hand. To be pulled down by this enemy was to be torn apart.

Fully aware of what was on the line, the one-eyed warrior met chill rage with chill rage. The heavy blade of his panga was made for chopping and hacking, and that’s how he used it. The panga sizzled as it cleaved the air, hardly slowing when it met mutie flesh and bone. It clipped wrists into stumps, left arms dangling free from shoulder sockets, and opened godawful, diagonal torso slashes, from nipple to opposing hip. In his wake, mewling stickies scrabbled on their knees in the dust, trying to collect and stuff back the slimy gray coils of their guts.

The sight of their fellows falling in pieces under the bloody blade didn’t give the stickies pause. As they threw themselves at him, Ryan’s mind and body were one, measuring attack angles, kill order, the necessary rhythm of perfectly executed forehands and backhands—all in a fraction of a fraction of a second.

Stepping around another set of outstretched sucker fingers, Ryan swung the panga so hard that he sliced off the top of the stickie’s head, front to back. Half a loaf of pale, cross-cut brain flopped steaming to the ground, followed by its stone-dead, former owner.

Their weapons loaded, Mildred, Krysty and Jak rejoined the fray. They split up to get clear firing lanes, then head shot the last of the surviving stickies at close range.

As quickly as he had switched it on, Ryan shut off the rampage, but the sustained burst of all-out effort left him gasping for breath. His kerchief mask’s hem dripped pink from its point, pink from his pouring sweat mixed with sprays of stickie blood.

As the echoes of gunfire faded, screams from the rubble field became audible. Anguished, rasping screams.

“Start up the bikes,” Ryan said, wiping the panga’s blade on his pant leg before he scabbarded it. “Come with me, Doc,” he called to the old man, who was recovering his sword sheath. As the two of them trotted for the remains of the travelers’ campsite, Ryan dropped the SIG’s spent mag into his palm and swapped it with a full one from his pocket.

Before they reached the edge of the bridge deck debris, three of the bike engines were running. Sitting astride the machines, J.B., Mildred and Krysty goosed their respective throttles to redline, making the engines whine. There was another sound, as well, much less encouraging.

Phut-phut-phut! Phut-phut-phut! Phut-phut-phut!

When Ryan looked back, he saw Jak stomping the fourth bike’s starter pedal, throwing his whole weight against it, over and over again.

“This way!” Doc said.

They hurriedly followed the moans, moving past the campfire pit and the traders’ abandoned, fully loaded backpacks. As they closed in on the source, the sounds became distinguishable as words.

“Sweet blessed Charity!” Doc gasped, stopping short.

“Chill me! Pleeeeease, chill me!”

The liquid, bubbling prayer came from a ruined hulk of a human being. He lay on his belly on the ground in the lee of a tipped-up slab of concrete, most of his clothes had been ripped away. “Please!”

As the trader begged, Ryan could see bloody molars and moving tongue through the huge hole torn in his right cheek. He had been scalped, as well, down to the shiny white bone. His right foot faced the wrong way, still in its duct-tape-patched boot. The other foot was missing altogether; his left arm hung semidetached, torn from its socket, hanging by a thread of golden sinew. Smeared stickie adhesive had sealed off the ruptured major blood vessels. The poor, broken bastard wasn’t going to bleed out, not anytime soon.

“End it!” the man plaintively croaked, stretching out the bloody claw of his good hand. “Use your blaster!”

Doc gave Ryan a questioning look; the one-eyed man minutely shook his head. Their bullets were in short supply, and the route to safety too long and too precarious. He pointed at the steel pommel and worn leather handle of a knife sticking out of the rubble. In the heat of battle it had fallen out of the reach and sight of the mortally wounded man. The Ka-Bar’s noble blade had been sharpened so many times it had been reduced to a steel sliver.