James Axler - Prodigal's Return

Glancing at his rad counter, Ryan started down the slippery incline. He nearly fell twice, even his U.S. Army combat boots having trouble finding purchase on the smooth fused earth. Then the companions grabbed one another by the arm and began to glide along like ice-skaters, helping to keep each other moving. It was touch and go in a couple areas, but they finally reached the bottom of the crater.

Scrambling across the glassy surface, Ryan went straight to the blast door. He found a small keypad set into the wall beside the entrance, and slowly tapped in the access code. The one-eyed man breathed a sigh of relief as the colossal door began to ponderously move aside.

But as if on cue, the glowing mist appeared on the slope and began to descend rapidly.

“Here comes,” Jak announced, hefting his blaster.

“Screw it, help me with Doc!” Mildred commanded, struggling to hoist the limp scholar over her shoulder.

Reluctantly holstering his piece, Jak moved to lend some assistance, while Ryan simply lifted the supine Krysty in his powerful arms and stood impatiently near the slowly opening door. Live or get chilled; it was all just a matter of timing.

“I’ve got your back,” J.B. stated, pulling out the last pipe bomb, then flicking alive a butane lighter.

Licking dry lips, Ryan wanted to say something to his old friend, but nothing came to mind.

When the crack between the door and the wall was just barely large enough, Ryan roughly shoved Krysty through, then squeezed inside himself, ripping his shirt and losing some skin in the process. Jak went through next, with less damage, and Mildred easily passed him Doc, then followed. Clean air blew from a wall vent. The interior was brightly illuminated by clear fluorescent lights set into the high ceiling.

With a dull boom, the blast door finished opening completely, paused, then began to slowly close once more.

“Come on, John!” Mildred pleaded, watching as the howler reached the bottom of the slope and came directly their way. Somehow, it seemed larger now, and ever faster than before. Then the physician realized that it was merely a fear-induced panic that was altering her senses. Not that it really mattered. Only a moron wouldn’t be scared shitless in this situation!

“Not yet, Millie,” J.B. answered, biting the fuse on the pipe bomb and leaving only a nubbin.

The disturbing keen of the howler echoed across the irregular expanse of fused earth, making it sound as if a dozen of the creatures were present, and the greenish glow of the cloud reflected off every shiny surface, creating a scintillating display of emerald flashes.

The overall effect was hypnotic, as he lit the tiny fuse and rolled the explosive toward the mutie, J.B. wondered if that was a deliberate ploy of the creature.

Undaunted, the howler flowed over the pipe bomb, which reappeared behind the creature, completely undamaged, the smoldering fuse extinguished a hair away from the lead cap.

“Son of a mutie bitch!” J.B. snarled, stepping back into the mouth of the access tunnel. Swinging up the Uzi, he emptied the blaster into the glass just in front of the howler, sending a spray of broken shards into the cloud.

Appearing alongside him, Ryan, Mildred and Jak opened fire with their blasters, hammering the approaching howler as the massive door continued its slow progress.

Out of brass, Jak started throwing knives into the cloud.

When her ZKR target pistol clicked empty, Mildred backed away. As the SIG-Sauer ran out, Ryan dropped the blaster to grab the S&W M-4000 from alongside Doc. Pumping the choke on the scattergun, Ryan chambered a 12-gauge cartridge and thrust the barrel past his friends to discharge the weapon inside the green cloud. The muzzle-blast of the scattergun sounded oddly muffled, but the howler actually stepped backward as the blast door slid past them to close.

But at the very last second, the writhing tip of a glowing tentacle stabbed through the ever-narrowing opening. With a living being blocking the way, the door automatically paused, then began to rumble open once more.

Snarling a curse, Ryan triggered the scattergun at the limb, doing no visible damage. Then J.B. lunged forward to attack with a sizzling road flare, and the mutie quickly retreated. However, the blast doors were already in motion.

Rushing to the internal keypad, Jak punched in the access code to try to stop the process. Sometimes that worked, but this time there was no result, and the armored portal continued to open.

On the floor, Doc feebly twitched, and his ebony sword stick rolled over to Jak. The albino teen snatched it up and twisted the silver lion’s-head grip to extract a length of shining Spanish steel. As the glowing cloud inched closer, he wildly slashed through the allotropic mist, going for the head, while J.B. did the same with the road flare, much lower. The howler voiced strong displeasure at the attacks, and something shifted about inside the impossible mist, never ceasing its effort to get closer and gain entry.

Inexorably slow, the blast doors finished their programmed journey inside the wall, then once more started across the twenty-foot span to cycle shut.

Finding his pockets empty of brass, Ryan drew his panga, the curved blade gleaming brightly in the fluorescent lights.

“Mildred, drag Krysty and Doc to the elevator!” he snarled, thrusting and jabbing at the terrible mutie. “If we’re not there in five, or you see green, get in the mattrans and jump without us!”

Shocked at the very idea of leaving the group, Mildred started to object, then reluctantly saw the wisdom of the heroic act. If the companions were separated, but still alive, there was always a slim chance of them finding each other someday.

“John, I love you!” she shouted, taking Doc and Krysty by the collars of their jackets.

“Heaven or hell, Millie, I’ll see ya there!” J.B. yelled over a shoulder, igniting a second flare with the dying flame of the first.

His heart beating wildly, Ryan started to add something for Krysty, but there was no need for words, and she wouldn’t hear him anyway. The two of them were more than lovers and friends, they were soul mates, and he would find Krysty again.

That is, Ryan thought grimly, if I’m still alive in thirty seconds!

As the stocky physician hauled the unconscious bodies around the first turn of the zigzagging tunnel, the howler had to have noticed the departure, and forcibly advanced, uncaring of any damage it might have been receiving from the flame and steel. When the greenish cloud got closer, the three men guarding the door began to feel ill, dizzy and disoriented, their sweaty skin prickly painfully.

“You’re not getting in!” Ryan bellowed defiantly, ramming the long barrel of the Steyr into the cloud. He hit something hard, and his hands instantly felt as if they were on fire. A wave of incredible pain rushed up both his arms, stealing the last of his flagging strength. Knife and longblaster tumbled to the floor, and Ryan reluctantly retreated, fighting against the agony racking his exhausted body. His stomach heaved, his vision blurred and he crumpled to the floor, still trying to rise and rejoin the fight.

After kicking the panga back to the trembling man, Jak swung his leg around to slash a sideways kick at the unseen thing inside the cloud. There was a crack as the steel-reinforced toe of his Army boot contacted something breakable, and the howler cut loose with a strident wail that told of serious damage.

“The sides!” J.B. shouted in a burst of sudden understanding. “Dark night, the rad-blasted thing is only armored in front! We gotta hit it from the sides!”

But he was speaking to himself. A shuddering Jak was on the floor, using the sword to frantically hack at the laces of his boot. Half of it was dead white, the military leather crumbling away to reveal the steel support inside, the metal heavily corroded and dissolving.