by Axler, James
"Thanks," Ryan said honestly. "Much appreciated."
The mutie clicked once loudly, then sank below the water, hardly making a splash or a ripple.
"Fascinating," Doc said, and walking forward he probed the swamp with his stick. The ebony shaft hit mud until he reached the spot where the mutie had been standing. There was no detectable ground there. Deciding to test the depth, he found it was beyond the limit of his stick and arm combined.
"This is the end of the swamp," Doc stated, wiping off his stick on a damp handkerchief. "We've reached deep water. Mayhap a lake, or even the original river of this area before the nukes reshaped the landscape."
Swatting at flies, Ryan studied the raft. "I think we lost enough supplies that it'll float with all of us on board."
"Only one way to find out," J.B. said with a grin, dropping his rope.
Pushing the raft ahead of them, the companions trod water until no longer able to touch bottom. Carefully, they climbed onto the craft and saw that the salty water washed over the logs, but they stayed afloat.
"Some of us could swim alongside," Dean suggested, precariously balanced on the very edge of the raft.
Harshly, Ryan vetoed that idea. "Everybody stays on board. There could be anything swimming around down below."
"Bullets can't go very far through water," J.B. commented. "Nothing can, really."
"So we move fast," Ryan stated. "J.B., use your shotgun. I'll use the Steyr."
The Armorer stared at the water with scorn. "I guess we have to."
Going to opposite sides of the raft, the men flipped their longblasters over and started using the wooden stocks as oars, steadily stroking in unison. The others kept watch as the men slowly paddled away from the swamp and into the hidden sea. Despite the crudeness of the oars, they soon built up a good speed, and the dot of greenery expanded to a wide strip. Soon they could discern a faint smell of living plants.
"Land," Krysty said, sighing. "I'll cook dinner if somebody else gets the wood."
"A deal, dear lady," Doc said. "Chopping wood will be a delight after dragging the Cornucopia through mud for ten miles."
"But, once we get to dry land," Dean said, "this raft will be useless. Too bad there isn't some way to keep the cargo with us. I like having enough to eat and spare ammo."
"Too true, lad," Doc rumbled.
"Got three wheels," Jak suggested, thumping the bottom of the raft.
Paddling in easy strokes, J.B. chewed the inside of his cheek, "Yeah, mebbe. If there's enough wood, we could make a cart and roll the stuff along. But we'd be traveling slower than shit in winter."
"Better dump the excess, and only take what we can carry," Ryan decided, muscles rippling in his powerful arms as he pulled the blaster through the water. Thankfully, the Steyr had a plastic stock, but J.B. was doing irreparable harm to the tiger wood of his scattergun. "If we travel too slowly, the blue shirts will find us, rather than the other way around, and they have too many advantages as it is."
Resting his back against the canvas mound, Doc barked a bitter laugh. "Too much ammunition. I daresay this is a problem we have never faced before."
"Hush," Mildred said urgently, staring into the murky depths. "I saw a disturbance underwater."
"Snake?" Jak asked, drawing his blaster.
"Could be."
Ryan and J.B. continued paddling, but watched the surface of the water carefully for any unusual movements.
Suddenly, a hundred of the beings resembling the humanoid they had encountered earlier silently rose from the water, completely surrounding the raft and its startled occupants. Each was armed with a long spear and what seemed to be a needle-thin knife made out of intricately carved bone.
"It's a trap!" J.B. shouted, hefting the shotgun and pumping a round into the chamber. But before he could act, the strange beings turned their backs on the humans, forming a line around the raft, their bamboo spears leveled as if for battle.
"What the—? They're here to protect us," the Armorer said in realization, lowering the scattergun.
"We do have permission to be here," Ryan noted, placing the Steyr on his lap.
"Protect us from what?" Mildred demanded suspiciously. Few folks these days knew the word honor, and even fewer obeyed its simple rules.
"Look there!" Krysty pointed. Something large was moving through the lake, coming straight toward the raft, the water foaming white in its wake.
The mutie from the swamp rose into view as smoothly as if it were riding an elevator. Excited, the creature waved its arms and gestured at the land, clicking so fast the noise was like a stick dragged across a picket fence.
"Thanks again," Ryan said with unaccustomed feeling. "Okay, move with a purpose, people! We've got to get to land if there's going to be trouble!"
Ryan and J.B. put their backs into stroking, and the rest of the companions started paddling with their bare hands.
"Mebbe we should stay and help," Dean suggested, bent at his task.
"Too vulnerable out here," his father barked. "On land, we can offer them assistance. But out here, we're only a liability, making them protect two things."
The boy nodded in understanding and redoubled his efforts.
With excruciating slowness, they gradually pulled away from the line of clicking beings when the raft violently shook as if it struck a rock. For a heartbeat, the companions thought that's all it was, just a rock. Then the tiny craft heaved upward, going higher and higher to finally flip over and spill them overboard.
Desperately holding his breath, Ryan grabbed the sinking Steyr before it got out of reach and started for the surface. Stroking with one arm, he got a brief ; glimpse of a dark shape moving among them at incredible speed. Whatever their attacker was, it wasn't one of their guardians or a rock. A submarine? '
Reaching the surface, Ryan caught his breath and saw that the raft was destroyed. The logs were smashed and floating away freely, the thick chains snapped apart, the precious supplies sinking to the depths below.
"Gator!" Jak shouted, splashing around, a knife in his hand.
Kicking to stay afloat, Ryan looked at the dry land so terribly far away. "Back to the swamp!" he shouted, and started swimming in that direction.
With every kick, every stroke, the man waited to feel the crushing bite of the alligator seizing a limb. But he reached the muddy banks alive and struggled into the knee-deep water. The others were only seconds behind, and the companions moved away from the invisible border and checked their weapons.
"Everybody here?" Ryan demanded, working the bolt on the Steyr.
"Looks like," J.B. announced, cleaning the droplets off his glasses. "Dark night, was that a gator? The bastard thing must have been over thirty feet long!"
"Seen bigger," Jak commented, shaking the excess moisture out of his Colt Python.
"How did you chill it?" Mildred asked, pouring the water from her med kit to lessen its weight.
"Didn't. Aced whole ville."
"Oh, hell," Doc said, scowling at his LeMat, the fresh charge of black powder dribbling out. "Lost my sword-stick, too. Can somebody loan me a blaster?"
Steyr in hand, Ryan tossed over the SIG-Sauer. Doc made the catch and expertly dropped the clip to check the ammo, then slammed it back into the butt of the pistol and jacketed the slide to chamber a round. Doc might prefer an old-fashioned revolver, but he knew how to work a modern blaster perfectly well.
"What's going to stop it?" Dean asked, checking his pockets for spare clips. He found only two; the rest had gone to the bottom.
"Grens will," J.B. stated, passing out the military spheres from his munitions bag. "Don't get crazy. That's it for explosives. One each. The rest went down with the raft."
"This is enough," Krysty said, unwrapping the electrical tape from the handle. The ball was green with a black stripe, high explosive with steel shrapnel, exactly what they needed. Too bad they had only these few charges.
Out on the watery expanse, noises and splashing wer
e coming from under the turbulent surface. Red blood spread outward from the aquatic combat, obscuring whatever was happening.
"I don't think our friends are winning," Ryan growled.
Then a large shape rose into view. A dozen spears were sticking out of its hoary hide, but the triumphant beast had a limp warrior dangling from its huge jaws. Tossing the body aside, the gator rolled over, showing its pale belly to the sky, then dived out of sight.
Tucking the gren into a pants pocket, Krysty furrowed her brow in thought. "An animal that size can't live in this swamp," she decided. "There's not enough food. The mutie must come from somewhere else to feed on these guys when it's hungry enough. It's probably the terror of their world."
"Starving mean dangerous," Jak noted grimly.
"Well, they tried to protect us, so we return the favor," Ryan stated, making sure the panga was still in its sheath. "Besides, if they lose, it'll come after us next, and without the raft there's no way we'd last long enough in the water to ever reach land alive."
"Gator follow dry land," Jak agreed.
"Any weak points?" Mildred asked pointedly.
"Eyes, belly. Ears best, but hid."
In a rush of water, the bawling gator lifted into view again with the chief clinging to its back by a bone knife, wildly stabbing at the beast with a spear.
"Light it up!" Ryan shouted, and started firing.
The companions aimed for the head, away from the chief, but their small-caliber rounds bounced off the thick hide. Only the .357 magnum slugs from Jak's Colt Python punched holes in the gator. Then the chief came free from the mutie creature and went flying. Riding the Uzi into a tight group, J.B. sprayed half a clip of 9 mm Parabellum rounds, hoping for a lucky strike. Undamaged, the beast was gone beneath the choppy waves.
"By the Three Kennedys!" Doc shouted in frustration, and began the laborious process of cleaning and reloading the .44 LeMat. As a precaution against rain, he always keep a few charges of ball and powder inside plastic film containers. It wasn't much, but until he got fresh supplies of black powder, it was all he had for the handcannon.
Dean reloaded the Browning Hi-Power and splashed away from the fight. "I know what to do. Jak, come with me!"
Snapping shut his Colt, the pale teenager stared at the running boy, puzzled, then smiled and took off after him.
"Hurry!" Ryan shouted, removing the spent clip from the interior of the Steyr and dropping in a fresh one.
There was some splashing nearby, and a score of the humanoids rose from the lake and shuffled onto the swamp. Some were bleeding from cuts, a few helped others walk and none looked in fighting shape. The chief stood directing the others, and Ryan could now see the being wasn't a human mutie, but more like an insect. A beautiful rainbow chitin was exposed through the slashes, and small quivering antennae were visible under the helmet, which Ryan now thought of as a crown, as only the chief had one. The smooth tan hide covering the bug was actually clothes, laced tight and with pockets. Some sort of fish hide, and not the human skin it resembled from a distance.
"It's camou," Krysty stated, "to hide their natural bright colors."
"They look like water beetles," Mildred added thoughtfully. "Only without the wings."
Ryan went to the chief and pointed toward the lake, then lifted his hand. "One?" he asked, raising a finger.
The beetle warrior gave a single click.
"Okay, there's only one of the fuckers. If it was more, we'd be running. But we can chill one gator."
"How?" J.B. asked, thumbing rounds into a spent clip.
"The mouth," Krysty replied stoically, snapping the cylinder of her weapon closed. "We let it get close, then blow it apart from the inside."
Holstering her ZKR, Mildred held out a hand. "Shotgun," she said to the Armorer, and he passed over the weapon.
A beetle stuttered loudly and threw its spear into the lake as the gator charged from the water, the shaft jutting from its head. The beast shook off the spear and plowed through the beetles, snapping one in its powerful jaws and crushing the insect. The warriors jumped on it, stabbing wildly, but the spear points could do no more damage than the 9 mm rounds of the blasters. Flipping on its back, the gator crushed a beetle and lashed its tail at another, removing the head.
"Son of a bitch!" Mildred roared, and fired the shotgun. The spray of buckshot hit the speckled hide, doing scant damage. Cursing furiously, the woman worked the pump and ejected the rest of the buckshot cartridges, then shoved in new ones from the loops on the strap.
Pulling the pin, Krysty threw the gren, and it landed in the gator's open mouth. But the beast hawked the obstruction loose and the sphere rolled into the lake and detonated, throwing water to the sky.
Startled, the beetles backed away from the blast, and the gator lashed out its tail randomly. Closing in for a kill, Mildred dived out of the way just in time, losing her grip on the scattergun. It vanished beneath the swampy brine.
The range was too close to try a gren again, so the humans pounded the beast with their weapons, dodging out of the way when it came close. The chief led the beetles back to the fight, and started launching the barbed points of their spear like crossbow bolts from the shafts. But nothing seemed to do anything more than annoy or distract the thirty-foot reptile.
Taking a stance, Doc leveled the LeMat and pulled the trigger. The percussion cap gave a bang, but the charge didn't ignite. A misfire. For the first time ever, Ryan heard the old man use a word the scholar normally pretended didn't even exist.
As if sensing a weak member in the pack, the gator charged at the gray-haired man, its stubby legs propelling it just as fast on the mud as in the water. Doc stood his ground and waited. Holding the blaster with both hands, he triggered the weapon at point-blank range. The LeMat threw flame and thunder, and the gator recoiled, hissing in pain as black blood flowed from a puckered wound in its torso. It tried circling Doc, and the man fired again, a miss. Then a piece of the mutie's scalp was blown away, exposing its bare white skull. Doc fired again and was rewarded with a dry click. Empty.
Rolling over, the gator lashed at Doc with its deadly tail. With the grace of a fencer, Doc swayed out of the way and pulled the SIG-Sauer, shooting a fast dozen times at the beast. But the 9 mm slugs glanced harmlessly off the dense hide of the giant mutie.
While the humans reloaded, the beetles rallied and launched another salvo of spearheads. By now the mutie was mad with blood lust and pain. Bawling in rage, it snapped its terrible jaws and lashed its tail, the entire lower half of its muscular body swaying from the pendulum force of the killing limb.
Aiming from the hip, Ryan fired the Steyr at a rock under the beast, and scored a ricochet into its belly, thin blood pumping from the wound. The beast turned its furious attention on him alone. Ryan braced for a charge, when there came the report of a big-bore handgun and he saw the hide of the beast spray out dark blood. Instantly, the creature shook itself as if trying to dislodge something on its skin.
Walking through the swamp, flies buzzing everywhere, Jak came on as steady as a machine, firing his .357 magnum pistol again and again, every round smacking into the mutie gator. With each impact, the gator went mad as if jabbed with white-hot pokers. Its breathing became labored, white foam dribbled from its jaws and weakly the beast charged the pale teenager.
As Jak reloaded, Mildred stepped between them and fired the wet, filthy scattergun, the flechette round blowing off the gator's front leg. Now the animal screamed and hastily turned, hobbling for the deep waters of the lake.
Ryan and the chief both shouted as the humans and beetles converged on the killer. As the creature was no longer able to dodge, the small-caliber rounds found its eyes. Blind, it spun in a circle, lashing out with its tail and catching a beetle across the torso. But the warrior was merely knocked aside and not pulverized. The beast was weakening fast. Mildred fired again, opening its chest, and the beetles filled the wound with their spears, one penetrating more than a yard. Dark blood po
ured from its mouth as the dying mutie crawled relentlessly for the safety of the water. Then Ryan stepped in front of the beast and fired directly into a gaping eye socket. The gator jerked as if hitting a wall and dropped flat in the shallow swamp, a pool of blood spreading wide until it seemed to cover the entire surface of the Carolina swampland.
"That was one tough son of a bitch," J.B. stated, jerking the bolt on the Uzi to clear a jam. "What the hell was on those bullets, the snake?"
"Bushmaster," Dean said proudly, holding up the bloody snake head for the others to see, the white fangs glistening in the afternoon light, the hollow tips moist and still dripping. "I thought of the poison, but only Jak's blaster could carry a dose."
"But my LeMat is more powerful," Doc said.
"You fire miniballs, solid slugs," Ryan explained. "The magnum was loaded with hollowpoints. Perfect for the job."
"Just a drop of venom in each," Dean boasted, "and a dab of mud to keep it there."
Doc smiled. "Good call there, young Dean. And exemplary shooting, Jak."
"Shit," Jak said, dropping the spent shells from his blaster and rinsing the weapon in the dirty water. "Big target. How miss?"
"I'm just glad it's chilled," Krysty stated wearily. She looked around for a place to sit, and saw nothing.
Mildred straightened from examining the still form. "It's snuffed," she reported. "No doubt of that."
Shuffling forward, the chief offered his spear to Jak. The teenager grunted in thanks, and Dean offered the bushmaster in return. It was accepted reverently, then the chief called out a series of long clicks. The surviving warriors waved their gory spears overhead and swarmed over the gator hacking it to pieces. Whether for food, or just to make sure it was really dead, none of the companions knew or cared.
"Now what?" Dean asked, rinsing his hands in the brine.
Ryan slung the longblaster over a shoulder and looked at the distant speck of green. "We start swimming."