by James Axler
Jak watched in fascination as the men, frozen solid in terror, gazed up at the armored bulk of the monster falling on them like a meteor.
Jak’s estimation of what the armor cat landing on an enemy would do turned out to be far weaker than reality. Basically, all five coldhearts burst like big, ripe bags of blood and guts when the creature came down on top of them. They were so completely squashed the monster didn’t slow down, although its claws slipped a little in the blood and guts as it charged straight into the remainder of the EUN patrol.
Jak watched a moment in happy fascination. Then, making sure to keep out of the way of a stray round, he trotted back around the rise where his friends were holed up. The sweet sounds of futile gunshots and even more futile shrieks was like his own personal fanfare.
* * *
“SOMETHING.”
Mildred came awake to Ryan’s soft word. He was hunkered down between her and Krysty.
She sat up. By reflex she had her ZKR 551 revolver in hand.
“El Guapo’s bunch?”
Ryan gave his head a shake as Krysty sat up. “They’d be crawling all over us if it was them. Those boys aren’t subtle.”
He gave Krysty a quick kiss and straightened. He had his Steyr in one hand. On the far side of the camp, Doc was still sitting in his bedroll, yawning and stretching.
J.B. was squatting by their fire. To minimize their chance of being detected, they had kept it small and banked it when they turned in. Now, as the yellow flames began to grow and crackle, Jak materialized out of the darkness between Mildred and Krysty.
“Out there,” he said quietly. “Watching.”
Skeletal fingers walked down Mildred’s spine, leaving frost.
“Who? What? How many?”
“Not know.”
They had pitched the camp just down the north side of a ridge. Trees screened them from below. Clumps of rock and brush hid them from the sides. Of course, as it meant that they couldn’t see an approaching enemy until he was right on them, either, they always had someone on guard duty.
“Up there.” J.B. pointed his jaw at the top of the ridge.
Ryan stood with a brand burning in one fist. He raised it high. Even before he got it all the way up; two circles of red light gleamed back at them from the crest.
“Chupacabras!” Ricky hissed. He started to raise his carbine.
“Hold on,” Ryan said.
“Why?” Mildred said. “Why not shoot it?”
“I want to see what it’s doing,” Ryan said. “Jak, keep your eyes skinned to back and sides.”
“Right.” The youth didn’t sound resentful. He’d seen chupacabras.
Mildred wondered if he suspected—as she unhappily did—that the others he sensed out there watching in the night were the mutie’s kin.
The brand flared as a soft mountain breeze fanned it. Mildred saw the creature clearly now.
“Why not just chill it?” Mildred asked again. “It might attack.”
“That’s why I have all of us except Jak pointing blasters at it,” Ryan said.
The creature was about the size of a small man or teenager, with long powerful back legs, a scaly tail, smaller arms. The limbs ended in wickedly curving black talons. Its shape and dimensions vaguely suggested a kangaroo gone horribly wrong. The eyes were big and seemed to glow red.
The creature looked as if it had been gene-spliced out of nightmares.
The hair rose on the back of Mildred’s neck as she heard curious trilling sounds from several directions. They might have been night birds. Or bugs. Even up here in the cooler, drier mountains, Puerto Rico never seemed to lack for bugs. But Mildred couldn’t make herself believe that was what was making the sounds.
The chupacabra began a strange sidling dance, left and right, erecting and lowering the long black spines that covered its body. The motion was hypnotic, which was the mutie’s intent. If it could mesmerize its victim, then it could strike without opposition, sink fangs into flesh and drink living blood.
J.B.’s M-4000 scattergun roared. The creature rocked back on its tail then toppled to the ground, as the buckshot pistoned into its chest.
But the heavy, densely grown spines provided the chupacabra a rough-and-ready form of armor. The creature hissed and sprang onto its big hind legs again. A forked tongue darted from between tooth-lined jaws.
Mildred’s shot blew out its left eye. The narrow spine-crested skull snapped back. A heartbeat later a .44-caliber slug from Doc’s huge handblaster smashed into its narrow chest.
It went down with a limp finality that made it seem unlikely the monster was playing dead.
Shadows began to move visibly around them. “Form a circle, everybody,” Ryan said. “Blasters up.”
That trilling—insistent and sinister—grew louder.
As though the blackness was taking solid form around them, chupacabras began to appear from the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Go away, you!” Ricky shouted. “¡Salgan! Get out of here! We don’t want any trouble, but we’ll sure finish it!”
He shouted more in Spanish, probably just repeating the same thing, but too fast for Mildred to catch.
“What are you doing?” Ryan said. “Have you lost it?”
“Listen!” the boy said. “They’re talking to each other, can’t you hear? Anyway, that’s what the stories say. That they’re smarter than just animals.”
“That’s just a superstition,” Mildred said primly.
“Isn’t that what people in your time said about chupacabras?” Ryan asked.
The comment about Mildred’s time passed by Ricky.
Mildred frowned and gave a grumpy grunt.
J.B. guffawed. “You’re too smart to think you can get one over on Ryan, Millie!” he stated. “Not with words, fists or firearms—well, mebbe with your ZKR. Best wait till he’s laid up with colic, and you can get your own back by giving him an enema.”
“Joy,” she said.
A sidling shape moved toward her. Putting her left hand on her hip, Mildred turned her right side to the monster and extended her arm.
The creature came up short and did an almost comic take, then it slipped quickly into the night.
“Knows what a blaster is, that’s for sure,” J.B. said.
“Any animal learns to recognize a blaster,” Ryan said. “Or they don’t live to breed.” But Mildred thought she heard a note of doubt in his voice.
Keening, the chupacabras closed in on the fallen mutie. One, bigger than the rest, stooped and picked up the dead one with its short forearms. Then, still making that thin whine, they turned and began to half walk, half hop away in that weird way of theirs.
“Well, now, that was different,” J.B. said.
“Eat good tonight,” Jak said with a grin.
But Ryan shook his head, his black brow beetled thoughtfully.
“If they got hungry enough,” he said, “mebbe. But this time, I don’t reckon so.”
The creatures blended back into invisibility. Ryan blew out a long breath through pursed lips.
“Let’s move on,” he said. “If they change their minds about trying us on, we don’t want to make thing easier on them than we have to. Plus the coldhearts will have heard all that blasting. This isn’t a good place to be.”
* * *
THROUGH THE GATHERING gloom of the early evening, Krysty saw red embers arc upward on the far side of the valley. Someone had already reached the cave the scalie ville boss had told them about.
“Well, isn’t that our luck all over,” J. B. Dix commented.
The evening air teetered on the edge of cool. A breeze blew up the valley from the left. Krysty couldn’t help but wonder at the site of the hidden redoubt. The rocky, brushy, windswept height they were perched on overlooked the ridge into which it had been built. She guessed the military had its reasons.
“So this Handsome bastard beat us here,” Ryan said. He drew in a deep breath and let it slide out through
pursed lips.
“What will you do now about the treasure, Señor Ryan?” Ricky asked.
“Figure out how to take it away from him.”
He passed the longeyes to J.B. “Scope it,” he said.
The armorer adjusted the focus and studied the position carefully, as well as the surrounding rocks. A jut of granite would normally almost completely hide the redoubt entrance from their position. The incautious sentry with the fire, though, might as well have lit a signal flare.
“Looks like two men on watch,” the armorer said thoughtfully. “No sign of anybody else.”
“So how do we get in?” Mildred asked. She sounded bitter and defeated. They were tired, still nervous about Tiburón’s patrol hunting them, though they hadn’t seen their pursuers since introducing them to the armor cat the evening before. Also, they were on edge because of the shadows slinking near them in the gathering dark.
“We can’t assault a redoubt full of heavily armed coldhearts,” Mildred said.
J.B. passed the longeyes back to Ryan. “Seems to me like the sentries aren’t expecting any company soon, either. From how this Handsome guy acts, he’d probably put that fire out with the guy’s head to, you know, encourage the others.”
“You answering me, Ryan?”
“Ease off the blaster’s trigger, Mildred,” Ryan said. “He just showed us the way in.”
“How do you mean?”
“I believe, my dear lady,” Doc said, stretched out on his stomach on a slab of rock still warm from the sun, “he means that if the guardians expect no one to emerge from the interior in any short period of time, it strongly suggests two things—primus, that there’s no one inside near the entrance, and secundus, that the rest of the party, however large, and presumably including their esteemed leader, is otherwise occupied somewhere within.”
He raised his head and lifted an eyebrow at Mildred. In the poor light, Krysty thought she saw a bit of a smirk.
Mildred scowled. “I went to med school, you grizzly old coot,” she said. “I know what primus and secundus mean.”
“Of course you do.”
“What do they mean?” Ricky asked.
“They mean El Guapo and his coldhearts are busy exploring, looting or both,” Ryan said. “Fireblast. This sucks glowing night shit.”
“Except it presents us with a sterling opportunity,” Doc said.
Ryan nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, I reckon. Not like we really need—”
He broke off with a quick flick of his eye at Ricky. Peering avidly at the half-hidden redoubt entrance, Ricky quivered like a dog eager to show its master how loyal and useful it could be.
“It just bugs my ass that the bastards are getting the pick of the plunder before us,” Ryan said. The falsity in his tone rang clear as silver-washed pewter in a tin cup to Krysty’s ears. Ricky continued to seem oblivious.
“But yeah.” Ryan turned and grinned at his comrades. This time it was genuine. “I see a way we can put the wood to him after all. You’re right, Doc. If we take care of those slack-ass guards, we can slip in easy as you please.”
“There aren’t many places to hide when entering a redoubt,” Mildred said dubiously.
“No, but once we’re in, there are if the doors aren’t locked,” J.B. said. “If they’re looting in there, they must be getting into places where loot may be.”
“We just need to get in the front door,” Ryan said. “Between us, I reckon Jak and I can chill those sentries quickly.”
Jak was squatting on his haunches down behind the rise, watching their backs. He nodded.
“What about me?” Ricky protested. “I can chill them from here, easy!”
“You can chill one, mebbe,” J.B. said. “His buddy might not hear the shot, sure. But you reckon he won’t notice his partner fall down, and raise a squawk before you can cycle that bolt, line up the next shot and silence him?” He shook his head. “I’m not willing to stake my life on those odds, for sure.”
“Nobody’s going to,” Ryan said gruffly. “Kid, we need you to stay up here, watch our backs and make sure to let us know if something goes south over there. Think you can handle it?”
Ricky nodded eagerly.
Krysty knew perfectly well where Ryan was heading. But the boy was an ally, even if he wasn’t one of them. An ally who had saved their lives repeatedly. She felt she owed it to him to say, “What about the chupacabras? What’ll they do if we leave Ricky alone up here?”
“They getting any closer, Jak?” Ryan asked.
“No,” Jak said without turning. He had his arms wrapped around his knees. “Keeping distance. Afraid.”
“Reckon they are,” J.B. said. “Mebbe they’re smart enough to savvy man-talk, mebbe they aren’t. But they speak blaster, right enough, and they respect us after what happened to their pal last night.”
Krysty could sense it, in communion as she was with Gaia. Although these creatures were probably not, strictly speaking, Gaia’s children, they acted the part of wild animals, even if perhaps more intelligent than the general run. The ones out there in the night around them...knew.
Something had raised an almighty fuss, even as they’d made their final creep up to this vantage point overlooking the redoubt entrance. Krysty had heard an angry yowl, changing to hissing and squalling, accompanied by a rising chorus of the chirps she’d come to associate with the chupacabras of the mountain zone. Whether they’d chilled the creature or not, the commotion had ended after a wild minute or so and hadn’t been repeated.
Mildred wondered aloud if it might have been an armor cat. For her part, Krysty doubted any number of chupacabras could bring down a leviathan such as the one Jak had lured onto the coldhearts so quickly. Not without taking losses so terrible that even animals would have to take note.
Ricky had reminded them that the ville boss had said many different monsters were known to frequent the vicinity of the lost “cave.” Krysty hadn’t found that especially comforting. But at least, as Doc observed cheerfully, it meant that the chupacabras shadowing the party were also protecting them.
Now Ricky said, “I can take care of myself. I’m not afraid!” If he’d been standing up, Krysty reckoned he’d have puffed his chest out.
“Right,” Ryan said. “So here’s how we run this deal....”
* * *
“I’M AFRAID OUR BOY might be a bit of a stupe,” J.B. said as they made their way up the far slope. About a hundred feet above them, the redoubt entrance was completely hidden by the ledge in front of it. “He took that hook without so much as poking at it first.”
Ryan sniffed the air. He could smell the tang of tobacco smoke from the sentry’s cigarette. The man was a smoking fool. Emphasis on fool.
Well, his father’s healer had always said the habit would kill you. He grinned.
“He trusts us,” Krysty said.
They spoke softly, knowing the breeze that now blew briskly up the valley would carry the sounds they made away from the sentries’ ears.
Krysty sounded reproachful. Mentally, Ryan shrugged. They’d do what they had to do. Like always.
She’d cope. Like always.
“What do you mean?” Mildred asked.
“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” Doc asked. “We’re abandoning the boy. We jump out and leave him here.” He shook his head. “Sad. Harsh to treat him so. Yet a kindness, in a way, to spare him our extended tour of the deepest circles of hell.”
“Not like,” Jak said.
“What’s that, Jak?” J.B. said. “Thought you couldn’t stand him. ‘Chill him,’ being your last word on the subject, if I recall.”
The albino shrugged. “Got backs.”
“Yeah, well,” Ryan said, “he’s not the first person who did us a good turn we’ve had to walk away from. Anyway, Doc’s right. He’ll do better back here at home than tagging after us. Plus he’s still hot to find this sister of his. And if El Guapo’s men haven’t raped her to death, she’ll be with him. And we, wi
th any kind of luck, will be somewhere else.”
“What if we should run across the gentleman in question?” Doc asked. “Or our young friend’s sister?”
“We steer clear of both,” Ryan said. “Got no beef with El Guapo worth dying over. And she’s not my sister, or one of yours. Remember, we’re trying to sneak our way to the mat-trans and jump out without anybody noticing.”
“What do you reckon our odds are of doing that, Ryan?” J.B. asked.
Ryan laughed quietly. “Better than our odds trying to take on a whole redoubt full of El Guapo’s men,” he said. “But if you’d rather take your chances out here with the monsters?”
“Lead the way,” J.B. said with an answering grin.
* * *
RYAN MOVED AS QUIETLY as a stalking panther, and he made no more noise than the panther’s shadow.
While their friends crouched twenty feet below the ledge, well out of sight of the guards, Ryan sneaked up to the left of the entrance, and Jak headed to the right. In keeping with their general slackness, the two lookouts stayed back in the vestibule formed by the rock that concealed the entrance. Ryan had the easier go, since he could get almost on top of his man around the big narrow jut of rock that screened the opening.
It meant he’d attack him from the front, but he didn’t intend to give the man much chance to defend himself. Or even sing out.
Once in place, his back pressed to the still-warm hardness of the granite outcrop, Ryan drew three deep, deliberate breaths, keeping the exhales noiseless to avoid alerting his prey. Then he peeked past the edge of the tall stone to where Jak crouched on the other side. Holding up three fingers, he counted down: three, two, one.
Go.
Panga in hand, he whipped around the boulder. The man on his side was just lowering his cigarette. His hand descended but did not interfere with the backhand slash that opened his throat to the neckbone.
Even as he cut the man’s gullet with his heavy blade, Ryan continued to step to his left past the man’s right shoulder. That helped put him clear of the vast jet of blood from the severed neck. Not that he was squeamish, but being soaked in drying blood got itchy and inconvenient when it started to get tacky, and also tended to leave drip trails if not glaring red bootprints.