LITMIR.BIZ

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      And that was another problem to weigh—what if the thing that enraged the stickies was hot on their tail? Fighting off such a large and maddened pack would be hard enough. To then have to fight another enemy may be a step too far.

      Jak was in sight of the companions, who broke cover as he approached. He was barely breathing hard, despite his exertion, but it still took valuable time for him to spit out everything the recce had told him. As he came to the end of his report, the pack was within hearing.

      “Fireblast and fuck it, we stand and fight,” Ryan snapped. “Too late to do anything else. They’re moving quick.” He directed the companions back to the positions they had adopted while awaiting Jak. “Fire on sight—just try to chill the bastards as they come through.”

      They had one chance to clean this up quickly. Because of their pack mentality, and because the woodlands were becoming more dense, there was a narrow channel through which the stickies would probably try to squeeze. With the companions in cover on either side of this channel, they may just be able to take them out quickly and en masse as they formed a bottleneck to move through. Stickies weren’t smart enough to back off and spread out, striking back at an enemy by spreading their attack front.

      The companions could smell the muties before they were upon them, the sickly sweet odor of their sweat filled their nostrils and made them gag. Stickies were vile enough in ones, twos or small groups; but this strong, and it was almost enough to make a challenger give up and run. The companions trained their blasters on the narrow channel, waiting for the first of the muties to hove into view. They had to be close. The noise they were making was now deafening, the smell overpowering.

      The foliage trembled, shook and finally was ripped asunder as the pack of stickies burst into the clearing. The wait had been so tense that it was almost a shock when they finally broke cover. They were ripping up anything in their path, each almost oblivious to the others around it, their collective state whipped into a rage of fury and fear—fear that seemed to be coming off them in waves, and was driving them onward. The mass of mutie flesh filled the clearing in less than a few seconds.

      Fingers had twitched on triggers, tensing and untensing for the moment when they would have to squeeze to unleash a barrage of blasterfire at the optimum moment to cause the most damage.

      And now that moment had arrived.

      “Fire!” Ryan yelled. “Aim at their heads.”

      The roar of blasterfire was intense, so loud that it washed over the noise made by the pack, drowning everything in the liquid shout of the pistol and machine-pistol action. The screams of the first stickies to feel the impact were lost in the hurricane of sound, but the reactions of their fellows showed that the initial burst had registered through the ranks.

      Jak’s Colt Python had the force of a Magnum round. The slugs he squeezed off ripped through their initial target, the rippling force of the bullets causing fatal damage almost instantaneously, the exit velocity such that the slugs cannoned into the head of the next stickie in line, taking it out at the same time.

      Krysty, Mildred and Ryan had blasters that demanded more precision: the Smith & Wesson, the ZKR and Ryan’s favored Steyr all taking out one stickie at a time with rapidly delivered single shots that ran true and chilled.

      But it was J.B. and Doc who could do the most damage. The LeMat percussion pistol’s second chamber, with its heavy ball, could do a similar job as the Colt Python, the heavily charged ball driving through one stickie and taking out the mutie directly behind as it retained enough momentum to cause lethal damage. It was, inevitably, the shot chamber that was the most deadly, the pellets striking home at a number of targets. Those that it didn’t chill immediately were either trampled beneath the feet of others as they fell, or turned and lashed out in blind anger and pain, fighting with their own.

      However, it took valuable time to reload the LeMat, so it was as well that J.B. could fire repeatedly from his Smith & Wesson M-4000, each cartridge load of barbed-metal fléchettes causing damage to the stickie hordes. The pump action enabled him to fire swiftly, and his natural skill and affinity with weapons made reloading a fluid and fast motion, which seemed to come as second nature.

      The channel into the small clearing was soon filling with the chilled and the injured, forming a block to the other muties. That should have been the end of matters. Stickies were normally cowardly and would run if attacked by any kind of superior force.

      Not this time. Whatever had frightened and agitated them scared them far more than the prospect of being chilled by weapons fire. Instead of turning back to something that terrified them more than the blasterfire, they continued to advance. And if they couldn’t move in a straight line, they would try to find a way through the denser foliage.

      Ryan cursed under his breath when he saw them begin to divert. It was always a risk to stand and fight such a large number of stickies simply because of the sheer weight of their numbers. The only advantage that made it even feasible was that the stickies would be likely to follow the same route through the woods and thus would be concentrated in a small area.

      The fact that they were now spreading out, moving into areas where it would be hard for the companions to hit them in bulk, and would be able to use the cover of the trees, made it a much more difficult task—one that verged on impossible at the best of times, let alone now. The companions had been marching all day and hadn’t had time to recover from the previous night’s fight with the mutie raccoons. This had been—they had hoped—a similar situation. Not now.

      “Spread out,” Ryan yelled.

      “There’s a lot down, they’re thinned out,” J.B. shouted. “Watch for them circling…Jak, what can you see?”

      “Less half left,” the albino mutie replied pithily. “Still moving blind,” he added.

      “So are we,” Krysty yelled at the Armorer and Jak. “Be our eyes.”

      Down on the forest floor, Krysty was right. The dense foliage echoed with the sounds of chilled and chilling stickies, mingling with the enraged cries of the remaining pack and the rustle of the foliage as it was disturbed. There were sounds from all around, making it hard to pinpoint the danger. The light was poor, the woodland in shadow and it was almost impossible to pick out movement through the density and the dark. She, Ryan, Doc and Mildred were blinded at ground level. But J.B. and Jak were still in position up trees and had a better view of what was going on around.

      Better, but still not great.

      “Shit, can’t see too much,” J.B. yelled over the noise. “Three of them to your right, Millie, about three o’clock.”

      Mildred furrowed her brow, frowning heavily as she tried to pick out one noise from another. At the Armorer’s words she turned to her right and squeezed out three shots at the first noises she heard. Screams of pain confirmed that she had found a target with at least two of the shells. But the third hadn’t quite finished the job. An enraged stickie, pouring blood from a neck wound, crashed through the undergrowth and was upon her before she had a chance to move. It crashed into her, driving her backward into the bole of a tree and knocking the breath from her. Her lungs ached for oxygen and lights danced in front of her eyes as she was momentarily stunned. She felt the creature’s hot, fetid breath on her face and, as the lights cleared, could see the blind hate in its pinprick black eyes, all the more intense for the white and hairless skull surrounding them. The stench from its body made her mouth fill with bile. The feel of the suckers on its fingers made her flesh crawl.

      It was the gag response that brought her just enough time to react. The stickie made her so nauseous that she projectile vomited into its face. The hot stream of bile and puke hit it squarely, filling its mouth and nostrils, stinging its eyes. The stickie screamed, suddenly blinded, and released its grip, staggering back and clawing at its face. Dragging air into her lungs with a painful, rasping gasp, Mildred brought up the Czech ZKR so that it was level with the creature’s face as it managed to blinkingly clear its eyes. The last thing it would have seen was the barrel and dark maw of the 551 as Mildred squeezed the trigger to release a slug. The exit wound took

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