LITMIR.BIZ

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down the black tunnel, hearing faint skittering and chittering noises from inside. “Pull me up!”

      J.B. started to do so again, and had almost gotten her to the lip of the pit when Mildred felt a strong tug on her combat boot. She glanced down to see yet another of the bugs with its mandibles firmly clamped around her foot. “Shit! Hang on, John. I have to do a little extermination!”

      “Hurry up, for shit’s sake!” he said through gritted teeth.

      Mildred aimed and squeezed the trigger, but the hammer fell with only a dull click. She pulled it again, but with no better result. “Damn it, I know I had one left—misfire!”

      “Great!” J.B. said. “Doc, a little help!”

      The old man’s head appeared over J.B.’s. Apparently he was lying on the Armorer to provide ballast. “Oh, my. One moment...” He stretched out a long arm with his LeMat revolver extending from his hand. His face was caked in dust and dirt, and his eyes were watering profusely, leaving wet tracks down his face and making him resemble some sort of demented, muddy clown. “Do not move, Mildred!”

      “Jesus! Can you even see what you’re aiming at, Doc?” she shouted back while trying to dig her other foot into the dirt. The burrow-bug increased its pull on her, making Mildred feel as if she was being stretched apart.

      “The beast is fairly large—” Doc squeezed the trigger of his LeMat, and the slug buried itself in the bug’s head. “That should do it!”

      And it did. The bug slumped to the ground—but its mandibles were still locked tight around Mildred’s ankle.

      “Dammit!” Still holding on to the jacket for dear life, Mildred kicked at the bug’s head with her other foot. Slowly it began loosening from her foot.

      “Careful, it’s starting to tear!” J.B. said. He was right—his jacket had been through a lot already, and the stitches around the shoulder were starting to pop loose.

      “Almost got it—off!” With a last hard kick, Mildred freed her foot just as Doc shot another of the tunneling beasts scuttling toward her. Its body slithered back to the bottom, where it disappeared into the tunnel below.

      “Can’t...hold...on!” she cried. Her bleeding fingers were slippery, and Mildred felt the leather slide through her slick hand. She glanced down to see three of the hungry muties jostling one another to be the first to sink their pincers into her when she fell. Although she squeezed the jacket sleeve with all her strength, she still felt herself slipping. Mildred tried to lift her other hand to support herself, but the injury in her chest flared when she raised her arm higher than her elbow, and she had to let it drop again. Looking back up, she saw more thread tearing away, and the hole between the sleeve itself and the rest of the jacket growing larger. “Please—”

      A strong hand suddenly gripped her wrist, and she looked up to see Doc’s lined face smiling down at her. “You are so close to being free of this accursed hole, and the world is an infinitely more interesting place with you in it, my dear Dr. Wyeth. Now come with me.”

      And just like that, with Doc and J.B. helping her, Mildred was free of the pit. J.B. gave her a quick hug, also patting her down for injuries at the same time. “Where are you hurt?”

      “Below my shoulder. I can walk,” Mildred replied, already rising to her feet. “Let’s go.”

      “No time to reload,” J.B. said. The cylinder of Mildred’s target pistol didn’t swing out for quick reloading—each shell had to be manually ejected with the rod on the side of the gun and bullets inserted one at a time.

      He handed her the Mini-Uzi and took up Doc’s LeMat. “I’ll help Doc, you cover us. Only got about fifteen rounds left. Make each one count.”

      “Ace on the line with that,” she said, switching the fire selector to single shot for more accuracy.

      J.B. hoisted Doc’s arm over his shoulder, and with the old man’s silver stinger ready to repel attackers, the three skirted the large pit and continued on their way toward the large rock plateau.

      But they had no sooner gotten around the hole in the ground than they faced a group of the bugs at least three deep and six wide. Aboveground, the bugs were about six feet tall, each one rearing to form an L shape. Eight legs were now visible—the rear four used for balance and movement, the front four for attack and defense.

      Mildred glanced back to see more of the armored killers forming to encircle them again. “Damn it, boys, didn’t we just leave this situation a few minutes ago?”

      “Back in it now...” J.B. began, just as the heads of the first row all opened up as if each one had been hit with a hammer, one after another, spraying black goo over Mildred, J.B. and Doc. Booming reports thundered around them as the entire first row keeled over, dead.

      The surprise attack seemed to confuse the second wave of bugs, and they hesitated for a moment. It was all the time Mildred and J.B. needed.

      With both the Uzi and the LeMat raised, the three charged forward as fast as Doc’s injured ankle would allow, clearing their own path with lead and steel. Six more went down in the first seconds of their charge, five by bullet, one by sword.

      Two others stepped into their path and were mowed down by accurate head shots. With a loud, long war cry, Doc impaled another one trying to flank them, pinning the struggling bug with his blade as if he were mounting a particularly large specimen under glass.

      The rear guard was charging after them in a wave, and Mildred could feel the animalistic fury at their backs. It just made her go faster, although not fast enough to leave J.B. and Doc behind.

      The burrow-bugs were getting closer now, braver. Any that got within three steps died, but Mildred sensed others closing ranks around them. If someone tripped, if an ankle turned on a loose rock, then that’d be all she wrote—the others would have to make the split-second decision to try to help the downed person and risk being torn apart, or keep moving.

      J.B.’s Mini-Uzi bucked in Mildred’s hand, each shot finding a home in a bug’s head. Again, at this range, she couldn’t miss, but she also couldn’t just shoot indiscriminately either. Only head shots would do.

      The bugs were close enough now that they could brush her with their claws if they chose, although Mildred would make sure she was the last thing they touched in their lifetime. She snapped off a shot at one that lunged at her, dropping it in its tracks.

      She heard the deafening boom of J.B.’s shotgun and glanced up to see Jak standing like a snow-haired avenger at the edge, blasting away at the bugs behind them. They just might make it....

      Doc let out a strangled gasp as his leg buckled. J.B., however, didn’t miss a step. He just hauled the taller man with him the last few steps to the rock wall.

      “Jump!” Ryan called down, his hand extended to grab the first person coming up.

      “Go!” J.B. said to Mildred. Mildred didn’t need further urging, and leaped for Ryan’s hand. Before she knew it, the powerful man hoisted her up onto the rock shelf, unceremoniously dumping her nearby and leaning down again.

      “Hey—” Mildred said, then clamped her mouth shut as she realized he was going back for the others. Doc was next, the old man wheezing as he stumbled away and sank to the ground. Mildred rolled to the edge of the plateau, still firing the Mini-Uzi into the mass of bugs as Ryan hauled J.B. up and onto the plateau. As his combat boots hit the rock floor, the submachine gun clicked on an empty chamber.

      “Think you could have cut it any closer?” Ryan asked with the hint of a grin as they watched the bugs surge back and forth below them.

      The Armorer shrugged. “Would have been here sooner, except I had to keep stopping for other folks,” he replied with his own wry smile.

      “‘Stopping for other folks?’ In case no one happened to notice, Doc and I almost got killed down there!” Mildred said.

      Both

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