Squatting, Geronimo indicated hand prints in the soft mud at the water’s edge. “She knelt here to get a drink.”
“I wouldn’t mind wettin’ my own whistle,” Hickok remarked, and started to bend down.
Abruptly shattering the tranquility of the woodland, a terrified scream arose on the other side of the stream, coming from a dense stand of saplings.
“That was her!” Geronimo exclaimed.
Blade sprinted to her rescue, splashing through the ankle-high water and vaulting onto the opposite bank. He grasped the Commando securely and plunged into the stand, threading between the slender young trees. A feral growling and snarling guided his footsteps to Kauler and a monstrosity straight out of a madman’s nightmare, a mutation spawned by the radiation and chemical toxins polluting the land.
The woman had clambered up a ten-foot-high sapling, and was clinging for dear life near the top. Her weight bent the tree, and her legs were within inches of the slavering genetic deviate trying to eat her.
Stopping, Blade raised the Commando and tried to get a bead on the thing.
Perhaps the animal’s ancestors had been common weasels. In its general shape the mutant resembled such small carnivores. But this specimen reared nearly seven feet high on its short hind legs, and had a thick but sinuous body a yard in circumference. Isolated tufts of brownish fur dotted its dark, leathery hide like weeds jutting from a parched plain.
A scruffy tail a yard long jerked spasmodically as the mutant weaved this way and that, its green eyes fixed on its intended meal. Large yellow claws on all four feet appeared capable of ripping any prey to shreds. A small, rounded head perched on a long, thin neck gave the weasel a snakelike aspect. As it tried to tear the woman from the tree, snarls and hisses issued from its mouth, revealing scores of tiny daggers for teeth.
Try as Blade might, he couldn’t keep the thing’s head in his sights for more than a second at a time. The mutation kept moving, its head bobbing and darting right and left. He didn’t want to fire until he was certain he could slay it, so he held his fire and heard his friends race up beside him.
Isabel spotted them and wailed, “Help me, please!”
Displaying exceptional intelligence, the weasel saw her looking to the southeast and did the same. The very instant that its eyes alighted on the Warriors it charged.
Blade fired, holding the barrel low to avoid accidentally hitting Isabel.
At a range of only ten yards he could hardly miss. Or so he thought.
With the speed of a striking cobra, the weasel flashed across the ground, winding from side to side like a rattler. A dozen rounds came close to its streaking form, chewing up the grass and sending clumps of turf flying. None scored a hit, though.
Hickok entered the fray, his Colts sweeping up and out and cracking twice apiece.
The weasel shuddered as the slugs tore into its body, but it never slowed.
Too late Blade realized he was its target, and he had barely braced his legs when the mutation plowed into his chest and bowled him over. He released the Commando as he fell and slammed onto his back with the ravenous horror on top of him. Its teeth snapped at his face, but he managed to get his left hand on its neck, under its jaw, and held its fetid mouth mere inches from his nose. Claws dug into his chest and legs. His right hand arced down and grasped the hilt of his Bowie, and on the upswing he buried the keen blade in the weasel’s heaving side.
As quick as lightning the mutation wrenched loose and darted to the right, crouching for another attack, blood pouring from the wound.
Shots blasted, Hickok’s Colts and Geronimo’s FNC combining in a thunderous chorus, both men moving toward the mutant as they fired.
Caught in a hailstorm of burning slugs, the weasel went down.
Immediately it surged upright and tried to flee, darting toward a thicket, snarling at the Warriors all the while. More rounds bored through its body and it sprawled onto its stomach.
Blade rose at the moment the Pythons and the FNC went empty. He took two strides and leaped, landing on the mutant’s back as it heaved onto all fours. Wrapping his left arm around its neck, he stabbed the Bowie again and again into the deviate’s body.
The weasel became a whirlwind, spinning and rolling and thrashing in a frenzied effort to dislodge the man-thing causing it so much agony.
His prodigious muscles bulging, Blade held on with all his might and continued stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. He glimpsed the thicket near at hand, and then the mutation stumbled again, tottered a few feet, and collapsed, its legs outflung, to hiss out a last, lingering breath.
In the heavy silence that ensued, Blade could hear his own heart thumping. The front of his body ached terrible. He uncoiled his left arm and sat up, staring at the weasel’s glazing eyes.
Hickok and Geronimo came over, the former in the act of reloading his prized Pythons.
“That looked like fun,” the gunfighter said. “You’d be a whiz at bronc-bustin’.”
“No thanks,” Blade said, looking down at the lacerations made by the mutant’s claws. They were bleeding but superficial.
Geronimo stood over the weasel. “This is a new type. It amazes me how many different varieties of mutations we encounter on our travels.”
“I don’t mind bumpin’ into them,” Hickok said. “It’s the fact they’re always tryin’ to eat me that gets my goat.”
“Isabel is lucky we arrived when we did,” Geronimo remarked.
At the mention of the woman’s name all three Warriors turned toward the tree in which she’d roosted to find her gone.
“Blast!” Hickok declared. “Where did she mosey off to now?”
Blade stood. “Geronimo, find her tracks.”
“Here we go again,” the Blackfoot said, moving to the base of the tree.
Wiping the Bowie clean on his pants, Blade retrieved the Commando.
He slid the knife into its sheath.
“Are we going after her?” Hickok inquired.
“Of course.”
“Why bother, pard? Why not let her leave if she wants? It’s no skin off our noses if a critter decides to have her for a snack.”
“Like it or not, we’re responsible for her,” Blade said, walking over to the tree. “We brought her all this way.”
Bent at the waist, Geronimo was inspecting the ground carefully. “That mutation really tore up the soil. It’s hard to distinguish her prints with all the claw marks.” He leaned down farther and grinned. “Here’s a complete track. From the way the toes are aligned, I’d say she’s still bearing to the northwest.”
“Still trying to get home,” Blade said thoughtfully. He hiked onward, taking the lead. “She can’t be far ahead of us. It shouldn’t take us very long to catch her.”
The assessment proved to be inaccurate.
For five minutes the Warriors pursued the cannibal. The forest thinned and they reached a wide meadow where a herd of grazing deer was spooked by their arrival and bounded into the trees. Beyond the meadow rose a boulder-strewn hill. Nowhere did they spot any sign of Kauler.
“That woman must have wings on her feet,” Hickok quipped.
In single file they jogged across the meadow to the base of the hill.
“Here are some more of her tracks,” Geronimo announced, jabbing a finger at a set of three partial footprints in the soil. “She went straight up.”
Hickok shook his head and chuckled. “Where does she get all her energy?”
“It’s all the protein in her diet,” Geronimo joked, and they both laughed.
“Not funny,” Blade informed them, starting toward the summit. Scores of boulders obstructed his view of the top. He wound among them, his legs pumping, confident he would catch her soon because he doubted anyone could long maintain the pace she had so far.