"Fireblast!" breathed Ryan, dropping into a blaster's crouch, gun braced against his hip, checking to make sure the others had fanned out.
About forty paces ahead, the swampies stood in a frozen group, staring at the invaders as if they were men from deep space.
Ryan checked them out, trying to guess precisely what their mutation was, wondering if it might be safest to simply chill the whole lot of them in a raking burst of lead. But there might be three hundred of them around the next bend.
The first thing that struck Ryan was their stocky build. Not one was taller than about five-two, and not one, including the single woman, weighed less than about two-twenty. Most of them had negroid features, with flattened noses and thick lips. Their hair was short and curly, and came in all shades from black to white, through red and yellow. Ryan noticed that their eyes protruded slightly, surrounded by nests of scars, like old tattoos.
None of them had fingernails.
As they glared at Ryan and his companions, their mouths sagged open as though their noses were blocked. There was not a blaster among them, though several had peculiar small crossbows strapped to their forearms. Each one, including the woman, wore long pangalike knives at the hip.
They were dressed in cotton shirts and patched short trousers, with flapping sandals on their feet, hacked from chunks of old tires.
For several heartbeats nobody moved on either side.
Then Finn opened fire.
Immediately all the others started shooting. After all, who was going to stand there shrugging his shoulders and complaining he hadn't been involved in a tactical planning discussion?
Two utilities raised their feeble little crossbows as if to retaliate, but the wave of fire sent them crashing down in a tangled heap of thrashing arms and legs.
Ryan saw his triple bursts wipe three of them away. First the woman, two 4.7 mm rounds smashing into her neck, nearly severing the head from the torso.
"High," muttered Ryan, automatically adjusting his aim. Finn's actions hadn't entirely taken him by surprise. The chubby blaster had never been known for his patience. And after Henn's murder...
The swampy beside the stricken woman was on a crutch, half his left leg missing. Ryan shot him through the stomach, spilling his tripes in the dirt.
Ryan's third victim had already been knocked off balance by one of his falling comrades, and Ryan's bullets hit him through the upper chest, on the left side. A clear heart shot, fatal within thirty seconds or so.
Perhaps fifty rounds were fired by Ryan's party, laying them all down. Peculiarly, none of the muties screamed or cried. Just a faint mewing from the dying.
In the loud silence, Ryan turned to face Finnegan, who was clearing the Heckler & Koch, reaching for spare ammunition.
"Open fire like that again, Finn, and I'll ice you myself."
It was said very calmly, with no obvious anger. But the blaster flinched and looked down at his boots. "Sorry, Ryan. You know how..."
"Yeah, I know how. But not again. Now let's get the fuck outta here before..."
There was a stifled scream from Lori. Everyone else was sufficiently experienced to know that all of the muties were down and done. Finished. But the tall blonde had been staring at the twitching corpses with a morbid fascination. Now she stood, pointing with her dainty blaster, her eyes wide with terror.
Three of the corpses had risen and were walking unsteadily toward them.
"By the three Kennedys," exclaimed Doc, taking a shaky step backward, away from the horrific apparitions.
Ryan knew that stickies were notoriously difficult to kill, but this was something else. The three... another one was struggling to rise...fourmuties had all taken terminal wounds. One had half his intestines hanging out, looping around his feet so he stumbled and nearly fell; bending to pick them up, he draped them over his arm, looking like an old picture Ryan had seen of an elegant Roman senator in his toga.
A second had an arm hanging by a thread of gristle with tattered rags of muscle bloodily weeping from the stump. Ryan had shot that one. A third had been shot in the face, the bullet dislodging an eyeball so it dangled prettily on the scarred cheek. The fourth had two massive bullet wounds in its chest and upper abdomen.
"They can't," said J.B. in disbelief. "They're dead."
"Then why aren't they fucking lying down?" asked Finnegan.
One of the swampies had managed to fire its crossbow, the bolt flying short and burying itself in the earth near Krysty's feet. She stooped and plucked it from the ground, looking at the sticky patch of brown oil smeared around its point.
"It's poisoned," she warned.
The four staggering muties were only fifteen paces away, lurching like drunken customers leaving a gaudy house at midnight. Ryan noticed that their wounds, appalling though they were, didn't seem to be bleeding as much as they should be.
"Again," he said, opening up atpoint-blank range with the G-12 automatic rifle, the burst of the caseless ammunition sending all four figures dancing and toppling. He raked the four bodies repeatedly, using thirty rounds to make sure they wouldn't rise a second time. Blood spurted, and chunks of flesh splattered into the air, with gouts of crimson, carrying splinters of bone.
After the racket of the guns, the silence was intense. The bodies lay still, torn apart by the ferocity of the shooting.
"If there's more of them, they'll be on top of us any time now," warned Ryan.
"How could they?" asked Doc Tanner, moving and staring down at the mutilated corpses. "Such wounds, and they rose and walked." He squatted down, oblivious of the blood soaking, around his cracked boots.
"Where?" asked the Armorer.
"Away," replied Ryan. "Must be more where that smoke was. I don't want to face more if they're that bastard-tough to put the stopper on."
"Sure. Back to the swampwag? Or into the brush?"
Standing up, his hands slobbered with dripping blood from probing at the carcasses of the muties, Doc interrupted, "Amazing. My dear Mr. Cawdor, it is truly amazing."
"What?"
"These poor creatures, genetically mutated as a result of the neutron bombing, have developed a dual circulatory system. Two hearts, two sets of lungs, two sets of arteries. That is why they are difficult to slay."
"Zombies," breathed Krysty. "By Gaia! They are truly the living dead."
"Nukeshit!" Ryan looked at her in surprise. "You don't believe that stuff. They're muties. Just muties. All muties are different, Krysty, but they're still muties. Right?"
The moment his words were out, he wished he could suck them back and swallow them. The girl glared at him for a long-held moment.
"I know about muties, Ryan. So do you."
"Hey, I'm... I'm sorry, only..."
She nodded her understanding. "I know why. Doesn't make it right."
"I hear them," said Finnegan, hastily reloading his blaster.
They all heard it. A distant ululating cry, rising and falling like the howls of hunting wolves. It sounded like an awful lot of swampies were heading their way.
"Let's move," said Ryan, turning away from the water and running unhesitatingly into the heavy undergrowth alongside the track.
A desperate chase it was, and lasted all morning, and well into late afternoon. At one point there was another torrential downpour but they didn't dare stop for shelter, in case the muties just kept coming after them.
Ryan, Krysty, J.B. and Finn were able to keep going with no great strain. Battle-honed and fit, they could have run for a day. Lori, despite the handicap of her high-heeled boots, did well enough. But for Doc Tanner it was a torturous pursuit.
At first they more than held their own, ducking and weaving along paths that danced and twisted like a breakback rattler. Ryan led the way, his steel panga drawn, slashing the branches that blocked their progress. Every few minutes he'd hold up his right hand for a brief rest, while all of them fought to control their breathing so they could listen for the sound of the muties.