“Our Tillers grow a heap of vegetables,” Hickok said, “and we have some fruit, but our meat is usually venison.”
“What’s venison?”
Hickok squinted at the Technic. “You’re puttin’ me on.”
“We don’t have venison,” Spencer said. “What is it?”
“Deer meat.”
“What’s a deer?”
“You’ve never seen a deer?” Hickok queried incredulously.
“No. Is it some kind of animal? Animals are illegal in Technic City,” Spencer disclosed.
“What about dogs and cats?”
“They’re popular,” Spencer commented, “but, personally, I don’t like them as much as worms.”
“You eat dogs and cats?” Hickok questioned him.
“You don’t?”
Hickok studied the billboard, perplexed. He could understand eating dogs, because feral dogs were a rare family fare. But worms! Revolting! He gazed around the parking lot, stared at the crowded avenue beyond, and perceived a spark of sanity in the notion. Technic City contained millions of people, all fenced in like cattle, herded into a limited area and forced to live out their manipulated lives subject to every whim of the totalitarian regime controlling them. With so many mouths to feed, and with scant dietary resources, the Technics had supplanted the typical prewar fare with the one food source capable of breeding faster than rabbits; with an abundant animal readily available at any time of year; with a creature easily cultivated and processed: worms. When you looked at it logically, Hickok grudgingly admitted, the idea sort of made sense.
Another siren sounded from afar.
Hickok dismissed the worms from his mind and concentrated on his escape. He glanced at Spencer. “I want you to tell me everything you know about this buggy of yours.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” Hickok affirmed. “How it runs, how you stop it, what those things are on the ends of the handlebars I saw you turning. Everything.”
Spencer commenced his instruction, and as the gunman listened, fascinated, a crafty scheme blossomed, a devious ploy designed to achieve his deliverance from the vile metropolis of worm-eaters.
Chapter Seventeen
The… thing… scrambled up the tunnel wall toward the landing, snarling viciously.
Blade had seen more than his share of genetically deformed mutations over the years. There had been mutates galore, and the Brutes in Thief River Falls, and Fant in the Twin Cities, and the Doktor’s bizarre creatures such as Lynx, Gremlin, and Ferret. But never had he witnessed anything as horrendous as the mutant in the shaft.
The beast was an amalgam of insect-like traits. Its huge body resembled that of a centipede, with five oversized segments and two legs on each segment. The body and legs were black, and the legs ended in tapered claws. Its head appeared fly-like, but it had four eyes, all bright green, instead of the usual two. Its elongated jaws were like those of a praying mantis, but glistening between the jaws were two rows of pointed, spiderish fangs.
Blade took all of this in as he rested the Dakon barrel on the metal railing and crouched, aiming for the creature’s bloated cranium. He remembered the button on the scope and pressed it to activate the Laser Sighting Mode, and there it was, a bright red dot on the creature’s sloping forehead.
The mutant was 15 feet below the landing, its claws clinging to the sheer walls, finding purchase where any other animal would slip to its doom.
Blade squeezed the trigger, the Dakon II recoiling into his shoulder.
The creature rocked as its forehead exploded, spraying the wall with black flesh, a pale yellowish muck oozing from the cavity, but it kept coming, climbing higher.
The mutant was only ten feet from the landing now.
Blade frowned, perturbed. He’d gone for the head, for the brain, hoping to dispatch the thing with a minimum of fuss. His shots should have struck the brain, killing it.
If it had a brain.
He aimed again and fired.
The creature shrieked as its squat neck was hit, its jaws twitching.
But it kept coming.
Seven feet now.
Blade rose and pressed the trigger, sweeping the Dakon in an arc.
The fragmentation bullets stitched a straight line across the mutant’s segmented body, geysers of flesh and pulpy gore raining on the wall.
But it kept coming.
And there wasn’t time for another broadside.
Blade retreated toward the stairs, watching the landing edge for the first sign of the mutant. There was a loud scraping noise in his amplified right earphone, emanating from underneath the landing.
Directly underneath.
Blade paused. But that would mean the thing was crawling under the landing to the other side, using the landing as a shield from the Dakon.
That would mean he was being outflanked!
Blade spun, finding his deduction was accurate.
The mutant had passed under the landing and climbed up the railing behind its prey. It was perched on the railing, its head swaying as it examined its next meal.
Blade raised the Dakon.
Snarling, the creature flowed over the top rail, its head and first two segments reaching the landing in a blurred streak. It reared on its lower segments, then pounced like a bird taking a fish, its serrated jaws spearing down and in.
Blade was caught before he could react. He felt something strike both sides of the helmet, and the mutant’s first pair of legs reached up, its claws digging into his broad shoulders.
It had him!
Blade rammed the Dakon barrel into the creature’s exposed abdomen and blasted away.
The mutant wrenched its iron jaws upward, tearing the strapless helmet from the Warrior’s head. It screeched as its jaws closed, crushing the helmet as effortlessly as a man would break an eggshell. Enraged by the agony in its belly, it flung its prey across the landing and into the opposite railing.
Blade’s left side bore the brunt of the impact, and he doubled over as an excruciating spasm lanced his chest. The Dakon II dropped from his benumbed fingers, and he fell to his knees, gasping for air. He saw the creature climb the rest of the way over the railing.
The mutant’s ghastly head and the first two segments of its hideous body rose from the floor, like a snake about to strike. It silently rocked from side to side, its jaws slowly opening and closing, opening and closing.
The squashed helmet was on the landing to its left.
If only he had his Bowies! He could dive under the monster and slash its guts out with a few swift swipes. But he didn’t have them, and Blade sensed he might never see them again if he didn’t come up with something fast. What he needed the most was a diversion, a distraction.
And he got it.
A loud war whoop from the stairs above caused the creature to bend its neck straight up as it searched for the source of the cry.
Geronimo was between landings, leaning over the railing. He aimed at the four green eyes and fired, sweeping the Dakon from side to side.
The mutant howled and thrashed, its head tilted, attempting to avoid the rain of lead. It suddenly bellowed and turned, its front sections climbing into the railing as it started up after this new pest.
Blade saw his chance. He rose, the Dakon II in his left hand, and ran toward the creature, grabbing the pulverized helmet as he did.
The monster’s head and first section stretched toward Geronimo, momentarily suspended in midair.
Blade pointed the Dakon at the mutant’s jaw below the head and squeezed the trigger.
The creature’s throat erupted in a shower of black flesh and pale ooze, and it whipped its head down, jaws wide, primed to rip its quarry to shreds.
Blade swung the ruined helmet around and up, driving it into the thing’s mouth, into its fangs, and as the mutant instinctively snapped its jaws shut, he released the helmet and stepped back, lowering the Dakon and firing at the mutant’s body segments, at the top of its legs, at the joints, where the legs were attached to the individual segments, and the fragmentation bullets did as he wanted, rupturing the limbs, bursting the joints, blowing four of the creature’s legs from its body.