Downrigger Drift. James Axler
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Ryan stopped short when he saw what he was about to walk into. The muties had been crapping down here for so long they had created piles of feces as high as Ryan’s head. He couldn’t even see the wall beyond in the dimming light. “Far as we go this way, people. Follow me.”
A flash of greasy, gray fur appeared in the torchlight, and Ryan squeezed the trigger of the Uzi, sending a single bullet into the pig-rat’s skull, the noise of the shot drowning out the scurrying of the stalking rodents for a few moments. It skidded to a stop at his feet, a mottled pink and back tongue lolling out as it spasmed and died. Even lying on its side, the creature’s body rose almost to Ryan’s knee.
“Good lord!” Mildred said. “They grow them big down here.”
“Keep moving. That shot scared them off, but they’ll be back, and probably a lot more next time.” Ryan set the pace, but was distracted by Doc, who stepped ahead of him to peer at a pile of shit, torch held high.
“Doc, we’ve got to keep moving.”
“Is it? It is! Give me a minute or two, my dear Ryan, and I will have the answer to your prayers in hand shortly.” Dropping his torch on the ground, Doc plunged his hands into a pile of shit, flinging fist-sized lumps aside with an expression of demented glee on his face.
“Ryan!” Mildred’s urgent hiss swiveled his head around to see a pair of the large pig-rats creeping in behind them. Stepping in front of the women, Ryan aimed and fired two careful shots that took the muties down, but they were quickly replaced by more. Ryan waved the torch, which seemed to keep them at bay, but the brutes only retreated far enough to be outside the immediate reach of the blazing brand. Lifting the torch overhead again, Ryan saw they were encircled by a double ring of the beasts, with dozens of claws scraping the floor as they approached. Finding the fire selector on the Uzi with his thumb, Ryan flicked it to full-auto and prepared to send a burst into the front line.
“Whatever you’re doing, Doc, you better do it fast!” The pig-rats were only a couple yards away now, grunting, snuffling and drooling in their desire to tear into fresh meat. Tightening his grip on the submachine gun, Ryan squeezed off a burst. The 9 mm rounds punched through a trio of muties, sending them squealing away to be set upon by their comrades.
The crack of Krysty’s and Mildred’s blasters also joined the fray, but Ryan saw it was hopeless—there were just too many of the vermin. He triggered short bursts until the Uzi clicked empty, then handed it to Mildred and drew his SIG-Sauer intent on making the nearest mutie’s attempt to steal a bite a fatal decision.
He had just drawn a bead on the closest one, which was hungrily eyeing his leg, when a two-foot-long tongue of flame shot past him and into the mutie’s face, searing it to a crisp as he watched in stunned amazement.
Chapter Ten
The pack of pig-rats halted its advance upon seeing the face of their comrade immolated right next to them. The burn victim screamed in agony and staggered away, its eyes heated to milky-white blindness. One of the others snapped at its foreleg, and when it turned to face that threat, another snuck in from behind and went for its underbelly. In seconds, the wounded one was down and dead, feasted upon by a half dozen of its fellows.
Ryan turned from the grisly sight—now nicely illuminated—back to Doc, who now held a curious apparatus. It looked to be a pipe about two feet long, bent at a sixty-degree angle, with a two-foot-long tongue of blue-orange flame erupting from a small nozzle. The other end was attached to a pair of large, steel cylinders by stiff rubber tubes. Above the odor of feces, Ryan now detected the faint scent of what smelled like burned garlic.
Doc’s face had lit up like a boy’s on Christmas morning. “MAPP gas welding torch—liquefied petroleum gas mixed with methylacetylene-propadiene. If I can get a hand with the fuel tank—” he waved at the pair of tall cylinders with a pair of gauges at the top “—we should be able to stroll out of here like walking out of church on a sunny Sunday afternoon.”
“Then let’s go. Neither Jak nor J.B. are getting any better while we stand around gawking!” Mildred said.
“Doc, look out!” Ryan aimed his blaster past the old man, who spun at the same time and adjusted a knob on the handle of the device, sending a five-foot burst of flame at the encroaching group of rats trying to ambush him. The searing fire drove them back, and Doc advanced into the group, wielding the pipe like a demented conductor, swinging it back and forth, singeing hair and mutie skin as he cleared a path through the pack surrounding them.
“Ryan, help me move the containers!” he snapped. “Everyone else stay close!”
Ryan kept his SIG-Sauer ready as he grabbed the handle sticking up above the pair of tanks. Upon a closer look, he saw that they were fastened to an upright, mobile cart, the rubber wheels jammed solid with fecal matter. Tipping the handle toward him, Ryan tried forcing them to move, but neither one budged an inch.
“Hold up, Doc!” Ryan tugged on the handle, breaking the cart loose from where it had stood for the past hundred years, and dragging it out before Doc could damage the hoses connecting the flaming wand to its fuel source. “Okay, stay close to the wall! Everyone, follow us!”
The muties snarled and shrieked their displeasure, but none were bold enough to risk the fire to attack the norm keeping them at bay. Guided by the wall on his left, Doc steadily drove through the crowd. Ryan was torn between keeping up with the old man and watching their back, but Krysty and Mildred seemed to be doing fine in that regard, the two women teaming up to protect their own flanks and guard each other. Pig-rats snapped and whined, but the occasional well-placed shot kept any rear force from becoming too organized or large.
Slowly, they forged deeper into the room, which Ryan was beginning to think had no end, but seemed to go on forever, with the group surrounded by darkness and muties, only held at bay by Doc’s improvised flamer. Always, the pig-rats probed their defenses, looking for a weak spot to swarm in for the kill. And time after time, wave after wave, Doc, Ryan and the others fended them off with fire and lead.
After what might have been the sixth or seventh assault, Doc, his narrow chest heaving like a bellows, pointed with the blazing torch. “Ryan, I see something ahead. It looks like a wall. It might be the way out!”
“Go! Go!”
Doc increased the spray on his torch, sending a stream of fire arcing out, scattering scorched muties out of his path. Ryan and the others increased their pace as well, pulses quickening as they realized they might be close to leaving this hellhole.
Then, as quickly as he had spoken, Doc stumbled to a stop, the torch drooping in his hand. “Holy mother of God…”
Ryan skidded to a halt beside him, the cart almost banging his shins before lurching to a stop. “Doc, what the hell, why you stopping now?”
In answer, the other man simply raised his arm and pointed.
At first, Ryan couldn’t make out what was ahead, but then they advanced into the light and his blaster rose instinctively, even though he knew it probably didn’t have a chance in hell of putting this new enemy down.
From around the wall lumbered huge, furry shapes, their front claws scraping through the muck, and their rear hooves clattering on the floor. Each of these muties, six in all, stood as tall as Ryan on their four legs. One of them yawned, exposing teeth as long as his hand, capped by a double pair of tusks the length of his forearm. Ryan knew that if they wanted, each one of these abominations could lunge forward and bite his head off, or disembowel him with one swipe of their three-inch claws.
Mildred, her eyes wide, was bringing up her blaster to target one of the huge beasts, but J.B. got his hand up first and managed to clamp his fingers around hers.
“No! No shooting, you hear?” he whispered.
“But we can take them out right now, before they kill us,” she hissed back.
“If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be on the floor, guts around our ankles,”