“Sounds good to me,” Krysty said. “That heat was starting to make me feel drowsy, and I think we’ll all be ready for some rest after tackling the woods.”
In general agreement, they gathered themselves together and headed into the forest, following the route Jak had taken. The albino led the way, slowing his previous pace as he knew the others would take longer to adjust their vision to the relative darkness. Ryan followed, with Krysty, Doc, Mildred, Dean and J.B. following close on his heels. It was imperative that they stick together.
“Watch roots. Wrong foot and ankle break.” Jak remarked as they reached the densest part of the path, where the entwined and knotted system of interdependent roots broke the surface. Slowing to almost a crawl, Jak picked his way over them, leading the others by example. His path was so surefooted that even Doc had little trouble in negotiating the trickier stages.
“Hot pipe, I wouldn’t like to come up against anything in here,” Dean muttered as they reached the mile-and-a-half mark of their trek. “There’s no room to fight.”
“No room for anything,” J.B. replied, “which is mebbe why there isn’t anything here.”
Dean shot the Armorer a look, not sure whether he was being mocked. J.B.’s face was deadpan behind his spectacles.
“Okay, so I’ll think before I open my mouth next time, all right?” Dean said acidly.
J.B. remained deadpan, despite the muffled laughter from the others—even from Dean himself.
Despite the difficulty of the path, there was an almost lighthearted feeling within the group as they trekked through the heart of the forest. It was true that they were maintaining a vigilance, but the entire trip so far had been so devoid of anything remotely resembling a threat that even their collective subconscious was starting to lose concentration…
THE OPENING at the far end of the woods was in sight. It lay about three hundred yards away, a small natural inlet into the trees, which grew up around it but for some reason hadn’t closed perfectly, allowing two hundred yards of grassland to invade the bare earth and root system. The sun shone through the gap, lighting up the grasslands with an almost luminous glow as the rays shot low across the ground.
Jak was fifty yards into the sun when he caught a movement that was almost beyond the periphery of his vision. It was instinct rather than eyesight that told him something was moving, something that wasn’t a bird or foliage, something that was bigger than either.
Krysty’s instincts jolted her out of her reverie at the same moment. “Ryan!” she blurted.
The one-eyed man’s reaction was razor sharp. The Steyr was off his shoulder and into both hands within the blink of his single eye, the bolt back and the chamber loaded, the stock cradled into his elbow and finger already pressuring the trigger. Behind him, at the rear of the party, J.B. had already unslung his Uzi, bringing it into position on rapid fire, and automatically covering the opposite side of the clearing to Ryan.
The one thought that crossed Jak’s mind, before his fighting instincts overtook it, was that their attacker was as silent as the yellow giant in his dream.
Except that the attack wasn’t by a single figure. It was much worse than that: a large group of stickies swarmed from the lower trees and bushes that fringed the clearing, where the lack of cover and root system had allowed smaller foliage to survive.
There had to have been close to forty of them.
And they had the element of surprise…
Chapter Four
There was no time to act, only to react. The stickies were on them before they had a chance to form a defensive formation or even clear their weapons for action.
Like all stickies—a particular form of mutation distinguished by their razor-sharp teeth, thin and shapeless skin and the suckered pads on their fingers and toes that gave them their name—they were hideous and screeched incoherently as they attacked. But what gave them that element of surprise was their stealth and also their seeming intelligence. They had observed the approaching group and gathered themselves on either side of the clearing, keeping silent until their target was within range.