Mildred and J.B. were hanging back toward the rear of the caravan, traveling near the wagons and mules. This was partly because both sought to keep as much distance between themselves and Margia as possible—something that Gloria had realized, playing her part by keeping her sister at the front of the party, near to her—and partly because Mildred wanted to be near Doc. She had become concerned as they had entered the denser jungle by the way that the insects and the humidity had affected Doc’s breathing. Doc himself had expressed a similar concern to her, speculating that the strain on his respiratory system imposed by the repeated trawls through time and the effect on his physiology had left him with a lower tolerance than he would have wished.
So Doc was traveling at the back of the caravan, occasionally hitching a lift from Jon and Petor, who were leading the armory wagon.
And it was Doc who had the first intimation of the attack. He was discussing the ritual mating habit of birds with Petor—or, rather, he was talking at him about it while the youngster maintained a polite but baffled silence, when he suddenly stopped.
“What is it?” Petor asked, jolted awake by the sudden cessation of speech and noting the faraway look in Doc’s eyes.
“An odd noise, my boy. Not like the general hubbub, and headed this way.”
“Which direction?”
“To the left,” Doc said hurriedly, reaching out with his silver lion’s-head cane to tap the Armorer on the shoulder. “John Barrymore—” he began urgently.
But J.B. had already heard the noise and had half turned to where the noise was emanating. “I hear you, Doc,” he said, unslinging his Uzi and easing the action to short bursts. He stopped moving, the better to concentrate. It was getting louder, and at rapid speed. But such was the thickness of the jungle at this point that he still couldn’t see it.
He was taking no chances. “Incoming,” he yelled. “Over to the left, back of the column. It’s… Dark night!”
The thing that heaved into view caused J.B. to stop dead and exclaim in awe and horror.
In the gloom of the undergrowth, it seemed at first to have no shape. Moving among the foliage at a rapid rate, spraying broken stems and flowers before it, it seemed to shift from a vaguely square shape to a long, rectangular shadow that loomed forward. It was only when it came fully into the light that leaked through the dense jungle that the reason for this became apparent. For the creature was a mutated bear of some kind, its black furry coat dotted with scaled sores and thick scar tissue. The eyes were wild and yellow, matched by the large, yellowing fangs that protruded from its slavering jaws. It seemed to change shape for the simple reason that it moved by placing its weight on its forepaws while the stronger, heavily muscled back legs propelled it forward in a loping half jump, half run.
It was moving at a phenomenal speed for something that looked so uneven and strange. Even so, the Armorer’s reflexes were up to the task. His sudden shock at seeing such a creature going forward at speed was outweighed by the combat skills that had seen him make it this far down the line without buying the farm.
Without pause and in one fluid motion, J.B. brought the Uzi around and up in an economic arm motion, leveling the barrel with an area around the chest of the beast. His instinct told him to go for this shot first simply because the erratic loping motion of the creature would make a chest shot harder.
His finger tightened on the trigger, slow and easy despite the adrenaline pulsing through his veins, making the blood in his ears roar so loudly that it drowned out the cries of the beast as it scented the sudden fear in the group of people before it.
It roared so loudly that it almost drowned the insistent chatter of the Uzi as the short bursts of fire rang out. Its voice rose in pitch to match the sudden upright posture it adopted, screaming in anger more than pain as the bullets from the Uzi seemed to make little mark, thudding harmlessly into its thick fur coat, raising nothing more than dust One hit a scaly sore, puncturing the crust and causing a little blood and pus to dribble gently down into the already matted fur.