Leaning forward, Ryan scowled from his horse. “He died fighting,” he said slowly. “Must have been an animal, something too big to reach him behind the cactus needles.”
“Why an animal and not a person?” Mildred asked, then she answered herself. “Of course. Because a man would have taken the rounds afterward. Check.”
“Doesn’t really matter, chilled is chilled,” Ryan stated pragmatically. “More importantly, those rounds look intact to me. Might be live.”
“Any chance they’re .44 calibers?” Doc asked hopefully. He was well stocked with black powder and miniballs for the LeMat, but he was dangerously low on bullets for the Webley.
J.B. adjusted his glasses. “I’d say those were .45. Sorry, Doc.”
The old man shrugged in resignation.
As J.B. started divesting himself of bags and weapons, Mildred walked over to the plants.
“Don’t bother, John,” Mildred said, starting to reach between the cactus, “I’ll get them.”
But as she knelt in the sand, there was a whispery sound and the companions turned to see an incredibly thin figure rise from the desert sand and lurch forward to hurl a spear directly at Mildred!
Caught by surprise, the woman didn’t react in time and the metal rod went straight past her, coming so close she could feel the wind of its passage. Then she dived aside and rolled over, drawing her .38 ZKR when there came a high pitched keen and the cactus burst apart, writhing green tendrils streaming into view from inside the plant. Moving like uncoiling snakes, the tendrils stabbed for Mildred, and she cut loose with her blaster just as the rest of the companions did the same.
The Devil’s Fork screamed even louder as the hail of lead punched a dozen holes through its stalks and branches, one of the tendrils getting blown off the main trunk. Thin pink “blood” gushed from the wounds, and the mutie went wild, every tendril thrashing about and grabbing for the nearby norms.
A horse was caught in the throat by a tendril, its barbed needles embedding deep in the flesh like fishhooks and dragging the screaming animal closer. Doc slashed out with his sword and cut through the ropy tendril, a well of pink ichor gushing from the wound. Another grabbed Jak around the neck, but as it tightened its grip, the tendril fell apart, severed by the razor blades hidden in the camou covering of the teenager’s jacket.
J.B. aimed and fired his shotgun as the companions moved away from the bizarre killer, the keening plant jerking as it was hit by another barrage of lead. Then a deafening report split the day and the main trunk erupted at ground level, the booming echo of the explosion rolling along the dunes like imprisoned thunder.
Lowering the smoking barrel of the Holland & Holland Nitro .475 Express, Krysty broke the breech, the two spent shells popping out to fall away as she thumbed in two more. Revealed amid the smashed skeleton and torn pieces of the cactus was a pulsating wound of exposed organs, ligaments and tendons. Ryan fired two more rounds from his SIG-Sauer directly down the gullet of the creature and it went still, the pumping ichor slowing to a mere trickle and then stopping completely.
“Another mutie plant.” Dean scowled, dropping the spent clip from his blaster and slipping in a fresh one.
“Animal, not plant!” Jak cursed, using a knife to pry away the needle covered bits of the creature still clinging to his jacket. Oddly, it reminded him of the hellish ivy covered town in Ohio where they nearly lost Krysty.
“Damn good camouflage,” Mildred said, shakily reloading her blaster and pocketing the empty brass for later reloading. “Certainly fooled me into thinking it was merely a plant.”
“But he knew,” Ryan said, the barrel of his blaster now aimed rock steady at the stranger wrapped in rags.
Doc swung the LeMat’s barrel in the same direction. The skinny person said nothing at those actions, simply standing there in silence, the dry wind tugging at the tattered ends of its wrappings.
“He saved Millie’s life with that spear,” J.B. said, racking the pump on his shotgun to chamber a fresh round.
“Unless he meant to ace her and that was a miss,” Ryan pointed out.