“Fuck you!”
“Not with what you got, stumpy.”
“Shut up,” Sergeant Campbell ordered, pulling up his suspenders. The night had been long and one of the best in memory. Farmer women lasted a lot longer than slave girls. The man almost felt sorry about capping the bitch he had been riding. She had cried, but they all did that. But this one used his name, and most didn’t even know it. That had unnerved him a lot. The sec man didn’t like that feeling, so he shot her twice just to make sure.
“Any coffee?” Campbell shouted into the still air, startling a flock of birds covering the corpses of the men.
“Didn’t think we’d eat here,” a sec man said, wrinkling his nose.
The sergeant was forced to agree. The stink of the rotting bodies was strong. The birds and bugs eating the flesh hadn’t helped reduce the reek, only made it stronger.
“Okay, saddle up and let’s ride,” he commanded, checking the magazine in his blaster.
As the sleepy men stumbled into the rear of the APC, Campbell brushed back his wild crop of hair and walked over to the bearskin on the side of the wag.
“Curing nicely,” he said, running a hand over the hide. “I want you men pissing on it more. Going to need a good coat come winter.”
A sec man slammed shut the left door as the driver started the big diesels. “What about Collette?”
Campbell climbed inside and took a wall seat. “Screw her. Going to keep it for me. Head north, Sam. And where’s the bastard coffee?”
The driver shifted into gear and the LAV-25 rolled out of the hamlet, leaving behind the dead and a rich harvest of spent brass scattered across the bloody ground.
The LAV rolled through the fields and into the woods beyond while a private passed out the MRE packs and another warmed water over a small fire inside a tin bucket, the smoke wafting along the roof and out a series of air vents. Designed for cig smoke, the vents worked just fine for the tiny cookfire. “How much farther?” Campbell asked. “Sarge?” the driver asked, confused. “How much farther to the next dish, asshole?” Quickly, the driver checked a map taped to the armored wall. “About sixty miles,” he answered, working the steering levers. “Say, two hours. With good ground, mebbe less.”
“Good. Hey, you! That water hot yet? Then give me a cup.”
Breakfast was brief, and Campbell was dry shaving with a Bowie knife when the vehicle passed the ruins of a fishing hamlet beside a raging river of white-water. The destruction of the flimsy structures was absolute, way beyond anything needed to merely gain entrance. Worse, there were no bodies.
“What could’ve done that?” a blue asked, working the bolt on his Kalashnikov. “River muties?”
“Don’t know. Better bolt the hatch,” the sergeant commanded in reply, and unsnapped the flap that covered his handcannon.
Just then something erupted from the river in a geyser of foamy water. Wings flapping, the creature streaked over the smashed kindling and slammed onto the side of the wag. Claws raked the metal, trying to reach the men inside. A black muzzle was shoved to an air vent, and a forked tongue jabbed a good three feet into the wag. The mutie howled in frustration and crawled over the vehicle, searching for a way into the strange egg.
A sec man cut loose with an AK-47 through a blasterport, but the river mutie had already gone under the wag. Suddenly, the belly hatch slammed open and the thing crawled into the transport. A taloned hand slashed at a sec man, who dived out of the way. Another man slammed the stock of his AK-47 into the thing’s snarling face, and a third kicked over the tin bucket, fire and boiling water covering the beast.
Keening in pain, the mutie went mad, claws slashing open the seat cushions and a box of ammo, precious rounds rattling across the floor in every direction.
Tripping on the loose ammo, the rest of the sec men scrambled for their blasters, while Campbell knelt and discharged the Colt at point-blank range. The blaster’s muzzle-flame extended to touch the beast he was so close. Incredibly, the first round missed, ricocheting off the belly hatch and out of the wag. Riveting its attention his way, the beast reached out and grabbed Campbell by the boot.
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