“Open fire like that again, Finn, and I’ll ice you myself.”
It was said very calmly, with no obvious anger. But the blaster flinched and looked down at his boots. “Sorry, Ryan. You know how”
“Yeah, I know how. But not again. Now let’s get the fuck outta here before”
There was a stifled scream from Lori. Everyone else was sufficiently experienced to know that all of the muties were down and done. Finished. But the tall blonde had been staring at the twitching corpses with a morbid fascination. Now she stood, pointing with her dainty blaster, her eyes wide with terror.
Three of the corpses had risen and were walking unsteadily toward them.
“By the three Kennedys,” exclaimed Doc, taking a shaky step backward, away from the horrific apparitions.
Ryan knew that stickies were notoriously difficult to kill, but this was something else. The three another one was struggling to rise.. . four muties had all taken terminal wounds. One had half his intestines hanging out, looping around his feet so he stumbled and nearly fell; bending to pick them up, he draped them over his arm, looking like an old picture Ryan had seen of an elegant Roman senator in his toga.
A second had an arm hanging by a thread of gristle with tattered rags of muscle bloodily weeping from the stump. Ryan had shot that one. A third had been shot in the face, the bullet dislodging an eyeball so it dangled prettily on the scarred cheek. The fourth had two massive bullet wounds in its chest and upper abdomen.
“They can’t,” said J.B. in disbelief. “They’re dead.”
“Then why aren’t they fucking lying down?” asked Finnegan.
One of the swampies had managed to fire its crossbow, the bolt flying short and burying itself in the earth near Krysty’s feet. She stooped and plucked it from the ground, looking at the sticky patch of brown oil smeared around its point.
“It’s poisoned,” she warned.
The four staggering muties were only fifteen paces away, lurching like drunken customers leaving a gaudy house at midnight. Ryan noticed that their wounds, appalling though they were, didn’t seem to be bleeding as much as they should be.
“Again,” he said, opening up at point-blank range with the G-12 automatic rifle, the burst of the caseless ammunition sending all four figures dancing and toppling. He raked the four bodies repeatedly, using thirty rounds to make sure they wouldn’t rise a second time. Blood spurted, and chunks of flesh splattered into the air, with gouts of crimson, carrying splinters of bone.
After the racket of the guns, the silence was intense. The bodies lay still, torn apart by the ferocity of the shooting.
“If there’s more of them, they’ll be on top of us any time now,” warned Ryan.
“How could they?” asked Doc Tanner, moving and staring down at the mutilated corpses. “Such wounds, and they rose and walked.” He squatted down, oblivious of the blood soaking, around his cracked boots.
“Where?” asked the Armorer.
“Away,” replied Ryan. “Must be more where that smoke was. I don’t want to face more if they’re that bastard-tough to put the stopper on.”
“Sure. Back to the swampwag? Or into the brush?”
Standing up, his hands slobbered with dripping blood from probing at the carcasses of the muties, Doc interrupted, “Amazing. My dear Mr. Cawdor, it is truly amazing.”
“What?”
“These poor creatures, genetically mutated as a result of the neutron bombing, have developed a dual circulatory system. Two hearts, two sets of lungs, two sets of arteries. That is why they are difficult to slay.”
“Zombies,” breathed Krysty. “By Gaia! They are truly the living dead.”
“Nukeshit!” Ryan looked at her in surprise. “You don’t believe that stuff. They’re muties. Just muties. All muties are different, Krysty, but they’re still muties. Right?”
The moment his words were out, he wished he could suck them back and swallow them. The girl glared at him for a long-held moment.
“I know about muties, Ryan. So do you.”
“Hey, I’m I’m sorry, only”
She nodded her understanding. “I know why. Doesn’t make it right.”
“I hear them,” said Finnegan, hastily reloading his blaster.
They all heard it. A distant ululating cry, rising and falling like the howls of hunting wolves. It sounded like an awful lot of swampies were heading their way.