“Watch out! Something’s wrong!” he cried.
As soon as the first syllable escaped Dean’s lips, Jak changed his tactics. Knowing that the creatures would now be alerted, the albino hunter drew the .357 Magnum Colt Python blaster from out of the depths of his jacket.
“Waiting behind rock,” he yelled in a clipped, terse tone, hoping that he hadn’t wasted precious fractions of a second by having to explain his actions. Wasted because, even as his mouth opened to utter the first sound, the creatures had begun to swarm from behind and over the rocks, alerted by Dean’s cries.
Lonnie began to turn back to the rocks, his hands gripping the H&K he carried slung over his shoulder as he shrugged it into position with a practiced ease. What he saw made him freeze for a vital half moment. And in that time, the creatures were upon him.
For what he saw was a swarming posse of wild cats, more than he could ever recall seeing in one place. They had obviously evolved a kind of group or pack mentality that enabled them to communicate and work together in some fashion, for it was only by such a manner could they have contrived to have held their peace so well while waiting for the party to approach the rock. Come to that, knowing that they would approach the rock—or were at least likely to—was in itself a sign of an evolved group intelligence.
Although this flashed through Lonnie’s mind, it wasn’t the thing that impressed itself upon him the most. As he got the H&K into his hands, he was almost frozen to the spot by the sight that he beheld. What had been an empty expanse of rock a scant few moments before was now a heaving mass of multicolored fur, the surface of the rock seeming to ripple as the undulating mass of flesh and fur scuttled down and around the rock face, heading for the group.
They were wild cats, mostly dark-gray-and-black tabbies, with long fur that was matted and in some places bald, the pale gray skin showing through. A few of the cats showed white patches or touches of ginger in their coloring, which, en masse, just made the whole carpet of fur seem more amorphous and sinister. And the noise was immense. They yowled in fury and hate as they moved, a hunger seeming to permeate the very tone of their massed voice, the previously quiet desert air now rent asunder by the sounds of a hungry pack in full cry.
For, make no mistake, these were creatures in a feeding frenzy. From the look of those few that it was possible to pick out from the pack, either because of some different marking or because they rose from the pack to look around, the pack hadn’t fed well for some time, and now they saw their opportunity.
For a moment, the entire recce party, apart from Jak, was frozen in awestruck horror by the sight. It was fortunate for their collective well-being that the albino hunter had his wits fully about him and was focused, as always, on survival.
Taking a combat firing stance to one side of where Lonnie was standing, the H&K frozen in his hands, Jak raised the Colt Python and fired into the pack. He aimed for the center of the front ranks as they poured off the rock and onto the desert floor. He squeezed the trigger until the blaster exploded deafeningly, the slight echo of it resounding against the rocks, but being deadened by the wall of fur that now covered the outcrop.
The powerful handblaster cut a swathe through the front ranks of the cats, ripping through thin flesh, splintering bone, and turning organs into a bloody mush. A couple of the cats took a full impact in their heads, skulls exploding in a shower that adhered to the matted coats of the animals around them.
It stopped the cats for a fraction of a second, as confusion spread through the pack, the smell of death hitting them strongly. Their collective purpose was for a moment lost as they scattered, a small gap on the rocks forming around the chilled animals.