“Harm my child, you pernicious and ugly beast?” he yelled in a hysterical tone. “Nothing can come between me and my family ever again, not even a mangy scrap of fur like you, do you hear me?”
He tried to fire again at the cat that was making directly for him, but the LeMat had discharged both the ball and shot chambers, and the hammer clicked on a dead charge. Holstering the pistol with one hand, Doc decided on a hands-on approach to the problem of the charging cat. As it leaped at him, he thrust out his free hand and with a display of timing that would have been spectacular and damn near impossible if he had intended it, he caught the beast by the throat in midleap. The animal hissed and yowled at him, drool and viscous fluid dripping from its jaws, the noise slightly distorted by the way in which his grip was beginning to choke the beast. Its body writhed and twisted with a preternatural strength as it sought to free itself, a strength matched by Doc’s own maddened grip. Its front paws lashed, the back legs coming up as it squirmed, kicking at him with sharpened claws. But all it hit was the thick cloth of his jacket, his exposed wrist and hand frustratingly out of reach for the creature.
His grip tightened, then squeezed. The cat’s neck broke, life dying in its suddenly dull eyes. And yet, even in its death throes, it took one last chance. Aided by the manner in which its neck was distorted by snapping, its dying move was to sink its fangs into his wrist. It was a feeble bite, not painful as it broke the skin, but enough to deposit some of the viscous fluid into Doc’s bloodstream.
Doc’s arm burned, then numbed, and he screamed in pain as he dropped the chilled cat, suddenly pulled back into the world of the Deathlands by the burning sensations sweeping through his body, followed by the numbness of sudden paralysis.
Jak saw the dying cat bite Doc and saw the stricken man fall to the ground. He immediately knew what had happened and knew that he had to get to Doc and get him clear before the remains of the cat pack fell upon the prone man.
By now, the Uzi and H&K fire was beginning to tell on the cat pack, and those that weren’t injured or chilled were beginning to thin out and scatter, their courage and pack instinct now shot to pieces by the continuous blasterfire that had decimated their numbers. But there were still enough to attack Doc where he lay, with enough venom in their fangs to chill him before they ripped him apart.
“Cover me—get Doc out,” the albino hunter yelled, moving toward Doc before he had finished barking out his instructions. As he moved, he holstered the Colt Python and palmed two of the leaf-bladed throwing knives, which he would use to fight off the surviving cats at close range. Stooping low as he ran in, Jak flicked his wrists so that the knives became whirring blurs that caught the flesh and fur of the cats that had clustered around Doc, closing in for the kill.
But then again, so was Jak closing in for the kill—and he was a far more experienced and ruthless hunter and killer than anything the posse of cats would have previously faced in the desert. As he stooped in and ran, the whirring blades made short work of the cats around Doc. Jak kept an eye on the cats, keen to make sure that none of them got another bite in at the prone man, always angling his blade to drive them clear as much as chill them. Behind him, the rest of the recce party kept the immediate area clear by firing at any of the posse that were still in the area. Those of the cats that Jak cut that weren’t chilled by his razor-sharp blades ran, their terror and pain deflecting their attention away from the food that Doc represented.
The blasterfire echoed away in the desert air to silence as the last of the living cats disappeared, melting into the desert as though they had never existed. The only signs that there had been a cat attack were the vast number of mutilated cat corpses and the prone Doc.