“What is it?” the Armorer asked. But a moment later his question was answered by the noise of a single shot, booming out over the lake. “Ryan’s SIG-Sauer,” he said. “Know that anywhere. Means trouble.”
“Felt bad vibes,” Krysty said, aware of a tightness in her throat.
As they waited, looking at one another, they heard two more shots.
“Let’s go,” J.B. said, turning on his heel and running for the trailhead.
RYAN WAS FORCED to jump over several of the insects, dodging them as they reared up to try to snap blindly at him. Once roused, they seemed able to move at surprising speed over the rough terrain, almost as fast as a running man.
At one point, jinking sideways off the trail to avoid one of the centipedes that was close to four feet in length, Ryan felt the earth crumbling beneath his feet, and he almost fell headlong into a burrow filled with writhing baby insects.
Excited by the hunt, the creatures were giving off a bitter, metallic odor that reminded Ryan of the unpleasant taste of the poisoned water.
The squat ruin of the watchtower was ahead of him now. The twisted girders formed a sort of nest, around a dozen feet from the ground. It was somewhere to make a stand against the mutie monsters.
But Ryan knew that the blaster wasn’t going to save him. It was obvious that deaths among their number had no effect at all on the blood lust of the rest of the swarm. They would come, come and keep on coming after him.
The best he could hope for was to buy himself a little more time until the others could get to him.
That was as far as his plan went.
THERE HAD BEEN no more shooting.
“Figure he’d have found some way to tell us if things were all right up there,” Krysty panted, leading the way up the oddly narrow trail.
The slope was steep and the footing treacherous, and already they were strung out. She and Jak were in front, with J.B. now about forty yards behind and below them. Mildred was fairly close on the heels of the Armorer, but Doc was already out of sight at the rear.
There was an odd, unidentifiable scent in the air, alien and unpleasant.
There had been no more noise from the top of the hillside, still out of sight, hidden by the dense trees.
RYAN CLUNG TO THE TOP of one of the girders, looking down at the seething mass of insects that shifted below him like a bright green ocean. The noise of the mutie creatures rubbing against one another was like a slipping fan belt on a war wag engine, loud and piercing.
Several of them had tried to climb the corroded metal, using their countless legs to grip their way up. But they had moved slowly and clumsily, and Ryan had been able to knock them off with the panga, pitching them down to be instantly devoured by their voracious comrades.
For the time being, Ryan was in no immediate danger. But there was no way that he could get down and try to run through that seething mass of mutated horror. One of the centipedes, largest of them all so far, was trying to lift itself, reaching almost five feet up the broken tower toward the man.
Ryan readied the panga. He knew that the others would have heard the sound of his three shots and would already be on their way toward him. He hoped that the lower part of the steep slope wasn’t also infested with creaturesnot that he could see how the others could help, short of finding a supply of gasoline from somewhere that would burn away the vicious horde.
“WHAT MADE PATH?” Jak asked, running fast enough to keep Krysty at full stretch, but not going on ahead of her.
“Don’t know Small rodents No sign of anything living Soon be there”
She and the albino seemed alone on the slope. If she really concentrated, Krysty could hear J.B. and Mildred panting down below them. Doc was way out of sight.
“Something come out of burrows,” the teenager observed, pointing to the right.