Landing upright, the creature flapped a pair of wiry arms and skittered across the floor, half running and half hopping with a seeming clumsy agility. And speed. A pair of powerful hind legs assisted in the quick, rapid motions the creature was making as it scurried away.
Like many of the other mutations Ryan had glimpsed or come face-to-face with in the Death-lands, this one possessed a pair of glowing red eyes, and a softly hissing mouth filled with sharply pointed teeth. Pupils of a pale yellow-green were slitted dots within the centers of the red.
The drawing Soto had shown him back in the cafe hadn’t begun to illustrate just how ugly and frightening El chupacabras truly was. The beast’s head was oval, with a strong lower jaw. Small holes served as a nose, and, like stickies, the mutie had no ears. Two small arms ended in three-fingered clawed hands. The powerful hind legs also had three claws, and Ryan took note of the bat wings under the creature’s arms, much wider and sturdier-looking than in the illustration.
“El Chupacabras!” Soto gasped, his round face flushed with excitement.
Jak’s Colt boomed twice, both slugs catching the creature high in the chest, and while the force from the shots drove the chupacabras back for a second or two, it still kept coming, silently, eerily, with eyes of glowing crimson lit by the darkest of inner fires.
Dean chose to unleash his own firepower, drawing his Browning Hi-Power and cocking and firing the blaster in a single fluid motion. The round was useless for any kind of long-range shooting, but at a mere twenty feet from the target, the payload the
Browning delivered on impact was utterly devastating.
When the bullet hit the freakish mutie, it struck with pile-driver force. The chupacabras’s head was obliterated in a cloud of wet grue and bone, leaving behind a stump of a neck that spouted pinkish blood, even as the body continued to be propelled forward by sheer momentum.
“Thing runs ’round like chicken with head cut off,” Jak noted.
“Got news for you, Jak. This sure as hell ain’t no chicken,” J.B. retorted as he kicked out with a booted foot and halted the now-headless creature’s charge.
“I didn’t expect them to be so tiny,” Krysty said as she eyed the dead mutie.
“What’s the deal, Soto?” Ryan asked. “That little thing couldn’t have been over two feet tall. You mean to tell me the entire island’s been hiding in fear of that?”
“No, you misunderstand, Ryan Cawdor. This chupacabras is a mere child, a baby.”
“Oh.”
“You’re bleeding, lover,” Krysty said, running her hand along one of Ryan’s stubbled cheeks and wiping away a red smear. “Claw must’ve got you on the way down.”
Ryan pulled off one of his tight-fitting black gloves, revealing additional superficial cuts on the top and heel of his left hand.
“Spines got me, too,” he said. “Who’s carrying the first aid and playing medic this trip?”
“Me,” Jak said, reaching back into the pack slung over one shoulder. The albino removed a tightly wound bundle of cotton gauze and a roll of white adhesive tape.
“These goatsuckers-any poisons or toxins in the spines?” Ryan asked, wincing as Jak sprayed a stream of hissing antiseptic from a small med can onto his exposed hand.
“Hope not,” Soto replied, kneeling at the corpse, using the muzzle of his long blaster to poke at the creature’s exposed underbelly.
“You’re a lot of help,” Krysty snorted to the smaller Hispanic man.
“I answer true, girl. I don’t think the spines are poison, but I don’t know for sure. I never tried to find out, if you know what I mean.”
“You test subject, Ryan,” Jak said, grinning, showing off sharp-looking teeth. “How you feel?”
“Felt better,” Ryan replied as the gauze was wrapped around his hand. “Felt a lot worse. Don’t feel sick or poisoned.”
“Looks like Jak has the makings of a decent field medic,” J.B. noted, glancing at the albino’s handiwork on Ryan’s injuries. “If Millie doesn’t watch out, she’ll be out of a job.”
“Tough for you,” Jak replied. “Not share your bed.” Dean snorted and laughed, but didn’t turn. He re- mained alert, his Browning Hi-Power cocked and ready to shoot if more firepower was needed.