“That’s one,” J.B. muttered, sniffing lustily.
A trio of the hell-beasts bounded out this time, keeping their distance from one another as they came at the party of humans. Krysty rolled across the ob floor toward the cover of a fallen table, hoping for a clear shot. She was moving on instinct in a desperate series of maneuvers, keeping low as one of the creatures zeroed in, hissing in triumph. Her bare arms and hands hit broken glass where beakers and other glass paraphernalia had fallen and shattered after the table had been overturned.
“Dammit!” she cursed as a half-dozen cuts and punctures oozed fresh blood from her skin. The injuries weren’t life threatening, but they blazed hotly with pain. She lifted her left hand to her mouth and using her teeth, gingerly pulled one of the larger slivers of glass from her throbbing palm.
The scent of blood sent the pursuing chupacabras into a spastic dance of joy. The ugly beast waved its arms, waggled its wings and shook its pear-shaped abdomen, all the while cocking its head and sniffing the air. A hop, two more and it was on the spot where Krysty had just left a few drops of crimson fluid behind as she rolled away through the jagged hunks of glass.
A long, pink tongue lolled out of the beast’s mouth and stretched out and down to lap at the fresh blood. While the creature was distracted, Krysty scrambled onto her stomach and crawled on her bleeding hands and knees behind the sanctuary of the fallen lab table.
Across the room, Jak pulled the Colt and fast-sighted, pulling back the hammer of the blaster in a one-two motion so quickly that the twin shots fired sounded like one. The first round missed by less than an inch the creature approaching Krysty. The second landed on target, hitting the mutie high in the general area of the shoulder and driving the beast backward and to the ground.
The chupacabras unleashed a wail of pain, and Jak was beset by one of the creature’s brothers. Jak went for lower ground too, taking a dive like an Olympic swimmer and rolling nimbly with the agility of a born athlete as he came up into a crouched position with Colt in hand next to Krysty. Even in the taut danger of the moment, Krysty couldn’t help but notice the lithe albino wasn’t even breathing hard.
The youth fired two more bullets, and both rammed home, blowing a fist-sized hole in the chupacabras’s midsection. The mutie flipped backward from the force of the gunshots, screeching in agony for a few long seconds before dying.
“Need practice. Not good with gun as knives,” Jak said casually to the woman at his side.
“Good enough,” Krysty answered with a smile.
“I think we have found the nest, Ryan Cawdor,” Soto called out, his face flushed red with adrenaline and fear.
“You think?” Ryan replied, biting back a more sarcastic remark. “We’ve been lucky so far, but I think we need to back off. J.B., we got enough in the way of those grens you boosted from Jamaisvous to close this place down?”
“Yeah,” the smaller man replied, patting a pocket of his jacket.
“Everybody head for the stairs!” Ryan bellowed. “J.B. and I will lay down covering fire. We’re going to blast and seal them in!”
Ryan didn’t have to give the order twice. There was a scramble as Krysty, Jak, Dean, Soto and Jorge hit the silver ring of the air lock. J.B. had the Uzi set on 3-round bursts, periodically fanning the duct where the creatures had entered the deck of the lab.
“Everybody’s out.”
“Okay,” the Armorer replied, taking out one of the four unusual, small, yet deadly high-ex grens he’d taken from El Morro. “I’m setting the timer for twenty seconds.”
“See you outside,” Ryan replied, and exited the room.
J.B. flicked a small timer switch and gave an underhanded toss, landing the gren inside the open vent of the circulation system, and then he was gone, out of the room, through the air lock and into the outside hallway, running with the others even as the walls shook and the loud sound of the gren explosion echoed through the lower section of the redoubt.