James Axler – Deathlands

Chapter Fifteen

It was a gigantic mutie python.

The creature had obviously tasted the air and sensed the young woman, who was sitting alone by the entrance to the camp. It crept from the cool shadows, moving with a silent, sinuous power.

Before Rain Flower even guessed at the danger, the snake had wrapped itself around her ankles, crushing them together, making it impossible to escape.

She had screamed, warning the others, and managed to draw her rusted blaster from its holster and pressed it against the huge coils, a yard or so below the blunt shovel-shaped head.

She pulled the trigger. There was a puff of smoke from the muzzle of the Savage and a feeble popping sound.

“Misfire,” Jak shouted, already sprinting back toward the guardhouse.

Ryan was at his heels, J.B. and Krysty sharing third place in the deadly race.

As they drew closer, they could appreciate the gigantic size of the serpent. Part of it was still hidden by the undergrowth, but what was revealed was fully thirty feet long, the central coils almost the size of a barrel. The skin was glossy, mottled in dazzling shades of olive, brown and gold.

“I’ll use the scattergun on it!” J.B. yelled.

By now the young native woman had vanished into the swathing loops of the reptile, only one arm emerging from the side. Her hand was waving frantically, her fingers opening and closing spasmodically.

Mildred called out from a few yards behind the others, breathless. “Don’t just shoot it, John. The reflex’ll tighten and crush her.”

“Shit!” The Armorer slowed, looking over his shoulder at her. “Sure?”

“Sure enough not to want to take the risk. Have to get it brain-dead straight off.”

The great head was reared in the air, fully eight feet off the ground. Jak was way out in front, sprinting for the life of Rain Rower. He had heard Mildred shout the warning and had holstered his .357 Colt, hardly breaking stride.

Ryan had shrugged off the heavy Steyr rifle, knowing that this was going to be a close-in chilling. But Mildred’s warning had also slowed him.

They all heard a muffled scream for help from somewhere within the serpentine coils of the python, but the voice was weak and fading.

“Let me!” Mildred yelled, stopping thirty or forty yards from the snake, panting for breath, drawing the ZKR 551 and leveling it, trying to steady herself.

But Jak was blindly oblivious to what was going on behind him. He was still running, arms pumping, white hair trailing like a flare of burning ice. His right hand held one of his concealed armory of throwing knives.

Ryan slowed, realizing that the drama was going to be played out one way or the other before he got close enough to take an active part.

It was going to be Jak.

Or nothing.

The python watched the darting figure, its flat eyes staring down. Waves of muscle ran along the hugely muscular body, slowly beginning to crush the frail woman, ready to pulp the meal to a more accessible size so that it would slip between the dislocated jaws and down into the squeezing labyrinth of its intestines.

The head was weaving slowly from side to side, like a rattler trying to hypnotize a rabbit.

Jak took no notice, every shred of his attention focusing on his target.

“He’ll never” Dean began.

Jak was the most amazing acrobat that Ryan had ever seen through all the long survival years in Deathlands. His lithe body was more agile than seemed humanly possible.

He took off from a flat-out run, as though from a springboard, performing a neat tucked somersault in the air, dodging the lightning lunge from the broad, patterned head and gaping jaws. He landed astride the upthrust body, hanging there like a monkey gripping a telephone pole.

The python hissed like a leaking steam boiler, its jaw snapping empty air as it tried to bite the irritating creature that clung to its immeasurably powerful body.

“Mildred?” Ryan called, not looking back.

“Moving too much. I’m too out of breath. Triple-big risk, Ryan.”

“Wait,” he said quietly. He had his own blaster, the SIG-Sauer P-226, cocked and leveled, but the chance of hitting a vital spot in the weaving head and body of the giant snake was remote. Better to let the teenager take his chance.