James Axler – Demons of Eden

Dizzy, his ears ringing, Ryan clawed at the rocks, fighting his way to his feet. Then Mildred and Doc were on either side of him, pulling him erect, helping to steady him.

A column of smoke twisted up from the top of the hill, and he saw the sparse grass was covered with a glistening crimson dew.

“Krysty,” he croaked, and started a shambling, stumbling run to the base of the slope. He tried to shake free of Doc and Mildred, but their grips were tight and he dragged both of them along with him.

“No!” Mildred said sharply. “Ryan, stop fighting us!”

Krysty, Jak and two of the riflemen appeared on the crest of the hill. All four people were daubed and streaked with blood, but they appeared uninjured, though Jak was favoring his right leg.

Ryan waited until they had half climbed and half fallen to the bottom before running out to meet them.

“Blood isn’t mine,” Krysty said unsteadily. “I was standing behind the man it belonged to.”

Mildred ran exploratory fingers up and down Jak’s leg. “Chunk rock hit me,” he said in a voice tight with repressed pain.

“I don’t think any bones are broken,” Mildred observed. “But I imagine you’ll have a hell of a bruise.”

At that moment a gren arced down out of the sky and landed on the hilltop to their left. The blast sent bodies as limp as rag dolls flailing into the air, rending them apart with shrapnel and shock waves. The detonation bit a sizable portion out of the hill and spit it skyward.

From the far side of the hills, from the plain, rose laughing catcalls of vicious delight and victory.

A body came tumbling down the face of the hill, and J.B. broke from the cover of the barricade and ran toward it. Before the corpse rolled all the way to the bottom, it reached out a bloody hand and grasped a handful of tough grass to stop the tumble.

J.B. ran up the slope and grabbed Mose Autry. The man’s eyes were unfocused and glassy, and he breathed heavily through his open mouth. Blood trickled from lacerations on his arms and legs, and from his ears.

Recognizing the symptoms of concussion-induced hemorrhage, J.B. grasped Autry’s wrists, stooped and wrestled him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. As he sprinted back toward the fortifications, a few bullets rattled on the rocks. The Cadre, was pushing through the gorge and climbing the hills.

Retrieving the Steyr, Ryan joined his friends behind the makeshift battlements just as a pack of pirates appeared at the mouth of the pass. No one gave the defenders at the walls an order. Half of them shouted in fear and anger and squeezed the triggers of their muzzle loaders. At that range every ball found a target, but the men of the Red Cadre managed to return fire.

The defenders of Amicus sheltered themselves behind their barricade as the bullets hammered into it. A man cried out and fell, hands over his belly, crimson squirting between the fingers.

The bugle sounded a discordant retreat. The men and women with fully loaded weapons straightened and fired a volley, raking the marauders who were backing into the gorge and running back over the hills. There was sporadic return fire from the Cadre, and two more Amicans went down, writhing and crying out.

Then the six outlanders were the only ones firing. Their blasters kept the pirates cowering in the pass while the defenders reloaded. Everyone continued to glance toward the hilltops for any sign of Hatchet Jack or a gren.

The stretch of ground between the battlements and the pass was carpeted with bodies, some moaning and trying to move, most motionless and leaking fluids. A pirate whimpered, shot through the head but somehow still alive. Smoke drifted in flat planes over them.

The companions quickly reloaded their weapons. Ryan glanced around, and J.B., Mildred, Jak, Doc and Krysty all met his gaze with self-assured nods.

A small dark object rocketed out of the cleft between the hills and struck the barricade broadside, with a shuddering shock and rolling boom of thunder and a ball of flame. The gren tore a ragged hole in the stonework. None of the people standing at the detonation point had the time to scream.