James Axler – Demons of Eden

He galloped alongside the shaggy herd, watching their humps heaving up and down like the prows of ships breasting rough seas.

Joe shouted at the bull, trying to cut it out of the herd. Both men started up a raucous hooting. Foam was wind whipped from the beast’s open mouth, and its red-shot eyes bored in on them.

Suddenly, so suddenly that the dodging maneuver of Jak’s horse nearly unseated him, the buffalo lunged away from the herd and charged. The mammoth humpback came directly for its tormentors, hooves tearing up clods of earth, horns questing for enemies to rend.

Both Joe and Jak managed to swerve their steeds out of the bull’s path, and it kept going. Unhindered by the press of the herd, the big animal’s speed was astonishing. It galloped away from them, heading south. Howling with the joy of the hunt, Joe and Jak gave chase, exhorting their mounts to give everything they had.

The horses managed to maintain a long-legged, full-out pace for a mile, yet the buffalo continued to elude them. Glancing over his shoulder, Jak barely discerned the distant figures of Doc and Judas Redux on the bluff. He also noticed that the herd and his friends were almost out of sight, but he didn’t worry about either.

The chase after the bull continued, the land gradually sloping into a marsh. Stunted trees stood in tight groups, and the grasses of the rolling plains were replaced by reedy strands of cane and cattails, which formed borders around a narrow creek.

The buffalo splashed through a shallow pond, sending a sheet of muddy water cascading into the air.

Both Jak and Joe were soaked, and by the time they wiped the water out their eyes, the buffalo had run into a copse of cottonwood trees. It didn’t reappear on the opposite side. The two men approached the copse from either side. Jak was too excited to be cautious.

With a bellow that seemed to make the air shiver, the buffalo thundered out of the stand of trees, crashing through saplings, snapping off branches like matchwood. Jak’s horse neighed in a mad panic, and as he tried to align the sights of his blaster with the shaggy skull, his mount reared, its forelegs slashing the air wildly.

The buffalo’s curved horns missed the horse’s belly by a hairbreadth. Jak felt himself slipping from the saddle, and he kicked himself free of the stirrups, trying to land on his feet. He managed to hit the turf upright, but he stumbled and went to one knee.

The buffalo came to a sudden, dirt-flinging halt, whirled and charged. He raised his blaster, sighted coolly and calmly and squeezed the trigger. The Colt Python boomed with its characteristically full, deep-throated sound.

Nothing happened. The buffalo didn’t falter. It lowered its head and charged on. Even as the echoes of the shot rang in the air, a wedge of a huge, woolly shoulder clipped Jak as he tried to leap aside.

The impact jarred the breath out of him, and he slammed down on his left side, rolling over and over. When he came to a stop, he was gasping for air, utterly astounded he was still alive. He hurt too much to be dead.

He had kept his grip on the Colt, and he tried to push himself to his feet. The buffalo veered, turned and began another charge. Jak could see a splash of blood on the beast’s shaggy skull where the dense bone had partially deflected the first round. He aimed his blaster at it.

Joe galloped around the stand of trees and placed his pony squarely in the maddened bull’s path. He placed the stock of the Gewehr against his shoulder and cheek and fired, then he kneed his horse out of the way.

A new splotch of blood had appeared on the skull. The bull thundered on for another second, then its forelegs folded and it skidded forward, sledding along the marshy ground like a down-sliding boulder. It left a wide, scoured path in its wake, turf rolling up before it like a strip of carpet. The buffalo came to a grinding stop less than six feet from Jak’s position.