James Axler – Gaia’s Demise

“Gotta be Overton,” the boy growled, his hand going white on the rim of the hatch. “Who else has predark weapons like that?”

Krysty glanced at the turret. “Agreed. We walked straight into a trap. This was the perfect location to recce the ruins of Shiloh, and they knew it. Those blue shirts of his must have gambled we would go check the place and planted some mines here just in case.”

“Bastards!” Jak spit.

“Clever bastards,” Mildred corrected, licking dry lips.

Minutes passed with only the steady ocean wind blowing over the field, and J.B. cursing as he worked on the mine.

“Well?” Ryan asked, his heart pounding in his chest. The Deathlands warrior had faced death a hundred times, but this was unclean somehow, cowardly. They sometimes used booby traps, but they were always designed to kill enemies, not mutilate. Was this revenge for what he had done to Overton? No, that made no sense. It was impossible for them to know who would step on the mine. Just the luck of the draw it was him, nothing more.

“Don’t rush me,” J.B. whispered, probing the mechanism with homemade tools—a coiled spring from a pen and a piece of stiff wire from a coat hanger.

Sweat trickling down his face, Ryan thought of how he sometimes teased J.B. about the oddball bits of junk the Armorer gathered in their journeys. He would never do that again.

Wiping off his face with the back of a hand, J.B. grunted something to himself and finally stood alongside the trapped man.

“Well, old buddy, I’ve got good news and bad news,” J.B. said while drawing his scattergun and working the pump action, ejecting live shells until it was empty. “I can get you free, and the primary charge won’t go off.”

Ryan knew what that meant. “But the other two will.”

The man nodded as he slid in fresh shells, simple buckshot instead of the usual flesh-shredding alloy flechettes. “So when you move, hit the ground to get under the spray.”

“And the scattergun is going to buy us some yardage.” It wasn’t a question.

J.B. lay on his belly and aimed the S&W M-4000 at Ryan’s partially raised combat boot. “Best idea I got. You ready?”

An insane laugh bubbled up from inside and Ryan couldn’t stop himself from chuckling. “I have a choice?”

“Nope.”

“Then I’m ready. Now.” Moving like lightning, Ryan dived to the left.

He was still airborne when the ground burst apart with a soft thump and the deadly mine leaped skyward. Instantly, J.B. triggered the scattergun, the blast slamming the land mine far over the edge of the cliff. Half a heartbeat later, the device violently detonated, and a hissing sound filled the air from the passage of the bearings. The half ring of trees along the clearing shook madly, leaves and branches tumbling to the ground in a cascade of destruction, along with the occasional bird and squirrel. Bloody feathers and bits fur were all that remained of the minced bodies.

The reverberations of the blast echoed for a few moments, then silence returned—dead silence without a bird singing or a cricket chirping.

“Thanks,” Ryan said as he rose from the ground.

“Easy as pie,” J.B. said, standing and dusting off his clothes. The Armorer kicked a clump of earth with his boot and watched it disappear over the edge of the cliff. “However, if that had been a PMR-2, or a Valamora…” He left the thought unfinished.

Ryan grunted in acknowledgment. “Let’s go.”

With extreme care, the two men retraced their steps to the APC, watching the ground closely, placing the toe of each boot into the heel mark of the footprint they made walking to the cliff. As they neared the wag, Krysty stuck her head out of the top hatch and whistled sharply. The men jerked their heads upward, and watched as she raised an open hand with the fingers splayed, then closed it into a fist. She then tapped her wrist twice with one finger.

“Company coming,” J.B. whispered, working the bolt on his Uzi as quietly as he could.

Ryan nodded, leveling his longblaster. “And fast. We better chance running the last yards. Go!”