“Starving mean dangerous,” Jak noted grimly.
“Well, they tried to protect us, so we return the favor,” Ryan stated, making sure the panga was still in its sheath. “Besides, if they lose, it’ll come after us next, and without the raft there’s no way we’d last long enough in the water to ever reach land alive.”
“Gator follow dry land,” Jak agreed.
“Any weak points?” Mildred asked pointedly.
“Eyes, belly. Ears best, but hid.”
In a rush of water, the bawling gator lifted into view again with the chief clinging to its back by a bone knife, wildly stabbing at the beast with a spear.
“Light it up!” Ryan shouted, and started firing.
The companions aimed for the head, away from the chief, but their small-caliber rounds bounced off the thick hide. Only the .357 magnum slugs from Jak’s Colt Python punched holes in the gator. Then the chief came free from the mutie creature and went flying. Riding the Uzi into a tight group, J.B. sprayed half a clip of 9 mm Parabellum rounds, hoping for a lucky strike. Undamaged, the beast was gone beneath the choppy waves.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc shouted in frustration, and began the laborious process of cleaning and reloading the .44 LeMat. As a precaution against rain, he always keep a few charges of ball and powder inside plastic film containers. It wasn’t much, but until he got fresh supplies of black powder, it was all he had for the handcannon.
Dean reloaded the Browning Hi-Power and splashed away from the fight. “I know what to do. Jak, come with me!”
Snapping shut his Colt, the pale teenager stared at the running boy, puzzled, then smiled and took off after him.
“Hurry!” Ryan shouted, removing the spent clip from the interior of the Steyr and dropping in a fresh one.
There was some splashing nearby, and a score of the humanoids rose from the lake and shuffled onto the swamp. Some were bleeding from cuts, a few helped others walk and none looked in fighting shape. The chief stood directing the others, and Ryan could now see the being wasn’t a human mutie, but more like an insect. A beautiful rainbow chitin was exposed through the slashes, and small quivering antennae were visible under the helmet, which Ryan now thought of as a crown, as only the chief had one. The smooth tan hide covering the bug was actually clothes, laced tight and with pockets. Some sort of fish hide, and not the human skin it resembled from a distance.
“It’s camou,” Krysty stated, “to hide their natural bright colors.”
“They look like water beetles,” Mildred added thoughtfully. “Only without the wings.”
Ryan went to the chief and pointed toward the lake, then lifted his hand. “One?” he asked, raising a finger.
The beetle warrior gave a single click.
“Okay, there’s only one of the fuckers. If it was more, we’d be running. But we can chill one gator.”
“How?” J.B. asked, thumbing rounds into a spent clip.
“The mouth,” Krysty replied stoically, snapping the cylinder of her weapon closed. “We let it get close, then blow it apart from the inside.”
Holstering her ZKR, Mildred held out a hand. “Shotgun,” she said to the Armorer, and he passed over the weapon.
A beetle stuttered loudly and threw its spear into the lake as the gator charged from the water, the shaft jutting from its head. The beast shook off the spear and plowed through the beetles, snapping one in its powerful jaws and crushing the insect. The warriors jumped on it, stabbing wildly, but the spear points could do no more damage than the 9 mm rounds of the blasters. Flipping on its back, the gator crushed a beetle and lashed its tail at another, removing the head.
“Son of a bitch!” Mildred roared, and fired the shotgun. The spray of buckshot hit the speckled hide, doing scant damage. Cursing furiously, the woman worked the pump and ejected the rest of the buckshot cartridges, then shoved in new ones from the loops on the strap.
Pulling the pin, Krysty threw the gren, and it landed in the gator’s open mouth. But the beast hawked the obstruction loose and the sphere rolled into the lake and detonated, throwing water to the sky.