Frowning deeply, Ryan saw that he had fought one of the small crabs. These new ones were huge, and looked brutishly strong, their legs as thick as soup cans. He wondered if the companions had ridden the dead insect like a raft. Made sense.
In a flash of white, a gull dived from the sky toward the ripe corpse and a crab perched on the spider’s back leaped into the air, slashing with both stingers. A spray of feathers went swirling, but the undamaged gull winged once more into the sky, crying loudly in frustration.
They fought in teams, Ryan realized, and with assigned tasks. Just how smart were the creatures?
“Too damn smart,” Krysty said aloud, as if reading his thoughts.
“No sign of the others,” Ryan said, studying the area for strips of cloth or human bones. “Best we check the other side. Just to be sure.”
Thumbing back the hammer on her blaster, Krysty started to walk inland to go around the feeding ground. Ryan limped along as best he could, but a couple of the smaller crabs scuttled over to investigate. Once they were in the weeds and out of sight of their brethren, Ryan dispatched the muties with his silenced pistol, then Krysty crushed their heads under her boots to make sure the crabs stayed dead.
The muffled crunches of splintering chitin caught the attention of the large blue patrolling on top of the spider, and its eye stalks extended fully to watch as the two-legs traveled around the precious lump of food. Since they kept their distance and didn’t threaten the horde, the big male saw no reason to attack them and continued its vigil against the winged predators in the sky.
Stopping on the crest of the dune, Ryan and Krysty could see there was nothing on the lee side of the huge corpse to indicate that any human had been slain by the crabs. But the lack of physical remains didn’t raise any false hopes. It didn’t mean the others were alive; it simply showed that their friends hadn’t been chilled and eaten here.
“Back we go,” Krysty said listlessly, holstering her piece.
“Later,” Ryan countered, walking along the top of the dune heading toward a ragged cliff. “First, we eat.”
Shielding her face with a cupped hand against the setting sun, Krysty soon spied what he was referring to. Food, and lots of it.
Working their way back to the shore along a rocky arroyo, Krysty and Ryan splashed into an irregular bay dotted with hundreds of small tide pools. Basins of seawater had been trapped in depressions in the hard ground as the tide withdrew, accidentally leaving behind some of the bounty of the sea. Most of the puddles contained only water and colorful shells, but several were impromptu aquariums housing an assortment of small marine life, tiny fish, sea horses or waving kelp.
Kneeling in a pool, Ryan reached into the inches of water and came up with a fat oyster. “Dinner,” he announced, tossing over the mollusk.
Krysty made the catch and eagerly pulled out a knife to open the hard shell. The oyster resisted and failed. “There must be hundreds of them,” she stated, chewing steadily. “Enough food for months!” The raw meat was slimy but delicious. However, her stomach rumbled unabated, the tiny morsel barely denting her ravenous appetite.
Tossing her another, Ryan readily agreed. He took the third oyster himself, splitting the shell and slurping down the creature intact. Chewing would have only wasted time. Casting the empty shell aside, he started to pass Krysty another when he saw the woman was already splitting an oyster she had located.
Together, the couple waded across the basin raiding every tide pool, devouring the oysters equally. They almost feasted on a small squid, but the nimble creature squirted out oily black ink when captured and squirmed from Ryan’s grasp to escape back into the rising sea.
“Too bad,” Ryan said, washing his hands clean in a puddle. “They taste like chicken.”
Spitting out a flawless pearl, Krysty started to make a comment when she was interrupted by the crackle of distant gunfire, closely followed by the dull thud of a black-powder gren.