James Axler – Shadow World

Krysty unholstered her .38, but before she could aim and fire, the snake in front of her struck, fully two-thirds of its body length extended, its jaws gaping wide. She instinctively twisted to the side and the fangs missed the top of her thigh by less than an inch. With amazing speed, the huge rattler recoiled itself for a second strike, this time point-blank.

Krysty was tightening down on the revolver’s trigger when Ryan called out a second warning.

“No blasters!” he said. “We don’t want to give away our position. Follow me, I’m going to open up a path.”

Krysty held her fire, but kept the snake in her sights and her finger on the trigger as Ryan drew his panga from its sheath. The blade slashed down in a tight arc and under the blade’s keen edge, the rattler’s head seemed to leap free of its neck. Spurting ten-foot jets of blood, the headless body went wild, thrashing and slapping the dirt.

Ryan grabbed Krysty by the arm and pulled her along after him. “This way!” he called to the others. No one questioned his choice of direction. There wasn’t time for discussion. They all knew that standing still meant certain death.

Krysty followed his boulder-hopping, straight-line dash. Farther out on the plain, she could see more big rocks turning into big snakes, and the big snakes were sliding their way. Whatever path Ryan could clear with the eighteen-inch knife, it wasn’t going to stay clear for long. The panga slashed down again and with a single stroke the one-eyed man hacked a snake cleanly in two. As they jumped the writhing halves and rushed on, Krysty saw Ryan shift the panga from right hand to left, just in time to flick out his wrist and catch another mutie rattler in midstrike. His left-handed slice chopped off half the snake’s head, just in front of the eyes, cleaving its fangs and tongue as well.

Disarmed, its face gushing red, the rattler instantly recoiled and struck at Krysty’s shin as she passed by. Forty pounds of muscle and bone slammed against the side of her boot and knocked her off balance. With a crash she landed on her hip on the rocks. When she looked up, still dazed by the impact, she stared into the wounded snake’s eyes and saw the hate. Pure unreasoning hate. Blood mist puffed out in time with its breath as the mutilated rattler rewound itself, preparing to hit her harder.

Krysty jumped out of the way before it could strike. Ahead of her, Ryan growled a curse of “Fire-blast!” She closed the gap between them while he dealt with the three snakes that blocked their escape route. Forehand, backhand, forehand, the panga’s blade screamed through the air, and, severed, out-sized viper heads hurtled off across the boulder field. For a quarter-mile across the desert, the companions ran full-out. Only when Ryan was sure there was nothing but real rocks for fifty yards around them did he signal a halt to their headlong flight. Gasping and drenched with sweat, the companions slumped to seats on boulders. It took several minutes for them to catch their breath enough to drink water.

Lowering his canteen, JJB. jabbed a thumb in the direction they had come and said, “Shame to waste all that good white meat.”

Ill cook it up,” Mildred told him, “if you go back and collect it.”

J.B. shook his head. “Rather eat my own foot.”

A HALF HOUR LATER, and another two miles into their trek, it began to rain. But not raindrops saturated with caustic chemicals.

It rained birdssmall, dead birds. A few at first, hurtling down, headfirst, with wings folded, dark brown blurs thudding into and bouncing limply off the rocks.

The drizzle became a shower, and then the shower became a deluge.

There was no cover for the companions. They shielded their heads with their arms, crouching as they were pelted by the hail of little corpses. The full downpour lasted only a few seconds. When it was over, thousands of unmoving bodies darkened the ground and the air was thick with tiny, shredded bits of feather.

The fluff made Mildred sneeze. “Better not touch them,” she warned the others. “It’s possible they could be carrying some kind of pathogen, a virus that might be contagious.”