James Axler – Shadowfall

“Keep back, friends!” Doc panted, now over halfway toward the crest. Now they could all hear.

A sullen roar that they could feel vibrated through their feet, like a long-caged beast thrusting up toward the murky sunlight.

The water in the dark pool was becoming violently agitated, swelling higher, then sulking back for a few heartbeats, then rising to twice its original height. Ryan had checked quickly where the prevailing wind was, knowing that even a light breeze could carry the boiling droplets for fifty yards or more.

Now Doc and the boy were close enough for helping hands to tug them up and over the top, pausing for a moment to gather breath. “Farther!” the old man panted.

They were less than a dozen yards away from the highest point of the rocky bowl when the geyser finally blew.

Everyone dived flat, covering heads, ears and faces, J.B. making certain that the Uzi and the Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 were both safely beneath his body.

Ryan risked a glance over his shoulder, seeing the great column of boiling water and superheated steam surge upward, at least a hundred and fifty feet in the air, its top drifting away from them on the small wind.

The noise was deafening, and the ground trembled beneath them, hot water splashing all around.

But Doc’s reflexes had been just fast enough to save all of them from what could have been very unpleasant injuries from the geyser.

And fast enough, beyond any doubt, to save the life of Dean Cawdor.

Ryan clasped Doc’s hand, feeling the way that the old man was shaking, from the shock and from the exertion. “Well done,” he said. “And thanks.”

Dean, soaking wet, was wiping water from his eyes. “You saved my life, Doc.”

“What friends are for, dear boy.” He blushed slightly. “Just what friends are for.”

“LOOKS LIKE WE’RE GETTING toward the end of this hot-springs part,” Ryan said.

They’d stopped again, a quarter mile of winding trail farther on. The rad counter was now showing only the palest of yellow, shading toward the green of safety, indicating that the worst of the missiles had fallen very near the coast of California, triggering the quakes and letting in the ocean. Here, much closer to the Sierras, it was cleaner and safer.

There was still that deceptive alkaline crust on one side of the trail, and bubbling mud on the other. But it really did look as though the rising ground just ahead of them was going to be the end of the bad times.

They were strung out in the usual single skirmish line, Ryan taking a turn at the rear, with J.B. in the lead. The path doglegged sharply to the right, in front of them, round a sulfur-stained bluff with hot water streaming down it.

J.B. suddenly held up a hand, seeing a number of figures running toward him, through the mist-wraiths, waving spears and daggers.

Simultaneously Ryan glanced behind, seeing if their line of retreat was open and safe.

It wasn’t.

At least a dozen more men were charging silently, the nearest less than a dozen yards away.

It was a perfect ambush.

Chapter Thirteen

There was the brief moment of recognition.

Ryan didn’t even have time to breathe the word “scabbies” before the first of the muties was on top of him. But his eye had sent that message through to his memory and brain.

Scabbies were a particularly repulsive type of mutie, often considered to be some kind of offshoot of the more common stickies. But they were found more often near regions where there were many nuke hot spots, combined with some kind of local climate or conditions that had bred the disgustingly hideous skin diseases that gave them their name.

They were generally believed to be a little more intelligent than stickieswhich wasn’t saying much without the latter’s profoundly perverse love of enormous bright fires and thundering explosions.

Like most of the mutated peoples, scabbies weren’t keen on blasters, finding them too difficult to keep clean and much too hard to shoot accurately. They preferred to attack with old-fashioned edged and pointed weapons.

It hadn’t seemed a potentially dangerous situation, with absolutely no sign of any sort of life, and Ryan had been walking along with the SIG-Sauer in its holster, the powerful Steyr rifle slung across his shoulders.