James Axler – Stoneface

Doc knew exactly what he was facing. For half a heartbeat, terror froze him motionless. Then he screamed, clawing and kicking himself away from the gaping mouth of the mucksucker.

The creature lifted itself out of the mud on finned, stiff-membraned lobes, its titanic toothless jaws closing on Doc’s left ankle with a crushing force.

Propelled by its fins, the mucksucker made a wrenching backward heave, its fluked tail threshing the water into a white froth. It intended to drag Doc into the river with it. Digging his fingers into the mud, the old man kicked out with his right leg, which skidded across the slippery charcoal-gray skin of the mutie’s blunt snout.

A small, rational part of Doc’s mind told him the mucksucker wasn’t really a monster, but only a mutated form of catfish, a lungfish that dredged its meals from shallow bottoms and mudflats. Straining its sustenance through a fibrous screen at the back of its throat, a mucksucker was mostly considered a nuisance, not a threat.

The larger part of Doc’s mind, the irrational part in charge, told him he was in the grip of a twenty-foot-long, half-ton hellspawn that intended to eat him.

He cursed himself for leaving his swordstick behind. Bracing himself with one hand, Doc managed to draw his Le Mat from its holster, but another backward lurch of the mucksucker jerked the blaster out of his sludge-slick hand. The weapon fell into an algae-scummed puddle.

As he groped frantically for it, he heard J.B.’s shouting, splashing charge and he glimpsed Zadfrak lash the mucksucker across its broad skull with the fishing rod. It twitched in pain, but refused to release its grip.

Zadfrak planted one foot on its head, preparing to drive the rod into one of its eyes like a spear. Then, like a sail unfurling, a serrated dorsal fin unfolded vertically from the mucksucker’s back. The sharp spines of the fin stabbed Zadfrak’s right arm and slashed furrows along his side. He staggered backward, crying out, dropping the rod to hug himself. He fell onto his back full length with a splatter of mud and grunt of forcefully expelled air.

Blood sprang from half a dozen punctures on his arm, from shoulder to elbow. Doc saw crimson glistening along his rib cage as Zadfrak thrashed over, gaining a kneeling position. Shooting out his left arm, his surprisingly strong fingers closed around Doc’s right wrist.

“Grab me with your other hand,” Zadfrak gritted from between clenched teeth.

Doc followed his instructions, grasping the man’s wrist with both hands. The next backward lunge of the mucksucker dragged them only a foot.

There was a sudden fusillade of shots. Doc recognized the sharp snapping stutter of J.B.’s Uzi and the suppressed crack of Ryan Cawdor’s SIG-Sauer. One of the mucksucker’s huge white-rimmed eyes broke apart in a spray of gelatinous fluid, and several holes were stitched across the blunt skull.

The creature’s long tail flailed and slapped spasmodically. Mud flew in great sheets, covering Doc, stuffing his nose and blinding his eyes.

The crushing pressure on his foot relaxed, and Zadfrak yanked him forward and to his feet. He heard a muffled, mushy explosion, then a stinking wave of warm air washed over him.

Pawing the mud out of his eyes, Doc watched the death convulsions of the monster fish. Part of its long thick-barreled body looked oddly deflated, and he realized that a bullet had punctured one of its internal air sacs.

He was still snorting sludge from his nostrils when Ryan grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him.

“Are you all right, Doc?” he asked, bending over to probe his legs with searching fingers.

“Just bewildered, thanks to our newfound friend.”

J.B. was attending to Zadfrak, who held his right arm at a stiff, unnatural angle. The skin around the puckered punctures was swollen and turning a livid purple.

“Damn thing finned me,” he said with a grimace. “Got a dose of the poison.”

“You’re having the luck of a shithouse rat since you met up with us,” J.B. said sympathetically. “Hope you did better on your own.”

The rest of the group, roused by the gunfire, came running to the riverbank. Though in various states of dress, all brandished blasters, fingers on triggers, barrels swinging back and forth seeking targets.