Ryan and Jak returned to the wag at a trot, casting glances behind them. They still saw nothing, but the cacophony of eerie cries grew louder by the second.
“Everybody back aboard!” Ryan shouted. “Screamwings!” Krysty ran back up the slope to the roadbed. J.B. pushed open the side door panel. The wiry, bespectacled weaponsmith climbed out, holding his Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 shotgun tightly. His Uzi hung from a lanyard across his narrow chest.
“Where?” he demanded.
Jak gestured back toward the hills. “Hear?”
“Yeah. Getting close.”
Poking his head into the wag, Ryan saw no sign of Mildred or Doc. He looked across the roof of the vehicle, then cupped his hands and bellowed, “Mildred! Doc!”
From the tangled underbrush on the other side of the roadway, he heard a faint response from Doc.
Krysty made a move in that direction. “I’ll get them.”
Ryan checked the move by grabbing her arm. “Stay put. Get inside and button up.”
He turned to J.B. “Kill the engine.”
The red-haired woman looked anxiously toward the foothills. Already the leathery rustling of hundreds of wings was mixing with the weird shrieks. “Can’t we outrun them?”
Ryan shook his head. “Worst thing we can do. Screamwings can’t see unless something’s moving. If we can’t be on the move before the flock gets here, we’ve got to stay put. Leastways, that’s what I’m told.”
He unleathered his pistol and ran across the shoulder of the road, down the gentle slope, and blundered through the undergrowth. He glanced back once and glimpsed a dark, twisting mass uncoiling from the far side of the hills, silhouetted by the sunset.
Screamwings were rare, even in this region of Deathlands. Ryan had never seen them, but he had heard plenty of stories about isolated settlements being completely wiped out by ravenous hordes of the winged predators.
He ran through the undergrowth, waist-high weeds and tangled brush, heedless of the thorns snagging his clothes and tearing his skin. He kept shouting Mildred’s and Doc’s names. He reached a small clearing in the overgrown vegetation, just as the stocky woman and the tall, skinny man appeared on the opposite side.
Relief welled up inside him. “You weren’t supposed to wander far.”
Mildred ran a hand through her beaded plaits of hair. “Sorry, Ryan.”
“My fault,” Doc said. Small twigs and leaves were snarled in his shaggy silvery white hair. He gestured with his lion’s-head ebony swordstick, which concealed a rapier of the finest Toledo steel. “I’d hoped to find a blackberry patch in this morass. I fear my enthusiasm for pies and muffins infected the lady.”
“Let’s hope our visitors don’t have your sweet tooth,” Ryan said.
Doc angled an eyebrow at him. “Pardon?”
“Screamwings. A swarm is on its way.”
They heard the beat of wings, and their faces registered their fear.
“Don’t move unless you have to,” Ryan said. “Stand stock-still and hope the screamwings will pass us and the wag by.”
The three formed a rough circle, standing back to back. Ryan faced the way he had come, the SIG-Sauer held in a two-handed grip, barrel pointed upward. He waited for the first glimpse of the screamwings and didn’t have to wait long.
Several black shapes held aloft by furiously fluttering wings darted above the overgrowth, dipping and banking and diving. Ryan tried to keep them framed within his limited field of vision, but it was nearly impossible. The speed and maneuverability of the creatures was remarkable.
Ryan stopped trying to follow their blindingly fast movements and concentrated only on staying as motionless as he could.
Suddenly a screamwing landed on the upraised barrel of the SIG-Sauer.
The screamwing was barely six inches long, though its wingspread was over two feet. It was scaled and clawed, with a wide mouth full of rows of serrated, pointed teeth. Leathery, talon-tipped wings whipped the air. Longer, curving claws were on the hind legs. A long tail lashed around the built-in baffle silencer as it sought to secure its perch. Unblinking eyes, like chips of cold obsidian, glared around.
Ryan had seen any number of mutated animals in Deathlands, but he had never seen one that looked like predatory death stripped down to its bare essentials. He couldn’t even guess at what predark life-form the screamwing had sprung from.
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