James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Ryan!” J.B. yelled from his position behind a young oak tree.

It was the only warning Ryan got about the stickie that exploded out of the brush with a spear held at waist level. Reacting to the attacker, Ryan shifted his body, letting the triangular spearhead slide past him, ripping along the scarlet armored vest. He chopped down with his hand and grabbed the forward haft of the spear, watching a look of surprise spread across the stickie’s rad-burned features.

Continuing to use his weight and strength to push down the spear, Ryan buried it point first into the ground. He used the added leverage to flip the stickie toward the mutie cat.

The stickie shrieked as it flew upside down, smashing against the beast’s snarling face. The cat closed its jaws over the stickie’s head and shoulders. Bone crunched as it chewed. Breath rattled and made sucking noises as it passed through the animal’s ravaged throat.

Still hanging on to the spear, Ryan ran to the mutie cat’s side. It spit out the dead, nerve-quivering stickie and turned to face him. Before it had time to respond, Ryan moved in close, both hands gripping the spear. He chose his spot, then rammed it in behind the cat’s foreleg, aiming for the heart.

The cat lifted a paw and swatted at Ryan, who was already in motion. The claws came close enough to shear his hair and break the skin along his forehead. Warm blood slipped across his face.

The paw slapped against the embedded spear, snapping the haft as if it was a straw. It took a step at Ryan, who’d moved off to recover his SIG-Sauer. By the time he’d scooped up the blaster and raised it, he saw death claim the cat.

The animal’s hindquarters shivered, then dropped out from under it. The eyes were already glazing before its head slammed against the ground.

Breathing hard, his throat feeling as if it were on fire, Ryan raked a hand through his curly hair and moved it back out of his face. He kept his blaster pointed in the direction the stickies had attacked from.

Only a few of them were in view, and they were headed back into the brush, some of them limping or holding hands over bleeding wounds. The rest of them were dead, lying in all kinds of poses between the tree line and where J.B., Mildred and the others had held the line.

Waiting for his heart rate to slow to somewhere near normal, Ryan used the slack time to reload the partially spent magazine in his blaster, then do the same to the clips he’d used inside the holding area. “Everybody okay?”

“Not everybody,” J.B. said quietly, nodding back and to the right where one of the Thompson twins lay on the ground, a short-hafted ax jutting from his cracked skull. The other twin knelt beside his dead brother, holding his sibling’s bloody hand.

Ryan crossed to the younger man, making himself hard. He put a hand on Thompson’s shoulder and shook it. “Got no time for grief. We need to be pushing on.”

“Fuck you, mister,” the twin said hoarsely, his eyes filled with tears. “My brother needs burying.”

Ryan met the man’s rage and sorrow head-on. “You plan on staying to bury him?”

“It’s the Christian thing to do,” Thompson replied. “I don’t feel good about just leaving him here. Like this.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Ryan said. “But it’s got to be done if you’re going to have a chance to tell your kids about their uncle. Only way he’s going to live on.”

Tenderly laying his dead brother’s hands across his chest, Thompson stood. His jaw tightened, becoming a hard line as he gripped the haft of the ax and pulled it from the dead man’s skull. The blade came free with a sucking noise. He tossed it away.

Ryan adjusted his gear. “Then let’s get moving.” He looked across the tops of the trees and brush. “See that building there, Mildred?” He studied the red neon lettering on its side.

“The Mirage,” the woman said.

“You figure on making for the Mirage?” J.B. asked.

“Highest vantage point,” Ryan answered. “We get inside there, mebbe we don’t have to worry about the animals or the muties so much.”