James Axler – Trader Redux

The shotgun boomed again.

The first round from the 12-gauge had very nearly missed the lightning-fast strike of the mutie killer. Of the twenty Remington ftechettes in each of the eight shells, only four had actually struck the snake, a hand’s span below the skull. The inch-long needle-tipped darts sliced a chunk from the scaled flesh, making the cottonmouth rear up, hissing furiously. It turned toward the source of the noise and the pain, its helpless prey temporarily forgotten.

One of the most important things that Trader had drummed into all of his crews was never to make any kind of assumption in a potentially life-threatening situation.

J.B. had actually been working on the expectation that his first set of flechettes would totally miss the rearing snake. He levered in another round and readied himself to fire immediately, giving himself just that vital splinter of a single broken second that would have been lost if he’d paused to check the result of his first shot.

He fired from halfway between hip and shoulder, bracing himself against the kick of the Smith amp; Wesson. The range was so close that it seemed as if the muzzle of the M-4000 were touching the dusty, blood-speckled scales.

There was no time for the darts to star out, striking as a compacted mass of slicing, piercing death.

J.B. took a half-dozen rapid, careful steps back, making sure that he kept his footing in the slippery mud. He brought a third round under the hammer, watching the pitching agony of the giant reptile. The darts had torn out a huge wound, much larger than a man’s fist, about four fleet below the questing head. It had broken the endless spine and opened up the breathing and digestive tracts of the creature.

For Abe, still pinned and totally helpless on his back, there was a moment of dreadful crushing pain, and the thought that he would have his legs pulped in the cottonmouth’s death throes.

But the coils relaxed and he managed to scrabble away, splashing through the narrow stream.

“Again!” he yelled. “Give the fucker another couple rounds, J.B.”

“No need. Done for.” The Armorer watched the serpent in its thrashing, ruined ending, stepping farther to one side. “Just keep clear of it.”

There was terminal brain damage as all the neural lines of communication went down for the cottonmouth. It was kicking up a great spray of wet mud and grass, biting itself, the poisoned fangs snapping off short, spurting the venom in a glittering arc of blinding beads.

J.B. turned away, feeling a few tiny spots land on the skin of his face, patterning his spectacles. The ichor burned like acid and he stooped, cupping water and splashing it on the poison, diluting it and washing the worst of it away.

The snake had plowed up the hollow, turning it into a quagmire of soft mud. Gradually, as its movements began to slow, it started to slide down the hillside toward the brink of the steeper drop high above the distant river. Bright blood still gushed from the two wounds, and its jaws were opening and closing in a series of mindless spasms.

“Going over!” Abe yelped, struggling to his feet, slipping and nearly falling. “Bastard’s goin’ right over!”

The gigantic cottonmouth was failing, its jerking and twisting getting more sluggish. There was a moment when it seemed that, despite its devastating injuries, it might still come back at them. J.B. had started to reload the scattergun, and he stopped, knuckles white on the pistol grip on the folding butt, moving the muzzle to cover the mutie reptile.

Then it was gone.

Both men stepped carefully and looked over, watching the last moments of the creature as it dropped several hundred feet, finishing in a cloud of dust on a ledge close above the river, where it lay quite still.

“That’s it,” Abe said. “Thanks a lot, friend. Thought I was an ace on the line for snake supper.”

The Armorer touched his face. “That poison stings like a bastard,” he said. “Let’s get up on top and try and find some good water. Could do with a proper wash and something to drink. Dry as a scorpion’s stingaree.”