James Axler – Zero City

“Yeah…”

Exhaling sharply, Rev cast away his dead cig. “And nothing is gonna stop us. We got it all this time. Food, blasters, wags and fuel.” He waved about them. “These ruins are a gold mine. Who knows what we’ll find in the next store?”

Just then, the stars overhead blacked out for a moment, and a sudden exhalation of air moved over the parking lot, bringing a hint of the desert heat.

“What the fuck was that?” Harlan demanded, dropping his nudie mag and drawing a huge revolver. The old S&W .357 Magnum was spotlessly clean, the blued barrel glinting dimly in the reflected lights of the bonfire.

“Don’t know,” Rev said, unlimbering his MAC-10 and snapping the bolt.

Following his lead, the rest of the crew hauled blasters into view. Even Jimmy whipped out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from an archery quiver on his back.

Rising to his full height, Samson hoisted his Marlin rifle to his huge chest, working the bolt to chamber a round. Nearby, Wu-Lang lifted an M-16 into view from a packing crate. With clumsy hands, he eased off the safety and fumbled with the bolt. He cursed as it sprang back, almost costing him a finger. Shitfire, the police station SWAT armory had yielded a dozen of the autoblasters, but no frigging instruction manuals.

“Probably just a bird,” Jimmy whispered, holding the shotgun as if it were a good-luck talisman. “A vulture mebbe. Or an owl. We heard one before. There are lots of them in these parts.”

“Yeah,” Harlan whispered, cocking back the hammer on his blaster. “An owl.”

“Mebbe it’s that flying mutie the runaway was talking about,” Brian muttered thoughtfully, holding a revolver in each hand.

“Nonsense,” Rev snapped, struggling to keep the terror from his words. Before dying, the sec man had described the terror of the ruins. Covered with his blood, they had laughed at the speech, but now a chill invaded the drug runner’s stomach as he scanned the night sky.

A wet crunch sounded from the dark.

“That you, Hal?” Wu-Lang asked. “Step on one of those tarantulas again…? Shitfire!” The man retreated from the night, staring at the ground.

Rolling and bouncing out of the darkness and into the firelight came a bloody human head. The features were slashed, ribbons of flesh hanging off the bloody skull, but what remained of the face was still recognizable as one of their sentries. The neck was severed in the middle, with no ragged marks of biting or chewing. The end of the flesh was smooth as if the man had been beheaded by an ax.

Then a torso plummeted from the sky to land on the bonfire, extinguishing the flames. Darkness enveloped the parking lot.

“Bloody hell!” Rev yelled, spraying a wreath of 9 mm tumblers into the sky above.

Everybody cut loose, rounds ricocheting off the stone walls of the library and shattering glass like crystal thunder.

Calmly waiting for a target to present itself, Samson stepped out of the reddish glow of the dying embers to let his vision adjust when a wind ruffled the hair at the back of his head. Annoyed, he patted it back down and was surprised when he found his hand sticking to his hair. The giant could feel warmth trickling down his neck, into his new shirt, and knew it was his own blood.

Baring his teeth in a wordless scream, Samson triggered the Martin, explosions of flame illuminating the parking lot for yards. Briefly, something on top of the stack of ammo crates was caught in the flash, and then was gone. A misshapen figure with terrible demon eyes.

“It’s them! They’re here!” Wu-Lang screamed in panic, firing short bursts from the M-16 wildly in every direction. Spent shells arced out in streams of brass and fell musically to the ground.

Rushing forward, Jimmy slipped on the brass and hit the asphalt hard, losing his blaster. Then with a horrible cry, he was hauled into the darkness and the sound of ripping meat accompanied his piercing screams.

Rev pumped some bursts that way, then the back of his neck tingled and he wildly spun, firing. Something unseen brushed his face, tearing a bloody score along his cheek, and the drug runner knew he had escaped death by a split second.