“See anything?” he asked, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
Krysty placed her hand on top of his and squeezed back. “Not a thing, lover. No villes in sight where we could buy juice,” she said, shifting her stance so that a warm thigh rested against his.
“No ruins, either,” Ryan agreed, dropping his arm to go about her waist and rest on the full curves. “We’re all alone for once.”
“Sounds great,” Mildred grumbled, holstering her piece. The physician shook out her wild tangle of beaded hair. “We’ve been in a lot of tough scrapes lately. Be nice to just sit and rest for a while.”
“Amen to that, dear lady,” Doc rumbled, resting heavily on his ebony stick. ‘”Ere the heart of a warrior break and die, he needs to sit sometime, and dream of nigh.'”
Biting a lip, Mildred tilted her head. “Um, Longfellow?”
“Catullus.”
“Ah.”
“Damn strange about all these traps,” J.B. said, standing at the fence.
“Traps?” Dean asked, furrowing his brow. “Looks like junk.”
The Armorer smiled. “Most things look that way after getting blown apart. There’s a minefield out there.”
“We’re going to have a bitch of a job carving a path through,” Ryan said, releasing the redhead and going to the fence. But not too close. “Hundred-year-old land mines tend to detonate whenever they feel like it.”
Just then, Krysty jerked her weapon free and glanced upward.
“Something?” Jak asked, raising his hand cannon and following her gaze. But the sky was clear. Just the usual stormy clouds full of acid, sheet lightning and fiery rads.
“A shadow,” she said softly. “Mebbe just a cloud.”
“Mebbe not,” Ryan said grimacing.
“Hot pipe!” Dean cried as he drew his blaster, pointed it at his father’s head and fired. The muzzle-blast of the semiautomatic pistol warmed Ryan’s cheek, and he spun with the SIG-Sauer in his fist.
Falling from the sky was a huge bird, its chest pumping blood from the bullet wound. The creature hit the ground with a feathery thump, and tried again to launch itself into the air toward Ryan, its enormous wings savagely beating the air as it screamed a high-pitched cry.
Ryan fired twice, the 9 mm Parabellum slugs slamming the colossal bird in the belly and the throat. It went quiet, and after a moment slumped lifeless.
“What is it?” J.B. demanded, going closer to the corpse. Gingerly he prodded the bird with the barrel of his Uzi.
“Condor,” Mildred said grimly. “Biggest bird in the world.”
“Mutie,” Jak stated, easing down the hammer of his Colt Python.
Pursing his lips, Doc said, “No, indeed. It is a pure-blooded creature of nature, same as you and I. Three feet tall, eight-foot wingspan, it’s the killer of the sky. In a fight with a sting-wing, or a screamer, I would put my money on this winged emperor.”
Turning, Ryan studied the sky. Tiny dots were circling high above them. “Looks like they travel in flocks,” he said, walking slowly toward the gateway. “Everybody move slow and walk casual to the door. Don’t want to get caught in the open by these things.”
“Big bastards,” Jak stated, sliding out the spent brass and inserting live rounds. The empty rounds went into a pocket he buttoned shut.
“Oh, it is highly unlikely they will attack with one of their own dead on the ground,” Doc stated. “Besides, birds fly in flocks, but attack alone.”
“Usually,” Mildred whispered, already walking toward the open doorway. “You an expert on condors?”
“No, madam, I am not.”
“Then shut up.”
An odd motion in the treetops caught Krysty’s attention, and she started firing even before the condors hidden in the greenery launched themselves at the human prey.
“The trees!” she shouted over the discharge of her revolver.
Even as the companions turned to this new threat, the birds in the sky folded their wings and dropped straight down, their huge bodies brownish-gold blurs.
“Dive-bombers!” Mildred cursed, lifting her ZKR blaster in both hands and tracking the huge killers. Two hundred yards away, she had their speed and squeezed off a shot. A condor flipped sideways, colliding with others and breaking the mass charge.
The rest of the companions opened fire in every direction.