“Can’t hit them!” Dean shouted frantically, slamming in a fresh clip. Spent brass dotted the ground around his boots, some so fresh they still contained traces of smoke. “They’re too fast!”
“Don’t aim at the body!” his father barked, the SIG-Sauer coughing a 9 mm death song. “Shoot at the beak! Use their speed against them!”
Dean did as ordered, and a condor died, then another, and a third. But six more took their place from the jungle trees. The supply of the winged giants seemed endless, and his ammo was dwindling rapidly.
He glanced at the doorway. More was in his backpack, but that was fifty feet away. Might as well be on the moon.
Looping into their midst, a screaming condor flew between the companions, needle-sharp talons grabbing for human flesh. Jak gestured and the bird hit the ground rolling, its neck stump pumping out blood by the pint.
Flicking the bird’s head off his blade, the teenager grunted in satisfaction and fired his Magnum at another target, but kept the gore-soaked knife ready in his grip.
“Keep shifting position!” Ryan yelled, dropping a clip and slamming a fresh mag into the SIG-Sauer. “Don’t give them a stable target!”
In ragged formation, the companions rotated in a circle. Disoriented by the tactic, several of the birds banked away from the group to try from a different direction. But that exposed their vulnerable underbellies for a critical instant, and a dozen more died in the sky.
But then the first of the mutilated bodies arrived. The booming LeMat was violently knocked from Doc’s grip by a thrashing corpse, and Ryan staggered under the impact of another. As they scrambled to recover their weapons, there was a breach in the circle and the condors rushed the weak spot in the humans’ defense.
The chattering Uzi spraying a wreath of hot lead, J.B. shrugged a shoulder and managed to slide the S&W shotgun off his back. “Millie!” he shouted, tossing the blaster her way.
Holstering her ZKR, Mildred made the catch, turned and fired as fast as she could pump the action. The barrage of flechettes tore the incoming flock apart into an explosion of feathers and blood.
Emptying half a clip, Ryan aced two more birds on the wing. One plummeted out of sight beyond the edge of the mesa, while the other hit amid the wreckage of the predark wags. It bounced off a dropping-splattered car hood to land on the ground.
“Fireblast!” Ryan cursed as feathered gobbets of flesh pelted them with stinging force. “There are too many! Run for the gateway! We’ll hold them off from there!”
Breaking ranks to charge for the open doorway, the companions jumped over the twitching bodies littering the soil just as a dozen more of the feathered titans noiselessly glided around the sheet-metal building. As they soared no more than a yard off the ground, it was an eerie sight, almost nightmarish in its unnatural silence.
Yanking another round from the row of shells sewn into the strap of the shotgun, Mildred hastily thumbed it into the receiver, worked the pump and fired from the hip. The birds in the front disintegrated under the assault of flechettes, and the rest wheeled away with uncanny speed, once again circling for another try.
For a single moment, the mesa was clear, and the companions dashed for the doorway. Piling inside, they went around the console to reform the firing line. Nimbly Dean leaped over the skeleton on the floor, but Krysty tripped and went sprawling, losing her blaster under the shelves. Jak kicked the chair out from under the door while J.B. emptied another clip in a stuttering burst out the door. The clip ran empty, and he dropped the mag, hand scrambling to find a fresh load.
“Dark night!” he cursed, and ducked just in time to avoid being gutted by a condor flying sideways, its talons extended like a collection of curved knives.
Dean dodged low, the talons raking the air before his face, missing by less than an inch. Mildred blocked its attack with her med kit, the canvas ripping loudly, the precious supplies spilling onto the floor.
Firing a brief burst through the doorway, J.B. dropped the Uzi and shouldered the door shut. A split second later, something thumped into the steel, screaming and clawing the metal in mindless fury.