Hanging Judge. James Axler

Torrance. Now you see why you should help us, right? If you do, I don’t shoot you in the belly, too. Painful way to die. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen a lot.”

      He tapped the often-broken bridge of the man’s nose with the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson 627. The man’s pale green eyes blinked rapidly at the still-stinging heat of the blaster barrel.

      “And since I’m in such a generous mood,” the sec boss went on, “I’ll even put your friend here out of his misery as a bonus. But only if you help.”

      The man drew in a long, shuddery breath.

      “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you. Now, please. Take care of poor Elliott.”

      “Right. Wise choice, Torrance.”

      He was a man of his word. A man was nothing if he wasn’t as good as his word. He holstered the Smith & Wesson and drew his trademark Bowie knife. Stooping, he cut the wounded man’s grimy, stubbly neck to the backbone with a single swift cut.

      Torrance fainted. Maybe it was the arterial spray of his best friend’s blood splashed across the shins of his faded jeans.

      Cutter Dan wiped his big blade carefully on the chill’s black coat. As he straightened, he sheathed it again.

      He looked down at the prostrate form of their new guide and shook his head.

      “I hope he’s not going to be such a lightweight on the hunt,” he said.

      “Mebbe he just don’t like the sight of blood,” Scovul stated.

      “Well, that could be a problem, too. Seeing as the object of this expedition is the shedding of blood. Though not too much, at least when it comes to our fugitives. We need to take ’em back to the Judge in presentable shape and not too drained out.”

      Yonas laughed. “Well, if he does turn out to be a weakling, you can always chill him, too, boss.”

      Cutter Dan shook his head.

      “We got severely limited time for these kinds of games, fun as they are,” he said. “Now, somebody throw a bucket of water over this simp and rouse him up. Those scofflaw coldhearts aren’t going to hang themselves.”

      * * *

      RYANSPOTTEDANOTHERmutie standing up out of the thicket on the left. It held a spear poised to throw. Ryan snapped two quick shots at it from his P-226. He mostly intended to make it duck and spoil its aim. But he saw blood squirt from the left side of its narrow chest. It dropped the spear and fell squalling into the green tangle.

      “Ryan!”

      It was Ricky, shouting from right behind his back—meaning, ahead of him in line. By sheer reflex Ryan jumped left and forward into the shallow brook.

      A spear brushed his pack. Another mutie uttered a gargling cry from atop the bank to Ryan’s right. Then it came half tumbling, half sliding down the bare red slope.

      As Ryan watched it fall, he heard the clack-clack as Ricky threw the bolt of his silenced DeLisle. It really was silent—the action working was far louder than the actual shot had been.

      That was old news. Ryan was far more interested in the creature descending toward him in an increasing tangle of limbs. It was bigger than he thought. The body was the size of a big dog or a small man. Its tail was about as long, bringing it to roughly nine feet in length, total. The reason he’d thought it smaller was that it seemed built to carry its body horizontally, not upright like a human.

      Its body wasn’t bare skin or scales, either. It was covered with what looked like small feathers, judging from the way the mud made it spike up. The creature came to rest with big taloned feet in the air. The feet did have scales, yellow ones, and each sported a single, much bigger claw higher than the rest. The open mouth was full of knife-tip teeth. The wide-open eye staring Ryan’s way was yellow.

      “Wow,” Ricky breathed. “With teeth and claws like that, why would they even need spears?”

      He yelped as Ryan hopped toward him and caught him with a powerful sidekick in the hip. It threw the boy sprawling in the wet grass.

      “Why’d you—?” Ricky began to yell in outrage even before he stopped sliding on his side. Then his eyes got big and his mouth shut as another spear stuck into the grass right where he’d been standing.

      “They need spears to throw at stupes like you who stand there making targets of themselves,” Ryan said, turning and loosing a shot. The spear caster ducked out of sight. “Now, move!”

      The shower of hurled objects continued as J.B. led them back up the ravine, less dense, but containing more of the metal-tipped spears. Ryan saw flashes of the strange lizardlike creatures moving fluidly through the growth at the tops of the walls. He suspected their powerful, clawed hind feet gave them the ability to run along the thicker vines.

      He could hear them chirping and screeching at one another. It was like being hunted by a cross between a wolf pack and a flock of crows.

      The companions couldn’t outrun their mutie pursuit, it seemed. But they were thinning it out. The pursuers were getting strung out along the cliffs. And the companions were popping occasional shots their way to make things as rough on them as possible.

      Ryan guessed that was likely why the muties had started throwing their precious spears again—to keep their prey from getting away. Those that missed—all of them so far, anyway—they could easily come back and retrieve later, when this was done one way or another.

      “We’re going this way, Ryan!” he heard Mildred call.

      He looked around. J.B. was leading the group up a gully that joined the main line from the northeast. To his relief he judged they were still well shy of the place where they’d left the monster centipedes to devour the wild hog alive.

      “Right,” he said. He turned and started running to catch up to his friends, who had pulled away. Watching their back trail was suddenly no longer the top priority.

      Seeing that their prey had veered away from half their pursuers, the feathered-lizard muties chittered in rage. J.B. suddenly stopped and turned to his left, his Uzi in his hands.

      “Up the bank,” he called to the others. “Lay down some righteous cover fire.”