“Chief, if Ryan is a good day ahead of us,” Gill said slowly, “then we may never find them.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stirling admitted. “That just means we have to ride faster.”
“Ride faster in which direction?”
“Give me a second,” the sec chief muttered. “I’m working on it.”
“Does anybody else think that there is something wrong here,” Renée asked, squinting at the horizon. “I mean, this field. This place feels odd. I can sense something wrong with it in my bones.”
“Odd place, I have to agree,” Alton grunted in reply. “Although I can’t tell you why. Mebbe we’re just used to having sand under our boot.”
“Rather than grass under our ass?” Gill added.
The sec men all chuckled at that, but Stirling felt his frown deepen. He had been thinking the same thing about this grassy knoll. Something wrong here, something unnatural. Then it hit him. No insects. With all this green, there wasn’t a single insect making noise in the field. That wasn’t a good sign. Hurriedly glancing around, Stirling saw a clump of tall grass and headed that way. Please let it be empty…
Although it couldn’t be seen from the top of the hillock, there was a body hidden among the grass. Or rather, what was left of one. The skeleton had been picked clean, the white bones still covered with straps of tattered clothing. With a sense of growing unease, Stirling studied the cloth until spotting numerous tiny holes in the material. Glancing at the boots, he saw the same thing. Holes neatly punched through the leather, including the wooden soles. Aw, hell.
“Drinker!” Stirling shouted in warning, pulling his handblaster and firing randomly at the ground. There was no point in being quiet now. If this was a drinker territory, the underground mutie already knew they were there.
Rallying at the cry, the other sec men started peppering the soil with blasterfire, while Nathan pulled out a pipe bomb and a cherished butane lighter. Holding them tight, he nervously looked around, watching the soil for any suspicious movements.
“Get on the horses!” Stirling ordered, backing away from the skeleton. “We ride north until reaching solid rock, and then—”
That was as far as he got when a section of grassland exploded into a wiggling pile of pale green tentacles that shot into the air and lashed about, searching for food. Human food.
“Nuke me!” Gill spit, firing both barrels of the scattergun.
The double charge blew off one of the thrashing limbs. But as the tentacle hit the ground it continued to flop wildly, and there was no sign of blood on the ragged end, only a thin greenish fluid resembling watery sap.
Flicking a butane lighter alive, Renée lit an oily rag fuse and threw a Molotov at the underground creature. The bottle hit with a crash, and flames erupted at that spot. As the fire grew, the plant quickly withdrew, but reappeared a few yards farther away.
“Frag me, there’s two of them!” Stirling cursed, spotting another set of waving tentacles.
Dodging around the thick grass, he tried to stay in the open field. The lush areas of growth were caused by the rotting corpses of the drinker’s victims. The greenery marked the lair of the mutie plant, even as it served to hide the old bones from casual sight. A mixed blessing then, and the sec chief cursed himself as the son of a feeb for not spotting it sooner. That’s why there were no tracks in the field. No animal or mutie would come this way. Even war wags avoid drinkers!
By now, the rest of the sec men were firing blasters at the ground or tossing bombs. The night shook with the explosions, and the two drinkers attacked the empty air around each strike, but not the blast hole itself. It was almost as if the drinkers understood that the bombs were being thrown.
Were the plants getting smarter, too? Stirling raged as he zigzagged across the ground. First the stickies of Two Son ville, and now this drek!
Holding on to the sec chief’s horse, Gill was waving around the scattergun, with two spare shells sticking out of his mouth for faster loading. The others were spreading out, trying to confuse the mutie, firing blasters at anything that moved. The light from the Molotovs helped them to see the deadly tentacles tunneling below the surface, and Renée cried out once as a failing limb whipped across her face, leaving a score of deep scratches from the thorny tip.
That was too damn close, Stirling realized, trying to catch his breath while perched on top of a rock. Then he scowled darkly at Porter. The coward was just sitting on his horse and doing nothing. Not a fragging thing to help. To hell with the baron’s orders, he was going to personally ace the yellow bastard as soon as they got out of this field alive.
But then the sec chief saw the problem. The horse had too many legs, there were six, not just four. Not legs, tentacles going straight up from the ground and into the belly of the beast! Sitting astride the animal, Taw Porter was sitting absolutely still and was even more pale than usual. Then Stirling saw the man’s clothing start to move as hundreds of tiny vines crawled out of the sec man’s body. One came out of his mouth to test the air, only to retreat again.
Shooting from the hip, Stirling blew off the back of the sec man’s head just to make sure the man was actually deceased. Pink and greenish fluids exploded out of smashed skull, then his hair came alive as tiny vines writhed from the ghastly wound and exited from his mouth, nose and ears. Only the dead eyes stayed intact to stare calmly into the starry heavens.
Suddenly, Renée’s horse screamed as a tentacle attacked, the curved thorns sinking deep into its legs. Then the vine began to pulsate as it started pumping out the rich red blood.
Waving her Browning longblaster, Renée could only curse and try to stay in the saddle. The angle made it impossible for her to get a shot at the subterranean monster.
“Cross fire!” Stirling shouted from the rock.
Working the bolt on his M-16, Nathan chambered a round and fired. The tentacle jerked from the arrival of the 5.56 mm hardball round, blood and sap gushing from the hole. Instantly, the tentacle released the horse’s leg and slid underground.
But as Nathan worked the bolt to chamber a fresh round, the used brass popped out and hit the soil. A split second later several tentacles exploded upward from that point, lashing madly with their deadly thorn-tipped vines.
Gill put both barrels of the scattergun into the monstrous thing, the wide spray of pellets doing the job proper, but also catching Nathan’s horse in the rump. The startled animal reared onto its hind legs, and Nathan had to drop the M-16 to grab the reins and stay in the saddle.
Deciding this was his best chance, Stirling bolted from the rock and raced across the flat ground, expecting to be aced at every step. The sec chief tightened his grip on the blaster as he crossed one yard, two, three…As his horse came into range, Stirling bodily threw himself across the saddle.
“Yee-ha!” Gill cried, kicking his own mount into motion, and dragging Stirling’s horse along by the reins.
Struggling clumsily, the sec chief grabbed the pommel with both hands and hauled himself upright to sit astride the saddle and take back the reins.
“Mother nuker!” he yelled in triumph. “Gotta move faster than that, you mutie bastard, to ace a Two-Son man!”
But a split second later, the ground around their former location started to move with vines and tentacles. As the questing limbs found nothing, a deep inhuman moan sounded from below the grass, the horrible noise echoing across the lush tundra and seeming to rattle the leaves on every bush.
“If you’re mad at us now, try this!” Renée snarled, flipping a pipe bomb at the thing.
“Scatter!” Stirling ordered, kicking his horse into a full gallop. The animal responded with adrenaline-fueled speed.
The sec men did as ordered and broke ranks to take off in different directions.