Unexpectedly, the flare sputtered and died. Casting it away with a curse, J.B. rummaged for a replacement. A small stingwing streaked low across the still water, coming in at groin level. Dropping the flare, J.B. swung up the Uzi, knowing he was a nanosecond too slow, when the scattergun roared. The muzzle-blast pounded his eardrums and almost dislodged his glasses. But the stingwing was blown into its component parts, blood gobbets soaring everywhere.
“Thanks!” J.B. shouted, over the stuttering machine gun.
“Anytime!” Mildred replied, unleashing hot lead death.
Firing the SIG-Sauer nonstop until its clip was empty, Ryan holstered the blaster while he swung up the deadly panga. The wicked blade took the creatures apart, removing wings, legs and heads with ruthless efficiency. Pale blood splattered everywhere, and soon the man’s clothing was soaked. A gush of intestines caught him full in the face, blocking his sight. Fireblast! Taking a deep breath, Ryan threw himself into the shallow pool, the salty water stinging every cut and abrasion on his body. Rising from the water, rivulets streaming down his face, Ryan braced for a new attack, but the stingwings now arched around the man as if he were invisible.
“Get underwater!” Ryan yelled on impulse, sheathing the panga and quickly thumbing loose brass into the empty clip for the SIG-Sauer in case the ploy faded. “Do it now!”
Although they had no idea what he was planning, the others trusted the man with their lives, and Krysty went first, then Jak and Doc, closely followed by J.B. and finally Mildred. Surrounded by a screaming cloud of the deadly muties, Ryan tried to watch for an attack from every side, but the creatures were no longer interested in him. In fact, several of the winged muties landed brazenly on the dead horses and noisily began to feed once more, ripping away chunks of the warm flesh to reach the juicy morsels deeper inside.
Rising from the bloody water, the other companions shook their faces clear and watched for the next rush. But the stingwings were paying them no attention, almost as if the companions weren’t there.
“It’s the blood,” Krysty whispered in astonishment. “There’s so much of their blood in the water they can no longer smell us!”
“Not smell, not find,” Jak stated confidently, brushing back his sodden hair. “How long last?”
“Probably until the first time we sweat,” Mildred muttered, as if the volume of her voice could reveal their presence to the feasting creatures. “Only primates have isotonic traces of ammonia in their sweat. They must zero in on that.”
“Good,” Ryan grunted, and ducked under the water once more and came up sopping wet. “Then chill them all!” he growled, and started firing, carefully putting a single round into the gore-streaked heads.
Using blades only to minimize the noise, the companions slashed a bloody path of destruction through the feasting muties, until every one was gone, and the salt water swirled thickly with their life fluids.
“Any more?” J.B. asked, adjusting his glasses to scan the dunes on the horizon. The lenses were dripping with pale blood, his shirt and pants drenched to the skin.
“That last,” Jak stated with a somber note of pride, swishing his blades in the filthy pond to clean the steel.
“Thank Gaia,” Krysty added, her soaked hair flexing limply under the accumulated weight of the blood and gore. “We haven’t been this close to getting chilled since the Anthill!”
At the mention of the nightmarish military base, every body grimaced, then continued with their crude ablutions.
“Okay, anybody hurt?” Mildred demanded, looking over the assemblage. Everybody had been slashed a dozen times by the talons of the deadly little muties, but they all appeared to be only surface cuts, nothing deep or dangerous, and there was no telltale flow of red human blood.
“Fine, just low on brass,” Jak complained, emptying the spent brass cartridges from his blaster and thumbing five fresh rounds into the 6-shot cylinder. If the fight had gone on for only a few more minutes, they all would have ended up inside a stingwing, looking out.
“Alas, I have plenty of ammunition,” Doc rumbled, looking forlornly at his Civil War–era blaster. Black powder was dribbling out the side of the massive cylinder from the constant dunking. “But I fear my LeMat will not be useful until thoroughly cleaned and dried.”
“Can’t leave you naked. Here, take this,” Ryan said, passing over the SIG-Sauer and a handful of loose rounds.
Eagerly, Doc accepted the weapon and worked the slide, keeping a suspicious watch on the dead muties. If life had taught the time traveler anything, it was to always be prepared for betrayal.
Going over to her horse, Krysty used her knife to flick aside a couple of tattered stingwings and inspected the chewed remains of the beast. Sweetcheeks had been a fine horse, not particularly intelligent, but bridle-wise, trail-smart and very strong. The woman silently said a prayer to Gaia to treat her friend well in the next casement of existence. Death was merely a part of the cycle of life, neither the beginning nor the end.
Ryan finished reloading a spare clip for the longblaster, slung the weapon and reached into a pocket to withdraw a squat black object about the size and shape of a soup can. With a snap, he extended the antique Navy telescope to its full length and swept the horizon in every direction.
“Nothing coming our way yet,” Ryan told them, lowering the optical device and compacting it back down again. “But with this much blasterfire and fresh blood in the air, you can bet your nuking ass we’ll soon have lots of company. Tanglers, stickies, hellhounds, you name it.”
“Maybe even some of those big wendies we’ve heard about that have invaded the desert from the far north,” Krysty added grimly.
“Wendigos,” Mildred corrected. “They were just a myth in my time—Canadian folklore—but they’re sure as hell real enough now. The bastard things patrol along the border of the desert to attack anybody coming out.”
“Picking off the weak and tired,” J.B. said, tilting back his dripping-wet fedora. “Pretty smart.”
“Pretty deadly,” Ryan stated.
“And, alas, we shall be walking thirsty from this point onward,” Doc rumbled, scowling in displeasure at the sight of the ruined water bags draped over the saddle of his own deceased mare, Buttercup. Most, if not all, of their leather water bags had been savaged by the stingwings and torn to shreds, the precious contents soaked into the bastard mixture of sand and salt crystals. Their U.S. Army canteens were dented, but still intact. However, the adjective great hadn’t been a misnomer in conjunction with the dreaded noun salt. The scorched desert was large and arid.
“How far away from clean water are we?” Mildred asked, squeezing the excess brine from her beaded plaits. Hanging at her side, the canvas med bag sloshed and felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. All of her primitive medical supplies were safely sealed inside plastic bags, and the canvas satchel itself was waterproof. Which made it a perfect catch basin for the contents of the brackish pond.
“Tell you in a tick.” Using the minisextant hanging around his neck, J.B. checked the position of the sun and did some fast mental calculations.
“Any chance we’re near Two-Son ville?” Mildred asked hopefully, tilting the med bag to pour out volumes of excess water.
“No, that’s a thousand miles to the south. Unfortunately, we’re close to the eastern edge,” J.B. said glumly, tucking the sextant away again under his shirt. “So we’ve got about a gazillion little salt ponds like this straight ahead of us for a good forty miles before reaching Clearwater Springs.”
“Forty