But then from the charred pit arose a…something. Only half seen in the cloudy night, it was huge with a lumpy skin that was constantly twitching. Looking around, the misshapen creation gave a low moan.
“Black dust, Buddha and drek, we got a drinker out of its burrow!” Gill cursed, looking over a shoulder. “We’re in for it now, amigos!”
“Shut up and move!” Stirling ordered, pulling a blaster from his holster. The sec chief fired two fast shots, and the others obeyed the signal to converge upon Stirling while still moving at a gallop.
Dimly lit by the dying flames of the Molotovs, the drinker was starting to crawl after the fleeing sec force. As it advanced, more and more of the animal-like plant came out of the smoking hole in the ground, oddly resembling a worm pulled out of its moist burrow. As it exited, the other drinker retreated. Then the end came out of the ground, looking exactly like the front.
“Son of a bitch, there isn’t two of them, just one biggun!” Nathan stormed, a fresh bomb tight in his hand. “How large do these fragging bastards get?”
“I say we keep running and don’t find out!” Alton added gruffly, frantically reloading the Remington.
Hunched low in the saddle, Stirling wanted to agree, but he could see white foam on the mouth of Renée’s animal. The wounded horse was doing its best, but would soon collapse and leave the woman behind to feed the giant mutie.
“Bomb count!” the sec chief shouted, moving to the rhythm of the horse as he reached into the rear saddlebags.
“Ten!”
“Six!
“Nine!”
“Four!”
“Use one each—no, two!” Stirling barked, casting a quick glance behind. The drinker was completely out of its hole, and still coming. It was as if the inside of a dark tunnel had come to life. Triple-damn thing was larger than the Metro, he thought. “Okay, we’ll take this thing the way we did that pack of wolves at Dead Man’s Gulch! Now, follow me!”
The others spread out behind the chief like a flock of birds racing from an aerial predator.
Retracing their route, Stirling slowed his mount as they reached a shallow ravine. Easing his horse over the edge and down the clay bank, Stirling sprinted across the small stream to hastily scramble up the other side again.
Reaching the top, the sec chief forced his panting animal to halt, and pulled out a pipe bomb and a knife. Cutting the fuse to a short length, Stirling impatiently waited for the others to join him just as the drinker arrived. Black dust, it was big! As the other sec men galloped across the ravine, the drinker was close behind, and almost stretched itself over the gully like some monstrous bridge, then down it went, the tentacles and vines lashing and whipping madly about in every direction.
“Light it up!” Stirling bellowed, dropping the knife to grab his butane lighter to start the fuse.
The moment it caught, he flipped the bomb over the edge into the ravine. The lead pipe hit the water with a splash, closely followed by four more bombs. Slowly rising upward, the drinker lifted its inhuman face above the rim and looked directly at the tiny norms with a face crawling with vines and roots. The eyes were strangely human, full of rage and hatred.
With their hearts pounding, the sec men threw another salvo of bombs and Molotovs just as the first charges detonated. The whole landscape seemed to shake from the force of the multiple explosions in the ravine. As writhing flames rose along its side, the drinker raised both eyes to the stars and keened in pain, the cry lost in the triphammer blasts of the other pipe bombs. A volcano of muddy water and tentacles flew into the air, shrapnel zinging everywhere, and the drinker bulged oddly, then seemed to come apart from the inside, gushing viscous fluids from every orifice.
Knowing what to expect, the sec men raced for cover as the grisly debris rained down, pulsating organs impacting the ground with wet smacks strangely reminiscent of a passionate kiss. As the reverberations died away, the drinker gave an eerily humanlike sigh and collapsed onto the clay bank of the shallow ravine, its split head only inches from the grass.
Sliding off his horse, Stirling passed the reins to Renée. Drawing his revolver, the sec chief warily proceeded to the crumbling edge of the smoke-filled ravine. There was only churning water below, mixed with bloody debris. A thorny tentacle lay twitching on a small boulder, and a single great eye rested in the shallow creek, staring up at eternity in soulful reproach.
“Everybody okay?” Stirling demanded, warily watching flesh and organs in the ravine for any unnatural motion. Only a feeb trusted a mutie, even a chilled one.
“No, Gill got hit!” Alton answered loudly.
Turning from the ravine, Stirling saw Gill holding a knife in his hand and poking at the piece of tentacle across his left arm.
“Can’t cut it off,” the sec man grunted as a trickle of blood appeared from the end of the plat. “Fragging thorns are in deep!”
“Put that blade away,” Stirling said, sliding the strap of his longblaster over a shoulder. “We gotta burn it off.”
“I…was hoping if I moved fast enough…” Gill panted, stabbing the knife under the throbbing length of plant once more. Then he sighed and dropped his shoulders. “But that was a stupe’s wish, eh, Chief?”
“Would have tried the same thing myself, Gill,” Stirling said soothingly. “Burning is no fun. Nathan!”
“Sir?” the teenager replied spinning about with a pipe bomb at the ready.
“You and Porter—” The chief stopped and started again. “You and Alton check the horses for damage. Renée, watch their backs. I’ll do Gill.”
“Shouldn’t we move away from here first?” Nathan asked, casting a glance at the body parts strewed about. “All this blood and meat is going to attract every pred for klicks.”
“Preds, rists and muties, ya mean,” Renée corrected grimly, reloading the BAR with sure fingers.
“No time,” Stirling growled, helping Gill off his horse and onto a nearby mound of dirt. “We do this fast, or Gill joins the sky choir.”
Sitting, the sweaty man watched as Stirling wrapped a cloth around the upper part of the wounded arm, then tied the rag into a tight tourniquet. The trickle of blood from the gaping end of the vine slowed, but not by much.
“Better find something to bite on,” Stirling warned as he pulled a bag of black powder from a pouch on his gunbelt.
“I got some shine in my bags,” Alton offered from among the horses. “That’ll help kill the pain.”
“And make me useless for the rest of the night,” Gill replied, pulling off his gunbelt. “Just do it, and be fast.”
Pouring the black powder along the spiky piece of vine, the sec chief said nothing, concentrating on the work. When the ammo bag was empty, Stirling passed it to Gill, who stuffed the leather into his mouth. Thumbing a butane lighter alive, the sec chief glanced at his friend. Gill gave a nod, and Stirling lit the powder.
There was a blinding flare and Gill gave a muffled scream, every muscle going rigid. He became lost in the searing glare, but as the harsh light died away, Stirling saw that the smoldering vine lay twitching on the ground. A neat line of holes went across the sec man’s arm, but the bleeding had already slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.
“Bet you could use that drink now.” Stirling snorted, angrily stomping his boot to grind the charred vine into the ground. The smoking length crumbled apart with a crunchy noise, and finally ceased to move.
“Gill?” Stirling asked, raising his head.
But