Doom Helix

“Or something much more highly evolved,” Mildred suggested.

“We can’t see what it is from here,” Ryan said. “And there’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“We don’t need more trouble than we’ve already got,” J.B. said. “For nuke’s sake, Ryan, it could be a trap, something triple-bad luring us in for an ambush—the oldest trick in the book. There’s a million hidey-holes for things to jump from. If we’re caught flatfooted on a patch of open ground, we’re never going to get out of this nukin’ frying pan.” The short man paused to thumb his wire-rimmed spectacles back in place, up the sweaty bridge of his nose. “We’ve got a lot of miles of lava field left to cross,” he said. “We should stay on the road, swing wide of whatever it is and never look back.”

Ryan took the Armorer’s point. But as things stood, their lives were balanced on a knife edge, and it was a question of priorities—a decision had to be made as to what came first.

“We need to round up some food,” Ryan said. “We won’t poke our noses in if there’s nothing to gain.”

Their stomachs audibly rumbling, Doc and Jak nodded in agreement.

Outvoted, J.B. screwed his hat back down with a flourish and said no more.

Ryan shoulder slung the Steyr and led them offroad, confident that J.B.’s injured feelings would quickly pass, whether or not they found fresh meat. J.B. was a team player, had been ever since the glory days with Trader—that meant honoring a group decision even if he didn’t agree with it.

Off the highway there were no trails for Ryan to follow. The jumbled chunks of lava were a solid mass underfoot. Sometimes he was stepping on jagged points, sometimes in between them, and the edges of the rock tore at the soles and sides of his boots. The surface was so rough that running over it without falling would have been impossible. Even walking a short distance in a straight line was damned difficult. Every ten yards it seemed, holes as big as semitrailers and twisting crevasses blocked their way.

Gradually, the vista ahead revealed itself, and it wasn’t as flat as it had appeared a quarter mile back—a trick of perspective and of the uniformity of the terrain’s coloration. Before them was a dished-out, sunken swath of ground, the top of a huge, collapsed lava dome. Ryan could see the far rim of the crater, a crescent of blacker black, and it was at least a mile away. The deepest part was in the middle, a hundred feet below the rim. The surface looked to be basalt, but the fractured plates of rock were much bigger and tipped up at steep angles.

Ryan knelt at the edge of the drop-off, hand-signaling for the others to do the same. From their new vantage point, the sounds were much more distinct and disturbing.

“My word!” Doc exclaimed. “That scream sounds almost human.”

Jak pointed and said, “There.”

Ryan caught a glimpse of movement in that direction, but it was too far away to make out details. He unslung the .308-caliber longblaster and uncapped its scope. Seven hundred yards downrange he saw a cluster of four-legged animals madly scrabbling, their heads lowered, their tails in the air, pulling and tearing at something on the ground. The low-pitched sounds he’d heard were their growls and snarls. What with the movement, the intervening heaps of rock, and the heat shimmer it was difficult to see clearly, but he could make out tall, skinny creatures with ribs showing through gray coats, and pointed muzzles and ears. And their heads were all oddly marked: the hair on top, between their ears, was bright orange-red. The violent tug-of-war took the animals and the prize they were fighting over out of sight behind the upturned slabs.

“Looks like a pack of wolves or coyotes,” Ryan told the others. “Real big ones. A couple dozen at least. They’ve chilled something large and they’re ripping it apart. Can’t see what they’ve got, but it isn’t fighting back.”

The shrill cry rolled over them again.

“There’s at least one victim still alive down there,” Mildred said.

“It appears to be begging for mercy,” Doc said.

“Begging the wrong critters for that, from what I saw,” Ryan said as he lowered the rifle.

“Guess we won’t be eating fresh meat tonight, unless it’s haunch of wolf,” Krysty said with dismay.

“In my experience,” Doc said, “no matter how it’s sauced, simmered, or pounded, wolf meat tastes like old boot.”

“A boot that’s stepped in shit,” J.B. added. “Okay, we’ve had our look-see. We should move on, and triple quick before they catch our scent.”

“We can’t leave whoever it is that’s trapped down there,” Mildred protested.

“More likely it’s a ‘whatever,’” Dix told her. “A scalie or some other mutie. And if it’s an ankle-biter, I say more power to the wolves.”

Ryan raised the Steyr to his shoulder, dropped the safety and surveyed the kill zone through the scope, waiting for the feeding melee to come back into view. No matter their complaints, no matter how nasty the meat tasted, he knew he and his companions would choke it down somehow, and with any luck it would keep them going long enough to get past the lava field.

Doc and Krysty were still discussing recipes when, a moment later, targets reappeared downrange.

Ryan held the sight post in the middle of the circling animals. He took up the Steyr’s trigger slack and held it just short of the break point, slowing his breathing and, by extension, his heartbeat. One of the creatures paused in the pitched battle. Panting hard, it straightened to full height, turning itself broadside to him.

To hit a bull’s-eye at the distance and with the twenty-degree down-angle meant taking an aim-point eight or nine inches low. Ryan dropped the sight post that far beneath the animal’s chest, and tightened down on the trigger. When it broke crisply, the Steyr boomed and bucked hard into the crook of his shoulder. He rode the recoil upward, working the butter-smooth action in a blur. Fresh round chambered, he reacquired the sight picture in time to see a puff of dust explode on the critter’s near shoulder. The .308 round drove it into the rocks hard. It bounced once, ragdoll limp, and stayed down.

The sound of the rifle shot and the echoes that followed turned the other animals into statues, but only for a second.

As they began to scatter, Ryan got off another round. His intended target juked an instant before the bullet struck, and a heart shot became a spine shot. Dust puffed off the animal’s back just in front of its hips. Its rear end and tail dropped like a deadweight. Meanwhile, the rest of the pack zigzagged away through the slabs—like the critters had learned how to avoid long distance rifle fire—and vanished into the lava field.

Through the scope Ryan saw the wounded animal crawling for cover on its front legs, dragging the back ones limp and useless behind it. “Two down,” he said, ejecting the spent cartridge. “The others took off.”

“Think they’ll keep their distance?” Mildred said.

“Depends,” J.B. said. “On how hungry they are.”

“They looked plenty hungry to me,” Ryan said, slinging the Steyr and unholstering his SIG-Sauer P-226 handblaster. “Stay alert and stay close.”

Weapons drawn, the companions carefully descended the crater rim after him, jumping from block to basalt block until they reached the bottom. Then they began working their way, single file, toward the center of the depression.

They walked in silence, except for the occasional scrape of boot soles. There were no more piercing screams for Ryan to home in on. The screamer had either been chilled by the pack of predators, or it was laying low in the wake of the gunfire, waiting until it sussed out the shooter’s intentions.

When they reached the kill zone, Ryan immediately signaled for the others to fan out and secure a perimeter. He and J.B. quickly tracked the wounded animal to a narrow opening in the lava. From the blood trail it had left on the rocks, it wasn’t likely to ever crawl out of the hole. Or live long enough to starve.

“Better have a look at this, Ryan,” Krysty called out. She and Mildred, wheelguns in hand, stood over the body of his first victim.

“Now that is what I call butt ugly,” J.B. said.

The spindly-legged corpse’s gray fur was mottled with yellow; amber-colored eyes stared fixedly into space. Its bloody canines were a good two inches long, and a purple tongue drooped out of its mouth. The .308 round had blown a cavernous hole crossways through its chest, sending a plume of pulverized flesh, bone, fur, and blood spraying across the hot rock behind.

Ryan could see things squirming in the puddles of gore. Thin, wiry things.

Parasites.

None of that was the “butt ugly” J.B. referred to.

Ryan dropped to a knee beside the body. The patch of color on its overlarge skull wasn’t composed of hair after all. From above the ears and eyebrows to the back of its head, the creature had a cap of brilliant, reddish orange skin; naked skin, wrinkled and seamed like a peach pit. He gingerly poked at it with the muzzle of his SIG.

Spongy.

The hairless patch rose to a massive sagittal crest, the anchor for jaw muscles powerful enough to crack the long bones of an elk.

“Look at the muzzle and the shape of the eyes,” Krysty said. “It’s not a wolf, it’s a coyote.”

“Part coyote,” Ryan said. “Definitely part somethin’ else.”

“A four-legged, nukin’ buzzard,” J.B. spit.

Ryan looked up when Jak appeared from behind a slab of basalt. He held a battered combat boot by the toe. It dripped thick blood off the heel; the laces were still tied and it still had a foot in it. The splintered end of a shin bone jutted out the top. “Rest over here,” Jak said.