Prodigal's Return. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ are your orders, sir?” Dean asked, checking the longblaster tucked into the gun boot. Incredibly, it proved to be a remade BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle. Suspiciously, he dropped the magazine. As expected, it was empty. No wonder Bert had used a machete.

      “Stay close, boot, and follow us back to camp,” Camarillo stated, shaking the reins of his horse. “You fall behind, and I’ll personally put lead in your head!”

      “Then I get what’s left.” Hannigan chuckled, patting the edged weapon at his hip.

      “Bring a blaster, gleeb,” Dean growled in return, kicking his horse into a gallop. “Better yet, bring a dozen to make it a fair fight.”

      Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan frowned at that, then slowly smiled, displaying his oversize, crooked teeth. “Deal,” he whispered, the word barely discernable over the pounding hooves.

      As the Stone Angels moved across the wide grassy field, Dean settled into the steady rocking motion of a seasoned rider, and began to wonder exactly how long he might have to stay before he would finally be able to slip away from these people.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Scrambling over the bank of a dried river, six people hastily pelted across the uneven ground, their hands frantically reloading blasters. Their clothing was torn and dirty, their faces gaunt from hunger and exhaustion.

      Suddenly, a weird sound came from the riverbed, the noise making them spin fast just as a glowing green mist appeared along the bank.

      “Fireblast, here it comes again!” Ryan Cawdor shouted, triggering his longblaster a fast three times.

      Instantly, his companions cut loose with a thundering cacophony of weapons. Gray and black smoke billowed from the blazing gun barrels, spent brass flying in every direction.

      Rising over the earthen bank, the green mist flowed along the loose sand and rocks, leaving behind a glassy streak of fused ground. Deep within the incandescent fog, something unseen gave voice once more to a high-pitched howl full of rage, pain and unbridled hate.

      “What in nuking hell does it take to stop that thing?” J. B. Dix snarled, yanking out the spent magazine from his Uzi machine pistol and shoving in a fresh one. Jerking the arming bolt, he sent another long burst of 9 mm rounds into the cloud. Most of the steel-jacketed lead simply flew out the other side to pepper a low sand dune.

      “Hard stop what not see,” Jak Lauren muttered, sending off three booming rounds from a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python.

      “Not sure we want to see it!” Dr. Mildred Weyth countered, squeezing off a single .38 round from her Czech ZKR target pistol.

      “Stinking howler,” Jak growled, firing again.

      Instantly, the howler inside the billowing cloud doubled the volume of its inhuman keen, and the companions painfully winced at the sonic assault.

      “Don’t know if that hurt it or just made the mutie angry,” Krysty Worth said, dumping out the spent brass from her hammerless Smith & Wesson Model 640 revolver. Pocketing the casings, she dug into another pocket of her bearskin coat and started thumbing in fresh cartridges.

      As the creature inside the green cloud flowed by a stand of cacti, the plants began to visibly wither, and by the time the howler was past, they were only shriveled lumps on the fused sand, thin tendrils of smoke rising from the scorched remains.

      “Egad, the accursed abomination is like some Dantean monster from the very depths of inferno!” Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner announced in a stentorian bass. Thumbing back the hammer on a massive single-action LeMat revolver, the tall man aimed carefully, then stroked the trigger. The huge Civil War-era weapon boomed louder than field artillery, black smoke vomited from the pitted muzzle and a lance of flame extended for almost a foot.

      As the colossal miniball hummed through the air to vanish into the cloud, the howler actually moaned even louder, but whether in pain from a hit or pleasure from a miss, there was no way of knowing.

      “Shoot it again, Doc,” Ryan commanded, shoving another magazine of 7.62 mm rounds into the open breech of the Steyr SSG longblaster. “At the very least, your handblaster slows the bastard thing down!”

      “That was my last load, my dear Ryan,” Doc replied, his hands already moving in the complex procedure of purging the chambers of the revolver clean as a prelude to packing in fresh black powder, lead and wadding.

      “Then we better start using boot leather!” J.B. shouted, grabbing his fedora and turning tail to start a hasty retreat.

      After reloading their own weapons, the companions followed suit, running a hundred feet, only to turn and fire, then run again. For the past day they had been fleeing from the unstoppable mutie. They were low on brass and close to exhaustion, but with their wag destroyed there was no other choice. Run, fight, and run again, to survive for a couple more minutes, another precious few yards. But they could do that for only so long. Soon the companions would fall, and be aced. It was just a matter of time.

      Ever since the howler had erupted from a predark iron mine to set their wag on fire with a single touch, the companions had been fighting a losing battle, trying desperately to find some way to trap the thing, block its advance or divert it by sending it after slower prey. There should have been a lot of stickies in this region of the Deathlands, and the humanoid muties were oddly attracted to explosions, especially the sounds of blasters firing. The fight should have summoned an army of the things. But so far there had been no sign of stickies, only the endless desert sands.

      Charging between two large dunes, Ryan saw the wreckage of some ancient machinery partially buried in the loose sand. Car, truck, helicopter, submarine, he didn’t care. It was made of metal, and the location was perfect, which gave them a fighting chance at life.

      “Rig it!” he commanded, dropping СКАЧАТЬ