Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [4]
“Something new, you think?”
“If it was, we’d have heard about it at the trade camps.” News and gossip flew like quail at the trade camps. “Something like this, everybody would have been talking about it.”
“Maybe it’s too new.”
Hella considered that. Genetic abominations still cropped up all around the world after the collider exploded. Strange animal life—new creatures as well as hybridized old ones—were the norm. Plant life and climatic conditions had lists of their own. She’d seen examples of all of them.
Something large stepped in behind her, and the presence washed over her. She whirled and brought her gun hands up, aiming for the center mass.
“Don’t shoot.” Stampede spoke softly but his voice filled the space around them. He stood almost eight feet tall, dwarfing Hella’s five foot three. Massive shoulders and a thick neck supported a huge, bovine head. Like his forebears, the buffalo, Stampede had short, curved horns. A gold nose ring gleamed against his muzzle, and gold studs gleamed in his short, tufted ears.
His body was humanoid, but the trace of the animal his ancestors had been remained. His arms and legs were thick as tree trunks, his hands and feet massive. Short brown fur covered his entire body except for his muzzle, palms, and the hooves of his feet. A short, shaggy tail hung out of his leather pants.
He didn’t wear a shirt, but he did sport a specially made Kevlar vest with an ammo rack for the huge machine gun/rocket launcher he carried as his main weapon. Twin revolvers, tooled in matte black to fit his hands and fitted with ivory grips, rode his hips in an Old West gunfighter style. He went barefoot, and his shaggy hooves dug into the ground.
“You shouldn’t come up behind me like that.” Hella drew her hands back but held them out a little from her sides.
“If you heard me, it would hear me.” Stampede shifted his rifle and tilted his head. “Is it still here?”
“Has to be.” Hella glanced around the woods. Up the hill, Daisy chirped in agitation.
“That stupid dinosaur’s not making the situation any better.” Stampede stepped in beside Hella. “Let’s find that thing and get in out of the rain.”
Hella nodded and took point, leaving Stampede to guard her rear. Before she’d gone a dozen careful steps, Stampede grunted in surprise, and his machine gun shattered the night.
Instinctively Hella went to ground then swiveled to face Stampede. He stood out in the open, covered with a stringy layer that closed around him. The sight froze Hella because the stringy mass looked like a huge sprawl of spider’s webbing. As she watched, another bundle of the webbing sailed through the air and smacked into Stampede.
The bisonoid growled in rage and tried to move his weapon, but the sticky strands bound it to him. He released the long gun and palmed one of the revolvers then the long knife holstered near his ankle. He pointed the pistol up into the trees and sawed at the webbing with the blade.
Following her partner’s line of sight, Hella peered upward. The possibility that the coyote-thing could climb had never entered her mind. She lifted her hands to take aim.
The mutie-coyote scuttled out of the darkness along a branch twenty feet from the ground. For the first time, Hella saw that it had six legs, not four. Mottled in gray and brown, the creature definitely had lupine genes, but—like many things in the world these days—it was much more.
The mutie-coyote paused and opened its long jaws. Instead of a triumphant bay, the creature vomited another ball of webbing that crashed down onto Stampede. The additional strands caused Stampede to topple over as his hooves got tangled in the webbing. He fired the huge revolver. The tracer rounds smacked into the tree near his attacker and left smoldering miniature craters.
Silently the mutie-coyote launched itself from the branch and dropped gracefully onto Stampede. The thing’s jaws opened wide to expose