Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [5]
Hella heaved herself into motion, both hands pointed before her. She was a gun sight, totally locked in on her target and knowing where every bullet would hit. She yelled to startle the mutie-coyote, to let Stampede know she had his back, and to burn off the excess adrenaline that suddenly drenched her system.
The bullets struck the mutie-coyote and tore through flesh. Blood spurted from the wounds, and the creature staggered back under the onslaught, but it turned to Hella and snarled. In the next instant, it vomited a strand of webbing into the trees and swung away.
Hella swung her guns overhead and fired, but the beast was a slithering shadow among the branches.
Beside her, Stampede sliced through the webbing and grabbed his rifle. On his knees, he lifted the big weapon with practiced ease, sighted, breathed out, and fired. A rocket screamed from the muzzle, flashing in and out of sight as the lightning flickered around them.
A heartbeat later a yellow and white explosion burst in the forest and set several trees on fire. Concerned voices mixed in with Daisy’s frantic yowling. If they’d been there before, Hella hadn’t noticed them. The detonation echoed in her ears.
For a moment Hella thought Stampede had missed his target. Then chunks of mutie-coyote, the fur matted and black and burned off in places, plopped to the ground around them. A leg bounced off Hella’s chain-mail shirt and left a greasy blood smear.
Hella kicked the leg away from her. “That was nasty.”
“Yeah.”
High up on the hill, someone cut loose with an automatic weapon. Then laser blasts illuminated the campsite.
Stampede cursed and reloaded as he kicked free of the webbing. Hella already had the point.
CHAPTER 2
You were supposed to be here! We’re paying you to protect us! You can’t do that if you leave us in the middle of the night and go haring about in the dark!” Klein Pardot, the head of the New Mexico expedition, frothed at the mouth as he declared his displeasure.
Hella stared at the man and kept her jaw cranked shut. Everything in her screamed to punch him in the face. Maybe she would have too, except Stampede stepped between them and pushed her back. Grudgingly Hella allowed her partner to take over. Despite outward appearances, the bisonoid was the better peacekeeper and more levelheaded in times of stress.
“Mr. Pardot—” Stampede looked down at the little man.
“It’s not Mr. Pardot.” The scientist’s voice was shrill and quite possibly the most annoying sound Hella had ever heard, even worse than the mating call of a rabid Arkansas razorback. Over the past few days, she’d grown sick of hearing the man speak. “It’s Dr. Pardot.”
“My apologies, Dr. Pardot.”
Despite the more than half a meter difference in their heights, Pardot didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest by Stampede. The bisonoid stood his ground with arms folded like he got yelled at in the middle of the night under pouring rain every night. Anything less than a paying client would have gotten pounded.
The expedition security men looked uncomfortable and even a little embarrassed. A couple of them wore fearful expressions, as if they were afraid they would have to try to subdue Stampede when he’d gotten a belly full. All eight of them had their black hardshells on. The formfitting, protective gear included boots, gloves, and helmets, and all of that contributed to make them look like beetles.
The hardshells provided a lot of protection from guns, knives, and lasers, even some strength and speed enhancement, but they didn’t work well out in the wilderness. Inside cities, Hella thought the security guards could have claimed some advantages. But that wasn’t true when all movement in the suits looked artificial. Stronger and faster counted when a firefight was going on, but a hunter/predator’s ability depended on being able to flow without a misstep and to vanish in a moment if the chance presented itself. The