Storm Breakers by James Axler Page B

longblaster.
    He winced as she slammed the black barrel across the froglike muzzle of a mutie. And not just because he heard the snout bones crunch and the monster squeal in horribly human-sounding pain. Usually using a blaster as a club was a sure, fast road to having a blaster that was only good as a club. But Ryan knew as well as any, even in this brutal world, how little use a working blaster was to a chill.
    But in that instant of capturing the scene in his one good eye, as he had learned to do by hard practice over harder years, he also noted the distressing fact that only a couple of the weird misshapen forms lay on the ground.
    These bastards take a lot of killing, he thought.
    As he booted the pinto toward Alysa’s circle of destruction, her bay mare caught a frog full in the side with both hind hooves in a brutal kick. It flung the massive monster a good five feet through the air, with a loud snap of ribs breaking. But Ryan saw that the creature never even went fully down—from a hurt that would’ve at least temporarily incapacitated any human, if not chilled him or her outright.
    He kept the panga going, still not trying hard to bite the blade deep. Just enough to clear his way until he could help the girl, whose pale blond hair was whipping like a pennon out from behind her cap. And to help cover his friends...
    Reassuringly he heard the sledgehammering of hooves on weathered, sturdy planks as the two women, presumably followed hard by Doc, crossed the bridge.
    Then, as he rode up to Alysa, a scream pealed from behind him. He heard a giant, cracking, splintering sound.
    He spun to see Krysty’s little red roan mare falling on its side just at the bridge’s end, saliva flying from its face. The horse’s thrashing body smashed free a whole section of the heavy timber top rail on her right.
    Blood hosed in a ruby arc from a throat torn open by black frog-mutie talons.
    * * *
    “U SE MORE FORCE , L UKE .”
    The chunk of concrete, twice as big as J.B.’s head and with nasty jabs and hooks of rust-reddened rebar sticking out of it, clanged against the long steel handle of the wrench. The hard sharp-edged concrete bit at his palms. He wished he’d thought to wear gloves.
    “What’s that, Trader?” he asked.
    Standing in the shade of War Wag Two, Trader chuckled. “Bad joke. And an old one, a reference to an old-days vid.”
    J.B. blinked owlishly at him, in part because his exertions had worked his glasses down his nose and he couldn’t rightly see the man as anything but a long, narrow, shadowy blur. But also because he never reckoned a man as triple-hard and bottom-line as the Trader to go in for such foolishness.
    As if reading his thoughts, the man said, “I deal in scavvy, son. I like to know the quality of my own merch. What exactly do you think you’re doing there, anyway, abusing my tools like that?”
    That stung J.B. as deeply, but he had the sense to throttle down the sudden racing of his temper.
    “I’m trying to get this cable loose so we can haul that cargo wag out the ditch,” he said, speaking slowly and tautly so as not to lose control of his words. It wasn’t so much that Trader was his boss—he had no reflex fear or deference to authority. To say the least. But the man was Trader, as formidable a figure as the Deathlands knew.
    “Son, I know that,” Trader said, and now his gravelly voice had a touch of steel in it, like the broke-off chunk of roadway foolishly clutched in J.B.’s chafed hands. “I know what goes on in my convoy. What I want to know is why you are pounding on the handle of my four-foot open-end wrench with a nuking rock?”
    J.B. frowned. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging like anything and blurring out his vision worse than before. He fought the impulse to blink it furiously away. He was afraid that would make him look as nervous as he was.
    “Well, I’m trying to get at this steel tow-cable,” he said, struggling a bit as he tried to keep the words from