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him.
Some of them were no bigger than sparrows, others close to the size of a rat.
Ryan remembered what J.R
had said about the sealing-off of the section of the redoubt, seeing more of
the spiders pouring through the wide-mesh grilles of the vent system.
Nobody had opened fire, recognizing the pointlessness of trying to shoot
thousands of the scuttling arachnids.
"Get Abe out," Ryan snapped, bolstering the blaster, drawing the panga from
the sheath on his belt.
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"They'll get out into the rest of the redoubt," Krysty shouted. "Me and
Mildred'll try to chill any that make the door."
Trader, J.B. and Jak started to move across the rippling layer of hairy
spiders, crushing them beneath their boots. Abe's bare feet had disappeared
beneath waves of the mutie creatures. There was blood dappling his hands and
arms, showing that the spiders had a vicious bite.
It passed through Ryan's mind, as he started to hack at the seething mass,
that if the spiders were venomous, then Abe's life was already measured in
minutes.
Now that he was in the middle of them, he could see that most were the size of
a baseball, with dark brown furred legs that almost tripled their size. They
had tiny black stalked eyes and large barbed pincers.
The three friends were only just in time to save Abe. His eyes had rolled back
white in their sockets, and he'd almost stopped fighting for life.
Jak, as agile as an acrobat, was first to his side, grabbing his arm and
sweeping off the most insistent of the spiders, holding the fainting little
gunner upright until J.B. and Trader arrived to help him.
Ryan used the panga like a brush, slicing back and forth through the mass of
scuttling insects. Liquid sprayed over his fingers, making them burn, but he
carried on with the remorseless slaughter.
Out of the corner of his eye Ryan noticed that Dean was standing near the
automatic door, just inside the toilets, using his turquoise-hilted knife to
stab any of the spiders that threatened him.
"Get outside, son! Help Krysty and Mildred keep the shitters out of the rest
of the complex."
The doors hissed and Dean vanished.
Fresh waves of the mutie creatures poured in through the grilles, dropping
softly to the floor, joining the throng that was still surging forward to
attack the invading humans.
Trader and J.B. had lifted the semiconscious figure of Abe clear off the
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floor, while Jak methodically swept away the spiders from his body.
The bath area was almost silent, the only sounds the grunting of the men, and
the hiss of Ryan's scything blade as it decimated the mutated insects.
"Get him outside," Ryan panted. "I'll hold 'em off long as I can."
One of the largest of the horrors had climbed all the way up his back into his
hair, dropping over his face with a sticky web projecting from its abdomen,
blinding and choking him.
As Ryan plucked at it with his left hand, it bit him near the bridge of the
nose, the needled pincers narrowly missing his good right eye.
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The pain was agonizing, and he very nearly dropped the panga. But he grabbed
the spider and squeezed, feeling the soft, brittle body turn to mushy pulp
between his fingers. Ryan cast the squashed corpse away from him, where its
fellows scrabbled around it, starting to devour the twitching legs.
Ryan rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to avoid spreading
any of the virulent ichor and blinding himself. The thought of being blind and
helpless among the rippling carpet of spiders was so abhorrent that he came
close for a few moments to losing control and sliding into panic.
But Ryan's combat experience surged forth and saved him. He turned, seeing
that the others had managed to drag Abe to safety, leaving him alone for a
moment.
But it was all right.
Control was back again.
Using the panga with devastating skill, he butchered dozens of the furry
creatures.
Ryan slowly moved toward the exit from the bath and toilet area. He jumped at
a sudden noise, but it was only the automatic water flush of the urinals,
operating as it had hundreds of thousands of times since skydark.
The doors hissed behind him, and Ryan turned and dived through, rolling around
and kicking out his feet, shaking off and crushing the last of his attackers.
A few dozen spiders made it through the gap, others being pulped as the doors
closed. But there were enough people out there to stamp and stab every last
one of them.
By the time Ryan stood, Trader and J.B. had carried Abe to one of the beds,
laying him down while
Mildred quickly started peeling off his clothing. Krysty, Jak and Dean were
finishing off the mutie arachnids, hunting down the last dozen or so that had
scuttled into the dormitory.
"You all right, Dad?" asked his son, breaking off to help him to his feet.
"You got a double-flash bite on your face. Like someone stuck a pigeon's egg
under the skin. Bet that sucker's really going to hurt you!"
"You don't have to gloat." Ryan cuffed the boy playfully. "You get bitten?"
"No. Too quick for them. But poor old Abe looks triple sick, Dad."
Krysty wiped sweat from her forehead, then cleansed her knife on one of the
mattresses and sheathed it.
"That must have been one of the world's bad sights," she said.
"What?"
"Opening those doors and walking in on those" She shuddered. "On those things.
Without any warning.
Gaia!"
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Mildred called to Dean. "There's two drinking fountains down the far end of
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the dorm. Go and soak a rag in one and bring it back. Jak, help him. Need lots
of water to wash these bites. Your hat, John?"
J.B. looked puzzled for a moment, then quickly picked up his fedora and went
to fill it with water.
Ryan looked down at Abe, seeing the numerous speckled lumps all over him where
he'd been bitten. They were particularly thick around his lower legs and arms,
but his face was also badly swollen, streaked with blood.
Chapter Ten
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron, seeing that barely two hours had elapsed
since they'd all been tugged out of sleep by Abe's screams.
Once he'd calmed down and Mildred had bathed the spider bites again, the
gunner had recovered fast, keen to get his clothes back on as the ambient [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]