Downrigger Drift (13 page)

They stayed ahead of the storm blowing out of the west for the first hour, pushing up to about forty miles an hour on sections of highway that weren’t too badly damaged. But the clouds grew larger and darker behind them, with lightning bolts arcing from the thunderheads to the ground, and claps of thunder heralding the impending storm, until Krysty and Doc both suggested finding a safe spot, preferably under cover, until the tempest passed over.

Ryan was for pushing on, until J.B. brought up the fact they were in a big rolling piece of metal, and, although grounded by the tires, a direct or nearby lightning strike could easily knock out the engine or electrical system, stranding them in the middle of nowhere. “We’re running just fine now, and I don’t want to blow it because you have a hard-on to get another ten miles down the road,” were the Armorer’s exact words, making Mildred and Doc smile, and Ryan flip his old friend the finger without taking his hand off the wheel.

In the end, however, he went along with the group consensus and found a highway overpass that seemed stable enough, since it held the Commando’s weight when they drove across it. Easing carefully down the crumbling off-ramp, he pulled around underneath just as the first patter of rain hit the war wag. They rolled to a stop into the center of the concrete structure just as
a freakish blast of wind howled through the man-made tunnel, and then the skies opened up. Even through the wag’s metal skin, they heard the rain pounding down all around them, with a gust of howling wind blowing sheets of water over the Commando. J.B. showed them on the blaster cam just how bad it was outside—driving sheets of solid water that cut visibility to a few yards at best.

“Least it’s not acid,” Ryan commented, drawing a grunt of agreement from J.B. Out west, particularly along the border of what used to be Mexico and the U.S. the infrequent rains picked up alkali and other chemicals that brewed into toxic, deadly precipitation that could strip a person to the bone in under five minutes. Once, when he was barely out of his teens and working in one of the pestholes along the Tex-Mex border, Ryan had had the unfortunate chance to see one of these storms in action as it deluged a poor drunk who had been caught away from shelter. The caustic liquid had flayed the man’s skin and flesh from his bones as he had run for cover, turning him into a seared, blind, deaf, mute wretch by the time he had reached the reinforced doors. One of the other bouncers had taken pity on the poor lump of meat and put him out of his misery with a bullet. Ryan had never forgotten the sight of the guy beating on the door with his melted hands, his screams of pain muted to incomprehensible moans. And there were other times….

“Ow! Son of a bitch!” The commotion came from the front blaster port, with Jak cursing, followed by the clank of the blaster port slamming shut. They all heard the hiss of a knife being drawn, then nothing.

“Jak? You okay up there?” Ryan called from the driver’s seat. He was about to get up and maneuver his
way over when the albino teen’s head appeared, glowing reddish-white in the dim light from the instrument panel.

“Bastard bugs, or whatever’s out there!” The youth was favoring his left hand, and when J.B. produced a small penlight and shone it on his injury, they saw a dime-sized injury on his palm, bleeding profusely.

“Fireblast! Mildred, get up here, Jak got bit again.”

She came up to see, her eyes widening in surprise at the wound. “My God, Jak, trouble is drawn to you.”

“Just tryin’ to get drink rain water. Hot up there, no vents open.”

Ryan and J.B. exchanged a knowing glance. “So you decided to cool off, right?”

The youth glared at them while Mildred tended to his hand. “Was just gonna stick hand out. Next I know, something landed on it, hurt like hell. Pulled in, stabbed fucker with knife, flicked it out the port, slammed shut.” His expression grew pensive. “Saw more out there. Lots, black, small.” He made an o with his thumb and forefinger. “’Bout that big.”

“Insect swarm, lookin’ for shelter from the storm?” Ryan guessed.

“Whatever they are, they don’t strike like any insect I’ve ever seen,” Mildred said while bandaging Jak’s wound. “This wasn’t made by a proboscis, more like some kind of leech, with some kind of rasping tongue to scrape off layers of skin until the bleeding starts.”

“One way to find out.” J.B. turned to the blaster cam and fired it up, moving the turret to scan back and forth. “What the hell are these things?”

The area around the war wag was filled with small, black, floating creatures, looking like a dark globule of gum or dirt, drifting lazily in the air. Occasionally one
would pass by the camera, seeming to writhe in the air, as if it was steering in some instinctive fashion.

“My word, isn’t that interesting.” Doc had managed to squeeze his lanky frame into the cramped main compartment, and stare at the monitor. “Reminds me of the famous Kansas City, Missouri, incident in 1873, whereupon the entire city was pelted with live frogs during a freak rainstorm. Of course, at the time I don’t expect anyone suffered the indignity of a bite like young Jak.”

“Think we’re in any danger?” Krysty asked.

J.B. snorted. “Not unless they can rasp their way through plate armor.”

Just then, however, the engine hitched before resuming its normal rhythm, making J.B. frown. “Unless they’re attracted to a heat source…”

The engine hitched once more, then died with a snort, shaking loudly enough that the entire wag vibrated, as well. “And clog up the main exhaust pipe.”

Ryan had already leaned over into the driver’s seat and turned off the engine. “Better get out there and clear it. Looks like the rain is subsiding, so we can get back on the road, too.”

“Yeah, these little bastards are floating to the ground—definitely not lighter than air. Let’s give them a couple more minutes to settle, and we’ll head out.”

Mildred put the back of her hand to Jak’s forehead, who shook it off with a grimace. “You feeling all right so far? We don’t need another incident like we had with those damn pig-rats.”

“Fine, not worry ’bout me.” Jak looked around at the cramped quarters and shuddered. “Go outside and clear the pipe. Want stretch legs.”

“In a minute or two, we’ll all get out, three at a time.”
Ryan gave it another few minutes before moving to the hatch. “Jak, J.B., you’re with me.” Opening the metal cover, he swung it out slowly, careful to avoid the few little black creatures that had been resting on the top edge of the hatch itself. He peeked out to see the ground alive with a moving carpet of squirming creatures.

“Here we go.” Ryan stepped out, his feet crushing dozens of the slugs, boots sliding unsteadily on the goo. When his feet hit the ground, the nearby creatures began crawling toward him, undulating their bodies as fast as they could.

“Hand me a blanket from inside, would you?” J.B. obliged, and Ryan swept it over the roof, dislodging a wave of the slimy creatures that rolled down over the front of the wag to the ground. Using the bottom of the entry hatch as a step, Ryan hauled himself up to the top, brushing away the slugs before they could start coming for him. Once he had cleared a space to stand on, he scrambled onto the roof and flicked the blanket out, sending the invaders tumbling off the top of the vehicle until the area was clear.

“All right, come out, but stay on the roof. Jak, once you’re on top, get clearing that stack so we can get out of here.”

The albino teen crawled out onto the roof with ease and trotted to the smokestack, which was still crawling with the loathsome creatures. Many had been cooked by the heat of the pipe, but there was still a head-size lump of them wriggling all over it.

“Use one of your knives,” suggested J.B., who had just come up as well after closing the hatch.

“No shit.” Jak drew a pair of his throwing blades and began scraping the mass off the pipe. Ryan and J.B. kept
a careful watch around them, looking at the large, black mass of leeches below them.

“Hate to fall into that,” the Armorer muttered.

Ryan nodded, then turned back to Jak. “How’s it coming?”

“Almost done. Fuckers don’t give up easy.”

“Hey, Ryan, look at this.” He turned to see J.B. examining one of the animals, which was slowly floating toward him in midair. “I’ll be damned. They’re like little leech balloons.”

The storm had passed enough to let some wan sunlight into the underpass, enough to illuminate the strange creature. It was about three inches long, and looked for all the world like a banded leech, black and segmented, with a questing mouth on one end, large enough for Ryan to see three tiny plates in its mouth that also moved every time its maw opened, coming together to form a rough surface that could easily strip off skin. The really strange thing was the small sac on its back, filled with what he assumed was air, that allowed it to float on the breeze.

J.B. moved out of its way, but it turned as well, as if coming after him. Pursing his lips, J.B. blew at it, sending the floating creature drifting away.

Seeing it so close prickled a vague alarm in the back of Ryan’s mind. “I thought all of them had settled to the ground. Is this a straggler?”

J.B.’s gaze flicked from the little parasite to Ryan. “Mebbe. Unless—”

Both men had the same thought at the same time. Lifting his head just enough to look upward, Ryan beheld a nightmare above them.

The top of the bridge was made of poured concrete sections that supported the road above. They were
spaced like giant rows, with a space between each pair of braces. Each space was filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of squirming, writhing leeches, held up by one another’s mass as they wriggled around.

“Attracted by—” J.B. began.

“Heat. Jak, run now!” Ryan didn’t wait to see if the albino teen listened, but was already heading toward the front of the war wag, planning to jump off and head for the hopefully leech-free ground outside the underpass.

He had just taken his first large step when the deluge came down.

In a heartbeat, the air was filled with hundreds of the leech-creatures. Although many of them had filled their air bladders to float down at their leisure, just as many had taken the quicker route, falling from the ceiling in hopes of landing on a meal. Moving between them was like trying to dodge big, black, hungry raindrops.

As he moved, Ryan kept his head down, mainly concerned about his eye. Just one of the things blowing into it could seriously injure, or even blind him. He would have closed it, but he still had to get off the wag, and jumping blind would invite a sprained or broken ankle or worse. And the one thing he knew he didn’t want was to fall into the layer of bloodsuckers on the ground. He waved his arms around his head, feeling his hands bat several of the things away, and at least three latched on to his fingers, instantly sending burning pain through his hands as they went to work on him.

Reaching the edge of the wag, Ryan slid down the front, aware he was both crushing and picking up more as he went. His boots thudded on the ground, turning dozens more to paste under their treads. He tried to run, but nearly fell over, and only saved himself from
toppling with a supreme effort. Everywhere he looked, he saw little black bits in the air, dozens of bloodsucking paratroopers zeroing in on their objective—him. More settled on his head, moving around in his hair, seeking the warm, blood-filled scalp. He felt them land on his shirt, on his shoulders, on his pants, everywhere they could get to him. He tried shaking them off, but they clung like they were coated with glue.

Ryan Cawdor didn’t scare easily, but this onslaught would have made even the strongest man break as the dozens of slick, black leeches came at him, each one seeking his warm blood. He burst from the dark tunnel into the sunlight, tearing off his shirt and flinging it away as he did so. The greedy parasites on his hands were the first to go, torn off with scrabbling fingers. Next he ran his hands through his hair, sloughing off at least a half dozen of the creatures and whipping them onto the ground. He saw J.B. out of the corner of his eye, cursing and capering as he swatted away his own army of attackers. Ryan couldn’t waste time spotting Jak, but was sure he was in the same boat.

“Hold still, Ryan—on your back!” As he heard the words, Ryan felt a sting as a pair of them latched on, their greedy mouths scraping through the skin. They’d landed right in the small of his back, and Ryan was about to draw his panga and scrape them off, cuts be damned, until J.B. ran over and tore them loose, flinging them to the ground and stepping on them.

Having cleared his head and hands, Ryan moved to his arms, dislodging each leech he found and stomping on it. He checked J.B. as well, finding one that was about to head south down the back of his pants. Grabbing it between two fingers, he threw it away. The sight made
him immediately check his own fatigues, which were thankfully leech-free.

“I imagine you’d know right away if one of those fuckers went after your privates,” J.B. said, giving Ryan a last, careful once-over. “Thanks.”

Jak had joined them, as well. His arms and neck weeping blood from several wounds. His hands blurred as he found the leeches and ripped them off his body “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Got that right.” Even though he was pretty sure he was safe, Ryan kept checking his arms and legs every few seconds, thinking he could still feel one or two crawling on his skin. “Never wanted a hot bath more in my life.”

“Yeah, with a heavy dose of salt—that’d take care of the little bastards.” J.B. had finished scraping the last ones off his trusty fedora, which had once again saved him from suffering the worst of the attack. One last check of everyone found a straggler lodged in Jak’s armpit, swelling to triple its normal size as it gorged. Whipping out his knife, the teen impaled the parasite on the tip, sending a spurt of dark crimson onto the ground. He flicked it away, letting the blood run down his side.

“Didn’t you feel it?” J.B. asked.

Jak shrugged. “Too busy dealing with dozen others.”

“Did you clear the exhaust pipe?” Ryan asked.

“Think so. Course, all comin’ down coulda plugged again.”