James Axler Deathlands 002 Red Holocaust

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ground as he could before hacking another shelter from the unyielding
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snow.
"Fuckin' fireblast!" he cursed, stumbling back a few paces, leveling, the
Heckler
& Koch G12 at the hulking beast that stood less than twenty paces away. Its
red eyes glared at him; breath plumed from its jaws. For a few moments, man
and beast stared at each other, neither sure of the other's intentions.
"Just fuck off out of my way," said Ryan, finger on the trigger of the
automatic rifle.
The creature moved its head back and forth, almost as if trying to hypnotize
its intended prey with the regular pendulum swinging.
Saliva dripped from the long, tusked teeth. The head moved faster and still
faster.
Ryan blinked, fighting against tiredness to hold the gun steady, knowing that
one lapse of concentration would be fatal.
Noticing a sudden tensing of the hump of muscle across the bear's shoulders
and guessing it presaged a charge, he didn't hesitate any longer. The gun set
on continuous fire, he squeezed the trigger, bracing his hip against the
recoil. In a crosswind the 4.7 mm bullet was liable to a degree of drift,
though the trajectory drop was excellent.
At twenty paces, the stream of bullets tore into the polar bear, bursting its
heavy skull apart. Ryan kept firing into the animal's broad chest, sending it
staggering to its knees, then onto its side. Its feet kicked and flailed in
the bloodied snow. Ryan used the entire fifty-round magazine, knowing that a
beast of that size needed to be terminated with utmost prejudice and speed.
There wouldn't have been a second chance.
He reloaded, looking into the gloom of the on-rushing night. The sound of the
gun would have been so brief that he doubted there was any danger from the
Russians.
Its head blasted to pulp, the bear was undeniably dead. But as Ryan bent to
touch it, feeling the warmth of the carcass, he was startled to feel the heart
still pumping, even though there was virtually no blood left in the whole
monstrous body.
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He took off his gauntlets, pushing his hands inside the gaping chest cavity,
careful to avoid scratches from the jagged ribs and breastbone. The scarlet
pool around his feet was steaming. Finn had come off once with a horror story
of some trader up in the north, dying of the cold, who'd shot a buffalo on the
high plains, hacked its belly open, ripped out the guts and crawled into the
carcass and huddled there in the glorious warmth. But during the night, the
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cold had frozen the soft flesh to an immovable stiffness, and he wasn't able
to get out.
And so perished.
Ryan was content to have his hands and arms warmed, feeling inside for the
rhythmic pounding of the bear's heart. He brought his smoking fingers to his
mouth and licked the salty blood. His stomach heaved with revulsion for a few
moments, but he fought against the sickness, lapping at the clotting crimson
liquid, taking as much nourishment as he was able.
He sliced away a few thin pieces of the meat, chewing with a grim
determination, forcing himself to swallow. Then he took more. From previous
experiences of hunger, he knew that to eat too much, particularly such rich
meat, would only make him throw up.
The blood dried and began to freeze on his hands, cracking and falling off in
dark brown flakes. Ryan rubbed his hands together to remove as much of the
blood as possible and felt his circulation reviving. Night was now very close,
and it was time once more to build a shelter.
This time there was less snow, and he was forced to struggle with boulders,
painstakingly chipping them free of the ice with his panga, piling them into a
wall, filling in the cracks with snow.
It wasn't solid enough.
After a couple of hours he began to feel the telltale signs of the biting
cold. His feet and hands were growing numb and he was becoming drowsy. It
wasn't the usual, healthy desire for sleep after a hard day; it was an
insidious, creeping sleeplessness, offering a tempting promise of warmth and
relief from pain. It was
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overlaid with the feeling that he'd done his best and had now earned his rest.
"Fuck that!" said Ryan. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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