There was a rotten jack-o'-lantern greenness below them, pulsating faintly. For the first time he became aware of odor - faint, unpleasant, wet.
The greenness was a face - what might be called a face by one of charitable bent. Above a flattened nose was an insectile node of eyes, peering at them expressionlessly. The gunslinger felt an atavistic crawl in his intestines and privates. He stepped up the rhythm of arms and handcar handle slightly.
The glowing face faded.
"What the hell was that?" the boy asked, crawling to him. "What -" The words stopped dumb in his throat as they came upon and then passed a group of three faintly glowing forms, standing between the rails and the invisible river, watching them, motionless.
"They're Slow Mutants," the gunslinger said. "I don't think they'll bother us. They're probably just as frightened of us as we are of -"
One of the forms broke free and shambled toward them. The face was that of a starving idiot. The faint naked body had been transformed into a knotted mess of tentacular limbs and suckers.
The boy screamed again and crowded against the gunslinger's leg like a frightened dog.
One of the thing's tentacle arms pawed across the flat platform of the handcar. It reeked of the wet and the dark. The gunslinger let loose of the handle and drew. He put a bullet through the forehead of the starving idiot face. It fell away, its faint swamp-fire glow fading, an eclipsed moon. The gunflash lay bright and branded on their dark retinas, fading only reluctantly. The smell of extended powder was hot and savage and alien in this buried place.
No comments:
Post a Comment