Outlanders 34 Successors by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SIMON TURNED AWAY and puked. Larry Robison didn't feel so good himself.

"This is what remains of a man named Juanito." Consuelo said in tones so bitter they were alkaline. "Not that his name would matter to you, Simon—you have never thought the Shuara human enough to deserve names!"

"It is not that, Consuelo.” he said, half offended and all pedantic. "It is that they resist necessary progress--"

"Enough," Hays said loudly. "I got no stomach for dialectics at the best of times. We have an emergency, here, people. So, save the world now. Debate politics later." Both Consuelo and Simon turned to stare at him as if amazed he would even suggest such a thing. Robison cleared his throat discreetly.

"What happened to Juanito. Consuelo?"

She glanced down at the horrifically violated body, then hurriedly turned away. "He was out hunting in the woods with his brothers when he realized animals of every size were rushing past him in blind panic, as if fleeing fire. Yet they knew there was no fire—they would have smelled it on the wind. So they went to investigate what might be frightening the beasts."

"Pretty halls," Reichert murmured

"It was no mere curiosity, not yet machismo." she said fiercely...It was concern for others. They feared that whatever was scaring the animals might prove a threat to the people of the forest, the Atshuara. And they were right! "Suddenly they came to an area where the vegetation had withered and died. Beyond that point they could see that what they knew had been forest—a dense stand of ancient trees—was gone, and in its place a profusion of all kinds of strange blue-colored plants they had never seen before. This scared them and they started to withdraw. Too late!

"Monsters poured out of the strange brush and swarmed over them. Juanito's brother Pablito was ripped screaming to shreds before the others' eyes, by creatures that slithered and hopped and flew."

She paused to draw a shuddering breath. Her eyes were turned downward. Her hair hung unbound, framing her porcelain-doll-fine face.

"A cloud of flying creatures enveloped Juanito. He screamed like a man afire. The eldest. Diego, was able to quickly strike flame into a handful of dry moss and use it as a torch to drive the monsters back, although he burned his hand terribly in the process. There was not enough fire to keep them off for long, and he was himself bitten and stung repeatedly but he was able to get to Juanito and bear him away, still shrieking."

"So fire scares 'em." Reichert said. “That's good news."

"Fire scares everything." Weaver said. "We're not out of the woods yet." The younger man looked stung at having been corrected by the older man, although Weaver had spoken with nothing but his standard gruff good humor. Kid's still a hero-worshiper, Robison thought.

It might have amused his former fellow Delta operators that he felt that way about an old guy, and a lifelong civilian to boot. But then, Larry reflected, they don't know Joe.

"When Diego came into camp," Consuelo went on.

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