Plague (Gone 4)

Others, though, were skittering down the hill.

Sam, Dekka, and Jack pelted after them, high on the discovery that the nasty creatures could in fact be killed.

Half a dozen of the monsters raced over rock and through scrub grass.

Jack snatched up a smaller boulder and threw it one-handed. It hit one of the bugs and missed the others.

“Dekka!”

“Yeah,” she said, and raised her hands. Dirt and litter and gravel floated into the air ahead. Another one of the insects floated with it. Jack grabbed a rock but it wouldn’t come free, it was an outcropping of something too big even for Jack’s strength.

He scrabbled and found a head-sized rock. He threw it hard and missed the floating bug.

“The others are getting away!” Sam yelled.

“What’s that noise?” Dekka cried, and made a shushing gesture.

The three of them froze and listened. A sound like a mountain stream rushing over stones.

No, a beating of wings.

“Greenies!”

The flying snakes came in a cloud, rushing up from their lair below like swarming bats emerging from a cave at sundown.

Like tiny dragons, most just a few inches long, some as much as a foot long. They had leathery wings and whipped their tails back and forth to sustain a very shaky aerodynamic ability.

Sam yelled a curse and fired. Too late to catch them by surprise. A mistake that might prove fatal.

Bright beams of light sliced through the attacking cloud. Greenies burned and fell flaming.

Not enough. Not nearly enough and the greenies were not backing off.

Dekka canceled gravity beneath the leading edge of the swarm, but it only had the effect of disorienting some of the snakes, who responded by flying upside down or in wild circles.

They began to squirt greenish-black fluid.

Sam remembered Hunter telling him about being hit by some secretion from a greenie.

“Don’t let them hit you!” Sam yelled. “Run!”

Running uphill would be too slow on the steep slope. They ran at right angles to the swarm, ran all-out, panic speed, tripping and jumping back up, oblivious to bruises and scrapes.

The swarm was slow to react, but react they did, and wheeled after them.

Sam hit the road, staggered, caught himself, and spun around. The swarm was still emerging from its lair in the rock face above. Sam aimed hastily and fired.

Brush on the hillside instantly caught fire. Rocks heated and cracked. He played his light on the cave itself, lighting it up, making it a bright, blazing green mouth.

The swarm was lost now, unsure. It swirled in the air, dropping green-black droplets like an evil rain, but not over Sam and the others, not yet.

Confident he had burned out the cave, Sam swept his light upward into the swarm itself.

A mistake. Attacking their lair confused the greenies, but a direct attack on the swarm gave them a target.

Sam aimed again at the rock wall, hoping to distract them. Too late: the swarm was coming.

“Run! Run!”