Chapter Eighteen

He was bitten a half-dozen times in the first couple of seconds of the one-sided fight. Two of the rats were climbing up his body with a sickening nimbleness, light-footed as demons as they scampered toward his face and throat.
Ryan used the stick like a medieval quarterstaff, two-handed, swinging it in a tight whirring circle, catching several of his attackers, hearing the dry snap of brittle bones splintering. The squeaking had grown to a shrieking, and the animals were pressing around his legs, trying to bring him to the floor by weight of numbers.
His first impression had been right. The rats were huge, bigger than cats, gigantic creatures spawned in some postnuke inferno, fattened on the creatures that lived in and around the bayous. One tried to fasten its grip on his hand, and he shook it off, shuddering at the realization that the thing had a double row of murderous teeth. If he fell
There was the sound of a shot, repeated twice more, the familiar waspish snapping of Krysty's Smith amp; Wesson 640. It wasn't a great blaster for any target much over forty feet away, but ideal as a stopper at closer quarters.
For a moment Ryan felt the rats hesitate.
Krysty fired twice more and the rodents retreated, leaving Ryan a clear space for a few moments. One of the mutie animals clung to the end of the staff and Ryan swung it to the floor with all his strength, crushing the creature to death.
"Let's go, lover!"
For a moment he was totally disoriented. Had it not been for Krysty seizing his arm, he could easily have blundered deeper into the rats' haunt or run out into the sluggish deeps of the swamp.
"This way."
His hands still held tight to the whittled stick, feeling on the one end the broken slivers where the rats had gnawed at the hard wood.
"Close call," he panted. "They after us?"
Ryan guessed they'd run about forty yards from the building, out onto the almost-submerged causeway that led eventually back to the ville of Bramton.
That much he knew.
Krysty slowed and twisted slightly as she looked behind her. "Nothing. The shots from the blaster did the trick, though you were more than holding your own with that chewed-up bit of stick you got there."
"Wasn't chewed up when I started, lover."
Now they stopped, recovering their breath.
Ryan considered telling Krysty to reload, knowing that she'd fired five from five. But her rescue of him had unsettled the balance of their relationship and he kept his mouth closed.
"Real pisser having to depend on someone else like that," he said finally.
"If I hadn't been there, then you'd probably have made it clear yourself," she replied. "You were holding them off all right, weren't you?"
"I guess so. But" he let the words drift off into the silent afternoon, knowing without a shred of doubt that another minute or so among the mutie rats would have seen him down and done for, suffering a hideous passing.
"Anyway, we have to get back to the ville, ready to go and meet the Family."
Ryan nodded. "Sure."
He was holding Krysty by the hand when the water to their right erupted in an explosion of noise and violence, and something vast rushed up the shallow bank and snatched her away from him with awesome force.
Ryan heard the single scream and the sound of the hammer of the Smith amp; Wesson blaster falling on a spent cartridge. There was a hoglike grunt, then a tremendous splash to his left, the scream drowning instantly.
And Krysty was gone, torn away from him by what he knew instinctively had to be a monstrous alligator.
She was gone, and he stood there blind.