Guns of Mars 88
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 27.1
The bounty man charged up the steps to the terrace above. He snatched up his carbine and ran out toward the crater. The falling sun cast its last rays to turn the jagged rim of the bowl into a golden crown. A dark tide moved in the shadows below.
The plant men had torn their roots from the sand to lumber toward the exit. They gathered in a crush at the start of the tunnel. They were massed there, the trunks of their bodies pressed tight. It was not panic, he realized. It was purpose. They moved as one to create a blunt instrument that would serve as a ram to free them from their trap.
The eerie piping, a rising and falling skirl, came from the obscene mouth-like orifices at the end of their stalks. The keening cry rose higher and higher to a shared, whistling shriek that felt as though it were cleaving its way into the bounty man’s skull.
He answered with a cry of his own, drowned out in the warbling clamor of the fascii. He raised his carbine and worked the lever again and again, emptying the magazine into the packed throng. This accomplished nothing to slow the onslaught. A few severed stalks went flying, a few showers of the bark that formed their outer skin.
Over the din of the pipes, he could hear a basso roar. It was the thark.
The bounty man raced back into the interior and slid to a stop on the tiles. Below, the thark was backing away as the heap of stones that covered the mouth of the tunnel shifted further. A continuous drumming came from within, a deep sonorous rhythm that caused ripples to form on the placid surface of the Eye of Water.
“My sword!” Kal roared when he saw that the man had responded to his calls.
The man pulled the long saber from where its scabbard lay. He tossed it overhand, spinning end over end, to where it landed, point first in the sand near the thark’s feet.
Kal whipped the saber around to the crumbling face of the obstruction just as slab came loose and rumbled down. As the stone fell away one of the repulsive, fanged blooms exploded from a gap, teeth snapping with a wet hiss.
The thark swung his blade severing the stalk near its base. He stepped back to avoid the spray of viscous discharge spilling from the amputated limb. It smelled foul and burned his flesh where a few droplets reached him. Two more of the gnashing flowers thrust through as the gap widened. Kal chopped these down as well. They rolled down the hill of stones, champing even though they had been brutally trimmed from their host.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
