Guns of Mars 90
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 27.3
Kal backed a step from the barrier of fallen blocks. The fury of those trapped within increased. A tremor caused debris to slide down the face of the barricade. Wind whistled into the widening gaps as the great blocks began to further separate. The fire building in the tunnel were sucking air in through the breaches to feed itself. The thark could feel the furnace heat radiating through the heaped blocks.
As the heat rose so did the mad efforts of the fascii. The bounty man reached the thark’s side just as the pile of stones collapsed and the first of the plant men emerged from the inferno. It was a mad thing, its limbs consumed by flames even as they reached for its tormentors. More of the fascii burst forth, fused together by the fires. Sap bubbled and boiled from seams torn in their bark as the flesh burst from the scalding heat that was cooking them alive.
The thark charged to meet them, bellowing a Warhoon challenge. With a single swing he lopped off the flaming limbs of the first attacker. The bounty man fired one last round to split an incandescently burning fascii from root to crown. He then shifted the weapon, taking the barrel in his hands to swing the long stock like a flail.
Side by side, human and thark, they stood at the narrow gap to club and chop at all that emerged. They had to hold their ground at the breach, to take the murderous horde one and two at a time. To give way even a half step was to lose the battle and their lives.
The chamber filled with bitter, blinding smoke. The fascii piled up before them in a steaming, twisting mound. In a last desperate rush, a mass of the creatures widened the gap sending blocks tumbling aside. They were weak but in greater numbers, stumbling from the inferno of the tunnel mouth in a swirling gust of embers. The sudden crush of flaming fascii forced the pair of defenders back to the water’s edge where they fought on, the water rising up their legs as they battled the blazing tide.
The natural oven within the narrow passage consumed more and more of the flailing plants, roasting them, reducing their number until the last of those that could walk stepped from the flames only to collapse on the sand in smoldering piles.
Gasping and blinded, Kal and the bounty man fled through the thick pall of smoke to escape into the open air. It was full night, the stars unblinking above them as they coughed and wretched to clear their lungs of the noxious stink of the cremated plant creatures. Exhausted, they lay on the cold sand looking up at the second moon arcing through the sky above them.
“Have we won or lost, little man?” Kal said when he could speak.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
