Doom Helix Read Online Free Page A

wounded animal crawling for cover on its front legs, dragging the back ones limp and useless behind it. “Two down,” he said, ejecting the spent cartridge. “The others took off.”
    “Think they’ll keep their distance?” Mildred said.
    “Depends,” J.B. said. “On how hungry they are.”
    “They looked plenty hungry to me,” Ryan said, slinging the Steyr and unholstering his SIG-Sauer P-226 handblaster. “Stay alert and stay close.”
    Weapons drawn, the companions carefully descended the crater rim after him, jumping from block to basalt block until they reached the bottom. Then they began working their way, single file, toward the center of the depression.
    They walked in silence, except for the occasional scrape of boot soles. There were no more piercing screams for Ryan to home in on. The screamer had either been chilled by the pack of predators, or it was laying low in the wake of the gunfire, waiting until it sussed out the shooter’s intentions.
    When they reached the kill zone, Ryan immediately signaled for the others to fan out and secure a perimeter. He and J.B. quickly tracked the wounded animal to a narrow opening in the lava. From the blood trail it had left on the rocks, it wasn’t likely to ever crawl out of the hole. Or live long enough to starve.
    “Better have a look at this, Ryan,” Krysty called out. She and Mildred, wheelguns in hand, stood over the body of his first victim.
    “Now that is what I call butt ugly,” J.B. said.
    The spindly-legged corpse’s gray fur was mottled with yellow; amber-colored eyes stared fixedly into space. Its bloody canines were a good two inches long, and a purple tongue drooped out of its mouth. The .308 round had blown a cavernous hole crossways through its chest, sending a plume of pulverized flesh, bone, fur, and blood spraying across the hot rock behind.
    Ryan could see things squirming in the puddles of gore. Thin, wiry things.
    Parasites.
    None of that was the “butt ugly” J.B. referred to.
    Ryan dropped to a knee beside the body. The patch of color on its overlarge skull wasn’t composed of hair after all. From above the ears and eyebrows to the back of its head, the creature had a cap of brilliant, reddish orange skin; naked skin, wrinkled and seamed like a peach pit. He gingerly poked at it with the muzzle of his SIG.
    Spongy.
    The hairless patch rose to a massive sagittal crest, the anchor for jaw muscles powerful enough to crack the long bones of an elk.
    “Look at the muzzle and the shape of the eyes,” Krysty said. “It’s not a wolf, it’s a coyote.”
    “Part coyote,” Ryan said. “Definitely part somethin’ else.”
    “A four-legged, nukin’ buzzard,” J.B. spit.
    Ryan looked up when Jak appeared from behind a slab of basalt. He held a battered combat boot by the toe. It dripped thick blood off the heel; the laces were still tied and it still had a foot in it. The splinteredend of a shin bone jutted out the top. “Rest over here,” Jak said.
    The rest was quite a mess, and spread over a wide area.
    “Sweet merciful Lord!” Doc said as he took it all in.
    Spirit reduced to flesh, Ryan thought. And mercy had had no part in it. He had seen many terrible deaths in his time. This one was right up there with the worst.
    The head had been torn from the neck and was missing, no doubt carried away, as were the four limbs, which had been gnawed off at the elbows and knees. The belly-up torso was nothing short of a wag wreck. And the wag wreck was what Ryan had seen the coyotes fighting over. The body cavity was chewed open, neck to crotch, ribs clipped to angry stubs, the organs and guts yarded out through the gaping wound—perhaps while the poor, luckless bastard was still alive. The torso was wrapped in a few bloody rags, the remnants of clothes. Gobbets of bone and flesh, drops of blood and hanks of long brown hair were spread over the ground.
    Ryan sensed how quiet it had become in the crater. The weight of the silence