Free Iron Rage by James Axler

creek’s surface was peaceful and even seemed free of crocodiles, at least in the stretch Ryan was watching with laser focus, past the Queen ’s stern.
    Then Trace burst out of the water, head back, arm and stump thrown high, but not under her own power.She was well out from the bank, where soundings by means of a predark weighted line said the channel was more than eight feet deep.
    She spun counterclockwise, hitting the murky water in a shower of spray that dwarfed the one that had accompanied her brief reappearance. Then two separate waves sloshed upward on opposite sides of where she’d gone down again. Tall tails thrashed the water into curtains of spray.
    Ryan took his SIG in a two-handed grip and blasted off the whole magazine, plus the cartridge up the spout. He reckoned if he chilled the captain by accident now, with two of the monsters fighting over her, it would just be a mercy chill. The spurts kicked up by the bullets striking were barely noticeable against the effects of their titanic struggle.
    The farther croc reared out of the water. In its jaws was clamped one of Trace’s legs. Red flew from the ragged end, past the yellow knob of her femur head. The commotion ceased.
    Dead silence reigned. It was as if time stopped, though Ryan’s pulse continued to pound in his ears. The violated water subsided into the usual ripple of its undisturbed flow so swiftly and smoothly it almost seemed to be trying to erase the horror that happened upon and inside it just moments before. The suspended moment was broken to pieces by a wailing wordless cry from Myron. The chief engineer was tackled by Santee just shy of the monster-haunted water as he tried to run to his doomed mate’s aid.
    Ryan realized he needed to follow the advice hebeen given when he was a boy learning to hunt: shoot enough blaster. He holstered the SIG, which he’d already reloaded, and ran for his Steyr. The longblaster was propped against his pack thirty paces inshore, muzzle-up to keep muck from getting in the barrel.
    â€œEverybody, get big blasters or big sticks,” he shouted. “The bastards tasted blood! They’re going to come swarming—”
    His words were drowned in a sudden cacophony of blasterfire.
    He grabbed the Scout and spun, dropping to one knee for better aim, even on the fly. His companions and the late captain’s crew weren’t just busting caps at empty water.
    It seemed as if dozens of crocs were rushing toward the shore and up onto the bank, tooth-fringed mouths wide.
    Ryan picked the nearest open pink-and-yellow maw and blasted a 7.62 mm round into it. It snapped shut. The creature behind it rolled onto its side and kicked air.
    As Ryan jacked the bolt of his Steyr, he saw a croc leap clean out of the water toward where Mildred stood by the rail. She danced aside, panic-firing at it as she did. Jak stood with legs braced on the cabin roof, firing down at the beast as its jaws snapped shut on the rail. For moment it actually hung there, all four legs out of the water, hanging on with its teeth buried in the wood. Mildred took the opportunity to take quick one-handed aim, arm fully extended as if she were at the target range, and put a .38 slug through its right eye. It let go and slid back into the creek.
    Santee rolled over and over in the shallows, with his legs around the middle of a croc at least two feet longer than he was tall, holding its jaws shut from beneath with one hand while his other plunged a big Bowie knife repeatedly into its exposed belly.
    Krysty and Ricky, flanking Myron, fired their handblasters. Nataly sat astride the engineer’s hips, pinning him facedown to the ground while she coolly reloaded the chambers of a cap-and-ball revolver from a red leather flask. Ryan was concerned the man might drown, but his face was not in the water, and by the motion of his shoulder he was sobbing uncontrollably.
    Doc blasted a lunging croc in the snout with the short