Free The Bounty Hunter: Into The Swarm by Joseph Anderson Page B

the morning
light still dazzled his eyes in the first few seconds. He didn’t have time to
stop and adjust to the change. The earth felt alive below his feet, shaking as
if every alien within the city had been woken up and was clawing its way toward
him. There was no more time to be careful and methodical; he pushed himself
into a run in the direction of their ship.
    He drew out the grappling line at his belt without stopping. The
tremors in the ground seemed to be following his steps and he needed both of
his hands to fight. He threaded the line through the handle of the drone’s core
and tied it around his waist. Cass tightened it by retracting the line in until
it caught around the armor. With his hands free, he reached behind his back and
grabbed his rifle in one quick motion. As if the aliens had been waiting for
him to draw his weapon, the ground around him began to burst.
    There were five dross. They emerged from the earth in a spray of
dirt and dust, immediately lunging out toward him. He raised the rifle to his
face and Cass linked the visor’s display with the scope of the assault rifle.
He squeezed the trigger and the first barrage of bullets punctured the alien’s
heads. He made a bloodied pulp out of two of them and then turned to the
remaining three.
    One leaped into the air toward him. He swung the rifle in its
direction and shot another two rounds through its skull. He dived immediately
to the side after releasing the trigger. The alien’s body slammed into the
ground where he had just been standing, with enough force that he felt the
rippling vibration of the impact through his legs. The other two dross were
already charging at him and he led with his rifle to face them.
    The aliens dug their claws into the ground as they ran, tearing
through the earth to pull themselves faster as they moved. The disturbed dirt
cloaked the air around them in a haze of brown but Burke had spent years aiming
through the mess they left in their wake. He lined the scope up on the closest
one and sent a single bullet to leave a crater in its head. The dross’s body
recoiled from the bullet and then slumped over, hitting the ground with the remaining
momentum it had gained in its run and skidding for a few more seconds before
stopping.
    The last dross was closer than he anticipated when he turned to it.
He squeezed the trigger instinctively, not having time to properly aim, and
landed a few stray shots into the alien’s shoulders. It wasn’t enough to slow
the creature, never mind stop it, and it collided into him just as Cass braced
the armor’s defenses against the weight of the attack. Burke barely stayed on
his feet, the boots of the armor scraping through the earth as the alien pushed
him back. He held the rifle in his right hand and braced against the dross’s
head with his left, pressing back as the alien gnashed and clawed against his
armor.
    The outer plates of the armor held against the dross’s teeth and
claws, but not without warnings of microcracks and fissures beginning to form.
The alien clamped its jaws around Burke’s arm before he thought to twist it,
springing the blade into the creature’s mouth and piercing through the back of
its head. He jerked his arm wildly with the blade, puncturing its skull from
within before the dross went limp. He withdrew his arm and stepped away from
the corpse, only then realizing that he had been holding his breath.
    “We needed a whole squad to kill five of these in the war,” he
gasped.
    “No time for that now. You need to keep running.”
    Another series of cries filled the air as if to prove her right. He
started into another run, ignoring the sound of fresh tunnels being clawed open
behind him. The earth erupted and then fell like rain, splattering around him
in chunks. He pressed on passed the new holes and remembered the missions he
had during the war. He had been sent out with a handful of other soldiers in a
light buggy, with the sole purpose of drawing out