Free Time Castaways by James Axler Page B

bitch!” another coldheart roared, throwing a boomerang. Oddly, it came apart in mid-flight to reveal that it was actually two pieces.
    Desperately trying to get out of the way, Liana managed to avoid one of the sections, but the other caught her in the forehead with a hard crack. Sighing, she slumped to the dirt, feebly twitching.
    As if infuriated over the act, the snakes in the pit started hissing louder than ever, sounding as if they were being boiled alive.
    Rising from the reeds along the edge of the cliff, a grinning coldheart stood with Mildred’s dropped blaster in his grip. Fumbling with the Beretta, he sent several booming rounds at the companions, then J.B. cut him in two with the shotgun.
    Spinning a sling to nearly invisible speed, another coldheart let fly a stone. It missed Doc, but hit a nearby rock and shattered into a thousand pieces, the shrapnel peppering the time traveler. Spitting a curse, Doc fired back and missed. As the coldheart began to spin another rock to chilling speed, Ryan took him out with a hollowpoint round to the knee. Letting go of the sling, the wounded man cried out as he stumbled into the campfire. As his clothing caught fire, Doc aimed, using both hands, and blew away most of his throat, cutting off the wild shrieks of pain. Still aflame, the body tumbled off the cliff.
    With the blonde out of the way, J.B. leveled the Uzi and opened fire, burning through a full clip of 9 mm Parabellum rounds. The shocked coldhearts were torn to pieces.
    Moving forward, fast and low, the companions swept across the bloody campsite, chilling every coldheart they found with ruthless efficiency. Tucking away the Ruger, Doc used his sword to slash the throat of every man, just in case one of them was only pretending.
    While Ryan and J.B. stood guard over the campsite, Jak and Krysty gathered firewood and Mildred knelt alongside the unconscious woman to check for any serious damage. Privately, Mildred fumed over losing her weapon, but concentrated on the task at hand. Thankfully, the blonde seemed fine, just undernourished, and with a knot on her head that was going to be very tender for quite a long time. The pretty blonde was going to have a monumental headache when she awoke, but that was infinitely better than the alternative. However, now that the rush of battle was over, Mildred’s wet clothes were starting to feel clammy once more; every gust of wind from the ocean sent a shiver through the woman.
    “How is she doing?” Krysty inquired, dumping an armload of loose sticks onto the dying campfire. The dully glowing embers pulsed into life under the deluge of dry fuel, rapidly building into a roaring blaze.
    “She’ll be fine,” the physician declared, realizing slightly under the waves of heat. “Just battered and bruised.”
    “They not ride?” Jak asked, adding more fuel to the fire.
    Brushing back the long hair of the woman to expose her face, Mildred wearily smiled. “No, we got here in time.”
    “Glad about that,” J.B. said, handing the physician the dropped Beretta. She accepted it gratefully.
    “The filthy blackguards,” Doc growled, the sound of hate thick in his voice. “They perished too quickly for justice. A nice long hanging would have been their reward back in Vermont.”
    Cleaning off his sword on a headless corpse, Doc sheathed the blade and started to remove his damp frock coat, but then he paused and instead kicked over the body of the largest coldheart to strip the corpse of its dry furs. He draped them over the woman, covering her naked body.
    “Looks like they ambushed her while cooking din ner,” J.B. said, studying the footprints in the dirt. “Guess she forget to rig a trip line.”
    “Stupe place for a campsite, anyway,” Ryan agreed, resting the plastic stock of the Steyr on a hip.
    “Wonder if this was her first time outside a ville,” J.B. added, rubbing his jaw. The lee side of the cliff sloped down to the water, the other end rising high above the