Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) by Ben Stevens (historical books to read TXT) 📕

and Carbine’s whereabouts. Concern bordering on panic covered each of their faces like a mask, but they were as of yet unharmed.

“Form a circle! Back to back!” Lucy yelled as she ran toward Jon and the others. Directly in her path, one of the fallen savages began pushing itself off the hard-pan floor of the desert. It looked up just in time to witness Lucy’s charge. It raised one of its arms in a futile defensive gesture, and her Aztec war-club sliced the arm neatly in half before passing on into its neck and beyond, her aim and power unaffected.

Jon watched the balance shift, as slow and persistent as the incoming tide, with growing concern. One of the more daring savages leaped an impossible leap—for a normal man—and landed directly in front of Maya, its legs rooted in the sand to either side of Ratt’s prone body.

Jon caught the blur of movement from the corner of his eye and sprang into a counter-attack before Maya’s scream of alarm had reached his ears.

He swung high, going for the thing’s head and ensuring that he wouldn’t accidentally hit Maya, but the savage dipped, just in time to prepare for a lunge at the goddess, and caused Jon’s blow to miss by an inch.

Rocking back on his heels and engaging every muscle in his body from head to toe, Jon slowed the hammer swing and regrouped, trying to turn his missed shot into a new opportunity. Releasing the haft with one hand, Jon intercepted the hammer just below its head and jumped forward, landing right up against the back of the savage. Before the man-beast could react, Jon lowered the long haft of his weapon over and in front of the savage and quickly pulled back, effectively pinning the villain against his chest.

The wretched creature struggled mightily against Jon’s hold and its foul stench assaulted Jon’s senses, but he held fast, preventing the attack that surely would have torn Maya to shreds.

“Run!” Jon growled to Maya through gritted teeth, forgetting that they were surrounded and there was nowhere for the goddess, or her comatose ward, to escape to.

“Jon!” Carbine shouted, and quickly sidestepped the ground they held to get a clean shot at the pinned savage.

Trying his best to stay out of the grasping arms of the grappled creature, Carbine placed the tip of his pistol to its temple and squeezed the trigger. Jon was in perfect synchronization with his life-long battle buddy and pulled his head back to one side, maintaining his iron grip on the hammer that trapped his victim. Rotten brain matter and soupy viscera ejected out the side of the savage’s head a split-second later and Jon felt the struggling stop with a jerk and spasm.

“Behind you!” Jon heard Lucy call from off to his right. Releasing his grip on the hammer and letting the half-headless savage slump to the ground to smother Ratt, Jon began to spin in place, but it was too late.

Claws raked across his back, etching deep grooves into him, severing corded muscles and scraping rib bones.

Blood poured down Jon’s back like water breaking through a dam. Falling to his knees, he let slip his grip on the hammer and braced his fall on both the slain savage and Ratt.

Lucy yelled something unintelligible and let rip a burst from her BFG, but the volley of rounds was intercepted by a half-dozen more attackers moving in for the kill, clearly inspired by their pack-mate’s success.

Grimacing, Jon rolled onto his rear, picking his hammer back up in the process, and feebly turned to face the one that had nearly sundered him. Waves of heat ran through his body, though he was not sure if it was the pain of his coming death, or the serum kicking into overdrive to heal his grievous wounds.

The savage before him grinned with primal glee. It flashed its claws triumphantly before him. They were dripping with Jon’s blood, droplets forming little pools in the sand. Sadistically, the lording man-beast raised the slick claws and extended his too-long-to-be-normal tongue, slowly licking one clean.

“I’m still standing, bastard!” Jon hissed, despite the fact that he was, in fact, half kneeling, half sitting, and not, in fact, standing at all.

The savage’s eyes widened abruptly, and for a moment, Jon thought that maybe the incoming jaguaress had reached him. Then the thing leaped backward, perfectly maintaining its footing upon landing. It tilted its head back and issued a series of short, bark-like noises.

As suddenly as the leap backward had been, the rest of the savages, the entire pack, froze in place and stopped their assault.

Lucy bridged the gap between herself and her companions with great ease, as some of the beast-men moved out of her way, giving her a wide berth.

Lucy slowed her sprint and cautiously re-joined the others, sweeping her pistol and Macuahuitl, waiting for the attack to resume.

“Why did they stop?” Carbine asked, flicking his pistol back and forth from one target to another, like eyeballs in a stationary skull tracking a fast-moving insect.

“I don’t know, and I don’t like it,” Lucy replied, weapons at the ready, her stance low.

“We don’t dare wait and find out if they’ll change their minds again. We have to make a run for it,” Jon said, slowly rising to his feet.

“Jon! You’re hurt!” Maya exclaimed, reaching forward, but stopped short of touching the tears on Jon’s back.

“I know, but the pain is subsiding,” Jon said without taking his eyes off the blockade. “I think the serum saved my life… again.”

“How? How do we escape? I mean, what do we do?” Carbine muttered.

Keeping the pistol aloft, Lucy saddled her war-club and bending down, first rolled the body of the savage off of Ratt, then picked him up and threw him over her shoulder.

“I have one explosive charge. I’ll toss it into the crowd. After it goes off, we run in that direction. My lady, you stay between me and Jon. Aim for the head. That seems to work best.”

“I’ll take