Feric's lead tank had reached an area no more than seventy miles from the border of Zind itself; here the patches of radiation jungle were thicker and more extensive than what paltry grasslands remained. For nearly an hour, all manner of monstrosities had fled from the cancerous jungle as the flamethrowers of the tanks set these cesspits of genetic putrescence aflame: giant featherless birds with four clawed legs and dripping carcinomas where their beaks should be, loping skinless obscenities trailing pulsating organs that flopped about in all directions, pus hounds, swine, and packs of assorted tiny horrors that might be deformed weasels, or badgers, or hedgehogs, or more likely mongrelized hodgepodges of all three.
Therefore, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Best pointed out some twenty specks flying toward the Helder army out of the eastern horizon. "Some sort of vile mutated bird, no doubt," Feric observed, and paid them no serious heed, for they seemed small and slow.
But a few minutes later, his perspective underwent a sudden shift: rather than small and slow, the things were swift and huge, for quite suddenly they were flying over the tank.
"What nauseating horrors!" Best cried. This was, if anything, an understatement. The creatures consisted primarly of huge fifty-foot wings composed of loathsome translucent slime tissue stretched tight over frameworks of thin bone. Slung under the wing was an almost vestigial torso, also covered with translucent slime tissue, through which pulsating internal organs were clearly visible. There were no heads or other appendages to speak of, save enormous distended sacs hanging obscenely on either side of the thin body.
As the monstrosities passed over Feric's tank in a tight 197
formation, sphincters in the bottoms of the huge bulging sacs opened, and a dribble of noxious green fluid began to fall on the tanks immediately behind Feric's. As this putrid rain contacted the armor plate of the tanks, dense clouds of vile yellow smoke sizzled from the metal.
"Open fire!" Feric cried. He himself opened his hatch, snatched up his submachine gun, and poured a stream of bullets into one of the horrors, tearing scores of holes in the slimy membrane of the wing. Instantly and soundless-ly, the creature folded up and the great sacs burst like pustules, showering a tank below with acid rain, before the thing crashed to earth to be pulped beneath the treads of scores of on-rushing tanks. The tank that had been under the monster sent a pillar of lung-searing smoke into the air and seemed to dissolve.
"Try the flamethrower!" Feric commanded his own turret crew, as he continued to fire at the things with his submachine gun, downing yet another of the monstrosities at the cost of one more tank. Even as he spoke, the air above the Helder tanks became filled with red-hot machine-gun bullets; six more of the creatures burst their sacs and crumpled, destroying four tanks in the process.
A moment later, a great tongue of orange flame sprang from a nozzle atop the turret of Feric's tank and caught one of the flying things in a bath of fiery petrol. The thing crisped to blackened ash before it could hit the ground, its acid sacs exploding in mid-air harmlessly.
Seeing this, the commanders of the other tanks opened up with their flamethrowers and caught seven more before the remaining monstrosities abruptly wheeled in unison like a flock of geese, climbed for the sun, and turned tail to head back to the east from whence they came.
"My Commander!" Best shouted, pointing high in the air above the formation of monstrosities as they dwindled into the distance. Five hundred feet above the things was a similiar flying creature; instead of acid sacs, this one had a kind of metal basket slung beneath it in which a humanoid shape was clearly discemable.
"A Dom!" Feric exclaimed. "Of course! There had to be a Dom to control the beasts!" He spoke into his command microphone: "Open fire! There's a Dom in that basket up there, and it's getting away!"
At once the air was filled with whistling cannon shells, tongues of flame, and an incredible hail of machine-gun bullets, all of which were futile. The flying thing was out 198
of range of all but the cannon, and since the cannon shells were not fitted out with proximity fuses, the chances of a hit were a million to one.
After a few moments of this gigantic barrage, Feric saw that nothing was being accomplished but the wasting of ammunition, and he ordered his forces to cease fire.
"Well, we destroyed plenty of the things, my Commander," Best said somewhat dispiritedly as the flying things dwindled once more to specks on the eastern horizon.
"But not the one that counted. Best," Feric said. "No doubt this was more of a scouting foray than a serious attack. Now the Dom who led them will report in detail on our approaching army."
"That's hardly likely to improve their morale," Best pointed out brightly.
