Spikes On A Devil's Back
A QUICK BYTE of Action From The Post-Nuclear Frontier...
The spikes of its fleshy back bristled, ready to skewer any hound stood before it. Unfortunately, that hound was James Baron Marshall, and the monster had set its sights on the settlement he had fought long and hard to establish.
The grizzled, half-albino frontiersman, fur splotched from years of exposure, held his rifle steady, both boots dug in the earth. His eyes narrowed and his fangs were barred. It was upon his growl’s flare that the creature bounded towards him, its many rows of teeth flashing in the setting sun as the ground trembled beneath its mighty taloned feet.
Each blow to the earth brought to mind a wife and child encamped behind him, the lives yet to start anew, and his own hope for new world to emerge from the ashes he had waded through for years, a dream that could bring this wolf to move Heaven itself if he had to.
Marshall furiously unloaded into the advancing mound, the gun jamming on his sixth shot. He threw the weapon down and looked for something, anything to beat back this wretched creature with. Best he could manage was a single plank and a nail. If his aim was true, and the timing right, he could land a blow right between the spiked devil’s blackened eyes.
It raced towards him, black eyes snapping red with indignant rage, snarling and roaring as loud as the hound could, the razor sharp claws and teeth ready to devour the old wolf in a single bite. As the great irradiated animal thrust itself towards him in a final lunge, the elder wolf leapt with a roar, and swung the spiked cudgel down. The beast was felled where it stood.
Hanging in the old wolf’s office is a spike from that devil’s back, measured at six feet in length. An example of the many strange monstrosities who once walked this earth, and who made the miserable mistake of trying to cross J.B. Marshall.