It was a new and different kind of hoot that none of the companions had ever heard before. Almost immediately, a distant hoot answered.
“Dark night, it’s calling for help!” J.B. gasped, dropping a spent clip and slapping in a spare. “What is going on here?”
Even as she frantically reloaded, Mildred considered the matter, and knew that she had no possible answer. Nobody knew for sure where the stickies came from in the first place, whether they were accidents of Nature caused by the nuclear holocaust, devolved humans, escaped genetic experiments, bioweps or what. But there was one singular, unarguable factor about the mutants. They lived, and anything alive always tried to improve itself, to make the next generation stronger.
Mildred shivered at the idea. Stickies with weapons. Oh, dear God in Heaven, protect our mortal souls….