by James Axler
No one spoke until Gloria had blinked several times, the faraway gleam in her eye being replaced by a sudden awareness and wonder of her surroundings. She always felt the same when emerging from a trance, telling Jak that it was like waking from a dream but not having slept, and seeing the world for the first time.
Now it was safe, Doc spoke. "I find your tales from within the trance most interesting, my dear. Allegory and fantasy to hide the truth from those on the outside and keep it within the chosen few."
"But we're the 'chosen few,' as you put it, sweets, and we don't know what it means."
Doc smiled slowly. "That's because you've lost the key to the puzzle somewhere along the way. That's something I would reckon whoever devised the legend never foresaw. But I believe it means that the thing we seek is somewhere to the northwest of what we used to call the United States, back in the days when there was an innocence in the air."
"Everything seems to point that way, so that's nothing new," J.B. said, puzzled. What was it that made Doc so certain?
The old man seemed to sense the unspoken question. "My dear John Barrymore, I have not just plucked it out of thin air. I base my assumption partly on that which is already known, and partly on what we have just heard."
"What part?" Dean scoffed. "C'mon, Doc, you can't tell me that you got anything out of that."
"On the contrary, my dear young Cawdor, I obtained plenty of information from the lovely Gloria to support my assumption. For instance, she spoke of the Illuminated Ones, whom we already know—of them being illuminated in a manner that suggests they stay underground, something that we already know. Perhaps more importantly, she spoke of them being a shadow to the old ways, in both a literal and figurative sense." Doc paused like a ham actor, for effect.
"So?" Dean prodded, succumbing to the lure.
"So simply this—figuratively, the Illuminated Ones wish to set up a system via their central redoubt that will rule the Deathlands in the way that their forebears did before skydark."
"They must be pretty stupe, then," Jak commented. "Don't notice them ruling anything."
"Of course not, my dear boy," Doc replied patiently. "Obviously, in the same way that the Gate have lost sight of some things during the ensuing years, then so have the Illuminated Ones…to what degree, we have yet to find out."
"Literally, then," Ryan said. "Shadowing literally?"
"Most ingenious," Doc muttered, nodding to himself in admiration of the fable's imagery. "I believe I may have mentioned in passing about the ideas of a second center of command, something I heard the whitecoats talk of during the time when I was held by them. I wonder if the idea of shadowing literally means that there is an identical center of command hidden somewhere in that area, modeled on the way things were so that it could smoothly take over the running of the military and economy when things returned to—shall we say?-—normal."
"Nice idea, but wouldn't it have been blown to shit by the nukecaust if it was too close to the old D.C.?" Ryan posited.
Doc nodded appreciatively. "If it was that close, that would be a reasonable assumption. After all, there is little enough there now. But there is still plenty of life around Seattle, as we have found to our cost in the past. And that's not too far away…and, perhaps more significantly, it would tie in with what we already know."
Gloria studied the old man intently. "You know as well as I do that we're headed that way. Do you really think that we could be within sight of our goal?"
Doc shrugged. "I have seen too much, experienced more than you would ever wish to know, to say yea or nay that simply. All I can honestly say is that it is possible that we may be nearing a solution to the many puzzles that beset us."
Gloria looked at Ryan. "Is that a yes or no?" She laughed.
The one-eyed warrior shrugged. "Don't expect me to understand everything Doc says—I've only known him for years!"
IN THE MORNING, J.B. fixed their position by his mini-sextant and established that their winding path was taking them toward the northwest. It was becoming more obvious, too, in the changes that were occurring in the foliage around them. The plains and jungle were blurring into one more and more, the trees spreading out and the vines and creepers the companions had encountered on an earlier trip to the northwest becoming more plentiful.
There were also larger and more predatory animals, as became evident in a sudden attack that almost took them off guard.
It happened after they had been traversing a thick patch of jungle for several hours. Ryan and Gloria led the way, hacking a path through a dense patch of foliage, where the trees grew in a stunted and twisted thicket so that branches overhung and overlapped, cutting out much of the light—but also, mercifully, the heat. Despite this, it was still oppressively hot beneath the canopy of leaves, and the thick clouds of midges and hoverflies were distracting, making it difficult to breathe.
The initial path through was being cut by the two leaders, with members of the Gate tribe, augmented by Jak, Dean and Krysty, joining them in widening the path to admit the whole tribe and, more significantly, the mules and carts that contained the majority of the equipment that the nomadic tribe carried with them.
In such a patch, the attention needed to stay clear of the insects and also cut the path took up the vast majority of everyone's concentration. There was also a large degree of noise involved in cutting the path, added to which the birds and small mammals that they knew to populate the jungle were disturbed by the arrival of the Gate, and so were raising hell as they tried to escape the onslaught.
All of which shouldn't have made it surprising that a larger predator would be able to attack them. Nonetheless, when it happened it came as a shock.
Mildred and J.B. were hanging back toward the rear of the caravan, traveling near the wagons and mules. This was partly because both sought to keep as much distance between themselves and Margia as possible—something that Gloria had realized, playing her part by keeping her sister at the front of the party, near to her—and partly because Mildred wanted to be near Doc. She had become concerned as they had entered the denser jungle by the way that the insects and the humidity had affected Doc's breathing. Doc himself had expressed a similar concern to her, speculating that the strain on his respiratory system imposed by the repeated trawls through time and the effect on his physiology had left him with a lower tolerance than he would have wished.
So Doc was traveling at the back of the caravan, occasionally hitching a lift from Jon and Petor, who were leading the armory wagon.
And it was Doc who had the first intimation of the attack. He was discussing the ritual mating habit of birds with Petor—or, rather, he was talking at him about it while the youngster maintained a polite but baffled silence, when he suddenly stopped.
"What is it?" Petor asked, jolted awake by the sudden cessation of speech and noting the faraway look in Doc's eyes.
"An odd noise, my boy. Not like the general hubbub, and headed this way."
"Which direction?"
"To the left," Doc said hurriedly, reaching out with his silver lion's-head cane to tap the Armorer on the shoulder. "John Barrymore—" he began urgently.
But J.B. had already heard the noise and had half turned to where the noise was emanating. "I hear you, Doc," he said, unslinging his Uzi and easing the action to short bursts. He stopped moving, the better to concentrate. It was getting louder, and at rapid speed. But such was the thickness of the jungle at this point that he still couldn't see it.
He was taking no chances. "Incoming," he yelled. "Over to the left, back of the column. It's… Dark night!"
The thing that heaved into view caused J.B. to stop dead and exclaim in awe and horror.
In the gloom of the undergrowth, it seemed at first to have no shape. Moving among the foliage at a rapid rate, spraying broken stems and flowers before it, it seemed to shift from a vaguely square shape to a long, rectangular shadow that loomed forward. It was only when it came fully into the light that lea
ked through the dense jungle that the reason for this became apparent. For the creature was a mutated bear of some kind, its black furry coat dotted with scaled sores and thick scar tissue. The eyes were wild and yellow, matched by the large, yellowing fangs that protruded from its slavering jaws. It seemed to change shape for the simple reason that it moved by placing its weight on its forepaws while the stronger, heavily muscled back legs propelled it forward in a loping half jump, half run.
It was moving at a phenomenal speed for something that looked so uneven and strange. Even so, the Armorer's reflexes were up to the task. His sudden shock at seeing such a creature going forward at speed was outweighed by the combat skills that had seen him make it this far down the line without buying the farm.
Without pause and in one fluid motion, J.B. brought the Uzi around and up in an economic arm motion, leveling the barrel with an area around the chest of the beast. His instinct told him to go for this shot first simply because the erratic loping motion of the creature would make a chest shot harder.
His finger tightened on the trigger, slow and easy despite the adrenaline pulsing through his veins, making the blood in his ears roar so loudly that it drowned out the cries of the beast as it scented the sudden fear in the group of people before it.
It roared so loudly that it almost drowned the insistent chatter of the Uzi as the short bursts of fire rang out. Its voice rose in pitch to match the sudden upright posture it adopted, screaming in anger more than pain as the bullets from the Uzi seemed to make little mark, thudding harmlessly into its thick fur coat, raising nothing more than dust One hit a scaly sore, puncturing the crust and causing a little blood and pus to dribble gently down into the already matted fur.
"The beast must be armor plated," Doc muttered to himself, drawing his LeMat from its position beneath his coat and bringing it up to take aim. With the attention of the creature focused on J.B., Doc had the precious few fractions of a second to take a better aim. As the creature reared upright—more in indignation than pain—at the impact of the Uzi slugs, Doc aimed for the head, discharging both barrels of the LeMat, so that the charge of shot was followed in rapid succession by the ball.
Doc had aimed for the gaping maw of the creature, having already registered that apparent thickness of its hide. If he could get his pistol to fire into the yellow-and-red maw, then it would tear into the soft tissue and do an endless amount of damage, perhaps even ripping up into the brain area.
Unfortunately for Doc, he misjudged the rise of the creature by a fraction, not surprising under the circumstances, but enough to deflect his original aim. Instead of the LeMat scoring a hit in the one known exposed area of the creature, the shot ripped across the left-hand side of the creature's neck, tearing at the fur and causing small gouts of blood to shoot out at the point of impact. It made the mutie bear roar louder, its yellow eyes taking on a bloodshot tinge of red raw anger. The ball fared little better, embedding itself somewhere in the fur of the neck without seeming to do much damage… except to make the creature more angry.
In the time this had taken, the entire caravan had turned to the rear in order to face the menace. Ryan and Gloria had left their positions at the front, and were now headed toward the rear, blasters ready.
As other members of the Gate took aim and fired, it was obvious that the handblasters were useless against the mutie creature. Its hide was far too thick, covered in who knew what kind of armored and crusted skin in those areas where the fur still grew, for the smaller-caliber bullets of the handblasters to penetrate. Ryan had already unslung his Steyr and was raising it as he ran back, skipping between the tribe members who were trying to both meet the menace and also avoid getting in one another's way—a problem that was very real in the enclosed space of their hacked path.
"J.B.!" Ryan yelled as he brought up the blaster. "I'll draw it, you finish the fucker!"
Not pausing to see if the Armorer heard him amid the din of the enclosed firefight, Ryan stopped and planted his feet on the floor of the jungle, raising the Steyr and blocking out everything around, so that all he could see or hear was the mutie that threatened the column.
The one-eyed warrior loosed a round, aiming at the side of the creature's head. From such an angle, he knew it would cause no great damage, but he hoped that it would be enough to draw its attention away from the rear of the column, and perhaps give his old friend the shot he needed.
The bullet drilled into the side of the bear's head, tearing at its ear and making rivulets of blood run down into the fur, matting those parts not already matted by filth and pus.
The bear screamed in pain—the pain of an irritation rather than a mortal wound—and its instinct made it turn toward the source of this irritation.
Which was exactly what J.B. wanted. The creature was now at an angle to him, its head raised to its full height as it sought the source of the pain among the melee in front of it. For an all important fraction of a second, it was still and at the apex of its rise.
The head was tilted at a twenty-five-degree angle, the mouth open in full roar. J.B. could see the yellowed fangs and the red flesh of the mouth as though they were the only things that existed. He moved his body with a swift and sinuous movement, altering his stance so that his blaster was at an oblique angle to the creature. He had reslung the Uzi, and now held his M-4000, which he aimed at the exposed vulnerable area.
He had one shot, and he had to make it count. He squeezed on the trigger, hitting the right balance between speed and haste.
Suddenly there was no noise for him except the loud explosion and roar of the M-4000 as its load of barbed flechettes shot from the barrel. There would only be time for the one shot, and it had to count.
The mutie bear turned by just a fraction of an angle in the millisecond between hearing the M-4000 explode and feeling the load of flechettes with metal barbs hit home. It was luck for the Armorer that this turn was in the right direction, and assisted the intent of his excellent shot. The open maw of the bear suddenly disappeared in a welter of blood, pus and fur as the load hit home, ripping into the soft flesh of the palette and jaw, splintering bone and pulping tissue, some of the hot metal shooting through to the brain, where it met no resistance from gray matter already reduced to mush by the flechettes. The exit wounds from the wild card of metal and bone exploding inside the brainpan were large, ripping apart the skull so that it disintegrated in a slow motion explosion of fur, pus and bone, showering the immediate area.
The final roar of the creature was strangled in its throat, allowed no exit by the sudden disappearance of its mouth and head.
The body of the bear stood erect, already chilled, but without anything to tell it to lie down. It teetered for a moment before crashing to the earth.
There was an eerie silence and stillness that descended over the party. It lasted for a short moment, before Gloria's husky tones, tinged with anger, cut across the silence. "Who the fuck let that big fucker through? Why wasn't he spotted? Who should have made the call?"
Her piercing blue eyes ran over the assembled Gate members and Ryan's people. She was scanning to see which of the outriders, scouting the territory on each side and ahead of the path, was responsible.
"Shit—woman down," she whispered, noting that Jess was missing.
It was all too easy to find out what had happened to the small, dark Amazon. All Gloria, Ryan and Jak had to do was follow the trail left by the now chilled mutie bear. They traveled as a trio for cover while the rest of the party regrouped and prepared to continue. Ryan and Jak both carried grens, in case the mutie had a mate who would be less than pleased to see them. But it seemed that the mutie bear had been a loner, perhaps the last of its type. Its lair was roughly a half mile from the path they had hacked into the jungle. It took them no time at all to reach the location, as the bear had destroyed enough undergrowth in its rampage to make the trail easy to follow and the path easy to traverse.
It seemed to them that Jess had been scouting when, h
er instinct for danger somehow deserting her momentarily but at a crucial point, she had stumbled across the small gathering of trees and ferns that the mutie had gathered as a bed. There had been no time for her to take any action as her blade was still sheathed and her blaster lay beside her outstretched hand. A hand that was immaculate and spotless, a contrast to the rest of her chilled corpse. The mutie had obviously taken her completely by surprise, as her rib cage lay exposed in the dim light, ripped by the talons of the creature to expose bone. There was little left of her innards, and the bear had seemingly used her for sustenance to fuel its rampage. She was nearly severed at the torso, her legs mangled and useless at an obscene angle to the rest of her body. Her head was barely recognizable, partly because of the obvious bite mark that obscured one side of her face, showing where the creature had attacked her.
"Fireblast," Ryan whispered. "Have to be triple red if there are any more fuckers like that around."
Gloria shook her head sadly. "Waste of a good warrior. But there are always reasons, and we must draw from this, so that she was not chilled for no reason."
"Learn well," Jak echoed, before adding, "but no mate here, so mebbe we look for them on own?"
Ryan assented. "It's a fair bet that rad-blasted fuckers like that are loners. And bide well," he added.
"Something to look out for," Gloria agreed. She turned to them, her icy blue eyes now clouded over with an infinite sadness. "But first we take Jess back to the Gate. We have to say goodbye to a warrior, bid her farewell."
Without comment, Jak lifted Jess's remains in his arms, marveling at how light she now was, and carried her back to the tribe, walking between Gloria and Ryan.
THE CEREMONY WAS simple. While Ryan and his companions stood back, the men of the tribe constructed a funeral pyre for Jess, clearing ample space lest the pyre cause a forest fire. While they did this, the Amazons laid the chilled corpse of their fellow warrior on the ground. They chanted around her, a wordless wail of anguish for a fellow lost, and a celebration of a life laid down for others.