by James Axler
Doc and Avery, who also had axes, had been holding off the muties trying to attack that way. Even though Doc had emptied his LeMat revolver and discharged the stub shotgun, he kept it in his hand and used it to bludgeon stickies. From the way the weapon was coated in stickie gore and brains despite the now-torrential rain, Ricky feared for Doc’s safety if he tried to shoot the thing again before giving it a thorough cleaning.
He heard hoarse shouts from the shore behind him, some masculine, some feminine. There was less blasting going on now, but he heard the unmistakable sound of hard wood and steel meeting stickie flesh with bad intent.
He heard J.B. milking short bursts from his Uzi and took a look over his shoulder. The Armorer was shooting at the swampers who had now formed a line in a rough semicircle inland of the Queen’s bow, and were smashing the stickies back toward the tall grass step by gore-slippery step.
Then Ricky realized that wasn’t the case at all. J.B. was firing over the heads of the swampers into the mass of the stickies beyond.
Well, that makes sense, he thought. I’d rather die at the hand of a human than a stickie any day.
Then he blundered into the rail, knocking all the breath out of him and bruising a rib. He turned and hurried after his friends, who had already reached the afterdeck, leaving busted-to-nuke stickies lying in their wake. He wasn’t moving top speed, either. He had given himself a definite hitch in the side.
Ricky reached the end of the cabin in time to see Doc driving his sword into the open mouth of a stickie. He realized there were no other muties vertical, anywhere he could see.
Jak was at the taffrail, leaning over. “All gone,” he said. He sounded at once triumphant and disappointed.
The other survivors had crowded onto the aft deck now, except for J.B., who was still banging away in the stern.
Krysty slammed a magazine home into the butt of her Glock, then she wiped yellow ooze off her face and whipped her hand to the side to clear as much of it off as she could.
“This stuff is never coming out of my hair,” she said. “The rain’s not even helping anymore. Ace. We got the ship. Let’s take a deep breath and go help the swampers.”
“Help the swampers?” Jake demanded. “Have you slipped your mooring, woman?”
A whole flap of skin had been torn free and hung loosely from his right cheek, and it was oozing blood. He seemed unaware of it, though Ricky was sure it had to sting like all get-out.
“They’re human,” she said, “and they’re fighting stickies. That’s enough for me. They want to chill us later, they can take their best shot.”
Myron and Nataly stared at her. They were shipboard, of course, but neither seemed inclined to force the issue with the tall redhead. The fact was, Ricky thought, they looked relieved to be following her lead.
“I’m in,” Arliss said. “They had plenty chance to jump us when we were sorely pressed. Or merely sit on their boats and laugh as the stickies tore us to pieces.”
He looked around. “Everybody fit to fight?”
Miraculously, everybody was. Except for the unfortunate Sean, who had died the death he most dreaded in all the world. The memory made Ricky shiver.
“Okay,” Krysty said. “Ricky, nip inside and get your longblaster. Yours, not Ryan’s Scout.”
It made sense. They had a lot more .45 ACP rounds than 7.62 mm NATO. And at the ranges he’d be shooting, he could hit a stickie as well over open sights with the homemade carbine as the fancy Steyr. And chill them just as dead with .45-caliber rounds.
“Then you and Mildred climb up on the cabin and snipe. As for me, I’m going on the beach. The rest of you can go or stay as you please!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Ricky replied eagerly. Then he was filled with the embarrassed fear that his eager assent would be construed as betraying that he was secretly relieved at not having to get close to any more stickies, at least for a spell.
Especially since that was exactly what he felt.
He did notice, as he headed for the hatch inside, that everybody except Mildred followed Krysty forward to join the swampers in battle.
Chapter Nineteen
I can’t remember when I’ve ever been this tired, Krysty thought.
But humans—if swampers were truly human, as they looked to be at close range—were the only things left alive in the clearing now. Or would be after the work of finishing off the wounded muties and prodding every one of the more than a hundred stickie bodies strewed across the clearing was done.
She sat down where she was. The rain drenched her. She raised her face to it, grateful for its caress as she was for the solidity of the ground on her tired rump.
She had long since holstered her Glock. She didn’t have any more magazines with her, anyway. But the last of it had been melee, smashing the stickies with the steel wrecking bar until the last remnants turned and vanished into grass that was far taller than the muties were. She let the gory bar fall to the grass and practiced trying to open her hand.
“You all right, sister?” a female voice asked.
Krysty looked up. She hadn’t even been aware her head was drooping between her spread-apart knees.
“I’m not hurting, thanks,” she said. “At least, nothing major. Yet.”
She smiled, and then realized she had never in her life seen the woman she was talking to.
It shouldn’t surprise me this much, she thought. I’ve been standing between a pair of swamper men, with none of us showing sign of anything on our minds but chilling stickies. Whatever they really are, they’re sure not acting hostile.
She renewed the smile, with full intention this time, not mere easygoing habit.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Krysty Wroth.”
“Ermintrude Strank,” the woman said. “No thanks to my paw and maw.”
She was of medium height and wide, pretty much all the way from shoulders to thighs, but she didn’t seem fat. Not at all—she looked sunken-in, somehow, as if her bones were a rack her black skin had been spread on to dry.
“You saved us when the stickies almost had us,” Krysty said. “I reckon we owe you a lot of thanks.”
“We did.”
Krysty turned her head to look toward the voice. A tall, rangy, knobby-jointed man strode toward them, grinning. He had a pair of machetes with sturdy bow hand-guards, not unlike Jak’s except for lacking studs, tipped back, one over each shoulder. The big, broad blades were so encrusted in stickie blood and brains and other tissue that it had started congealing into an ugly blue-and-green-shot mass of yellow despite the rain that continued unabated.
“And you do,” the tall man continued as he approached. “I’m Joe Trombone, and I mean to have a little talk with you about that.”
* * *
“YOU DON’T SEEM to be doing too good of a job of living up to your reputation as cannie murderers,” Mildred said.
The rain pattered again on the makeshift lean-tos they’d assembled with tarps from the Mississippi Queen and swamper oars. It kept coming and going. A few little fires burned among the circle of shelters, just enough under the canopies to keep from getting doused while still allowing the smoke to escape. Or that was the theory, anyway. Krysty’s eyes and throat stung.
Krysty looked at her friend. She knew that Mildred’s bluntness would have won an eye roll from Ryan, if not a bark of reproof, and sometimes her sharp tongue had been known to cause trouble. And not just for her.
But the swampers seemed amused if anything by her.
“Sadly, no,” Joe Trombone said in his dry way. “You might call it advertising.”
“Why would anybody advertise being cannie murderers?” Santee asked.
“Keep people out,” J.B. said, poking the fire in front of him with a stick. Sparks flew up as one burned-through driftwood chunk collapsed into the red embers. “Right?”
“Why would you need to keep people out of a strontium swamp?” Arliss asked. He was managing to keep up a pretty brave fro
nt, although Krysty knew his friend’s horrible death was hitting him hard. “That’s not what I’d call a big attraction, right there.”
“Sadly, it doesn’t keep out as well as you’d expect,” Ermintrude said. She sat next to Joe. She didn’t seem to be his wife. Or if she was that didn’t seem to be why she was sitting there; she seemed to be a co-leader of the group with him. Or possibly the leader of a component band. Krysty wasn’t sure.
Only a dozen or so of the swamp folk remained in the clearing. The others had pulled their boats into the water and headed back up Wolf Creek not long after the battle ended.
“Who would come in here after you?” Krysty asked. “We know the rad count’s high in here, and we know the stories are true about killer crocs and the stickies.”
“Our charming neighbors,” Joe said, biting off a chunk of crocodile jerky they’d given him and chewing vigorously. “Huh. Bit bland—could use a touch of ghost pepper—but you don’t do a half-bad job for outlanders. Anyway, you already met ’em, our biggest problems. People from New Vickville and Poteetville hunt us for sport. Sometimes it even seems like they think if they somehow wipe us out, it’ll take care of the rads and the death-metal and the stickies and all.”
“So on the rare time when one or two of us go out on the river and to a ville,” Ermintrude said, “they make sure to talk the place up as Hell on Earth. Ain’t far wrong, of course.”
“And we’re not saying we don’t ambush them when they come in looking for us,” Joe said. “Helps to keep up appearances. And also keeps us from winding up slaves on some New Vick plantation.”
“So how come you can survive in here?” Ricky asked. “Are you muties?”
That brought a suddenly intent stillness to every swamper in earshot. Ricky shrank from the look Joe gave him, even though there was no overt hostility in the anthracite eyes.
“Since you’re young ’n’ ignorant,” the swamper boss said, “I’ll just go along pretending like I never heard that. We’re not muties. What we are is survivors. Our ancestors got chased here, generations back, by some triple-bad people. They weren’t even all people, mebbe.”
He shook his head. “Anyway, it’s all just stories now. Point is, the rads and the fallout poisoning sickened and chilled us, just the same as everybody else.
“But not all of us. Some of us proved to just be naturally resistant to all that. Only stumbling into the midst of the nastiest nuke hot spot would have any effect on us. That a person could see, anyway.
“And after a spell, we started building our numbers back. There’s bands of us scattered all through the strontium swamps.”
“So why’d you help us?” Nataly asked. She sat cross-legged under a lean-to next to the one Krysty sheltered under, gazing somberly into the fire. She was the ranking member of the Queen’s crew present. Myron had retired to the ship for the night.
“We aimed to put you in our debt,” Ermintrude said.
“Well, that’s candid,” Arliss replied. “Why?”
“We want out,” Joe said.
“Say what?” the master rigger said, blinking in surprise.
“We’re sick of living stuck in this radioactive asshole,” Ermintrude said. “When Joe says we’re survivors and all, you’ve got to understand what that means. And that is—the rads and the heavy metal poisoning just chills us slower than it’s chilling you.”
For a fact, though they seemed healthy and vigorous, the swamper faces around the little fires didn’t look quite right to Krysty. They were gaunt and hollow-eyed, and like Ermintrude’s, their bodies mostly looked sort of shrunk.
And of course Krysty wasn’t feeling altogether healthy these days. She doubted anybody else from her group was, either.
“Why haven’t you left before?” Avery asked.
“Same reason you’re still here,” Joe said. “Got no good way to get past our friends out there on the Sippi.”
“But surely they have not maintained their current deployment blocking the river for generations.”
“If you mean, have they had their big old fleets toe-to-toe the whole time, no. But they had patrol boats ready to troll us in, and either enslave us or just massacre us outright. So once we came here, we found ourselves stuck.”
“We’ve only been thinking of it, making a break for it, for a couple years now,” Ermintrude said. “Joe and me.”
“But why us?” Avery asked.
“Well,” Joe said, “to start with, you didn’t come in here acting all hostile, like outlander folk usually do.”
“Except to stickies,” Ermintrude added. “But that’s ace with us. We hate stickies.”
Mildred waved at the rest of the clearing. “We kind of got the idea.”
For her part, Krysty just hoped the rain would wash the stickie blood far enough away that the place wouldn’t reek for days of rotting stickie. The bodies they’d just tossed into Wolf Creek. The crocodiles were welcome to them, if they wanted them.
“Also you have that big old ship,” Joe said. “And you seem to have a double-clever idea of how to pull off getting out of here, too. Making your own ironclad and everything. Where’d you get an idea like that?”
“It’s all J.B.’s notion,” Nataly said. “I’ll let him explain.”
“Years ago,” the Armorer replied, “a trader I ran with had a history book that said how way back predark in the Civil War, these Confederates armored up an ironclad of their own, to run the Union fleet that was blockading the river and bust out. Dark night, I think it was even on the Yazoo, that we come down.
“Supposedly they did it all out just setting in a cornfield, using old railroad iron. I also recall reading somewhere else as to how it didn’t rightly go down that way. But that doesn’t matter here. What does is that it set me to thinking.”
“Well,” Joe said, “I like the way you think. And that brings me to the business proposition we had in mind afore we decided to come lend you a hand today.”
“What’s that?” Arliss asked, his brow narrowing in reflex concern. Krysty thought that was tipping your hand a bit much for a man who was supposed to be a master negotiator. Then again, they’d all had a hard day, and nobody harder than him. Well, except for his friend Sean.
“We help you finish getting your ship ready to go,” the swamper leader said, “and you take us with you.”
“How many people have you got?” Avery asked.
“Two hundred fifty souls, give or take. Ermintrude’s and my bands.”
The boatswain shook his head. “No way. Sorry. We can cram a dozen or two inside the cabin or belowdecks.”
“Nobody’s riding outside the armor,” Abner said from another lean-to, “unless they don’t mind winding up a red smear on the ironmongery.”
“We’ve got plenty of boats,” the swamper woman said. “And you’ve got plenty power to tow them, I bet. Even with all that excess scrap iron onboard. You were a river tug, weren’t you?”
“We have the power to tow almost any number of light craft,” Nataly replied. “Especially downstream, which is the way we’re going. But how will you survive, without armor to protect you from the New Vickville cannon? Not to mention possible small-arms fire.”
“You think they’ll waste time on us, not to mention powder and ball, when there’s another big old ironclad driving right through them thumbing her nose?” Joe asked. “They’ll be too busy shooting at you.”
“There’s a reassuring thought,” Mildred said.
“What are your thoughts, J.B., Krysty?” Nataly asked. The formality meant she was asking, What do you think of it as people who, though you don’t like to call yourselves professional trigger-pullers, most certainly find yourselves pulling triggers a great deal more than we do?
“Sounds ace to me,” J.B. said, after Krysty looked pointedly his way. “Don’t see how it’s going to worsen our chances any.”
Krysty nodded. “I certainly have no objection.”
“I trust you will pardon me for ask
ing,” Doc said, “but what if our gratitude at being rescued by you failed to overcome your fearful reputation—or our own debased natures, should we turn out to possess such?”
Joe grinned. “We’d just wipe you out, feed what’s left of you to the crocs.”
“Why not do that anyway and take our boat?” Jake asked.
“We’re not coldhearts,” Ermintrude said. “We’re mean because we have to be, when we have to be. And then, of course, we’re powerful mean. But we don’t cotton to chilling them as doesn’t harm us.”
“Besides,” Joe added, with a grin even more lopsided than his oddly uneven features could account for on their own, “should you turn out to be snakes after all, we can always wipe you out and feed you to the crocs then.”
Nataly cocked a brow at Doc. “Does that reassure you?” she asked.
Doc grinned and shot his cuffs. He had his long black coat on.
“Speaking just for me,” Abner said, “I wasn’t looking forward to digging enough of a hole to float the poor old Queen out with just the hands we had. Goes triple with all that pig iron piled on top of her.”
None of the other crew objected. Nataly nodded in her ultra-precise way.
“Very well. Captain Conoyer has authorized me to make all such decisions, including agreements, in his absence. And I am pleased to accept your kind offer, Mr. Trombone, Miss Strank. As well as to thank you again for saving us today.”
She reached out and shook hands with the two chieftains.
“It’s not like Myron’s gonna object,” Moriarty said, rallying somewhat, “at the prospect of anything that’ll help him get the Queen underway again.”
Joe and Ermintrude rose together, then the other swampers stood.
“We’ll be heading back, then,” the tall man said. “Long row back upriver.”
Ricky scrambled to his feet. “Mr. Trombone?”
The swamper looked at him.
“Do you play?”