by James Axler
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She nodded weakly. “Just another one of those attacks.”
“Easy does it, Krysty.” Mildred knelt at her right side, touching the back of a hand to Krysty’s forehead. “Deep, slow breaths, honey. In and out, in and out.”
“What coming?” Jak’s voice rose up from somewhere nearby. “Last time fit, muties attack and rock wall appear.”
“I don’t know.” Krysty closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing her mind the way she did when she called on the power of Gaia, the Earth Mother. Reaching out, she strained to find some thread of the force that had triggered her pain, some whisper of whatever had brought on the bolts of pain.
But there was nothing. Just emptiness and stillness.
Or was there something after all? As Krysty continued to strain, she felt what might have been a faint tension, pressing in the distance.
Scowling, she struggled to tighten her focus even more, to home in on whatever was out there. At the same time, she tried to steel herself against the next bolt of pain that might come.
“Look like find something,” Jak said.
“Not sure yet.” Krysty gritted her teeth and cast her net as wide as she could. Was she tuning something in or feeling something that wasn’t there? She couldn’t tell.
“Krysty.” Ryan leaned closer. “We should get you out of here. You said this place is killing you.”
“No, wait.” Krysty sat up and raised a hand. The tension was definitely there, as if something were being pushed, or pulled…
Or stretched.
“Everybody!” Krysty snapped her eyes open and leaped to her feet. “Get out of here, now!”
“You heard her!” Ryan shouted. “Move! Out the way we came in!”
But it was already too late. Krysty knew it instantly, as the tension she’d felt building suddenly released, like the string of a bow.
Or a fault line in earthquake country.
Before anyone could start running, a familiar wave of force crashed into Krysty. She hung suspended for an instant, her whole body quivering, and then the force let go, whipping her around to slam into Ryan.
As the two of them stumbled, barely holding each other erect, Krysty saw the ground in front of them flutter like a bedsheet. She heard a low hum, followed by a rumble that coursed up through her feet and shook every bone in her body.
Then a flash of light erupted before her like a second sun blazing to life. As the light faded, between the blur of spots left pulsing in her eyes, Krysty saw the thing she’d dreaded, the latest phenomenon signaled by the pain.
The ground was opening up.
“Sinkhole!” As the word left Ryan’s lips, the hole expanded rapidly. In seconds, it was big enough to swallow up a good-size war wag, and still growing at breakneck speed.
The companions were on the move, scattering fast, but not fast enough. Krysty could feel the ground dropping away, disintegrating hot on her heels as she sprinted alongside Ryan.
Suddenly, the hole caught up with her. Like sand in an hourglass, the once-firm ground slid out from under her. Just like that, her feet had nothing solid beneath them, and she started to fall.
Before she could plunge into the widening chasm, though, Ryan’s strong hands seized her arm and hauled her forward. It was all the help she needed. With firm footing restored—at least for the moment—Krysty was able to bolt out of reach of the hungry pit.
Mildred wasn’t as lucky. She screamed in alarm, and Krysty flashed a look in her direction as she ran.
Some twenty feet away, the predark physician was almost completely in the hole. Only her head and shoulders remained above the rim. She was holding on to a hump of rock, her body dangling into the pit as it continued to grow around her.
Instantly, Krysty changed direction and raced toward her friend. She knew Ryan would follow, but she had to prepare as if she alone would mount this rescue.
Dashing toward the dissolving rim of the hole, Krysty focused her thoughts on the familiar power she drew from in times of emergency. Gaia, the Earth Mother, the world itself, provided a wellspring of energy for the few who knew how to tap it, and Krysty counted herself among their number.
Chanting her prayer quickly, she made contact with the power of Gaia, the potent force residing all around her. Embracing the power, she drew a portion of it into her, feeling it churn and crackle within her like a ball of lightning.
Then, as she and the crumbling rim raced toward each other, she let the power explode and infuse every cell of her being.
Leaping just as the rim collapsed in front of her, Krysty landed on the peak of the rock that Mildred clung to. Balancing on the balls of her feet on that peak, Krysty ducked and grabbed hold of Mildred’s upper arms. With one heave, as if she was lifting a child, she pulled Mildred up.
As Mildred looped her arms tightly around Krysty’s neck, the redhead turned, part of her mind wondering if she’d made a fatal error. The bank, which was still dissolving, was nearly thirty feet away.
It would be a long jump, even in her heightened, Gaia-empowered state, but it would only get longer with each second she hesitated. Her odds of survival would only get lower.
So Krysty gathered the power within her and crouched, coiling her muscles for the leap. The bank continued to recede.
Then she took a deep breath, focused the Gaia force and leaped.
Even with the weight of Mildred on her back, Krysty felt light as she sailed through the air. Miraculously, she overtook the dissolving rim and kept going, past the point where the sinkhole might take her as soon as she touched down.
When she did land, Ryan and J.B. were waiting for her. The second Krysty put down Mildred, J.B. had his arm around the woman’s shoulders, urging her forward to flee the approaching pit.
Ryan did the same for Krysty. “Can you keep going?” he asked as they ran.
“Yes.” Whenever Krysty tapped Gaia’s power, she always went through a slump afterward, as if the superhuman exertion had unnaturally exhausted her. But perhaps because of the continued danger, she hadn’t gotten to that point yet.
She and Ryan ran onward after J.B. and Mildred, trying to get past the limits of the sinkhole’s expansion…if there were any. Up ahead, Jak and Ricky had stopped running and were waving their arms, urging them on.
Suddenly, a fresh bolt of pain shot through Krysty’s skull, and she stumbled. She tried to keep running at full tilt, but another bolt caught her, and she stumbled again, heading for a fall.
Ryan’s arms stopped her from hitting the ground. In one smooth movement, he scooped her off her feet and kept going, carrying her away from the sinkhole.
Just then, a shock wave plowed into both of them, nearly bowling them over. Krysty saw the ground around them flow like liquid, and she knew what was coming next.
A blinding flash lit the landscape. Ryan reeled with Krysty in his arms, teetering in the light, and then the flare was suddenly snuffed out.
Instantly, Krysty could feel that the air was different. Everything was quieter and more still than before, with good reason.
The constant rushing of the collapsing ground had ended.
“It stopped.” Looking back, she saw that the sinkhole had finally stopped expanding, leaving the farthest reach of the rim at about thirty feet from them.
“Best news we’ve had all day,” Ryan said. “But why the hell did it start?”
Krysty concentrated, trying to probe their surroundings for a clue, but then the post-Gaia weakness finally struck. Her thoughts scattered like ripples from a pebble tossed into a pond, and she slumped in Ryan’s arms.
Mildred was at her side in a heartbeat. “Are you all right?”
Krysty nodded weakly. “Just worn-out.”
“You just let me know if you need anything.” Mildred patted her cheek lightly.
“What about you?” J.B. put a hand on Mildred’s shoulder, gazing at her with deep concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mildred said. “Not a big
fan of this place, but I’m fine.”
“It hellhole,” Jak stated. “We stay longer, it take us like took Doc.”
“Mebbe we should split up,” J.B. suggested. “One group could get Krysty out of here before the next disruption while the other group stays here and keeps looking for Doc.”
“Or,” shouted Ricky, who was standing on the rim of the crater, pointing into the distance, “we could all follow that.”
Ryan carried Krysty to the rim, and the others joined them. As Krysty looked where Ricky was pointing, she saw what he was talking about.
J.B. blew his breath out in a low whistle. “Dark night!”
“Maybe one good thing came out of that crap storm,” Mildred said.
In the distance beyond the giant sinkhole, Krysty saw that a channel now ran through the surface of the earth—a rough-hewn canal filled with a glowing red liquid. The red substance churned and bubbled, shedding plumes of rippling gray steam that revealed, at a distance, just how hot the channel’s contents had to be. Meaning the red liquid could most likely be only one thing.
“Lava,” Krysty said.
“Magically appearing in the middle of the Sandhills, where there’s zero volcanic activity,” J.B. commented.
“That we know of,” Ryan corrected. But how the lava had gotten there wasn’t the important part, and they all knew it. More important by far was what it might do for them.
And whom it might lead them to.
“Don’t you think it could be a trail?” Ricky asked. “Mebbe it’s pointing at the middle of all this.”
J.B. nodded. “The epicenter of the effect.”
“And that might be where they’re taking Doc,” Ricky added.
Ryan nodded. “Might be, at that.”
“Seem like long shot to me,” Jak said. “How know that where taken?”
“We don’t,” J.B. replied. “But we don’t have any better ideas, do we?”
“I think it’s worth a try.” Ryan looked down at Krysty, still resting in his arms. “But mebbe we should still get you out of here.”
Krysty shook her head. “I don’t want us to split up.” She shifted in his grip, signaling that she wanted him to let her down, which he did. “I can handle whatever comes our way. Don’t worry.”
Ryan held her gaze for a long moment, reading all that remained unsaid between them. Krysty knew he was aware she was making a sacrifice, and that it would cost her, but she would gladly do it if it meant finding Doc.
And she knew he was well aware of one other fact as well: once she decided to do something, there could be no stopping her.
“All right, then.” Ryan nodded. “Let’s gather up what’s left of our gear and get moving. The longer Doc’s out there on his own, the less likely it is that we’ll ever see him again.”
Chapter Five
Doc blinked furiously as he was dragged from the pitch-blackness and dumped in a space awash in bright white light. For a long moment, he couldn’t see a thing beyond a few dim outlines in the flaring brilliance.
Then, as his eyes adjusted, things slowly took shape around him. He saw that he was in a round, stone-walled chamber, open to the sunlight overhead. He lay on a dirt floor at the feet of a group of muties, unarmed and at their mercy.
The question was, what did they want with him? And why had they brought him here, wherever here was?
“Oh, dear.” As Doc looked around, the muties stared back at him with great interest. They couldn’t take their eyes off him; even as they giggled and tittered in childlike voices, their stares never left him for an instant.
At least they didn’t seem to be exuding hostility. Doc smiled as he sat there, and many of them smiled back at him. The crimson skin of their faces crinkled around their mouths and the corners of their eyes, suggesting a response that was the polar opposite of hostile.
“Well, then.” Doc slowly got to his feet. “Perhaps I have made some new friends after all. Perhaps this has all been an unfortunate mistake.”
Just then, a familiar high-pitched voice piped up over the noise from the crowd. “Not a mistake at all. And we are old friends, not new ones.”
Instantly, Doc recognized the voice as that of the first being who had grabbed him in the lightless stone cell. Turning to look at him, Doc saw a mutie with skin as red as a burning ember. He stood taller than the other muties by at least a head, and wore different clothing, as well. The muties in the crowd were dressed in scavenged predark clothes, while this one wore a gray uniform and boots that were practically in mint condition. Was he a leader, perhaps?
“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” Doc bowed quickly at the waist. “Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, at your service.” Straightening, he raised his eyebrows at the apparent leader of the muties. “And what shall I call you, pray tell?”
The leader sighed and shook his head. “What have they done to you?”
“They? They, who?”
“Your captors, of course. The ones who took you from us.” The leader spread his arms wide. He held Doc’s silver lion’s-head swordstick in his left hand. Doc’s LeMat revolver was holstered at his hip. “We took you back, but they must have done something to you first. Taken your memories or senses. I only hope they didn’t ruin you for your holy work.”
“What sort of holy work is that?” Doc asked, marveling at his command of the English language.
The leader just stared at him with apparent pity and worry. “Have no fear,” he said coolly. “We will heal you, my friend.”
Doc cleared his throat, uncertain of what to say or do next. The only thing he knew for sure what that he’d never seen these particular muties before in his life. “If, as you say, we are friends, perhaps you could humor me. Perhaps you could tell me your name.”
“Though it hurts me to have to tell you, I’ll do it,” the mutie said. “My name is Exo. And yours is Dr. William Hammersmith.”
“I suppose it is.” Doc shrugged. “What else can you tell me about myself, friend Exo?”
“You have been a naughty boy, Dr. Hammersmith.” Exo ticked Doc’s ebony swordstick back and forth. “It’s a good thing you’re so important and such a good friend.”
“Naughty?” Doc straightened. Without the swordstick and LeMat revolver, he felt utterly naked. “In what way was I naughty?”
Exo pulled a stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy out of the vest pocket of his uniform. “You ran away. If you hadn’t done that, the interlopers never would have taken you.”
“I see.” Doc nodded, thinking how appropriate it was that his doppelganger had a penchant for escape. Doc himself, after being snatched through time from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, had tried numerous times to get away from his whitecoat captors. “And you say these interlopers seized me against my will?”
Exo peeled back the plastic wrapper and slid the candy stick between his lips. “Why else would you have stayed away so long, leaving your critical work unfinished?”
“Hmm.” Doc frowned and rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “And what is this work to which you refer, precisely?”
“Perfecting the Shift, of course.”
“Ah, the Shift.” Doc nodded, then tipped his head to one side and squinted. “Which is, of course…?”
Exo took the candy stick out of his mouth and swept it in a semicircle. “All around us! The deadliest place in the Deathlands!” Stomping forward, he jabbed the swordstick at Doc’s chest. “And you are making it even deadlier.”
The mutie’s breath was rancid enough to choke a horse, but Doc stood his ground. “Is that so?”
Exo narrowed his gaze. “I can see by the look on your face that you still don’t remember it all. But no matter.” The mutie reached over and cupped the right side of Doc’s face in his hand. “You still have time for it to come back to you. The journey to the core will take days, and we have other business to conduct on the way.”
Doc couldn’t help leaning his head away from Exo’s hand.
“What business is that?”
Exo laughed that high giggle of his, the one that so belied his threatening personality. “Teaching your kidnappers a lesson, dear Doctor. Teaching them the price of intruding in the Shift, where they are not welcome and never will be.”
He was talking about Ryan and the others, and Doc knew it. “What price is that?”
Exo paused a moment, his face completely unreadable. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and shouted in Doc’s face, “Death! Torture, mutilation and death at the hands of the shifters!”
Doc cleared his throat and took a step back. “I do not suppose you would consider letting bygones be bygones?”
Exo giggled and tossed away his candy stick. This time, when he lunged, he threw Doc down on the ground and pummeled him with his fist and the head of the swordstick until Doc started fading again.
“The Children of the Shift never forgive!” As Exo said it, the other muties roared in agreement. “We understand only one thing! Swift and brutal retribution without hesitation or mercy!”
It was then that Doc lost consciousness. His last thought before he went under was if this was how Exo treated his friends, then Ryan and the others were really in for it.
Chapter Six
Ricky tossed a rock into the bubbling lava and watched it melt in an instant, casting up a plume of steam.
“That’s some hot stuff, man.” He elbowed Jak, who walked beside him at the front of the group. “Get too close, and it’ll give you a sunburn.”
“No want get close.” Jak was a good thirty paces from the lava channel, where he’d stayed since the team had started hiking. He was only too happy to let Ricky stay between him and the superheated flow. “Enemy not come that direction.”
Ricky raised an index finger. “Unless things change again, that is. It happened before.”
Jak snorted. “We ready. Learned lesson.” He smiled grimly. “Expect unexpected.”
Just then, Ryan trotted forward from the middle ranks. “Guys.” They parted, and he formed up between them. “What’s the good word?”
“All quiet for now,” Ricky said.