by James Axler
Mildred nodded. “We need to get Doc back.”
“You’re right about that. We’re not the same without him. Something’s…off.”
“He’s family. We have to get him back.”
“We will, Millie.” J.B. clenched his jaw and nodded firmly. “We’ll blow the hell out of heaven and earth if that’s what it takes to get Doc back with us.”
Chapter Seventeen
Doc blinked at the bright morning sunlight as he emerged from a tunnel amid the bustling shifters. After hours of frolicking and sleep in the still zone cavern, they were on the march again, continuing their journey to the core.
The muties seemed well rested, with plenty of spring in their steps, which was the opposite of the way Doc felt. He hadn’t slept well in the cavern; as beautiful as it was, it had been far too cool and damp for his comfort. If he was lucky, he might have three hours of sleep under his belt, which wasn’t nearly enough. He knew from experience that he could survive on that or less, but the quality of his thinking and alertness would be compromised.
Nevertheless, he would have to make do. Not only that, but he would have to excel in handling whatever came his way. His life was as much on the line as ever; minute by minute, he walked a tightrope, and one slip would be enough to take him down forever.
“You’re sluggish this morning.” As always, Ankh was glued to his side. His had been the first face Doc had seen when the lights had come back on in the morning.
Doc shook his head. “I assure you, this constitutional has got my blood flowing, Ankh.”
Ankh cast a sidelong gaze at him, looking doubtful. “And you’re not hungry, I suppose?”
Doc patted his belly. “Not a bit.” The muties had offered him a portion of their rations, but he’d tactfully turned it down. The thought of sharing their squirming handfuls of live insects and worms was repulsive to him. Such food was certainly nutritionally sound, but he would have to be much hungrier to force himself to partake of it.
“Suit yourself.” Ankh smirked. “Let me know if you change your mind. There’s lots to go around.”
Doc smiled and hoped Ankh didn’t hear his stomach growling. He was determined to go without food until he found something more appetizing, like roots or berries, but the truth was, the terrain had been pretty barren so far. Finding suitable victuals in those environs could be more of a challenge than he could stand.
“No matter,” Ankh said. “If you pass out from hunger at some point, we’ll just drag you the rest of the way.”
Doc tipped his head with faux gallantry. “Your hospitality continues to astonish me,” he said.
“You’ll enjoy more of it shortly,” Ankh said. “We’re heading for a ville inhabited by my people, the only one of its kind in the Shift.”
“A ville?” Doc frowned. “How is that possible, given the changeable nature of the local landscape?”
“You’ll see.” Ankh adjusted the Winchester longblaster hanging from his left shoulder. “We’re a good deal cleverer than you norms might believe.”
“I already believe it,” Doc said. “One of my best friends is a mutie, you know.”
Ankh looked at him with obvious disbelief. “You’re just saying that.”
Doc shook his head. “I am not.” There was no need to lie in this case; Krysty Wroth was indeed one of the few people he thought of as a friend in the Deathlands. “Her friendship is indisputable. She has saved my life and the lives of my ‘norm’ friends numerous times.”
Ankh kept staring at him. “This mutie. She isn’t some kind of slave or pet?”
“She is anything but. She is no one’s servant or pawn, I assure you.”
Finally, Ankh tore his gaze away from Doc. “Impossible,” he said quietly. “Such a relationship could never exist.”
Doc lowered his voice. “What about Dr. Hammersmith? I’ve heard Exo refer to him as a very good friend.”
“More like property,” Ankh said. “Though I am certain Hammersmith would tell you otherwise.”
“I see. So Hammersmith is more a slave than a friend, working on behalf of Exo.”
Ankh nodded. “For the best of reasons.”
“And what might those reasons be?”
“The survival of our people,” Ankh said. “And the extinction of all those who oppose them.”
“Ah, yes.” Doc folded his hands behind his back. “And here I was beginning to think your people might not be more of the same old, same old. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“No, no, you were right. We can do things you have never seen before. And our vision for this place is like none other that has ever existed.”
“I will take your word for it, then,” Doc said.
“Oh, no.” Ankh looked up at him with dark eyes gleaming from his crimson face. “You will help make it a reality before all this is done. Not for him.” He gestured at Exo, who walked at the head of the ranks. “For someone more deserving and enlightened.”
“Someone like you, perhaps?”
Ankh shrugged. “Time will tell, Doc. Time will tell.”
Chapter Eighteen
Everyone had been hiking for two hours when Union stopped in front of a big hill and stayed there. She looked left, then right, then left again, as if she couldn’t make up her mind which way to go.
She stayed that way for a full five minutes.
Krysty leaned over and whispered to Ryan, who was growing increasingly antsy. “One of the problems with having multiple personalities is that you can’t always make up your mind at a fork in the road.”
Ryan nodded and didn’t look happy about it. “She’s arguing with herself.”
“Four women, one body.” Krysty shrugged. “You do the math.”
Ryan shook his head, cleared his throat and spoke so Union would hear him. “What happens if we go right?”
Union looked that way with eyes narrowed. Her braid, at this point, was Taryn black. “It will lead us to the core of the Shift.” She looked back to the left. “That direction leads to the same place, but it’s a shortcut. It will cut our time by half.”
“Sounds like a no-brainer to me.” Ryan took three steps to the left. “We take the shortcut.”
“Wait.” Union raised an index finger. “The shortcut’s more dangerous. It passes through an area known as the Devil’s Slaughterhouse. They say very few travelers have survived a trip through that zone.”
“Huh.” Ryan rubbed his chin. “How few?”
“A handful,” Union replied.
“Sound like our kind shortcut,” Jak stated.
“You don’t understand.” Union’s face suddenly changed, eyes widening with terror, and her braid turned white. “There are things living in there! The Shift has changed them!”
“More delicious, I hope,” Jak said. “Would kill for some fresh meat.”
“They’ll slaughter us! We’ll be the ones who are devoured!” Union’s voice continued to rise with panic. “But the others want to go that way, too! They’ll doom us all!”
“Tell the others we’re with them,” Ryan told her. “Now can we get moving?”
Union’s expression changed from fear to a sneer, and her braid went auburn. “What the fuck do you think I’ve been telling these dumbasses for the past fifteen minutes?”
Krysty kneaded her temples and shook her head slowly. “This is starting to give me a headache.”
Ryan shot her a look with eyebrows raised.
“The old-fashioned kind,” Krysty said. “Don’t worry.”
“All right, then.” Ryan stepped back and gestured in the direction of the Devil’s Slaughterhouse. “After you.”
Rhonda-Union snorted and stomped past him. “Just make sure you keep up. And do as you’re told! I know the critters in this little corner of hell better than you!”
“Thought only handful travelers survived Devil’s Slaughterhouse,” Jak said.
Rhonda-Union sneered back at him. “Including me!”
Jak trotted forward and too
k up position alongside her. “Then, know who I stick with.”
Rhonda-Union bumped elbows with him. “Smart man, Jak. Best of this sorry bunch, if you ask me.”
“Not ask. But same goes for your bunch.”
At which point, Ryan looked at Krysty, who rolled her eyes and shook her head. It was good that one of the team was hitting it off with Union…but that didn’t make the budding friendship any easier to take, as Rhonda treated the rest of them like garbage.
At least Ryan understood. Reaching over, he cupped his left hand on the back of Krysty’s head, pulled her close and kissed her. “We’d better get going,” he said softly. “Let me know if you’re in trouble.”
“No problem.” Krysty grinned. “Just listen for the screams of agony.”
“All right, people.” Ryan let go of her and looked to the rest of the companions. “Let’s try to make some time.”
“We will if she will.” Ricky pointed at Union, who was walking away with Jak. “Tell her let’s make some time.”
“Sure. Just as soon as I can figure out who the hell I’m talking to.”
With that, the team started marching after Union and Jak. Above them, the sky was quickly clouding up.
Krysty had a feeling that the rain, if it came, would be the least of their problems in the Devil’s Slaughterhouse.
* * *
THE GROUP HADN’T been marching for long when the rain started to fall. It came down lightly at first, and Ricky didn’t mind it a bit. If he had to choose between sweltering heat and cool rain, he’d pick the rain every time.
Maybe, he thought, it would even keep some of the things that were living in the Devil’s Slaughterhouse from being at their most active. Still, he knew better than to relax the slightest bit while moving through the territory. He kept both hands on his De Lisle carbine and repeatedly checked his Webley revolver, making sure it was good to go in its holster.
All in all, it had been a peaceful hike, so peaceful that Ricky started to wonder if Union had lied about how bad it would be. Maybe she’d been trying to talk them into the other route, not anticipating that this was a group of people who never flinched at taking the hard way in any situation.
Or maybe the place had been awful once, but had changed. After all, it was part of the Shift, wasn’t it? Maybe the creatures had become less dangerous or gone elsewhere.
That was exactly what Ricky was thinking when the fur-covered snake with the seven-foot wingspan swooped down from the gray sky and tried to snatch him up.
“Hey!” He spotted the creature at the last second and barely dodged its gleaming silver claws.
As the giant, orange-furred snake hurtled back into the heights, Ricky swung up the carbine and sighted along its length. The mutie’s body, as skinny as it was, would not be an easy shot, so Ricky chose the bigger target and tugged the trigger.
He heard the thing shriek as a round punched a hole dead center through its wing. Suddenly, the beast became aerodynamically unstable, flapping frantically and whipping in a circle.
Then rounds from three other blasters—courtesy of Ricky’s teammates—blew more holes in its wings, and the creature hurtled downward. It hit the ground thirty yards away with a final screech and a thud like a net full of fish being dumped on the deck of a boat.
“Wow!” Ricky shouted to the others. “That was one mean-ass—”
Before he could finish the sentence, another creature exploded from the side of a nearby hill, heading straight for him. It started as a big, gray sphere, then unfurled to reveal an underside studded with jagged white pincers and fangs.
Ricky could hear them clacking together as the creature flew straight at him through the rain. Instantly, he swung up the carbine, ready to fire, but Ryan beat him to it. The Steyr Scout belched out a round that caught the creature in the side, spinning it out of its original trajectory. As it skidded across the sand, Ricky followed up with a blast from the carbine, blowing it apart like a watermelon.
Before he could take a breath, he caught sight of another creature galloping toward him from fifty yards away—and this one was much bigger than either of the other two. It looked like a cross between a hippopotamus and a porcupine, studded with spines and roaring belligerently from an enormous maw full of multiple concentric rows of inward-pointing, razor-sharp teeth.
Smoothly, Ricky spun and sighted his carbine at the beast. He squeezed the trigger, and a round crossed the distance in a heartbeat. He knew before it hit that it would be a perfect head shot.
Which it was. But what he didn’t expect was that the bullet would zing from the creature’s forehead without leaving a scratch.
The hippo-porcupine kept charging, and Ricky quickly realized how ugly his situation had just gotten. Glancing around, he saw his teammates were all occupied with bizarre creatures of their own. No one else was aiming a weapon at the stampeding monstrosity.
No one else was going to come to his rescue. If Ricky hoped to survive, he would have to make it happen on his own.
He squeezed off another shot, and it, too, deflected from the beast’s skull. Then, as the hammering hoofbeats pounded ever closer, Ricky did something he rarely did during the many conflicts he faced in the Deathlands.
He ran for his life.
Chapter Nineteen
In his years roaming the irradiated wastelands of what had once been the United States of America, Ryan had dealt with some horrifically mutated wildlife. He’d met, and put down, some truly twisted animals that in some cases were so warped, he hadn’t been able to identify what species they’d originally been.
But the thing that was facing him now through what had become a soaking downpour really took the cake. It was like someone had crossed a giant tarantula with an armadillo…and a barrel of hydrochloric acid.
The creature was seven feet tall, with the bulbous body and eight hairy legs of a tarantula. But the body and legs were clad in overlapping armor plates like those of an armadillo. Only its head, with its huge, curving fangs and clusters of eyes, was unshielded.
Not that the armor was its only defense. As Ryan darted to one side, the creature shot a stream of fluid from between its fangs; the stream struck the spot where he’d been standing, dissolving the sandy ground with a loud hiss.
Heart pumping hard, Ryan bolted around behind the creature, out of range of its acid jet, and reloaded the Steyr Scout. He had to take the monster down fast, but how? It was built like a tank.
Whatever he did, he would have to do it soon. His teammates were all under attack by the hellish local fauna, which seemed to have awakened all at once. From what he could see, all of his companions were all equally endangered, though some were having worse luck than others.
* * *
MILDRED CLAWED AT the ground, but the thorny tendrils kept dragging her by the ankles. Looking back over her shoulder through the rain, she saw what they were dragging her toward, and that inspired her to redouble her efforts.
An amorphous, gelatinous blob like an overgrown amoeba kept its glistening mouth wide-open in her direction. The tendrils didn’t seem to be part of it—they were connected instead to a giant green pod squatting nearby—but they yanked her inexorably toward the blob nevertheless.
As she slid across the muddy surface, she watched her ZKR 551 get farther away. She’d dropped it after pumping two shots into both the blob and the pod, without killing either one. Now the weapon was twenty feet away and getting more out of reach with each passing moment.
With a cry of frustration, Mildred scrabbled for any kind of handhold, to no avail. The tendrils dragged her another three feet, bringing her to within ten feet of the blob.
She could hear it smacking and slurping behind her, and she realized she couldn’t avoid it. Her only chance, it seemed, would be to confront the organism head-on, with her bare hands.
If it didn’t devour her first.
* * *
JAK HURLED ONE of his leaf-bladed throwing knives into the eye of the pouncing see
-through lion, interrupting its leap. The great cat landed on its feet, roaring in pain, and then it grew another eye beside the ruined one.
Through the animal’s transparent skin, he could see the damage done by the blade. Blood poured from an artery, gushing inside and outside the wound. When the lion roared again, the wound widened, increasing the damage and blood flow.
But within seconds, the bleeding stopped. Another artery grew beside the first, twining its way through the tangle of blood vessels and ligaments in the creature’s neck.
“Just got interesting.” Jak drew a blade in each hand. He flexed his grip on both handles, took a deep breath and steeled himself for what he was about to do. “Wonder if limit how much can regrow?”
As if in reply, the lion let out a loud roar.
Jak twirled the knives in his hands. “Not worry, cat.” He stopped twirling and tightened his hold on them. “Find out fun way. Cut cat down to size, see if new one grows.”
With that, he let out a roar of his own and charged at the lion, blades flashing in the rainy gray daylight.
* * *
KRYSTY STOOD STOCK-STILL as the swarm of piranha wasps surrounded her, their wings emitting an earsplitting whine.
Each wasp had a head like a carnivorous fish—its maw packed with gnashing fangs—and an ebony body with a massive black-and-yellow-striped stinger. The creatures were big, the size of Krysty’s fist, and hovered menacingly all around her.
Sweat beaded her forehead as they cut off all escape routes, even filling in the space above so she couldn’t leap clear. Heart racing, she watched their multifaceted black eyes, which appeared to be blank.
Their intentions, she had no doubt, were nothing but hostile. The only real question remaining at that moment was when, not if, they were going to attack.
Through gaps in the swarm, she glimpsed Ryan. He wasn’t more than twenty yards away, but he would be no help to her. He was busy facing an enemy of his own, some kind of enormous armored tarantula creature.
Breathing deeply, Krysty shifted her stance to a crouch. As soon as she moved, the piranha-wasps inched toward her and buzzed louder.