Child of Slaughter

by James Axler

  Krysty marshaled all her strength and speed and cut loose in a graceful, brutal frenzy. She batted and kicked away bugs, whacked them with the blaster’s butt, then spun the weapon around and blew a clump of them into chunks and goo.

  She continued that way for as long as she could, fending off the swarm until finally there were no more piranha-wasps attached to her body, driving their stingers in deep.

  As soon as she stopped, she could feel the Gaia force begin to taper off. She started her descent from the peak of her powers, knowing all too well the venom-induced pain that awaited her. At least there would be no fresh injections of it; at least she had stopped the bug things from overwhelming her.

  That was what she was thinking when she heard the buzzing. Turning toward it, she saw the swarm—what was left of it—hovering some thirty feet away, half its original size, but still enough to surround her.

  And without Gaia’s power surging through her, Krysty knew she wouldn’t have a chance of survival.

  She took a long, deep breath and tried to steady herself. Warrior that she was, she would go down fighting.

  “Come and get me,” she grated. “What are you waiting for?”

  As if in response to her words, the swarm started gliding toward her.

  Then, suddenly, a blastershot boomed from nearby. A round blasted through the swarm, blowing several of the piranha-wasps out of formation. Another shot followed from the same direction, kicking out a few more.

  Looking toward the source of the shots, Krysty saw Ricky taking aim with his Webley. He saw her looking and grinned as he pulled the trigger once more, throwing another round into the swarm.

  Just then, another shot echoed from a different direction, and Krysty looked that way, too. This time, she saw Jak pointing his Colt Python at the swarm. His arms and torso were soaked with blood, but he otherwise looked to be unharmed from whatever threat he’d been confronting.

  As Jak and Ricky fired more shots, Krysty heard yet another blaster in action. This time, the familiar sound of the weapon was enough to make her heart skip a beat, in a good way.

  Even before she turned toward the latest blasterfire, she knew who was making it happen. She knew he’d emerged unscathed from yet another battle in the Deathlands, and that meant everything to her.

  As Ryan rattled off rounds from his SIG-Sauer P-226, he glanced for an instant in Krysty’s direction. His expression was as grim and intense as ever, completely focused on his brutal work.

  But she knew how he felt about her, and that was all that mattered. The one-eyed man might not be smiling, but he was there, and he was doing what he could for her.

  Not that she had any intention of letting him do all the work. Clenching her teeth against the weakness and pain surging into her as the Gaia power faded, she raised her Glock and fired at what was left of the swarm. The shot pegged one of the piranha-wasps dead-on, sending it spiraling down to the sand like a crashing plane.

  Smiling with a death’s-head grimness that was the equal of her man’s, Krysty fired again, knocking down another bug. And then she fired once more, emptying the blaster just as the last of her energy ran out, and she collapsed to the ground.

  * * *

  AS ONE INVISIBLE creature swatted J.B.’s back, the other bashed his front, pasting a heavy blow across his chest. J.B. gasped at the impact and let himself fall to one side, but the angle was intentional. He still had a hold of his M-4000 scattergun, and now he had a range on the two beasts he’d been fighting, one of which he’d already tagged once.

  When he hit the ground, he flipped over on his back and blasted away to the right and to the left, where he knew the creatures had been just seconds ago.

  But they weren’t there now, at least not in the path of his rounds. He heard thrashing but no roars of agony, saw a muddle of tracks but no imprint of a falling body in the sand.

  Cursing, he scuttled back and scrambled to his feet. Watching the sand, he saw the tracks of the two creatures fan right and left around him, resuming their ominous circling pattern like invisible vultures around a doomed animal.

  If only he could better pinpoint their size and shape, he’d have a better chance of landing a shot. As it was, he thought he had a good idea of the outlines of their undersides and feet, and little else. They kept hitting him with some kind of limb or flipper or pseudopod, but even the extent of that extremity was not clear to him.

  As if in response to his thoughts, one of those very limbs thudded into the back of his head. It was then he realized there had to be a third creature in the mix, because the other two were still leaving tracks on each side of him.

  “Damn it!” Whirling, he kept a tight grip on the scattergun, listening and watching for traces of the third creature. He heard a rustling from the left, thought he saw the sand dimple and popped rounds in that vicinity but with no discernible contact.

  By the time he heard the louder noise—a growling from the right—it was already too late. The thing lurking there plowed its limb across his face, stunning him senseless.

  J.B. dropped the scattergun and toppled backward. He hit like deadweight, and blacked out for a moment.

  He was snapped back to consciousness by the roar of blasterfire.

  Staying low, he looked up and saw Mildred standing twenty yards away, firing her .38 revolver in his direction. She threw three more shots, then stopped to reload.

  But the sound of blasterfire instantly resumed from another direction. Only this time, it was the sound of round after round jackhammering from a fully automatic assault blaster.

  Twisting, J.B. saw Union blasting away from Mildred’s three o’clock, filling the air with a hail of projectiles. It seemed like a solid approach to him; Union’s Heckler & Koch outpowered every weapon on the field, laying down enough constant fire that it stood a better chance of ventilating the invisible creatures.

  Sure enough, J.B. heard the screams of at least one of the beasts erupting from nearby. He heard a thump and saw the sand compress into an odd-shaped dish under the body of one of the monsters.

  Briefly, J.B. considered trying to retrieve his own scattergun and rejoin the fight, but for once, he thought the best strategy might be to let someone else do the shooting.

  Meanwhile, Union never let up. She just kept blasting out rapid-fire rounds from the H&K’s drum magazine, sweeping the area with hurtling bits of metal that were bound to hit something invisible sooner or later.

  Sure enough, another creature howled in pain and thumped to the ground, this time about twenty feet from J.B. Moments later, he heard a third cry and thump from farther away, some thirty yards.

  And then he heard a wild shrieking from Mildred’s direction. He twisted just in time to see her open fire with the .38, shooting at what looked like thin air right in front of her.

  But the thudding sound J.B. heard after Mildred’s second shot told him the air over there wasn’t so thin after all. There had been a fourth creature, and Mildred had put it down.

  Was that all of them? For all he knew, there might be a whole pack of them out there, lurking among the raindrops.

  Whether that was true, J.B. was sick and tired of staying out of the line of fire. As soon as he saw Union lower her weapon, he jumped to his feet.

  By then, Mildred was rushing up to him with a smile on her face.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right,” Mildred said softly, leaning back to meet his gaze.

  “The feeling is mutual.” He nodded and drew her in for a hug. After the fight he’d been through, he was happier than usual to still be alive.

  “We shouldn’t linger,” Union said as she stalked toward them, stiff backed and imperious. The braid at her temple was black, meaning Taryn was running the show. “There could be more of those things around, or other things that are even worse.”

  “No kidding,” Mildred agreed. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Union. You weren’t exaggerating about the local wildlife.”

  “Actually, it’s been some
what worse than I remembered.” Union looked around warily. “I’ve seen some, if not all, of these creatures before, but never in this kind of concentration.”

  “Could it be this bad up ahead?” Mildred asked.

  Union’s shrug was barely perceptible. “It’s never not bad in the Devil’s Slaughterhouse.”

  “Then, I guess you were right,” Mildred stated. “About us getting slaughtered, I mean.”

  Union scowled, somehow taken aback by the comment. Was it possible the Taryn personality didn’t remember things that had been said or heard by another personality? Or was it just that she didn’t approve of what Carrie had said?

  “Hey!” At that moment, Jak ran over with Ricky in tow. “Having second thoughts ’bout shortcut!”

  “You were warned, weren’t you?” Union said.

  “That not point,” Jak snapped. “Losing Krysty!”

  Without hesitation, Mildred ran after him.

  “Damn!” J.B. took off after the two of them, mentally kicking himself for losing track of Ryan and Krysty. If only he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own battle and the aftermath.

  If only none of them had entered the Devil’s Slaughterhouse in the first place.

  Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that Union wasn’t following them. She was just standing there, watching them all rush away from her. Was she being indecisive again, torn between her multiple personalities? Or was something else going on with her, something far more ominous?

  What if she wasn’t following because she didn’t care if Krysty lived or died? More than that, what if she didn’t care if any of them lived or died?

  It was something J.B. had known from the start might be true.

  Though, whatever Union’s intentions were, J.B. already knew one thing for a fact. If Union did go all the way dark at some point, J.B. and his friends would have a hell of a time putting her down before she could do the same to them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As an earthquake rocked the ville of Struggle, Doc lay in the path of a toppling tower. If the structure came down on top of him, it would likely crush him in an instant.

  There were times in his life when he might have frozen in such a situation, times when he might have panicked or had a flashback and required a rescue. But this wasn’t one of them.

  Adrenaline blazed in his bloodstream, impelling him to action. Throwing himself to the side, he rolled fast across the ground, hurtling out of the path of the tower.

  The quick action saved his life, though he wasn’t completely unscathed. The rickety structure crashed down beside him, the heavy metal car doors that formed its walls slamming down with such force that all their windows shattered at once. As for the framework of rusty plumbing that had been holding it all together, the impact blew it apart. Broken lengths of copper and iron pipe sprang from the wreckage, flying outward—and one pipe collided with the middle of Doc’s back. He cried out when it hit, though at least his spine was spared; the hunk of metal struck to one side of the spinal cord, mostly catching the flesh around his ribs.

  The injury stung, but it could have been worse. Gingerly, Doc rubbed the impact site, glad the projectile hadn’t smashed into his skull instead.

  Then he heard someone else crying out, and he sat up. Listening and looking around, he quickly identified the source: the plaintive shouts were coming from another collapsed building, one that had fallen across the street from the jury-rigged tower.

  Getting to his feet, Doc realized that most of the shifters were focused on other buildings in the center of town. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the crumbled brick-and-timber blockhouse from which the nearest cries for help came.

  The thought of turning away never entered his mind. Setting his jaw, Doc hurried across the street and started picking his way through the blockhouse rubble.

  “Help!” The voice from within was high-pitched, a child’s. “Please, somebody help me! I’m trapped!”

  “Help is on the way, my friend,” Doc shouted in reply. “I hope to have you out of there in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “Please hurry!” The voice sounded close, as if the child were a short distance inside the crumbled walls. “My mama isn’t breathing!”

  “Hold tight, friend.” Doc’s movements took on added urgency as he pushed aside broken timbers that were blocking the front entrance of the building. Grunting, he picked up bricks that were piled in the doorway and dropped them to one side. His back injury pinged repeatedly, and he kept working through the pain, determined to dig his way inside.

  A few more moments and he’d cleared a path into the wreckage. Carefully, he stepped through the doorway and moved down a short passage, stopping twice to push more timbers out of his way.

  “Hello?” the child called. “Are you still out there?”

  “Yes, my dear.” Doc had to ease his way around a heavy timber that was wedged between ceiling and floor and wouldn’t budge. “Rest assured, I am still moving in your direction.”

  “Please hurry!” the child urged.

  Doc ducked under another collapsed timber, stepped over a pile of dust and debris, and came to a doorway on his right. He had to contort himself to get through it, setting off his back injury, and then he was in the same room as the child.

  He saw now that the shifter child was a little boy, no older than five or six. “You’re here!” The boy’s eyes widened and lit up from across the rubble-strewed room, where he was squatting on the floor beside his mother’s supine body. “You came!”

  “There was never any doubt, child.” Doc smiled as he picked his way through the rubble.

  “My name is Cardy,” said the boy. “Can you help my mama?”

  “I will certainly try.” Doc lowered himself to kneel at the unconscious woman’s side. Her skin was pink; the usual deep red color common to shifters had faded.

  Cardy had been right: she wasn’t breathing. But when Doc pressed his fingers into the artery in her neck, he felt a thready pulse. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save her.

  “Can you help her?” The boy’s face was streaked with tears.

  Doc didn’t want to get his hopes up. “I will try.” With that, he checked her airway, which was clear, and started administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It was a technique he had learned from the whitecoats who’d time-trawled him to the 1990s; at least they’d taught him one thing of lasting value during his captivity.

  Doc performed chest compressions on the boy’s mother, then tipped her head back, pinched her nose shut and puffed breath into her lungs. Her chest rose, then fell, and he blew in another breath.

  As he resumed chest compressions, he heard a creaking sound and looked up at the ceiling. He saw a single splintered beam buckling under the weight of sagging wallboard; it was only a matter of time until the entire ceiling collapsed.

  After administering another series of breaths, Doc applied more compressions. “Go outside, Cardy,” he told the boy. “Go ahead, and I’ll meet you shortly with your mama.”

  “No!” Cardy shook his head vehemently. “I won’t leave her!”

  “Please,” said Doc. “You must.”

  “No!” Cardy placed a hand protectively on the woman’s shoulder. “Just help her!”

  Dust from the wallboard ceiling trickled down around Doc. “Go!” he snapped, trying to jolt the boy into getting clear of the imminent ceiling collapse. “Get out of here!”

  The boy just shook his head, more tears pouring down his cheeks.

  Again, Doc repeated the breaths and compressions, and again the woman didn’t respond.

  Was Doc going to have to tell the boy that his mother was dead? The thought of it propelled him through another round of CPR. He knew just how it felt to have a loved one torn away, to never see that person again because of the mistakes of others.

  More ceiling dust trickled down, and the creaking of the beam grew louder. Doc’s heart hammered, and his stomach twisted painfully.

 
Then, suddenly, the woman inhaled on her own. Breath rushed into her lungs, and she coughed.

  “Mama!” Cardy lit up with joy. “Mama, you’re alive!”

  Just then, the beam above them creaked again, louder than ever. Doc knew they were all out of time. “Let’s go!”

  Cardy was hugging his mother around the neck, and Doc pushed him off her. Getting to his feet, Doc scooped the woman up with some trouble, ignoring the protests of his injured back.

  “We need to get out of here!” Doc nodded toward the doorway through which he’d entered. “You first!”

  Cardy hesitated. “But my mama…” He didn’t seem aware of the fact that the beam was about to snap.

  “Just do it!” Doc hollered. “Unless you want all this to be for nothing!”

  Cardy scowled as if he might cry. “What do you mean, for nothing?”

  Doc was exasperated. “Just go!” He said it with the most commanding voice he could, hoping he would cut through the little boy’s confusion.

  It worked. With a hurt and angry glare, Cardy spun and charged out of the room. As young and nimble as he was, he sidestepped the debris in his path as if it didn’t exist.

  Doc hurried after him as fast as he could, praying the ceiling would hold up for another few seconds. Navigating the wreckage, he followed Cardy’s footsteps through the doorway and into the passage beyond.

  Doc was most of the way down the hall when he heard the ceiling collapse behind him. The crash was like a thunderclap to Doc, seemingly all the louder because it signified the death he’d just escaped.

  By the time he maneuvered out the door with the woman in his arms, following on the heels of Cardy, an audience had gathered. Five shifters ringed the doorway, watching with wide eyes as Doc emerged from the destruction.

  The shifters all cheered for him at once, then surged forward to help him with the woman. By the time they were done, Doc was standing there empty-handed, but not for long.

  “Thank you!” Cardy leaped at him and hugged him tight around the middle. “Thank you for saving my mama!”

  Doc had to admit, he felt choked up at that particular moment. The boy’s gratitude was overwhelming.