Child of Slaughter

by James Axler

  Hammersmith nodded slowly as if considering what she’d said, then raised a finger of his own: the middle finger of his left hand. “Forget it. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “You just don’t want to face what you’ve done,” Krysty said. “The mistakes you made that have empowered the shifters.”

  “Fuck them,” Hammersmith. “And you, too.”

  “Mebbe you’re a coward, too. Mebbe, for all your attitude, you’re a scared little boy.”

  He remained silent, staring at Krysty.

  “Or mebbe there’s something else.” Frowning, she stepped closer to him, tipping her head to one side. “Something you’re not telling us about. Something that keeps you away from the core.”

  Hammersmith shook his head, looking thoroughly disgusted. “Do you mind?” He gestured at the door.

  Krysty took one more step toward him. “So what are you going to do after we leave? Run as far as you can from the core and the Shift? From the destruction you’ve made possible?” She took one more step closer. “But what happens if it follows you? What happens then?” She smiled grimly. “Because that’s what mistakes do, Dr. Hammersmith. They follow you all your life, until you deal with them.”

  “Wow.” Hammersmith nodded. “Thank you.” He pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “You’ve really turned me around, you know? You’ve helped me see the light.”

  Taking Krysty’s arm, he guided her to the door. Krysty knew full well what was coming next, but she let him pull her along anyway. Resisting would not have done any good.

  “Go ahead out and get your friends ready.” Hammersmith pushed the door open and shooed her through it. “I’m so looking forward to working with them to make amends for my mistakes.”

  As soon as Krysty had cleared the doorway, Hammersmith shut the door. That left Krysty back in the main lab, face-to-face with the rest of her team.

  “Well?” Mildred asked. “How did it go?”

  “Hammersmith help?” Jak said.

  “He refuses, but don’t worry.” Krysty grinned. “It’s just temporary.”

  “You sweet-talked him?” Ryan asked.

  Still smiling, Krysty shook her head. “I didn’t need to. He was already convinced.”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” J.B. told her.

  “Deep down, he wants to make things right,” Krysty said. “Though he’s bound to do everything wrong in the process.”

  “Sound like liability,” Jak commented.

  “As long as he’s more of an asset, I want him to come with us,” Ryan told them.

  “You sure about that?” J.B. asked. “He’s got some mouth on him.”

  “I said I wanted him along.” Ryan grinned. “I didn’t say I’d never give him a fat lip.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Doc hurtled through pitch-darkness at a ridiculously high rate of speed, rocketing along the contours of the smooth-walled chute. He had zero control of his course.

  He heard shifters sluicing around him, their bodies whisking past like pucks on ice. Some of them called out gleefully as they flew by in the dark—a reaction that Doc couldn’t quite match. Being propelled without any control or vision through an underground speedway wasn’t really his idea of fun.

  Doc couldn’t help marveling in the back of his mind—even as the front spun with panic—at the structure of the tube. The interior surface seemed to be frictionless, or nearly so; how else could it race them along without the application of additional thrust?

  The forces at work in the core had to be truly mind-boggling to be able to create something like this, and to do it so quickly. Controlling those forces, as Doc was expected to do when he got to the core, seemed as if it would be utterly impossible.

  Doc continued to rocket forward, swooping through the track like a runaway train, and then he felt it: the familiar fizzing in the back of his head, the funny feeling that had presaged the opening of the slideway.

  And as soon as he felt it, his panic multiplied a thousandfold. His heart, which was already hammering like a ticker tape machine on overdrive, flew into a hyperkinetic tattoo fit to blow up the organ in his chest.

  The implications of that feeling were terrible. If it signaled another impending change, and that change affected the underground chute, the consequences could be fatal for Doc.

  Still, he continued his mad slalom through the dark, swooping up one side of the tube and then the other. How much farther did he have to travel until he reached the other end? No light was visible up ahead, not even a reflection on a polished wall around the next bend.

  Had the shifters sensed the approaching change, too? None of them was calling out gleefully anymore. The only sound was the swooshing of their bodies as they flashed through the blackness, rocketing toward whatever fate awaited them.

  Meanwhile, the fizzing in the back of Doc’s head grew stronger and moved around to the sides and top of his skull. For the first time since entering the chute, he wished he could speed up. The faster he got to the other end, the greater his chance of survival.

  The fizzing moved into his eyes next, and his vision suddenly turned yellow. That told him, based on his first experience with the “funny feeling,” that it wouldn’t be long until the Shift’s next change.

  Doc thought he felt the chute vibrate around him, but that could have been his imagination. Was that a flicker of light up ahead? He couldn’t tell, now that his vision was a wash of bright yellow.

  The fizzing in his head turned to crackling, and a familiar wave of warmth flooded his body. Maybe this was it, the end of the line for him at last.

  The thought of it was not entirely unpleasant. A surge of relief flowed through him at the notion that he might at last escape the hellish Deathlands. He might be only moments away from the afterlife, in fact.

  How long had it been since he’d last seen his wife and children outside his own memory, dreams or hallucinations? How many seeming eternities had he endured without the loved ones who’d once formed the bedrock of his existence?

  And yet, he’d been part of some dark and violent doings in his years in the Deathlands. What if his soul was soiled, no longer fit to join his family in heaven?

  He would find out soon enough, it seemed. As he continued to rush onward, the heat in his body banked into a roaring fire. Every nerve screamed out that the change was about to strike; whatever form it would take, it was only seconds away. And all he could do was swoop forward and wait for the outcome.

  Doc could see nothing but a field of featureless yellow, but he closed his eyes anyway. He hoped against hope that the next time he opened them, he would see his beloved Emily smiling back at him.

  Head filled with crackling, body burning with heat, he rushed along a straightaway, then slid through a tight curve. He remembered what was coming next—a blaze of white light…

  Before it could flare around him, Doc found himself shooting out of the tube, flying like a bullet from a barrel through open, empty space.

  He came down in a soft, dry dune, landing feetfirst on his back at the end of his flight. His momentum drove him in up to his waist, leaving him half-buried and coughing up puffs of fine sand. It was then, as he opened his eyes, that the blaze of white light he’d been expecting burst to life.

  The light quickly faded but left him blinded for a moment. Still coughing, he blinked away the pulsating spots left behind in his eyes, eventually glimpsing bright blue sky between them.

  Then he glimpsed a familiar face smiling down at him—only it wasn’t the face he’d hoped for during his race through the chute. It wasn’t the face of a member of his family.

  Clearly he was nowhere near heaven.

  “Here we are.” It was Ankh, who looked perfectly calm and collected, not at all as if he’d just ridden at lightning speed through an underground slideway. “End of the ride.” Smiling, he reached down.

  Doc took his hand and let Ankh help him sit up. “Has everyone else arrived, as well?” Doc asked the question
carefully, not wanting Ankh to know the real reason for his concern: that some of the shifters might have been lost in the wave of transformation while still in the tube. The less Ankh knew about Doc’s new ability to sense changes in the Shift, the better.

  “Every last one of them,” Ankh replied. “They all got through just in time, before the slideway turned into that.” He gestured at something behind Doc.

  The old man turned to see what was back there and couldn’t suppress a gasp. The exit of the slideway, which had to have been a hole in the ground just like the entrance, was nowhere to be seen.

  In its place, a tower of glittering ebony crystal rose at least fifty feet in the air. There was no sign of a slideway hole in the ground at its base, which extended in a graceful, sloping mantle for dozens of feet on each side of its vertical axis.

  “Beautiful.” Doc slowly stood and turned to face the tower. “Is it made of onyx, I wonder?”

  “Who cares?” Ankh asked. “It will be no less beautiful for whatever it’s made of.”

  Doc kept staring upward, transfixed. He could hardly believe the tower had come into being on its own, and so quickly. Frankly, he thought, it was miraculous, one of the most beautiful things he’d seen in all his time in the Deathlands.

  And that was really saying something—but not because the Deathlands were full of beautiful things. It was more because the Deathlands had so little beauty compared with his home and home era. Sometimes, in fact, he thought there was no beauty at all in the blasted, blighted ruins that had once been a great nation.

  Yet here was proof to the contrary. The crystal spire twinkled in the late-afternoon sunlight, every dark facet dancing with bright sparks.

  If he’d been a few seconds later getting out of the slideway, this thing would have killed him. But now it took his breath away with its simple beauty and splendor. He wanted to run his hands over its smooth facets, feeling what he imagined to be its cool, gem-like surface. He felt as if he could gaze at it all day, drinking in the details of its grandeur.

  Instead, he was snapped out of his reverie by the shrill, abrasive voice of Exo.

  “We made some good time there, didn’t we?” For once, there was no candy stick in his mouth. Had he lost it in the slideway? “We covered about five miles, according to the navigators.”

  “Five miles north.” Ankh raised his eyebrows. “That means we’re nearly there.”

  “The core?” Doc asked.

  Exo nodded excitedly and rubbed his hands together. “Our destiny is imminent. Your time to shine is almost upon you, William Hammersmith, the part of your life they will write songs about in ages to come.”

  “Ah, yes.” Doc nodded with feigned enthusiasm. “Everything has been leading up to this, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has, my friend.” Exo swaggered over and punched him in the upper arm hard enough to hurt, as usual. “I envy you, being a chosen conduit for power and a witness to greatness.”

  Doc bowed a little. “Truly, it is an honor beyond imagining.” He had to fight to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  “Meanwhile, the forces of Struggle now roar ever closer to your malevolent abductors. Soon enough, those monsters will be slaughtered.”

  “An outcome much to be desired.” The urge to slash Exo with the razor blade welled up within Doc’s heart. He might have given it a try if he’d thought he could have finished the deed.

  “The outlanders’ location is known to us, thanks to a faithful friend in the enemy camp,” Exo said. “The battle will most likely ensue at dawn tomorrow, and conclude very shortly thereafter.”

  “Wonderful!” Ankh said. “Such heroes, wouldn’t you agree, William?” He cast an encouraging look in Doc’s direction.

  “Our brave fighting men and women are to be commended.” Doc nodded, hoping his words had been sufficiently convincing, though he hadn’t said anything against his own people.

  “Excellent!” Exo lunged as if he was going to lash out, and Doc flinched, but the move was just a feint. Laughing, Exo quickly danced back from Doc. “Now come on! Quit standing around! The sooner we start marching, the sooner we reach the core!”

  He feinted at Doc again, then hurried away to rally his men for the march.

  As soon as Exo left, Doc relaxed. “So we are almost there.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ankh nodded. “Which means you and I need to have a talk about the future. About how this is all going to play out when we get to the core.”

  “Good. I have been wondering.”

  “We’ll make it work, don’t worry. Trust me, the two of us can’t fail.”

  “I like the way you think.” Even as Doc said it, he patted the pocket where he was keeping the razor blade from Struggle. Between the blade and his newfound ability to sense changes in the Shift, he didn’t feel as if he was empty-handed anymore. That was a good thing, since Ryan and the others were nowhere in sight, leaving Doc to his own devices.

  If he wanted a rescue, he would have to engineer it himself. At another time in his life in the Deathlands, he would have viewed this as an impossible proposition, one he would have refused. But somewhere along the road since his abduction by the shifters, he had made a decision. If no one was coming for him, or coming in time, he would take it upon himself to do everything he could to win his own freedom. He wasn’t about to surrender and let mad Exo destroy him, not without a fight.

  Come what may, he was going to have to become his own Ryan Cawdor.

  Chapter Thirty

  Jak knew he was taking a risk when he stepped outside, but he was desperate for some fresh air. Walking through the Devil’s Slaughterhouse at night was dangerous, but he wasn’t the kind of person who liked being cooped up for too long.

  He and the others had already been in Hammersmith’s lab for hours. They’d decided to stay the night there—camping on the floor with their bedrolls—but had agreed to leave first thing in the morning, with or without Hammersmith.

  Morning wasn’t soon enough for Jak to take a walk, though. He needed to feel the wind on his skin, see the moonlight, hear the crickets and night birds. It was possible, in the Slaughterhouse, that those crickets might have laser-beam eyes, and the birds might emit acid sprays from their beaks, but Jak wasn’t worried. As always, he was confident in his ability to handle any threat, and the risk was worth it. Getting out for a while would keep him sane; plus, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little surveillance.

  And he had another reason for being out there, too. He wanted to see if Union was anywhere nearby, after being away from the group for hours.

  Had she left for good? Jak thought it was possible. It had been a long time since she’d stormed out after revealing her history with Hammersmith. She’d been iffy about working with the group from the beginning; maybe having Hammersmith thrown into the mix had been the last straw.

  Or not. As Jak walked around the base of the next hill, he spotted Union’s unmistakably lithe form gliding toward him.

  “Look what cat drag in.” Jak smiled as she approached. “Gone long time.”

  “I needed some time alone. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  Taryn was running Union just then; the black braid confirmed it. But Jak wasn’t sorry he was facing the ice-maiden personality. “Yeah, appreciate.” In fact, she was his favorite of the four. “Better now?”

  “I’m not sure.” Union frowned. “No worse anyway.”

  Jak nodded. “Where been?”

  “I don’t know.” Her frown deepened. “Why do you care?”

  “Curious.” Jak shrugged. “Taking walk myself, wonder what see or avoid.”

  “There’s nothing. Just wasteland for miles. The mutie creatures must all be asleep or elsewhere or something.”

  “So.” Jak narrowed his ruby eyes and stared at her. “Coming back Hammersmith’s place? Turning in?”

  “I don’t want to, but yes.” There was resignation in her voice. “There’s no place safer to bed down, that’s for sure. As long as that
son of a bitch keeps his distance.”

  “Not need worry ’bout him,” Jak said. “Rest of us have back.”

  “Is that so?” She looked and sounded suspicious. “We barely know one another.”

  “Part of team now. Like family. Take care of you.”

  Union’s braid turned auburn, and she sneered. “You’re full of shit, Jack Sprat. Just trying to sweet-talk us into letting you in our pants.”

  “Tell like it is. Not alone anymore.”

  She stared at him for a moment, but he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing. Her expression was unreadable—eyes steady, brow creased slightly, jaw set, head tipped forward—but the braid was what caught his attention.

  It was striped with all four colors now: black, auburn, white and brown. What could that mean, if it was more than a trick of the moonlight? That all four personalities were acting in concert?

  “We are never alone.” When she spoke, her voice sounded different, deeper, darker. “We are four women in one body, remember?”

  Jak watched and listened, mesmerized. It was then, as if on cue, that the first of the fireflies appeared.

  They drifted in lazy looping swirls, blinking as they gathered nearby—but they were no kind of ordinary fireflies. Each bug had multiple nodes on its body, illuminating in sequence, and the nodes were different colors, all the colors of the spectrum.

  Jak focused on a single mutant firefly as it swirled around him. Its lights winked as if signaling a secret code: red, yellow, green, purple, red. Another firefly glided after it, lighting up in the opposite order: red, purple, green, yellow, red.

  “Look.” Jak grinned as he watched yet another firefly drift past. “Cool, huh?”

  Union folded her arms over her chest and looked unimpressed. “They will probably shock you to death or impregnate your brain or something.”

  Jak brushed a hand through the air, stirring fireflies like stardust. “Who say everything deadly?”

  In spite of herself, Union’s eyes lit on one of the twinkling bugs as it floated past her face. “Don’t be fooled. These are probably lures for some monstrous carnivore about to pounce on us.”