by James Axler
Turning fast, the boneman started to yell a warning, when the entire world seemed to explode, and bodies went flying into the trees like burning rag dolls….
AS THE AFTERNOON faded into evening, Ryan called a halt to their progress for the day. There were still some lingering aftereffects of whatever drug had been used to render them unconscious, and everybody needed some rest. The smoked fish and rolls had made decent sandwiches during the ride, but now it was time for a hot meal and some proper sleep.
Making camp in a glen, the companions fed and watered the horses from a small creek trickling through the weeds. Then they curried the animals clean, carefully checking for any wounds that might fester. But the horses were undamaged and nuzzled their new owners to show they were ready to keep going. After so many years of dragging the slave wags, the weight of a single rider meant nothing to the hardy animals. However, the companions had been pushed as far as they could go this long day and ached for some real sleep.
Pitching the canvas tent, the weary companions dug a pit to hide their campfire and cooked dinner—fish stew, as there was nothing else, aside from the grain for the horses. Afterward, the friends spent a few hours cleaning and tailoring their new clothes until sleep sounded a clarion call, and everybody piled into the tent to share the two thin blankets, all of them far too exhausted to even try standing guard. Hopefully, the horses would warn them of any intruders in the night.
The sun was high in the sky when the companions finally stumbled out of the tent, yawing and scratching. Breakfast was the same as dinner—stale bread and dried fish—but the food eased the ache in their bellies and was good enough for the present.
Washing as best as possible in the tiny creek, the companions got dressed and strapped on their new weapons. Ryan had a strip of torn cloth tied around his head in lieu of his former eyepatch, deerskin moccasins and a rope belt on his pants that supported a bullwhip and a machete. A battered leather bag was slung over a shoulder, containing plastic jars of black power, lead balls and wadding for his longblaster, plus two spare flints.
Unable to find a pair of pants that she could wear without tripping over the loose folds of cloth, Krysty was wearing one of the slavers’ huge shirts as a makeshift dress, the material reaching midthigh. A canvas gun belt cinched around her trim waist supported two flintlock pistols and a small knife.
Amused by the Old West appearance of the woman, Mildred started to make a comment about Annie Oakley, but then decided reticence would be the wiser course, since she was wearing something similar, with the hem reaching to her shins. Mildred hadn’t been able to find a pair of shoes that fit her feet, and so had made peasant boots, or whatever they had been called back in the Middle Ages. The boots were just thick folds of cloth wrapped around her feet and legs, lashed into place with leather straps. Between the boots and the shirt, not an inch of her showed below the neck.
Passing on a flintlock, Mildred was armed with a crossbow and a full quiver of arrows, along with a .22 zipgun. The numbing recoil of the black-powder pistols hurt her hands, and a physician without a delicate sense of touch would be worse than useless during surgery. She would have to depend upon accuracy, instead of stopping power.
In contrast, J.B. had managed to trim down some of the slavers’ clothing to a reasonable fit, although the cloth was covered with stains that he didn’t want to think about too hard. The pepperbox longblaster was rigged to hang across his chest with a sling made from the leather reins, and an unsheathed machete was tucked into a rope belt. J.B. considered them both excellent weapons for a man who couldn’t see very clearly. In tight confines, he would be as deadly as ever.
The wiry man also had a loose sack slung over a shoulder. The inside of it reeked of smoked fish, but it now held a couple of pounds of black powder wrapped in cloth bundles, some spare wadding, five worn flints that needed to be resharpened, a plastic bottle half-full of shine, some rope cut to the various lengths and a single butane lighter. It was a feeble collection in comparison to the formidable armament the man had formerly carried in his munitions bag, but it was a start, and that was what counted.
Sporting another .75 musket, Jak was in a tunic made from a shirt, horsehide moccasins and rag leggings that reached his knees. His wide leather belt bristled with five assorted knives, none of them with a decent edge yet, and the hatchet, which had been honed to a razor edge during the long ride yesterday.
After some due consideration, Doc hadn’t altered the clothing of the chilled slavers, instead concentrating on pounding out the various stains and smells with a rock and a little sprinkle of black powder. His shirt and pants were almost clean now, although ridiculously loose, the excess material fluttering in the breeze. The old man was overarmed with a bullwhip, crossbow, a machete and a .22 zipgun. To help manage the weight of the canvas gun belt, the man had added two leather straps that hung over his shoulders like suspenders.
“Not run fast carrying weight,” Jak stated with a snort.
“True, but I am astride a horse at the moment, so I have no need to challenge Hermes,” Doc retorted, checking the draw of his zipgun. “Besides, the best defense is a good offense!”
The homemade weapon was made from a block of soft wood, some copper pipe, a roofing nail and a mousetrap. It looked like junk, but there were notches in the handle. So either it did work, or else the previous owner was a blowhard.
Probably a little of both, Doc decided.
Breaking down the campsite, the companions packed everything away carefully, then buried the campfire. They rode around in circles for a few minutes to disguise their numbers, then continued along the fading trail of the wags. If there had been any rain, acid or otherwise, they would have been completely out of luck. But so far, the weather had held, the dark clouds overhead merely rumbling. Stubby grass was already starting to grow where older plants had been crushed under the weight of the wooden wheels, and Jak often had to stop and study the ground for minutes before figuring out which way the slavers had come from.
Animals were in the dwindling forest, and the companions hunted along the way, using the crossbows as much as possible so that Big Joe and his people wouldn’t hear their approach. It also gave Mildred and Doc some much-needed practice of quickly reloading the cumbersome weapons. The bows were made from the leaf-springs of predark cars and required a lot of raw muscle to pull back into position.
By late afternoon, the pommels of every saddle were festooned with rabbits and squirrels. Jak had brought down a hawk in flight using his hatchet.
“Might good balance,” the albino teen said, grinning as he extracted the blade from the fallen hawk.
An apple tree had yielded the last of the summer fruit, and Mildred had collected a good supply of wild onions and dandelion leaves.
“Find taters, I make stew tonight,” Jak said, honing the edge of a knife across the top of a smooth stone he had found. The steel was slowly getting a decent edge.
“We don’t have any bowls or spoons,” Krysty reminded him, plucking the feathers off the hawk as they rode through the rolling countryside.
“I can carve us some of those,” Doc said confidently, then grinned. “Just not enough for everybody in the span of a single day.”
As evening fell, the companions stopped to make camp in a wooded glen alongside a small creek. There were plenty of bushes to hide their campfire and enough wildlife to tell them that no big muties infested the area.
Dinner that night was the roasted hawk with dandelion greens and onions simmering in the dripping fat. The apples were given to the horses to extend the dwindling supply of grain and grass. Properly gutted and skinned, the rabbits were set to smoke above the smoldering embers to preserve them for the following day, and the companions were forced to turn their attention away from the delicious smells coming from the slow-roasting meat.
Each of the companions stood guard through the night, J.B. being an exception due to his poor eyesight, watching the darkness for any indication of suspic
ious movement. But the world was hushed and still, as if for a brief time, it had forgotten about them completely.
Or more likely, it was merely the calm before the storm, Ryan thought in somber contemplation before fading into sleep.
An hour after huddling in conversation with Ryan, J.B. strode to where Mildred had hunkered down, only to discover that Mildred had moved both of their bedrolls off to the side, partially obscured from the rest of the companions by some flowering bushes.
“Evening, John,” Mildred said with an inviting smile, as the man stepped out of the night.
“I thought you might be too tired tonight after everything we did today,” J.B. said. As he approached, he saw that Mildred had one leg tantalizingly exposed to the hip, her full breasts only slightly covered by an arm supporting the rough horse blanket. Millie looked like a goddess, and the man struggled to find the right words to say so.
“Never that tired.” She smiled, blushing from his frank appraisal. “How about you?”
“Millie, you are always just like a bullet,” J.B. stated with conviction.
Puzzled, the woman arched a questioning eyebrow.
“You always get under my skin,” he explained with a grin.
She laughed and, pretending to stretch, allowed the blanket to slip from her arm. Her nipples instantly hardened at the touch of the cool night air, and J.B. inhaled at the glorious sight, then began to quickly remove his clothing, hanging it over the bushes to afford the couple the tiniest bit more of privacy.
As the man undressed, Mildred watched him with growing interest. The wiry man was covered with scars: the puckered circles of a bullet wound, the slash of a knife, acid burns and the freckling tones of shrapnel. She knew that he had lived a hard life before they met, and that history was burned into his flesh. Born a century apart, they were exact opposites, the healer and the killer, yet Mildred loved J.B. in a way she found difficult to express, or even to fully understand. But that was the mystery of life. Sometimes lightning hit, and a person was changed forever. There was no rhyme or reason, just the unalterable fact that when you found that special somebody the knowledge filled your mind and body until it seeped into your very soul.
“Dark night, I feel so damn naked,” J.B. said, slipping under the blanket.
“Bullshit, you just miss that damn fedora.” Mildred chuckled softly, running her hand across the top of his head.
“That, too,” he admitted honestly, then leaned in to kiss the woman full on the lips, gently at first, savoring the delicious contact.
The couple parted and smiled, then kissed again, this time their mouths open to allow their tongues free range as their passion began to grow. Eager hands began to explore familiar flesh. Mildred raised her head to breathe in deeply, and J.B. kissed her along the throat, savoring the salty tang of her sweaty skin. Softly, he whispered her name, and she looked at him with an eager smile, her eyes full of promise. Mouths and hands roamed freely, tasting, touching, stroking in a banquet of intimacy.
The two lovers began a dance as old as man, and for a brief time peace was granted to the weary travelers, who had somehow found a kind of heaven deep in the heart of the savage Deathlands.
Chapter Seven
The next day, small patches of sand appeared in the grass lands, reminding Doc of Scotland, and Mildred of a golf course. The companions were glad they had smoked the rabbits as they found a lot less game—only a couple of scrawny prairie chickens and a gopher. The reason for the lack of wildlife was soon abundantly clear when wispy streaks of salty sand extended into the greenery like the bony fingers of a corpse. By afternoon, the temperature had risen considerably, and the companions were riding over a mixture of grass and hard-packed sand, both areas twinkling with chunks of rock salt.
“The edge of the Great Salt,” Doc muttered, slowing his mount to an easy canter. “Behold, my friends, this is quite literally hell on Earth.”
“Just a desert,” Ryan muttered, adjusting the new leather patch covering his left eye again. The replacement patch was made from rabbit skin and was starting to curl along the edges. It kept making the man think there was an insect crawling on his face.
Reining her horse to a stop, Krysty slid out of the saddle and scooped up some of the smaller salt crystals. Taking her flintlock pistol, the woman pounded the salt in her hand, crunching it into much smaller particles, and offered it to Ryan.
“This’ll help cure that leather,” she said.
“Better than pissing on it,” Ryan agreed, taking off the patch and rubbing the salt into the leather as hard as possible. Hopefully, the salt would finish the curing process.
The rabbit skin had been thoroughly scraped and cleaned, then treated with its own brains. It was odd that there seemed to be just enough brains in most animals to cure their own hides, including man. Doc thought that was the work of the Lord; Mildred thought it was merely ironic.
“Not more tracks,” Jak said, leaning forward in the saddle. His horse snorted in pleasure as the teenager patted it on the neck.
“Don’t need them anymore,” J.B. said, shielding his face with a hand to study the cloudy sky. “Look there!” Just a few miles ahead of the companions were some vultures circling about in tight formation.
“Probably more folks asleep,” Ryan said in agreement, leaning forward in the saddle. “Those birds are carrion eaters, just waiting for the meat to tenderize.”
“You mean die,” Doc corrected with a dour expression.
“Same thing to a vulture,” Ryan said, kicking his horse into an easy gallop and pulling the longblaster out of the gun boot to cock back the hammer.
The companions heard the waterfall long before they saw it and spread out in a skirmish line to converge on the poisoned lake from different directions.
There were some bodies splayed on the ground, a man and a woman, his limp hand still touching the cool water. Both of the people were aced and covered with flies. Partially consumed, they both had most of their clothing torn away and long strips of skin removed from their still forms.
Hunching over the corpses was a feasting stickie. The humanoid mutie was using its sucker-covered hands to rip fresh pieces off the bodies and gobble them down, the grotesque face covered with blood and entrails.
Snarling a curse, Jak raised his longblaster, then stopped. Stickies often hunted in packs, and the red-blasted things were actually attracted to the sound of gunfire.
Holstering the blaster, the albino teen went for his throwing ax, when Mildred and Doc both sent arrows into the stickie. The bolts slammed into the mutie, driving it off the corpse to splash into the lake. Hooting in fright, the stickie tried to remove the arrows from its chest, when the hatchet arrived. With a meaty thwack, it split the forehead of the creature, pinkish brains splashing into the lake. Shuddering, the stickie knelt, went terribly still, then fell forward, the water becoming cloudy with spilled blood.
High overhead, the flock of vultures called out their annoyance at being denied a meal, and winged away in search of other carrion. For eaters of the dead, the Deathlands was always a bonanza of corpses.
Preparing for a rush by more stickies, the companions sat on their horses for a long time, weapons in hand, watching the shifting sands for any sign of more muties. But the dying hoots had either not been heard by others of its kind, or this stickie was a rogue and traveled by itself.
“Okay, we’re alone,” Ryan stated, easing down the hammer on the flintlock so there wouldn’t be unnecessary strain on the firing spring. “But from now on, we stand guard in pairs. Jak and me, J.B. and Mildred, Doc and Krysty.”
“So that there is always a crossbow and a blaster,” Doc said with a nod. “Most wise, my dear Ryan. Silence is golden, eh?”
“But a brass will save your ass,” J.B. countered, resting the enormous pepperbox across his saddle.
“Well,” Krysty said, “I don’t see any signs of a horse or a wag. Looks like these folks walked out of the Great Salt the same as we did.”
>
Scowling, Jak seemed as if he wanted to say something, but kept his peace. The albino teen thought the two people had to be feebs for both drinking at the same time from a strange waterhole. However, he recalled his own burning thirst when the companions stumbled out of the desert, and felt a little embarrassed at the outrage. Hunger made a person weak, but thirst drove you mad.
“And there, but for the grace of God, are us,” Mildred muttered, lowering her crossbow to make the sign of the cross.
Closing her eyes, Krysty said a brief prayer to Gaia for the strangers.
“Mildred, how long have these folks been aced?” Ryan asked, thoughtfully cracking the knuckles on a hand.
“Hard to tell in this heat,” she replied, studying the bodies. “Say…a couple of days. Certainly no more than five.”
“More like four,” Jak stated confidently.
“Then it’s just about time for Big Joe to come gather his new supplies,” Krysty growled in understanding. “Okay, Doc and I can bury the stickie behind a sand dune. Jak, do your best to erase our tracks, but be sure to leave the footprints of those two.”
“J.B. and Mildred, make the chilled look like they’re still alive and just asleep,” Ryan continued, hefting the longblaster. “I’ll stand guard.”
Wrapping the stickie in the waterproof canvas of the tent, Krysty and Doc got the mutie out of the lake, holding their breaths for no sane reason against the poisoned water. It just seemed like a wise precaution. Dragging the body off behind a dune, they found a small gully and rolled the stickie into the open ground. Recovering the arrows and hatchet, they used their bare hands to pile on rocks and loose sand.
“This foul abomination now becomes manna from heaven for the beetles and scorpions,” Doc muttered, steadily hoisting stones. “But then, the conqueror worms make feasts of us all, eh, dear lady?”
“I just hope the bugs like their meat well salted,” Krysty agreed, throwing handfuls of salty sand onto the bedraggled form.