Sunchild

by James Axler

  It seemed obvious that in the time directly after skydark, when the Deathlands was formed in the upheaval and devastation, this part of the country had suffered severe tremors and quakes that had lifted up a part of the ground that, by chance, contained the gateway to the redoubt. The sec doors to what had once been the entrance were probably hidden and decayed in the lush vegetation beneath. The maintenance and emergency shaft had only been protected and preserved by the concrete platforms of the graduated steps.

  They now took the opportunity to rest and recuperate before pressing on. Although it would be easy for them to be spotted from the lower levels, they also had a clear view of any potential enemy themselves. It would be impossible for anyone—except perhaps Jak—to move through the forest below without causing disturbance. The territory beyond the sheer drop was more sparsely vegetated, with the remains of a two-lane blacktop road about three miles to the east, with a ruined gas station and diner sitting on it like a toy. Anyone moving on the terrain would be as visible to them as they would be on top of the hill.

  "So which way you reckon we move, lover?" Krysty asked Ryan as the one-eyed man stood on the edge of the drop, scanning the horizon.

  "Guess we go down the rock face. It won't be easy, but it'll be less risky than going down into that forest," he said. "What do you say, J.B.?"

  The Armorer shrugged. "I don't reckon either of them, but seeing as we can't go back, either, I guess there isn't much choice."

  "Better danger seen than not seen," Jak added.

  "I take your point, gentlemen," Mildred said slowly, "but do you think all of us are up to it right now?"

  "Madam, I shall endeavor as always to do my best. I can ask no more nor no less of myself." Doc bridled.

  "Relax, you old coot, I wasn't particularly thinking of you," Mildred answered. "I'm not too sure about myself at the moment, and even more so about Dean."

  "I'll be fine," Dean spit. "You can save your worry."

  "Don't be a fool, boy," Ryan snapped harshly. "Mildred's right to a degree. You've been unconscious and haven't had a chance to recover. If you're concussed, then it could be a tricky descent."

  "I'll be fine, Dad. What are we going to do, wait here forever 'cause I've had a sore head or Jak needs a bandage on a grazed knee or—?"

  "That's enough," Krysty said softly. "If you stumble, we all do, remember?"

  Dean stood and stared for a moment, biting his tongue. Then his temper subsided, and he had to agree. "Yeah, you're right. But I'll be okay. I just won't be stupe about it."

  "Just as a matter of interest, where would you say we were… I mean in general geographic terms?" Doc broke the awkwardness by changing the subject. He knew the cloud cover would prevent J.B. from taking a reading with his minisextant.

  "My guess is to the north, probably more eastern than central, judging by that forest," Ryan replied, indicating the slope to their rear.

  "I would have thought so, too," Doc mused. "I wonder if that means the Illuminated Ones had their bases within more than just mat-trans distance to the so-called Erewhon?"

  Ryan pondered on that for a few moments. "You mean like within a fairly easy wag distance, in case they needed to do it over the surface? If the mat-trans failed and they were surface safe?"

  Doc nodded. "It's a thought, is it not? After all, it would fit with what little we know from the journal and also from the surrounding area."

  Ryan nodded. "Then we try and head north along that old road when we reach it. Head for the building first, see if there's anything there to salvage."

  "Sounds good to me," J.B. muttered. "Just got to get down there first…" As he spoke, he looked up to the sky. The dark, purple-tinged chem clouds overhead began to discharge a fine spray of rain that began to soak through.

  "Great, that's all we need," Dean said, hunching against the rain.

  "Feels fresh after all that dust," Mildred said absently.

  They all spent a few moments absorbing the rain, resting up with their thoughts before they began the descent.

  It was Doc who first noticed it. After scratching absently at an itch on his cheek, he rubbed the tips of his ringers together with a bemused expression.

  "What is it?" Ryan asked, his sharp eye catching Doc's gesture.

  "I think it may be time for us to move," Doc said with a distracted air. "My dear Dr. Wyeth, would you do me the honor of rubbing your fingers together?"

  "What?" Mildred gave Doc a puzzled stare. Then, seeing the seriousness of his expression, she rubbed the index and middle fingers of her left hand together. The texture of the skin on her fingertips was softened, almost soapy. As she rubbed, the skin peeled painlessly away.

  She felt her face, where the rain was gently falling. There was the same soapy texture.

  "A mild acidic solution, if I surmise correctly," Doc said.

  Mildred nodded, then said to Ryan, "We need to get going. It's a way to that roadhouse, and we need the shelter. Too much of this rain and it'll peel our skins off."

  Ryan nodded, tentatively fingering his own face. "Then we go now," he said simply.

  The descent down the sheer drop would be difficult for all of them. They had no equipment with which to facilitate the climb, and it would mean going down with nothing to link them together other than a thin nylon rope.

  Looking over the edge, Doc raised an eyebrow. "Well, at least it gets an incline after about thirty feet, so that will be the worst over with," he said with a grin.

  "That makes me feel a whole lot better," Mildred said sarcastically.

  Linking themselves together with the rope, they began the descent. Jak went first, as he had an instinctive talent for the climb, and would hunt out the best hand- and footholds he could find for the others. He was followed by J.B. and Mildred. Krysty came next, with Dean following. In both pairings, the former was to keep a close watch on the latter, in case their weakness following the landslide experience was to affect their ability during the descent. And for this reason, Ryan left Doc to bring up the rear, covering the older man. So if Doc stumbled and lost his footing, then Ryan would be able to take the strain.

  The descent began well. Jak found that the surface of the hill, although straight down, was pitted with enough outcrops to provide ample foot- and handholds. He crawled down the surface with ease, his hands and feet probing the surface for the largest pieces of jutting rock. Following in his wake, J.B. found the descent easier than he had feared.

  Mildred and Krysty had been wary for different reasons. Mildred was worried that her weariness would take a toll and Krysty had thought about doing the climb without her boots, concerned that they were far from suitable for such a climb. Jak's choice of footholds took that into account, however. Dean followed behind Krysty with barely a sign that he was exhausted. He marshaled his concentration in a single-minded display worthy of the Cawdor name.

  The one-eyed warrior noted this in his son as he followed on after, but suppressed his pride to concentrate on Doc.

  Doc was finding the climb difficult, and the light rain seemed to be more irritating to him than to the others. He was far more tentative in feeling for the hand- and footholds, and a couple of times Ryan had felt the nylon rope tighten as Doc had either moved away and pulled on it, or else had stumbled and almost fallen, his weight straining against Ryan.

  "Everything okay, Doc?" Ryan called.

  Doc replied with difficulty, his breath coming short and his tone distracted. "I shall get by, my dear Ryan, but I'm not saying it'll be easy."

  The rock face was bare of vegetation except for a few small patches of moss and one or two scrub trees that grew at awkward angles from fissures in the rock. One of these scrub trees was covered in sparse green foliage and appeared to house a nest of some kind. Always wary of the possibility of mutie birds, Jak had steered a path away from it, a path followed by the others in their descent.

  But not Doc.

  As he passed within a few feet of the scrub tree, Doc felt his f
oot slip on the small protrusion he rested it upon. It was his second such stumble in just a couple of moves, and he panicked momentarily. Flailing backward, his weight pulling against Ryan, he fell to his left. The nearest handhold was the scrub tree, and Doc grabbed for it gratefully.

  Below him, Ryan was glad for the strength of the wire-thin nylon rope as he felt it strain along its short length as Doc teetered above him. He wasn't so pleased as he looked at the scrub tree.

  "Good heavens!" Doc exclaimed as he steadied himself, his feet finding solid purchase beneath him, his balance regained. For the tree bent under his grip to reveal a bird's nest in the center. And in the nest were four jet-black chicks of a young age, their mouths open automatically for food at the movement of their nest. Their voices broke the quiet of the air with harsh, strident cries that belied their small size. He peered over them, momentarily enchanted and forgetting his precarious position.

  As one, they snapped at his face with strident cries, panic and fear of attack overtaking their desire to feed.

  The loud cries were echoed by a deeper, much more strident call. Doc looked up, and the only impression he received was of a black shape swooping down on him at great speed. He barely had time to raise an arm to protect himself before the bird was upon him, screeching loudly and pecking at him with a beak as hard as the rocks to which Doc clung.

  Doc hugged in close to the rocks, his face contorted in a rictus of pain as the flesh of his hand, clinging to the scrub, was ripped and torn by the slashing cross of the bird's beak, the stench of its body and the shiny black glare of its feathers filling his vision as the rhythmic beating of its wings and the hideous eardrum-splitting screech of its anger filled his ears.

  "Fireblast! Move away from the bastard, Doc," Ryan yelled as he drew the SIG-Sauer from its holster and tried to aim at the bird. It was mutated somewhere along its lineage from hawk, but the beak had developed into a honed knife-edge slashing machine. Its dark eyes gleamed dull hatred as it bobbed and weaved around Doc, hovering close to him, its ten-foot wingspan obscuring the man's huddled form. Ryan bobbed and weaved like the bird, trying to line up a shot that wouldn't risk hitting Doc, but it was proving impossible.

  Below the one-eyed warrior, Dean, Krysty and Mildred had all drawn their blasters. All were good target pistols, but the bird was saving itself by the sheer ferocity of its attack, staying too close to its prey for them to risk loosing a shot without hitting Doc.

  At the bottom of the rope, J.B. and Jak exchanged a hurried glance.

  "Too close for a shot," the Armorer yelled.

  Jak nodded his understanding, and was already scrambling up the rock face, the rope pulling tight against J.B. as the albino passed him. From the patched and ragged camou jacket, Jak panned one of the lethal and razor-sharp leaf-bladed knives with which he was so deadly. Taking aim, he let fly with a throw that propelled the knife straight and true for the flapping creature's vital organs.

  Jak was astonished to see the knife hit the black hawk's feathers and bounce harmlessly away. The bird didn't even seem to notice the knife's impact.

  "Hot pipe! The mutie must have armor for feathers," Dean exclaimed.

  "Figures," Mildred said. "If it rains like this, it'd be a protection against the acid."

  "Nice theory, Mildred, but it doesn't help Doc," Ryan shouted down to her, still trying to get in a clean shot at the bird. "Doc'll have to try and deal with this himself."

  Which was something Doc was attempting. His hand had almost gone numb on the scrub from the overload of nerve damage and pain he was feeling. He felt his frock-coat sleeve ripped by the iron-hard beak, and the similarly armored claws plucked at his pants, tearing through to the flesh beneath. He knew that unless he acted swiftly, he would be forced to let go of the scrub, let his other arm fall and leave his face and eyes vulnerable to attack.

  He had to chance all on one throw of the dice. Doc had not, in his youth, been a gambling man, recognizing the innate losing chance stacked against the fates. But since arriving in the Deathlands, he had learned that sometimes the long odds were the only ones.

  Like now…

  The bird's attack had been insistent and concentrated, yet not truly effective. Something at the back of Doc's mind told him that, sooner or later, the bird would have to fly away from him or change the angle of its attack in an attempt to penetrate his feeble defenses. When that happened, then he would have the briefest of moments in which to launch his own attack, or for his companions to come to his defense. Yet he knew he couldn't leave it to them, as they may be undergoing the same trial as himself.

  This was something he had to do alone. And it had to be soon. He prayed that his chance would come soon.

  As Doc's mind raced to formulate some plan of action, the black hawk screeched once more. But was that a note of irritation or frustration he could hear in its cry?

  His moment had come. The bird, tired of mounting a seemingly ineffective attack, had drawn back in order to change the angle at which it attacked the prone figure. As it hovered just a few feet away from him, shining black wings flapping loudly and remorselessly in the air, blocking the sun, Doc used his few seconds' respite in which to act.

  Still keeping his handhold on the scrub—for in truth his shredded flesh was too numb to move with any speed—Doc moved the arm that had been flung protectively across his face.

  It seemed to him that it moved in slow motion, but with a relentless inevitability. He didn't take his eyes from the bird as it hovered, and could see in the glittering dark eyes the recognition that he had made himself vulnerable to it. It wheeled in the air, rotating its body to swoop back and attack the unprotected face.

  All the while, Doc's free arm moved across his body to the LeMat, which he kept in his belt. The heavy double-barreled percussion pistol came up in his hand, leveled at the bird as it flew toward him.

  The black creature filled his vision, the heavy dark feathers gleaming in the light and rain with an oily, almost metallic sheen. The screech of the bird's cries were almost symphonic, so close to Doc that he could hear strange and wonderful voices in the cacophony that filled his ears. The razor-sharp, armored beak opened, exposing the red maw and fetid breath that was close enough to hit Doc in hot waves as it cried out. Underneath the bird's body, its claws were raised, ready to grip, tear and rend.

  It took an almost arrogant patience to wait until the barrels of the LeMat were nearly touching the beak as it closed in, a perfect grasp of timing as his strained arm muscles were trembling, causing the pistol to waver slightly. Just a moment too soon, and some of the shot may have missed the bird. A moment too late, and the talons would have caused serious—perhaps fatal—injury before he had discharged his shot.

  But Doc's timing was perfect. As the pistol touched the tip of the beak, his fingers tightened, gripping the stock of the pistol and squeezing the trigger. First one barrel, then the other, in succession so rapid that it almost sounded as one shot. A shot muffled by the explosion's enclosure in the bird's mouth.

  Ball and grape at enormous velocity discharged into the maw of the mutie bird. Although its outer feathers, and possibly the skin underneath, had become hardened and mutated to protect itself against the acid rains of the area, the inside of its body was still soft and fleshy. Even the armored beak could prove no protection against ball and grape at such close range.

  The bird screeched a high, almost inaudible note that was choked short as its throat disappeared in a spray of tangled flesh, blood and feather. The beak was ripped into sharp ribbons that whipped up into the glittering eyes, tearing them as it had torn at Doc and all its prey. The eyes, perhaps, registered surprise at its own natural advantage being turned against itself. But it was only brief, as life had already begun to flicker and die as the brain was pulped and mashed by shot that ricocheted around the skull, breaking through the top and spreading fine splinters of bone and feather into the air.

  For a split second, the rain became red, and the bird ho
vered at the apex of its flight, the body hanging in the air, bereft of a head. For the beak had become detached from the skull, which itself had imploded into thousands of fragments.

  The silence after the muffled explosion and the high-pitched cry was heavy and oppressive for that fraction of a second, broken only when the bird fell heavily, plummeting toward the bottom of the sheer rock face, hitting the incline where it began only a few feet from Jak. The weight of the bird pulled it to earth with increasing velocity, breaking the once fearsome body upon the rocks.

  While the others were still watching the bird fall, Ryan was edging toward Doc.

  "Doc," he said softly, "you ready to move?"

  Doc looked at Ryan.

  "I fear that I may still be paralyzed by fear, my dear… Oh God, I'm so sorry, my friend, but I fear your name has temporarily escaped me." Tears welled in the old man's eyes as he pushed the LeMat into his belt.

  "Don't worry about it, Doc," Ryan soothed, "it'll soon come back. You've done the hard part. Now, let's get out of this rain."

  "Yes, I fear that it may be a great mistake to stay out in the rain. One could always catch pneumonia."

  Although still trembling, Doc was able to descend from the rock face with a greater ease than any of the others would have thought possible, perhaps because there was still enough adrenaline flowing in his veins to give him the extra strength and sureness of foot needed to make the descent.

  Ryan kept close to the old man, just to make sure that he was able to make the descent, and was relieved when they were all on the flat earth.

  The corpse of the mutie hawk, already crawling with insects, caught his eye. "Did I do that?" he asked absently. "I seem to recall—"

  "I wouldn't worry about that right now," Mildred said gently, taking Doc by the arm. "Right now we just need to get to shelter."

  Covering the exposed areas of their flesh as best they could, they set out on the hike to the old roadhouse.

  "Mebbe we would have been better staying in the shaft," Dean complained as they trudged across the bare terrain, with hardly any scrub to provide shelter between the bottom of the hill and their destination.