by James Axler
Despite the raised voices and the inevitable noise of a sudden run down loose ground, neither party seemed to draw attention from the Sunchildren. There were very few of them at the edges of the ville, the majority of them now converging on the central arena, where the three poles of impaled children were now surrounded by kindling that was being doused in some kind of foul-smelling oil.
The muties were chanting louder and more intensely, with the keening edge growing higher and more desperate. On the belts of leather and material that kept their robes together, their blades glinted in the firelight.
The party led by Harvey arrived at the bottom of the hill and into the bowl of the valley. Harvey and Downey flattened themselves against the back of the ranch house; Ryan and Krysty took shelter behind a shack, while the others used some of the tents as cover, keeping low.
It was here that Ryan made the first chill.
The one-eyed man trod stealthily around the side of the shack that was sheltering himself and Krysty, measuring his footfall while the redhead kept him covered. Although his senses were on triple red, he was fairly sure that the shack was empty as all the muties seemed to have gathered in the center of the ville.
He didn't reckon on those that were too ill to make the ceremony.
Time seemed to freeze and then move with a painful slowness as he stepped past the opening at the front of the shack, only to feel a hand snake out and grab at his ankle. It took him by surprise as he had seen nothing from the periphery of his vision. The hand came from his blind side, emerging from the corner of an eye where there existed only an empty socket.
The grip was feeble, but exuded an uncanny strength when Ryan twisted, trying to free his boot while also turning to see what had taken hold of him.
The arm was wizened and covered in open sores, blistered and bleeding. It had crude tattoo marks all the way up to the elbow, in some spiraling and arcane design. As Ryan pulled harder, a face appeared in the dim light of the ville's outer reaches. It was a parody of a human face, with no chin, a formless nose and eyes that were aligned at a forty-degree angle across the forehead. The mouth was a toothless, gaping maw, opening with a dull croak that threatened to get louder with each breath.
Ryan didn't want to risk a shot from the SIG-Sauer, alerting the chanting Sunchildren, so he drew the panga from its thigh sheath and sliced down through the night air. The momentum of the razor-sharp blade carried it deep into the skull of the mutie, driving through the softened bone of the skull and cleaving clean through to the palate.
It was just a pity that the momentum stopped before the panga blade tore into the larynx, as the mutie let out a high-pitched and piercing scream as it died. A scream that cut through even the loudness of the chanting.
The scream was followed by an eerie silence as Ryan felt the grip loosen on his boot, freeing him.
SUNCHILD, THE CHOSEN, hereditary leader of the ville, stopped in midchant, arms raised. The muties gathered at the foot of the poles, about to ignite the kindling and fire the sacrifices, looked at their leader, a questioning look spreading across their dull visages. Sunchild, raised in a stagnant genetic pool altered only by mutation, was little more than a drooling idiot, but a drooling idiot with a strong sly streak running through him, and a cold ruthlessness unhindered by any intelligence or thoughts of morality.
If there were intruders, he would add them to the sacrifice, and the gods would gorge on energy, as would his people. He turned and caught sight of a flash of white hair and red eyes burning in a pale face, a flash that was followed by the roar of a blaster and a burning sensation across his shoulder.
He screamed, and his people were suddenly galvanized from their frozen stupor, the chanting beginning again in earnest as they turned back to face the surrounding ville, blades coming to hand.
AS SOON AS the silence hit, Jak took one look at Ant and Dee.
"Something's fucked up," Ant whispered.
Jak nodded. "Hit fuckers fast."
Before the sec men had a chance to register what was happening, Jak streaked forward from cover, skipping nimbly over the detritus of the ville, spread out between the shacks and tents, making for the central arena where the Sunchildren were gathered. J.B. was on his tail, moving on a path that would take him into the center. Mildred was close behind, dropping to one knee at the side of a shack and leveling her ZKR, taking aim to pick off the first mutie to move.
Doc once again took the sec men by surprise, his long thin legs taking him on a path that cut between two tents, the heavy LeMat percussion pistol ready to discharge into the throng of the multicolored enemy.
"Damn, boys, we're gonna miss the fun," Blake complained, taking off in pursuit. The twins exchanged glances before raising their shotguns and following.
By the time they had taken their first step, Sunchild himself had already seen Jak, and taken the slug from the Colt Python .357 in the shoulder, the grazing blow taking a chunk of bloody flesh from the top of his shoulder joint and sending him spinning as the momentum of the slug drove him around in a circle before collapsing.
"THAT'S FUCKED things," Bodie breathed as Ryan withdrew his panga from the now chilled mutie and returned it to its sheath as he turned, raising the SIG-Sauer to the first of the muties that came toward the group, following the direction of the cry.
The roar of Jak's blaster and the scream of Sunchild momentarily halted the onrush, and some of the muties turned, their chanting stopping.
"Now!" Harvey screamed, coming from cover. He and Downey started to fire, picking their targets and watching the muties fall as every slug hit home. Bodie, Jake and Rankine also came from cover, firing as they advanced, taking steady steps with each discharge, cutting through the muties.
Ryan and Krysty were also cutting a strong swath, each shell from the SIG-Sauer and the Smith & Wesson counting not just for one mutie down, but also for another two or three turning in panic or confusion.
On the other side of the arena, J.B. was chopping down the muties with ease, the short, controlled blasts of the Uzi taking out two or three at a time. In the confusion, he couldn't tell whether they were chilled or merely injured, but that was unimportant. He and Jak were through to the center, where he shouldered the Uzi while Jak holstered his Python. The wounded behind them were now the responsibility of Doc, Mildred and the sec men.
The Armorer and Jak cleared away the kindling with hands and feet, working at the poles to loosen their grip in the ground, ignoring the smell and sight of the children before them.
"Dark night," the Armorer breathed, "how the fuck did they get them in here?"
"Who cares? How get out?" Jak gasped, sinews straining as he worked at a pole.
"Jak, watch out!" was yelled from behind him. The albino whirled in time to see a purple-clad mutie, snarling with an unreasoning hatred, throw himself forward with a bayonet blade grasped in his fist. The albino stepped to one side, parrying the mutie's arm and watching him fall.
The mutie came to his feet in a roll, ready to spring forward once more. Jak was in the process of drawing his Python when he heard a deafening roar beside him, and the mutie's midsection dissolved into ribbons of blood, flesh, intestine and splintered bone as the grapeshot from the LeMat tore into him.
Doc lowered the blaster beside Jak. "Come, lad, let us get these poor children's corpses unstaked."
Jak turned. Three of the stakes were now lying flat, with Dean and J.B. both laboring on two of the remaining three while the sec men from Raw kept them covered.
There was no sign of the other group.
"Fireblast! Where are they coming from?" Ryan yelled above the roar of the chanting and of blasterfire.
"They heard us first, lover, so we've got the lion's share," Krysty replied over the clashing noise. She could see the other party freeing the stakes and holding their ground.
And as suddenly as it had started, they were through to the center themselves, with Harvey and Downey close behind.
"Where's Dean?" R
yan yelled to the sec chief, losing sight of his son. Harvey shrugged.
Rankine was pinned down by three muties, his Lee Enfield .303 having been knocked from his grasp by a thrown rock. While Jake and Bodie were in front of him and plowed on regardless, Dean was close enough to spot the three muties descend. They were too close to Rankine for the youngster to risk a shot, so he holstered his Browning Hi-Power and flew at them. A high kick caught one at the point of his jawbone, just beneath the ear, shattering the bone and driving shards of it into his brain.
The second mutie was grabbed by the hair, his head pulled back and a straight-handed chop to the throat taking him out.
Rankine was able to deal with the third mutie himself, grasping fingers reaching the barrel of the Lee Enfield. Pulling it into his grip and grasping tighter, he swung it so that the stock crashed across the mutie's nose, bloodying his face and throwing him backward.
"Thanks, kid," the sandy-haired sec man puffed as he struggled upright.
"Thank me if we get out of here," Dean returned with one eye on the surrounding crowd of muties. Some of them had started to fight one another, confusion and blood lust clouding any reason they possessed.
Rankine and Dean joined the others in the center. Dean joined Mildred in positioning one stake on their shoulders. Rankine and Jake took another, while Ant and Dee took a third.
"Form a circle, fire out when need be, and we head for the main road," Harvey said. "I know these fuckers. Once we get out of the light, they'll be too scared to follow."
"Hope so," Ryan said shortly. The odds still bothered him. As did the fact that Doc seemed to be choosing the wrong time to get distracted, staring at the painted totem.
Doc turned to the one-eyed man. "If—when—we get out, then I fear I shall have something of import to discuss," he said with a worried frown.
"Worry me later," Ryan returned. "This is gonna be a bitch."
It was about to get worse. The sound of a blaster discharging cut through the chanting and yells of the muties.
"I thought you said they didn't have blasters!" J.B. yelled at Harvey.
Chapter Eight
It was Sunchild himself who had the blaster. Where he had found it was something none of them could ever know—the fact that he had no idea how to use it was undeniable.
The mutie leader appeared in the middle of the crowd, the scarlet of his blood blending with the colors on his robes, running together in a mess of red as it flowed from the wound in his shoulder. Whatever else, the mutie leader had immense reserves of strength and stamina. He waved the blaster in the air, yelling in a fury even more incoherent than the chanting he had previously led.
It was hard to see in the glare of the firelight, but it looked like a long-barreled blaster, possibly a .44 Colt Peacemaker. The Armorer strained his eyes to tell, wanting to know how many shots the mutie would have left. Especially as he had just discharged the second round.
None of the party had seen where the first shot was directed, but it was an even bet that it was as random as the second, which fired off at an oblique angle, stopped by the soft flesh of a mutie with only one arm, the other showing just a few fingers flapping at the shoulder.
Now the mutie had no arms, its only true limb blown off at the elbow by the heavy lead slug, ripping sinew, flesh and bone at such short range.
The companions and sec men encircled the poles, facing out. What had been difficult before was now shaping up to be a deadly proposition.
"You said they didn't have blasters," Ryan stated flatly. "Our entire attack was based on that…but they do."
Harvey shook his head, momentarily thrown. "Never seen the bastards use them before. Didn't even know that they had them," he whispered.
"Seems certain they don't know how to use them," J.B. snapped, "so mebbe we'd better get going before they do."
Harvey nodded. "We keep tight, lay down a covering fire, staggering shots to preserve ammo. But first I think we need to carve ourselves a little path."
The uncertainty that had plagued his voice a few moments before was now gone as the sec man's tactical brain clicked into gear, going through the permutations of what was possible in this situation.
From the leather bag at his belt he produced an old gren. He pulled the pin and lobbed the bomb overarm toward the road out of the ville. Ryan noticed that a few of the muties automatically followed the path of the gren as its dark shape arced in the light, their inbred idiocy responding to stimulus, even in the middle of a battle.
The sec men laid down a volley of fire, driving the muties back, while Harvey counted carefully, hissing the numbers between his teeth, until he screamed, "Now!"
He hit the ground hard. The sec men around him did likewise. The companions took only a split second between them to realize what Harvey had been counting, and followed.
The gren exploded, either on impact with the ground or else in the air directly above. It was hard to tell, as it landed somewhere to the rear of the pressing crowd of mutie Sunchildren. Shrapnel from the gren spread out in all directions, and the air was suddenly filled with shrill screams as those at the rear of the crowd were either hit by the white-hot metal or thrown forward by the concussion of the blast.
There was more confusion among the ville dwellers, and a few more shots were loosed. J.B.'s experienced ears picked up that it was more than one blaster…a Peacemaker, probably Sunchild's, as he had suspected, and a Walther PPK, like the one carried by Blake. So there were at least two. The Armorer surmised that the blasters had been picked up from sec men claimed in raids by the Sunchildren in the past. It was obvious that they had no idea or experience of blasters, and probably only used them now because of the injury to their leader.
But even a blaster in the hands of an incompetent idiot was a threat. The sooner they moved out, the better.
"We go now, yeah?" he yelled as he scrambled to his feet.
"Head out!" Harvey returned.
The party scrambled to its feet, the circle of sec laying down fire that kept the Sunchildren at bay. They had pressed forward from the back, and those at the front were seeking to move back, away from the blasterfire. The result was that the muties had got themselves into a tangle of limbs and falling bodies on either side of a clear pathway. For, as Harvey had figured, the forward force of the gren explosion had parted them, driving them to one side of the point on the dirt road where the gren had landed.
In fact, this was the major obstacle that confronted the party on the way out. There was a large hole in the road where the gren had dug out a gouge of earth, and the pole carriers had to negotiate the treacherous sliding earth at the sides of the earthen indent.
Once past that, the resistance they encountered became almost negligible. As Harvey had told them, the confused and cretinous Sunchildren had preferred to stay in the light, only a few thrown blades and the odd stray shot following them, and causing no danger.
The incline out of the valley was wearing on those carrying the poles, and once they were in open country, with just a faint, angry buzz of sound from the ville of Samtvogel all to remind them it was there, the party swapped over. Ryan and Harvey took one pole, and the lead on the route back.
It was quiet, and they traveled in silence, all the companions wondering silently why it was so important to recover the chilled corpses. Harvey and his sec men kept an uneasy silence, unwilling to say anything in front of the strangers.
Doc was keeping pace with the front runners of Ryan and Harvey, cradling his LeMat and keeping an eye out for anything that moved across the arid plain. He seemed to be deep in thought, deeper than any of the others.
Finally, he turned to the one-eyed warrior.
"Ryan, my dear friend and leader, there is something I shall have to share with you," he said insistently.
Ryan shot him a warning look, fixing him with his steely eye. Doc appeared to notice and take heed, for his tone changed noticeably.
"It is, ah, a personal matter, and perhaps now i
s not the time…but certainly I shall need to converse with you on something that is causing me much alarm."
The old man moved away, with a backward glance at Harvey that made the sec man curious. Downey, keeping guard in a similar parallel position to Harvey as Doc was to Ryan, also noted the old man's behavior, and made note to himself to keep an eye on the crazy old man—who perhaps wasn't as crazy as he seemed.
THEY MADE easy progress through the edges of old Seattle, past the apartment building and through the forest, Harvey and his sec men leading them on a path that only a thorough working knowledge of the territory could reveal. They went farther into the forest than Ryan and his people had penetrated before their first encounter with the sec force.
Here, the many-colored flowering plants decreased in favor of the mutated and stunted trees, which grew from the mounds of rubble. The creeping vines were more prevalent, flowering white and sweet smelling, the flowers open even at night. The tilted buildings, standing firm yet looking precarious on mounds of moved earth, their structures yielding slowly to gravity. Varieties of vine crawled across the spaces between buildings, forming a ceiling of green, sentient plant life that kept that part of the forest in perpetual twilight.
"Not much farther." Harvey spoke suddenly, his voice surprising in the silence engendered by their journey. It was a response to a question he had felt had been unspoken for some time. "You wouldn't have found the entrance, even with the map," he continued with a note of pride creeping into his voice. "We're real careful to keep ourselves hidden. You never know what's around…"