by James Axler
Krysty felt her blood weeping out of her, felt the warm flow of it between her legs, and this heartened her. It signified an untapped energy of vast potency.
Slowly, warily, she swiveled her head to peer across the huge room. This part of it had been transformed into crude living quarters. The wide double bed she was lying on — in fact an old bed frame with a filthy, torn mattress covered by the blanket — filled the angle of one corner. There was a table nearby littered with candle stubs and loose rounds of ammunition. There were a few broken-backed chairs. Opposite her was a grimy window through which nothing could be seen, then a wide planked door, now closed, then another window as filthy as the first. The ceiling was high, high above her. It was dark up there.
Arranged around the walls, jammed down over angled hooks, was a grisly assortment of heads, male and female, hundreds of them, young and old, some fairly fresh, others in the final stages of decay. Sightless eyes gazed vacantly upward at nothing.
The heads of those slaughtered yesterday had not yet been trophied. Krysty did not know where they had been stored, and did not want to know. Their spirits had departed. In her mind she had said prayers for them to the Earth Mother, although Uncle Tyas had not believed in any gods at all, only science. Gods, he'd said, were capricious, whereas science was fixed and immutable. To the old argument that it was science that had virtually wiped out the world a century ago, he had testily pointed out that it was not science at all but people. People misusing science, using it for their own ends, to further their own greedy or stupid or insane ambitions. Krysty was with him in that, at least.
Her eyes moved on.
The rest of the storehouse had been divided at some time into two separate stories, but some of the floor of the upper chamber had long since rotted away. The partition, too, that had once separated the main two-level store from the living area had disappeared. Only a few planks here and there showed that a wall had ever existed.
On the lower level, the ground floor section, she could see Scale's armory and store. Guns were everywhere, some in piles, some stacked against the outer wall: MGs, rifles, shotguns. Some of the weaponry she could identify. There were rows of crates, mostly still sealed, stacked along the inner wall, three or four deep, five or six high. Many, she knew, contained canned food looted from land wag trains. There were other boxes she recognized. A crate of grenades, open, its top wrenched off, stood near the door. She had noted that one almost at once. She knew very well how to use a grenade. She knew very well how to handle an automatic rifle, too. In this, as in so much else, Uncle Tyas had been more than thorough when he took her in after her mother's death.
From where she lay, Krysty could not see the very farthest part of the building. That was where the man called Scale was. She could hear him muttering to himself as he kicked things over, wrenched at cardboard boxes, seeking something.
She wondered how much time she had.
She tried to relax. Forced herself to relax. To do what must be done required calmness, peace of mind. Not for long, however. Only as long as it took for her to be at peace with herself, and at one with herself. Under the circumstances, not easy. But she had to become like the invisible clock in her body, blind to everything but herself.
She closed her eyes, drifted. She felt as though she was on the edge of... what? Difficult to say. She tried to imagine a huge soft mattress, of the kind owned by wealthy folk in the East, one of the symbols of their status. Very thick and very, very soft. And she was lying atop it. What she must do was sink into it. But at the moment it was nothing but unyielding, as firm and obdurate as a tabletop.
Or... maybe not quite as hard as that. Not quite...
She could feel a yielding.
She blocked off all noise, all outside sounds, everything that was not a part of her.
And in her mind, she smiled....
And began to sink into the feathery, cotton-wool softness.
And as she began to sink, so she could feel, within her, a... stirring.
* * *
Scale marched back down the long room, smacking the coiled bullwhip against the side of his leg. The feel of it was reassuring, as though it was a trade-off for the power he had so swiftly, so devastatingly, lost less than an hour ago. He would do her now, do everything to her he could think of. Then having assuaged the raging fire in his loins he would flay her, destroy her with the whip. Then he would leave. That was it. He had no idea where he would go, what he would do, because he was not thinking that far ahead. In his mind was a confusion of images — fireballing explosions, red hair, stabbing rifle-flashes, white flesh, soaring tracers, skin that was slick with blood. He marched like a robot, cackling to himself, muttering disjointedly, not even knowing himself what he was saying. Smacking the whip against his leg.
He strode out from under the sagging beams that supported rotting planks and headed for the bed. He did not see the woman as a woman, as a flesh-and-blood human being. Merely as a shape. He threw the whip down on the trash-strewn floor and grabbed at the shape, his hands fumbling, then yanking the loose clothing, ripping it, tearing off long strips of it, clenching fingers at her panties and pulling. He reached for the knife at his belt, sliced the cords that bound those limbs, wrenched them apart, heard the shape screaming... screaming....
* * *
Screaming! It was as though someone had thrust a spear deep into her soul. Such agony! The psychic shock exploded through her, jolting every nerve end in her body.
She came alive. Her eyes burst open. She saw Scale looming over her, staring down at her, his mouth wide, his jaw spittle flecked.
He whispered "Blood." His voice was thick, the sound coming from the back of his throat. He said, "Bleedin'. Ya bitch. Y'evil fuckin' slut. Ya bleedin'."
His eyes slowly focused on her face and locked on to her eyes. He was breathing stertorously, his brutish frame trembling. Then a frown spread slowly across his scaled face, a frown half of bewilderment, half something else. Half... recognition. Krysty shivered uncontrollably at that look. She knew it for what it was.
He suddenly thrust his face down at her and his foul breath gusted over her face. His left hand shot out, clutched her throat, pulled her half up from the bed. She gagged in pain and terror. He started to smile as he peered into her eyes. Then he began to chuckle, a harsh, rasping sound, the ugliest sound.
"Yeah," he breathed slowly. "I know you, ya bitch." Triumph suddenly flooded into his voice. "I knowyou!" He unclasped his fingers, shoved her back against the bed, his body shaking as the huge storehouse echoed to the harsh, jarring, malevolent noise of his cackling.
He flicked open his belt, kicked off his boots. He unzipped his pants, thrust them down. Still laughing, he exposed himself, his penis thick and erect. He stroked it, held it firmly, his eyes suddenly narrowing as he stared at her, a crafty expression sliding across his face.
"Yeah. I know you. I got who you are. Hell of a thing, huh? You know..." his tone had become bizarrely conversational, "...I was gonna kill ya. But not now. Oh, flo, not now. Gonna keep ya all for myself!"
He stepped forward, his tongue dragging across his thick lips.
Krysty thought, I was just on the point of it; I was nearly there, so nearly there. Then she thought, I can still do it. All I need is just a little more time. Once he's inside me, thenI can do it. It's the only way. It's the only blasted way...
Then she saw his attention had been caught by something else, something above her. He was staring upward at the ceiling, at the gloom high in the rafters, his mouth gaping ludicrously, his features frozen into an expression of stunned shock.
She wrenched her head back, her eyes penetrating the shadows, felt horror and loathing flood through her as she glimpsed what he was looking at. A glimpse was all she needed, all she wanted. Clinging to a beam by one suckered hand, its twin free, the suckers writhing as they groped for the wall, was something she had never seen before, only heard about.
A sticky.
Scale jump
ed back frantically, his face livid, his arms swinging wildly. He shrieked curses as he turned and dashed for the door.
And howled with frenzied fury as another sticky dropped from the shadows above.
At any other time the sight of this half-naked man in a state of near terminal panic, with his rapidly softening erection, would have been comical. Hilarious. But Scale was throwing off psychic waves of unadulterated terror. Krysty could feel it as though it was something physical. He saw death and agony clawing at him and he wanted neither.
Scale sprang toward the crates, grabbed the nearest weapon to hand, a .45 automatic. The gun stabbed flame, the thunder of the shots filling the barn. He emptied the mag into the sticky by the door and the sticky took every round, was thumped back against the wall with their jarring impact.
Krysty saw, with fright-flecked eyes, the slugs slam into greasy flesh around stomach and thighs. Then saw the creature stagger to its feet, red stuff oozing from wounds that were not gaping holes but mere liplike slits, already closing as though sucking the bullets in. The sticky squealed with rage, snorting its fury down its half-formed nostrils, and lunged at Scale, its sucker hands outstretched.
Scale tore a box from one of the piles and heaved it at the thing. The creature's fingers caught the heavy object and held it, almost as though the box had suddenly become a part of it, a clublike extension of its arms. It swung the box and smashed it into Scale, slamming him over into a stack of crates, which swayed, teetered, crashed to the ground.
That saved Scale. The crates rolled and tumbled, some splitting open and sending cans of food spraying out. The sticky blundered into the avalanche and was hammered off balance, going down under what for a normal being would have been a bone-crushing weight of tins. Scale scrambled up and darted to one side, then disappeared down the long storehouse toward the far end.
Krysty, her mouth dry with fear, risked another glance upward. Another sticky was bounding along the wall, high up, like a crazed spider, hand over hand, its long arms supporting its weight with only an occasional kick with its suckered toes to keep balance. Both creatures were naked save for tattered pants. The sticky made it to the upper chamber and vanished into the gloom.
Breathing a prayer, the red-haired young woman closed her eyes again. Concentrating, she let her mind do the work, let it dive into itself so that the light within increased even as her focus became smaller and smaller. Her ankles were now free from her outstanding new strength, her magic, and she could run for it, but her wrists were still tied and without the use of these she might just as well be hobbled again. All she wanted were a few seconds, just a few. She felt the familiar lightness in her head, a feeling like that of bare electric wires of almost no voltage brushing her wrists.
This was power. Woman power in earth: the mind as place. This was strength over material things, a power so strong and so centered in one place that it commanded all it touched. But she wanted desperately to open her eyes, to check for new threats, new horrors that might even now be looming over her. It seemed to her, in the power state, that she had been in a totally vulnerable position for literally minutes on end.
Then she got up, her hands free though her wrists throbbed, the torn cords falling away, her eyes darting to the pyramid of cans so very close to her.
Nothing stirred. She could hear no sounds from the other side of the barn. She put her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge for a few seconds breathing in deeply, oblivious of the general stench of the place. She got to her feet, shakily. She was still wearing her boots but her jump suit was in shreds, ripped and torn from breasts to knees. It looked like an animal had been at it, which was pretty much the truth. Glancing down, she saw streaks of blood staining the insides of her thighs and was aware of the dull ache in her womb. She gathered up what remained of her panties — flimsy shreds of cotton — and screwed up one strip. Squatting, she inserted it deftly into herself as a makeshift tampon. Then, still breathing quickly and managing to control the shivering fit that threatened, she hurried across the room to the open box of grenades.
She grabbed four, stuffing three of them into various untorn pockets, keeping the fourth in one hand. She backtracked to where five automatic rifles leaned against the outer wall, and selected one. No mag. She cursed, picked up another. Same again. Desperately she picked up the remaining three. None had mags. She stared around. This was insane. There was an MG lying on the floor, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to control the kickback on that. There were many more rifles but she could see now that all were empty. Then she noticed that one of the crates had burst open, revealing mags aplenty. They didn't seem to be greased and factory fresh, but had been piled in willy-nilly, all kinds, all types, straight, banana, long curve, short curve. More loot from a land wag train. Her eyes flicked at the leaning row of rifles and SMGs and she picked out a Heckler & Koch 9 mm. Good weight, short, a nice death-dealing compactness. She took it up, checked it, went back to the box and tensely fingered through the jumbled mass of sticks, clattering them aside until she found two 30-slug curved mags. One she stuffed into a back pocket, the other she held against the gun while she began cramming the fourth grenade into an already overstuffed pocket over her right breast.
The pile of cans burst apart in a wild spray of tin. The sticky, squealing viciously, had erupted from the ground.
Krysty gasped. Her heart felt as if someone had just kicked it.
She sprang back, dropping the grenade. She also dropped the second mag. The sticky came at her like a flying fury, and she had to dance away and flee back to the living area of the barn, her right hand fumbling at the remaining mag jammed into her back pocket. It wouldn't come out, had somehow gotten entangled with the pocket lip. She felt as if she could scream, but didn't. Instead she turned for the door, but the creature was already there, its eyes almost popping with rage and blood lust.
Krysty yanked the mag and it came out, tearing the pocket open at one side. But now she was all fingers and thumbs and the mag would not slot in. The sticky, hooting nasal fury, jumped for her and she felt its wind as she stumbled aside, saw the sucker pads of its right hand lunging at her. She raced away across the room, still trying to shove the mag into the SMG but in her desperation only jamming it. Her heart was pounding like a trip hammer and sweat was coming off her like glistening pearls. Adrenaline boosted her body and desperation boosted her brain.
In a microsecond she took in the fact that one of the pillar supports that held up the upper chamber had heavy nails sticking out of it. Thrusting the mag between her teeth, she grabbed hold of one of the higher nails and thrust a foot at a lower one — the H&K stuffed under her left arm and held tight to her body — and she began to pull herself upward. The nail heads were sharp; they tore at her flesh. She didn't give a damn, didn't even think about it. The fact that her fingers began to bleed and the nail heads became suddenly slippery merely acted as a further booster. She reached the second floor and rolled over onto what remained of the floor planks just as the kill-crazy creature slammed into the pillar.
She stared down at its fearsome, horrific ugliness as it, too, began to climb, hissing and snorting through its nose. She pushed herself up into a kneeling position and once more endeavored to cram the curved mag up into the SMG, but in her terrified haste she fumbled more than before and the mag suddenly became a living thing in her hand, flying out of her grasp. The sticky's head rose above the floor and blindly she smashed the useless gun into its face, crashing the snub-nosed barrel repeatedly into one of its eyes and transforming it into a crimson jelly before the creature was jolted off its perch, tumbling back to the ground. Panic rose like nausea within her, and without thinking she clutched at one of her grenades, yanking the pin and screaming, "Fuck you!" as the sticky, shrilling its pain and rage, leaped for the pillar again. She dropped the grenade on it and flung herself backward, scrambling as if demented away from the floor edge.
The roar of the detonation nearly deafened her, and all at on
ce the floor was rocking then bursting apart and she was sliding toward the edge and tumbling over. She fell, still clinging to the H&K, and hit the ground, automatically rolling on the trash-choked floor. Beams and planks thudded down and dust rose chokingly. She staggered to her feet, her ears ringing, her eyes prickling and smarting.
Miraculously the whole barn had not collapsed, and after a moment she could see why. The sticky had taken most of the blast. Unaccountably it had fallen across the grenade, hunched over it, acting almost like a sandbag. Except a sandbag would not have hurled gobbets of flesh and bloody entrails all over the place.
The pillar she'd squirreled up had gone and that part of the upper chamber's floor now sagged drunkenly to the floor, unsupported. Other pillars nearby looked about ready to collapse, and she glanced up at the roof fearfully; it seemed safe enough from what she could see through the dust and the gloom. Steel splinters from the blast had flayed the surrounding area, scoring the wooden walls, tearing the table apart. Heads now lay about the floor in macabre confusion. Miraculously, none of the windows had blown.
She thought, I've got to get out, got to get out.
She wondered why no one had burst in on her from outside after the explosion. Where in nukeshit were Scale and the second sticky?
Among the mess she spotted the first mag, the one she'd dropped, and hastily bent to pick it up. As she did so she was dimly aware of sounds from outside: the muffled roar of engines, accelerating; the stammer of automatic fire and the heavier punch of MGs; shrill cries of panic. Suddenly she could smell smoke.
Confused, she stood up and glanced to her right and saw that something was burning under the sagging floor of the upper chamber. Delayed action from the grenade blast. Had to be. Even as she watched, a tongue of flame caught a rotten plank and leaped up it, gathering strength as it gathered height. In two seconds or less, the single flame had become a leaping wash of fire, greedily engulfing the tinder-dry beams, soaring toward the roof. Dense, white smoke, caught by drafts, billowed around, mushrooming upward. Shadows trembled, became distorted by the lurid glare of the flames. The smoke caught her and buried her in a swirling fog, the acrid fumes choking her.