by James Axler
“An old man should be excused his eccentricities,” Doc muttered with embarrassment.
“J.B. kept telling me about the bomber and I dismissed him,” Ryan said angrily.
“Ryan?” Krysty piped up when he fell to silence.
“They got us,” Ryan told her. “They got us good. Whatever is going on in this ville, it’s tried to change us and—fireblast!—it damn near succeeded. Krysty, we’ve gotta leave. We’ve got to get away from this madness because it’s a madness none of us can see happening, and that’s the kind that chills you.”
There were tears in Krysty’s eyes now, and her lip trembled. “The children,” she whispered. “They have been dosing their own children with this...this poison. I saw how it affected them, made them sick. But I didn’t realize what it meant.”
Reaching across the counter, Ryan stroked the side of Krysty’s face and neck gently. As he did so, he unclipped the band that held her hair in place, setting it free. “Now we’ll fix it,” he said. “All of it.”
Then Ryan popped the rad counter onto the lapel of his shirt and he began to give out instructions. “We’re going to need our blasters,” he said.
“I’m already ahead of you,” Doc admitted, flashing the LeMat at Ryan from its hiding place beneath his coat.
Ryan smiled.
And now the two were six.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan and Doc found Jak out in the eastern edge of Heaven Falls clearing the scrub to reclaim the land for farming.
“Best you stay here, Doc,” Ryan suggested.
Doc nodded. “Quite. I would not want to crowd the lad.”
So while Doc remained at the edge of the field, Ryan trudged across the dirt toward Jak where he worked with two other laborers. Jak looked up as Ryan’s shadow crossed him.
“We need to talk,” Ryan said, pitching his voice low.
“What ’bout?” Jak asked.
Ryan almost smiled at that. Jak had lost none of his rough edges from living with the Trai, and his speech style was as reticent as ever. “Away from here,” Ryan said, gesturing to an overgrown bank of grass at the edge of the cleared space.
The young man nodded once and followed Ryan.
“Jak, we got trouble,” Ryan said. “It takes a little figuring, but it’s nasty and it’s affecting us all.”
“Trouble?” Jak asked, canny eyes flicking to his companions still toiling in the field.
Ryan explained the whole story about the irradiated honey and how the caste system of Heaven Falls reflected that found in a beehive, how the Trai were following the behavioral patterns of honeybees and how J.B. suspected they intended to swarm and conquer the Deathlands.
When Ryan had finished, Jak stared at him in disbelief. “Charm chose me,” he said. “Trust me. We in love, Ryan.”
“She’s duped you,” Ryan said, shaking his head, “the same way they’ve duped us all. Mebbe she saw something in there that frightened her, or mebbe the Regina did. Mebbe they needed to keep you under control.”
Jak lunged at Ryan then, driving the knuckles of his left fist into the taller man’s jaw.
Watching from across the field, Doc winced and considered stepping in. But no, Ryan would have to deal with Jak his way. If Doc waded in now, it would seem that the two men were ganging up on him, and the argument would be lost.
Ryan grunted, and his hands came up to deflect the second blow that Jak attempted. The one-eyed man sidestepped, blocking Jak’s left fist with his right hand, meeting the wrist and pushing the blow up and forward, forcing Jak to compensate or lose his balance. Jak never lost his balance in a fight.
The anger was clear in Jak’s face, his usually sullen expression replaced by a fiery hatred. He took two quick steps back then charged at Ryan, growling like a beast as he came at him. The other men in the field had been alerted by the noise, and they hurried over to see what was going on.
Ryan stepped aside as Jak came at him, holding up both forearms to take the force of the albino’s charge. It was a powerful blow, and the power behind it knocked Ryan so that his boot heels slid on the freshly turned soil.
“Jak, listen to me,” he commanded. “This isn’t helping.”
But Jak was fired up now. “No help,” he snarled as he swiped at Ryan with his right fist.
Ryan moved swiftly, grabbing Jak’s arm as the fist connected with the top of his chest. “Ugh!”
Then Ryan pulled, stepping backward and dragging Jak off his feet. The albino youth seemed to skip along, his toes scraping the top of the soil before slipping down to his knees. Ryan let go then, breathing heavily, watching.
The two laborers could not believe it. They asked what was going on, who started it, why they were fighting—but Ryan ignored them, while Jak was as typically reticent as he had always been.
“Calm down and think,” Ryan told Jak. “We’ve been friends too long for this.”
Jak pulled himself up from the soil, crouching like a coiled cougar. He sprang without warning, driving toward Ryan like a dart from a blowgun, issuing a savage growl from his throat.
Ryan was forced on the defensive again, blocking Jak’s attack as best as he could but still taking a powerful blow to the chest. He grabbed Jak’s shirt as the albino slammed into him, using it like a handle to hoist Jak into the air and toss him aside.
“I helped you out in Louisiana when Baron Tourment tried to execute you and me both,” Ryan stated as Jak rolled over and over in the dirt.
Jak was up in an instant, running at Ryan once again. The one-eyed man braced himself, adopting a defensive stance.
Six feet from Ryan, Jak sprang into the air, kicking his right leg toward his former friend’s face. Ryan responded without thinking, bringing his right arm up to block the blow, taking the full impact there with bone-jarring force.
“And when Christina died,” Ryan said as he rolled with the blow, staggering backward.
Jak went hurtling in the opposite direction to Ryan, slammed into the ground and rolled over twice to bring himself back up to a fighting crouch. Ryan saw the knife blade glint in his hand where he had slipped it from its hiding place in his sleeve.
“And Jenny,” Ryan said. He saw something in Jak’s expression change as he said the name of the daughter Jak and Christina had had: a softening of the anger, a rush of sorrow. And then he knew what to say. “I lost Dean—my son. I know how it chills you inside, Jak. I know how that void must hurt even now. But if you turn your back on your family, the void only gets bigger. In the end, all we have is family.”
Jak’s scarlet eyes were fixed on Ryan, and for a long moment he did not move or speak. Then, as Ryan watched, Jak slipped his knife back into its hidden sheath and nodded fractionally. “Tell,” he said.
Ryan stepped forward and offered Jak his hand, helping the albino up from his crouch. They were both covered with dirt as they trekked across the field to where Doc was waiting. The two farmhands who had worked with Jak had a hundred questions to ask, but neither man offered any answers.
* * *
J.B. TOOK THE other companions to the redoubt without incident, following the same rocky pathway that he had taken to regain entry into Heaven Falls and keeping to the cover of the trees as much as they could. J.B. was accompanied by Ricky, Mildred and Krysty, and all of them stayed on high alert as they came within sight of the mound that housed the hidden redoubt.
J.B. had his minibinoculars up to his eyes as they came within sight of it and he scanned the doors, the bulky satchel he carried resting against his hip. “The doors are open,” he told the others. “Last time I came here they’d posted a Melissa on the door and there was a team inside working on the mat-trans. I can’t see any sign of... Wait, there she is. Cute little blonde.”
J.B. passed the binoculars to Ricky.
/> “I see her,” Ricky confirmed. “It won’t be hard sneaking past her, either.”
When Ricky pulled the field glasses from his eyes he saw that J.B. had his M-4000 shotgun cradled in his hands. “No time for negotiation,” he said. “Krysty, Mildred—you’re covering the exit. Anyone comes in or out who isn’t one of us, you pop them. This is life or death, as usual. Ricky, you’re with me.”
Ricky hurried after the Armorer as he marched downslope, pulling his reproduction De Lisle carbine from beneath his jacket.
Ten seconds later they rounded a tree and appeared in the open, twenty feet from the redoubt entrance. The blonde in the white robes looked up with surprise to see two armed men standing there. J.B. didn’t let her thought process get any further than that. It was kill or be killed. He squeezed the trigger of his shotgun, sending a lethal cloud of buckshot into the woman’s gut and peppering the wall behind her.
The Melissa fell back, collapsing on the floor.
“Now they know we’re here,” J.B. stated grimly. “You got to hit them quick because they move like lightning if you give them a chance. And, Ricky, it’s us or them.”
“Gotcha,” Ricky acknowledged.
The two men stepped over the dead body and marched deeper into the redoubt, automatic lighting flickering to life with each step.
* * *
“TRICKED,” JAK GROWLED, shaking his head in frustration. He was walking with Doc and Ryan along the main path of Heaven Falls that led into the ville center. Doc thrust his swordstick ahead of him with each step, warily watching the few other people using the path, wondering if they suspected anything.
“We were all taken in,” Ryan said quietly. “J.B. figures the Trai are going to swarm soon, use the mat-trans to settle a new colony and expand their territory. Once they get one mat-trans jump behind them, it’ll be child’s play for them to keep moving, keep setting up colonies, eating up every bit of space.”
Jak looked thoughtful. He was recalling the conversation he had had just a few days before when he and Charm had been making love.
“We could leave,” Charm had told him, her eyes fixed on his. “Build our own Home, like this one, only better. With me as queen.”
“And me as king,” Jak had replied, laughing.
“You’re strong,” Charm had said. “We could build something beautiful together, another Home.”
Not a home, Jak realized. A hive. He had said he would be her king but she had never agreed, only told him how she would make a fine Regina. Doc had told him that the word meant queen, as they’d walked toward the ville center. It made a warped kind of sense now, the way the conversation with Charm had gone.
Jak recalled something else, too, how the wound on Charm’s leg had repaired very quickly and without any medication. “Bee people strong,” he said warningly.
“I have seen them move very fast,” Doc added.
“Me, too,” Jak said. He was recalling the incident outside the redoubt, when he had first seen the Melissas as they’d chilled the bomber. They had attacked as a group, and they had moved with uncanny speed and grace. It had struck him as odd then, but the further he had gotten away from that incident the more he had forgotten about it. There was so much he should have questioned but hadn’t. If what Doc had said was right, then the honey in the diet was making them all docile and obedient to the Regina, open to her suggestions. That made sense, albeit the sick kind.
“Charm trick me, Ryan,” Jak said. “Got fix it.”
Ryan nodded. He understood how Jak felt. Where the rest of them had been taken in by the miracles around them, Jak had been specifically targeted by one of the Melissas, the so-called daughters of the Regina, and kept almost as an obedient puppy. It had to burn him up inside.
Doc reached into his frock coat and pulled out the blaster that J.B. had handed to him before they’d parted to attend to their separate tasks. It was Jak’s Colt Python, reloaded and oiled by J.B., the safety carefully set. “I foresee that you shall likely be requiring this,” Doc said.
Jak nodded, taking the blaster with an expression of glee.
“Keep that hidden, Jak,” Ryan reminded him. “You know the ville rules.”
Jak slipped the blaster into an inside pocket of his jacket, pressing at it so that the jacket’s folds hid the bulge. Once he was satisfied, he trotted a little faster to catch up with Ryan and Doc.
The gleaming white towers of Heaven Falls peeked over the tree line where they waited up ahead.
* * *
THE REDOUBT WAS eerily quiet after the sound of the shotgun blast. J.B. and Ricky moved swiftly, their weapons in hand, ready for an attack.
“Perhaps if we look around the upper levels we’ll find something that will blow up,” Ricky suggested. “That way we won’t need to mix it up with whoever’s down below.”
J.B. shook his head. “I admire your style, kid,” he said, “but it won’t work. We need to clear this place of bee people since it’s our escape route. We leave the Trai in here and they could seal the place up and then we’re screwed.”
“Couldn’t we walk out of the mountains?” Ricky asked.
“Far as I can see, this whole area got hit by missiles and quakes pretty hard,” J.B. told him. “Quakes probably came about because of the missiles shaking seven shades of piss out of the terrain. Net result is this here is a land island—there’s no way out unless you plan to grow wings.”
Ricky shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “These people have tried to make me mutie enough for one week.”
They started to descend a stairwell. As they got closer to the lowest level Ricky became a little more nervous, and J.B. worried that Ricky was going to do something rash and give their position away. He remembered his dream, and the way Ricky had almost got himself chilled out in California.
“Settle down, kid,” J.B. whispered as they neared the bottom of the stairwell. “Whatever happens now, trying to second-guess it will only get you chilled. We need to react and watch each other’s backs.”
Then they were at the door. Without any discussion, J.B. positioned himself on one side while Ricky held himself back, centering the door in the sights of his De Lisle. J.B. nodded to Ricky just once, then pulled the door open and shrank back. A figure moved through the doorway as it opened, dressed in white robes that danced around her lithe body like mist.
Ricky pulled the trigger on the De Lisle, sending a .45-caliber bullet at the Melissa. She moved faster than he could imagine, leaping up toward the next level of the staircase even as his blaster boomed. The shot whizzed through the air where she had been a nanosecond before.
Standing to the side of the door, J.B. moved, too, aiming his blaster at the fleeing target and sending a cacophonous explosion of buckshot at the fluttering white robes. His shot missed, too, and the Melissa seemed to slip behind the cover of the next level like a cloud passing the sun.
J.B.’s breath came out in an audible “Whumph!” as the Melissa swung around on the aged metal banister and kicked him high in the forehead.
The Armorer crashed backward, his hat flying from his head.
“J.B.!” Ricky shouted, whipping his blaster around for another shot.
“No, Ricky, the—” J.B. began.
Moving like lightning, the Melissa delivered a second kick, this time to J.B.’s jaw. It struck so hard that the Armorer’s teeth clacked together with an audible snap.
Ricky tried to take aim, but then he heard something behind him and realized what it was J.B. had been trying to warn him about. Behind him, framed in the open doorway of the stairwell, stood another Melissa. Adele. Before Ricky could switch targets, the dark-skinned Melissa was on him, her hand flattened into a wedge as it cut toward his throat.
Chapter Thirty
Ricky reeled backward at the strike, choking on h
is own breath as he tumbled against a wall.
Three of them! J.B. realized. One on the door and two down here. No, check that—at least two down here.
He was still recovering from the other’s attack. J.B. brought his shotgun around and squeezed the trigger without aiming, sending a brilliant burst of buckshot at Adele as she slipped into the stairwell after Ricky. He watched with grim satisfaction as the white-robed woman did a twisting dance on the spot, the buckshot slapping against her right side.
But Adele recovered with the swiftness of lightning, switching targets and pouncing at J.B. in the blink of an eye. The Melissas were bastard resilient, J.B. knew, but he didn’t have any other option; as she sped toward him, J.B. squeezed the trigger again, sending another lethal burst of fire at her.
The other Melissa was scrambling up the stairwell, feet swishing out, bounding from step to wall, clambering upward monkey fashion. Ricky was just recovering, and he brought his De Lisle carbine up to take a shot at the escaping woman. “I got her,” he choked, the words coming out rough where his throat had been struck.
J.B. was knocked back against the wall by Adele, and the M-4000 shotgun in his hands angled upward, pointing uselessly toward the ceiling as the woman attacked. The Armorer took a blow to the face, another, then heard something crack inside his nose. He ignored it. Adele moved in a blur, striking out at him from feet away, each blow precise and vicious, like being lashed with a whip. J.B.’s glasses slipped from his face as the woman struck another painful blow there, and the Armorer cried out in agony.