by James Axler
There was a prolonged hiss, and this time Lily convulsed, throwing back her head to cry out. J.B. and Krysty fought to keep her limbs still and allow Mildred to do the cauterizing job properly. So many hours had been lost getting away from the coldhearts, it might already be too late to save her. There certainly was no time for a second attempt. This was it. Win or lose. Live or die.
Ignoring the stink of roasted flesh in her nostrils, Mildred emotionlessly flipped the blade over and touched the other small leak. There was another sizzle, but no response from Lily. She had fainted from the unbearable pain.
“Now what?” Doc asked, tucking away the flashlight. He felt useless, unable to do a thing to assist in the surgery.
“I’ll sprinkle in some black powder for the sulfur, stitch the outside closed, and wrap it in clean bandages.” Mildred sighed, wiping her sweaty brow with the hand still holding the hot knife. “But we better stay here for the night. Another ride on a motorcycle would only open the wound again, and kill her. This is a major artery. I was lucky to be able to fix it at all with the primitive tools I have.”
“Then we make camp,” Ryan declared, taking back the panga. “This is a good place to hide until dawn, and we could all use a little sleep.”
“Horses, too,” J.B. added pragmatically.
“Damn straight.”
Casting a look at the mouth of the cave, Krysty asked, “And if the coldhearts show up?”
“Their name is Rogan,” Mildred said unexpectedly. “Lily muttered it before. John, Robert, Edward and Alan Rogan. The four of them are brothers.”
“There are only three remaining,” Doc added with surprising anger. He glanced again at the sleeping woman, and felt his heart oddly quicken.
“Three, four, ten, don’t nuking care,” Ryan growled, shoving the still warm blade into the leather sheath. “There’ll be none of the bastards left after they meet us again.”
Chapter Thirteen
There was the faint smell of burning wood on the warm wind, and the cicadas sang their eternal song among the thick plants of the weedy field.
With a start, Stirling awoke to pain; throbbing agony that seemed to fill his entire body. He had been shot several times, then fallen unconscious.
So why am I still sucking air? Stirling wondered, feeling the insect-like trickle of sweat, or perhaps blood, flowing down his face. There had come the sound of a rapidfire shooting…no, several rapidfires, and then his sec men fell dying on every side.
Nathan had been the first; he’d tumbled from his horse without a face and hit the grassland so hard his boots came off. How remarkable that memory was. The boots coming off and his stockinged feet displayed, one toe showing as the young man trembled his way onto the last train west.
Trying to track the attackers from the angle of the wounds in the lad, Stirling had worked the bolt and trigger on the big Browning longblaster like a madman. The muzzle-flashes had lit up the night, and then he’d seen them, tiny flowers of flame shimmering in the distance. Burning flowers from the muzzles of their unseen enemies.
Snarling and spitting curses, Renée fell, shooting into the darkness. Then Alton’s blaster had jammed and he’d dived through the flying lead to reclaim the sawed-off scattergun. He’d lit up the night with the twin discharge, and the three outlanders were running.
Rushing to a horse, Alton had grabbed a bag of Molotovs, and advanced to finish the job, when a bright white light banished the night. Caught in the deadly glare, Alton tried to get a Molotov ready in time, but the outlanders had ripped the man apart in a shitstorm of lead.
As the light faded, Stirling had stumbled through the weeds to grab the second BAR from Renée’s bloody hand. Checking the load, he’d found it was empty, and dug in his pockets for any spare brass.
Soon voices had started coming his way, and as soon as Stirling could dimly see figures in the starry blackness, he’d opened fire with the Browning, then dropped it and did the same with the other. The range was long, damn near impossible, but Stirling had known there was no other way. That first volley had hit his people from six hundred yards away. Mebbe seven! What kind of a longblaster could hit a person that far away? Only the BAR could respond, nothing else had the range.
A cold breeze blew over the sec chief as Stirling remembered that Ryan had a longblaster that could ace that far, and so did his companions. Vehemently, the sec chief shook his head in refusal to accept the idea, only stopping when the agony in his chest grew to the point where he had trouble breathing.
“Impossible,” Stirling whispered, dried blood cracking off his lips. No nuking way Ryan would jack sec men from Two-Son ville. But then, had Ryan known it was them? Mebbe the companions thought some outlanders were doing a nightcreep. Could Ryan have done this to them?
Suddenly jerking awake, Stirling realized that he had fallen asleep again and somebody was walking toward him. Feebly, his hand moved for the handblaster at his side, but the fingers were too weak to pull the heavy .40 revolver from the holster. By the blood of his fathers, was this how he was going to get aced? Lying in the weeds, unable to draw his own wep like some green sec man on his first day wearing shoes?
“And whom do we have here?” a soft voice asked from above.
The words were plainly spoken, but for some reason they sent a shudder through Stirling and he rallied once more to reach the blaster. But the weight was impossible, and he might was well have tried to lift a mountain. In defeat, the sec chief lay on the ground and concentrated on breathing as the stranger came closer.
“I asked you a question,” the soft voice said, growing slightly tense. “But I suppose simple courtesy is quite impossible with a dozen machine-gun bullets in your flesh. Actually, I am rather impressed that you are yet alive.” There came a laugh without merriment, a cold rattling thing as joyless as the grave of a child.
Some weeds crunched and a pair of weird shoes came into sight. The damn things were made of cloth, like a moccasin, only the material was silvery-bright, like the hair on Doc Tanner. The resemblance was striking. The shoes were the exact same color, almost as if they had been spun from the hair of the wrinklie, or other wrinklies like him. Bizarre.
“Still alive after so much blood loss,” the outlander commented, sounding interested but not impressed. “Honestly, I could almost think that humanity was evolving into a tougher species if I didn’t know that was genetically impossible.” He gave a hard chuckle. “Oh, a mutation might crop up, they always seem to, and at the oddest times. But there could never be an overall improvement. Oh, no, that would be statistically absurd.”
One of the slippers swung forward to nudge Stirling, and he cried out in racking pain.
“Please forgive my rudeness, but we have not been properly introduced,” the outlander said casually. “I can see on your shirt that your name is Stirling. And from the abundance of your weaponry, I would say a sec man, perhaps a sec chief?” The metallic eyes twinkled. “Yes, of course, Sec chief Stirling. I am Delphi.”
Who gave a frag care what his name was? Squinting hard, the sec chief discovered that he could dimly see the field and the black lumps of his fallen comrades dotting the ground. The horses were gone, run away…no, the realization hit him like another bullet. The coldhearts who attacked his people had taken their horses, leaving behind the blasters and black powder as if the weps were useless. Guess they were when you had rapidfires.
We weren’t jacked for our blasters, Stirling understood in cold clarity. But for our horses! Everything else they threw away. Desperately, the man squinted into the darkness, and there it was, only a few yards away. The med kit, the canvas bag med kit!
Strolling among the corpses lying in the field, Delphi stopped and turned. “Did you say something?” he asked politely.
“B-blasters,” Stirling managed to croak. “All ya w-want…”
Quite bemused, Delphi crouched, bringing his face into view. It was a calm face with dead-black eyes like an insect, or a predark doll. His blond hai
r was slicked back tight to his head, and there wasn’t a single scar on his features. Not one! Stirling had never seen anybody like that before in his life. Even barons and gaudy sluts got into fights. The jaw and cheeks were smooth and unmarked, as if the man didn’t even shave yet. Or never had. The hands were slim, like a young girl’s, and the clothing was all white, a crisp clean white of new-fallen snow. Silver shoes and white clothing.
“Blasters you said.” Delphi smiled. “Well, I can see that you still have your formidable-looking side arm, so I can only assume that this is plea for clemency, perhaps?”
“My baron…reward…” Stirling forced the words out of his aching throat, then he broke into painful coughing that seemed to last forever. He was exhausted when it finally stopped, and through his blurry eyes Stirling could see that the stranger was still crouching there, smiling just a little bit, as if entertained by his pain.
“Oh, I see,” Delphi said slowly. “You were offering me a bribe to assist you? Bad choice, I’m afraid.”
The man stood and started to stroll away. Stirling couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Who turned down a reward of blasters? But then, there were a half dozen lying in the weeds, and the pale man was walking around them as if trying to avoid piles of fresh nightsoil.
“Now if you had asked for help under the auspices of a moral imperative, that I might have listened to,” Delphi said, fading into the night. “After all, it was my employees who shot you, and your associates, so I do feel some amount of responsibility. But your attempt to purchase my efforts as if I was a mercenary is insulting! I am an artist! A creator! Those paper-pushing bureaucrats at Overproject Whisper tried to buy me, and they soon learned the error of their ways. Oh, yes, they did.”
By now the man was gone from sight, even the steps of his silver moccasins disappearing into the darkness. “A reward, he said! Bah. Please die quickly, Sec chief Stirling, and lighten this world from the deadweight of one more incompetent fool.” Merciless laughter filled the air, then abruptly stopped as if a door had been closed.
Listening to the wind rustle the blades of grass, Stirling could only hear his own rasping breath and thudding heart. As the itching on his skin grew worse, the sec chief felt his muscles tighten, and stiff fingers raked the soil as anger filled his body. So, I’m a feeb, eh? We’ll see about that, ya motherless nuke-sucker!
Forcing himself into a lurch, Stirling painfully rolled over, then shoved a knee forward and pushed his boot backward to start stubbornly crawling toward the med kit. Every move was fire in his wounds, and the dirt rasped against his face, pebbles and sticks jabbing his skin until fresh blood flowed. But Stirling gritted his teeth and kept going. Laughed. The fragging bastard had laughed at a sec chief!
WITH A VIOLENT SHAKE, Stirling came awake again and saw some sort of small animal sniffing at Renée nearby. He cursed and spit at the thing until it scampered away. But not very far. It sat to closely study the bleeding man, and Stirling knew if he passed out again, he would never wake up. Gotta keep moving. Don’t stop. Not for a tick. Concentrate! Use the pain! Keep moving, Steve, keep moving…
Something tapped his head and Stirling snarled to scare away the scavenger, but only saw the canvas bag. He’d done it! Resting for a few laboring minutes, he rolled over sideways, and went into convulsions, hot agony tightening his chest until he rolled over onto his back once more. Nuke fucking hellfire! Must have a busted rib! Well, nothing he could do about that for the moment.
Fighting for air, Stirling forced his numb hands to fumble open the canvas bag and start pulling out everything: bandages, candles and then a bottle of sterilized water. Yes!
Twisting off the cap, Stirling poured some over his sticky face, then into his mouth. It tasted like blood, but eased the soreness inside his throat and sent a delicious chill into his stomach. There was food in the med kit, too, not much but some, along with plenty of bandages, plus the needles and things needed for stitching closed big wounds. He had been hit in the back a few times. Not much he could do about those aside from washing them with shine and cover with bandages. No person could sew up his own ass, as the saying went. Mebbe with the dawn, he could pull the lead out of his legs, but that was for later. First things first. Stop the bleeding. Wash the dirt out of the wounds. Eat, drink, and find some safe place warm to rest. Warm, that was important. Damn, the ground was cold! But afterward, Stirling would track down the fragging bastard in white, and shove those fancy silver slippers so far down his fucking throat he’d nuking choke to death. Delphi had laughed at a sec chief.
Finding a roll of clean cloth, Stirling started to stuff the material into his wounds. Laughed! The bastard was going to pay dearly for that insult. Even if it took the rest of his life, Stirling would find the motherless son of a bitch and make him pay in long bloody screams.
“Run, Delphi,” Stirling muttered, using the hate as fuel for his exhausted muscles. “Run far and fast, mutie-fucker, ’cause I’m coming….”
STIRRING THE FIRE with a green stick, Doc watched the red-hot embers rise on the warm currents and float away. Drifting on the currents, the dying sparks sailed over the large boulder and out of the cave to ascend into the desert night until they seemed to become twinkling stars.
“Star light, star bright.” Doc sighed, then tossed the green stick into the fire, causing an eruption of sparks.
Perched uncomfortably on a rock, Doc listened to the horses softly snoring outside, and knew there was nobody near the cave. Their hearing was much more acute than a human, so there was no sense sitting out in the cold when the horses could stand guard for him, and do a better job of it, too.
A few yards away in the cave, the rest of the companions lay huddled together, sharing their body warmth, horse blankets on the ground and jackets bundled as crude pillows.
There was a horse blanket set aside for Doc to use, but he had decided against that. If he got too comfortable, it could lead to sleep, and that was an express train to death with so many enemies after them these days.
No, they’re all after me, Doc corrected, frowning deeply as he took another sip of cold coffee in the plastic cup. Overproject Whisper, Operation Chronos, Department Coldfire—the names may change, but the goal was always the same. Me. I was the key to time travel. They didn’t know why, and the good Lord knows that I certainly don’t have the answer, or else I would be back home with Emily. My dear, sweet Emily.
Feeling embarrassed, Doc sneaked a glance at Lily. The young woman was sleeping peacefully under some spare blankets, her pale face turned his way. Feeling an ache of longing in his throat, Doc studied her delicate features, then vehemently shook his head and clawed for his wallet. Yanking it free, Doc withdrew the fifty-dollar bill hidden inside the fold. He had found the antiquarian green-back in Zero City when he was going through a rare coin store for kindling to start a fire. But when he’d seen it in the display case, he’d known at once he had to possess the fifty. Paper money was without any value nowadays, except as a lavatory aid, but it had amused the old man to take the bill. The green-back came from his time, so it was a sort of souvenir from home. Besides, fifty dollars was a year’s income to a teacher. Having that much cash in his wallet made Doc feel rich. It was silly, he knew, but true nonetheless. Then he’d turned the bill over.
There were words written on it in bright blue ink, faded over time, but still discernable if the light was just right. Words written in a handwriting that he knew by heart. His throat seemed to close as Doc focused on the words, the impossible words, written on the ancient piece of script. “Theo, you will find a way back. I’m waiting. Emily.”
What happened next, the scholar really didn’t remember, but Mildred had found him curled into a ball under a desk and weeping uncontrollably. His wife was dust in the grave, but still very much alive in the past. She was dead and alive at the same time. Time. It was all a matter of time. And of timing.
As if sensing Doc’s troubled thoughts, Krysty shifted in her sleep, murmuring somethin
g too soft to hear. A branch in the fire gave a pop as a drop of resin oozed out from the fresh wood, and J.B. snorted in response, which set off Jak into a soft snore.
There was a tin pot from a U.S. Army mess kit sitting near the small fire. Doc tossed aside the cold coffee. Pouring some of the warm water into a plastic cup, Doc added a packet of instant coffee from a MRE pack, then stirred in powdered milk and sugar. Sipping the tepid brew, Doc watched over his sleeping friends, knowing that this would be the last time he ever saw them.
Time again, Doc thought sadly, savoring the dark flavor. It seems that I have finally run out.
Just then, something moved in the darkness outside the firelight. Spinning in a crouch, Doc pulled both of his blasters and thumbed back the hammers in unison. At the metallic clicks, a fat rodentlike creature scampered into view, then darted back into the shadows again, moving, Doc thought, as if it knew what a blaster meant.
“Perhaps it does.” Doc chuckled softly, easing down the hammers on the LeMat and Ruger before sliding the blasters back into their holsters. “After all, two heads are better than one.” Or did it have three? He wasn’t really sure, and cared even less. There were so many aberrations in the world, what did a two-headed rabbit matter? None at all. By the Three Kennedys, he had even seen one of those back in his day. Mutations happened constantly. Humans were a mutation, just a mighty good one. So were ducks, dogs and dinosaurs. There was nothing new in the world, just old ideas constantly recycled.
“Hey,” a voice said.
Moving fast, Doc brought up the Ruger, then lowered it as Ryan walked around the crackling campfire, buckling on his gunbelt.
“You could not sleep?” Doc asked, holstering the blaster.
Ryan shook his head. “No, I’ve come to spell you,” he replied, running stiff fingers through his wild mane of black hair. “You need to get some rest. Coffee isn’t sleep, old friend, and tomorrow we go after those coldhearts and get this matter settled. Permanently.”