Perdition Valley

by James Axler

  “This is the work of Delphi!” Robert cursed in his broken voice. “When the wrinklie buried him alive, the whitecoat had to have summoned his nuking pets to get revenge!”

  Ryan and J.B. shared a fast glance. Delphi was aced? Good news, if it was true.

  “Mebbe we could dig him free…” Lily whispered, hesitantly lowering her blaster. Then she screamed at the sight of a stickie running along the ground, its sucker-covered arms splayed wide.

  “No time!” J.B. snarled, spraying the mutie with his 9 mm Uzi. The stickie crumpled to the ground, oozing fluid from its head. But more muties appeared behind it, and even more from the sides. There seemed to be an endless supply of the shambling monstrosities.

  “Looks like we all buy the farm, or stand together!” Ryan shouted, pulling a pipe bomb from his pocket. “Your call, Rogans! But make it fast!”

  Growling in barely controlled fury, John turned his head away as if unable to face the truth, then turned toward the one-eyed man across the drifting sands.

  “Agreed!” the elder Rogan huffed, as if expelling a piece of rotten offal from his mouth. “But we settle our biz after we ace these things!”

  “Done!” Ryan shouted, lighting the pipe bomb and heaving it out toward the dunes. The bomb landed with a thump, and all of the nearby stickies turned at the noise, then converged to fight over the sizzling length of fuse. A moment later the pipe bomb detonated, blowing the muties into a grisly spray of organs and watery blood.

  “What the fragging…these aren’t smart!” Robert cried, shooting from the hip. A big stickie rocked back from the violent impact of the handload round and fell flat, its arms and legs shaking. But the other muties seemed to become excited by the sound of gunfire, their cries increasing in volume.

  “Eat this, nuke-suckers!” Edward shouted, his gren launcher thumping. The 40 mm gren hit like a thunderbolt among the creatures, broken mutie bodies flying everywhere.

  Chewing on a cigar butt, J.B. unleashed the Uzi, while Mildred emptied her MP-5 in one long burst. A dozen stickies fell and the rest tumbled over the corpses, their arms and legs becoming wildly entangled. But the last two arched around their comrades and threw themselves at the entrenched people.

  Steadily firing his Webley handblaster, John dashed forward to retrieve the fallen M-16 from the warm ashes. Ejecting the warm ammo clip as too dangerous to use, the elder Rogan slapped in a fresh clip and worked the bolt to clear the ejector port, then burped the blaster to stitch a couple stickies dangerously close to Doc. While John yearned to crucify the wrinklie, common sense dictated that the old man had to be kept safe until he knew for sure whether Delphi was feeding the worms.

  With the Colt Python blazing away, Jak blew the head off a female stickie. Pumping out a horrible spray of blood from the ragged neck stump, the body kept going past the group of entrenched people and straight over the cliff.

  “Dark night, it’s like the nest in Two-Son all over again!” J.B. muttered, burping the Uzi in short controlled bursts.

  “Don’t let them get behind us!” Krysty warned, her hair a wild corona as she triggered death into the infested dunes.

  Concentrating on their brother, Edward and Robert gave cover fire as John raced back to the meager protection of the dead horses. But from out of nowhere, a stickie rose into view from behind the shattered juniper tree and reached for the man with its deadly hands.

  Dodging out of the way, John cut loose with the rapidfire at point-blank range, the muzzle-flash engulfing the face of the inhuman creature. The 5.56 mm hardball ammo blew out the back of the stickie’s head in a frothy mix of bones, brains and blood. The mutie went limp, but stayed erect, its suckered hands clinging to the bark of the tree. But more stickies came into view. There had to have been a dozen of the creatures, waving their deadly hands in the air and hooting loudly.

  In a deadly cross fire, Ryan and Edward both took out a stickie, while Lily fired and missed. Mildred blew up a group with a pipe bomb, while John did the same with his last 40 mm shell. J.B. used the S&W M-4000 to blast the leg off a mutie trying to scramble up the sandstone ridge.

  As the limb fell away, the stickie grabbed the scattergun and made a swipe for the Armorer’s face. Releasing the blaster, J.B. ducked and his glasses came off. Dropping the scattergun, the wounded stickie awkwardly lunged for the man just as Jak flicked his wrist. A knife slammed into the throat of the stickie, and the mutie made gurgling noises as it swatted at the painful obstruction.

  Pivoting at the noise, Krysty leveled her blaster at the creature, but Lily was blocking her view. Snarling in rage, the Armorer racked the scattergun and blew off the stickie’s head. Stumbling backward, the one-legged mutie went over the ridge and rolled lifelessly along the ground.

  Two stickies started toward Doc, trapped in the netting, and the old man instantly stopped using the butane lighter on the resilient nylon. The flame was doing little damage to the material, and was beginning to attract the unwanted attention of the lethal muties.

  “Lily, go free Doc!” Ryan ordered, working the bolt on his Steyr to yank out a clip and shove in one of his last spares. Ignoring the ache in his right arm, Ryan triggered the longblaster and chilled the two muties near his friend. But more took their place.

  Pausing for only a second, the young woman hobbled over the ridge and slid down the sandstone on the seat of her pants to shuffle toward the trapped man. Her left leg was swaddled with bandages, and after a few steps the cloth started to seep with crimson.

  Ignoring the throbbing pain, Lily hurriedly crossed the flatland, while trying to reload her blaster. Stickies headed her way, and the companions blew them away. Realizing that she was being used as bait, Lily frowned, but kept going, firing her wep at the inhuman horde until flopping down next to Doc, his face barely visible through the black nylon strands.

  “Warn me if one gets close,” Lily ordered, breaking open her revolver to dump the spent brass and hastily start to reload.

  “On your nine!” Doc barked through the net.

  The confused woman paused for a moment, then spun to her left and fired, catching a stickie in the belly. It staggered away, holding in its ropy guts and hooting plaintively.

  Placing the blaster on the sand, Lily pulled out a knife and started cutting the mil netting. “Stickies,” she whispered, putting a wealth of emotion into the single word.

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Doc whispered from the ground. “Well done, lass. Good shot.”

  “Thanks.” She grunted, leaning over more to put her weight onto the blade. “Next time, just say left or right, okay?”

  “My mistake.”

  Already softened from the flame of the butane lighter, the strands began to part with musical twangs and a layer peeled way. Brushing back her long hair, Lily concentrated on the job of melting the net without setting the man trapped inside ablaze.

  From his prone position, Doc was startled to discover that he could see straight down her loose shirt at a pair of firm young breasts unfettered by a predark bra. Blushing mightily, Doc quickly averted his gaze.

  “Look all you want to,” Lily told him, noticing the direction of his gaze. “You saved my life yesterday, Tanner…I mean, Doc. Iffen we get out of this alive, I’ll thank you.”

  Only able to sputter in reply, Doc fought for words when something exploded a few yards away, showering both of them with acrid smoke and stinging sand. A stickie raced back, covered with flames, and blasters chattered nonstop.

  “I—I also got you shot, dear child,” Doc mumbled in apology, flexing his arms against the confines of the netting. There was some give, but not much.

  “Ain’t no child, wrinklie,” Lily shot back, then softened the harsh words with a weary grin. “A gaudy slut ages fast lying on her back all day.” Moving the flame to another nylon strand, she snorted rudely. “Or do you prefer boys, old-timer?”

  “Good heavens, no!”

  “Fair enough then. I’ll do you proper, and that’s a promise.” />
  More explosions shook the desert. Bullets were everywhere.

  “Cut faster,” Doc urged, struggling to get loose. “Or your generous offer will be moot!”

  Unsure of exactly what the frag that meant, Lily bit her tongue to not sound like a feeb, and redoubled her efforts.

  As a group of hooting stickies charged along the ridge, Jak pulled out a pipe bomb. Fumbling for his butane lighter, the albino teen went cold as something moved in the flickering light of the burning motorcycle. Instinctively, he dodged to the left.

  A sucker-covered hand grazed his jacket, and the stickie hooted in agony as it withdrew a hand minus several fingers. Blood flowed into the camou fabric from the severed digits still attached to the razor blades hidden along the collar.

  Coming up in a crouch, Jak shot the mutie in the chest, then Krysty and Mildred both put a round into the wounded creature, and it limply toppled over.

  Unexpectedly, Robert screamed in his guttural voice, and a stickie stood behind the big man holding a large chunk of bleeding flesh. Shuddering all over, the bald Rogan fell to the desert sand, blood pouring from the ghastly wound in his neck.

  “No!” John screamed, emptying an entire clip to shoot the mutie’s head apart. But more of them converged on the elder Rogan and he disappeared within the hooting crowd of stickies waving the exhausted rapidfire. The muzzle-flashes of his handblaster could be seen between the wiggling bodies, then he began to shriek and the wep went silent.

  His face a mask of feral anger, Edward started that way, firing at every step. But then he stopped as his M-16 jammed and he hastily worked the bolt to try to clear the brass caught in the ejector port.

  “Fragging piece of drek!” Edward snarled, dropping the half-spent clip to insert a full one.

  As the creatures began to noisily feed on the aced Rogan, Jak lit the fuse on the pipe bomb and started to throw it at them. Then he bent forward slightly so that his snowy hair tumbled back into his scarred face.

  Levering single rounds into the Steyr to shoot at the hooting throng, Ryan recognized that posture as the teenager’s combat stance, and wondered what he had planned. It better be good because the companions were dangerously low on ammo and almost out of bombs.

  Angling around, Jak heaved the bomb past the crowd of feeding stickies and threw it toward the cliff. It landed amid the loose gravel and loudly detonated, the rumbling echo from below making it sound like a thousand grens. That immediately caught the attention of every stickie. Hooting wildly, the muties swarmed past the norms and headed for the smoking blast crater.

  “It worked!” Mildred shouted in delight.

  Ryan pulled out a pipe bomb. “Okay, drive ’em in!”

  Hurriedly, fuses were lit and bombs were hurled to rain destruction upon the stickies on the cliff. With every blast a dozen perished and more rushed over in blind, mindless need.

  Cornered on the cliff, trapped by their own lust for fiery destruction, the muties coalesced into a group target, and the norms ruthlessly mowed them down. A few tried to escape and only plummeted out of sight into the darkness below. Ruthlessly, the companions maintained the assault, and in only a few minutes, the hooting stopped and there was only the multiple, overlapping echoes of the detonating charges thundering along the rock walls of the vast chasm.

  Quickly reloading, Krysty and Mildred went over to assist Lily in setting Doc free from the net, while Ryan, J.B. and Jak joined Edward in a slow walk among the twitching bodies, firing rounds into the head of any mutie that didn’t quite look chilled enough. They hated wasting live brass on the creatures, but there was no other option.

  The slaughter continued in a steady procession until the group reached the edge of the cliff. Staying sharp, the norms double checked the bodies on the bloody ground, but there weren’t any stickies left intact.

  “Well, that seems to be all of the bastards,” Ryan declared, inserting his last clip.

  “Looks like,” J.B. agreed, titling back his fedora. “Which only leaves one Rogan to deal with.”

  Covered in entrails and blood, Edward checked his rapidfire blaster and watched the other people through narrowed eyelids. There was only half a clip of brass left in his blaster, but if the outlanders wanted to dance, he would put at least one of them on the last train west.

  Stepping over a blast crater, J.B. stopped a yard away from the last Rogan brother, deliberately just out of reach. The gorilla-like man looked more than capable of chilling with his bare hands.

  “Blood for blood,” the Armorer said as the wind blew a cloud of loose dust along the cliff. “That means it’s okay with us if you walk out of here.”

  “Yeah?” Edward demanded suspiciously. Somewhere in the fight, his ponytail had come loose, and the long hair hung down around his wide shoulders, giving the barrel-chested man the appearance of a wild barbarian from out of a predark vid.

  “You can load it into your blaster,” Ryan stated honestly, resting the wooden stock of the Steyr on a hip. “Bury your kin, and leave in peace. Or come at us right now. It’s aces or eights with me either way. Your choice.”

  “Just go far,” Jak said in a low growl, thumbing back the hammer on his Colt Python. “If see again, chill. Savvy?”

  Shifting his grip on the rapidfire, Edward hawked and spit. The dust was so thick in his throat it was like trying to breathe underground, and the dirt carried the taste of the grave.

  “Sounds good,” Edward stated, resting the M-16 combo on a broad shoulder. “Just give me Lily, and I’m gone.”

  “No, not the girl,” Ryan countered sternly. “We don’t barter with people as if they were jack. All the blasters and brass you can carry, and a bag full of self-heats, but nothing else.”

  Frowning deeply, Edward used stiff fingers to brush back his loose hair. “Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” He sighed in resignation. “Fair enough, then. No deal.”

  The words were said so simply they caught the companions by surprise. Shooting from the hip, Edward dived to the side. A line of impact geysers formed where Ryan had just been a split moment before, and the one-eyed man was already in motion, the SIG-Sauer chugging death. The rounds ricocheted off the angular body armor under Edward’s gore-streaked shirt, and the big man staggered from the impact but triggered another short burst from the predark rapidfire. Ducking low, Jak fired the Colt Python, the impact making the big coldheart step backward and trip over a chilled stickie. Dropping to his belly, J.B. unleashed the scattergun just as Edward pulled a gren from his pocket.

  Crying out, Edward clutched his bloody face and went over backward, losing the gren. The mil sphere rolled along the ground and dropped in a blast crater still misty with smoke.

  “Down!” Ryan shouted, and the companions dived for cover.

  The fiery detonation illuminated the entire cliff in stark relief. Then Edward screamed, but it sounded more like surprise than pain. As the harsh glare of the explos dissipated, there was no sight of the last Rogan. But his scream could still be heard fading away into the darkness below. The noise seemed to last a long time, but the cry abruptly stopped, and there was only the sound of the sighing wind.

  Chapter Nineteen

  With a loaded blaster in hand, Jak stood guard on a rill, while Ryan and Jak went through the battlefield checking on the scattered belongings of the Rogans.

  Most of the debris was burned, crushed or riddled with bullet holes. But a few of the 40 mm shells seemed undamaged. Plus, there was an entire nylon bag full of MRE packs. The Mylar envelopes were sprinkled with stickie ooze and human blood, but could be washed off with no problem. Sadly, the horses were aced, the exploded bike reduced to flaming wreckage. A thick plume of black smoke rose high into the stormy night sky.

  “Wherever we go, it’s going to be on foot,” J.B. declared, slinging a gunbelt over a shoulder. The blaster seemed okay, and there were even a few live brass left in the loops.

  “Yeah, the only real question is where,” Ryan stated, stuffing a knife into
a pocket. “Those horses came from Two-Son ville, which means they were either stolen or Baron O’Connor sent sec men after us.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were dispatched to chill us,” J.B. retorted, adjusting his glasses.

  “Also doesn’t mean they were sent to protect us,” Ryan said in a somber tone, flexing his sore arm. “The only way to be sure is to go ask, and by then it’s too late.”

  “Yeah, I know.” J.B. sighed in agreement. After so many betrayals, lies, ambushes, even friends becoming enemies, it was difficult to believe that anybody was on their side.

  Suddenly, Jak’s blaster rang out and the men pivoted with weps in hand. As they watched, the albino teen gave the all-clear signal. A moment later an aced stingwing fell from the sky to land with a meaty thump near the burning motorcycle.

  Startled by the crashing arrival, Lily paused in shock, then went back to looting the bodies, stuffing items into a saddlebag recovered from a chilled horse.

  Wordlessly, J.B. indicated the looting with the barrel of his Uzi. Grimacing in acknowledgment, Ryan noted the things she was appropriating and approved. The young woman had fought by their side, and even tried to free Doc, when running would have been a logical choice. Fair enough. Blood for blood. That was a code of honor any warrior could understand down in his bones. Lily could keep anything she found. Except grens, of course.

  Scooping loose sand in both hands, Krysty poured it over the sticky filaments of the net, the particles adhering until the strands were no longer shiny but a dull brown. She had seen the Rogans handle the net with gloves, but those were nowhere to be seen among the tattered corpses and spent brass. However, the sand coated the material just fine, making it possible to touch the netting without also becoming ensnared.

  “Okay, this should do it,” Mildred said, pouring shine on the blade of a knife and hacking once more at the resilient material.