Deathlands - The Twilight Children

by James Axler

  Now, within rifle range of the old ruined ville of Seattle, on the edge of the mighty Cascades, he had finally succeeded and was riding again with the Trader.

  "Success. WILL STAY around Seattle for three months. Come quick. Abe." That had been the message that Trader had agreed should be sent to Ryan Cawdor and the others.

  Most of the packmen and travelers that Abe had spoken to had agreed to take the message. Some asked for a handful of small change in return for the errand. Nobody knew where Ryan would be, but they were simply told what he looked like-tall man, well armed, one-eyed, with a woman whose hair was like spun fire. And they were given descriptions of the rest of the group.

  Only one person had argued with Abe, pushing the smaller man around, until Trader walked over from the bar and stood right up in the stranger's face and gave him his thin, dangerous smile and asked if there was a problem.

  There wasn't.

  THINGS WERE DIFFERENT, in ways that Abe found difficult to quantify or understand. All the years when Trader had ridden the helm of War Wag One, often with at least one more of the huge armored vehicles in the convoy, Abe had been one of dozens of men and women who'd formed the crews of the wags.

  He saw Trader then for many of his waking hours and his recollection was of having some good times, long talks and shared experiences with him.

  Now he was slowly coming to realize that that was an edited version of the truth.

  In fact, hardly anyone ever had long conversations with the Trader, except maybe John Dix and Ryan Cawdor, the three men sitting together around the guarded camp fires at the end of a day's driving or trading or fighting, talking, occasionally laughing.

  Abe was now coming to recognize the fact that he'd hardly ever had a long talk with the Trader hi his entire life. Maybe never.

  Now he spent the whole day and long chunks of the night with his taciturn former leader, and it just wasn't at all like he remembered it.

  Trader was content to go for hours on end without saying a word to Abe, sitting in a chair, or with his back against a convenient tree, looking vacantly out across a saloon bar or into the glowing embers at the heart of a dying fire.

  A few times he would stir and draw out a reminiscence of some firefight or massacre that they'd shared, relishing the way they'd chilled their enemies, seeming to Abe to disregard their own fatalities and wounded.

  The one thing that was like what Abe remembered was Trader's bleak toughness.

  Two weeks after they'd finally met up, they were camping on the western ridge of the Cascades. The weather had been variable, often starting with heavens of sunrise, followed by a gradual thickening of the cloud from the Pacific and then a cold drizzle moving in over the mountains.

  Trader had bought a bottle of home brew from a wizened old woman, her eyes almost blind with the pale milk of cataracts. It was so strong that even to flick a few drops from the tips of your fingers into the fire brought a "whoosh" of flame.

  "Remember when those stickies stole a wag full of hard liquor like this, Abe?"

  "When was that?"

  "Must be ten years. In the Apps. Scranton. No, wait, it was down Odessa way, yeah, that was it. Odessa way. We'd camped near a broke freeway bridge."

  It rang a vague bell in Abe's memory and he nodded. Already he'd found that the Trader still didn't take kindly to being interrupted or contradicted.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Drink was so potent that they started spitting it into their big fire." He shook his head. "Them stickies surely liked a flame and an explosion." He threw his head back and laughed. "Got them both that night. Some of them kind of exploded when we threw them into the burning wood. Damnedest thing I ever saw, Abe."

  Yeah, he remembered all right. Remembered now, like it had been that same night.

  The stickies-there'd been about fifteen of them in the raiding gang-had made a try for someone from the wags. Who had it been? Cohn. The radio op had been out fishing in a narrow creek, near to sunset. Stickies had come after him. Abe closed his eyes for a moment, his right hand stroking at his long, drooping mustache, visualizing the wounds when Cohn had been carried back on a canvas stretcher to the defensive circle, in the looming shadows of the two war wags.

  The unmistakable wounds were from stickies. They were muties that had developed circular suckers on their palms and fingers, and used them to hold on to their victims. Cohn had the round, raw patches on his arms and one big one on his face, where the layers of skin had been ripped away, leaving the bloody cicatrix, like a massive, burst blister.

  Trader had been annoyed.

  That's like saying that the midday sun could sometimes be fairly warm.

  They'd gone after the stickies, raiding their camp while they were drinking their stolen moonshine, and chilled them all-fifteen muties, eight men, four women and three children. Most were blasted down from hiding. Trader had never been one to take chances.

  "Man takes a chance when he doesn't have to can't wait to get into his grave," he used to say.

  Survivors were doused in the potent liquor, then burned to death.

  The charred remains had been left where they'd fallen, after running, burning and screaming. Abe remembered.

  "YOU'RE MILES AWAY.1'

  Trader's harsh voice rasped through the evening gloom, making Abe jump.

  "Remembering."

  "What?"

  "Old times past."

  "Not worth forgetting." Trader grinned.

  Abe sat up and peered into the depths of his enameled coffee mug, finding, as he'd suspected, that it was almost empty. He tossed the bitter dregs into the dirt and stood to pour himself a top-up from the dark blue pot that hissed and bubbled in the heart of their fire.

  "Hold it!" Trader's voice a whisper that barely rippled the evening air.

  Abe cursed himself under his breath, half turning, seeing the glint of metal by his bedroll. His stainless-steel Colt Python, the big .357, was as much use there as if it were at the bottom of a Dubuque shithouse.

  "Other side of the clearing."

  Abe looked where the Armalite pointed, expecting to see a mutie rattler, ten feet long. Or a giant cougar, fangs bared, crouched to pounce and crunch and rend him open from groin to breastbone.

  It was a gray squirrel, a dainty little creature, quite oblivious to the two men watching it, holding a small pine nut between its front paws and picking at it with quick, delicate movements.

  Abe turned back, seeing that the Trader was cautiously raising the Armalite to his shoulder, squinting along the barrel, steadying it on the tiny squirrel.

  "Waste of a bullet, Trader," Abe said, conscious of how high and reedy his voice suddenly seemed to sound.

  "How's that?"

  "You used to tell us that a bullet wasted today could be a life wasted tomorrow."

  Trader's short, barking laugh was loud enough to disturb the creature, sending it scampering away into the lake of tranquil darkness under the trees.

  To his relief, Abe heard the soft click of the safety going back on. Fingers trembling, he helped himself to the hot coffee sub, sitting down again across from Trader.

  "You were right, Abe, but I wouldn't cross me too often." A long pause. "Ten weeks for Ryan to get up here. Ten weeks isn't that long."

  Chapter Six

  Despite being only eleven years old, Dean Cawdor had been most places in Deathlands and seen most things.

  But he'd never seen anything like the thing that now sat perched on the back of the rusting locomotive tender, staring at him from golden eyes. There was another on the roof of the stagecoach barn, another squatting up on the splintered gable of the Masonic lodge.

  And another.

  And another.

  The boy slowly drew his heavy blaster, unsure whether it would be a good idea to start shooting or not, not yet certain whether any of the others had spotted the threat.

  Then he saw his father, holding the SIG-Sauer in his right hand, peering out of the doorway of anoth
er of the tumbledown old buildings, heard him say "Fire-blast!" and knew that meant that he had also seen the sinister creatures that had appeared from out of the shrouding mists.

  "I chill it, Dad?" he called, as loud as he dared, his voice bringing the other five into sight, all of them looking up at the apparitions.

  Ryan waved his hand low, indicating a negative to the boy's request.

  But the mutie thing on the tender still hadn't moved, its eyes boring into Dean with as much passion as a melt-washed boulder of Sierra granite.

  J.B. waved a clenched fist to Ryan, gesturing toward the general store, at the far end of the street of the re-created ghost town.

  Ryan nodded. The Armorer's tactical skill hadn't deserted them. The alien creatures might not be hostile, but you didn't take a chance on something like that. It was better to gather in what seemed the strongest of the buildings.

  He checked that the rest of the companions knew where they were going to go, hefted his blaster and made sure that his rifle was secure across his shoulders.

  None of the weird things had moved at all, though five more had arrived, circling lazily from the belt of the fog, settling on other roofs.

  "Now!" Ryan shouted.

  They moved together at the signal, running along the furrowed main street, up onto the splintered, damp boardwalk to the store.

  Michael was there first, followed closely by Dean and Ryan. All of them stood by the open door, ready to g ive the others covering fire against the threat of the creatures.

  "Inside," J.B. said, ushering Mildred, Krysty and Doc into the shadowy interior.

  "They aren't moving, Dad."

  The things all watched the flurry of movement with a calm, disinterested stare, the protuberant yellow eyes not seeming to register what was happening.

  "In," Ryan ordered, gesturing to Michael and Dean with the SIG-Sauer.

  He stood and waited.

  During the last quarter of a minute a dozen more of the muties had flown in, all finding places to perch on the roofs, all along the strip of buildings. They wheeled down onto Lonesome Gulch in almost total silence, the only sound the beating of their strong-pinioned wings.

  Ryan studied them, trying to weigh up what kind of threat they might present, assuming that they were any sort of danger at all. The more he looked, the more it seemed a fair assumption that the things could be bad news.

  He guessed that their genetic mutation, triggered by the nuking of a hundred years or so ago, had begun with them being some kind of bird.

  They had a wingspan of about five feet. But from what he could see from the doorway, it looked to Ryan as though they didn't have normal avian feathers. There was a metallic, leathery appearance to them, like the wings of robotic bats, with sharp claws spaced out along the leading edge.

  The jaws were elongated, like an alligator's, with two very prominent, curved teeth and then a myriad of tiny ones. The golden eyes protruded from sockets of bones, and there was a ruff of crimson spikes around the throat that could have been either feather or bone. None of the things was close enough for Ryan to be able to know for certain.

  "They doing anything?"

  J.B. had reappeared at Ryan's shoulder, holding the Uzi. He peered out into the street.

  "No. What's it look like to defend?"

  "Shutters inside, but they got the worm. Wouldn't want to trust them to keep out a spitball. Others are putting them up now. They got ob slits in them."

  "Fog's coming lower again."

  Now there were about fifty of the bird creatures. Every now and again one of those farthest away would flap into the air and make an ungainly landing on a closer roof.

  "We hold out here until night." Ryan glanced at his chron, cursing under his breath at its uselessness. "Can't be that long now. Move out then and head for the redoubt. You know, the gateway. Unless those ugly sons of bitches can see in the dark."

  Behind them there was the clatter of wood and iron as the old shutters were eased into position, with the groaning of rusted binges. Krysty called out to Ryan.

  "More of those birds out front, near where that parking lot used to be."

  "How many?"

  "Ten or a dozen."

  "What are they doing?"

  "Watching. Don't like this one, lover. Could be we ought to head out of here, soon as we can."

  "They're getting restless," J.B. said. "Only trouble in trying to reach the mat-trans unit in the dark is

  that we don't have a working compass, and those fogs can be a bastard." He rested the blaster against his hip and took off his wire-rimmed spectacles, polishing them on a kerchief. "Thought of getting lost hi this place isn't-"

  "Here they come," Ryan snapped, interrupting the Armorer. He pushed inside, slammed the door behind him and slid across a stout bolt.

  The mist had grown suddenly thicker, sinking from the barren peaks around onto the small ville as though it were a hostile, sentient entity itself.

  Simultaneously all of the mutie birds began to cry out, opening their beaks wide, the arrays of teeth glittering in the odd, pallid light. The noise wasn't like the call of any bird any of them had ever heard. It had a deep, penetrating quality that struck at the hearts of the listeners.

  To Ryan it conjured a picture of a slack-jawed, gibbering shape in a mold-stained shroud, calling to its fellows from an echoing catacomb.

  To Doc it was the cold wind that blew between the long-dead stars.

  Everyone of the seven friends who listened to that dreadful chorus heard it differently. But all of them found it a frightful sound.

  AT THE PRECISE MOMENT that they began to shriek, the things rose from the roofs and flapped toward the store.

  Dean had been watching through the narrow slit in one of the shutters that overlooked the street, and he yelled out a running commentary.

  "They're all in the air and the fog's badder than... coming in toward-" He ducked away, though there was no immediate impact, then peered out again. "They're circling, Dad. Hundreds of them!"

  Ryan looked around the store, all of his experience and combat sense working overtime. The room was around thirty feet long by twenty wide, with several windows, all of them now covered with the ulterior shutters. The front entrance was glass, but it had a thick wire inner door.

  "Get something against that, Michael," he ordered. "Things that big could break through the screen. Help him, Doc."

  "What with?"

  "Countertop."

  "There's an upstairs, Ryan."

  He turned on his heel and stared through the gloom at Mildred, who was pointing along a narrow passage that ran back from near the cash register and the display cabinet holding the sacks of blasting powder.

  "Fireblast!" He sprinted along the corridor toward the steep, narrow staircase, dropping his rifle as he ran to give himself greater speed and mobility.

  He heard the crash of glass ahead and above him before he'd even set his foot on the steps.

  "J.B.!" he yelled, reaching the landing and glancing to left and right. He saw that there was a single gable room at the far end, the door standing a little ajar.

  The noise from that dark chamber was almost indescribable. More glass shattered, and the chorus of menacing cries from the lizard birds rose.

  There hadn't been many times hi Ryan Cawdor's life when he'd been consciously frightened of anything. Yet that shadowy landing, with the half-open door at its end, containing those hideous creatures, made him hesitate for a moment.

  But common sense carried him on.

  If the things escaped from that upstairs room, then there was nothing to be done to prevent them flooding down into the main part of the store. And the dying wasn't likely to take very long.

  Behind him Ryan could hear J.B.'s boots pounding on the rickety wooden steps.

  At the farther end, a reptilian head appeared in the gap, unwinking ocher eyes burning through the gloom into Ryan, who snapped a shot at it, missing by inches, gouging a spray of plaster from
the wall.

  The thing was out, its huge wings cramped by the narrow passage, beak open, shrieking at the human intruder.

  Ryan batted at it with the barrel of the blaster, hitting it a glancing blow across the chest, barely dodging a scything jab from the fanged beak.

  "Chill it!" he shouted to the Armorer, who was almost at his heels. "I'll close the door."

  He grabbed at the dark metal handle, shaped like the head of a buffalo, and tugged at it. But another of the muties had found the gap and was blocking it, head protruding, hissing its ferocious anger, the great pinions flailing at the wood.