by James Axler
Ryan held the door in his left hand, the SIG-Sauer in his right. He reacted like lightning, dropping the gun at his feet and drawing the panga from its greased sheath.
The blade hissed through the dusty air, striking the mutie bird just below the point where its angular skull articulated with his snakelike neck. Ryan had expected the honed steel to slice clear through, but the panga angled off, barely nicking the overlapping scales.
The narrow head struck again at him, the point of the beak ripping at his sleeve, nearly making him let go of the door handle. Behind it Ryan could hear a bedlam of noise, aware of dozens of bodies flinging themselves against the battered wood.
There was also a disturbance downstairs, with shouting and a couple of shots fired, but he was too busy with his own problem to pay it any heed.
At his back there came the sudden flat spitting sound of the Uzi and the shrieking sound ended abruptly.
"Need a hand, Ryan?"
"No room. Fucker's got a skin like sec steel."
Two more desperate hacking blows had more success, opening a gouge in the thing's throat, sending drops of amber blood pattering, hot and acid, onto Ryan's wrist.
He took a chance and eased the door open a few inches, punching with the haft of the panga at the wounded creature, pushing it back into the attic room. He slammed the door shut triumphantly and heard the lock click home. Until that moment it had never occurred to Ryan that there might not be any sort of catch on the door, or that it could easily have rusted away during the endless years after the long winters.
He spun around, stooping with an easy grace to retrieve his fallen SIG-Sauer, seeing that J.B. was standing at the top of the stairs, Uzi at the ready. The dead mutie bird was lying still on the dusty floor, one wing broken off, its head lolling on its muscular neck.
"Door won't hold them long." J.B. smiled at Ryan, his teeth white in the gloom. "Never figured on ending as a bird's dinner."
As RYAN RAN BACK down the stairs into the main part of the old store, he was figuring that J.B. was probably right. It looked as though it were only going to be a matter of time.
It was like being at the still center of a spinning world. Outside there was a cacophony of shrieking noise, orchestrated by the constant thudding of wings and beaks battering at the walls and shutters.
The other five were standing close together by the candy counter, guns drawn, waiting for die moment when the defenses were breached and the mutie creatures poured in to chill them.
"Any ideas?" Ryan shouted.
"Yeah," his eleven-year-old son replied.
Chapter Seven
It was so noisy that Ryan wasn't even sure that he'd heard his son correctly.
"What?" he shouted.
"Can I have some candy, then I'll tel l you?"
For a moment Ryan nearly slapped the boy hard enough across the face to send him staggering into the middle of next week. That he could joke at a time of such imminent peril brought the crimson mist of rage flooding down across his mind. Krysty, at his side, caught the wave of potential violence from Ryan and gripped him by the wrist.
Very hard.
"Tell us, Dean. Then have as much candy as you want." She didn't let go of Ryan while she spoke.
The heavy counter that had been propped against the wire screen over the front entrance to the store was already rocking under the impact of the things.
"There's a root cellar." Dean pointed back toward the stairs. "Under there."
J.B. was closest and he moved with deceptive speed, opening a dark-painted door. "Throw us a pack of self-lights," he called. "If they still work."
Mildred picked up a box of matches and threw them to the Armorer, who vanished from their sight.
But his voice floated up to them, just audible above the sound of the ceaseless attack. "Cellar, all right. Solid. And-" he paused "-reckon we can get out of here. Double doors." There was another moment of silence from the Armorer. "Yeah. They're stiff, and there's something piled on them, but we can shift them. Definitely another way out."
"But those shithead snake-bird things are all the way around us," Mildred protested, staring out of one of the ob slits, pulling back quickly as the wood splintered and a length was smashed in by the attacking muties.
"If only we could find some way of luring them all in here and then destroy them with some fiendishly cunning ruse," Doc said.
Dean was leaning against one of the remaining counters, sucking pensively on a honey-and-mango sugar stick, tossing one of the little souvenir bags of blasting powder in the air with his other hand.
"Careful that doesn't blow us all up," Ryan said. "That's it! J.B., come here. Something you once showed me."
"TRICK THAT TRADER taught me, first week after I joined him."
The sallow-faced Armorer was down on his knees, oblivious to the threat from the mutie birds flocked all around them. Ryan had just snatched a glance from one of the ob slits and realized then that time was sliding away from them. The fog had closed in and there seemed to be, literally, hundreds upon hundreds of the vicious brutes.
The temperature had also dropped radically in the past few minutes, so that everyone could see their breath misting around them in the store.
"Damnably chill," Doc muttered. "My Aunt Harriet used to have a saying that it was as cold as the blood in the neck of a dead horse."
Ryan ignored him. The seconds were running out, the sand falling ever faster through the thin glass throat of the timer. And the delicate operation he and J.B. were working on could possibly save all of their lives.
Or destroy them a few minutes more quickly.
He had taken a handful of thin black cigarillos from a sealed pack on the counter, making sure with the self-lights that they still worked and hadn't dried away to powder. He carefully got them all glowing evenly at the same length and bound them upright with a length of thin twine from one of J.B.'s capacious pockets. Then he set them amid a pile of wood shavings that Michael had whittled from the edge of one of the shutters, with a number of crumpled, dry pages from some of the old guides.
The main trigger for the ignition was a number of matches, tilted carefully against the pile of small cigars, so that they would eventually come into contact with the glowing ends.
"Nice a little fire booby as I ever saw/' J.B. said admiringly. "All we need now is a trail of the black
powder from the source to the main stock of the explosive."
Dean had slipped up the stairs, running down again almost immediately. "The bastards have almost broken through," he yelled. "One of the top panels is split from top to bottom, and I could see their beaks driving clean through."
Ryan nodded. "Right. Take some self-lights and go down in the cellar. Everyone except me and J.B., now."
To his relief they all obeyed immediately, Krysty brushing the tips of her fingers against his cheek as she left. "Don't be too long, lover," she said.
J.B. had scattered a trail of the glistening black grains, leading to the main store of the powder, which he'd packed tightly into a stout wooden box that had been standing in a corner of the store.
"Nearly ready," he said, checking that the matches were still in place and that the cigars were burning evenly.
"Where did you first get this idea from?" Ryan called, standing with the Armorer's Uzi in his hands.
"Guy in Oregon got paid to spot fires for the local baron. Paid jack on results. More fires he spotted, more jack he got. Took to starting them himself. Showed me how he did it."
Ryan glanced one last time through the nearest ob slit, looking out across the main street.
The fog had thickened, intruding through the cracks around the shutters, tasting cold and bitter, like steel and salt water. Every window in the place had been
completely smashed, turned to smithereens of sharp-edged glass, and the bird things kept coming. They vanished out of sight into the veiling mist, then turned and drove into the thick wood hard enough to make it shudder. It see
med like the entire building was trembling under the ferocious assault. Ryan kept his eye a safe distance from the slit, aware of the possibility that one of the reptilian beaks might smash through and pierce his skull.
The muties were attacking in a ceaseless stream. It was like watching them flap toward you in their hundreds, along the dark tunnel.
Even in the thickest of the fog, Ryan noticed that their eyes glowed with a fearsome yellow light. He stared intently out at them...
Someone was shaking his shoulder and shouting at him.
"What?"
"You got hypnotized, friend. Let's go." J.B. turned toward the passage that led to the stairs into the root cellar.
"We need them in here for the explosion to work. Kill enough for us to be able to risk a break."
"Dark night!" J.B. pounded his right fist into his left palm. "You're right, Ryan."
"Go. I'll pull down that old counter. Should give them a way in. Might have time to throw open one or two of the shutters as well."
Above them they both heard the startling noise of splintering wood, rising over the other sounds, and the screeches of the creatures grew instantly louder.
"They're in!" J.B. yelled. He ran to knock over the counter, while Ryan unbolted two of the pairs of shutters.
The mutie horrors held off for a vital couple of seconds, suspicious of the sudden access to the old store. J.B. led the way toward the door at the top of the basement steps, held open by a watchful Krysty.
Ryan was less than six feet behind him, still holding the Uzi, the SIG-Sauer in its holster. The Steyr had been taken down to safety by Dean.
Death was all around.
Boiling down the stairs from the second story, the creatures clashed in their blood lust, beaks open, their screams of hatred and rage filling the store. Others had surged in through the shattered front entrance and past the open shutters.
Ryan felt something pluck at his sleeve and there was a sharp fiery pain at the side of his neck, warmth running down inside his collar.
J.B. was through the door. Krysty's face, a taut mask of fear, was framed in the rectangular shadow.
Ryan paused a second, the blaster on full-auto, spraying a circle of bloody doom all around him, seeing the mutie birds falling with shattered wings and broken skulls. Then he was through the door and Krysty slammed it shut, pushing across stout bolts at the bottom and top.
"Fucking close, lover," she said.
Below him was a set of stairs, without a handrail, that led down into an earth-walled cellar, about fifteen feet square. Five faces looked up at him, illuminated by the orange glow of the brief self-lights that everyone but J.B. was holding.
"Best get right down," he said. "Cover your ears and open your mouths."
The door at the top of the stairs was taking a dreadful pounding, but that wasn't what concerned Ryan. The passage was so narrow that no more than a couple of the things could attack the sturdy wood.
It was the bomb they'd set that worried him.
He was worried what would happen if it didn't go off, and what would happen if it did go off.
If it didn't, the creatures would get them, either by breaking down the door or, eventually, by waiting them out.
If it went off as planned, then it should chill or mutilate the majority of the attacking muties, and scare the living hell out of any survivors, giving Ryan and the others a decent chance to break for it and head back for the gateway-providing that the explosion didn't wreck the store so effectively that the cellar roof collapsed and the entire place entombed them.
Working in the near dark, under enormous pressure, with one hundred-year-old black blasting powder, didn't lead to the scientific probability of measured success.
On balance, Ryan hoped that it went off.
One by one the tiny halos of light from the matches were extinguished, leaving the cellar in pitch dark-
ness. Everyone was crouched over on hands and knees, palms pressed to their ears, mouths sagging open against the anticipated shock wave. All waiting.
Chapter Eight
"It hasn't worked, Dad."
The small voice came from the raven blackness, trying to hide its fear.
"Can't tell yet, Dean." Ryan had only just caught his son speaking, through the muffling hands over his ears. "Not like a chron-timed gren."
The others were aware of the conversation and were moving around hi the dirt.
1 "This brings back such happy memories of playing at Sardines with my English cousins at one Christmas party. One had to squeeze into the smallest, darkest space one could find and wait for the other to try to f ind you."
Doc sounded totally unworried by their intensely dangerous predicament, chatting as easily as if he were relaxing at a faculty tea party.
"How long do you reckon, J.B.?" Mildred asked from near the double doors to the open air.
"Reckon in the next minute or..."
"Or what, John?"
"Or not at all."
"It's coming," Krysty said, quiet and confident.
"When?"
"Soon, lover. Very soon." She paused long enough for three beats of the heart. "Now."
MANY YEARS EARLIER Ryan had been knocked unconscious by an implode gren going off close to him while he was swimming hi a deep reservoir. The feeling was similar when then homemade bomb was ignited in the store above.
There was a massive, muffled impact that a person felt rather than heard. It was like having the brain squeezed by a giant's fist, who was also compressing all of the internal organs of the body. It was sensation, rather than actual pain.
The floor heaved, and Ryan felt chunks of wood and dirt raining over him as he crouched on the packed earth.
J.B. was quickest, holding a dozen spluttering matches in his hand. The air was filled with powdery dust, and they could all catch the bitter stench of the explosive.
Krysty touched a finger to her nose, bringing it away streaked with crimson. Dean had a worm of blood creeping from his nose, and Doc complained that he'd bitten his tongue.
Ryan scrambled to his feet, feeling his head ringing. "Can't hear those mutie birds anymore," he said, aware that his voice sounded extremely distant.
"I can't hear anything," Michael countered, brushing dirt off his clothes.
"No point waiting." Ryan walked to the heavy doors and braced himself under them. "Dean, take the rifle and Uzi. Michael and J.B., lend a hand here."
Doc, Mildred and Krysty struck more matches, giving the men enough light to see what they were doing. For a frozen moment, Ryan thought that they might not be able to shift the ancient doors and was on the verge of asking Krysty to use the power of the Earth Mother, even though he knew what a terrible toll it took out of her when calling on the frightful strength.
"Going," Michael panted.
A hinge groaned in protest, then both doors swung up and back, letting in a flood of cold, bitter fog. Outside the building, the day hadn't yet quite run its course, though it was moving toward evening.
"Ladder?" Ryan felt around him, but there was nothing. "No. Michael, climb out first. Here, I'll give you a leg up. Then help pull everyone out."
The place was deathly still, the fog clamped tight around, cutting visibility to less than five paces.
Behind them there was the dimly seen light of a fire burning, dry wood crackling and the distinct sound of sorely wounded creatures.
As they moved away from the tourist ghost town of Lonesome Gulch, the noises faded behind them.
THE JOURNEY BACK to the gateway through the blighted land wasn't entirely without incident. None of the mutie birds that had besieged the store at the entrance to the ghost town came after them, but the
fog grew steadily thicker and more menacing, making it less than easy to find the trail with none of the compasses working at all.
They picked up the old road along the side of the slow-running, sinister river without any problems, taking care to keep as far away as possible from the strange
semiliquid flow, avoiding attack from any of its lethal denizens.
Dean complained of being thirsty and waited a little way off the trail, looking for pools of water trapped amid the frost-riven boulders.
The others waited, Ryan calling out to him not to go far from sight.
"All right, Dad. Got some..." Then came the sound of spitting and spluttering from the gray walls of fog.
"Dean?"