Perception Fault

by James Axler

  J.B. turned back to see a mountain of a man, easily close to seven feet tall and at least 350 pounds, looming over him. He aimed the Beretta and pulled the trigger, only to have the blaster jam with a click. The huge warrior laughed at the sight, until J.B. hurled the weapon at his face. The projectile smashed into his mouth, crushing his lips, and making the man spit out blood and a rotten tooth before lumbering toward him. J.B. danced around him, trying to put him between himself and the approaching muties. The giant seemed unconcerned about anyone else, but concentrated solely on the Armorer, raising his club to brain the smaller man. The moment he brought it down, J.B. moved.

  Not away from the man-mountain, but toward him. Stepping inside his reach, J.B. got close enough to smell his rotten breath as he darted around the man, his knife seeking a vital spot he could reach with relative ease—the giant’s right hamstring. He sliced through both tendons on his way out, and ducked as a ham-size fist tried to grab him, the massive warrior being faster than he appeared to be. The turn made his wounded leg buckle, however, and he crashed to the ground, shouting in pain and surprise. Grabbing his bleeding joint, the warrior looked up to see three stickies staring down at him, lipless mouths opening and closing in their hairless faces, their protuberant, staring eyes evincing no reaction at the man lying before them. Bending over, they all went to work on him.

  For J.B., the screams would echo in his dreams for days afterward. At the moment, however, he wasn’t concentrating on anything but reaching the APC. Most of the group had already made it to the protection of the vehicle’s roof, with Doc being hoisted up by Krysty and Mildred while Jak kept a lookout for approaching stickies or blue-painted warriors.

  Loud hoots from nearby let J.B. know he had been spotted, and he put on a burst of speed. The sounds of carnage were all around him as the stickies found the remaining warriors and attacked them with the same glee as they did any other living creature.

  Hearing footsteps slapping the ground behind him, he pushed himself to the limit to reach the APC, making a final desperate leap to grab Krysty’s and Mildred’s outstretched hands. As they began to pull him up, a heavy weight grabbed his legs, pulling him back down.

  “J.B., get rid of him. He’s gonna pull you down!”

  “Want to tell me how I should do that!” he barked.

  Doc’s snow-capped head appeared over the side of the APC, his LeMat in hand. “Fear not, John Barrymore, I will remove this ruffian from your person.”

  “Doc, you better have the goddamn right barrel selected!”

  “Of course, my good man.” Doc checked the blaster and twisted the barrel slightly before sighting down at him. “Just hold still.”

  “A little lower—just a little lower!” J.B. shouted, seeing the muzzle come dangerously close to his chest. Doc adjusted his aim one more time before pulling the trigger. A puff of smoke and flash of flame later, the weight fell away from J.B.’s legs, and the two women pulled him up.

  “Great, we made it. Now how to we get inside?” Mildred asked, wiping her sweaty brow with the back of her hand.

  “What, isn’t there a top hatch up here?”

  Krysty pointed to a yard-square piece of dark metal with a seam running all around it. “Yeah, we think so, but it’s locked from the inside.”

  J.B. knelt to take a look at it. “I didn’t get up here just to fry in the sun or become some stickie’s skin toy.” He quickly located a small, armored panel, which slid aside at his touch, revealing a numeric keypad. “Jak, knife.”

  “Don’t break tip like you did before.” The albino teen handed over one of his slim throwing blades, which J.B. used to pry up the pad, exposing green circuit boards. Identifying which one controlled the power, he sat back on his heels and tried to figure out how to run a bypass without wire when the panel slid open, nearly throwing Doc over the side.

  “Hey, you did it!” Krysty said.

  “Not me.” J.B. bent over to look inside and was greeted by the barrel of a short machine pistol shoved into his face.

  “You got three seconds to explain yourselves, or you’re worm food,” the armored, helmeted sec man wielding the gun ordered.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ryan burst into action as the wave of stickies swarmed toward him and Josiah Carrington. Even as he leaped forward in what would surely be a vain attempt to save the old man, even as he brought up his Sig Sauer and aimed at the nearest one, a part of him wondered what the hell was making him try to save Josiah. Had he really bought into the man’s vision of a true free city in the Deathlands, or was it simply that no one deserved to die like that?

  Later, he’d realize that he’d never gotten an answer to his question, for as he charged in front of the old man, tracking and shooting stickies with head shots as fast as he could pull the trigger, there wasn’t any time to consider what had brought him there. The dead muties made a small hole in the shambling horde, with several breaking off to find easier prey, but a large group kept advancing on them, heedless of the others dying under the accurate aim of the one-eyed man.

  Five stickies fell to the ground, bleeding from punctured eye sockets or holed skulls, but the rest kept coming. Ryan tried to shove Josiah behind him, keeping himself between the man and the greedy horde only a few feet away now. He shot until his pistol’s slide locked open, then reached for another magazine while elbowing the elder Carrington back, hoping he would take the hint and retreat, but knowing this was probably his last stand.

  “Cawdor, get down!”

  Ryan pushed backward with all his might, landing on Josiah and sending him to the ground. He covered the other man with his body as a blast of flame jetted over him, splashing onto the lead stickie and instantly setting him on fire. The tongue of flame licked farther out, enveloping the rest of the group in a sticky, liquid inferno. Ryan was too busy trying to roll Josiah out from underneath the jet of flame, otherwise he would have taken a moment to enjoy the immolation erupting all around him.

  The knot of muties flew apart, each one capering and dancing madly even as they cooked under the jellied napalm. Some, true to their nature of being enraptured by large fires, watched the others burn even as they were consumed themselves, staring until the flames crisped their eyeballs and seared their lungs. Others tried to put out the persistent inferno consuming them, slapping at the dancing heat with their suckered hands, but to no avail. Slowly, each one fell over, thrashing and twisting on the ground in their death throes, but eventually each blackened form stopped moving, leaving the remaining flames to lick at the charred bodies.

  Ryan looked back to see Sergeant Caddeus running toward them, holding a strange device that looked like two small propane gas tanks mounted above a handle, tubes and a flaming nozzle. Holding the device against his hip, ready to shoot in case any of the stickies moved again, he reached a hand down.

  “Just in time,” Ryan said as he grabbed it and was pulled up by the other man.

  “Well, I had to repay you for helping me in that hellhole under the plains.” Caddeus bent down and helped Josiah to his feet, as well. “Where’s Rachel?”

  A scream from one of the trucks made all three of their heads turn. Tellen was behind the wheel of the wag, which belched black smoke as it lurched into motion.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Ryan groaned as he watched the wag begin to drive away.

  Josiah was near panic as he watched the wag begin to disappear into the distance. “What are you talking about? My daughter is in there. We have to go after him!”

  “I’ve got to see if my people are safe first.” Ryan turned, scanning the killing field, his hands already busy reloading his blaster. Small clusters of stickies were busy savaging Indians and Bunker sec men alike, while here and there pockets of resistance attempted to fend off the brutal mutie onslaught. In the distance, Ryan saw a motionless APC, and atop the roof was a figure topped by a shock of long, bright red hair that he knew so well, next to a rail of a boy with stark white hair. As he watched
, another figure with dark skin and beaded plaits clambered up beside her, then a skinny man in a frock coat.

  “Come on, J.B., come on.” Ryan waited another moment, ignoring Josiah’s pleas for help, until he saw the last member of his group climb up after Doc had apparently shot something near him.

  “Let’s go.” Turning back to them, he legged it over to the second wag, which was being started by the panicking driver. The six-wheeled vehicle’s engine had just roared into life when Ryan, accelerating into a run, leaped onto the running board, grabbing the large side mirror and pointing his blaster at the driver’s head, just behind the ear. “Park it and get out.”

  Holding up one hand, the man did so, then tried to push Ryan off the truck by shoving the door open with him still hanging on. However, he’d failed to account of Sergeant Caddeus, who was waiting on the ground next to the wag, and jumped up to grab the driver, who had gone for a blaster hidden near his seat. A lightning-fast palm strike to the face, and Caddeus hauled the unconscious, bloody-nosed driver out of the seat and dumped him unceremoniously to the dirt. Slipping behind the wheel, he pulled the door closed, letting Ryan get his footing back on the truck. “You in or out?”

  Beyond the black man, Ryan saw Josiah climb into the passenger seat, wheezing as he did so. “Just go. I’ll be in the back.” He grabbed one of the metal struts that had held the canvas up and swung into the cargo bed of the wag as it shot off after Tellen.

  The wag swayed and bounced over the washboard plains, and Ryan was hard-pressed to keep his balance as they pursued the other vehicle. Caddeus handled the wheel deftly, avoiding the worst of the wind and flash-flood-carved ruts, and soon they were catching up to Tellen. Ryan saw a head appear out of the passenger-side window, and snapped off a shot at him, even though he knew he had almost no hope of hitting the guy at this range.

  “Closer!” he shouted. Caddeus answered by coaxing a burst of speed out of the old wag, making it shudder as it narrowed the gap even further.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Caddeus shouted over the roaring engine.

  “Pull alongside him!” Ryan moved to the other side of the wag, one foot on the metal side of the cargo bed as Caddeus slowly drew abreast of the other truck. Tellen suddenly swung his vehicle hard left, smashing into the fender of Ryan’s wag, and making it slew over, almost pitching him out.

  “Son of a bitch!” Aiming his Sig Sauer at the nearest tire, he shot at it until it exploded in a spray of rubber fragments. The wag slowed a bit, but kept plowing forward, demolishing scrub bushes and anything else in its way.

  “Fireblast, Caddeus, get me near that flatbed!” Ryan shouted as he shot out a second tire on the other truck. He looked up just in time to see the head pop up from the passenger window, this time carrying a stubby machine gun.

  “Fuck!” Bringing up his own blaster, Ryan shot three times as the masked man leveled his weapon and sprayed a short burst across the truck. Ryan ducked for cover as bullets sparked off the fender and cab, starring the rear windshield glass.

  The vehicle under him surged forward again, coming almost even with the front of the other wag. Ryan gauged the distance and leaped across, landing on his hands and knees in the cargo bed and rolling to the far side, jolting to a stop with a breath-stealing slam against the metal side. He’d kept his blaster pointed more or less up, and now turned to find himself staring down the barrel of the sec man’s weapon as he pointed it at his head. Ryan tensed for the bullets to tear into him, only to roll back across the cargo bed as the wag lurched violently from Caddeus ramming his truck into the other one.

  The man’s burst went wild, and Ryan recovered first, rolling to his knees and aiming at the sec man’s head. He squeezed the trigger just as the man ducked back into the cab, the bullet clipping his scalp, but doing no serious damage.

  Ryan peered through the rear window of the truck, seeing the shooter spot him at the exact same time. He hit the floor as the sec man let loose with another 3-round burst, shattering the window and raining hundreds of tiny glass pellets on the one-eyed man. Brushing them off his face, he looked up just in time to see the subgun poke out of the window, aimed in his general direction.

  Ryan grabbed the blaster and pulled hard, trying to wrest it from the sec man’s grasp. Instead, he found the man’s body coming through the window, so unwilling was he to let go of it. Reflexively squeezing the trigger, the man emptied the submachine gun’s magazine, the bullets flying into the air, some punching through the cargo bed of the other wag, which was still trying to disable Tellen’s truck by ramming the hell of out the left side fender.

  For a moment, the shooter was stuck half in and half out of the cab, then gravity took over, and he fell on top of Ryan as he was trying to bring his blaster to bear. The Sig Sauer and Ryan’s hand ended up pinned between the two of them, putting him at a severe disadvantage as the man used both hands to twist his weapon out of Ryan’s grip, and then tried to brain him with its butt. He got a solid blow in to the side of the Deathlands warrior’s head, making him see nothing but red and black for a moment. Levering his free hand between himself and his opponent, Ryan shoved as hard as he could, rolling over, pushing the guy away.

  His vision clearing, Ryan rolled to his knees and brought up his Sig Sauer, only to feel a numbing blow on his wrist, making his fingers pop open and the blaster clatter to the metal floor. Tellen chose that moment to narrowly miss a hillock, the truck’s left side jouncing high in the air before crashing back down to earth. The unexpected collision sent both men crashing to the patterned steel again, sliding toward the driver’s side of the cargo bed.

  Ryan recovered faster this time and grabbed the man’s wrist as he swung the subgun toward his head, digging his thumb into the nerve cluster an inch from his hand to try to make him drop the weapon. The masked man grabbed Ryan’s wrist with his other hand, trying to dislodge it, but Ryan gritted his teeth and held on even tighter, digging his fingernails into the man’s skin and making him growl in pain. His empty blaster hand still numb from the hit it had taken, Ryan put it to work by punching the guy in the face with short, sharp blows. The combination of assaults made the man throw up the hand that had been gripping his adversary’s arm to block his fist, while attempting to escape the wrist hold by twisting out of it. Ryan stayed with him, however, pressing into the tendons of the man’s forearm until his fingers opened and the blaster fell to the truck bed.

  The wag swerved again as Tellen sent it crashing into Caddeus’s ride. This time the front fenders locked together, making a horrific screech as metal grated against metal, each truck’s frame shuddering as it tried to overpower the other one. With a scream of a tortured engine and the shriek of an overstressed fender, the two wags peeled apart again, each running more slowly now, white smoke puffing from both engines.

  The collision had forced both men apart, and Ryan rolled to his feet, turning to face his adversary who had drawn a thick-bladed combat knife with a serrated blade, ready to slash or stab in an instant.

  Ryan reached down to his hip for his heavy panga, only to realize too late that it wasn’t there. It must have fallen in the fight. But that wouldn’t necessarily be an issue, unless the man knew how to handle his knife. As he approached, he wove a blurred pattern in the air, the black steel weaving crazily around in distracting, erratic movements. Ryan brought himself up short—this might have just become a problem. Spreading his legs apart a bit, balanced on the balls of his feet against the rocking of the wag underneath him, he kept his arms close to his body and waited for the man to make his move.

  The masked man, one eye now swelling shut from the beating to his face, shuffled his feet as he approached, then feinted high with the knife before coming in with a downward stab aimed at Ryan’s chest. Gauging the moment, the one-eyed grabbed the man’s wrist again, pulling him forward and off balance with all of his strength, whipping him around in a half circle before just as suddenly letting him go. Already committed to his attack and still moving f
rom the redirected inertia of Ryan’s throw, the man staggered to the edge of the cargo bed, his lower legs hitting the side, and flailed to regain his balance. Unfortunately, Tellen chose just that moment to jog his wag to the right, and the man fell over the side—just as Caddeus wheeled his own truck over to smash into the other vehicle again.

  Caught between the two wags, the man had enough time for one agonizing scream that was choked off almost immediately. The two trucks ground his chest into crushed bones and flesh before separating, his corpse falling to the ground, the large wheels pulping his limbs and head and leaving a mangled, unrecognizable corpse on the dusty ground.

  Casting around for his blaster, Ryan saw it in a far corner of the cargo bed and crawled over to retrieve it. Gripping it in his hand, he rolled to the back of the cab just as Caddeus rammed his wheezing wag into Tellen’s again, the jarring impact almost tipping the 6x6 up onto its right wheels for a second. Ryan slid down toward the right front corner of the cargo box, landing in the corner with a grunt. The wag crashed back to earth, and he saw Caddeus’s truck fall behind, the white smoke billowing from its engine turning a dark gray.

  Grasping the edge of the window frame with his free hand, Ryan popped up and jammed his blaster into Tellen’s neck. “Stop the wag now!”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rachel in the passenger seat, her hands tied behind her back, her lower lip split and bleeding, and one eye beginning to swell into a dark shiner. At the same instant, he noticed the rebel leader had an angry, inflamed set of scratch marks running down the side of his face. Apparently she’d given as good as she got.

  Tellen hunched over and jammed the accelerator to the floor, goosing a burst of speed out of the ancient machine. “Or what? You shoot me, this thing’ll most likely flip, and then it’s goodbye Rachel, you and me!”

  “Just shoot the fucker!” Rachel shouted.

  “Shut up!” Ryan and Tellen both shouted at the same time.