by James Axler
“See that hole?” Ryan said, pointing. “They’d chain the poor bastard in place, then close the hole around their victim’s neck to keep him, or her, still. That way only the head would be above the table. Then they sawed off the top of the skull and scooped out the brains.”
“Eat brains makes go mad?” Jak demanded.
“Possibly,” Mildred said. “Could be a variation of the oozies.”
“I heard that brain eaters go permanently insane,” Ryan said. “And die screaming with laughter. And they never stopped laughing, even after our cannons blew them in two,” Ryan growled in open revulsion. “The Trader hunted down a band of these things once. Chilled them all, then burned down their ville and sowed salt into the dirt.”
“We didn’t want anybody eating something from a plant grown near the place,” J.B. explained, curling a lip. “The Trader was afraid it might spread the madness, and cause more people to become nuking screamers.”
“People? These were not humans, but abominations!” Doc shouted. “Foul things, monsters from the very bowels of the abyss!”
“Was this the important find, Doc?” Ryan asked, sounding annoyed. The one-eyed man had nothing against exploring, and Mildred had taught him the wisdom of learning new things. Sometimes knowledge was power, although it never hurt to have a loaded blaster at your side. However, these were an old enemy, and screamers had nothing to teach the companions except a new way to get chilled.
“Oh no, that is down this last corridor,” Doc said, striding across the dining hall to pull back a curtain.
Yet another tunnel was revealed, this one made entirely from wooden planks. More bodies littered the floor, but these corpses were all facing down the tunnel, not randomly, and there was a sandbag wall sealing off the tunnel, more dead cannies lying across the top.
Warily, the companions entered the tunnel. Somewhere along the way, the bloody slaughter had turned into a civil war, with two different sides fighting to the end. The last handful of cannies establishing a shatter zone to stop the remaining screamers from ever proceeding any farther in this direction.
“What find?” Jak asked eagerly. “Cannie arsenal?”
“Much better than that,” Doc announced proudly, a smile crossing his face. “I found our salvation!”
Impatiently, Ryan began to demand a proper answer from the old man when a dirt-encrusted form rose from the pile of rotting corpses. It was a naked woman, her mouth and pointed teeth smeared with something sticky, the scalp of the cannie at her feet peeled back to show a large hole in the gleaming white skull.
Even as the startled companions reacted to the unexpected appearance, the screamer swung around an AK-47 assault rifle from behind her back and began to insanely giggle as she cut loose with a yammering stream of high-velocity death.
Chapter Ten
In tight unison, the companions opened fire on the thing, the barrage of bullets tearing her apart, making her sagging breasts flap around obscenely.
Still chuckling, the screamer eased to the floor to lie in a spreading pool of her own blood. Not trusting the bitch, Ryan walked closer and put another round in the back of her head. The body jerked and went still.
“Screamer,” Jak snarled, putting a wealth of hatred into the single word.
As if that was their cue, more of the supposedly dead bodies began to rise around the dining room, softly giggling. In horror the companions could see that the screamer had gutted the other cannies, and were actually wearing their skin as a sort of camouflage! Caked with filth, insane faces peered out from the folds of rotting human hides, the front laced closed like a bodice. The sight even gave Ryan pause for a moment. In all of his travels, the one-eyed man had never encountered this bizarre tactic before. It was beyond wild, or crazy; it was genuinely insane.
In a crash, the dining table was flipped over to block the companions from reaching the wooden tunnel, then the screamers charged, laughing happily as they brandished knives, sharpened pieces of bones, or holding blasters by the barrel to wave them like hammers.
Pressing their backs to the wall, the companions met the first rush with concentrated blasterfire, the rapidfires cutting a crimson path of destruction through the naked lunatics. The giggling screamers were torn apart by the thundering volley. But then the second wave arrived, clambering over the first even as they fell, and the fight went hand to hand.
Shooting a screamer in the throat with the last round in his longblaster, Ryan then swung the stock of the Steyr to cave in the head of another, eyes and teeth flying away. Two more fell before the makeshift club, then clawed hands raked across his clothing and face, ripping off the eyepatch and leaving behind bloody furrows.
Dropping low, J.B. emptied the Uzi into the rush of unwashed bodies, going for their knees. As the bones exploded from the arrival of the copper-jacketed 9 mm rounds, the screamers fell back, most losing their weapons. However, none had stopped laughing, and now the crippled monstrosities began to crawl forward, their slack mouths still chuckling from within the leathery masks of their last victims.
Thrusting the barrel of his Colt Python into a throat, Jak crushed the windpipe of a screamer and it abruptly stopped laughing, no longer able to draw any air into its lungs. The teen beat back two more, then holstered the blaster and jerked his hands, knives coming out of his sleeves to fall into waiting palms. Shouting a war whoop, Jak began slashing at the screamers, slicing open throats and bellies. Unfortunately, the skins they wore had been tanned into a form of crude armor, and several times his blades failed to make a chill. Crazy, but not stupe, Jak realized suddenly, adrenaline flooding his body like a graveyard wind.
As her M-16 cycled empty, Krysty threw it away as a distraction. But the screamers paid no attention to the rapidfire, the males instead focusing their attention on the living, breathing woman, their intentions abundantly clear. Several of them were already fully erect. Snarling in disgust, Krysty drew her hammerless S&W revolver, and shot the five nearest screamers directly in the mouth, the backs of their heads exploding in a horrid spray of bones, brains and blood. But as the dead fell, other screamers replaced them, eager hands grabbing her clothing to drag the struggling woman closer.
With both of his blasters empty, Doc used the selector switch on the oddball LeMat to quickly change from the miniballs to the single-shot, 12-gauge barrel. Taking aim, he triggered the minishotgun into the mob of creatures, trying for the woman. In a deafening roar, the black-powder charge sent a hellstorm of double-aught buckshot into the screamers, tearing away two of their arms and sending the rest flailing backward.
Regaining her balance, Krysty thanked the man with a brief nod, then drew a knife and started jabbing into the throng, already preparing to ask Gaia to come to her aid.
Flipping over the massive handblaster, Doc now laid into the screamers, ruthlessly pistol-whipping the monsters, his normally genial expression slowly changing into a feral mask of unbridled fury. For a moment the schoolteacher was startled at his own savagery, then he willingly embraced the visceral urge to slay those attacking his companions, and kill, kill, and kill again, until the ornate curved handle of the cavalry LeMat was dripping with gore.
Holstering the empty ZKR blaster, Mildred drew a knife and slashed away at the encrusted fingers reaching for her from the throng. As they retreated for a moment, she cut away the nylon strap holding the S&W M-4000 across J.B.’s back. As the weapon fell, she made the catch and kicked a screamer between the legs as she worked the pump-action to chamber a 12-gauge cartridge. However, the male screamer didn’t fall, or even stumble from the terrible blow, and grabbed her pants in both hands in an effort to throw the woman to the floor.
Raw fear filled her belly for only a moment, then the physician snarled and discharged the scattergun directly into the face of the chuckling lunatic. His head exploded, the chunks and buckshot pelting the screamers behind, and sending several more into the great blackness.
Yanking back her boot from the decapitated corpse,
Mildred put three more bone-shredding rounds into the giggling mob, clearing away the nearest screamers and giving the companions a chance to hastily reload. Only Doc was the exception, the powerful LeMat taking an inordinate amount of time to recharge the chambers, and he didn’t have a speed loader for the Webley. With no choice, the man drew the slim sword from within his ebony stick. Slashing the steel around, Doc deftly removed ears, fingers, or hacked off genitalia, to keep the ravenous horde at bay for a few precious moments more.
However, the screamers now lifted their fallen comrades and held them in front as shields to advance once more, their humorless laughter sounding like a chorus of demons from hell.
Switching to the SIG-Sauer, Ryan laid down a fast barrage of 9 mm Parabellum rounds into the exposed hands and feet of the screamers. Several of them dropped the human shields, and he executed the things with a single round to the heart. The screamers re acted as if hit with an anvil, then crumpled to the floor, the giggles changing to sighs.
In a fast series of clicks and clacks, the rest of the companions finished reloading their blasters and unleashed a withering hail of hot lead, driving the screamers backward to stumble over the bodies of the fallen, then join them in the sweet silence of death.
“That all?” Jak demanded, cracking open the cylinder of the Colt again to dump out the hot brass and thumb in replacement.
“Let’s make sure,” Ryan growled, walking among the twitching bodies. Keeping the SIG-Sauer ready, the one-eyed man used the panga to slit open every throat, no matter the condition of the corpse. His precautions paid off as a skinless screamer jerked at the touch of the blade and reached out for the man, even as his mouth filled with blood. Half expecting some sort of ruse, Ryan fired twice into the cannie, ending the matter for ever.
“All right, check them for any brass,” Ryan directed, keeping the SIG-Sauer moving among the bleeding piles of putrefied bodies.
Swiftly, the unsavory task was completed with a minimum of fuss, the yield only a handful of loose rounds and a gren that proved to be empty of any explosives.
“Triple-stupe feebs,” J.B. growled, slapping a fresh clip into the Uzi and working the arming bolt. “Why would they stage an ambush here instead of the entrance?”
“Because of what is at the end of the tunnel,” Doc said, breaking open the top of the Webley to start reloading. The .44 LeMat was his preferred weapon, but that would have to wait until he had more time. “I found the pride of their ville. Indeed, it is the prize of the ville! A boat, or rather, a fishing trawler in fine shape and more than ready to take us back to the mainland right now.”
“Let’s see,” Ryan said, holstering his blaster to retrieve the Steyr.
As the other companions dragged aside the feasting table, Ryan worked the bolt on his longblaster to open the breech and extract the empty rotary clip and thumb in a fresh one. The clear plastic was getting badly scratched over the long years, and he knew the clips were nearing the end of their service. They were fine for the moment. But he made a mental note to watch for any weapons that used similar clips for him to loot.
“Need brass?” Jak asked, proffering a couple of magazines to Krysty.
“Thanks, I was down to my last,” she replied, accepting the spare ammunition magazines. “What kind is it, anyway?”
“Mix, hardball and tumblers.”
“Excellent.”
When everybody was ready, Ryan took the point and started along the wooden tunnel, with Doc, Krysty, Jak and Mildred in the middle, and J.B. covering the rear with his Uzi.
Reaching the sandbag nest, Ryan kept guard while Jak slit the throats of the chilled cannies, just to make sure, then rifled their gunbelts. Unfortunately they all carried hatchets or homemade zip guns, the .22 cartridges streaked with rust and less reliable than the promise of a baron.
Just then, some loose dirt sprinkled down from the ceiling, and Ryan instantly fired the Steyr, the 7.62 mm rounds exploding a small furry animal into assorted bits and pieces.
“And what, pray tell, is that?” Doc asked, lowering the Webley. “Some form of mutant rat?”
“Just a common vole,” Mildred identified. “It must have been attracted by all of the blood.”
“Mole?” Jak asked with a scowl.
“In the same family,” she explained. “Just meaner. A whole lot meaner.”
“Meaner than screamer?” the teen asked with a grin.
“Brother, if Daniel Webster ever encountered those assholes, he would have to change the dictionary,” she stated with heartfelt conviction. Jak merely shrugged.
Continuing onward, the companions could suddenly smell the salty breeze of the ocean long before they heard the sound of waves breaking upon the shore. A warm breeze carried away the stink of battle and cleared their minds like a healing potion.
“Wonderful! If anybody ever doubted that we come from the sea, all they have to do is smell the ocean,” Mildred said, loosening her collar slightly to let in the fresh air.
“Or mayhap the Garden of Eden was near the shore, and God used muddy sand to form them, both he and she,” Doc countered with a slightly garbled quote.
“Crazy old coot,” she shot back, trying not to smile. Sometimes the man said the damnedest things.
Continuing deeper into the tunnel, the companions encountered nothing further until reaching a second sandbag nest that closed off the end of the tunnel. Bright daylight streamed in past the bodies lying still on the cloth bags, and the air was thick with buzzing flies.
This time, J.B. kept guard while Krysty did the honors. But there was little need, as these bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition. They had to have been the first folks chilled in the fight between the cannies and the screamers.
Located at the mouth of the tunnel was a concrete dockyard, the chains and cleats forged of predark steel. There was more than enough space at the dock for a dozen boats. But it was empty, without even a fishing pole dangling in the water.
Vast and empty, the deep azure Cific Ocean stretched in front of the companions all the way to the horizon. There were no other islands in sight to break the perfect monotony of the gentle rolling waves. A few miles offshore, a humpback whale erupted into view, closely followed by a dozen more of the behemoths. Rising incredibly high, the whales soared skyward as if planning on taking flight, but then they rolled over and came crashing down to throw out stupendous waves as they frolicked in innocent play before disappearing below the surface again, leaving no trace that they had ever breached the sublime serenity of the oceanic view.
“So, where boat?” Jak asked in a whisper.
Wordlessly, Doc jerked a thumb to the right.
An old Quonset hut stood to that side of the dock, the curved roof festooned with green moss and white bird droppings. The arched front was wide open, the waves lapping onto a concrete ramp that lead inside. Masked by the shadows inside the structure was some sort of a boat, condition unknown. However, this was a predark dry dock of some sort, or maybe even a repair facility, that the cannies had found and taken over. That was very promising.
There were clusters of halogen lights set into the side of the hut, and a fire hose was neatly coiled behind a glass door, ready for instant use. Nearby was a set of fuel pumps that seagulls had been using as a toilet for the past century, and also a full cord of split wood, the quarters dried, seasoned and ready to burn.
Suspecting the truth of the matter, Ryan scowled at the disappointing sight.
“Might be there for the kitchen,” J.B. suggested hopefully.
“Mebbe,” Ryan answered without much conviction.
Staying low, the companions listened for any movement aboard the sturdy little craft, but there was only the sound of the waves and the gulls, the music of the sea.
Assuming combat formation, Ryan took the lead once more and the companions swept into the hut ready for battle. However, the repair shop proved to be completely deserted and fully stocked—with useless items. The workbenches we
re piled high with tools of every possible description, and condition, including corkscrews, soldering guns and bathroom plungers. Clearly the cannies had simply been stockpiling anything and everything they could find in the crude repair shop.
“Dark night, this stuff is useless.” J.B. declared, briefly inspecting some of the items. Lifting a Stilson wrench, he wasn’t overly surprised when the head simply fell off to land on the worktable and explode into corroded bits.
“The salt air has eaten through everything,” Krysty said, her hair moving against the breeze. “The damn fools didn’t know to protect the metal from corrosion.”
“And they had the right stuff, too,” Ryan said, lifting an unopened jar of petroleum jelly. Removing the cap, he saw that the pink gelatin was in perfect condition. Just a dab smeared on anything made of metal, and rust would have been held off for years.
“No way these are the descendants of the original sailors assigned to this dock,” Mildred said bluntly. “Even a green recruit would know better than to let steel tools rust in the salty air.”
“Then we can have little hope for the condition of the boat,” Doc rumbled, his shoulders sagging.
Sitting in the wooden cradle of the dry dock was a civilian cabin cruiser, the fiberglass hull unblemished from the passage of the years. However, there had plainly been extensive modifications. Car tires hung along the gunwale as protection from the cradle, there was now a black-powder cannon set on the foredeck, thick slabs of wood had been bolted to the exterior of the wheelhouse as crude armor and a fat smokestack rose directly from the rear deck. Painted across the bow in flowery script was the name Moon Runner.
“Dark night, what a tumbledown tub,” J.B. said with a sigh. “At least, it still floats. Kinda.”
“The engines are what matter,” Ryan countered, rubbing one of the scratches on his cheek. With a start, the man realized that his eyepatch was missing, and fumbled in his pockets to find a handkerchief. Quickly, Ryan tied it across his face as a temporary replacement until he could make a new one.