Starfall

by neetha Napew

  Ryan didn't even try to fool himself into thinking it was caused by the wind. He looked up, his single eye narrow­ing, and spotted the man-size silhouette that sprang at him.

  Chapter Two

  Help me!

  The voice hammered the inside of Krysty Wroth's skull now. The pain had increased in the short amount of time Ryan had been gone. She blinked back tears and struggled to hang on to her resolve to watch her lover's back.

  I'm dying! The voice was a croaked gasp that slashed through Krysty's head. "I don't want to be alone! Please answer me! I know you're there!

  A picture formed in the redhead's mind, washing out the other sights that her eyes brought to her.

  The woman stood wrapped in thin gray fog tendrils that obscured her features. She held her arms out in supplica­tion. Why don't you help me?

  "I can't," Krysty whispered out loud, hoping the woman inside her head could hear her. "I'd get chilled."

  No. You must come. Her age could have been anything from twenty to sixty. Her long blond hair wrapped tightly around her head, clinging to her.

  "No!" Krysty struggled to see past the woman in the fog, concentrating on the broken terrain of the ville again. Ryan was out there somewhere, and she had his back. "I'm not going to risk getting Ryan chilled."

  Who's Ryan?

  "Ryan's my lover," Krysty said. "My life."

  Impossible! The Chosen don't mate!

  Krysty didn't respond. She peered hard into the fog in her mind, burning holes through it now. The woman's face cleared. Her complexion was nothing short of perfection, a confection of vanilla brushed with the hint of a rose. Krysty had never seen a woman who had looked like her, never seen anyone who looked so unreal. Gaia, was she halluci­nating? Had she caused Ryan and the rest of the compan­ions to come out here following a fever dream? She didn't know.

  You have taken vows of chastity, the woman said in a stern tone that barely covered the anguish that assailed her.

  "No." Some of the pain Krysty was feeling from the woman ebbed, but she felt the woman's confusion in there now.

  But your power—everyone knows mating with a man will break your power! How dare you throw your gift away so cheaply!

  The vision in Krysty's head thinned and became trans­lucent. The woman's voice sounded more distant in her mind. She saw the broken-down buildings in front of her again, grayed out as though they had no color.

  A curious itch trailed through Krysty's mind unexpect­edly. She felt chilled by it, and nausea sent burning bile to the back of her throat.

  You speak the truth. You are not one of us. The woman's puzzlement filtered through her pain, seeming to become a distraction enough to tear her away from her agony.

  "No," Krysty replied, "I'm not." She took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling the pain ebb and flow in her head again. "Who are you?"

  Phlorin. I am one of the Chosen.

  "What Chosen?"

  You do not know?

  "No."

  But your power? How could you have it and not know of us?

  "I received my power from my mother."

  The woman screamed as the sound of gunshots rico­cheted from the area where Ryan had gone.

  Krysty concentrated on the .38 in her fist. It was solid and secure. She had to stay rooted in reality if she was going to help Ryan. She shifted, on top of the flattened building, but her equilibrium was distorted and she felt too weak to get to her feet. "What is wrong?"

  It is the Staggers. They think I am a doomie.

  Doomies were muties who exhibited paranormal powers, generally hinging on an ability to foretell disastrous events in the near and distant future. Often, they were considered to actually bring bad fortune to those around them rather than to merely predict it. Krysty had worn the label herself. "Who are the Slaggers?"

  The men who captured me. Coldhearts of this region. Phlorin's thoughts broke away abruptly.

  Instinctively Krysty reached for the woman's voice in her mind. Contact was made, feeling as much like a caress as her sentient hair coiling around her neck. "You are alone?"

  Yes.

  "Why?"

  Because there is no one else.

  Krysty felt the woman's thoughts become disjointed, like cold water slipping through her closing fist. She struggled to maintain the contact. As the woman drew away, it felt as though a vacuum opened in her mind, maybe powerful enough to drink down her mind, as well. The thought scared her. "Were you always alone?"

  No. The rest of the response was slow in coming.

  Krysty waited, her eyes searching through the haze of her vision to the area where Ryan and Jak had disappeared. Only then did she become aware of how slowly her heart seemed to beat. Then she realized the conversation taking place in her mind had to have been taking place much faster than she realized.

  There were others. We never go out alone.

  "Where are they?"

  Dead.

  "How?"

  The Slaggers killed Thusella today. Wolves brought Artimys down nearly a week ago.

  An image of a rock-covered grave appeared in Krysty's mind. Three women, one of them the blonde she thought was Phlorin, stood above the grave. All of the women wore some kind of white robes. Krysty couldn't believe they dressed in such a fashion while in the rough.

  "Three of you?" Krysty asked.

  Of course. There are always the Three. There is much power in that number.

  "Who are the Chosen?"

  There is no time to explain. I am dying.

  "Mebbe not." Krysty tightened her hand on the .38. "If there's a way, mebbe we can help."

  It's too late for me, child.

  "Never too late."

  One of the Chosen always knows her time, the woman said. That is one of our gifts and one of our curses.

  "Give up," Krysty said, "and you might as well cut your own throat." Her head didn't hurt as bad now, but the thrumming vibration filling it changed timber.

  I'm giving up only on this hold in the mortal realm. Another life awaits me. One much better than this.

  "If you believe," Krysty said.

  And you do not?

  Krysty didn't answer, though she felt Phlorin already knew. Mother Sonja's teachings about Gaia remained strong in her, provided her a cornerstone of strength and belief.

  You do believe.

  "Because I have seen what Gaia can do."

  Gaia? You worship Gaia?

  "I pay her my respects."

  How is it, then, that you are not one of the Chosen?

  "You know of Gaia?"

  All of the Chosen know of Gaia. She is the Earth Mother who binds us all, ties us one to another. Only most are too blind to see.

  Krysty didn't know that she agreed with the woman. Gaia was one source of power, but she had seen a number of other belief systems that seemed as strong as her own during her travels with Ryan.

  Sacrilege! Gaia is more than a belief system!

  Krysty felt properly chastised.

  Gaia, give me strength that I have only you to lean on, Krysty Wroth.

  "How do you know my name?"

  There are many things I know about you now.

  Anger flooded Krysty. She knew the woman had some­how ransacked her private thoughts.

  You are of the Chosen, whether you admit it or not.

  "How can you be so sure?"

  Because the Chosen can always recognize each other. It is only one of our ways. If there were more time, perhaps I could explain to you what you have missed.

  "I don't know you or the Chosen."

  No.

  "Do you know about my mother?"

  Sonja?

  Krysty's heart leaped. Though Mother Sonja had disap­peared from Harmony years earlier, even left rumors of her death in her wake, there was no proof that she was dead. "Yes."

  Only what I have discerned in your mind.

  "She was not one of the Chosen, then."

  Perhaps she had another name. I can't see
her clearly in your mind.

  That was because Krysty had only her earliest memories of her mother. Even those were tainted by wishes and sto­ries she had heard from relatives. "If she had been one of the Chosen, she would have returned there."

  She bore you, child. Your mother would not have been allowed back among the Chosen. Now hush. There is much I must do, and I have precious little time to do it.

  Another pistol report echoed through the terrain, drawn out long and hollow, giving Krysty fresh indication of how much her sense of time had been distorted by the invasive mind. She struggled to free herself from the hypnotic qual­ity of the woman's thoughts mixing with hers.

  For a moment, she believed she was winning, pushing the woman from her mind. Then Phlorin's voice thundered inside her skull, filling her brain with white-hot pain.

  Forgive me what I do, Phlorin said. It is necessary.

  Struggling to hang on to consciousness, Krysty made herself think of Ryan out there without her covering his back. It didn't matter. A lightning bolt burst inside her brain and shut her down, taking her away.

  "COMPANY'S COMING, JOHN."

  J. B. Dix glanced up from his position on the second floor of the building they'd chosen to wait in and looked into Mildred Wyeth's face. He followed her line of gaze as she stared through the binoculars.

  To the east, a broken line of dust scattered across the darkening sky.

  "Dear lady," Doc Tanner said, "that dust means only that a few riders travel hither. And there can be any number of explanations for that. They could be venturing here for shelter from the approaching tempest."

  "Could be." Mildred nodded reluctantly. Her ebony face remained emotionless, but the dust graying her cheeks and forehead gave silent witness to the wear and tear they had all experienced these past few days. "I suppose the horse­men of the apocalypse wouldn't draw much attention, ei­ther. Until their horses were breathing flame up your ass."

  Of medium height, Mildred carried a few extra pounds on her stocky frame that even hard living in Deathlands hadn't been able to strip from her. Multicolored beads hung in her hair, holding the locks in braided plaits. Her fatigue-style shirt and pants held ground-in patches of dirt, but the action on her ZKR Czech-made .38 pistol remained clean.

  "How many riders, Dean?" J.B didn't bother to study the approaching riders much. Built short and wiry, he didn't look like a man to fear, but he'd been weapons master for the Trader on War Wag One. The steel-rimmed glasses and worn fedora almost gave him the look of a stern school­teacher instead of a trained killer. He returned his gaze to the area where Ryan and Jak had headed, waiting to see if anything else had happened. So far, he hadn't heard the crack of Ryan's SIG-Sauer or the Steyr, so he knew what­ever shooting had been done hadn't involved his friend.

  Dean Cawdor shifted at the end of the building. The boy shaded his eyes as he peered at the dust cloud. His stark black curly hair and vivid blue eyes, as well as the rangy build, clearly marked him as his father's child. The holster on his hip was empty because the Browning Hi-Power he carried was in his hand.

  "Fifteen, mebbe twenty," Dean called out.

  "Riders?" J.B. asked.

  "Yeah."

  J.B. processed the information. Horses meant some kind of ville. A man out ranging the land with no home would be hard-pressed to keep a horse's belly full. An expert trav­eler could get by on some ring-pulls and self-heats that he raided or traded for in arid country. Few who regularly traveled Deathlands wandered far from their home twenty on horseback. A horse was a valuable animal, capable of a lot of work and needing a lot of care. Besides being vul­nerable to the harsh climate, a horse was also an item worth stealing or killing for.

  A dozen or more horses meant whoever was riding them could take care of them. And they wouldn't be out traveling unless it was important.

  "Carrying some kind of flag," Dean went on.

  "See what it is?" J.B. asked.

  "Not yet."

  "Let me know." The Armorer kept focused on the ter­rain ahead of them. Going back and crossing the paths of the riders wasn't a good plan. Better to take their chances losing themselves in the detritus ahead of them.

  "John Barrymore," Doc said, shifting close and keeping a low profile, "I fear we are much too far away to offer succor to Ryan should he need it."

  "Way Ryan wanted it," J.B. replied. "We got the back door."

  "That was then," Doc said stubbornly. "This is now. He surely did not know about the riders closing in on this location."

  "We hold." J.B. forced himself to stay at rest, his hands wrapped securely around his Uzi. His Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun lay strapped against his back.

  "Then someone should be with Krysty," Doc said. When he had been born in South Strafford, Vermont, on February 14, 1868, he had been christened Theophilus Al­gernon Tanner. He'd earned a science degree at Harvard, then a doctorate at Oxford University in England.

  He was tall and lean, and his silver hair blew around his shoulders. His clothing was Victorian, including a frock jacket showing a green patina from age, and cracked leather knee boots. He held a Le Mat percussion pistol in one hand and a black walking stick with a silver lion's head in the other.

  Though well over two hundred years old by the count of a conventional calendar, Doc's actual age was much more bizarre than that. He'd been seized from 1896 by a time-trawling experiment conducted by Operation Chronos near the end of the second millennium. Chronos had been merely one facet of The Totality Concept, an organization that had explored arcane avenues for future warfare.

  In the 1990s, Doc hadn't given up hope of being returned to his wife, Emily, and their children. In spite of the fact that his transfer from the past was the only known success, and that no one had survived any attempts at being sent back, he worked to take the chance. Ultimately the re­searchers affiliated with Operation Chronos had marked Doc as a security risk and had trawled him a hundred years into the future. Both experiences had left their mark on the old man, leaving him with episodes of disassociative de­mentia.

  "Krysty's a big girl," Mildred said. "She can take care of herself."

  "Still," Doc grumbled, "I would feel better if one of us was with her."

  "Dad wanted it that way," Dean said. "So did Krysty. Less risk to the rest of us if she was kept isolated. Till we find out what's wrong with her."

  Despite Dean's attempts to keep his feelings to himself, his worry was immediately apparent to J.B.

  The Armorer said, "It's going to be just fine." But he couldn't help glancing over his shoulder at the approaching column of dust from the riders. Then he cut his gaze to the sky.

  It was going to be a race to see what went wrong first: the arrival of the riders, or the arrival of the chem storm.

  Then his attention snapped back to the area where Ryan and Jak were as he heard a double tap of shots. There was no doubt that they came from Ryan's SIG-Sauer.

  Chapter Three

  With the attacker silhouetted in front of him, Ryan stepped to the right and brought up the panga. If possible, he wanted to keep quiet and not draw the attention of the Slagger coldhearts down the incline.

  The man landed short of Ryan, coming down hard. His clothes were reduced to rags, strips of material that fluttered around him, caked with filth. If the man hadn't been stand­ing downwind before the attack, Ryan felt certain he would have smelled him before he was able to get close enough.

  Rad burns scarred the ghoulie's face and arms, marring the bald scalp with purple blisters of proud flesh. Long black hairs jutted from pustular pockets on his head, and pus wept freely from the affected pores. Broken black teeth filled the rictus of his grin. Still, he was strong enough to swing the homemade club in his hands. A half moon of sharpened metal gleamed at the end of it, turning the weapon into an ax.

  Dodging back, Ryan barely avoided the vicious swipe that streaked for his head. Instinctively he raised the 9 mm blaster. He didn't want to fire it unless he had to. The det­onati
on would draw the coldhearts from down in the basin. He hoped the intimidation of the blaster would be enough to turn the ghoulie back.

  The ghoulie made gibbering noises and tugged on the club. The half moon of metal had gotten stuck in a mound of earth to the side. Yellow, phlegmy spittle ran from the corner of his warped mouth. With another frantic tug, the club ripped free of the earth. The ghoulie didn't hesitate about carrying on the attack.

  "Fireblast!" Ryan swore. He gave ground again, avoid­ing another hasty swing. While his attacker drew the club back again, he switched hands with his weapons, gripping the panga in his right fist.

  The ghoulie growled menacingly and swung again, ad­vancing a step as he did so.

  Ryan held his position and stepped inside the club's arc with practiced movements. A man handling a long weapon had to be prepared for his target to attempt to move inside. The ghoulie wasn't.

  Blocking the club with his right arm, cursing the fact that he wasn't in a position to use the panga without risking his own safety, Ryan slapped the barrel of the blaster across the ghoulie's temple.

  The creature yowled in pained protest as a bloody tear opened up along his temple. Crimson ran freely down the side of his face.

  Expecting the ghoulie to be dazed from the blow, Ryan released his hold on the club and lifted the panga for a straight thrust at the creature's throat. Instead, the ghoulie swung the bottom of the club into the one-eyed man's face.

  Staggered, Ryan dropped and rolled back, slipping be­neath the ghoulie's follow-up stroke. He came up on his knees, ready to dig his boots into the ground and drive himself back to his feet.

  Two other ghoulies landed to the right of the first. One of them carried a pitchfork with a broken center tine, and the other held a scythe sporting a ragged edge. The first ghoulie gestured toward them. They fanned out, moving in tandem to quickly circle Ryan.

  The movements showed discipline and practice. Ryan had no doubts that they'd used the strategy successfully against past victims. It was possible that the activity of the Slagger coldhearts drew a crowd, or at least bottled up the trade routes for a time. Then the ghoulies could choose their quarry and escape. Ryan thought they probably lived in the area, existing off whatever they could steal or take from the ville's usual inhabitants. And a ghoulie's favorite meal was meat from a decaying corpse, one they had killed them­selves and put away until it reached the proper degree of ripeness.