Starfall

by neetha Napew

  Maybe the dogs were the only ones that ate the victims that had been trapped in the cross fire before, but Ryan kept remembering the ghoulies.

  "How many men inside the fort?" Ryan asked.

  "Don't know for sure. A dozen mebbe." The Armorer looked up at him, then out at the wag where Halleck was calling to his men, gathering them to him. "They're not going to wait long out there. The chem storm doesn't give them much choice."

  "Doesn't give us much choice, either," Ryan replied. He worked his way to the end of the broken wag, glancing briefly at Krysty. She slept, but her face showed tight lines, as if she was having a bad dream. "What about the people you said were in here?"

  "Over there." J.B. nodded toward a recessed area on the other side of the space facing the fortified building. "Looks to be people the coldhearts captured."

  "They are," Ryan replied. "Jak and I saw them earlier. Should be a woman among them. Name's Phlorin. I want her found."

  "How do you know her?" Mildred asked.

  "I don't," Ryan answered. "But she's what's wrong with Krysty."

  "I'll find her, Dad," Dean said.

  Ryan started to object, wanting Jak to do the search. But he saw the earnest look on his son's face.

  "If she's the reason Krysty's tied up now, not being herself, then I'll make sure she's found quick," Dean prom­ised.

  "Do it, then," Ryan said. "But stay low."

  Dean nodded and seemed to disappear into the ground near the overturned wag.

  Ryan glanced back at the Jeep. Halleck was having prob­lems of his own. The Slaggers weren't having much luck getting together without the baron's men shooting into them. The one-eyed man turned to the Armorer. "I'm going to need you to cover me."

  "Kick in the door?" J.B. asked.

  "I don't see another way." Ryan gestured to Jak, indi­cating that the albino should circle around the junkyard fort in the opposite direction. Ryan didn't have to tell him what they were going to do.

  "If those other coldhearts attack while we're spread out," J.B. said, "we aren't going to be able to hold."

  Ryan nodded tightly. "See you in a few." He moved out, finding cover where he could.

  Chapter Seven

  Ryan crept up on the side of the junkyard fort, the SIG-Sauer leading the way. The structure had enough wood con­tent that he'd considered firing it and burning out the men inside. But that would have left the companions nowhere to go except deeper into the stacks of junked wags, where there were more dogs.

  He glanced across the door and found Jak already poised on a section of the car above the fort. The view the men inside the building had was limited. They hadn't planned for a quarry that had time to think and move, or one that was used to moving so quickly.

  Two windows, one on either side of the door, looked out over the junkyard. At Ryan's signal, Jak hung from his feet and leaned down to just past the top of the window. The albino opened fire at once, firing through all six rounds in quick succession. He pulled himself up only a second or two before return fire hammered the window's casement.

  Spinning quickly, Ryan thrust the 9 mm blaster into the window. A man stood in front of him, his attention on the window Jak had shot through. Ryan fired his first round into the man's temple, emptying his skull in a crimson splash that stained the two men behind him. Two more pairs of shots, and the one-eyed man was certain three men were down inside the fort.

  Jak had hit at least three himself, though one man con­tinued to howl in pain.

  Ryan's mind took in the details of the fort's interior as he fired, filing the information away. When the SIG-Sauer blew back empty, he was certain no more than three men remained alive inside the room. He spun toward the door instead of the side of the fort, ejecting the empty magazine and shoving a fresh one home.

  The interior of the fort was little more than thirty feet to a side. All of it was open space, littered with pallets on the floor and a brace of hammocks in the far corner against the back wall.

  Jak dropped into position through his window again and fired the .357 dry. Then he flipped to the ground, landing effortlessly on his feet on the other side of the door. "Two men left," he said, putting the knives away. "Back cor­ners."

  Ryan thumbed the slide release, sending it home with a metallic snap. Stepping forward, he turned and rammed his left shoulder into the door, putting all of his two-hundred-plus pounds behind the effort. It had been locked into place, but it hadn't been built strong enough to withstand the abuse he gave it. Hinges gave way, and he followed the door inside.

  Smoke from homemade black powder hazed the room and filled it with a sulfuric stench.

  A man in the back corner raised his weapon, screaming in rage and fear. His bullets struck the walls near Ryan.

  Firing from the point, letting instinct be his guide, Ryan shot the man twice in the heart, relying on the blaster's stopping power to put the man down as he turned on the remaining coldheart.

  The Slagger's weapon had evidently jammed. He flung himself forward, trying for one of the abandoned pistols of his comrades.

  Ryan shot him through the head, watching in satisfaction as the body quivered and lay still. He then turned his at­tention back to the companions outside. He waved them in, stepping outside the door.

  Mildred came first, followed by Doc, who carried Krysty's unconscious body gently in his arms. J.B. stood guard as Dean got the coldhearts' prisoners moving. Two of the men carried a twisted old woman dressed in home­spun breeches and a curious tunic.

  Ryan studied the woman as the exprisoners neared. Her hair was as white as snow, and she looked ancient. Black eyes glittered behind the half-closed lids as they settled on Ryan's one blue eye.

  Then the old woman smiled. "Ryan Cawdor."

  "You don't know me."

  "I do now," the woman replied. "Because Krysty does."

  "Get her inside," Ryan growled.

  The prisoners appeared hesitant to enter the fort. There were only nine of them left—four men, a little girl, a small boy and three women. Phlorin made four women.

  "If you people want to stay out here," Ryan said, "that's fine by me. Take your chances with the chem storm and the coldhearts. But if you want to live, throw in with us."

  "We get inside that building," one of the men said, "we'll be trapped like rats."

  "Your decision," Ryan said coldly. "But when this door shuts, it's not opening again later if you decide you've changed your mind." He stepped over to join J.B., looking at Halleck and his group milling in the distance.

  "The man's got a hard decision to make all of a sud­den," J.B. said. A smile touched his lean face. "If he comes after us, he knows we aren't going to go down easy. And he's going to leave his flank open to the baron's men."

  "Mebbe he'll make the right decision," Ryan said. He watched the coldhearts. "When he does, the baron's men will follow him."

  NONE OF THE PRISONERS decided they wanted to take their chances on their own in the junkyard. They filed into the fort and helped secure the building against the coming at­tack, using the meager furniture to block the door and par­tially cover the windows to leave makeshift blasterports.

  Ryan started a fire in the fireplace, making sure the flue was open. Jak's preliminary exploration of the fireplace re­vealed that it was built under a shelf of flattened metal and couldn't be blocked up to smoke them out. They'd recov­ered two bows and quivers of arrows from the dead cold-hearts. Dean had come up with the idea of wrapping pieces of shirts around the arrow shafts and soaking them with fuel they found in a cabinet at the back of the building. The rain might soak most things, but Ryan had noticed that some of the wags had interiors that looked easily flamma­ble. It gave them another weapon in their arsenal.

  "Still have two grens," J.B. said.

  "That gives us an edge," Ryan agreed, "but that edge will come in the timing, as well." He kept the companions manning the windows and armed his makeshift troops from the dead coldhearts.

  Then he p
ut the men in the group to work with Jak and Dean, throwing out the stripped corpses. The bodies lay in front of the building, providing extra protection. The smell of fresh meat drew some of the dogs out of hiding. Two bolder animals approached the dead bodies and started to feast.

  "Don't bite the hand that feeds you," Doc said in a soft voice. "But, by the Three Kennedys, what if it is the hand that feeds you? And the arm after that?"

  After he was satisfied that they were as ready as they were going to be, Ryan crossed over to Mildred and Krysty.

  The black woman had confiscated one of the pallets and had Doc place Krysty on it. Before she'd been cryogenically frozen and nuclear winter from the skydark had blown the candle out on the world for a time, she'd been a medical doctor. The problem was, they didn't have much in the way of med supplies.

  "How is she?" Ryan asked.

  "Still with us," Mildred replied.

  Krysty twisted restlessly on the pallet, her mouth work­ing. Doc approached and held one of her hands in his own, patting it gently. "Poor child. Whatever did happen to her, friend Ryan?"

  "I'm not sure." Ryan quickly explained how Krysty had attacked him on the rooftop and told him about the woman trying to take over her mind.

  "Some kind of psychic attack?" Mildred asked.

  "She said that woman got into her mind," Ryan said. "Now I've got the woman."

  Phlorin lay on a pallet across the room, bound hand and foot, a gag in her mouth. The woman had been shot in the chest, and Mildred had told Ryan the old woman was going to die. It was only a matter of time until she caught the last train to the coast.

  "When Krysty wakes up, we'll see if we can get more answers." Ryan turned his attention to survival again. Sav­ing Krysty only to have them all die in the junkyard was worthless.

  "Ryan," J.B. called. "The coldhearts have decided to give it up. They're pulling out."

  Ryan walked over to the window and peered out. The rain had started to fall now, coming down in a fine mist that had to be a big factor in Halleck's decision. The wag led the way back into the rubble of the buildings around the junkyard.

  As soon as the Slaggers pulled back from the front of the junkyard, though, the horsemen rode through the en­trance. Ryan counted over thirty men, then looked at J.B.

  "Reinforcements, mebbe," the Armorer said. "The group we saw earlier could have been part of a bigger party. Blasterfire might have attracted them."

  "Fireblast," the one-eyed man swore. "We know those men aren't here for us, and they're obviously not here for the coldhearts. Only leaves one thing."

  J.B. nodded. "The people in here with us."

  Ryan turned on the nine people across the room with the companions. "Any of you know these people out here?"

  No one answered and no one moved.

  "Get over here to the bastard window and look," Ryan commanded. "If you can't see them from in here, I'll give you a chance to see them up closer when I kick you out of this building." He meant it, too, because his own survival and that of the companions came first. It always did.

  Every one of the adults they'd let into the building came up to the window and peered out. And all of them said they didn't know who the men were.

  "Mebbe lying," Jak said after the last woman had walked away. "Or mebbe person baron's men look for dead out there and they not know."

  "Mebbe," Ryan said, but the thought didn't ease his mind.

  A flash of lightning zigzagged through the dark sky, then the heavens opened up and the chem storm howled across the broken face of the ville in wild fury. The acid rain pelted the ground hard enough to leave pockmarks against the dust, and it beat down the weeds that grew around the wrecked wags.

  The horsemen spread out around the stacks of rusted wags. They dismounted and unfurled heavy canvas tarps to create tented areas out of the wags. In minutes, they and their animals were safely out of the storm, as well, though Ryan heard pain-filled curses as some of them were burned by the acid rain before they could get to shelter.

  He watched the corpses of the coldhearts he and Jak had killed to gain control of the fort. The caustic precipitation ate into the flesh, causing ulcerous boils that burst when they pressed past the elasticity of dead skin. In minutes, the rain began to peel away the flesh, baring it to the white, gleaming bone beneath.

  TEN MINUTES PASSED, and the chem storm beat into the ground, whipped against the piles of rusted wags and whis­tled mournfully through the twisted metal. It showed no signs of letting up. The baron's men remained in their makeshift shelters, but they kept a guard posted.

  "We could perforate their provisional habitats," Doc suggested. "Mayhap the rain itself would do what threat of our combined gunplay cannot."

  "More than likely," J.B. replied, "it'd just piss them off."

  "Break them out of those tents," Ryan said, "gives them bastard few places to go for protection from the chem storm. Most likely place is this place."

  "True, friend Ryan. But I heartily dislike feeling like Pooh in the honey jar trapped as we are in this place. No matter how humble an abode this may be, there is no place like home."

  Ryan glanced at the old man and saw the familiar signs of dementia at the edges of Doc's gaze. "You just hold steady, Doc. We'll get out of this just fine. We've been in tighter spots than this."

  Doc grinned, baring his strangely perfect teeth. "Yes, and Hillary always hated Bill for being reminded of that."

  THE ACID RAIN CONTINUED drumming on the metal roof twenty minutes later. The stink of ozone from all the elec­trical activity mixed with the harsh stench of sulfur and other chems in the air, making it hard to breathe inside the fort.

  "There's something else we didn't consider," J.B. said, "that might have brought the baron's men here."

  "Phlorin," Ryan answered. "I've already been thinking about that."

  The Armorer nodded. "No matter what it looks like now, that rain's going to let up sooner or later. And if we can get those people off our asses now, it would be a good thing."

  "I want to make sure Krysty's going to be okay before we give that woman to the baron's people."

  J.B. nodded. "Get it done."

  Ryan kept the SIG-Sauer in his fist and drew the panga with his other hand. He approached the old woman lying on the floor and dropped into a squat beside her. "You and I are going to talk." He hooked a finger behind the gag in her mouth and pulled it below her chin. He deliberately let the cold steel of the panga's edge caress her throat with enough weight to draw a thin line of thick dark blood.

  The woman's black eyes blazed. "There's nothing I have to say to you."

  "Good," Ryan told her. "Means you're ready to listen. You've done something to that woman over mere." He pointed at Krysty with the panga. "Fucked her head up somehow. I mean to see her back the way she's supposed to be." He freed the woman's left hand, then stepped on her wrist, trapping it against the earthen floor.

  "And what are you going to do if I don't?" the old woman wheezed. Her trapped hand moved weakly, like a dying spider trying to scuttle into hiding.

  Ryan was conscious of every eye in the room on him. If the other ex-prisoners had any idea what he was talking about, none of them showed it. "I'm going to whittle you down to a more manageable size," he told her roughly. "I know ways that can make your dying a long time in com­ing."

  The woman laughed at him, her spittle laced with the blood from the wound in her chest. "Do you actually think you can frighten me, man?"

  "Doesn't matter," Ryan answered in a flat voice. "I'm just telling you how it's going to be."

  "Cut me if you wish." Phlorin coughed again, sputtering blood up through her thin blue lips. "I can put myself past the pain. And now that I have Krysty with me, I don't have to be alone when I die."

  "I can throw you out there in that acid rain." Ryan stared hard into the woman's magnetic black gaze. "You'll be alone then."

  "It won't matter. I've bonded myself with Krysty. She is a part of me now, and I am a part
of her. There's nothing you can do to prevent that."

  Ryan glanced over at Mildred.

  "This woman's dying," Mildred said. "Even if I had all the supplies I'd need and we could guarantee that she wouldn't be moved for a few days, she won't make it."

  "You see?" Phlorin taunted. "All you can do is hasten the inevitable. I'd consider it a favor. I don't like lying here, being weaker and more helpless than I've ever been."

  "When you die," Ryan said, "mebbe Krysty will wake up and never remember you were even there."

  "Do you want to take that chance?"

  Ryan gave her a cruel fox's grin. "You're dying, bitch, and I'm going to be trying it sooner or later because I don't think you're going to let go on your own. Rather it was sooner, let me know what I'm dealing with while I'm trying to save our asses. And that's an ace on the line."

  "Krysty is one of us," the old woman said. "How you got her to give up her birthright is beyond me. And she's very strong."

  "You brought us here," Ryan said, "and mixed us up in this. It wasn't any of our business."

  "Couldn't die alone, because then everything I'd known would die with me. Chosen don't die alone, don't die far from home without returning." Her words slurred and be­came hollow, drifting away.

  "You're losing her," Mildred said.

  Bolstering the SIG-Sauer, Ryan grabbed the woman. She fought against him weakly, then gave up. She spoke softly and sibilantly, and it took Ryan a moment to realize the same words were coming from Krysty across the room. They were two voices singing the same song.

  Krysty lay there, her unseeing eyes directed at the ceiling overhead.

  Chapter Eight

  Without a word, Ryan backhanded Phlorin across the face, once, twice.

  One of the men in the group started to get to his feet. "You can't do that to her," he protested.

  Jak swung his .357 to cover the man, not saying any­thing. But with his ruby eyes glinting cold fire, he didn't have to say anything at all.