by James Axler
Once more the stickies tried for the broken windows, and the companions hacked away at the hairless limbs, fingers and mouthing suckers falling to the floor. Again and again, Doc thrust deeply with his sword, going for throats and bellies. Then a stickie grabbed the blade and wrestled it from his grip with surprising strength. The creature tried to escape with its prize, but Jak grabbed the arm and pinned it to a seat, while Doc tried to force open the stubby fingers to get back his blade. But the stubborn creature refused to relinquish the weapon, so Doc was forced to hack off the fingers with his belt knife to reclaim the sword. Shrieking, the creature tumbled off the bus, cradling its destroyed hand.
Holding on to the luggage rack, J.B. went to the front of the wag. “Go faster,” he urged.
“Can’t. Bastard engine is at the red line now,” Ryan shot back. The gauges on the dashboard flashed in warning, and the wag was barely traveling twenty miles per hour. “I push any harder, it’ll blow.”
“Then we start shooting,” the Armorer said, and sent a burst through the access door. The muties fumbling with the portal were blown off in a shower of glass, blood going everywhere.
In response, windows smashed on every side, and dozens of arms reached through to grab for the companions. A sucker-covered hand touched Mildred’s med kit on a seat and pulled it to a window. The straps caught on the iron grid, and Mildred emptied her blaster outside until the stickie let go and the med kit dropped to the floor. She snatched it away and tossed it onto the luggage rack out of reach.
But the deadly hands were everywhere, clawing for anything edible. In the rear, a Firebird was hauled away, and the plastic cover of a seat was ripped off, springs and foam padding bursting free from their tight confines. A canteen was taken, then an empty MRE envelope. The mutie attack was mindless, but unrelenting, and the companions raked the windows with blasterfire, hot lead tearing off chunks of the swamp dwellers. Mutie fingers and suckers rolling around loosely with the spent brass made walking tricky on the blood-streaked floor. A stickie got Krysty by the hair, and the woman cried out in agony as the creature tried to pull her along by the living filaments. Doc placed the LeMat on the thing’s wrist and blew its hand off. Weakly, Krysty dropped to a seat, violently trembling, then slowly stood and began to fire again without regard for conserving ammo.
Opening the side vent, Ryan blew the knee off one trying to crawl onto the hood. The mutie fell, thick blood streaking the polished metal. Reaching through the angled vent, Ryan tried to push off the deader on the grid and only managed to cut his arm in the process.
Crouching, Ryan saw the trees were only yards away, and then he noticed a breach in the woods, a pathway that led into the cool greenery. He didn’t give a damn where it went, as long as it was away from this nightmarish hellzone.
A steady hammering could be heard above the blasterfire. Suddenly, the back door flew open and a stickie climbed into the bus. It tried to crawl over the stacks of supplies and failed, then began tossing the boxes of food and ammo outside to clear a path for the others right behind. Krysty fired twice, winging the creature in the shoulder, then Mildred triggered the shotgun, blowing the mutie to pieces and destroying several of the boxes in the process.
“Close that door!” she bellowed, racking the slide.
“Can’t. It’s gone,” Dean replied, firing at a leg that creeped into view on the bumper. There was an answering hoot, and the wounded limb was withdrawn for the moment.
“What mean, gone?” Jak demanded, thumbing fresh shells into his exhausted weapon. A stickie reached for the teen from behind, and J.B. put a burst from the Uzi into its face.
“They tore it off!” he replied, dropping a clip to slap in a fresh magazine. “The door’s a hundred feet away and sinking.”
“How many more are there?” Mildred asked urgently. “Anybody keeping count of the dead?”
“Fifteen aced,” Jak replied. “About ten more.”
“Mebbe twelve,” J.B. added grimly.
Pursing her lips, the physician used a word that her father the Baptist preacher used to pretend didn’t even exist.
“Can’t let them whittle us down,” Krysty said, her hair coiled tightly to her head to prevent further grabs. “Okay, we form a firing line, right here.” Kneeling on the slaughterhouse floor, the woman pointed her weapon at the rear door. The others joined her in a cluster and waited, panting for breath.
“On my command,” Krysty said sternly.
A stickie reached into the bus and paused, expecting to be attacked. When nothing happened, it dared to dart inside and paused, staring at the motionless humans. Then hooting loudly, it began to climb over the stacks of crates as more stickies swarmed into the vehicle. As the creatures got past the boxes, they charged up the aisle for the motionless people.
“Eight,” Krysty said, as the muties rushed closer, arms extended. “Nine, ten of them inside!”
“That’s the lot. Chill the fuckers!” J.B. shouted, cutting loose with the Uzi on full-auto, the compact machine pistol chattering on and on as he emptied a full clip into the massed targets.
Doc and Jak threw thunder from their big-bore handcannons, misshapen heads exploding from every hit. Krysty and Dean maintained a steady discharge into the crowd with their blasters, as J.B. reloaded and rode the Uzi into a tight grouping. Holstering her .38, Mildred stood and used the shotgun, the fléchette rounds tearing the muties into screaming hamburger, intestines slithering out of broken bodies, blood washing over the rubber mats in a tide of death.
Pausing to reload, the companions stared into the swirling mists of acrid gunsmoke, waiting for the next wave of muties. But as the smoke cleared from the winds pouring in through the smashed windows, they saw only twitching bodies piled on the floor and seats. A motion under the seats caught Dean’s attention, and, walking over, he knelt in the blood and fired a round into the head of the stickie trying to crawl away. It jerked once, then went still.
“Two more on the roof,” Ryan said, trying to switch on the defroster and drain some heat from the boiling engine.
“Mine,” Jak said, angrily scowling at the ceiling.
Then the bus violently shook as it hit something under the bog, and started bumping along as if rolling over railroad tracks. Their speed increasing, the front end lifted clear and the vehicle drove out of the quicksand and onto solid ground.
“We’re out!” Ryan announced, slightly easing his hunched position behind the wheel.
“Thank God,” Mildred said, slumping into a chair.
Dodging saplings and rocks, Ryan headed for the path, the off-balance tires shuddering from every irregularity in the ground. Stickies could be heard moving about and hooting loudly on the roof.
“There’s a road!” Krysty said, standing alongside the man, trying to look over the aced mutie. “Jog left!”
Downshifting, Ryan twisted the steering wheel, and the rough vibrations smoothed. Predark pavement? Ryan hit the gas and the bus rapidly built speed as it raced along the cracked strip of old asphalt. Far behind, a couple of stickies ran out of the quicksand, but were quickly left behind in the dust.
Muffled footsteps could be heard on the roof, and Jak tracked their progress with his weapon. “Still got them,” he growled menacingly.
“We’re far enough away,” J.B. said, holding on to the luggage rack to stay erect. “Might as well, slow down and refuel.”
“After we get rid of our uninvited guests,” Doc said, shifting the fire selector pin of the handcannon to the shotgun round.
“Especially this bastard,” Ryan complained, bobbing his head to try to see around the bedraggled corpse on the windshield. Blood was still trickling from the multiple knife-blade wounds, and it was becoming impossible to see clearly. The wiper blades were long gone, causalities of the stickie attack.
“I’ll get him,” Krysty offered and went to stand by the access door, a slim hand holding on to the chrome-plated pole, as she waited for the wag to stop.
Just as
Ryan started to downshift, he saw the fallen tree lying across the road ahead of them, a massive decaying log that a walking man could easily step over. But for the wag it was an impassable palisade. Chunks of rubble lined the predark road on both sides, giving him nowhere to turn, and with the tree trunk only yards away there was virtually no time to slow. Only one choice then.
“Roadblock!” he yelled, standing on the brakes and throwing the gears into reverse. “Brace yourselves!”
Instantly, the wag bucked as if hitting an invisible wall. Every loose item in the vehicle was thrown to the front, a deluge of bodies and boxes burying the companions. A pair of hooting muties flew off the roof and smashed into a tree, the bodies wrapping bonelessly around stout branches.
Brakes squealing, engine roaring, the wag decelerated from fifty to thirty miles per hour in only seconds. Then the screeching transmission exploded from the strain of the reversal, the spinning gears tearing themselves apart and shotgunning out of the floor. Ryan fought the wheel as the speed dropped further, but it wasn’t enough, and the wag slammed into the old tree, plowing through in an explosion of rotten wood. The collision sent the vehicle airborne for a few yards, then dropped to slam onto the asphalt in a resounding crash of crumpling metal and smashing glass. The radiator erupted into a geyser of steam, the axles broke apart and the spinning tires shot away.
Still in motion from sheer inertia, the wreck threw off a spray of sparks from the chassis scraping along the rough surface of the roadway. Shuddering, jerking, clanging, the destroyed wag noisily ground to a halt a good fifty paces farther down the road.
Only the steady ticking of hot metal slowly cooling broke the profound silence of the roadway.
Chapter Fifteen
Crouching sec men armed with knives and flintlocks stole toward the smoking ruins of the school bus.
A trapped bubble of air rose from the quicksand lake to burst on the surface, sounding very much like a human cough. Condors flew high in the stormy sky above, and tropical birds twittered in the oak and birch trees of the nearby forest, waiting for the night when they could hunt. Darting from stone to weed, a rat scurried along the ground with an ear held triumphantly in its jaw. The tattered bodies of the fallen stickies were strewed along two miles of mud and quicksand, ending in the crumpled remains of the wrecked school bus. A column of smoke rose from the quietly burning engine, and the rear door was gone, showing piles of crates and more corpses inside.
A short distance away, a dozen more soldiers sat on their horses with longblasters pressed to their shoulders, shiny new flint in every weapon and tense fingers on the triggers.
“If there’s a God still in heaven, hear my plea,” a corporal whispered hoarsely. “Let the outlanders still live, so I may avenge my brother.”
Mitchum leaned over in his saddle and pressed the point of his knife to the sec man’s throat. A drop of blood rose from the skin and flowed easily along the razor-sharp blade.
“Don’t speak again without my permission,” Mitchum whispered, applying more pressure. The sec man inhaled sharply, craning back his head to keep from being cut. “Or I will wear you as boots. I learned many things as a prisoner of the cannies. Skinning a fool was only the beginning.”
“They killed my brother,” the corporal said without moving his jaw. He could feel the warm blood flow down his throat. “Shot him in the back in cold blood. Want them bad.”
Mitchum studied the rage in the man’s eyes and returned the blade to its sheath. “The man who died in the mountains with us,” he said slowly. “Trying to outdraw the white-skinned man.”
“That was Cob, my older bro,” the sec man grunted. “I’m Whyte.”
“Fair fight. I was there,” the officer said out of the side of his mouth, now watching the troopers creep inside the bus. The men with longblasters got tense, leaning forward in anticipation to the brutal recoil of their black-powder weapons.
“Don’t care,” Whyte snarled, looking up at the mounted officer, reaching for his own knife. “I want them!”
Smoothly, Mitchum drew his blaster and slapped the corporal on the back of the neck just below the swell of the skull. Whyte didn’t even gasp as he limply dropped to the ground. His hands dug at the pavement for a moment, then stopped, but his back rose and fell in the rhythm of life.
“Anybody else speaks out of turn,” Mitchum said softly, cocking back the hammer of his piece, “and he dies on the spot. Now drag this feeb away and remove the corporal stripes from his shirt. He’s a private now.”
A private saluted the officer and hauled the unconscious trooper away just as a sec man appeared at the rear of the bus. He splayed an empty hand, closed it, then cut the air with a flat palm.
“Scorch!” Mitchum spit angrily, and thumped his heels on the horse’s rump to get it moving. Reaching the wreck, he slid off the animal and tethered the reins to a broken sapling. There were lots of them about, forming an orderly path that zigzagged to the vehicle. The driver had to have been dying or blind to hit so many.
“Any sign they had been inside?” Mitchum demanded of the waiting sec men.
The leader of the recce saluted. “Yes, sir. Lots of blood and spent brass is everywhere.”
“Must of been a hell of a fight,” another man agreed. “There be bullet holes in the windows and roof.”
“A gangbang,” the colonel stated gruffly. The swamp stickies had been doing a lot of that lately. Attacking in larger and larger groups to ace passing norms. Blasters weren’t stopping them anymore.
“Mebbe they are aced, sir,” a corporal suggested, peeking in through a busted window frame. “And something dragged the bodies away. Lots of things will eat norm flesh that’s black with rot, but never touch a fresh mutie corpse.”
“That’s true,” the sergeant agreed, kicking at some debris on the cracked pavement.
Yes, it was possible, even likely, but Mitchum didn’t trust such an easy answer. He wouldn’t believe Ryan was dead until he saw the body and cut out its heart.
“What about their possessions?” Mitchum demanded, walking around the twisted shell of the broken wag. “Are their backpacks or the rapidfires still inside?”
“No, sir,” a private answered. “We looked, but those are gone.”
“They’re alive!” Mitchum growled, slamming a fist into the side of the bus, denting the weakened metal. Ryan and his people were alive and had escaped again. Animals might have dragged away the bodies, but not the blasters.
“What a heap of dreck,” a sergeant snorted in disgust. “Must of hit that log and gone flying. Shitfire, both axles are busted to pieces, and the engine block is cracked. Look at that oil spill! There’s no way I could fix this wag. It was in better shape when we dug it out of those ruins.”
“Might be able to find a few parts that work,” a private suggested, lifting a wheel-bearing assembly from one of the axles. It was slightly bent, but still should work. He tucked it into a pocket.
“Stop that,” Mitchum directed, going for his horse. “We’ll scav for anything usable on the return. But first we find those rad-sucking outlanders and send them to Davey in pieces.”
Mounting his horse, he walked it to the middle of the roadway, watching the trees for snipers. Nothing was stirring, but he didn’t relax. Something was terribly wrong here; he just didn’t know what it was.
“I want a recce of the whole area,” Mitchum directed. “If they walked away, there’ll be tracks. Sergeant, form three teams of five men. The outlanders are still alive, and we will find them!”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied with a smart salute.
Then a voice shouted from inside the wag. “Hey, there’s a pile of flintlocks in here, and they ain’t even scratched!”
“Any ammo?” another asked, walking closer.
“Sure! Lots!”
Battle instincts flared, and Mitchum spun in the saddle.
“Don’t touch those!” he bellowed. “It’s a trap!”
But the warning
was too late. A sec man cried out as something inside the bus burst into a sizzling chem spray. There followed a small explosion, then a roaring whoosh as flames filled the bus, stretching out the windows and doorways to completely engulf the vehicle in a rapidly expanding fireball.
“They boobied the fuel!” a man shrieked as a burning wave of shine blew him out the door, clothes and hair instantly bursting into flames.
Desperately covering his face, Mitchum dropped behind his horse for protection as the hellstorm washed over the group of startled sec men, igniting them like greasy torches.
The conflagration consumed the entire area, the growing flames reaching to the trees, and the screams of the dying men seemed to last forever.
PUSHING THEIR WAY through the dense greenery, Ryan stopped as Krysty whirled to look behind them.
“Trouble?” he asked, grabbing his blaster.
“They found the booby,” she said. “I pity them.”
“Fuck ’em,” Jak snarled, limping along. A tree branch had been cut into a crude crutch, and the teenager was stiffly hobbling along, his face a mask of barely contained fury.
Hoisting her med kit, Mildred didn’t blame him for being angry. A barrel of shine had fallen on his leg in the crash, giving the teenager a sprained ankle. She had wrapped it tight with wet strips of cloth that would tighten as they dried. Not much, but it was the best she could do. The sprain had to be very painful, but the teenager didn’t complain. Mildred had two aspirins she was holding in reserve until nightfall to help him get to sleep. But the more he walked, the worse it would feel.
“Hated to use all of my plas in one shot,” J.B. said, removing his hat to wipe off the sweatband with a handkerchief. Then he set the fedora back in place. “But once the wag was broke, that aced the plan of trading it for a ship at Cascade.”
“Hope it got them all,” Dean said grimly, rubbing his sore ribs. Nothing was broken, but he had a lot of painful bruises.
“I think we can count on some of the sec men surviving,” Ryan said, “and that soon these hills will be crawling with troops.”