by James Axler
“Always keep the first chamber empty,” Krysty said, touching the cylinder. “That’s for safety. I’ll guess that you are not overly familiar with the operations of a revolver.”
“A what?” Liana asked, totally confused.
“That’s another name for a blaster,” Doc explained.
“There’s no brass in the cylinder right now,” Krysty stated. “So it’s okay to dry fire it a few times. Pull the trigger a little bit, the hammer cocks. See? Now pull it all the way back, and the hammer drops, firing the brass.”
Carefully, Liana did as she was instructed, trying to get the feel of the clicking metal thing. The blaster was heavier than a boomerang, and carried a strange feeling of deadly power. She could guess why. A hammer had a dozen uses, rope was good for a hundred purposes, and a knife even more, but this tool was made only for chilling and nothing else. It was a solid piece of death.
“Save for close range,” Jak advised sagely. “Then shoot into belly.”
“Not the head?” Liana asked with a frown. “I’ve heard the sec men say that was the best place to ace somebody, even a mutie.”
“It’s also the hardest to hit,” Krysty said. “The barrel of the blaster will jump a little when you fire. That means a beginner will miss a head shot every time.”
“I see,” Liana said slowly, testing the weapon in her hand. The checkered grip slipped into her palm as if it had been designed just for her and nobody else. Simply amazing. “So if I shoot for the belly, and miss, I’ll still hit the chest?”
“You learn fast, little sister,” Krysty said with a smile, passing the woman a leather gunbelt, the loops full of live brass. Then the redhead showed the blonde how to load the blaster.
It took Liana a few times to learn how to open the cylinder and then insert the brass cartridges while walking, but she finally got the task accomplished and closed it with a satisfying click. Suddenly the blaster felt alive and potent.
Keeping the barrel of the Colt pointed away from the others, Liana tried to thumb back the hammer the way she had seen the companions do just before a fight. However, it was much heavier than expected and slipped away from her to hit the cylinder. Instantly, the blaster jumped as the brass fired, the round loudly ricocheting off a rock to zing into the distance. Horribly embarrassed, the woman cringed and started to offer the weapon back.
“Don’t worry about it, no corpse, no crime,” Mildred said in a soothing tone, patting the blonde on the shoulder. “Besides, everybody does that their first time. Damn near blew off my own foot as a beginner.”
“Will somebody teach me more later on?” Liana asked eagerly, hefting the weapon.
“Well, Doc is the best shot,” Ryan lied, not looking backward as he stepped over a fallen log.
Quite surprised by the untruth, the scholar raised a questioning eyebrow and grinned in understanding. Clearly, Ryan wanted to keep the newcomer at a distance in case they were forced to leave her behind. However, the answer to that problem was simple.
“Dear lady, would you be so kind as to shake my hand?” Doc asked politely.
Timidly, Liana did so, and was rudely surprised when the tall scholar began to squeeze hard. As the pain grew, she almost cried out for him to stop, but then saw something in his gentle eyes, and gamely fought back, trying her utmost to give as good as she got.
After several minutes, Doc finally let go, and beamed a wide, contented grin. “By Gadfrey, miss, you’ll do fine!” He chuckled. “You are clearly more than strong enough to handle the recoil of that weapon.”
So that had been a test? “If strength is important, why don’t I use a two-hand grip?” she asked eagerly.
“Ah, but you should!” Doc exclaimed, and demonstrated how, one hand holding the grip of the blaster, the other holding his own wrist for additional support.
Clumsily, Liana copied the hold, then shifted her position slightly and suddenly the blaster felt an integral part of her arm. It was amazing! Nearly bursting with questions, Liana tried to get them out one at a time, and the lessons continued over the long miles as the seven companions marched into the misty hills, leaving the seacoast ville far behind, the hazy smoke of the burning buildings fading into the distance.
Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Slowly the old healer rose from the tattered form lying on the churned earth, and reverently laid a white fur coat over what had once been a living, breathing woman.
“She’s gone, lord,” the healer said, bowing his head.
“No…impossible….” Baron Griffin whispered, dropping to his knees. His clothing was torn and dirty, a great chunk of fur missing from his cape. His left arm was nestled in a crude rope sling, and a crimson streak was smeared across a cheek from the barrage of shrapnel that exploded from the destruction of the Wendigo.
“My love?” the baron whispered, reaching out a trembling hand to stroke the bloody arm of his wife. But there was no reply, and he knew there never would be again.
Opening his mouth to speak, the healer decided it was better to say nothing and moved away, looking for anybody his seaweed potions and cloth bandages might be able to help. Nearly half the people in the ville had wounds of some sort or another, but most of them had been caused by the sec men shooting blindly at the escaping outlanders. However, that was the sort of comment that got a man hung and fed to the crabs. With every wound he stitched shut, the healer wisely cursed the cowardly outlanders and praised the brave sec men.
Seeing one of his wife’s favorite plastic rings where it lay near her body, Baron Griffin reverently slipped it back on the stiffening finger, the wild maelstrom of raw emotions inside the tormented man too complex and powerful to ever put into simple words. Gone, Barbara was gone forever.
A long time passed, but none of the sec men surrounding the tableau dared to speak and disturb their mourning baron. There was only the background cries of the wounded, the wail of civies over their deceased husbands and wives, and the steady crackle of the burning log cabins. Arrows stuck out of the ground like winter weeds, the spent brass of the outlanders’ blasters clearly showing their escape route through the ville. The smoldering wreckage of the Wendigo lay scattered across the ground for a hundred yards. A thick column of black smoke rose from the roiling inferno of the annihilated still, the cooking bodies of the shine crew sizzling horribly inside the raging fire, the meaty smell both oddly appetizing and utterly repulsive at the same time.
“What should we do now, lord?” sec chief Donovan demanded, thumbing live brass into his blaster.
The chest of the big man was covered with tight leather wrapping to ease the pain of his broken ribs. A fat bandage sat on his wounded shoulder like the pet bird of a sailor, a rivulet of red seeping out from underneath to trickle down his arm. His once handsome face was covered with blisters from the spray of red- hot coals, but there was a fierce determination in his dark eyes.
“Do?” Baron Griffin repeated, as if he had never heard the word before. Then withdrawing his hand from the cooling skin of the ragged corpse, he slowly stood, the mounting fury giving him new strength. “What we do is track down the mutie-loving outlanders and skin them alive!”
“I already have a full team of horsemen out searching for them, as well as the cats and falcons,” Donovan replied curtly, closing the blaster with a snap and tucking it into a holster.
“Send more,” the baron commanded, looking at his hands, tightening them into fists and releasing them again. “Send out everybody who’s still alive.”
“No, my lord, that would endanger the safety of the ville,” Donovan countered. “We’re already down to the newbies and green recruits on the wall.”
Turning, the baron wanted to scream at the sec chief to do as he was told, but then cold reason countered the hot rush of anger. Yes, the ville had to be protected at all costs. If only so that he could cut out the beating hearts of the outlanders over the grave of his wife, and soak the ground with their blood. The baron knew the old l
egends. Only the blood of the living enemy could sooth the soul into the next world.
“Yes, a prudent move,” Baron Griffin growled, his face jerking with a nervous tick. “Have the children recover the arrows, send the oldsters to put out those damn fires, reload the arbalests in case of an attack, and then…” He smiled, the tick coming back to turn his vis age into a feral mask. “And then send out every messenger pigeon we have! Inform every ville on the entire world about the coldhearts. Offer a reward of fifty pounds of steel if they are captured and brought back to me alive.”
“F-fifty!” a sec man gasped. “But, my liege, that’s the entire royal treasury!”
“Not anymore,” the baron commented dryly, waving a hand at the steaming debris of the shattered Wendigo. “Gather every scrap, every piece, and start rebuilding the boiler. We may need to take it as trade in case—”
Whatever the baron was about to say was truncated by a low, inhuman growl from the direction of the cliffs. Instantly everybody scrambled for weapons as the noise came again, louder this time, and much closer.
THE LONG DAY FADED into a cool afternoon, but the companions kept moving deeper into the rugged terrain, steadily climbing ever higher into the foggy mountains. The air was crisp and clean, and wildlife abounded in the thick foliage.
Thick forests of pine trees dominated the rolling landscape, but there was also a steady scattering of maple trees, copses of apple and nectarine trees, and an endless variety of fruit-bearing bushes—blueberries, loganberries and several species that not even Krysty could identify.
“No starvation here,” J.B. said, wiping his glasses with a cloth as they marched along. “I’m surprised that the island isn’t choked with people.”
“Have there been a lot of wars?” Ryan asked.
“There’s always fighting,” Liana replied, lengthening her stride to keep abreast of Doc. If the scholar noticed her efforts, he gave no sign. “But even in the good times, breeding ain’t allowed unless the Book says so.”
“Bible?” Jak asked as a wild guess. He knew of several villes that lived by the old rules.
Glancing at the teenager, Liana frowned as if she had never heard the word before. “The Book of Blood,” she explained. “It’s the only thing that all of the barons agree on. Every family is listed, and nobody can breed unless they’re three births away from each other.”
“Interesting,” Mildred mused, rubbing her chin. “The island must have survived the war with a very small gene pool, and somebody was smart enough to keep track. You can safely have children with a relative if you’re third cousins. Any closer and you would start to get terrible inbreeding.”
“The innies, yeah, they’re bad,” Liana agreed with a hard expression. “Most of the babes…well, the midwife aces ’em right there on the birthing bed.” After a moment she added, “Sometimes the villes swap folks around, send five men here, or ten women there. Not sure why, but the babes born afterward are always bigger and stronger than usual. Sec chief Donovan is one of those, and he’s bastard strong.”
“I noticed,” Ryan muttered, touching the bandage on his throat.
“Sadly, there must also be the occasional mutation,” Doc added, clearly thinking out loud.
Trying not to blush at the dirty word, Liana agreed. “I…I always thought that I was a…a mutie,” she said in a rush. “Don’t look like either of my parents.”
“Just a recessive gene,” Mildred explained. “There must have been some Asian blood in your family once, and it resurfaced in you.”
“Why?” Liana asked in a sudden surge of interest.
Briefly, the physician considered trying to explain Mendell, the laws of heredity and DNA, then decided not to even try. “Just nature’s way of keeping us all different,” she said affably. “Like when two ugly people have a beautiful child, or two really smart people have an incredibly dumb kid.”
“I see,” Liana said slowly.
Leaving the field, the companions trudged higher into the mountains, the air becoming steadily colder. Along the way, Liana kept drawing her blaster and pointing it at targets: rock, tree, bush. She got faster, then slower as her muscles got tired, then a little bit faster once again through sheer determination.
Slowly, night descended and once more the dancing lights of the aurora borealis filled the sky. As if they were entering the clouds, a heavy fog spread across the land, more dense than any Deathlands sandstorm. Soon the cicadas began their eternal song, and in the far distance, a wolf howled at the silvery moon for reasons unknown since the dawn of time.
Suddenly, Krysty raised a clenched fist and everybody instantly stopped moving. Walking a few yards ahead of the others, the woman squinted into the distance. “There’s a ville over there,” she announced hesitantly.
“Better stay away from there,” Liana stated firmly. “That’s Hill ville.”
“Friendlies?” Jak asked, thumbing back the hammer on his Colt Python.
“Aced, they’re all aced,” Liana replied. “They were triple crazy and defied the Book of Blood, marrying and breeding with anybody they wanted.” She scowled darkly. “Or could catch. The barons of both Anchor and Northpoint sent troops to attack the ville one night, and they chilled everybody, man, woman and child.”
“Even the civvies?” J.B. asked, pushing back his fedora.
“Everybody,” Liana repeated. “Only a handful escaped alive. Dunno how.” She turned to the tall mountain in the east. “Some folks say they took refuge in the Forbidden Caves, but anybody going there to see don’t come back.”
“And thus were created the Hillies,” Mildred said in a rush of understanding. She had assumed that the name was merely a bastardization of the term hillbilly, but actually it came from the name of their former ville.
“Anybody there now?” Ryan asked, pulling out the Navy longeye.
“Sky gods no!” Liana replied, shocked at the mere suggestion. “The ville is cursed. Baron Griffin sent some pilgrims once, and they went mad, screaming, running around naked and clawing out their eyes. Couple of years later Northpoint tried, and the same thing happened. Since then, Hill ville has been avoided like a mutie in a rad pit.”
“Sounds like some kind of poison to me,” J.B. stated. “I’m guessing the locals soaked a cord of wood with something, and when the invaders started a campfire for dinner, the fumes took them out neat and quick.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan agreed, sweeping the ville with the longeye. “Unless they had a stock of nerve gas.” The outer wall of fieldstones was still standing and seemed in good repair, but the front gate was gone. Dimly, he could see some log cabins inside, but there wasn’t even the dimmest glow of candles, torches or cook fires. There was only a deep, unbroken blackness.
“Nerve gas? That is most unlikely, my dear Ryan,” Doc rumbled in his deep stentorian bass. “Military-grade nerve gas must be stored in glass-lined metal containers to protect it from moisture.”
“And in this blighted island the containers would be more valuable than the gas,” Mildred finished. “However, there are all types of poison you can make from plants and such.” She waited, but J.B. gave no indication that he heard. “More likely they used poisoned firewood, or maybe the wooden seats in the ville lav.”
“The place sounds damn near perfect,” J.B. said. “Good strong walls to keep out the night hunters, and lots of empty houses for us to choose from. The baron’s is probably in the best condition…no, frag that. The invaders would have burned his home when they first attacked the ville.”
“Sec chief,” Jak stated, easing down the hammer.
“Yeah, the home of the sec chief would be the next best,” Ryan agreed, collapsing the longeye and tucking it away. “At the very least, it’ll get us out of this bastard cold.”
“How can you know these things?” Liana asked curiously as the group started forward.
“We’ve done this sort of thing once, or twice, before,” Mildred stated.
Just then, an owl softly hoo
ted in the gloom, sounding eerily like a stickie. The companions drew their blasters and braced for a rush of the humanoid muties, but then the owl called once more and noisily flapped out of the bushes, taking to the misty sky.
Easing their stance slightly, the companions kept their weapons out and primed as they proceeded toward the distant ville.
It was night when the companions reached Hill ville, and the moon bathed the landscape in an ethereal glow. With their blasters at the ready, the companions did a fast recce around the outer wall for any signs of recent breaks or, worse, repairs. But the weathered fieldstone wall seemed untouched, the base hidden by thick grass.
Taking the point position, Ryan proceeded to the gap in the wall where the front gate should have been. Even through a thick growth of weedy grass, the one-eyed man easily spotted the gate on the ground. It had been thoroughly smashed into kindling from some sort of explosion, or possibly a salvo of those giant arbalest arrows. However, the hinges were missing entirely, which clearly meant that they had to have been made of metal, and thus taken by the invading sec men.
“We’re not gonna find a nail in this place,” J.B. muttered, the Uzi held steady in a two-hand grip.
Easing inside the ville, Ryan nodded his agreement. “Looted to the wall” was the phrase the Trader had taught them, and it would never be more accurate than on this triple-crazy island.
Passing by the ruins of a sandbag nest, Ryan saw several skeletons inside, their skulls smashed in, a spider spinning a web among the jumbled collection of ribs.
Next came a split-rail fence surrounding a large corral, the number of cow pies covering the ground showing that the locals had owned quite a large herd at one time. But not anymore. Every animal, whether alive or chilled, would have been jacked by the victorious invaders.
Every cabin, water trough, outhouse, shutter and shingle was elaborately covered with detailed carvings: animals, misspelled words, trains, planes, winged horses, lightning bolts, giant spiders and mushroom clouds, a phantasmagoric mixture of fanciful myths, old legends and hard reality of the postwar world. If nothing else, the Hillies were ace woodcarvers.