Playfair's Axiom

by James Axler

  The dried-shit flooring muffled sound. Ryan’s flesh crawled at being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of the seagull-size, flesh-craving mutants, not to mention the monster in its house-size nest looming over everything, with its crested head tucked under one wing.

  Ryan glanced back. J.B. backed him tight, shotgun ready. His hat was tipped up, and his head and his face looked pinched and pallid beneath a gloss of sweat. Next came Krysty, her normally full lips almost vanished in a resolute line. She carried her Smith & Wesson 640 in her right hand and a cleaver from her backpack in her left. Behind walked the unarmed Brother Joseph, trying to look nonchalant, and as ever, close after him stalked Mildred.

  Ryan wasn’t really sure where they were going. He steered left, around the house-high pile of bones beneath the monster’s macabre nest. Something about the shadows of that crumpled-in roof corner drew his eye.

  From the left came a peculiar chirp. “Ryan,” J.B. muttered through clenched teeth, “I think we’ve been noticed.”

  Ryan looked left. A small screamwing sitting on the guano mat just eight or nine feet away had taken its head out from under its wing. It shook it, triple-fast, like a wet dog. Then as if accidentally it turned to look up at Ryan.

  Its eyes, half-lidded with sleep, shot wide. It opened its beak and squawked.

  Ryan hit the on switch of Brother Joseph’s device.

  “Damn!” Mildred whispered. “Bro Joe just broke away! He ran right around the elevator bank to the south side before I could stop him. Freaking screamwings distracted me. Sorry.”

  And hundreds and hundreds of screamwings raised their sleepy heads, turned and stared at the intruders. Then with a booming of many wings they took flight. Almost directly overhead, the king—Ryan still thought of the monster that way; how the hell did he know what sex it really was?—unfurled its own wings with a sound like a cannon going off.

  The lesser screamwings flew up about ten feet in the air and began swooping toward the companions. They seemed chiefly curious as to what these strange intruders were. What they didn’t seem was repelled at all.

  From the black shadow pocket beneath the crumpled-down roof corner a figure emerged, with ghost-white face and hair and wearing a camo jacket and ragged jeans.

  “Ryan, no!” Jak yelled, waving his arms. “That brings ’em!”

  But Ryan had already switched the sunburst counterclockwise until it hit a detent.

  The diving seagull-size screamwings braked as if they hit an invisible wall. The device, which had been vibrating so fast in Ryan’s hand it stung his skin, now rumbled at a low frequency that rattled in his bones.

  With a skull-shattering shriek, King Screamwing took off straight up, fleeing the hated low tone. The downblast of his wings almost battered Ryan to his knees.

  “Jak!” Krysty shouted through the diminishing thunder of the giant flyer’s wings as it flapped away from its lair. “You’re alive!”

  Instead of answering he dived back into the shelter of the shoved-in roof. A whole cloud of lesser screamwings hit it like a sudden hailstorm. Ryan heard multiple thumps as a number of them bounced off the roof.

  The muties raised a terrific screeching clamor. Ryan saw a wild churning of wings and toothed beaks, and a flash of steel in moonlight. A screamwing fell, its finger-wing sheered through. Others swarmed over its thrashing body. Its cries rose higher as its fellows devoured it alive.

  Jak’s fighting knife slashed patterns of dazzle in the air right outside his shelter. Blood and body parts flew. Some of the screamwings settled down to cannibalistic feasts. Others retreated in squawking haste.

  One bold mutie ventured close, managing somehow to evade the fast-moving blade. A white hand grabbed it by its skinny throat. It vanished into shadow. A beat later it was flung out again. It was limp, and its head dangled loose at the end of a wrung neck.

  “Stick tight!” Ryan shouted. He sprinted toward Jak, holding the screamwing repeller high. He had no idea if it helped; he did it anyway.

  “What about Brother Joseph?” Krysty yelled. He didn’t look back. By her voice he could tell she was right behind him, which was all he needed to know.

  “Nuke him!”

  The screamwings had started circling like a noisy living dust devil in front of Jak’s shelter. Now they broke apart and shot off in all directions, like drops of water from a big rock hitting a pond. They triple-hated that low-freq hum.

  The companions reached Jak’s shelter. “Come on,” Ryan shouted. “We don’t know how long this noisemaker’ll hold them off. We’re in their damn house!”

  Jak popped out like a prairie dog, his knife and knife hand dripping blood. His face was streaked with gore the color of the eyes that glared wildly from it.

  Why all come?” he demanded. “All gone droolie suddenly?”

  Knowing how risky it was to hug the albino teen with his shard-encrusted jacket, Krysty squeezed his upper arm.

  “Strength in numbers,” Ryan said. “You walk?”

  “Can run!”

  “Don’t,” Mildred said. “Footing’s pretty slippery in places. You go down in this shit, you won’t get up before these things’re all over you.”

  Ryan gestured with the repeller and his P-226, herding his crew back toward the stairs. They started back past the big rectangular concrete structure that formed one wall of Jak’s hideout.

  A cry loud as an air horn made them look up. The giant screamwing settled onto the girders next to its nest, waving its enormous wings in agitation. Another echoing call, and the cloud of little screamwings, which had begun orbiting above the gable roof, arrowed back down through the open west end.

  Right toward the companions.

  Most of them sheered off again, screeching dismay at the subsonic hum. But one blasted right through. It struck Ryan’s left shoulder, flapping its furry left wing in his face. Its toothed beak sliced into his cheek below the eye patch. He shouted, in angry surprise far more than pain.

  A flash. A wash of heat. Ryan heard nothing, merely felt an impact like a huge hand slapping the left side of his face, hard enough to sting.

  The screamwing exploded into blood and bone shrapnel.

  “Glowing night shit!” Ryan yelled. He could only hear in his right ear. The whole left side of his head felt numb. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Sorry, Ryan!” He barely heard J.B. He realized he wasn’t hearing triple-good with his right ear, either, at the moment. He also realized the Armorer had stuck the muzzle of his shotgun close to the furry little horror and blasted it at near contact range, which meant he’d lit off the 12-gauge blaster right next to Ryan’s left ear.

  By reflex Ryan clapped a hand to that ear. There was no blood on his palm when he took it away. Mebbe I didn’t lose the drum, he thought.

  In screaming fury Mildred stamped a fallen screamwing with her combat boots. Krysty slashed another’s furry belly open. It fluttered brokenly a few paces and fell thrashing to the floor, kicking at its own spilled guts.

  The companions had halted when the first screamwing broke through their repeller tone. The giant screamwing tipped its crest back and vented another sky-ripping screech. A squadron of the lesser horrors dived on them again. As before, they turned away as they got close to the source of the painful vibration.

  Most of them. Ryan whacked one out of midair with his SIG. Another descended claws-first toward his face. He slashed at it with the repeller. The mutie backed air and he shot it with a 9 mm slug. The muzzle-flash set its fur smoldering as it fell flapping in frantic agony.

  “Run!” Ryan shouted, stomping the fallen flier with his bootheel and breaking its back.

  “But the king!” Krysty shouted, slashing the furred wing membrane of another that had broken into the repeller field.

  To get back to the stairs they’d have to pass directly above the crested monster. The giant also seemed to be egging its juniors on to the attack, whether by design or accident literally blowing them toward the intruders wi
th beats of its huge wings when they held back. It didn’t seem to like the repeller tone any better than the little ones did. But between their overlord’s urging and their fury to defend their nest, the lesser screamwings by ones and twos overcame their distaste of the throbbing hum to attack the invaders.

  Sooner or later they’d get in close enough to do real damage. His friends’ faces already bled from cuts and nips. They were losing this game fast.

  Ryan pointed his blaster at the king and emptied the magazine into it.

  The monster’s blood rained down on them. As the SIG’s slide locked back, the king took off again, screeching its titan fury. Ryan doubted he’d done it any real damage—he wasn’t that lucky. But like anything the creature didn’t like getting shot.

  “Haul ass!” he yelled. The companions lit out for the stairwell at as brisk a pace as the yielding floor would allow.

  J.B. put a foot into a patch of poorly dried guano and sank. He stumbled and began to pitch forward onto his face.

  Once down, he’d never rise before the little monsters swarmed him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mildred and Jak caught J.B. under the arms before he could fall. With frantic strength they yanked him out of the deep muck that had tripped him. He got boots beneath him on more solid footing and staggered onward, coughing as though his lungs would burst.

  Ryan feared they might do just that. But he had no attention to waste on that. The giant screamwing hovered directly above the opening in the gable roof, screaming. The sound was driving the lesser screamwings to suicidal fury. They dived in again and again. Each time a few got close enough to slash at the interloping humans with needle-toothed beaks.

  Ryan stuck his P-226, its slide still locked back over an empty mag, back in its holster and drew his panga. The big blade whistled a figure eight of death in the air before him. J.B. blasted his M-4000 empty, then reversed the weapon and, holding it by a barrel that had to be scorching fingers and palms, swatted and broke furry bodies that dared wing too close.

  Krysty and Mildred had put away their empty blasters, too. Handblasters weren’t ideal for dealing with the fast-moving, swarming monstrosities. Instead they used knives and bare hands, grabbing and snapping fragile wing bones or crushing throats, slashing at eyes and bellies.

  At least these muties weren’t as tough to chill as some breeds of screamwings they’d encountered. But what they lacked in hardiness they more than made up in numbers—and ferocity.

  Despite the giant screamwing’s shrieking rage, the friends all reached the door alive. Doc’s short-barreled shotgun slung beneath the primary barrel of his LeMat blew apart a last diving screamwing. Ryan turned and again held the thrumming device up before him like a talisman as the others dived to safety inside.

  Apparently the little monsters weren’t as proprietary about the area around the concrete blockhouse that enclosed the stairwell. Or maybe, despite their monarch’s rage, they were getting wary. Scores of torn and broken bodies littered the guano-mat floor, some thrashing and squalling, others moving and croaking feebly, and most just lying there cooling. The last pursuers turned away as Ryan thrust the repeller at them. They flew across the roof near Jak’s former hideout and, landing, began to tear at the fallen bodies of their less fortunate brethren.

  “Get inside,” Doc was roaring. He gestured with the fat-cylindered handblaster, while flourishing his black sword stick in the reeking air to discourage any particularly plucky pursuers. None came close, though.

  When everybody else was inside, Ryan shouted to Doc to go into the stairwell, too.

  A great shadow descended. King Screamwing had at last decided to join the fray.

  Ryan jumped backward. His boot soles were slick with gelatinous screamwing shit—he slid out of control. Mildred caught him, kept him from going down the stairs or tumbling over the rail to plunge almost six hundred feet to make a wide stain on the concrete floor. Krysty slammed the door shut.

  A darkness blocked the window. For a moment the right eye of the giant screamwing glared yellow hate at them. Then the great crested head went away. Ryan felt the boom of the sky monarch’s wings even through the steel door.

  “He’s perched up on the girder again,” Krysty reported. “He’s preening. The others have lost interest in us completely.”

  Ryan and the others had collapsed onto the floor of the landing. The concrete felt wonderfully cool to Ryan’s spent and battered body. After two beatings in twenty-four hours the companions had been near the ragged edge of exhaustion before ever setting out from Soulardville. Now, without the immediate threat of being ripped to pieces to keep them going at any cost, fatigue landed on all of them like an asteroid from space.

  Vaguely Ryan was aware of Jak, squatting and panting like a wolf, describing breathlessly how he survived. “Possumed when big fucker lifted me up. Didn’t want fall. Then came here. Took hider knife, stabbed fucker triple-good in leg. Dropped me. Saw hidey-hole, got in before little screamers got me. Then held off till sun went down, monsters got sleepy.”

  Ryan shook his head and struggled to his feet. “All right,” he said. “A few more steps and we’re done.” It was metaphor rather than truth. But it seemed to get them all moving, however painfully.

  A violent pounding came from the door. Heads snapped that way.

  Brother Joseph stared in the little window at them. His eyes showed white all around.

  “For the love of mercy!” the preacher shouted, “Please, let me in!”

  “After that dirty trick you played with the screamwing device, Brother Joseph?” Mildred asked.

  “Ryan would’ve done the same! All’s fair in love and war!”

  “Mebbe,” Ryan said.

  “You can’t leave me for these monsters!”

  “Watch me,” Jak said.

  “We had a deal!” the fallen spiritual leader screamed. “I bring you here, and you’d let me go when you got your friend back. Well, you’ve got him. And he’s even alive! A miracle! You talk a lot about keeping bargains, Ryan. Keep the deal you made with me.”

  “Sure,” Ryan said. He turned the sunburst on the device all the way clockwise.

  “What did you do?” Brother Joseph shrieked immediately. “They’re looking at me! Oh, sweet mother of mercy, no!”

  Ryan pushed past the others and yanked the door open.

  Brother Joseph stood staring with round eyes. Behind him the lesser screamwings had taken flight and were circling once more in obvious agitation. King Screamwing slowly extended his mighty wings and looked down toward the source of the most intriguing noise.

  “Oh, thank you, Ryan, thank you, I’ll—”

  Whatever else Brother Joseph was going to babble came out in a wordless whoosh of air as Ryan brought up his knee and thrust-kicked the man in the gut with the shit-coated sole of his right boot. Brother Joseph reeled back five steps before doing a comic pratfall. Guano squelched beneath him.

  “What are you doing?” he howled. “We had a deal!”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “And I just kept it. You’re free to go, Bro Joe. Anywhere you please.”

  The literally fallen spiritual leader and man-who-would-be baron gathered himself to leap for the sweet tempting shelter offered by the open door. Ryan brought his hand down and back and lobbed the fast-vibrating device in a low arc above Brother Joseph’s head. It landed with a soft plop fifteen feet behind him, bouncing to rest against the base of the pyramid of discarded bones beneath the king’s wicker-and-bone nest.

  “Right now I’d try to go switch that thing to repel, if I were you,” Ryan said. “Glad I’m not.”

  Brother Joseph turned and scrabbled on all fours after the device. Though his hands sank into shit to the elbow and came out dripping white custardy foul ooze, he drove himself forward by sheer will until he was almost in reach of the device, sending out its siren song, inaudible to all but Jak. Several hundred screamwings who were taking an ever more lively interest orbited closer and closer
like a flapping, chittering tornado.

  But in its nest, high above a great city’s rubble, there was only one screamwing that mattered.

  As he stretched a clawing desperate hand for the mutie attractor a moon shadow fell across Brother Joseph’s face. He looked up.

  And screamed at the point of King Screamwing’s beak, poised a handspan from his face.

  The huge crested head darted down. Like a spear the monster’s beak struck between Brother Joseph’s shoulder blades, pinning him facedown to the mat of pliant, fermenting shit.

  Then a new color overwhelmed the sunburst pattern tie-dyed on the back of Brother Joseph’s T-shirt: solid scarlet, gleaming and fast-spreading.

  Ryan backed into the housing and shut the door on his screams.

  “Okay, I’ll hold here. You all go do what needs to be done. When you’re clear, give a shout and I’ll follow. But don’t wait for me. Get out of this hellhole as fast as you can. Hear me?”

  “No,” Jak said.

  Ryan stared at him. In his current state he literally had trouble conjuring what the single emphatic syllable even meant.

  “Now, hold on just a—”

  “Said no. Meant no. I faster best times. Fastest. You all beat. Had better day, me.”

  “Well,” Doc said, “it’s true the lad didn’t have to walk here, Ryan. And he got one fewer thrashing.”

  Krysty laid a hand on Ryan’s arm. “Surely you don’t think you have to prove anything, Ryan? He’s right, you know,” she added.

  Ryan slumped. Krysty tightened her grip on his forearm. It was enough. He forced himself to stand upright.

  It took about the same effort it had to climb forty-three flights of steam bath stairs.

  “You got it, then, Jak,” he said. “But when we give the word, you throw open that door and move like hell’s on your tail.