by James Axler
"A feeding! A feeding! A feeding! A feeding!" Louder and louder, like the pulse of a raging and insensate heart.
Fists were punching the air, in unison, pounding the beat of the cry: "the feeding." A thousand voices raised together. The piping tones of little children and the trembling sound of the aged. It rose around Ryan, deafening him.
Marianne Mote stopped.
Immediately the yells began to fade away, until there was only the stillness of the night and a gasping intake of breath as everyone realized that the woman's finger pointed, rock steady, straight at the figure of Carla Petersen.
"Gaia!"
The Heroes began to move forward, stopping when a slight figure stepped from the front row and stood between them and Carla.
"First person moves, man or woman," J.B. said coldly, "and they're on their back looking up at the stars. With a bullet through their skull."
Nobody moved.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"HE'S ONE MAN, alone. Chill him! Feed him to Belial!"
Marianne's voice broke the silence like the shattering of a crystal goblet.
"He's not alone." Ryan leveled his G-12. "Someone makes a mistake and there'll be a lot of death come to this ville."
"Two or three or four! What does it matter? We are a thousand strong," Norman shouted, coming to his wife's support.
"Six!" came Doc's melodious voice from the middle of the crowd. "I urge discretion upon everyone here. You may o'erwhelm us, but the cost will be most appallingly high. Who would wish to die?"
"Looks like a hot-spot standoff," J.B. called. "You don't get at us without taking a high body count."
"You can't get away, scum!" Zombie shouted, looking across at Norman Mote for his orders.
"Mebbe not," Ryan agreed. "But it's triple-sure you won't live to find out."
A little girl with freckles and plaits, in a patched gingham dress, broke the stand-off, calling out in a clear, ringing voice, "Look, Mommy! See the funny mans!"
"Holy shit!" someone said hoarsely.
"Stickies!" Riddler bellowed, immediately blasting away with his shotgun.
To encounter three times in two days was kind of unusual. Ryan's first reaction was to glance around, trying to place the members of his group, and trying to gauge the opposition.
J.B. stood at his elbow, one arm around the shoulders of Carla Petersen, Krysty was just behind with Jak. And somewhere in the center of the panicking mob were Doc, Lori and Rick.
Out front, cavorting around the fires, were a dozen stickies, bodies glistening in the light. Some held the cans of gasoline and others had seized blazing branches, waving them in the night like medieval torches.
Ryan was just able to grab Krysty by the arm when the mob swept by them, a shrill, hysterical gaggle charging aimlessly toward what they hoped might be some sort of freedom and escape from the threat.
"Keep close, lover!" he shouted.
Chaos.
Fire and explosions and screams and bodies, jostling, pushing. Ryan had the caseless rifle in his hands, but it was useless. The press of frightened men, woman and children was too great.
Ryan fought to maintain the ground where they stood, knowing that those who drove and pushed toward the road would fall among the stickies and the rolling wall of flames.
Suddenly Doc Tanner was with them, supporting Rick with an arm around his waist. The freezie was pale, gripping his walking stick with white knuckles, eyes wide with terror.
"Get… me out… of here, Ryan," he stammered. "I can't take it!"
"Where's Lori?" Krysty asked, striking out with the butt of her pistol at a fat man who lumbered into her, who grinned with the dreadful tension. Blood gushed from his face, but his expression didn't alter and he staggered on, toward the line of gasoline fires, toward where the flames bloomed and danced.
"What?" Doc bellowed.
"Lori? Where is she?"
"Don't know! We got separated. She's a big girl now. Hope she can look after herself."
Ryan heard a shotgun boom and decided that it wasn't his imagination. He had felt the wind of the charge, close by his face. He caught Zombie's eye and saw that the president of the Last Heroes motorcycle club was holding a smoking shotgun.
But now wasn't the time to do anything about it.
"One thing," Krysty pointed out.
"What?"
"Noise and flames and shooting should keep those bastard snakes away from here. With one of those up our asses we could find ourselves in some real heavy trouble."
"Plenty trouble anyway," Jak said, pointing to where one of the stickies had grabbed a woman who had tried to run past it. She clutched a small baby in a white lace shawl.
Before Ryan could fire he saw J.B.—only a few yards away—put two rounds through the middle of the mutie's face, showering the shrieking woman and her child with its stinking ichor.
The Armorer glanced around, seeing Ryan between the running people, and shouted to him at the top of his voice.
"Get out of this!"
Ryan nodded vigorously and pointed to the right of the fires, indicating that they should cut through the desert for a couple of hundred yards, hitting the blacktop on the Snakefish side.
"Why not stop and chill the stickies?" Krysty asked as Ryan began to move.
"Not our fight, lover. Going to be some dead here. Stickies got fire and gas. We could pick off a few, but they might get close to us in the dark. They got good night-seeing. No. Main thing is to get us all back to the ville safe."
SURPRISINGLY the missing Lori was at the Rentaroom before any of them, and was sitting on her bed, washing sand from between her toes.
Doc was helping to half carry the exhausted Rick and was near the limit of fatigue himself. But he cheered up at the sight of the girl.
"My angel of the brightest dawning! I was worried when I couldn't find you. How did you get back here so fast?"
"In a wag."
"With the baron?" J.B. asked. He'd seen the Brennans and Carla safely into their own vehicle before rejoining the others.
"No."
"With the Motes?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah. Josh asked me and I say yes I'll go with them. What other can I do? Stickies everyplace and smoke and I didn't see all of you! They safed my life."
"Main thing is that Lori's alive," Krysty said quickly, defusing a potential argument between Doc and the blond teenager.
"Best get something for Rick," Ryan said, leaning his G-12 against the wall. "He's spent."
"Shot my load, friends." The freezie sighed.
"Want drink?" Jak asked.
"Strawberry daiquiri and make it a large one, barman."
"I'll get water," the albino replied, leaving the room.
Ryan lifted the corner of the curtains, peering out at the front. The street was a hubbub of men and women, running everywhere, gathering in small knots, talking animatedly. One of the Heroes went by on his chopper, revving the engine, kicking up clouds of dirt in the glow of the streetlights.
J.B. checked the rear window. "Nothing out here. If the stickies had come into the ville and started a fire, the whole place would have gone up like tinder. Wooden houses, close together. Unless they're cleaned out, Ryan, they'll do that. Only way you stop a stickie is by chilling it. No other way to do it."
"I'm dying," Rick moaned. "Have kaddish sung over me. And put my baby shoes away, Mama."
"Shut up and drink," Jak said, returning with a tumbler.
Ryan whistled through his teeth. "I reckon this is coming up to a good time to shake the shit of Snakefish off of our boots, friends. Stickies that close in those numbers mean serious bad news. Like I've already said, I'm sorry for that fat little baron. No doubt in my mind that the Motes'll run him out of the ville. Probably in the next few weeks, the way it's shaping. But that isn't our fight. Never was. Never will be."
J.B. looked as if we were going to argue, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Ruby Rainer, her face smeared with
soot and dirt, her "feeding" clothes stained and torn, the hem of her skirt sodden with what looked to be congealing blood.
"Shedskin!" she panted. "You outlanders all made it back safe? There's a hollow-tooth miracle. Azrael himself must have been looking after you. In all that death…"
"You all right, Mrs. Rainer?" Krysty asked.
"I'm delivered, mercy be to the coil and the scale," she replied, leaning against the wall to recover her breath. "But there's many a dozen good folk of this ville who won't see the sunrise tomorrow."
"How many chilled?" Ryan asked.
The elderly woman shook her head, the electric lamp casting deep shadows across the stark bones of her face. "I'd count on two dozen or more. There was the whole Locke family burned when one of those mutie spawn poured gas over them all. Dancing in the flames they was, and all their flesh was melting and dripping away from them. Danced until they fell, they did. Every one. And there was Miriam—"
"How many stickies done for?" J.B. interrupted.
"I don't know. There seemed to be hundreds. One gripped my dress and pulled me down. May the hollow tooth feed John Dern for saving me. He blasted the monster back to the pit, but its blood went all over me and… Forgive me," she said, on the edge of tears.
"Most escaped?"
"Yes, Mr. Cawdor. I think—" She stopped and blew her nose noisily on a kerchief she pulled from her sleeve. "So many hurt and chilled. I saw poor Mr. Vareson, his whole face scorched black, eyes bubbling holes in… Oh, dear, dear. I must go and lie down. I don't think I can prepare any food tonight, if you don't…"
Krysty patted her on the arm. "We can raid the larder if we feel hungry, Mrs. Rainer. You go and take a rest. I don't think any of us are going to feel much like eating tonight."
As the door closed behind her, Jak turned to Krysty. "Speak for self. I'm real hungry."
NOBODY ELSE WAS STAYING at the hotel, and Ruby Rainer kept a well-stocked pantry. It was an indication of the wealth of the ville, with all its processed gas, that she was able to store so much. And so little of it grown locally.
A rare sight in the Deathlands was a freezer, yet Ruby had one, humming away to itself in a room off of the kitchen. It was filled with beef, pork and chicken, several different sorts of fruit and steaks of some large and unidentified fish.
Jak and Lori set to, frying some of the fish in oil and serving it with potatoes and tender green peas. They dished out some large raspberries, but they hadn't thawed properly so most of the group chose to leave them.
"Not bad," Rick said. "Not quite as good as Mom used to make, but it comes close. Best thing I've eaten since I've been in these Deathlands."
"You should appreciate, my dear young friend, that this is also one of the best meals that I have eaten in Deathlands. And I have been here a great deal longer than you."
Doc's comment cast a pall over the freezie, and he refused a second helping of the bullet like fruit. "Maybe I should have stayed frozen," he said. "Or never gotten frozen at all. The cryo business isn't all they say."
"You said there were other cryo centers, Rick?" Ryan said.
"That's right. One up on the Lakes and one some place in south Texas. It'll come back to me, I guess."
"Could be this is a good time to tell us just what you know about jumps and gateways," J.B. suggested.
Rick put down his coffee mug. "If I could remember what it is I know about gateways, J.B., then I'd be happy to tell you."
"How 'bout how to control where you go?" Jak asked.
"No. Sorry, guys. That wasn't my scene. I can perhaps help out in ways of detecting faulty gateways and how to return. I know I knew all that stuff. Knew it. Once."
It was a disappointment. Ryan had, at the back of his mind, the hope that some day, somewhere, they might come across some piece of information that would reveal how to master the gateways. And the freezies had been one of his hopes.
Time had drifted by.
It was around ten o'clock and the bedlam out on Main Street
had died down. Just as the seven were beginning to think about bed they heard the noise of several of the Last Heroes' two-wheel wags rumbling through the night from the old funfair.
"Company," Rick said unnecessarily as the motorbikes came to a halt immediately outside.
"Or trouble," J.B. said grimly.
Finally they heard the front door crash open and booted feet drum along the hallway. Except for the freezie, all were wearing blasters—and all went for them.
"In here!" Ryan shouted, taking the initiative away from the bikers. "If you're coming to assassinate someone, you don't make so much noise about it."
Zombie stomped in, backed by Riddler, Harlekin and Freewheeler.
"You in here?" Zombie said.
"Looks like it," Ryan replied calmly.
"Nobody chilled or injured?"
"No."
"Come from the ville's council."
"Who's that?" J.B. asked, standing near the table.
"Your friend Carla and the baron. And the Reverend Mote and his lady and Josh Mote."
"Since when?" J.B. said.
"Since long enough," Riddler replied defensively. "Keep free, bro. This isn't your fight. Remember that, huh?"
"So everyone tells me. Bro."
"What did the council decide?" Ryan asked, easing the tension.
"That at dawn we all go out and blow the shit out of those fucking stickies."
"Who's this 'we' you mentioned?" Krysty asked.
"Baron Edgar, his nephew and his brother. And a few others. And us. And Josh Mote. Oh, and you outlanders, of course."
"Why us?"
Riddler answered. "You took the jack from the ville and food and beds. Now the council says you gotta ride with us after the stickies. Sort of pay the debt, Ryan." He shrugged his shoulders as if to explain that it wasn't his idea.
"How did the council vote on this?" Ryan asked. "No, let me guess. Wouldn't be three to two in favor, would it?"
"No." Harlekin laughed.
"No?"
"No, Ryan, you too-smart fucker. It was three to nothing. Carla and the old baron didn't bother to vote at all!"
"If…" J.B. began, hand blatantly on the butt of his Steyr blaster.
"Forget it." The wolfish smile disappeared from Zombie's face. "Your gaudy's fine. Nobody hurt her or Edgar. They're fine as sunshine, Mr. Dix!"
"Dawn, you said?" Ryan asked. "We'll leave the woman and the free… and Rick here in the ville."
"Please yourself. Don't matter. Just so long as we waste the stickies."
"Ryan. I don't—" Krysty began, stopping as he turned and looked coldly at her. She knew better than to push it. For the time being.
"So be there," Riddler said.
"Or be square," Rick concluded.
"Not you, feeb," Zombie sneered. "The others. Be there or be fucking dead!"
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LAYTON BRENNAN FLEW so low over their heads that they could see his amiable face, grinning at them over the edge of the cockpit of the Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter, his goggles glinting in the dawn sunlight. He waved a cheery hand, then angled the plane away, heading across the dusty desert toward Death Valley.
The search was on for the stickies.
The inbred muties didn't have anything that resembled an organized camp. They burrowed into the sides of hills, or took over old, abandoned houses and buildings, staying sometimes for only a few days. Sometimes for months. It all depended on how long it would take for them to strip the region around their nests of anything edible or useful. Then they would move on.
Ryan had been pressed by Zombie and by Norman Mote about how many stickies he thought might be in the area. In the panic during the feeding ceremony only three of the muties had been chilled.
"I've seen them alone, and often seen them hunting in packs around ten to a dozen. Biggest nest I saw was probably forty or fifty. Trader once told me of a kind of ville of stickies he'd come across. Said there could easily hav
e been two hundred or more. If I was a guessing man I'd say that we'd probably find us around fifty. Good-size pack."
As the airplane shrank to a tiny dot in the pink, cloud-dappled sky, Norman Mote called his hunting posse to order.
"Quiet, brothers. You all know why we're here. You've seen the sad corpses lying there in the temple. We don't want any stickies left alive. Not a single one."
Ryan made a quick count: eight of the Last Heroes; himself, with J.B., Jak and Doc; Edgar Brennan with his brother and his nephew, off in his plane; and twenty-seven other men from the ville. The only one Ryan recognized was the gun dealer, John Dern.
Everyone was armed, many carrying a variety of patched and repaired scatterguns. Ryan's warning that the only way to be sure of downing a stickie was to blow its head apart had been passed all around the group.
Ryan had faced a bitter argument from Krysty during the night and on into the early hours of the morning.
"Why?"
"You know."
"Tell me, lover. Tell me why you four get to go and I'm left here holding the baby. No. Check that. Holding both the babies. Lori and the freezie. Why is it me?"
"Because there's no women going on the cull. That's why."
"Gaia! It makes me sick, Ryan. I tell you that for jack in the dirt."
"I know. But I wouldn't want to leave Rick on his own. His health's worse again today."
"If he was a man he'd have picked a blaster and be out on the hunt."
"Not fair, lover. You know the poor bastard's gut-sick."
In the end Krysty had reluctantly agreed to drop the quarrel.
THEY TRAVELED in a fleet of battered wags, mostly open-bed market wags. Norman Mote and his son rode in the half-armored wag that had brought them to the feeding. Edgar Brennan and his brother had chosen to ride with Ryan and his three friends.
"For safety," Rufus had whispered.
J.B. had taken off his fedora to avoid losing it in the wind. As he rubbed his fingers through the cropped stubble of his hair he heard the baron saying to Ryan, "Carla said to watch out for a back-chilling out on the hunt."
"Least we can do is watch for it," Ryan agreed. He turned to J.B. "Pass the message to Jak and Doc."