by James Axler
Doc Tanner was enjoying the ride. The wag bumped over the rutted highway, enveloped in a cloud of gray dust. "On the road," he shouted to Ryan, baring his perfect teeth in a wide smile. "I was a great reader, you know. During the days after they trawled me I read all of Jack's books. The best romances. Traveling and searching for…what was it they called it? Satori. That was it. I searched for it, but never found it."
Most of the time that the old man began to ramble, he left Ryan way behind. Or way ahead. It was never clear which.
THEY WERE ONLY a few miles out of the ville when they heard the crackling sound of the airplane returning.
"Flywag!" shouted the lookout man who was on the front of their truck.
Trader had once explained to Ryan that the quality of fuel needed for jet-powered air wags was beyond anything that the Deathlands could produce. He'd found a cache of it north of where Boston had been, but they didn't have a plane to use it. Nor anyone living who had the least idea of how to pilot one of the fighter jets. But the old biplane flown by Layton Brennan used a much more basic type of fuel. The engine sounded rough, but it worked.
"Get yourself six of those and some good machine guns and you could take damned near any ville you wanted," J.B. said.
"Yeah, but you and me found us some missiles around the redoubts that could pluck that out the sky. Easy as spitting."
"This MP-7 could do the job," the Armorer replied, patting the H&K blaster on his lap. "But air wags got so much surprise. Look at the way he's gotten back here so quick."
The Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter lurched and the engine faltered as it came swooping low over the convoy. Zombie, leading the way on his Electra Glide, held up his fist and stopped the wags. As the dust cleared,
everyone could see the hand over the edge of the plane, dropping something near them, something with a hank of rag attached to it so they could find it easily.
Ryan swung over the bed of the truck and walked to the rounded stone, three or four of the Last Heroes following him. He bent and picked it up, peeling away the sheet of handmade paper from around the small rock, flattening it out.
The writing was crude and childish, the letters of uneven shapes and sizes.
Fifteen miles. Northeast. Leave road at old school. Dirt—the next word was illegible—over hill. Caves. Counted thirty. They saw me and gotten jumping good around.
"What's it say?" Riddler asked. Ryan handed him the note, but the fat biker passed it to Kruger.
"Don't read good, Ryan. Frankie here got the spelling and figuring."
Kruger was old with a badly scarred face, as if he'd been in a devastating fire some years earlier. He followed the lines with a painful concentration, tracing them with the knife blades he'd sewn into the fingers of an ancient pair of gauntlets.
"Take us a half hour," he said, looking across at Zombie.
"Read it again," Zombie ordered, listening while Kruger stumbled through it. "Yeah. They could be ready for an attack. Best we leave the wags by the old school. Go for 'em on foot. You reckon, Ryan?"
"Yeah. I reckon."
THE SCHOOL WAS an adobe building that looked as if it had been abandoned long before dark day. The windows were gaping sockets and there was no trace of a door. The structure stood at the junction of the highway and a dirt track that wound away into some low hills.
The leadership of the group was peculiar. Norman Mote proclaimed himself in charge, yet he left all the major decisions up to Zombie, who, in his turn, deferred to Ryan. Baron Edgar, who should have been at their head, waited patiently with the rest of the men.
Ryan agreed that it would make sense to split into two groups, to circle around the nest of the stickies and attack from the rear, making sure that none of the creatures escaped the trap.
But the division of the two sections led to querulous squabbling.
Ryan didn't want to split his own group, nor did Zombie want to split up the Heroes. The Brennans insisted that they should go with Ryan's group. Norman Mote pressed that the baron ought to be with them "for his own safety."
In the end everyone settled on a reluctant compromise. Ryan and Jak were grouped with four of the bikers, including Riddler, as well as Joshua Mote, Edgar Brennan and a dozen of the men of the ville, including John Dern, who was carrying a customized M-16 carbine.
Zombie and Norman Mote led the other group, with J.B. and Doc there to keep an eye on Edgar's brother, the partially blind Rufus.
"We go left," Ryan said. "You got a chron?"
Riddler shook his head and grinned, showing a mouthful of broken and stained teeth. "Told yer. Don't go for all that figuring shit."
"My timepiece will suffice, will it not, Ryan?" Doc asked, displaying the trim silver watch on his left wrist.
"Sure. Say forty-five minutes from… now. Unless you get attacked. Find a way, close as you can and get ready. I'll lead our squad in. You come in straight after, Zombie."
"Sure. Be there, Ryan."
Ryan glanced around his group, seeing the nerves and ragged tension.
"Most muties run from blaster fire. Stickies run, but they run straight at you. Explosions and fires bring them. We all know that. Just keep in mind that they're triple-stupes. Body wounds hardly slow them at all. Lot of you got pump actions. Best thing for a stickie. Wait for them to get close, then take their heads off. Any questions?"
A skinny, middle-aged man raised a tentative hand.
"Yeah?"
"I have a question, Mr. Cawdor."
"Fire it."
"What do we do if we get grabbed by one of them stickies?"
"Pray. No more questions? Then let's go and do it."
"TEN MINUTES to go. Could do with Layton and his plane, Baron."
"Might it not warn them?"
Ryan nodded. "Could be. From the note, we should be virtually on top of them by now."
Edgar Brennan looked exhausted. He wasn't dressed for a cross-country trek. His shoes had lost their polish and his pants their crease. The laundered shirt was stained around the back and chest, the collar ragged and limp. He'd torn off the paisley cravat and held it in his hand, using it to mop at his brow.
"Want me to go ahead and scout with one of the brothers?" Riddler asked eagerly.
"Word is there's a lot of stickies there. Couple of scouts'd whet their appetite for the rest of us. No."
The Last Hero didn't argue, grinning cheerfully at Ryan.
John Dern sidled up to the front, clutching his carbine. "Could find a good spot and pick off the evil devils from safety with this?" he suggested. "Be happy to do it."
"Good combat blaster. Not the best for wiping out a triple-dozen stickies. They'd walk over you. We go in together, fast and blasting."
"LOOKS LIKE IT. Sounds like it."
Ryan held up his hand to stop the straggling file of men. He'd heard the familiar, guttural grunting noise that the suckered muties usually made, coming from just over the next ridge. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled swiftly forward, followed by Jak.
Cautiously Ryan eased himself to the crest of the hill. Squinting over the top, he saw a steep-sided valley that was honeycombed with shallow caves. Gathered together in the middle were a group of stickies. It looked as though Layton Brennan's rough count had been about right.
"Thirty-five or so," he whispered.
The boy was licking his pale lips, his scarlet eyes glittering with the anticipation of the firefight to come. "How long?" he asked.
Ryan glanced at his chron. "Three minutes. Wonder if the others got here yet. Can't see any sign of them on the far… Yeah. There."
He spotted the flash of sunlight off metal. A line of heads appeared on the far ridge, all looking down at the stickies. Ryan knew that J.B. wasn't in command of the other raiding party. The Armorer would never have been stupid enough to risk being spotted before the attack began.
"Fireblast! Best go now, or they'll see us and we'll lose the surprise."
He turned and beckoned to Riddler. The f
at biker crouched and waddled to join them. "What the fuck's up?"
"We gotta go now. Stupes there are going to blow the whole attack."
He suddenly heard an outburst of shrill squealing from the far side of the ridge.
"Too late." Ryan shouted the command. "Come on! Now! Let's go!"
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE STICKIES HAD initiated the attack, taking the impetus from the men of Snakefish. Most of the muties rushed toward Zombie's group, ululating and waving their suckered fingers. Some turned back as they saw Ryan leading his twenty or so men over the rim of the hill and down into the valley.
"Let 'em get close!" Ryan yelled.
The muties had a slight numerical disadvantage, but they made up for that by their unbridled ferocity. Other than the night assault at the feeding, few of the men from the ville had ever seen a stickie and many were almost paralyzed with terror at the hideous sight of gibbering death running at them.
Some turned and fled in panic.
Almost all of them died early.
The skinny man who'd asked the question about what to do if he got grabbed by a stickie got his answer with horrific speed.
He stumbled blindly into the embrace of two of the scuttling muties. One was a female, with pendulous breasts, who used her suckered hand to tear away the man's clothes, leaving bleeding weals on his pale flesh. Her other hand clutched at his groin, the tiny disks clamping to his shrunken genitals. With a slobbering whoop of delight, the creature exerted all her power, emasculating the screaming man and flourishing the severed flesh and sinew above her head before lifting them greedily to her mouth. Her companion had already buried its face in the side of the man's neck, near the throbbing temptation of the carotid artery.
Death was mercifully rapid.
Scatterguns boomed all around, interspersed with the lighter, thinner sound of the .32 which were the common handblasters of the ville.
If Ryan's original plan had been followed by the group containing Zombie and Norman Mote, the initial wave of the assault could have hoped to chill sixty to seventy percent of the hostiles. Now it was a bloody battle for the upper hand.
Ryan had his rifle set on triple burst, knocking over any mutie that came within easy range. He made sure that the caseless rounds were head shots, exploding the blank-eyed skulls like eggs under a mallet.
Ryan nearly tripped over a human corpse on the far side of the valley, near the opening of one of the caves, recognizing who it was only from the pair of dark blue spectacles that lay near the headless body. Layton Brennan, in his air wag, would soon learn that his grandfather was dead.
The sand was rapidly becoming a quagmire of trampled mud, with the stench of death hovering above.
The biker called Freewheeler was facing a stickie who'd snatched his scattergun, but couldn't work out how to fire it. The Hero had drawn a long-bladed knife and was cutting away at the mutie's chest and stomach, opening up gaping wounds in the rubbery flesh, but hardly harming the creature.
Ryan was about to blast it when he heard the crack of Doc's Le Mat pistol. A section of the creature's face and jaw became detached, dangling loose like a broken storm shutter. The stickie staggered then reached up and pulled away the chunk of bone and flesh, peering at it bemusedly until Doc shot it once more at close range between the eyes.
"This appears to be easier than stealing candy from a little baby," Doc shouted.
Ryan leveled his G-12 and fired a trio of bullets, missing Doc by less than a yard. The old man stumbled sideways, his jaw dropping in shock. He glanced behind him and saw a stickie falling over backward, half its face blown away by Ryan's shots.
"Some little child!" Ryan yelled. "Watch your bastard back, Doc!"
Riddler was nearly pulled down by two young female stickies as he fumbled in the pockets of his denim vest for more ammunition. They mewed at him as their hands reached out, their bloodied teeth exposed behind leathery lips.
He swung the butt of his shotgun in two clubbing blows, knocking both muties to the crimsoned earth. He thumbed the twin hammers and leveled the twin barrels at the semiconscious females. "Eat lead," he snarled, firing first one round and then the other. Both the heads disappeared in a spray of bone, skin and blood.
Riddler grinned at Ryan. "Best advice anyone ever gave me," he bellowed. "Shoot 'em in the head and they fucking die! Right on, bro!"
The combined firepower of the attackers finally tipped the balance firmly in their favor. The initial charge by the stickies left, at Ryan's swift count, around eight or nine of the norms dead. But the shotguns were taking their toll, aided by the blasters of Ryan, J.B., Doc and Jak. Well over half of the stickies were already dead meat.
The remaining creatures had begun to retreat, heading away in a clumsy run over the ridges, while others backed off into the shallow caves where they were easily trapped and butchered. This part of the day's hunting, Ryan noticed, was particularly relished by Norman Mote and his whooping, jeering son.
J.B. joined Ryan, carefully reloading his blaster. "Looks close to done," he said quietly.
"Yeah. Looks that way. Could have gone worse, I guess."
"Least none of us got caught by any stray lead. There was plenty flying for a while."
"Where's the baron?"
J.B. turned and pointed. "There. Near where his brother bought the farm."
"Best go see to him. Wouldn't want any accidents to happen. Not now."
They were almost too late.
The air was filled with the rumbling explosions of the scatterguns, and the thinner cracks of the small-caliber pistols. The valley was brimming with the stench of powder smoke, hazy and blue.
"There he is," the Armorer said.
Edgar Brennan, a kerchief pressed to his red-rimmed, weeping eyes, was moving unsteadily down the far side of the valley.
"Let's go help him. Looks flattened by his brother's chilling."
He and J.B. walked quickly across, feeling the stickiness of the dirt on the soles and heels of their combat boots. The sounds of gunfire were dying down.
When they were only a few yards from the stumbling little man, he looked up and saw them, still rubbing at his eyes. "Rufus has…" he began. But his feet slipped from under him and he fell, full length, rolling toward them.
Simultaneously the earth behind the baron exploded in great bursts of mud. Both J.B. and Ryan, their ears tuned to the sounds of a firefight, picked out the sharper noise of the shooting. Each man immediately recognized the distinctive sound of the blaster that was being used.
"M-16," J.B. shouted, rolling for cover.
"Yeah. Dern. There he is."
The owner of the gun shop stood on the ridge, about a hundred paces behind them. When he saw them looking his way he hesitated, then stood and waved to them.
"Chill him? "J.B. asked.
"He's one of Mote's boys," Ryan replied. "Could push things over the brim and get the pot boiling on the fire."
Dern began to approach them, rifle at his side. "Hollow tooth, brothers!" he called. "That was close. I was aiming at a stickie behind you, but there's something wrong with the sights on my blaster."
Brennan had stood and brushed himself clean, his hands trembling with shock at the near miss. "He tried to chill me."
"Yeah, Baron, but I'd keep my lips zipped," J.B. suggested. "This isn't the time or place, with all Mote's men round us."
"For sure, John, but…"
Dern reached them. "Never known this blaster to let me down. That was terrible. Could have gunned down the baron."
Ryan looked him in the eye. "You could have, but you didn't. Now, that's either lucky or unlucky. Depends on how you look at it."
"I don't understand, Mr. Cawdor."
"Yeah, you do. If you'd killed the baron, some would say that was lucky. Some might say it wasn't. You missed him. Some'll say the same."
Dern swallowed hard and looked away. "I sure don't know—" he began.
But J.B. interrupted him. "One th
ing to keep in mind, gunsmith. Anything happens to the baron now, we'll know who to come looking for. Won't we?"
Zombie joined them with six of his chapter. Ryan had seen one of them—Vinny, he thought—go down under an unusually tall stickie, his body a welter of blood.
The gunfire had faded away. The fight was over and won.
"That's it," the Last Hero said. "We got 'em all. Don't think a single one escaped. We found us some tinies in one cave. Blowed them away. Can't let the fuckers breed."
"Sure," Ryan agreed. "We going back to Snakefish now?"
He looked at Baron Brennan, but the little man was still too shaken by his narrow escape and the death of his brother to make any sense. It was Norman Mote, arriving with his arm around his son's shoulders, who answered.
"Surely will. And thanks to everyone here. Y'all played your parts. We'll have a service of thanks this night."
"And you got some burying to do, Reverend," Ryan said.
"And I have to see to the obsequies for poor Azrael Twelve, Brother Cawdor. And pursue the quest to find out who butchered him. Perhaps it could have been the stickies. Then again… perhaps not."
Ryan looked around the place of blood and death, resolving that he and his friends had to leave Snakefish as soon as possible. Before it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THOUGH NORMAN MOTE tried to make those in the ville believe that the raid on the stickies had been an unqualified success, there were too many corpses from Snakefish to convince everyone.
By the time the excitement and the grief had died away and become more private and seemly, it was early afternoon and the sun rode high in the nuke-polluted sky.
Ryan and his friends dined in their hotel, with three guests. Carla Petersen sat next to J.B. Beside her was Baron Edgar Brennan, stricken by his bereavement, only picking at his plate of stew and rice. His nephew, Layton, sat next to him.
Once Ryan and the others had given an account of the morning's firefight, conversation flagged and faltered. Eventually it faded into an almost complete silence.