gamma world Red Sails in the Fallout

by Paul Kidd

  Xoota, seeing the body language, reluctantly tore herself away from staring at the wide, blue sea and clambered up beside the irritating man. “What is it?”

  Benek’s teeth gave off a perfect, predatory gleam. “Along the coast—two kilometers. There’s another building. An omega building. I have seen it before.” He flicked through the printouts he’d brought all the way from Watering Hole and found the one he wanted. “Here. It’s part of the remote camera network. It has to be part of the cryogenic facility. The rest might be just beyond.”

  Xoota looked at the photograph then took her binoculars and examined the distant building. They certainly looked similar—a squat shape mounted up on pylons, grayish green, with a fence line all around. The quoll nodded. “All right. We’ll check out the ruins here above us, and then we can head off and check out this place of yours.”

  “My mission must take priority.”

  “Your mission will wait. Watering Hole can’t.”

  Benek seemed to inflate like a massive, well-manicured toad. “I insist—”

  “Benek, we’ll deal with it.” Xoota’s temper was never the best. “Save your damned energy. Apparently you’re going to need it.”

  Cursing under her breath, the quoll stomped back down the hill. Wig-wig was delighting himself by chasing back and forth at the edge of the ocean, fleeing en masse before the farthest reaches of the waves. He had discovered an alpha mutation that morning that manifested as blinding flashes of light, which he used to spark and twinkle as he ran back and forth, squealing happily.

  Shaani tasted the seawater and spit it out at once.

  Xoota raised one brow. “What?”

  “Salt.” The rat made a face. “This must be what’s contaminating the pipe.”

  “Could the pipe have fractures? Maybe somehow let this stuff leak in?”

  “Maybe.” Shaani looked back to the buildings on the hill. “I’ll have to look inside there first. That seems to be the end of the trail.” The rat called out to Wig-wig and Rustle. “All right, chaps. Come along. There’s some adventuring that needs to be done.”

  The group reluctantly left the seashore. Rustle and Wig-wig came bustling up to where the others lay in wait, watching the buildings on the hill. Xoota thought the place had a decidedly dangerous feel.

  There were yet more skeletons on the ground there, the bones covered in withered chunks of rotting flesh. Shaani pulled out a rope and a hook that she used to toss and snared one of the skeletons, dragging it carefully down to where they were. Flies rose from the carrion, as did a dreadful stink. But it was the heat of radiation that made most of the team back off. Shaani, oblivious to the radiation, covered her nose and inspected the corpse.

  Xoota peeked out at her from behind a rock. “Shaani, careful. It’s hot.”

  “Oh, yes, pretty steaming. I should keep well back if I were you.” Bred for science, evolved to weather the sternest of stern stuff, Shaani examined the marks on the flesh. “It’s been attacked by a carnivore. Something that can cut through a rib cage. See the way the bones have been sheared clean? Probably mandibles and not fangs …”

  “That’s fascinating.” Xoota could feel the radiation even from behind a stone. “Don’t get your clothing all contaminated.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” Shaani settled her straw hat, looking at the buildings. “Right. Won’t be long.”

  “What?” The quoll blinked. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Well, I have to check out the buildings.” The rat came walking back to the others, cleaning off her fingers with a handful of sand. “I can’t risk you lot. Not with radioactivity all over the place. Job for a scientist, you see.”

  Xoota could see her point but didn’t like it. She unbuckled her holster. “Well, take the gun. And run back here at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Of course.” The rat bound the gun belt around her meager waist. “You know me. I’m the soul of caution.” She lugged her fearsome chainsaw up and onto the hill. “Toodle-oo.”

  Xoota sighed and covered Shaani with her crossbow. Her antennae were jangling with vague warnings of alarm.

  Up on the hilltop, the sand was covered in a thin layer of grass, burned and mottled yellow by radiation. Shaani moved cautiously along, her chainsaw in one hand and the pistol in the other. She reached out with her senses, feeling the radioactivity that poisoned the air. It seemed to radiate from the gnawed cadavers that lay all over the ground. Shaani moved up and gave the nearest body a cursory inspection; like the other one, it had been stripped of flesh and the organs accessed by snipping open the rib cage with some kind of huge shears. The dead creature seemed to be a mutant animal of some kind. Its bulk was impressive. It had been well equipped with armor plates, tentacles, and claws. Food for thought. Whatever was killing those things certainly didn’t find size to be an object. Nor apparently fangs, claws, spines, or jaws. That was possibly bad news. The rat girl heard the gush and bubble of water nearby. She reached a rusty cyclone fence and managed to wiggle underneath the ancient links. She was damned close to the buildings. The splash and patter of falling water was loud, and the ground reverberated with a weird hum.

  Her radio headset suddenly buzzed and hissed in her ear. Radiation was interfering with reception, but Xoota’s voice came to her through the white noise. “See anything?”

  She was in no place for a conversation. Shaani lay flat and tried to whisper. “I’m at the buildings. Hush.”

  The place had been sturdy, a big concrete structure. Staying low to the ground, Shaani found a brass plaque fixed to the wall near one corner that read, “This desalination plant was opened by the Right Honorable Angus Young, MP.” Interesting. Desalination. Moving with all the stealth she could muster, Shaani flattened herself against a wall. She edged toward a large crack in the concrete wall, from where the sound of falling water came loud and clear.

  Something seemed to flap and rustle inside the ruins. Shaani clutched her weapons and worked her way ever closer to the hole in the wall.

  The radio crackled yet again. “… moving … zzz … round the side.”

  Shaani felt a little cross. She hissed an urgent whisper into her headset. “Shh. Go away.” The rat turned off her headset. The sound of white noise was simply too annoying.

  Shaani reached to her belt, and removed an old car mirror. She edged it carefully around the corner of the wide crack in the wall and examined the space inside the building.

  There were pumps somewhere deep, deep underground. They fed water up from somewhere—probably intakes out somewhere in the sea. It all came percolating up into massive containers. Then apparently it gushed out of a shattered pipeline and spilled all over the floor. She did not see vast masses of water, but it was enough to feed the distant well at Watering Hole, enough to keep a whole community alive.

  Only the machinery seemed to be broken. The pumps were still gushing water, but somehow the water getting into the pipeline was salt, not fresh. Why were the machines even working in the first place? Terra tech, the things that existed before the Great Disaster, needed electricity to run, which was usually fed by power lines. Power lines, however, were long dead and gone. And yet somewhere beneath the floor, some sort of pumps were clearly still operating. There were omega relics nearby too, and omega installations typically worked by power broadcast through the airways. If there was a broadcast power station nearby, then perhaps the old Terra tech had picked up the power beams?

  Well, anything that was broken could be fixed, thought Shaani. Science ad excelsior, and all that. She felt a surge of satisfaction and put away the mirror she’d been using to look around the corner. From somewhere high up inside the building, there came a dry, rustling, flapping kind of sound. Shaani twiddled her whiskers and redeployed her mirror, looking up into the gloomy ceiling space. Four enormous moths clung to the ceiling near several cocoons. The moths were fully two meters long and glowed with an eerie green with radiation.

  Shaani blinked, flatten
ing herself against the wall. “Oh, bother.” Gamma moths.

  They were clearly to blame for all the carrion around the station. Gamma moths liked to swoop down on prey, fry them with radiation, then feast on the sizzling flesh. It also explained why the desalinator was no longer working. EMP blasts from the moths would have fried any exposed electronics above ground. Shaani flattened herself against the wall and tried to think of how the hell to deal with a nest of titanic, carnivorous moths.

  Xoota intruded on her thoughts. The quoll pelted across the ground, casting all caution to the wind. She waved her hands in panic at Shaani. Shaani scowled in puzzlement and went forward to meet her, holding up a finger to indicate the need for a bit of hush.

  Out of breath from her sprint, Xoota grabbed onto the rat and tried dragging her away. “C-come on.”

  “What?” Shaani scowled. “Look, why don’t you take a moment and just catch your breath?”

  “Shaani, we need to get the hell out of here.” Xoota said as she pointed toward the giant armored star creature rounding the corner. It moved at a determined speed, heading straight for them.

  Suddenly little darts shot out from the creature’s armored shell on controlled bursts of air. Shaani and Xoota made a mad dive for the ground, and the darts ricocheted off the concrete wall behind them.

  Xoota fired her crossbow at the creature. The bolt bounced clean off its armored hide. Shaani leveled her pistol, thought about it, and decided to run. The pistol shots were too damned precious to waste. Being that they were each a mutant quoll and a mutant rat, it may have struck someone as funny that the two ran like rabbits, but run they did, pelting over the dry grass like hares in a hunt. They reached the fence and searched desperately for a way through. Xoota looked back to see the star creature lumbering steadily toward them.

  “Use the pistol. Shoot it.”

  Shaani was reluctant. “I haven’t figured out how to recharge the batteries. We might need the pistol for emergencies.”

  “Then throw a bomb.”

  A bomb would instantly wake up the sleeping gamma moths. “Not advisable.”

  “Then what?”

  The fence disappeared. Rustle had come happily forward and had simply ripped the wire away. They ran like hell, with Rustle ambling contentedly along beside them.

  Darts whirred overhead. Two stuck harmlessly in Xoota’s new armored suit. Another stuck into Rustle, who seemed immune to whatever effect they might have. He kept bumbling happily along, finally joining the others as they sheltered over the far edge of the hill.

  The damned star creature was a juggernaut. It crashed down a section of fence and followed on the same path, apparently tracking them by scent. The team ran back to another sand hill closer to the beach, only to see the mammoth star monster come blundering down the hill, closing in on them relentlessly.

  Budgie blinked at the thing and made a squawk. Everyone crowded back, ducking to avoid more showers of poisoned darts.

  Shaani pondered.

  “We can just outrun it.”

  “Then how do we deal with the gamma moths and fix the pump?”

  Xoota popped up and fired another crossbow bolt at the huge monster. Again her shot bounced off. “Damn that thing. It’s armored like rock—Wait. What about gamma moths?”

  Shaani pondered. “Ah, but only on the upper surface. If we could flip it over …”

  “Not really an option.” Xoota grabbed Shaani by the hand and tugged her. The star monster was already topping the hill. The adventurers moved hastily back to yet another sand hill, easily keeping their distance. But the monster showed no inclination to go away. It kept following them, walking on its tubular feet and clashing a set of rather nasty jaws beneath its shell. Xoota gave a curse and led the retreat back to yet another sand hill.

  Wig-wig came the rescue. He happily bustled forward, various earwigs waving their antennae at the others. “Not to worry. Wig-wig will fix it.”

  Xoota blinked in astonishment. “You? How?”

  “Easy as pie.” The earwigs were already flowing off in the direction of the star monster. “Get ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Xoota called out after the earwig swarm. “Wig-wig?”

  The horrible star creature was already topping the next hill, its long, armored tentacles with their countless tube feet were questing their way over the edge. Wig-wig ran fearlessly right up into the creature’s path.

  Wig-wig had one of Shaani’s pipe bombs and a box of her homemade matches. Shaani looked at what the earwigs were up to, and felt a touch dismayed.

  “Oh dear.”

  The earwigs stuck a pipe bomb into the sand, lit the fuse, and fled, jumping and skipping as they ran. “Glee.”

  Oh, hell. Xoota ducked. Benek scowled. The star creature blundered right over the top of the fizzing bomb. There was a sudden detonation, and the sand seemed to buck beneath the adventurers. A shower of monster parts flew up into the air.

  “Run away. Run away.” The earwigs came racing past, fleeing as fast as they could go. Inside the pump building, gamma moths screeched in blood lust as they awakened. Everyone took one quick look at the old building then ran like hell. Boots, claws, feet, and tendrils churning at the sand, the adventurers ran wildly to the beach, took a hard right turn, and followed Wig-wig into a tangled stand of trees. They dived beneath some bushes, with Rustle uprooting several shrubs and holding them up so he could pretend to be a tree.

  The gamma moths came fluttering up out of the ancient buildings, hungry for prey. The adventurers sheltered in a stand of trees, ready for combat. The gamma moths flapped around, hindered by the bright sun. They blundered in the air, blazing bright with radiation, stabbing bolts of gamma rays into random bits of sand.

  One moth veered over the stand of trees. It fired blindly down into the plants, sheathing the place with radiation. The shot missed the adventurers and instead hit an innocent tree. The tree withered and died, nearby bushes blistered, and a sand weevil twenty meters away suddenly developed teleportation genes and dodged madly away.

  One of the other moths had found the dead star monster spread lavishly around on the sand. The moths instantly converged on the steaming corpse. They picked up the tastiest chunks and carried them off toward their home in the pump house, disappearing from view.

  Once sure that the gamma moths had gone, Wig-wig slowly emerged from hiding, one antenna at a time. “See? Easy.”

  Xoota eyed the insects with a dire glare. “You’ll keep.”

  They sat together in the shade, sharing a water bottle—except for Benek, who kept fastidiously to his own. They all looked up toward the ruined desalination plant in pondered.

  Xoota scratched beneath her chin. “You saw the pumps?”

  Shaani nodded. “Oh, yes. They’re on the fritz, but I’m sure they can be mended. You know, a bit of elbow grease and the old scientific spirit.” She thought wistfully of a cup of tea. “The problem is, getting the current residents out so we can work on the jolly thing.”

  Xoota sucked her fangs. She clearly had an idea. “Not a problem. I think I can help you with that.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I’m a genius.” Xoota patted Shaani on the shoulder. “Right, well, it won’t work until sundown. So let’s check out the beach then head back to the ship for a cup of tea.”

  “Ah, good.” The rat stood and worked the kinks out of her tail. “What a sterling idea.”

  CHAPTER 11

  All right. Are we ready?” Xoota made a last check over the empty beach. “Everybody?” A chorus of yes noises came from all around her in the dark. The sounds were muffled, and the nighttime surge and hiss of the surf on the beach seemed somehow louder. The beach at night was a strange place, where shadows seemed remarkably dark and the vast ocean was utterly black, except for tiny winks of light as waves foamed against the shore.

  Xoota cast a last look up at the hill where the gamma moths lived then knelt down. She struck a match and set fire to the
piles of kindling she had jammed beneath a heap of wood. She traveled around the pile, spreading the flames. Once she was sure that the bonfire would catch, the quoll ran and dived into a pit she had dug into the sand. She covered herself with a piece of old sack and lay low with her pistol in one hand.

  Around the bonfire, they had placed several figures, all dressed in clothing and made to look as though they were sleeping. Shaani’s music box happily blared out an ancient song to attract attention; she said it was one of the great classics from the dark ages of 1982.

  They lay quietly waiting for the moths. They would be radio silent; EMP from gamma moths would fry their gear like bacon, anyway. Her antennae quivering, Xoota scanned the dark skies with her nocturnal eyes, hoping that Benek had remembered to put his night goggles on.

  Quite suddenly a bolt of purple radiation stabbed down from the skies. One of the figures by the fire burst apart, clothing afire. A huge moth plunged down on it from above, its mandibles open in a bloodcurdling scream. It tore at its victim, ripping the burning cloth aside to find nothing but wet sand stuffed into the old clothes. The creature gave a screech of fury, its whole body blazing bright with lethal radiation. Still, Xoota held her peace.

  A second moth plunged from above and slammed into one of the other decoys. It tore it apart with its claws to a similar result.

  “Now!” Xoota shouted as she threw off her camouflage.

  From inside their sandpit blind, Shaani gripped a length of insulated wire. She shot a spark down the line and into the pipe bombs hidden in the sand near the bonfire. The bombs exploded with a deafening blast. The concussion hurtled one moth into the fire, sending it tumbling and burning. The second giant insect simply disintegrated into grizzly chunks. Xoota and Shaani both ducked the shower of sand then emerged to desperately search the skies.

  Benek rose from a nearby sand hill and bellowed a warning. His night goggles had spotted something up above. “Move!” He fired his crossbow. Seconds later a bolt of radiation seared down from the skies. It clipped Shaani, who ignored it. Xoota threw herself to one side; took aim at a massive, black shape that swept overhead; and fired her pistol.