Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  "Back!" Ryan yelled

  He ejected the clip and rammed in another from the supply he'd removed from Panner's corpse. It seemed to him that his people were only reacting. To survive, they had to get these soldiers on the run.

  "Dad, get down!" Dean shouted as he saw the drum rise from the center of the wag. It looked like a circle of blasters on a rotating wheel, which began to spin rapidly.

  Ryan dived as the rotating wheel spit fire. He felt a plucking at his clothes, small objects whistling past his ears and through his hair.

  Trank darts.

  His last conscious thought was that someone wanted very badly to take them alive.

  Why?

  Rat King

  # 51 in the Deathlands series

  James Axler

  May we not who are partakers of their brotherhood claim that in a small way at least we are partakers of their glory? Certainly it is our duty to keep these traditions alive and in our memory, and to pass them on untarnished to those who come after us.

  —Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves, USN, 1859-1937

  THE SAGA

  This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

  There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

  But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

  Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

  Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

  J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

  Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

  Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

  Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

  Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

  In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope…

  Prologue

  The old man was going to die soon. He knew it, and so did the others. They could feel the pain of old age, of a body's survival systems shutting down one by one.

  They could feel it within him, reaching out to spread over them. One chilled, all chilled.

  Inevitably they panicked and wanted him detached, their mute cries coming through on the readings as a sudden increase in electrical activity. Readings the like of which no one in the redoubt had ever seen before.

  MURPHY GLANCED over the shoulder of the hunched tech. His hands were slow on the keyboard, laboriously tapping in a code to trigger a programmed instruction.

  Except that Murphy knew there wasn't a code. Wasn't a program.

  "Wallace will have to know," he said.

  The tech said nothing. He just kept tapping. Tap-tap-tap… even though the screen repeatedly told him that there was no response from the mechanism.

  Murphy hit the man on the shoulder. He didn't often come to this level, and sec men of his standing didn't bother to fraternize with the other ranks. That was just the way it was. He felt the small rankle of irritation grow to a full-blown itch of anger. An itch he had to scratch.

  "Hey, stupe, why don't you answer when I say something? You know you have to answer to superior officers."

  Murphy swung the tech around by the shoulder and drew back his arm to deliver a backhand blow. It was his favorite form of mild reproof, as each of his four fingers had a thick silver or steel ring rammed down beyond the knuckle joint. The index finger had a ring with the head of an old god called Elvis, his name embossed underneath. The middle finger had a skull and crossbones-—the edges of the crossbone motif would make a satisfying tear on many an impudent mouth— and the third finger had a five-pointed star that had been awarded to him by Wallace in recognition of the manner in which he had led the defenses on the last outsider attack. Many of the scum had been chilled on that day.

  But it was the little finger that held the prize—a diamond cut into many sharp razor edges that could lacerate with only the most glancing of blows. The metal that held the ring on his finger was thin compared to the other rings, but the jewel was a prized weapon, handed down his line from the days before skydark.

  Murphy relished taking out his anger on the stupe tech, but halted when the man's face whirled to look into his. The eyes were empty and dull, the nose misshapen into a blob of flesh with no septum. The mouth was open, jaw slack, drool on the receding chin.

  Murphy gave a sigh of disgust, his anger temporarily retreating. The tech had to have gotten some mutie blood in his line somewhere. The colony deliberately stole women and some men from the outsiders in order to try to keep the gene pool from getting too stagnant. The trouble was, the rad-blasted valley still suffered from intense chem storms and the irradiated dust brought in by the whirlwinds. The poison became trapped within the valley's confines and just circulated again and again, spraying whatever crops the outsiders could grow, seeping through the food chain into the animals the outsiders caught and ate.

  Murphy's men tried to get clean specimens on their raids, but sometimes it was just so hard to tell.

  The only way you knew was when you got this…

  "Stupe bastard, you don't even know what I'm saying, do you?"

  There was no answer. Just the empty eyes.

  "I'll just have to tell him myself, I guess." Murphy sighed. With exaggerated care he turned the tech so that he faced his terminal once more. He started to tap in the nonexistent code again.

  With a last look through the Plexiglas shield that separated the mechanism from the banks of terminals, and a shudder at the sight that lay beyond, Murphy left the tech alone with whatever thoughts went through the head of a triple-stupe mutie bastard.

  MURPHY FOUND Wallace in his office. As always. Sometimes it seemed that Gen Wallace didn't move outside of the office, not even to piss or shit. But if that was the case, Murphy had no idea where he stowed his waste products.

  "Sir, permission to report possible code red," Murphy said in staccato fashion, knocking on the door as he spoke. He clicked his heels and saluted, his arm raised in front of him. As prescribed, he didn't look at Wallace until his superior spoke.

  "Sarj Murphy, report received and understood. What's the matter?"

  Wallace was a big man, spilling out of his uniform, which was frayed at the cuffs and shiny with age. For all that, it was well and regularly laundered, like Murphy's uniform and the tech's white coat. The colony believed in God and cleanliness, like it said in the good book.

  Murphy, given permission to look at Wallace by the superior's reply, directed his gaze at the big man as he stepped into the room.

  "Trouble, sir. It's the mechanism. One of the components is finally succumbing to obsolescence."

  Wallace steepled his fingers and stared at them. He didn't answer for what seemed to be a long time. Then finally he spoke.

  "No such thing as obsolescence, Sarj. Recycle is the law. We have parts we can use."

  It wasn't a question.


  Murphy pulled at his collar uncomfortably. It was too tight, his father having had less of a bull neck. The pants, on the other hand, were too big, where his grandfather had carried a paunch. Right now he'd like to be able to swap one for the other. He felt blood suffuse his face.

  "Sir, not so sure about the parts."

  Wallace looked at him. His eyes were cold, flinty in the shadowless glare of the fluorescent lighting.

  "You daring to argue with the good book, Sarj? You recycle. It works. Always."

  Murphy kept his jaw tight. Stupe bastard. Wallace was in command because his father had been Gen Wallace, and his father before him. Just like Murphy's father had been Sarj Murphy, and his father before him. That's the way it was. But Murphy wondered about the strict reg on heredity. There was too much danger of mutie blood infecting the ranks to keep it that simple. The tech was a good example. Dammit, Murphy knew he was smarter than Wallace—smarter than nearly everyone in the redoubt. But the regs couldn't be broken. Never had been. That was how they'd managed to stay as the colony while skydark decimated the outside—the rad-blasted and scarred world the outsiders called Deathlands.

  Problem was, it left them with a triple-stupe bastard like Gen Wallace, too inflexible to believe that anything new could ever happen. He'd never actually been outside.

  Murphy had. He knew that things changed all the time.

  Like now.

  "Sir, I really think you should come and see the mechanism."

  Wallace snorted. "Sarj, if this is a pointless trip and the recycling can go ahead as usual, then you're on a charge, mister."

  Murphy said nothing. He let the big man heave himself out of the chair and waddle after him as he headed back down the corridor toward the tech section. He walked fast, knowing it would make following hard for Wallace and enjoying the small piece of revenge for the Gen's lack of concern.

  WHEN WALLACE REACHED the tech section, puffing and panting behind the fitter Murphy, he was in a foul mood.

  "You, what's the problem?" he barked at the tech.

  "Sir, he can't answer you. Mutie blood."

  "Goddamn!" Wallace exploded. "How many times do you have to be told, Sarj. That just can't happen."

  "No, sir," Murphy said quietly. "Just like this can't happen, I guess." He indicated the Plexiglas screen.

  Wallace looked beyond and frowned.

  "Vital signs going down on number three. He was the oldest of the bunch when the great experiment began to run. Got most major organs recycled, and some limbs. Doesn't seem to be anything actually in need to replacement. Just seems to be…fading out."

  Wallace didn't seem to be listening.

  "Sir?"

  "Recycle."

  "But what, sir?"

  "The whole damn component, Sarj. If a part of the component can be replaced, then why not the whole damn thing? 'Cause the man is just one part of a larger organism—the mechanism. Recycle, Sarj."

  Murphy tried to hide his bewilderment. "But, sir, the whole mechanism is predark. The old man is 187 years, three months, two weeks by old chron time. Forty years older than the other components, true, but still, where do I find something of a similar age?"

  "That's your problem, Sarj. You're in charge of sec corps. You requisition supplies. Not my problem—what the good book calls delegation."

  Murphy ground his teeth. The good book was written before the great chilling. What the hell did it know about right now? But he kept it to himself. He didn't want to be put on a charge. As head of sec corps, he knew what that meant. And he'd trained his men too well.

  "Is that a problem, Sarj?" Wallace asked, the flinty eyes glittering in the quivering flesh of his fat face. Fat, but still hard and cruel at the jaw.

  Murphy was spared from lying by the sudden deafening blare of alarms that hadn't been used since predark times.

  Wallace looked around in surprise. The tech whined and covered his ears.

  "Alarms—shit, it must be the mat-trans," Murphy said.

  Wallace frowned. "Don't be stupe. No one's ever got it working. Lost the know-how after the great chilling."

  "Who said someone got it working from this end?" Murphy whispered.

  Chapter One

  The jump had been as sickening as usual. Ryan Cawdor opened his eye and felt a dull ache across the areas of his face that hadn't been numbed by scar tissue. The empty socket behind the eye patch felt as if it were pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and he flicked open his right eye, the bloodshot blue watering.

  Mat-trans jumps were painful and disjointing at all times, the atoms of each individual body being disassembled then flung across vast distances until reconfigured by the mat-trans computers at whichever redoubt was programmed to pick up the signal. The time between was taken up by nightmares and wanderings through the dark nights of imagination. The time immediately after awakening was usually filled with nausea and weakness.

  Ryan shook his head, trying to rid himself of the pulsing that thumped inside his skull. He looked across the dull green-and-cobalt-blue walls to where the streaked armaglass ended abruptly as the wall met a floor inlaid with the disks that also peppered the ceiling.

  He reached out for his weapons, feeling his hand brush the stock of the Steyr SSG-70. Where that lay, his SIG-Sauer couldn't be far away.

  His hand touched warm flesh, and he felt fingers instinctively grasp at him. Head still pounding, he turned his eye to focus on Krysty Wroth, her flaming red hair coiled protectively to her head and neck. Her mutie heritage gave her hair a sentience that acted as an early-warning system, coiling close to her head when danger threatened. After a jump it usually took some time to flow freely, but never before had he seen it this defensive.

  It set off a triple-red warning in his brain, and he forced his disoriented reflexes to respond. Forcing unwilling calf muscles to brace his legs as he got to his feet, he looked around the chamber.

  J.B. Dix, Ryan's oldest friend and a fellow traveler since their days with the Trader, was beginning to regain consciousness on the far side of the chamber. His beloved and battered fedora was pulled down over his eyes, and his right hand moved instinctively toward one of his capacious pockets to pull free his glasses. Ryan could see that his breathing was steady, and that he was recovering from the jump with his usual speed.

  The Armorer's other hand was held by Dr. Mildred Wyeth, a survivor of predark days who had been cryogenically preserved before the big blow of 2001, then thawed by Ryan in the postnuclear age of the Deathlands. The stocky black woman's hair hung in beaded plaits around her downturned head. She was beginning to stir, raising her head and opening her eyes. Her Czech-made ZKR 551 revolver lay in her lap, and before she was fully conscious her hand closed on it.

  Dean, Ryan's son, was still out. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose to his top lip. He grunted as the effects of the jump began to wear off and the first nausea of consciousness returned.

  "Dark night, my head's thumping like mutie drums on a bad day."

  Ryan turned, dark spots still exploding in his vision at the speed of the movement. "Thought it was just me." Ryan winced at the pounding that was still making his empty eye socket throb.

  "Everybody." Jak followed the statement with a wretch of bile that splashed onto the floor of the gateway. The jumps usually made him vomit, and he spit out the remains of the bile before rising to his feet, pulling on the patched camou jacket that carried his hidden throwing knives and holstering his .357 Magnum Colt Python blaster with a fluid grace.

  "The bells, ah, the bells, Esmerelda. Ask not for whom they toll. The bells toll for thee, my Emily…my Esmerelda…"

  Doc's eyes were open and staring, but they shared the same faraway quality as his voice. The jumps always proved the hardest for Doc Tanner, whose white hair hung in soaked strands around his face, streaked with perspiration and the blood that flowed from his nose and trickled from the corner of his mouth. No one knew how old Doc really was. Trawled from the 1890s into the immediate years p
receding skydark by the whitecoats of Operation Chronos, a part of the Totality Concept, which had also furnished the redoubts with the mat-trans units, Dr. Theophilus Tanner had proved to be a problem. Such a problem that the whitecoat scientists had decided to use him for a further experiment, shooting him forward in time—ironically only a short time before their own lives were ended by the madness of skydark—and landing him in the maelstrom that was the Deathlands.

  According to records the companions had come upon in the whitecoat hell of Crater Lake, Doc had been in his early thirties when snatched. The stresses of time trawling had made Doc physically resemble an old man, and his mind had a similar fragility that sometimes tipped him over into temporary madness.

  His speech was stopped by an urge to vomit, and he spewed the blood that had run down his throat.

  Mildred went over to him.

  "Crazy old fool. Sometimes I don't know how his mind ever snaps back from the strain of these jumps," she said as she ran a quick check on his vital signs.

  Doc smiled. "Perhaps it never does, and this scenario is nothing but the product of a disordered psyche."

  "Big words. Feel better," Jak commented shortly. "Right about bells."

  "Gaia, I've never heard a bell quite like that before," Krysty said as she moved toward Ryan. Now fully recovered from the jump, and with a resilience that was close to the one-eyed warrior's, she spoke in a low, urgent tone. "Sounds more like a siren. A warning of some kind, mebbe?"

  "New redoubt," J.B. commented, looking at the walls. "Could have an old alarm system. Mebbe working off the same power supply."

  "Never heard one before. Why now?"

  "Why not?" Dean asked. "Stupe comp systems get faults all the time."

  "Not that often, son," Ryan replied, his mind racing. "There's something else—"

  "The chamber," Krysty finished. "We've never seen one this spotlessly clean before. Almost like it's been swept out."

  "Which would mean someone lives here," Mildred added.