Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  He was ready for the man when he arrived. Moving under the tall mutie's body, which was bent forward at the waist by his momentum, Dean held his hand rigid and drove his fingers into the man's Adam's apple.

  A look of pain and shock crossed the mutie maintenance man's face before his mouth dribbled a pale pink mixture of blood and spittle over sharp teeth that emphasized the stickie genes in him. It was followed a second later by a ribbon of bright blood.

  The suffocating man's momentum pulled Dean down to the floor with him. The boy cursed as he tried to get away from the flailing, gagging man.

  "Come on, son," Ryan said, pulling the man back by his hair so that Dean could free himself.

  "Go now, yes?" Jak asked.

  "We should," J.B. agreed, gesturing to a winking sec camera with his newly acquired blaster. "They'll be onto us soon enough. And they'll be able to follow."

  "Then shoot out sec cameras."

  Doc was on his feet, trying to brush himself off and avoid smearing Panner's blood on his clothes. He looked weary, as though the burst of activity had drained him of energy. "Then, if I may make a suggestion of some use, it would perhaps be best if we were to be moving on. Time to get those, ah, big wheels rolling."

  "Doc, you speak some godawful claptrap sometimes, but just occasionally you come out with a gem of truth." Mildred sighed.

  "The armory first, then," Ryan said. "We need to get some more weapons and our own damn blasters back. They outstrip us in terms of manpower and blasters."

  "But we've got one advantage," Dean said with a wry smile.

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah—they're definitely stupe bastards."

  Ryan allowed himself a grin. "Yeah, mebbe."

  He switched his attention to the corridor. "Okay. I'll take point. Usual formation, people. J.B., cover the back."

  The Armorer nodded. "Any other weapons on those coldhearts?" He indicated Murphy and Panner.

  Ryan frowned. "None. That's even weirder. It's as if they don't expect trouble, even though they're sec."

  They started to move off along the corridor, back in the direction they had come. Jak had taken the needle-thin screwdriver from the dead hand of the maintenance man. It would be a useful weapon in hand-to-hand combat if little else.

  In nearly all the redoubts they had landed in, the armory had been located in the same place. There was no reason to assume otherwise here. The long corridors offered little cover for the companions, but equally little cover for any sec men who might try to attack. Ryan figured that they had the advantage in that the redoubt dwellers wouldn't expect them to know the layout.

  It was pretty obvious to all of them that the sec men were trained and had the weaponry to do serious damage, but didn't have the combat skills or wit that the friends had acquired during their journeys across the Deathlands. Stealth wasn't something these sec men were familiar with.

  "I just don't get it," Dean said as they proceeded with extreme caution. "How come they live here, got all this equipment and they can't fight? And how come they haven't used the mat-trans?"

  Doc smiled, tapping the ferrule of his swordstick against his thigh and showing his set of perfect white teeth.

  "Ah, young Dean, if only you had finished your schooling with the good Mr. Brody. Your grasp of logic is incomplete. What proof have we that they do not use the mat-trans?" He waited for Dean to answer, and when the youth didn't, he continued, "Furthermore did you learn nothing from your biology classes? I suspect that if these are survivors from a predark community, as seems likely by their mode of dress and some of their speech, then the likelihood is that an astonishing degree of inbreeding has taken place. And there is nothing like that for dulling the wits. Would you agree, my dear Dr. Wyeth?"

  Mildred allowed herself a small smile. She remembered the freezies she and Ryan had encountered in the Anthill, hidden beneath the remains of Mount Rushmore. There was no inbreeding involved there, as the survivors of predark times had lengthened their lives with biomechanical body parts and low temperatures. They had mat-trans units, as well as a map of every redoubt across the old U.S.A., but they hadn't used them as far as she knew. This was too long a story to go into. Instead she said, "Your timing for a discussion on genetics is bad, but I guess you've just about summed it up. By the look of it, I'd say these people definitely don't get out enough."

  "What about stickie?" Jak asked, his eyes still flickering as he scanned the corridor, screwdriver poised and balanced in his palm.

  "Ah, there you have me." Doc shrugged. "Although it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that some outside blood, particularly of a mutated variety, could have—"

  "Doc," Ryan said softly.

  "Yes, my dear Ryan?"

  "Shut up. Save the school lesson for when we're out of here."

  Doc deferred with a bow of the head, realizing that Ryan's words were prompted by their arrival at a junction in the corridors.

  It hadn't escaped Ryan's notice that Krysty had been quiet. Too quiet, almost as if something was distracting her.

  As the group halted some ten feet from the junction, Ryan whispered, "Something's very wrong with all this. Too easy. They can't be that stupe, can they?"

  "I don't know, lover," Krysty replied, resting her hand on his arm. He could almost feel the tension in her fingertips. "Back, there I didn't feel like it was a setup. But here it's different. Now that we've got the run of the place, I don't feel danger like they're going to chill us…something different. More devious. Uncle Tyas McCann used to warn us of trying to interpret people who had a different way of looking at things. You always have to be on your guard, as they think in a different way. Makes them more difficult to second-guess."

  "And that's what's happening here." It was more of a statement than a question. From the moment they arrived, they had been on the defensive, unable to go on the offensive and gain freedom. Whoever was the baron or leader in this redoubt had a mind that worked on different lines from any Ryan could remember encountering. Until he could work out what this leader wanted, they would be at a disadvantage.

  He scanned the area in front of him, straining his ears until he could almost hear his own circulation pumping around his body.

  It was deathly silent. The background babble of activity that had accompanied their escorted walk from the dorm and down the first corridor had ceased. Now there was nothing.

  "J.B.?"

  "I'm with you," the Armorer replied. "Withdrawn all sec men. Every damn man, by the sound."

  "Could be trap at armory," Jak stated.

  "Only one way to find out," Ryan said. He lifted the Heckler & Koch until its length was parallel to his good eye. He felt the unfamiliar weight of the blaster, adjusting his balance for what was to come. "Dead end ahead. Two blind corners each way. Shitty odds, but all we've got. J.B., keep our asses covered."

  "You bet."

  "Careful, lover," Krysty whispered. "Even more than usual. This is more than just that…"

  Without answering, the one-eyed man steeled himself and launched into the corridor. He hunched into himself to make a smaller target and threw himself across the breadth of the corridor, spraying covering fire first one way and then the other, twisting with a suppleness born of many close-combat situations. He was relying on the fact that any sec men gathered on either side of the junction would not want to fire at random for fear of hitting their compatriots facing them. They would want to aim carefully, and his covering fire should cause just enough confusion to prevent that. And maybe take out a few of them at the same time.

  Ryan came to rest against the wall of the corridor, the repeated blasts of the Heckler & Koch still reverberating in his ears, ringing through the empty corridor.

  "Fireblast!" he exclaimed under his breath. The corridor was empty on either side for as far as he could see.

  He looked across at his companions. They were staring at him with as much bewilderment as he felt.

  Ryan shrugged. "Empty. The whole redoubt
seems bastard empty. What's going on?"

  "Like fighting ghosts," Jak said, stepping into the corridor.

  "Mebbe that's the idea," the Armorer said, bringing up the rear of the party and not allowing his watchfulness to slacken.

  "That would make sense with what I can feel." Krysty rubbed her brow, sweeping back the flaming hair that clung tightly to her. "They're hanging back on purpose, just waiting for us."

  "Why don't they just come out with it and try to chill us?" Ryan cursed. It occurred to him that Krysty had been right when she said that they should beware of people who didn't think the same way. Just what were the tactics at work here?

  Doc resheathed his sword and leaned on the stick.

  "I have a supposition. It may be the ravings of a fool, but I truly believe that they wish to keep us alive."

  "When we've chilled three, mebbe four of their people? Doesn't make sense." J.B. shook his head.

  "To us, perhaps not," Doc said. "However, we are not cognizant of whatever reason they may have for keeping us alive."

  Remembering the perverse habits of some of the barons they had come across, and the trade in body parts that had centered around old military installations, it was not a thought on which to dwell.

  "Stupes may not be so stupe after all," Ryan murmured. "The only thing we can do is keep moving to the armory, then be on triple red for an ambush. Seems to be the only place it can happen."

  They advanced in line, still keeping alert. In all their travels they had yet to come across a redoubt where the vanadium-steel sec doors could be closed in any other way than by punching in the code on the wall-mounted panels. It seemed unlikely, then, that they could be trapped by their enemies sealing off a section of corridor by remote triggering of the doors. Then again, they'd never jumped into a redoubt that had a population that was actually maintaining it, or seemed to have any idea how the old comp systems worked.

  All the corridors were deserted. The only signs of life were the detritus of people moving out in a hurry: a clipboard and pen that lay on the floor; another mop and bucket similar to the one belonging to the chilled maintenance man; a frayed and worn service cap, with a threadbare insignia.

  It seemed obvious that whoever commanded the redoubt had pulled out all personnel to some secure place without sounding an alarm. That indicated a strong sense of discipline among that personnel.

  By the time they reached the location of the armory, all of them were feeling strung out. The complete silence was unnerving. In other redoubts it had been normal, but here—where they knew the redoubt was still a base of some kind—the silence was eerie.

  The sec door to the armory was raised. From their oblique approach angle, Ryan could see into the room. It appeared unoccupied, the ranks and boxes of blasters, grens and ammunition undisturbed by human presence.

  There was, however, still half of the armory that was hidden from view by the angle.

  "Too quiet," Jak mouthed into Ryan's ear. "Too empty. Want us there."

  Every instinct told Ryan that Jak was correct. The armory, too, was deserted.

  Dean stated what they were all thinking. "If it is empty, that's 'cause they want us in there. Once we're in there, we're trapped."

  All it would take would be the release of the sec door to the armory, and all seven of them would be trapped inside. They'd have all the weapons in the redoubt, but it wouldn't do them any good against being starved to death, or gassed by a nerve gren or by some kind of nerve-gas supply fed into the air circulation. From bitter experience they all knew that no gren or plas-ex could penetrate the vanadium steel—always assuming that they could have survived the impact blast from inside the armory. Or that it wouldn't trigger off every other gren, shell, cartridge or piece of plas-ex in there.

  "Simple solution," J.B. told them. "Half of us stay here on watch. At least that way some of us will stay on the outside."

  "Mebbe," Ryan answered. "But mebbe that just leaves us trapped in different ways and our forces halved. Better we stay together right now."

  "But for what?" Krysty asked with a shiver. "We've come up against some real evil, but this is triple weird. This is just so…so innocent somehow. There's no sense of pleasure in chilling going on here."

  As she spoke, they became aware of the rumble of heavy wheels on the concrete floor, and the high whine of an electric engine.

  "Krysty, there's nothing innocent about that baby," Mildred husked in an awed voice as a bizarre wag turned the far corner of the corridor.

  IN THE WEAPONS-DEVELOPMENT lab, Gen Wallace perched his enormous bulk on the groaning stool, its wheels squeaking in protest as he rocked the stool back and forth. His fingers hovered nervously over the keyboard, using the keys to guide the remote wag. It hadn't been used for several generations, and it was only thanks to the continued diligence of the weapons-development team that the wag still worked. They hadn't actually developed any weapons for five generations, but the blueprints left by their ancestors were used to assiduously strip and clean all the weapons in their possession. It was their task and purpose. That was how it was in the good book.

  Murphy spumed the use of tech weapons, claiming that they would be useless on the outside, and that blasters and a well-drilled sec corps were the only essentials.

  Wallace furrowed his brow. Where was Murphy now? Unconscious, maybe chilled, on a concrete floor.

  And the outsiders he wanted so badly… Murphy would have chilled them. Wallace wanted them alive. They were recyclable. Especially the old man. He seemed perfect for the mechanism.

  The vid screen flickered above the terminal the Gen was using. In shaky black and white, reverberating in time with the movement of the wag, Wallace could see the seven people standing by the open armory door. He knew he had guessed right. They needed blasters, and he had used that need to trap them. That was why he was the Gen.

  They were frozen in disbelief for a fraction of a second. Then the one-eyed man in front and the man with spectacles at the rear raised their blasters. The black woman, the one with the strange hair, the boy, the albino and the old man—yes, the all-important old man— stood between.

  Gen Wallace stopped the wag and grasped the handheld microphone that stood by the terminal. He thumbed a switch.

  "You people. You will obey the regs and put your blasters on the floor. Hands on heads, then follow the wag. No harm will befall you. We come in peace. It is imperative that we have full and fruitful discussions."

  He saw the one-eyed man shout something and open fire with the Heckler & Koch. The sec camera was obviously hit, as the screen went black.

  Wallace sighed. Why did they do this? Didn't they know the regs stated all resistance was futile? He keyed in a comp code.

  "BACK," RYAN YELLED.

  "Back where?" J.B. asked. "Damn redoubt corridors don't have any cover."

  "Past the last sec door, John," Mildred cried, passing the Armorer and pulling at his arm. "Maybe they're like all other soldiers and pencil the code under the punch plate."

  J.B. figured Mildred had a point—that was usually how they found the sec codes of some doors in redoubts.

  "Worth a try," Ryan yelled over the chatter of his Heckler & Koch as he emptied the clip at the wag. "It's the only way we can outdistance this thing, buy some bastard time."

  He ejected the clip and inserted another from the meager supply he'd removed from Panner's corpse. It seemed to him that they were doing nothing but react. They had to turn the situation around and act, get these soldiers on the run.

  "Dad, get down!" Dean yelled 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 rapidly spin.

  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.

  Krysty screamed behind him. He tried to turn, but movement was sluggish. His vision narrowed.

  Trank darts.

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

  What reason could prompt that risk?

  Chapter Four

  Dean Cawdor was sure that there was something wrong. It was night, and he was making his way across the marshy grasses that separated the boys' dormitories from those of the girls.

  That was weird; in all his time at the Nicholas Brody School, he couldn't recall the area between the dormitories being such a swamp. It hadn't been such a long trek, either. Dean's calf muscles ached, each step tearing at them and sapping his strength. He ground his teeth as he pulled a foot out of the sucking earth and moved on.

  The girls' dormitory seemed to fall farther into the distance the longer he walked. His breath came in rasps, and his chest felt as though it were about to burst, a burn crossing his lungs with each painful intake of air.

  The more he thought about it, the more bizarre it seemed. He had no idea why he was doing this. Trying to think as hard as possible, to concentrate as much as he could while the distractions of searing lungs and tearing muscles pulled at the edges of his mind, Dean knew that something was wrong.

  Was it a nightmare?

  No, not that… Dean didn't dream with such clarity. His muscles never ripped and tore in his dreams, and his lungs never felt as though they would explode in his chest as if someone had rammed a gren down his throat.

  Vaguely, plucking at the corners of his mind, he could remember the redoubt and what had followed. When he reached the point where the trank darts were fired at him, everything descended into blackness…

  Until now. So how did he get here? It certainly wasn't an ordinary dream.

  "HIS REM IS GOING totally crazy, Gen. I think we should pull him out before the kid ruptures something."

  Gen Wallace fixed the tech with a gaze that spoke of barely suppressed fury. Murphy, watching from a few paces back, noted the way that the small man quailed at the Gen's stare. He seemed to visibly shrink. It was something in the way Wallace looked at you. There was a mixture of ice and fire in that gaze, like the barely controlled impassive skin over a raging volcano of fury. The thought of being the agent that unleashed it wasn't pleasant. Murphy screwed his face into a wry grin, or something close. A genetic problem had resulted in numb facial muscles, so they didn't respond too well. Inbreeding. At least it was minor compared to many.