Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  Murphy switched his attention from Wallace and the tech to the kid on the couch. He suppressed a shiver as his view took in the boy, stretched naked on the PVC-covered foam rubber that molded to the contours of his body. Not that you could see much of him under the trailing mess of wires and electrodes that covered his body, attached to the skin by guar-gum pads that occasionally slipped on the sweaty surface of the boy's twitching skin. The wires entwined across the floor until they reached the opened back of a small comp console that sparked ominously with faint crackles.

  This part of the old R&D facility was populated by some of the geekiest specimens Murphy had ever seen. The tech who had just been stared down by the Gen, for example. He was a small, hunchbacked man with a squeaky voice—whiny and irritating even after a few words—who stood at barely four feet tall. His white coat trailed across the floor, and the sleeves were turned up several times so that his tiny hands could poke out of the ends. But worst of all from Murphy's point of view, the geek tech was wearing thickly lensed glasses that still didn't seem strong enough for his vision, as he squinted heavily when he stared at Wallace.

  That could account for the sparking and crackling terminals. Although it was almost sacrilege to think, Murphy felt certain that the techs weren't learning anything new, and whatever was supposed to be passed down the family lines was somehow going astray.

  Murphy doubted that Wallace would get whatever he wanted from any of these outsiders. Chances were that they would be killed on these machines before the Gen learned anything.

  Murphy looked at the kid, jerking and twitching underneath the skein of wire.

  He wouldn't last long.

  IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE of strength, stubbornness and sheer determination that Dean had, but he finally crossed the swampy grasslands and reached firm earth that felt as hard and smooth as metal beneath his feet.

  So far, so good. Dean had no idea why he was doing this, but he was driven by some inner message that pushed him on by instinct.

  The night was cold and still, and he could almost see the steam rise from his hot, sweating body by the fallow light of the shrouded moon as he made his way across the earth toward the three-story blockhouse that constituted the girls' dormitory. A veranda ran around the length of the building, with stanchions at each corner that would allow him a swift and easy ascent. Even with the pains that still flowed like the blood through his legs, pulsing in time with his hammering heart.

  Almost counting between breaths to keep some sort of rhythm to his actions, Dean trotted across the empty expanse of earth that stood before the building, keeping an eye out for the guards. Yet it was quiet. Too quiet Not even the cry of the whippoorwill disturbed the air.

  Why was there no one else around?

  "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?" Wallace snapped.

  The tech squinted at the flickering monitor, where various lines were changing pattern and tone at a rapid rate. He glanced up at the Gen. It was hard for Murphy to discern anything on the strange little face, but he was sure there was an aura of fear.

  "I, uh, I'm not too sure, sir. We don't usually register such readings when we run tests."

  "Do you run tests on subjects, then?" Murphy asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  The geek tech shot Murphy a glance of pure venom, "There aren't any subjects as a rule," he muttered in his high, penetrating voice. "We only run simulations."

  Wallace snapped the technician's head around to him with a blow from the flat of his hand. His fat jowls wobbled in fury. "You mean that we could lose these outsiders?"

  The tech shrugged. "I don't think so…"

  THE ROOF on the veranda was made of sheets of corrugated metal that allowed any rainwater to flow into the eaves troughs that had given Dean easy foot-and handholds. The roof was steeply angled, but the corrugation made it relatively easy for him to scramble up, even though his aching calf muscles protested.

  Clinging to the rough texture of the dormitory's outside wall, the youth steadied his breathing and counted the number of windows. Three along would bring him to where Phaedra was waiting. It seemed a long time since he had left the school with his father and their companions. A long time since he had seen Phaedra, and since she had kissed him, stirring feelings in him that were still strange.

  Stranger still was the fact that, despite he was clinging on to the outside of an out-of-bounds building at a school he no longer attended, with aching muscles that felt as though they could give way at any moment, and that he could be discovered by the guards Brody employed as much to keep the sexes apart as to keep the school safe from outside marauders, Dean felt safe. As if he were coming home to a safe place.

  Third window along. Dean edged his way across the veranda roof until he was directly underneath. The tip of his nose could touch the sill, and as the window was open it was a simple matter to push it up and then lift himself up over the sill and into the room.

  Inside, Dean was immediately aware that things were, once again, not as they should be. The room was larger than those he remembered, and cleaner. There was virtually nothing in the room except one bed, square against the wall opposite the window. Strange—there were at least two occupants to each room in the dormitory buildings. So why was this different?

  The bed was covered with an insect net, draped over the poles that held the net four feet above the bed, like a canopy, and falling to the floor, gathering in a pool around the feet of the bed.

  "Dean? Is that you, come back again?"

  Dean's heart raced, but not from exertion. It was Phaedra's voice, just as he remembered.

  "I guess it is," he said slowly, trying to control his breathing. "I don't know exactly how I got here, but…"

  "It doesn't matter," she replied, cutting across him. "The important thing is that you're here now, and it's safe."

  Dean wanted to speak, but some instinct stopped him. Why should she use a word like safe? He'd been thinking that, sure, but why would Phaedra say it?

  The net over the bed stirred, and was pushed aside. Phaedra emerged from the misty depths, and Dean caught his breath as she rose from the bed and stood in front of him. Her long hair fell perfectly straight, parted in the middle and tumbling over her shoulders and down over her breasts. She was naked, and Dean felt stirrings within him that were still new enough to be alien.

  Phaedra stepped forward.

  "I knew you'd come back one day, Dean. Back to where it's safe."

  She held out her hand. Dean hesitated, then raised his own arm to take her hand.

  Again why would she say safe?

  As Dean's fingers were about to brush against Phaedra's, some instinct made him suddenly pull back his hand.

  She immediately changed. Her face hardened, seemed to grow old and lined in front of him. She opened her mouth, and instead of speech nothing emerged but a harsh and sibilant hiss, like a stickle that was about to attack. Her hair seemed to disappear without Dean noticing where it had gone, and her hands grew the ugly suckers typical of the mutie stickies. Her open mouth was filled with sharp, needle-point teeth, and he could smell her fetid breath across the short distance between them.

  Although the sudden transformation was shocking, Dean showed the same sharp reactions that had kept his father alive for many long hard years traversing the Deathlands, and snapped onto his back heel, throwing his balance back to roll with the attack. Phaedra—or whatever it was that had pretended to be her—came forward and pitched into him. He used the creature's momentum and his own back-foot balance to throw it over his head.

  The creature hit the wall behind with a sickening thud. They were close enough for it to lose none of the initial momentum, and so it hit the hard surface with some force—enough to knock plaster off the wall in chunks, dust filling the air. Dean coughed, tears filling his eyes and blurring his sight.

  He swore under his breath, not wanting to shout and risk taking in another lungful of dust.

  The stickie came at him, rising from the
floor as though it had merely brushed the wall. It hissed and spit at him, rushing at him with arms flailing.

  Dean backed up and readied himself in a combat stance, prepared to take the creature. He blocked one wild swing of its arm and followed with a straight-handed thrust at the stickie's exposed right side. He felt his fingers penetrate the soft flesh with a sickening squelch, and he jerked his hand free as quickly as possible, determined not to get stuck in the creature. It yelped in fear and pain, pulling back, its thin blood spewing out of the ragged wound.

  Anger, the fear and the pain were just about discernible in the black and glistening eyes as it gave a cry and rushed for Dean once again.

  Why, he thought, casting a glance around, was there never anything around to be used as a makeshift weapon when a person really needed it?

  It was a momentary lapse of total concentration that his father would never have made: Dean's youth and inexperience teaching him a harsh lesson.

  The stickie was on him a split second before he was fully prepared. The flailing arms were just a touch too quick for his defenses, and one of the hands glanced across his face, the blow pulling at his flesh and scoring it.

  The pain spurred Dean into complete concentration. He had to end this, and end it now. He lowered himself and dived in underneath the flailing arms, pushing against the stickie with all the power he could muster from his aching calf muscles. It was enough to drive them back against the wall. Dean was ready for the impact, and gritted his teeth as the impact jarred every bone in his body. He heard the sickening crunch of splintering bone, the thin snapping sounds of the stickie's ribs giving way and the high, fluting whine of its cries of pain.

  Every breath driven from its unprepared body, it sank to the floor, stunned, as Dean stepped back.

  The youth ignored the aches of his own body and focused his attention on the task at hand. While the stickie was still sitting, dazed, Dean stepped forward and took its head in his hands. Tensing his muscles, he jerked the head sharply to the right, and then to the left.

  He heard the snapping of its neck a millisecond before the cry of pain and surprise that was wrung from its throat. The light in its eyes dimmed swiftly and faded.

  As Dean stepped back, it was no longer a stickie. There, in front of him, with her neck broken and her naked body covered in weals and bruises, blood running over her belly to pool between her thighs, was Phaedra.

  Dean howled in anguish.

  "THE KID'S GOING CRAZY," yelled the small tech as Dean's jerking, howling body lifted itself off the couch, pulling wires and electrodes from his body, the tangles and terminals coming out of the comp console with an alarming amount of sparks and crackles. A small fire broke out, doused immediately by an alarmed whitecoat with a high-domed forehead and bug eyes. She was completely bald, with her front teeth missing. It would seem that she also had a cleft palate, as she uttered a worried yet incomprehensible noise.

  The only calm personnel in the room were Murphy and Wallace. Sarj Murphy studied the Gen very closely.

  "Desist this ridiculousness. The good book dictates calm in times of emergency, and I will have calm."

  Wallace's voice rose almost imperceptibly in volume as he got to the end of the statement, but the increase was accentuated by the sudden silence that descended on the room, broken only by the hum and buzz of the still fizzling terminals.

  Murphy couldn't help but be impressed. And worried. This would be a formidable foe.

  "Bring the outsider back," Wallace continued in quiet, authoritative tones.

  "I'm not sure if we can… At least, not that quickly," the geek tech said absently, squinting heavily at where Dean had subsided back onto the couch. His eyes were moving wildly behind the closed lids, and his breathing was labored and shallow.

  "I think you will," Wallace said simply.

  "Sir." The tech snapped to attention, something in Wallace's voice reminding him of his position.

  Murphy, on the other hand, was dubious. And if the kid didn't survive, what hope was there for the old man who lay in the next sick bay, similarly wired up?

  "NOT LIKE THIS, DOC. Frightening."

  "Worry not, my sweet. There is no puzzle to which there is not a solution, if you care to think of it. Be it logical or lateral, there is always a path that can be followed."

  "Don't look to me like there are any paths here at all." Lori looked at Doc Tanner with wide and uncomprehending eyes.

  Doc sighed. It was ever the way that Lori, as sweet as she was, failed to understand the simplest allusion. He cared deeply for the girl—a fellow waif in a strange land—but couldn't help but find her obtuseness, at times, irritating.

  They were standing in a dark cavern, the only light— if it could be called such—a faint phosphorescent glow from the rocks around them. The cavern seemed to stretch away into an unspecific and threatening darkness, a feeling of fear that was in no way alleviated by the faint roar of a distant gale and the odor of old, burned flesh that hung over them like a curtain.

  The pearl handle of Lori's Walther PPK .22 blaster glowed softly as it picked up the reflection of the rocks. Her long blond hair framed her glittering eyes. Doc could see little else of her in the darkness, but as they advanced a few steps he could hear the clicking of her high heels on the rock floor.

  In the mind of Dr. Theophilus Tanner, reason struggled to gain the upper hand over the encroachment of fear. Doc knew that the others considered him crazy, sometimes tipping into incoherence. The simple fact was that they were correct He had seen things and been through mind- and body-wrenching experiences that no one else had shared. And it was unlikely that anyone else would.

  He shuddered involuntarily as he remembered things he had seen when the scientists of Operation Chronos had tried to shut him up. He remembered the mewling mess that had been Judge Crater. Perhaps he would have been better dead than to end up like this, prone to lapses into insanity. For a man with Doc's intelligence, it was a strain to know that he walked a narrow ledge between coherence and madness. He had once heard someone say that stupidity had saved many a man from madness. Perhaps that was true.

  "Doc, what we gonna do?"

  Doc was jolted back to the moment. He looked at Lori, peering through the darkness to focus on her.

  "I said, what we gonna—"

  "I know, my dear. I heard you the first time. My grasp on sanity may be a little tenuous at times, but my hearing has not suffered. As to the action I propose we take, I would suggest that the best course of action at the present time is to actually take no action."

  Lori giggled. "You're crazy, Doc."

  Doc smiled to himself but refrained from comment. Slowly, in his mind, the fragments of the puzzle were assembling themselves into a whole. He remembered the fat, evil-looking woman whose throat he had sliced in twain. He remembered the attempt to escape from the redoubt, and the signs of a sudden evacuation by the staff. And then there were the trank darts fired from the strange vehicle.

  And now he was here.

  With Lori?

  Doc felt the weight of the LeMat in his hand, and knew that it was primed to be fired. In his other hand he held the swordstick. It was a sign to him of the changes that had occurred in his life that he, an academic by vocation, no longer felt safe unless he had a weapon or two at hand. Particularly now.

  Particularly as, although she was standing next to him, he knew that Lori had been dead for no little time.

  Doc was about to speak when a blast of air hit him like a solid blow to the solar plexus, doubling him over and driving the breath from his body. He was aware of Lori screaming, her shrill voice mixing into the roar of the gale as it hit them.

  With a sickening realization, Doc knew that they were facing a foe worse than any baron, scavenger or mutie. They were facing the implacable force of nature gone wild, distorted by the rad blast of skydark.

  It was a foe against which all weapons were useless.

  "Doc! Help me…"

  "THE
OLD DUDE is looking a bit wired," remarked Pri Firclas Baker, scratching his head and noting idly that he'd made his tender scalp bleed again, a tuft of hair caught under his nail.

  "It's nothing we can't handle," snapped the willowy woman who was the end of a long line of techs for this section. By some fluke, Dr. Tricks was an almost perfect specimen of womanhood. A throwback to a cleaner, less rad blasted gene pool, she had flowing raven hair and sharp, classical features with high cheekbones. As a result she was the target of lustful attention from every male in the redoubt. At first Gen Wallace had high hopes of using Tricks to start a new gene pool and eradicate some of the problems of inbreeding and mutie infiltration.

  Until he discovered the one flaw in Tricks's otherwise immaculate makeup: she was sterile. He ruled that she was out-of-bounds. If she couldn't breed, then he didn't want his men wasting their seed on her.

  It didn't stop them trying, which made her weary of the attention.

  It also made any male soldiers assigned to her section slack in their attention to detail. Baker had been commanded by Wallace to inform him of any change in the old man's signs. He was too busy watching Tricks move around the lab to really pay much attention to the way in which the monitor screen was registering a rapid variety of signals. Like Dean, studied so carefully in the next room, Doc had REM that was going crazy, and sweat poured from his body as the muscles twitched beneath his skin.

  "Don't you think you should go and tell the Gen what's happening here?" Dr. Tricks said archly.

  "No, it's nothing," Baker replied without giving the monitors a second glance. "The old dude'll probably kick it, but so what?"

  "I'm not so sure that the Gen will see it that way," Tricks warned.