Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  J.B. couldn't even see where he was as they pinned him to the ground. He could smell their foul odor and feel the heat of their bodies as a multitude of suckered ringers grasped his body, wriggling obscenely across him as he was secured in a tight mass grip and lifted from the ground.

  He felt the quality of the air change as he was lifted above their heads and carried along. The light increased, and he guessed that he had been sheltered somewhere, but was now out in the open. The landscape blurred as he was jarred up and down on the uneven ground. He could hear the debased chattering of the stickies as they moved en masse.

  He struggled, even though he knew it was pointless. There were too many of them, their grip was too tight and he was severely impaired by the loss of his glasses. Despite this, his acute sense of survival impelled him to try. A slim-to-nothing chance was preferable to no chance at all. The Trader used to say that there was no such thing as no chance, only people who couldn't spot it.

  As J.B. flexed his muscles, some of the stickies stumbled beneath him. One caught a foot on a stone and lost balance, careering into others, who also lost balance. Among the unintelligent creatures, this caused a mass panic, and J.B. was pitched forward into their midst.

  He landed on his feet and hit the ground running. Vague shapes and blurs stood in his way, but were soon knocked aside by sharply aimed blows.

  He was off and running, but didn't know where.

  The ground was bumpy, stones rolling under his boots as he ran, trying desperately to put some distance between himself and the stickies. His breath came hard, and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. It was pounding so hard that it took a few seconds for him to realise that he wasn't being followed. There was no sound from behind him.

  That was even more worrying than being chased by the stickies.

  What was stopping them from following? The answer came to him as he slowed. His feet began to sink into the marshy earth, which became more of a quagmire as he continued, dragging one painful leg after another, until his calf muscles began to tear.

  "THAT'S REALLY INTERESTING, sir," the small tech said to Wallace.

  "Is it? Explain, boy. This tech stuff isn't part of my duty."

  Pulling back one of his sleeves so that his tiny hand could point to a series of flowing lines on the monitor, the tech turned to Wallace and Murphy.

  "As you may know, sirs, our ancestors were in charge of developing new weaponry for the cold war between—"

  "Spare the history lesson and cut to the chase, runt," Murphy snapped. "The military has work to do."

  The tech sighed and continued in pained tones. "Well, before skydark and the great isolation and the time of recycling, there was only a certain amount of the preliminary work that was completed. There are only so many image stimuli that can be fed to the subject for them to feed and respond to. The idea of the swamp has been fed to this subject and the boy we were watching a while ago. And both seem to have interpreted this stimuli at different points in the cycle."

  "So?" Wallace asked blankly.

  "Well, it suggests… It… It's just kind of interesting to us down here, sir," the tech finished weakly.

  "Son, it don't matter bodiddly-squat how they see it, as long as it gets us results," Wallace said blandly.

  Murphy suppressed a smile. He still believed that his methods could have softened the outsiders with greater speed, but the Gen loved his toys.

  Wallace turned to Murphy. "He's ready now. Just the red-haired bitch to go."

  GAIA, BUT THESE NIGHTS were cold.

  Krysty huddled into herself, trying to preserve some body warmth in the darkness. She could feel that her flowing red hair had tightened like a steel spring until it was close to her scalp, coiling tightly against her nape.

  She didn't need this sign to tell her there was danger about. She could hear it in the rustling of the leaves, the scratching of the undergrowth as it moved, disturbed by the predators that were always just out of view.

  They weren't human. She knew that because she had never heard any sec men or hunters who could move that quietly. If not for the fact that so long on the road had attuned her to danger, she would have taken the noises for nothing more than the movement of the night air.

  But this night there was no movement. Despite the cold, it was as still as the hottest summer day. So still that the air seemed to solidify around her.

  Krysty knew that she was on her own, that she was outnumbered. That the odds were against her making it to morning.

  Even more so when she checked the pockets of the bearskin coat that, despite its bulk, was still failing to cut out the chilled air. Her Smith & Wesson Model 640.38 was with her, but there was no ammunition. And a blaster without ammo was as useless as a man with no dick in a gaudy house free-for-all.

  The crescent moon cast little light, but there was enough to shine off the silver-winged falcons and points on her boots, and to catch her misted breath in the air. It was enough to cast shadows across the copse, where she sat on the rotted stump of a felled tree, and into the forest beyond. The forest rustled with barely concealed danger.

  It briefly occurred to her that the danger came not from there but from something else. There was no reason why she should be alone and unarmed. There was no recollection of arriving here. None of it added up.

  It flashed through her mind that the real danger was whatever was making her think she was at this place.

  "NOW, THAT'S an interesting reaction," Dr. Tricks mused.

  "In what way?" Murphy asked, using it as an excuse to move closer to her as he looked over her shoulder.

  "You see these lines here?" she continued, ignoring his heavy-breathing presence and indicating a sudden flattening of the signal on the monitor. "It means a decrease of tension and adrenaline."

  "So?"

  "So, the clever little mutie is onto us. She may be as hard to crack as the albino."

  Murphy smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. "You see, you R&D personnel always put too much trust in science. Brute force and ignorance is what wins battles. Always has been."

  "We'll see."

  KRYSTY KEPT HERSELF ALERT, despite the sudden doubts that sprang through her mind about the veracity of her senses.

  To her left, just out of her range of vision, she heard an increase in rustling and spun to meet it.

  "You?"

  "Yes, me." Uncle Tyas McCann stepped into the sparse light of the moon. He looked just as he had when she had last seen him. How long ago was that now?

  "Too long," he said, seeming to sense her thoughts, before breaking into a throaty chuckle.

  Krysty's hair coiled even tighter, straining against the muscles of her neck. It was a little like him, sure, but there was something here that just didn't make sense. He was dead, and this—apparition, for want of another word—wasn't that much like him at all in the faint light.

  "That's very perceptive of you," he replied to her thoughts. "You always were too damn smart, Krysty. Just like Sonja."

  Tyas McCann never mentioned Sonja, either. Krysty's mother—perhaps dead, perhaps not—had always been a topic he would avoid.

  Krysty stood, feeling the cold air invade her as the movement drove the scant warmth from under her coat. She shivered, and not just from the cold.

  "That's right. You should be very afraid, because this is a scenario that you can't control or defeat. You know your mind is being manipulated, and I'm here because I'm what you fear most of all."

  "I never feared Uncle Tyas," Krysty replied, trying to keep a tremor of cold and fear from her voice.

  "True. But then again, wouldn't that be your worst nightmare? For me to suddenly turn against you, to attack you? How would you react? Would you try to defeat me in order to save yourself?"

  "Are you going to try to find out?"

  He smiled. "You know the answer to that."

  Krysty nodded, as much to herself as to the thing that called itself Tyas McCann. If what she suspected was true,
then he couldn't harm her.

  "Are you sure about that?" he asked.

  "Try me."

  Tyas smiled. It was harsh and evil, not at all like the man she remembered, which would make sense. If this was her nightmare, then he would be the opposite of the loving father figure she had once known.

  Krysty stood perfectly still as he advanced upon her. If she was right, then nothing could really happen to her.

  She closed her eyes and waited for the moment to come. With a roar of anger, Tyas McCann reached out and grasped her left arm. He wrenched and pulled with a barely controlled fury, twisting her arm at its socket. Krysty felt the tendons and muscles tear inside her arm, blood vessels exploding and veins and arteries rupturing.

  With the sickening, crunching squelch of bone and flesh mixed with the tearing of fabric and fur, Krysty's arm came off in Tyas McCann's hands. She opened her eyes to see him fling it away into the trees. There was a rustle, like animals descending on carrion.

  She looked down at her exposed shoulder joint, blood pulsing onto the earth, steaming as her body temperature met the cold night air. She should feel pain, shock…but nothing penetrated her consciousness. She was perfectly calm.

  Tyas McCann looked perplexed.

  Krysty smiled. It was beatific. Even though she had not called upon the power of Gaia to give her strength, she could feel the energies running through her veins, helping her to see through her course of action.

  Tyas McCann snarled at her and repeated the procedure on her right arm. Once again she heard the severing of the limb but felt nothing.

  A haze began to descend over her, something that she put down to the loss of blood. Even though it wasn't her real physical sense, or a real death, she knew that she had to see it through to the end. She had to call the bluff of whoever was playing with her mind.

  "You will not fight?"

  "I will not fear," she replied, her voice sounding distant in her own ears.

  The darkest night slipped away into a blackness darker than anything she had ever imagined.

  "SHE'S BEATEN THE COMP," Dr. Tricks remarked, watching the signals on the console.

  Wallace pulled a face, his tightly pursing lips making his multiple chins wobble.

  Tricks raised an eyebrow. "Two out of seven isn't bad." She looked at Krysty, naked and encased in a skein of wires and electrodes. Unlike everyone except Jak, Krysty had not one drop of perspiration on her body. "It's probably something to do with their mutie blood. I'd like to study them some more, Gen. The mutie outsider scum we usually get die very quickly. These show more resilience."

  Wallace shook his head. "No deal. These will be recycled in another manner. They're necessary for my plans, and as Gen I pull rank on you every time, Doctor."

  "Just what are your plans, sir?" Murphy asked.

  "Now that they're suitably softened up, I want you to extract their backgrounds from them. Particularly the old one. He may be of the greatest use."

  "If I may beg your indulgence and ask, sir, why didn't you just hand them over to me?"

  Wallace fixed Murphy with a sneering stare that bespoke contempt. "Time is of the essence, Sarj. To get quick results you may have to harm them physically. And I cannot have that." He turned to survey Krysty with a cold, emotionless eye. "At least, not yet."

  Chapter Six

  The disorientation and mental stresses of the brainwashing process softened them all. It was distressingly, boringly easy for Murphy to interrogate them. The level of resistance was low, and some of them he hit just for fun. Particularly the one-eyed man, whose name he discovered was Ryan Cawdor.

  The interrogation room was constructed just as Murphy's forefathers had wanted it: like something out of the crumbling pages of the books that he kept in his quarters and would sometimes thumb through. It made him feel more in touch with the world before skydark, the world on which his world view was based.

  Ryan was tied to a metal chair with a cane seat. He was stripped naked, his hands bound behind the back of the chair, wrists pulled low so that his posture was slouched, his shoulders wrenched if he tried to move on the seat. It was a simple torture tactic, and one that didn't take a lot of effort while becoming quickly effective.

  "It's quite simple, you murdering son of a bitch," Murphy said quietly, wiping the blood from the rings on his fingers after slapping Ryan backhanded. "You just tell me all about yourself, and I release you from the seat before your balls strain through the little holes. Uncomfortable, isn't it?" he continued, as Ryan tried to move on the seat and ease the pain that was starting to spread into his groin.

  Ryan breathed deeply, using his iron will to control the pain. The scar that ran under the eye patch, from the empty socket and down his cheek to his jaw, was white and puckered, the flesh drained of blood as he gritted his teeth. He was storing up the resentment. If he ever got the chance, he'd finish Murphy. But he'd rather get out. One of the things the Trader taught him was the uselessness of bearing grudges. Concentrate too hard on that, and you wouldn't notice the enemy creeping up behind you.

  Murphy watched Ryan through slitted eyes, trying to work out how far he could go. The one-eyed man was sitting beneath the only light in the room, directly above him. Murphy stood half in a pool of shadow. Behind him, obscured from Ryan's view, was an armed soldier. Murphy could watch his prisoner's reactions with clarity, but Ryan could see little beyond the pool of light in which he sat.

  "You won't get anything from me," Ryan muttered, spitting blood from his torn mouth.

  Murphy nodded. "You're a big man. You've proved to me how hard you are. Now let's get real. That kid, he looks like you, One-eye."

  Ryan looked up. Slowly, trying to mask his concern.

  It didn't work. Murphy grinned at him slyly. "Yeah, figured so. Your sprog, right? How'd you like him to be tied to the chair? I figure he's only…what, twelve? Thirteen? Maybe his balls ain't dropped yet. It'd be interesting to find out."

  Ryan winced. In his mind he tried to weigh up the options. What would it lose them at this stage if he told this scum who he was? The redoubt seemed inbred and isolated, so the chances of them hearing about him were low.

  A chance he would take to save Dean the pain.

  "Fireblast, you win this round, fucker. What do you want to know?"

  "Who you are. Why you're here. How come you can use the mat-trans. And the old guy is…"

  Ryan's brow furrowed. Why were they so interested in Doc?

  "LOOK LIKE SHIT," Jak said quietly.

  "Feel like it, too," Ryan replied, stretching out on the bed, his legs apart to ease the pain that throbbed into his groin. The act of speaking opened up one of the cuts in the corner of his mouth.

  Krysty took a pillowcase from one of the beds and wet it under the faucet before using a corner of it to dab gently at the edges of Ryan's mouth.

  J.B. looked up at the sec camera over the door. They were all back in the room in which they had originally been confined. He pushed his fedora back on his head and scratched idly along his hairline, frowning.

  "Got an idea, John?" Mildred asked quietly. She had been the most subdued since they had all awakened on the beds, and had so far kept quiet about her dreamlike experiences. The others had shared some details in order to try to work out what had happened to them.

  J.B. shook his head. "No, I was just wondering what exactly it is they want from us."

  "Guess find out soon," Jak commented, indicating Ryan with a curt nod of the head. "What they do with Krysty and Mildred?" he added.

  "I'm sure they'll have thought of something," Mildred said bitterly.

  Ryan raised himself on one elbow and told them exactly what had happened to him. When he had finished, Doc rose to his feet. He made as though to strike a lecturing pose, leaning on his cane, until he remembered that Murphy's men, once bitten, had taken it away from him.

  Doc cleared his throat. "Their behavior is most perplexing. I think we can agree that our experiences while unconscious we
re an attempt to in some way play with our most primal fears, possibly with the notion of reducing our resistance."

  Krysty nodded. "For some reason, it didn't affect Jak and myself in the same way as it did the rest of you. Perhaps there's some kind of mutated gene running in us that—"

  "What they used to call psychological warfare, but taken up a notch," J.B. interrupted. "I saw some old vid once about it. They've got so much stuff in this redoubt, most of it in some kind of running order. Why not a comp of some kind that could show us our fears?"

  "It worked all right," Ryan reflected. "I tried to hold out, but when Dean was threatened, I just caved in."

  "You shouldn't worry about me," Dean cut in angrily. "I stand or fall as one of us like everyone else. Don't treat me like a kid."

  "Point one, you are still a kid. Point two, Ryan's not saying he did it because of that. Are you, lover?" Krysty waited for Ryan to acknowledge before continuing, "The point is simply that he couldn't hold out because something in his mind wouldn't let him."

  "And that worries me," Ryan said, looking at J.B., who returned his gaze.

  "I'm with you there. If we get a chance to break, what's it going to do to us all?"

  "May I offer the suggestion that the only way to find out is to actually make that break?" Doc mused slowly. "I would hazard a guess that part of the effect is simply to make us doubt ourselves."

  "That makes sense," Mildred said with a nod.

  Jak shrugged. "All talk, need action. Mebbe make some?" He glanced at Ryan.

  The one-eyed man was about to answer when the door to the dormitory swung open, and Murphy stood in the doorway, flanked by two sec men. He had obviously learned a lesson from Panner's death, as both sec men had their blasters trained on the prisoners.

  He pointed at Mildred. "You're next." He crooked his finger and beckoned her. "Come on, baby. Time to answer a few questions. If you answer them right, then you may get a reward." He leered at her, and the two sec men flanking him broke their impassive stares to smile cruelly.