Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  During his time in the whitecoat hell that was the headquarters of Operation Chronos, Doc had experienced almost every kind of sedative and painkiller that had ever been formulated.

  This felt like the purest heroin…perhaps pure enough to kill him with one hit.

  "BY THE THREE KENNEDYS! A nightmare of morphia bliss and sullen joy. Ah, Alice, where is the Mad Hatter now? The Cheshire cat grins at me from beyond the boundaries of space and time. Yet he wears a white coat, my dear. Why is that? And why do you look at me so? For you are beautiful, and I have loved you truly…more truly than the spoken word can tell…"

  Doc's hand reached for Tricks's arm, fingers clawing at the air. In his eyes she could see the anguished terror of a man trying to keep a hold on what he believed to be reality while the images of his subconscious ramblings ran riot across his mind.

  With a moue of distaste she removed his hand from her arm and let it fall to his side, still clawing in involuntary spasms.

  "You poor bastard," she whispered, stroking Doc's sweating brow. "This is a complete waste of time, but at least I won't kill you. I promise that. You alone know what it'll be like for you when you get into Moebius, but at least you'll still be alive…after a fashion."

  Somewhere beneath his fevered ramblings, Doc was aware of what she was saying to him, and realized that there was no escape from being linked into the rat king. But he wouldn't have his skull trepanned, and he wouldn't have electrodes and diodes placed in the soft gray tissue of his brain.

  Through a fog of fevered rambling, babbling softly to himself all the while, Doc was able to follow Tricks's movements. Her soft fingers probed across his skull, parting the leonine mane of long white hair to find areas of the scalp that she marked with a stubby indelible pencil, licking the end and murmuring to herself as she found the spots she was seeking.

  She turned away, and Doc could hear her moving instruments on her workbench, the clatter of metal and the soft curses as she sought one particular item.

  She turned back, and he heard the buzz of electric clippers before he saw them in her hand. Humming tunelessly to herself, she shaved away small portions of his hair, making perfect circles of pink, exposed scalp around the small, purple indelible crosses.

  She switched off the clippers and headed back to the bench, returning to Doc with a series of rubber-tipped electrodes, small pads attached to the ends.

  "This won't hurt, Dr. Tanner," she said distractedly as she began to attach them methodically to the exposed areas of scalp. "I've been reading up on you from the material salvaged from the computer files. You really are a most remarkable man. It's interesting how your body seems to have taken the immense physical strain. I wouldn't have thought it would have manifested in such a fashion. Still, you never stop learning, eh? There," she added, standing back, "that's that done. There's no way I'm going to open you up, but this should secure you to the mainframe."

  With immense effort Doc managed to croak, "Why…others not like…this…?"

  Dr. Tricks put a hand on her hip and struck a pose that would have had a younger, less befuddled Doc Tanner thinking of his beloved Emily. Tricks's large, liquid brown eyes stared at him with an intensity that made him feel as if he wanted to melt into them.

  "It's quite simple," she said softly. "The original Moebius was made to last longer than it has, really. With the correct maintenance, it could still be going strong. Skydark changed all that. I'd guess the components were—shall we say—coerced into taking part. The removal of part of the skull and the direct inject was to make sure there was no going back. Seems to me that it wasn't strictly necessary, from a scientific point of view."

  Through the mist of the drug, Doc recalled the savagery of the whitecoats he had encountered in the twentieth century, and made a small moan of agreement.

  "You, on the other hand," she continued without acknowledging him, "are another matter entirely. I can't risk chilling you, not with Wallace breathing down my neck. I have to keep you alive, at least until Murphy gets his act together and we can dismantle the useless projects and utilize our resources properly. So you get the soft option…of sorts."

  She smiled, and it made Doc shiver, even through the narcotic haze.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He heard her turn and leave the room. There was a mumbling of voices, too distant through the drug to be coherent. With his eyes still closed, Doc heard footsteps into the room—the heavy clatter of combat boots. For one delirious moment he hoped it may be Ryan and John Barrymore, leading an attempt to free him.

  A slim hope, which was dashed as he heard Murphy's voice bark an order. The chair was unbolted from the floor, slipped onto a frame that jarred him, and he was wheeled out of the lab.

  He opened his eyes to see the strip lighting of the corridor ceiling slowly flash by above his head. He tried to look around, but his head felt too heavy and stuffed with cotton wool to respond.

  He was wheeled into an anteroom and left there. It could have been a few seconds, or it could have been a few years. Time was elastic and without meaning. Finally men in biohazard-suits entered the anteroom and sprayed him with what he took to be some kind of antiseptic. That done, they wheeled him into the main chamber.

  Doc was positioned where the now-departed Marine officer had spent the past century. He felt sharp pains in his hands and arms as the feeding tubes were inserted, felt the pressure as the liquid started to drip into his bloodstream.

  Was it imagination, or could he already feel his muscles start to atrophy?

  The tech finished attaching him to the apparatus that would keep him alive and prisoner in this room. Now came the moment he had been dreading. They took the cables attached to his head and inserted jacks into the mainframe computer. A series of codes was punched in.

  Doc felt a tingling sensation begin at the back of his brain and braced himself.

  Suddenly he was no longer in the room. A rush, a blinding light, and an immense spasm of pain that ran through his entire frame, making him convulse in spasms that passed slowly. The lights began to settle into shapes, the oppressive silence melted into white noise that resolved into pulses of static sound that eventually shaped into words.

  "Welcome to the torture machine, Dr. Tanner. Welcome to our nightmares."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Even though the storm was abating, and the conditions meant that they could see more than a few yards in front of them and weren't scoured by sprays of dirt and dust, it was still a long, hard slog toward the ville.

  "Don't these storms ever stop?" Mildred asked as she shook the dirt from her braids.

  Mac shook his head. "Not in the valley. That's just the way it is."

  They continued in silence through the relative calm. Limbs ached, skin was sore, resistance was low. Escape was the last thing they could think of at the moment. Despite the talk of a ritualistic chilling, Ryan felt they needed to reach the ville and assess the situation from there.

  And then there was Doc. If there was a chance they could get him back, then this would have to be taken. It would also give them access to a mat-trans.

  But before all else they had to actually reach the ville.

  The terrain was still flat, but there was a gradual incline on the distance. Looking ahead, Ryan could see the lip of the valley begin to form. They had to be only a few miles from the ville by now. It seemed to Ryan that the wild storms were contained within the bowl of the valley, and as they reached the edges the winds were allowed by nature to dissipate.

  There was more foliage and growth here. Not enough to support farming, but certainly a scattering of scrub that was more than they had seen so far.

  The natural corollary of this was there had to be wildlife of some kind. Ryan glanced at Jak, who was scanning the brush.

  "Things move—not dangerous…yet," the albino added with a lupine grin.

  J.B. turned to Mac. "What lives here?"

  Before the sec man answered, Ryan noted that the Armorer
's limp had grown worse. J.B. was almost dragging his left foot, relying more and more on Mildred to support him.

  Mac gestured expansively with his blaster. "Could be anything lives out here in this rad-blasted hole. Don't rightly know, as we never stick around long enough to find out. You follow my drift?"

  Ryan nodded, a wry grin cracking his dried and chaffed lips. For the first time he felt empathy with their captors. "Best way. Imagine the worst and you don't get surprised."

  "Right, One-eye. There are stories of strange creatures that live here, between the outside of the valley and the heart of the storm. Can't ever say that I've rightly seen anything, though. I guess they may just be as scared of us as we are of them."

  "That I doubt," J.B. interrupted. "Never seen a wild mutie creature that didn't want to rip your heart out."

  "Unless you rip first," Jak added.

  Dean didn't seem to be paying attention to the idle chatter, looking over to the left as he walked, with an intent expression.

  "What is it?" Krysty asked, noticing his distraction.

  "Don't know," Dean commented shortly. "Not yet. Some kind of movement over there."

  Krysty stopped and followed the line of Dean's arm. About fifty yards away, still partly obscured by the remnants of the storm, there was something that looked to Krysty like a small hill.

  "Gaia! What's doing that?" she exclaimed.

  Her cry brought Ryan and Mac back from their position at the front of the group. The two mute sec men, standing to Krysty's rear, made signs at Mac.

  Ryan gave him a questioning glance.

  Mac shrugged. "Yeah, weird. Looks like that hill over yonder—" he gestured with his blaster. "—is making itself as we watch."

  Ryan focused his one eye on the distant mound of earth. It was true. It was growing as he watched, a sign of something powerful. To see it grow from that distance meant that a generous amount of earth was being moved.

  "Don't like," Jak said pithily. "Anything moving under ground cause lot surprise."

  "Good call," Mildred said, looking around at the scrub. "Who knows what's lurking here?"

  Ryan turned to Mac. "Can I suggest we get out of here before whatever's doing that decides to come looking for us?"

  "Good idea." Mac turned to the two mute sec men. "Let's press on."

  Gesturing with his blaster, he led the way toward the lip of the valley and his ville. Ryan noticed that Mac had suddenly increased the pace at which they proceeded, obviously rattled by the sudden appearance of the earth mound, and wondered if J.B. would be able to keep up.

  The Armorer was finding it hard. The pain in his ankle was like a hot poker with every step, and despite Mildred's help it was difficult to keep up any kind of speed. What he desired most was just to sit down, ease his combat boot off his swollen foot and rest the aching limb. Yet he knew that this was impossible until they reached the ville. So he drove himself onward, sweat dripping off his brow, making his spectacles slip on the bridge of his nose and gathering around the brim of his fedora as he gritted his teeth and kept going.

  Now that they were near the edges of the valley, and the storm was reduced from a roar to a whisper, it was possible to hear other noises. Dean was aware of a rustling from the brush to his left—the same direction as the mound—and whirled in surprise.

  "Hot pipe! What's that bastard thing?" he yelled, taking a sideways step to move more toward the center of the group.

  Mac raised his blaster and fired into the brush. There was an agonized yelp, and a creature flung itself toward the group. It rushed at J.B. and Mildred, almost as though it had instinctively picked out the weak link in the group chain.

  "Dark night," J.B. breathed, falling back and pulling Mildred with him as the creature, now in its death throes, flung itself at them. As they hit the ground, it flew over them, thudding to earth a few feet away, twitching.

  "Take a look at that," the Armorer said, pulling himself painfully to his feet and hobbling over to where it lay.

  "That's an evil-looking bastard," Mac said, bending to examine it. Ryan crouched beside him.

  "Just look at those," he commented, indicating the creature's teeth. "They could really do some damage."

  "And would have done, if John hadn't been so quick," Mildred added, shrugging off the twinge of pain in her shoulder where she had landed awkwardly.

  The creature was a sobering sight as it lay on the dry earth. The blood had ceased to flow where the creature had died, but enough had leaked out to color the dull earth, framing its corpse. It was eighteen inches long in the body, with short, dark gray fur. The head had elongated jaws and almost reptilian black eyes that were now hollow and empty in death.

  The jaws were what drew the attention immediately. Long and powerful, they had large incisors that were sharpened almost to points. Mac prodded the jaws with the barrel of his blaster and pushed back the dead lips. The other teeth were also sharpened, uneven and yellow with scraps of meat and vegetable matter caught between them.

  The body was thin and wiry, with short front paws that had wicked claws and powerful back legs that could spring long distances. The muscles seemed bunched, almost bursting out of the fur. The tail was vast and bushy, almost as long as the body, with a gradation of gray coloring that would probably act as good camouflage in the colorless scrub.

  "That's the most bastard evil-looking squirrel I've ever seen," Ryan said.

  Mildred nodded her agreement. "Nasty little mutie. Let's hope its little brothers and sisters don't decide to exact vengeance on us."

  J.B. pushed his fedora back on his head and cast a glance around at the scrub. "If that's a nest of some kind," he said, indicating the distant mound, "and that's the direction this little fucker came from, then I wouldn't give much for our chances if we don't keep moving."

  "Good call," Ryan said, turning to Mac.

  "So I guess this is as good a time as any to ask for our blasters back."

  The sec man looked at him askance. "You've got to be kidding, One-eye. What guarantee have I got that you won't just chill us and be on your way?"

  "None, I guess," Ryan said calmly. "But we outnumber you already, and it wouldn't be too hard for us to try and take you down. We could, but it'd be triple stupe right now. If there are more of these little bastards, then we need to all be prepared, or else none of us are going to reach your pesthole ville."

  Mac thought about it, but not for too long, as he cast a worried glance across to the mound. There were rustlings in the brush that could have been more of the creatures approaching, or could have been nothing more than the breeze in that part of the valley. Did he really want to take that chance?

  "Okay," he said finally. "Give them the hardware."

  The mute sec men unhooked their backpacks and opened them. Ryan received his panga, the SIG-Sauer and Steyr, returning them to their places on his body and feeling at once better balanced. J.B. was glad to see his knife, Uzi and S&W M-4000. Jak received his Colt Python .357 Magnum to go with his secreted knives. Testing the balance of her ZKR, Mildred felt more comfortable with the encroaching dangers. Dean checked his Browning Hi-Power and looked around, scanning the horizon. Last blaster out of the backpacks was Krysty's .38-caliber S&W. She pocketed it in her fur coat, preferring to wait until it was necessary to draw.

  "That's better," Ryan said, checking his group. "We can all cover ourselves and each other now."

  "Just as long as it is each other," Mac added warily.

  "Listen, stupe, if I wanted to blow you away right now, I could," Ryan gritted, leveling the SIG-Sauer at Mac's chest. "But I don't. You want us for this bastard ritual chilling—we want you to guide us out of here. It's equal now. When we hit your ville, it's everyone for themselves. But until then…"

  He lowered the SIG-Sauer.

  "Guess I can't argue with that," Mac commented, switching his attention to the surrounding brush, where the noise and scufflings were on the increase. "Also guess we've got something to worry about
."

  They were clustered together on a rough trail that ran through the brush, worn down over a space of decades by raiding and hunting parties that had ventured that far into the valley. It was less than three feet across before the wild foliage started to take hold again, springing up sparsely but with enough clumping of brush to provide cover for something small and deadly, like the mutie squirrel that lay at their feet.

  "Okay, let's move off," Ryan whispered, assuming command as Mac seemed unwilling to move, and set off in the direction of the lip of the valley, Mac falling in behind him.

  Mildred hung back to support J.B. as he hobbled to bring up the rear.

  "I'm a liability, Millie," he said quietly, grimacing through the pain.

  "Don't think about it, John. We just need to keep going until we're out of danger. With that psychotic bitch out of the way, and three sec men outnumbered by us, I guess we might have a chance to negotiate with the ville's baron. If we can do that, then I might get a chance to have a better look at that ankle."

  "Don't kid yourself, Millie. This isn't going to get better, and I don't want it to be the reason you're chilled. First sign of trouble, you think of yourself."

  "Like you would?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

  Despite the pain, it still raised a smile from the Armorer. "Mebbe."

  Looking ahead of her, Mildred could see that already a gap had opened up between them and the rest of the group. Ryan wasn't setting that fast a pace. It was more an indication of how J.B.'s ankle was slowing them.

  Mildred was about to call to Ryan to wait for them when it happened.

  There was a sudden silence from the brush, as though all the hidden life within had, at a silent command, ceased to move. A moment of eerie silence was then broken by a wild screeching that began as one animal and increased as more and more joined in the cry, a cacophony of screeching that drowned out the fading noise of the storm.

  "Fireblast! What the—?"

  Ryan's shout was interrupted by the explosive crack of Dean's Browning Hi-Power as the boy sighted one of the mutie squirrels springing from the brush.