Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  “By the Three Kennedys!” he exclaimed, realizing that he was about to blow J.B. into pieces. “John Barrymore!” he yelled, jerking his arm up at the last moment so that the round of shot was discharged harmlessly into the air, ripping the overhanging foliage to shreds and chilling a few birds, but coming nowhere near harming the Armorer.

  J.B. blanched, felt the blood drain from his face. It was so close that he could hear his heart thumping in his chest, his head prickle and feel faint as lights exploded around him and the deafening roar of the LeMat shut out everything else.

  For a moment, everyone else in the gathering had been silent, all mute witness to the drama unfolding. The explosion of the LeMat seemed to galvanize them into action. With a yell, the woman in the hunting party threw herself at Ryan, wielding her knife in an amateurish, over-hand action. It was easy for the one-eyed warrior to sidestep her clumsy attack and club her to the ground with the hilt of the panga.

  The off-hand manner in which he did this, and the fact that he didn’t seem to take her attack seriously enough to chill her, only seemed to enrage the four men all the more. With a volley of screams, they launched themselves at their prey.

  The companions couldn’t afford to take chances. Given time, they might have tried to overpower the hunters and find out about their village. They needed food and shelter, perhaps a boat to take them across the inlet. Chilling five of the inhabitants wasn’t the best way to show peaceful intent. However, with the noise of Doc’s pistol likely to attract more attention, and all of it hostile, it became an imperative to free themselves from the hunting party. Especially as these five had made it clear their intent was to take no prisoners.

  The four men were faced by Mildred, Krysty and Jak. Each carried a blade, but the one facing Jak looked suddenly uncertain as he caught the cold gleam in the eyes of the albino hunter and paused midflight to try to draw his ancient revolver. It caught him in a no-man’s-land of indecision, and area where he could expect to be shown no mercy.

  With a slow, almost lazy gait, Jak stepped toward the man, feinting with one arm and using the other to pull a precise, tight arc that took in the attacker’s right-hand side. This was the side holding the knife, and it dropped from nerveless fingers as the leaf-bladed knife sliced cleanly through the flesh of his lower arm and wrist, blood dribbling and spurting from the wound, severed nerves causing his fingers to open. The villager looked at his suddenly lifeless fingers, hanging loose and open, all intent of grabbing his revolver with his left hand forgotten. Not that he had much time to stand and stare, as the continuing arc carved up the side of his head, splitting the flesh from jaw to hairline, before a flick of Jak’s wrist took the blade down again, the point burrowing into his exposed neck—opened to a clean blow by the instinctive jerking back of his head as the flesh was carved—and, with a gentle pirouette of the blade, severing the carotid artery so that the man’s lifeblood pumped out, hissing and steaming across the surrounding foliage.

  Mildred and Krysty had three men opposing them, and with the extra player it should have been simple for the hunters to take down the women. However, they showed their lack of experience in such matters by rushing blindly for their opponents.

  Krysty sidestepped and tripped one of the hunters, whose impetus carried him into an uncontrolled tumble, his flailing arms catching the man next to him and throwing him off balance. As the first hunter careened out of range, Krysty stepped in close to the unbalanced man and drove her blade up under the rib cage, catching a lung and puncturing it before pulling back, using the heel of her free hand to pummel the attacker’s head back, pushing him back off her blade. His punctured lung began to fill with blood, starting to drown him. But before he had a chance to make a last, dying lunge, Krysty wheeled and kicked out, her leg coming up to his head height, the heel of her silver-tipped cowboy boot catching him at the temple, sending him backward, unconscious before he hit the ground, his last drowning moments lost in darkness.

  Mildred was less extravagant with her attacker. Partly because this hunter had a little more awareness than the others, and stayed his rush just enough to jerk back and avoid the full thrust of her attack, the knife scoring his chest, cutting through his shirt, but not stopping him. As Mildred attempted to pull back, he closed in on her. She could feel his hot breath, smell the fear in his sweat, see it in his eyes, as he attempted to pin her back against a tree with one arm and drive his knife into her eye with the other. She could almost see the point grow larger in her right eye, her own knife arm pinned across her body.

  She had only one chance. She jerked her knee savagely upward, catching him in the groin. It didn’t fully land in the soft sac of his balls, but it was close enough to make him yelp in pain and loose his grip on her. It also deflected his arm enough for her to move her head, one of her plaits pinned to the tree by the point of his blade.

  Mildred pushed him back a couple of steps, enough for her to bring her arm back and step forward, slicing across him with the razor-sharp, leaf-bladed knife, cutting his face from the corner of his eye across his nose and top lip, a flap of flesh falling bloodily free. He screamed and instinctively clapped a hand to where his eyeball was bleeding white goo down his opened cheek, dropping his own knife. Ignoring the pull of her plait as she tugged it free of the knife and the tree, Mildred wasted no time in following up on her initial attack, driving the knife up to the hilt into his chest. He gasped and coughed blood over her hand and arm, looking bewildered and astonished as he slumped toward her. She moved back, tugging at the knife to free it as he fell onto her. She cursed and let go of the knife, in case he fell and pinned her underneath.

  Meanwhile, Ryan was making short shrift of the careening hunter, who had lost his balance and fallen at the feet of the one-eyed man. He looked up into the ice-blue orb, knowing that his time had come to buy the farm. It was almost too easy for Ryan, and he felt a twinge of regret as he sliced through the man’s neck with the panga, almost severing his head from his body with the force of the blow, taking off three fingers from the man’s hand where he, at the last, tried to protect himself from the chilling blow.

  A growling sound to his rear made Ryan suddenly spin. The woman had regained consciousness in time to see her compatriots routed, and was determined to try to take one of the companions with her if she had to buy the farm. With a manic cry she launched herself toward Ryan, her blade held high above her head.

  It was an incredibly stupid and unskilled thing for her to do, and only reinforced the one-eyed man’s opinion that these weren’t habitual fighters. Although she was in close proximity to Ryan, her stance left her body completely open, and one thrust from the panga was enough to impale her, the light of fury dying in her eyes to be replaced by bemusement as she dropped her blade from fingers rendered nerveless by her sudden demise.

  “Fireblast, what a stupe fuckup,” Ryan swore as he pulled out the blood-slicked blade. “There’s no way we can approach the village now, and they’ll be after us.”

  “Ryan, I—” Doc began, but the one-eyed man cut him short.

  “Don’t have to explain, Doc. Shit happens. You okay, J.B.?”

  The Armorer was still shaking his head to clear it from his near-chilled experience. “Guess so—guess I’ll have to be.”

  Ryan checked the others. They were covered in blood, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Shit,” he cursed loudly. “We really didn’t need that. Let’s get moving away from here.”

  “Yeah, triple quick,” Jak added, inclining his head. “Can hear more, coming fast.”

  Chapter Four

  “This way. Keep the noise low and keep triple red,” Ryan said in an urgent whisper, straining to hear the noise that had alerted Jak. A questioning glance brought an answer from the albino hunter.

  “’Bout five minutes away, moving fast. There,” Jak added, indicating a direction away to the left.

  Ryan nodded and continued to move to the right. He hoped that there was only one party coming
out to investigate the blasterfire.

  “Ryan, I recce then report,” Jak continued. “Go that way, I scout ahead.”

  The one-eyed man was wary. He would prefer to keep his people together, and Jak moving about could draw friendly fire unless they held back. And if they did, it might be on a foe rather than a friend. But the albino youth had the ability to move almost silently, and there were other problems. They couldn’t go back, as this would drive them back into the desert. They had to forge ahead and somehow skirt around the village and the pursuing war parties. The only way it seemed that they could do this was if they had prior knowledge of their opponents whereabouts.

  Jak was the obvious choice.

  All that went through Ryan’s head in a flash before he nodded at Jak. “Yeah, do it,” he said simply.

  The albino hunter grinned briefly, then melted into the undergrowth, only the slightest rustling of foliage marking his passing.

  Ryan turned his attention to his chosen direction. “Keep those blasters ready, and stick close,” he ordered as he took the panga in hand and began to clear a path through the woods. Behind him, each of the companions kept an impassive silence, faces set, and lost in their own thoughts as they followed him.

  JAK MOVED SILENTLY through the woods, circumventing the source of the noise. He didn’t want to cross the path of the group that was beating its way toward the scene of combat, and he figured that the best way to observe them would be to move around and in behind, where they would least expect anyone.

  The albino youth paused and listened intently. He could pick out at least half a dozen sets of footfalls, perhaps more. It was hard to tell in the crashing of the undergrowth. He tried to pick out how many voices were exchanging whispered and urgent messages. The words were indistinguishable among the other sounds, but he could hear at least four different voices, no more. So at least two weren’t talking. He reckoned there were probably six in the chasing pack. Not too bad as odds went.

  The war party crashing through the jungle was causing a major disturbance among the wildlife. Birds and animals were making noise, alarmed by the intruders and still agitated in the aftermath of Doc’s LeMat discharging among them. The treetops were rustling and moving as birds, squirrels and other small mammals hopped from limb to limb, tree to tree, moving in a blind panic.

  It could be just the cover he needed. Jak scrutinized the canopy of tree cover with a practiced eye. The limbs on each tree were strong, and they seemed to hang close together. It would be easy to leap those that were a little apart; the others he could just crawl across. Jak’s vulpine grin spread across his scarred visage—the hunter in pursuit of the hunters.

  Jak scaled the nearest tree, moving smoothly up the gnarled trunk, which gave him a multiplicity of easy foot and handholds. Once up into the lower limbs, he edged out, carefully testing the weight. He was able to move with ease along them, and he was soon scudding across the canopy of leaf cover, using the sounds of the disturbed bird and animal life to mask his progress.

  In a matter of a few minutes, he was just to the rear of the hunting party. Circling them widely enough to escape detection, but close enough to get the members in sight quickly, he settled onto a limb as they stumbled across the scene of combat.

  Still, as though he were now a part of the tree rather than an alien presence on the limb, Jak sat and watched while the hunting party were stopped in its tracks at the sight of the carnage. There were six of them, as he had guessed, two women and four men. Two of the men were weatherbeaten and looked old, although they still moved easily and without the stiffness he would expect from age. The other two were younger, one of them nursing a large gut, but otherwise looking strong. The women were both young, with long, muscular limbs. One of them had large breasts that bounced as she moved, made more obvious by the belt of ammo that was slung in a diagonal across her chest. She carried a remade AK-47, which failed to account for the belt, as it was fed by a magazine. The other woman, however, was carrying what looked to Jak like a Sharps, which would necessitate the belt. But why wasn’t she carrying it?

  No matter, except that perhaps it told of this party being unused to combat. Certainly, Jak would have put the village down as a fishing community, with little need for much blaster use when they were this isolated. They were also unused to seeing the results of battle. This much was obvious from the way the young man with the pendulous belly turned away and hurled the contents of his stomach onto the grass. The woman with the Sharps went over to comfort him while the others just looked, dumbfounded.

  “Shit, must be an army,” the other woman whispered.

  “Or just good,” one of the old men commented. “Too fucking good, I figure.”

  “Good or not, we owe them for this,” the other young man snarled. “They thought they were only chasing game. They weren’t expecting this.”

  The two older men exchanged glances. The one who had spoken previously said quietly, “They should have been expecting anything. So should we.”

  The other man moved in the direction that the companions had forged their path. He studied the undergrowth. “Moved this way,” he said thoughtfully. “Figure that they’re moving out to the west and trying to get around the side of the village, which means that they’ll move right into the regular scouts.”

  The younger man grinned. There was something in it that spoke of the smell of vengeance in his nostrils. “Serve them right. Take them alive and make them suffer… Hey, Leroy, you hear that?” he asked suddenly. “Up there somewhere…”

  “Only the birds, Tyne, only the birds,” the old man replied, following the younger man’s gaze. “What we want is over that away.”

  Indeed he was correct. Jak had already vacated his vantage point and was speeding through the upper reaches of the trees, on his way to meet up with the companions. He had only heard the one group moving through the woods, but if the regular sec patrol they spoke of would cross paths over to the west, then there was no way that he would have been able to detect them. And there was little chance that the others would to know they were there until it was too late.

  At the back of his mind, it struck him that the hunting party, and those they had chilled, had been dressed like people from a ville that was poor. The clothes were threadbare and well worn. They’d need something hardier as a predominantly fishing ville. And why the hell were they hunting game when they were supposed to get most of their food from the seas? It was starting to look as though the companions had walked straight into someone else’s crisis. But right now, that was unimportant. It could wait until they were in the clear, past all possible attack.

  Behind him, he could hear the hunting party start to follow the trail left by the companions. He would be able to outrun them easily and reach Ryan and his people before the hunters, but would he be able to reach them before they crossed paths with the sec patrol?

  A FEW MILES AWAY to the west, Ryan and the rest of the companions were moving through the woodlands at a rapid pace. The idea was to put as much ground between them and the scene of combat in as quick a time as possible. The farther they were from the scene, the harder it would be for the pursuing party to catch them, for there was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that the trail would be easy enough to follow. It was virtually impossible for five people to cut their way through the undergrowth without leaving a trace of their passing. So speed was their best weapon.

  They couldn’t know that the faster they went, the longer it took Jak to reach them, the more they were hacking their way into a trap.

  They continued, regardless. They couldn’t hear the distant approach of another party, the noise of their own progress obscuring the distance.

  JAK HAD NEVER MOVED SO FAST, and with so little caution. There was no point. He had left the hunting party far behind, and knew that the only other sec party in the woodlands was to the west.

  His red eyes were unblinking, every nerve ending screaming, the blood pumping at a bursting rate as he pushed his muscles, s
pringing from branch to branch, sometimes landing on the toes of his combat boots and trusting his arms to carry the bulk of his weight on an overhead limb. Once or twice his feet had slipped on guano or moss that had gathered on a limb, and his arms felt as though they would be wrenched from his shoulders as his feet flailed into empty air, slipping off their perch, the momentum increasing his weight at these moments.

  But his luck held, and he carried on his way, making time and ground as fast as was humanly possible.

  The trouble was, he needed to be more than human.

  “I WOULD HATE TO BREAK SILENCE at such a moment, my dear Ryan, but I feel I must,” Doc blurted suddenly, his previously purposeful stride faltering as he stumbled, turning his head to the rear. He was second from last in the line, with J.B. bringing up guard position.

  “Doc, this is no time—” Ryan began, but J.B. cut him short.

  “Doc’s not bullshitting,” he snapped. “Wait—listen…”

  Ryan, Mildred and Krysty stopped.

  “Fireblast! Who the hell is that?” Ryan hissed.

  “Doesn’t matter. Whoever they are, they’re nearly on us,” J.B. snapped, bringing his Uzi up to level.

  Ryan couldn’t believe they’d been so slack as to miss the oncoming sound of another hunting party. It couldn’t be the one they were avoiding, as these had to be some distance behind. It had to be another who had guessed their path and cut them off, for these sounds were coming from in front of them.

  There was a rustling in the trees behind them. The one-eyed warrior looked up, but could see nothing: the noise continued past them. He looked at his people. They seemed as bemused by this as he was himself.

  Before any of them had the chance to say a word, the rustling continued and Jak appeared before them, springing down from the trees.

  “Different party. Five. Handblasters and blowpipes,” he said without preamble. “Only minute, mebbe two, and coming right for us.”