Seedling

by James Axler

  Every route he tried he found himself barred by the stomping boots of patrol. The main positive result of his extended recce was his learning that relatively few of the creatures seemed to be carrying any kind of blaster. Most had homemade knives and axes, while some hefted spears. Virtually all wore short wooden clubs at their hips.

  As with all mutie communities, there were discrep­ancies in appearance. But this time there was a sur­prising consistency in the scalies. All were male, mostly between five foot four and five foot nine, though Ryan spotted a few that scraped six feet. All had long jaws and sunken nostrils, as well as the coarse, scaled skin that gave them their name.

  They occupied a large part of the Mattan section of the ville. Ryan wasn't sure about street numbering, but it seemed that it ran from roughly West Twenty-third down south about nine or ten blocks, then westward from Ninth Avenue

  , clear to the ravaged dock area on the North River.

  Some freak of blast-and-missile-attack patterns a hundred years ago had left some of the buildings standing, particularly the low warehouses close to the water. Windows and doors were gone, splintered and burned and melted by the nuke-heat, but walls and roofs were often secure.

  The other main fact Ryan learned was that the scalies had opened up amazing communication routes through cellars and sewers.

  One small group of half a dozen that he was shad­owing disappeared into a doorway, and he heard their studded boots clattering down steps.

  Moving with slow, infinite care, he closed in on the entrance. But before he'd reached it, the same patrol erupted from an enlarged manhole cover in the cen­ter of the highway, a hundred yards away.

  They took him by surprise.

  "Hey!"

  The voice was deep and harsh, like a large saw hacking at a rusting iron.

  "Fireblast!" Ryan spun on his heel and sprinted for his life.

  At the nearest corner he glanced back over his shoulder, seeing the muties lumbering after him. One had some sort of long gun at his shoulder, and Ryan heard the flat crack as it was fired. But he had no idea where the bullet went.

  It was easy to outdistance them, but the whole area was infested with the creatures.

  A high, thin whistle sounded, which was answered by others behind him. He heard more to the right… and the left. And ahead.

  When you were being hunted, one of the greatest dangers was to run blind. To run blind was to run into the hunters. Ryan flattened himself into the empty doorway of a long-gone store.

  The original crosshatched pattern of roads that had intersected the ville was partly vanished. Where there had been great craters and tumbled buildings, alter­native routes had been painstakingly cut around the obstacles, sometimes weaving through 180 degrees and making it difficult to maintain any sense of di­rection.

  The whistles and shouts were all around him now. This was the scalies' turf, and there wasn't likely to be any hiding place for blocks around that they didn't know.

  Move, Ryan urged himself.

  To the right, some way off, he could see the origi­nal squad of muties still plodding steadily toward him. To the left, which was the direction he wanted to go, the main highway was clear.

  He started off at a fast jog, his pistol in his hand. The whistles were growing louder and nearer, pierc­ing. For a moment Ryan thought he caught the dis­tant sound of a powerful wag's engine. But it vanished, if it had ever been there.

  An alley opened on the far side of the street, and he sprinted for it. The walls were three stories high, barely five feet across. The ground was cobbled, un­even, slippery with the damp. A thin layer of phos­phorescent green moss gleamed on the stones on both sides of the passage.

  Ahead, Ryan could now see brighter light, signal­ing the end of the cut-through. He slowed down, looking behind him. The noise of pursuing boots was magnified by the alley.

  "Stop there!" the voice came from one of several figures that suddenly appeared ahead, blocking the exit.

  Ryan spun around.

  Scalies waited at that end, as well.

  "Oh, shit," he muttered.

  Chapter Thirty

  "CACOËTHES," DOC BOOMED.

  "What?" Krysty asked.

  "Cacoëthes," he repeated.

  Mildred stood and stretched. "Yeah, we heard what you said. We don't know what the hell it means."

  "Ah, yes, I was just allowing my mind to take a small wander on its own, down into the little rustic lanes of my memory."

  "Dangerous paths to walk," Krysty replied. "Never know what you're going to meet, lurking around the next corner."

  "Quite so, quite so. Hence, my use of the word. Cacoëthes. An aged poet taught me the word a year or so before the skies darkened. He said it meant an itch that you shouldn't scratch. A kind of bad habit."

  "What made you think about that?" Mildred asked. "What bad habit were you remembering?"

  The old man smiled in the basement's gloom. "There you have it, my dear. I fear I've completely forgotten what it was I'd remembered. Isn't that the way of the world?"

  Behind them, lying bundled in layers of malodor­ous blankets, J.B. groaned, his head shaking from side to side.

  "Had to tie his hands to his belt in the end," Mildred said. "While you and Doc were taking a look around the block, he was trying to tear his face open. The insect bite's driving him stark crazy."

  "He worse?" Krysty asked.

  Mildred took a long time answering. "I don't think John's going to make it. The coma's deepening, and I don't know what to do. The lump is enormous, and it kind of vibrates when I touch it. like it's alive."

  "Perhaps Ryan will return lathered and spurred, like the man who brought the good antibiotics from Ghent to Aix."

  Krysty shook her head. "Truth is, Doc, half the time I just don't know what you're talking about."

  J.B. cried out, making them all look toward him. It was close to a scream, sounding as though it had been torn from the depths of his soul. Mildred ran back and knelt down, peering at him. "Oh, sweet Je­sus!" she breathed.

  THE TRADER HAD BEEN big on logical advice. Even though it might differ from day to day.

  "Get in a trap, and your best chance is to go back. Least you know what it's like where you've been."

  Then again.

  "Find yourself ambushed, and your best chance of not buying the farm is to go forward like goose shit off a shovel. They won't be expecting that."

  Ryan's fighting brain didn't think about either op­tion for more than a tiny splinter of time. His blaster had fifteen rounds of 9 mm, and one of his pockets held two more loaded mags.

  He snapped off three shots, half turned, aiming at his pursuers. He didn't pause to see what happened, knowing that all three rounds must have found flesh and bone. The scalies had packed the end of the alley, making a miss impossible. The SIG-Sauer, with its built-in baffle silencer, only made a rather apologetic coughing sound.

  Ryan had already decided he was going to follow the second bit of Trader's battle advice. The ones be­hind him knew who he was, but those in front of would only have heard shouts and whistles. They knew there was some major alarm, but wouldn't have any idea what to expect.

  As he powered himself along the last few yards of the constricting alleyway, he squeezed the trigger five more times, seeing the press of bodies that blocked the light simply evaporate. There were screams and deep-chested roars of agony.

  Ryan didn't hesitated or break step, bursting from the mouth of the passage, vaulting a pile of tumbled, bloodied bodies. A squat scalie was swinging a long-handled ax toward him, and he shot him through his gaping jaws.

  "Nine," the one-eyed man muttered, keeping score from force of habit.

  Now he had a heartbeat to look around and see where he was, weigh up the options and make his move.

  The immediate bad news was that there were at least four more scalies, standing with a line of twenty or so chained norms. On the credit side was the open space beyond them, showing a wide
stretch of clear street.

  At his back was screaming chaos; in front, an un­earthly, shocked silence. Once again Ryan thought he heard the distant sound of a wag, but he still couldn't be certain. And he had more pressing matters on his mind.

  The scalie guards were absurdly slow to react, stunned by the appearance of the man who'd just blasted down so many of their colleagues. The chained humans were quicker.

  "Don't chill us!" one shouted.

  "Give in or they'll…" began a skinny man with a narrow, foxy face.

  Ryan didn't wait to hear any more. The only chance of freedom lay in their direction.

  "Over, under, around or through" had been the Trader's rule, meaning that there was always a way.

  The only possibility was "through."

  Two more bullets from the blaster took out the scalies guarding the left side of the line. Ryan ran at them, waving the SIG-Sauer, conscious of only hav­ing four rounds left in the mag.

  The skinny man made a sudden, unexpected dive toward him, pulled up short by the chain around his throat. But Ryan's reflexes were too quick. He snapped off a shot, the bullet only creasing the side of the captive's pallid face as he was jerked back­ward.

  He still went down, screaming, pulling everyone else with him.

  Ryan tried to dodge, slipping on the wet, greasy stones, falling to one hand and one knee, barely keeping his balance and avoiding losing hold of the blaster.

  "Fireblast!"

  The man he'd wounded was thrashing like a gaffed eel, fingers grasping at Ryan's leg. The mark of the bullet stood out, livid, on his skin. The bloody graze, already surrounded by a swelling black bruise, where the kinetic energy of the 9 mm bullet brushing by had been momentarily absorbed by his flesh.

  Ryan clubbed him across the temple with the butt of the SIG-Sauer, nearly two pounds of cold metal cracking the skull like a pin hammer.

  There was the snap of a small-caliber pistol being fired. A woman with a birthmark across her right cheek cried out as the bullet struck her in the shoul­der.

  In the shambles it wasn't too difficult for Ryan to regain his feet and spring away, head back, arms pumping, feeling the breath tearing in his chest as he ran, knowing that speed was now his only hope.

  Two more guns fired, and he heard one of the bul­lets hiss past him, only a yard or so wide. He hadn't figured on scalies being able to shoot with that much accuracy, and he began to jink and dodge.

  A little dog, with stubby legs and a long, low-slung body, scampered out from a doorway, yapping at the top of its voice. Ryan cursed at it and it backed away, whining.

  Now the whistling began again, echoing and bouncing off the miles of ruins around him, shrill blasts that seemed to be warning the whole ville that Ryan Cawdor was loose in the highways and should be hunted down and butchered in the gutter like rabid vermin.

  Ryan needed to find his way out in a northerly di­rection, moving eastward, as well. But this street was blocked at the next intersection to his right, forcing him back toward the west and the river. And the heartland of the scalies.

  A long mutie lurched from a covered manhole only fifty yards in front of the running man, trying to heave itself out into the open, struggling to draw a thin-bladed knife as it did.

  Ryan swerved away, resisting the temptation to put a bullet through the seamed, reptilian head. Four rounds wouldn't take him far.

  He rounded another corner of a devastated block, which offered him the easternly run he wanted.

  Ahead of him the street was empty, with a cross­roads looming, wide and clear.

  Now he could hear the loud rumble of a gas-powered engine.

  Scalies didn't drive wags, he thought to himself. Then again, they didn't form themselves into bastard armies with lightning badges on their black berets.

  He slowed to a jog, looking behind him and won­dering if he had time to change mags on the blaster. But the puff of powder smoke from an old rifle and the ricochet of the bullet near his feet convinced him to keep moving.

  In the distance, from a side alley, he saw a dozen scalies appear, most of them armed with blasters.

  The net was closing. And fast.

  IN THE CELLAR J.B. seemed to have gone into a cat­atonic trance. His body was stiff and rigid, legs and arms like staves of beechwood, the muscles of his neck taut and quivering. His mouth was pulled back in a rictus of pain, like the grin of a corpse. His eyes were nearly shut, but they showed a narrow strip of white beneath the lids.

  Krysty and Doc stood to one side, allowing the light from the fire to fall across their friends, taking care not to get in the way of Mildred as she knelt by J.B.'s side.

  Her eyes were fixed on the place where the Ar­morer had been bitten. Her thin lips were shut tight, and she was breathing through her nose.

  "No, Mildred," Krysty said, her voice reflecting the horror she felt.

  "Only way."

  Doc coughed. "I'll do it."

  Mildred looked at him. "Bravest thing you ever said, Doc. I won't forget it. But it's down to me. I've got to do it."

  ANOTHER SMALLER PATROL of the lizardlike muties had appeared on Ryan's right, shutting him off com­pletely from the direction of safety. The only route still not closed was westerly, where they could herd him through the gray dockside to the edge of the river. And there they would take him.

  The sound of the Klaxon was surprisingly loud, booming from the blind side of the next corner. With a screeching of brakes a wag appeared, heading for Ryan. It was less than sixty yards away, cutting him off from the large group of scalies.

  At a quick glance it looked to Ryan like an ar­mored recce wag, eight-wheeled. If it held scalies, then the heavy machine gun on the turret would quickly wipe him away.

  As the wag came to a shuddering halt twenty paces in front of him, the turret began to swing. Now he saw that the blaster was a Bushmaster automatic cannon.

  It stopped, pointing directly at him.

  The entry port, just forward of the turret, began to open.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  DOC HAD PUT some thin, dry sticks on the fire, and they now burned with a bright golden flame, filling the basement with warmth and light.

  Now they could all see the swelling on the side of J.B.'s face very clearly. Near the angle of the jaw, the lump extended down to his neck.

  "They're hatching," the old man said, voice thickened with disgust.

  The surface of J.B.'s skin was stretched so tightly that movement could almost be detected—the move­ment of the wriggling maggots, progeny of the eggs that had been laid in the moment of the mutie fly's sting. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them, coiling and twining as they fed on J.B.'s living flesh.

  "Put that can of water in the fire to boil," Mildred directed.

  In places the tiny, voracious worms had already begun to eat their way out, perforating the skin of the man's cheek, seething in their warm nest as they hatched.

  "Now!"

  RYAN BLINKED, unable to believe what he was see­ing. Over the years he'd come across a number of books and magazines with all sorts of pix of the times before sky-dark. Any from December showed illus­trations of the mythical figure called Santa Claus, sometimes called Father Christmas.

  As the entry port opened, a face appeared, rising from the dark depths of the wag. The hair was white and wavy, curling around the ears. A full beard and mustache were also white as snow. The eyes under bushy white brows were bright blue. There wasn't much left to see of the rest of the visage, but the cheeks were rosy, as though the man had been sitting too close to a fire.

  To add to the surreal apparition, he was also wear­ing a bright scarlet sweater with long sleeves.

  Behind Ryan a rifle cracked, and the bullet pinged off the front of the wag, leaving a raw scrape of bright silver metal.

  "Best be moving, outie."

  Ryan didn't hesitate, vaulting up on the front of the black-painted vehicle. The jovial figure vanished, and he was able to slide into the
port.

  "Close the hatch, outie, or we'll be getting scalies in our laps."

  The diesel engine roared, loud in the confines of the steel box. Ryan was aware that there were at least two other men inside, as well as White Beard. One was in the driver's seat, peering out through the ob-slit, wearing goggles. The other could be seen from the thighs down, standing, head and shoulders in the turret.

  "Want me to roast 'em, Harry?" the disembodied voice asked.

  "Like killing ants with molten silver," came the reply from behind Ryan.

  "Back home?" the driver called.

  "And don't spare the horsepower." Another bul­let rapped smartly on the arma-plate, ringing like a bell.

  "Sure you don't want a few rounds up their scalie asses?"

  "Haste is waste, Lee. Let's go." He tapped Ryan on the shoulder. "Unless you have anywhere you partic­ularly prefer, Mr…?"

  "Cawdor. Ryan Cawdor. You're Harry…?"

  "Stanton. People sometimes call me—"

  "The King of the Underworld," Ryan completed. "Small ville, isn't it?"

  KRYSTY WATCHED, impassive, managing to over­come her revulsion. In the far corner Doc was stooped over, vomiting noisily, unable to control his over­whelming nausea, trying to apologize in between bursts of puking.

  Mildred ignored him, ignored everything except the task of trying to save J.B.

  Using the point of one of the Armorer's knives, she managed to open up the swelling, lancing it so that the tiny maggots erupted out across his face and neck in a writhing, seething mass. Mildred scraped them away, trying to clear out the suppurating wound. The smell of decay seemed to expand until it filled the en­tire cellar.

  Doc had just started to move toward them when he spun on his heel and retired to his corner again, gag­ging at the stench.

  Krysty had to call on all of her inner power not to go with him.

  Mildred continued to breathe fast and shallow through parted lips.

  "Can't get them all. I need something like a spoon or a suction pump. Still some buried in the subcuta­neous layers."