Shatter Zone

by James Axler

  Only then did he remember the bandage on his scalp. Could the mutie smell the dried blood? Did it know he was near? Jak had to remember that these were smart stickies. All of the years chilling stupe muties was working against him.

  A fluttering piece of thread on a splintery wooden fence told of the mutie’s passage. Warily peeking over the top, Jak saw the thing standing in the middle of an open field piled with mounds of rubble. Poised motionless, the stickie just stood there, seeming to wait for something. Mebbe another stickie? Then thunder rolled in the sky, and it darted into a dark alcove to vanish from sight. Easing his stance, Jak fought back a grin. Smart, but not smart enough.

  Climbing over the fence, the teen crept across the slippery rubble, his heart pounding louder than the building tempest above. Reaching the alcove, he found it oddly blocked by a closed wooden door. But he had seen the stickie… This had to be it! The nest! There was no other possible explanation for the mutie going to the trouble of waiting for thunder to mask the sound of the closing door.

  Staying low to the ground, Jak moved into the middle of the nearest intersection and impatiently waited for the rest of the sec men to arrive. A few minutes later, the hulking Metro rumbled into view, filling the street with its imposing bulk and noise.

  Close behind, Stirling appeared, leading the small army, along with the palomino mare. “Lose something?” the man asked, offering the bridle.

  “Don’t need,” Jak spoke urgently. “Found nest.”

  “Where?” the baron demanded, pulling out the Winchester.

  As the teen quickly explained, all of the sec men got their blasters out and started to check loads for the assault. From the top of the Metro, there came the squeak of rope as pulleys hauled the wooden arm of the catapult, the plastic milk box at the end jammed full of Molotovs.

  “Hell’s fucking bells, no wonder we could never find them,” a sec man stated, studying the nondescript building. “We kept looking for rad pits or blast craters, some kind of covered hole in the ground, when the bastards were hiding in plain sight.”

  “Mighty clever for muties,” another sec man agreed nervously, tightening the grip on his crossbow. The arrow, or rather, the quarrel, was tipped with a barbed head, the kind used to catch fish. Once it went into a stickie, there would be no way the mutie to get it out without ripping itself apart in the attempt.

  “Bah, nothing clever about ’em,” another sec man rejoined. “Just a bunch of feeb stickies. Dumber than rists.”

  Inserting a clip into the rapidfire, Mildred couldn’t believe her ears. They’re just stickies. That could easily be the death song of humanity.

  “Okay, let’s burn the place down,” Stirling growled, taking a butane lighter from a shirt pocket.

  “Sorry, but we can’t do that just yet,” Ryan stated firmly.

  Pulling out a Molotov, the sec chief paused in the act of flicking the lighter alive. “And why not?” he demanded.

  “Because, we don’t know if they are all in there,” Krysty said, checking the load in her S&W .38 revolver. Tucking away the blaster, she looked up at the old dilapidated building. It was just a half-fallen down ruin located among many others, indistinguishable from the rest. That fact didn’t make her feel any easier. According to Mildred, nonmutie spiders built traps to capture their food alive. As did monkeys, and some lizards, snakes, birds… There were a lot of animals besides man that knew how to hide and ensnare their enemies. And this had all of the earmarks of a trap.

  “You mean, there could be several nests,” O’Connor huffed, the leather saddle creaking from his weight. “That’s a hellish notion.”

  “The windows are white,” Cauldfield said in annoyance, sliding off his mount to lash the mare to the bumper of a predark car wreck. “We could smash those open, but then they’d know that we’re coming and escape out the back door.”

  Stroking the neck of his stallion, a sec man snorted. “Back door? Just how smart to you think these nuking things are?”

  “Smart enough to know which building is the armory and try to set it on fire,” Ryan retorted. “Too damn bastard smart, that’s how smart.”

  “Dark night, this is like facing Kaa all over again,” J.B. said, removing a strip of duct tape from the arming handle of a thermite gren.

  “Kaa,” the baron repeated. “The king of the muties? But that’s just a stretch, a tall tale to frighten the littles. No mutie ever raised an army to fight norms.”

  “Oh, yes, he most certainly did,” Doc stated resolutely. “We were there. We saw it all.” Lightning flashed in sinister harmony to the stark pronouncement.

  “So you think this Kaa is back?” the sec chief asked as the thunder echoed among the predark buildings. The pause between the light and the sound were getting constantly closer. The storm was fast approaching.

  “No, Kaa is gone forever,” Ryan stated bluntly.

  “Okay, so he had a son, or brothers,” the baron relented. “Or whatever made Kaa smart is happening again.”

  “Evolution,” Mildred said unhappily. “Life finds a way.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Cauldfield demanded petulantly, sliding a longblaster from the holster set next to his saddle.

  “Got no choice,” Ryan said, lifting the saddlebags and draping them over a shoulder. The leather pouches clinked in a satisfactory manner. “We have to know if this is the entrance to the nest, one of several nests, or even if the muties are there at all.”

  “Yeah, and how you gonna do that?” a sec man demanded hotly, protected by the shadows of the coming storm.

  Sliding off his horse, Ryan scowled as he recognized the voice of Porter.

  “How? That’s simple,” he said, turning to face the old building. The dead-white windows seemed to stare back at him like the eyes of a corpse. “We go inside and find out.”

  Silence engulfed the sandy street, with only the puttering of the war wag and the shuffling of the nervous horses to disturb the night air. Even the storm seemed to be holding its breath.

  “We…go into the nest?” Cauldfield repeated weakly, his voice strained to a hoarse whisper.

  “Yeah, but we can’t take everybody,” the baron said, grabbing the saddlehorn and lowering himself to the ground. “We might as well shoot off fireworks first than do that.”

  “We six travel together,” Ryan stated bluntly.

  “I expected no less,” O’Connor said, then he gave a chuckle. “You’d make a mighty good baron.”

  Ryan shrugged off the comment.

  “Well, frag that drek,” Stirling declared roughly. “No offense, but I’m not letting my baron go into a nest of stickies with only outlanders for companions.”

  “Didn’t think you would,” the baron said with a half smile. “I’ll take along six men, as well.”

  “Lucky thirteen.” Mildred sighed, using a strip of cloth to tie the beaded plaits off her face. “There’s an omen for you.”

  “Well, let’s get started,” the baron said, slinging the strap of the Winchester around his neck. “Steven, you stay here with the rest of troops. Get ready to give cover fire if we come out running.”

  “What? I’m not one of the six?” the sec chief demanded. “No way, sir, I—”

  “Save it,” the baron snapped, cutting off the discussion. “These things took my arm, and I want to return the favor. Besides, one of us has to stay with the war wag.” He paused. “For the sake of the ville. Savvy?”

  A long minute passed. “You’re the baron,” Stirling said reluctantly, then added, “My lord.”

  “Glad you remembered. If I don’t come back, then Daniel is in charge,” the baron said, clumsily taking his own saddlebags full of Molotov cocktails. He couldn’t light and throw the firebombs at the same time, but the baron had a strong feeling that wouldn’t be a problem tonight. Death was in the air, thicker and more pungent than any acid rain. It was almost a tangible thing blanketing the predark ruins.

  The sec chief said nothing.

 
“Steven, will you stand by my son?” the baron asked in the rumbling darkness.

  “I…yes, I will, my lord,” the sec chief promised. “He’ll ride the eagle throne, and I’ll chill anybody who says different.”

  Stepping closer to the sec chief’s horse, the baron offered his hand and they shook. “Good enough, old friend.” Then he added in a tense whisper, “Just watch your six for Cauldfield.”

  “He’ll be the first man I chill if you don’t come back,” Stirling answered softly, casting a glance that way. “He wasn’t my childhood friend, and I don’t owe him jack, or shit.”

  “So I have gathered.”

  Choosing only the most loyal sec men, Stirling picked six to accompany the baron. Nervously looking at the predark structure, the troopers climbed off their horses and handed the reins to friends, then proceeded to double-check their handcannons and longblasters. A few of the sec men exchanged weps, so that the people going in would have a better blaster. One corporal passed over a handcannon to a cousin already armed with a homie scattergun.

  “I want that back,” he stated gruffly, emotion tightening his throat.

  “No prob,” the other sec man said, tucking the blaster into his wide belt.

  “All right, let’s move out,” Ryan said, drawing the SIG-Sauer. “I’ll take point.”

  “Like hell,” the baron growled angrily. “I always take the lead.”

  As a chill wind blew along the street, Ryan patted the blaster. “This shoots barely louder than a cough. How about your longblaster?”

  Leveling the big-bore Winchester, the one-armed baron started to object, but then considered the logic of the man with the silenced blaster going first. He didn’t like it, but accepted the hard reality. Blind norad, O’Connor wanted to do some chilling tonight! It was like a hunger in his belly.

  Readying their explosives and blasters, the companions started across the street when a sudden flash of lightning cast the world into stark relief for a single long heartbeat. It made the building strangely resemble a human skull. Then the diffused light faded and darkness returned.

  “If you hear explosions…” the baron added over a shoulder.

  Stirling grunted. “We’ll come running. Yes, sir.”

  “Good man. See you in Hell, Steven.”

  Detouring past the field of rubble, Ryan went stealthily by the snowy windows and up a short flight of granite steps to the front door.

  “I thought the stickies used the side door?” a sec man asked, both hands worrying the stock of his longblaster.

  “Which is why we’re using the front,” Ryan whispered back, watching the roof for any unnatural movements. “Now, pipe down. This is a recce, not a bloody gaudy house orgy.”

  Going to the door, J.B. quickly checked for any boobies, but it was clean. He picked at the lock with a couple of steel probes. The rusty tumblers were stubborn, but finally yielded.

  As the weathered portal swung aside, there came a dry exhalation from the building carrying the smell of mold, decay and something else. This was a sharper smell, nasty and unclean.

  “Stickies,” the baron breathed, thumbing off the safety of the Winchester. “By gad, this really is their fucking nest.”

  Pointing at two men to stay and guard the exit, Ryan led the way inside. The dank air was thick enough to chew, and the norms pulled neckerchiefs over their mouths as if caught in a sandstorm.

  As the front door closed, candles were lit. In the dancing light, the norms could see that the peeling walls were bowed slightly, as if sagging under tremendous weight or just from sheer age. The terrazzo floor was cracked and stained, and the front desk of the office building was coated with layers of thick cobwebs. Apparently, this had once been an office complex. A directory on the wall listed all of the companies here, a single plastic headstone for the hundreds of people who had once worked here, now long gone, deader than the grit under their boots.

  Judiciously, Mildred scanned the list of names, but none of them were familiar. Then again, any of them could have been a covert front for some government agency from of her time.

  Going to the left, Ryan easily located the side door that the stickie had used to enter the building. Jak pointed at the loose sand mixed with the dust on the floor. Multiple tracks overlapped one another. Ryan frowned at that. These weren’t enough footprints for a horde of stickies. If this was their nest, it hadn’t been here for very long. Mebbe only a couple of months. Were the stickies moving around in the ruins? Just how smart were these bastard muties?

  Following the trail, Ryan watched for traps as he slipped through the still building, the accumulated cobwebs covering everything like a blanket of freshly fallen gray snow. The detritus of time lay heavy over the office building, solemn and implacable.

  As the group of companions and sec men returned to the lobby, Ryan saw marks along the wall where the stickies had gone around the stairs and climbed directly up the wall to the landing on the next level. Were the stairs a trap?

  Relaying his suspicions to the other with sign language, Ryan studied the marble stairs for a minute, then slowly started to ascend. Almost instantly, a stickie lunged out of the gloom with both hands raised for a chill.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Spinning out of the way of the rush, Ryan smashed the mutie in the face with the barrel of his weapon. It staggered but didn’t fall.

  Moving fast, Baron O’Connor kicked it in the belly, then Doc whipped out his sword and lunged forward. The silvery length of the Spanish steel pierced the stickie through the mouth, pinning its forked tongue into place. As the other sec men stepped away from the lashing suckers, Ryan fired twice, the SIG-Sauer coughing 9 mm death into the monster’s head. The stickie rocked from the impact of the hot lead, almost coming free from the sword. Then it shuddered all over and went still, dropping limply to the filthy floor and stirring up a small gray cloud.

  Distastefully, Doc retrieved his sword and wiped it clean on a nearby curtain bearing the monogram of some predark company.

  While Krysty and Mildred scanned overhead with their MP-5 subguns, Ryan dropped the clip of the blaster to replace the two spent rounds.

  “Think there’s more of them hiding?” a sec man whispered from behind his mask, worrying the checkered grip of his scattergun. In his mind, the darkness was alive with stickies.

  “Better safe than chilled,” the baron replied softly, using the long barrel of the Winchester to probe the alcove that the mutie had been hiding in. But there were no other stickies present, only a rusted candy machine, the confections behind the ancient glass as inedible as the dead stickie.

  “No talking,” Ryan admonished in a harsh whisper, starting up the stairs once more, the canvas bag of Molotov cocktails at his side clinking softly.

  The next floor was the mezzanine, with all of the closed office doors facing the railing that looked down onto the lobby. Here the dust was disturbed, and the norms proceeded with extreme caution. If more stickies were hiding, there was no telling from which direction they could charge.

  A set of escalators waited motionless at the far end of the mezzanine, and the group split apart in unspoken consent. The companions took the left, the baron and his sec men going up the other. Here and there they noticed old bloodstains on the serrated metal steps, and Ryan kept a close watch on the drop ceiling. The feeble glow of the tallow candles barely reached outside the group, and it was as if they were traveling inside a bubble of light through a black ocean.

  At the top of the escalator, Ryan paused to try to hear if anything was moving in the building, but there was only the breathing of the other norms. No creaking water pipes, moaning wind or scuttling mice. Not even the rumble of the coming storm outside could be discerned.

  The armed group of hunters moved onward. Eventually, the top floor became another reception area, the floor a decorative tile mosaic. Huge green plants filling wicker pots in the corner were obviously plastic, and there was a line of phone booths with what looked like vid s
creens. Those made Ryan tense. Yeah, he knew those from the Anthill. Very high-tech in its day. Just drek now, not worth scavenging. Then he saw Krysty go stiff.

  “Trouble?” Ryan demanded in a tense whisper.

  Her hair flexing and waving nervously, Krysty didn’t reply at first. Just for a moment, the woman could have sworn that she heard a hoot.

  Noticing the agitation of the redhead, Mildred pumped the handle of her flashlight and moved the weak yellow beam along the pay phones. The dulcet illumination was reflected off the vid monitors, magnifying the light into a golden wash that revealed a nightmare.

  Just down the hallway to their left were dozens of stickies. The entire third floor seemed to be packed full of the sleeping muties, jammed together solid like brass in an ammo clip. The muties were lining the walls in resinlike cocoons, probably made from the hardened residue of their own gelatinous ooze. Baron O’Connor had used the term nest, but Ryan hadn’t expected it to be accurate. This was a beehive, just like the mailbox near the manhole cover. It was a honeycomb full of sleeping stickies!

  Inhaling sharply at the sight, the baron waved the Winchester at his sec men to order them back down the escalator. If this wasn’t all of the stickies, it was enough. Time to burn the place down. But it was vital that his troops didn’t see the nest. Somebody was sure to panic, and with one loud noise they would all get chilled. There wasn’t enough live brass in the whole ville to stop this inhuman horde.

  As the anxious sec men followed their baron, one of them gurgled loudly and grabbed his throat, blood gushing from a gaping wound.

  Firing from the hip, Ryan fanned the nearest alcove with the chugging SIG-Sauer. The 9 mm rounds torn off the leaves of the plastic plants and smacked hard into the marble wall to ricochet away. Then a stickie fell forward, bleeding from the arm. Then another mutie appeared, carrying a heavy wooden club. The sec men braced for a rush, but instead of attacking the norms, the stickie began beating the cudgel against the marble wall, the booms echoing through the entire building.