“For shaking. It’s a custom when you meet someone new.”
“We do this,” Star stated. She stood and raised her right hand, palm out. “Peace, Hickok,” she declared solemnly.
Hickok suppressed an impulse to chuckle. He followed her example.
“Peace, Star.”
“I guess I’ll have to trust you,” Star sighed. “I’ve got no other choice.”
Hickok knelt and placed his arms under the woman’s body.
“What are you doing?” Star quickly demanded.
“Relax. I’ve got to carry your mom across the field to the Home. The sooner we have the Healers examine her, the better.”
“Okay.”
The woman was light, not much over one hundred pounds. Hickok lifted her with ease. “What’s your mom’s name?”
“Rainbow,” Star answered.
“Do tell.” He moved through the brush, the girl at his side, her worried gaze fixed on her unconscious mother.
They reached the field, the bright moon overhead.
“Who’s that?” Star suddenly asked.
Hickok followed the direction of her gaze and spotted a figure coming toward them from the Home. He recognized the fluid, controlled movements of the Family’s martial arts master. “That’s a pard of mine,” he said to Star. “His name is Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Star replied.
“Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
The Beta Triad Warrior reached them, his scabbard gripped in his right hand. “I heard the shots,” he explained, “and presumed you needed assistance. Obviously not.”
“Say, mister.” Star looked up at Rikki. “Is your name really Rikki-Tavi-Tikki?”
“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, at your service.” Rikki bowed and swept his left arm in a grandiose flourish.
“Where’d you get a name like that?” Star wanted to know.
“Out of a book…” Rikki began to answer.
“Oh?” Star clapped her hands, excited. “You have books here?”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Rikki responded. “The man who built our Home knew we would require knowledge to persevere in the world after World War Three. We have a magnificent library.”
“I just love books,” Star said delightedly. “We only have a couple of dozen and I’ve read all of them.”
“Who taught you to read?” Rikki asked her.
“My mother,” Star stated, reaching up and taking her mother’s limp right hand.
“Who happens to be very ill,” Hickok interjected. “We’ve got to get her to the Healers as quickly as possible.” He led the way, walking briskly in the direction of the drawbridge.
“You were telling me about your name,” Star reminded Rikki as they followed the gunman.
“I picked it from a book about an animal called a mongoose. This animal was responsible for guarding its human family from some vicious snakes. I’m a Warrior, and I’ve been trained to protect my Family, so I thought the name was highly appropriate. I selected it at my Naming, on my sixteenth birthday.” Rikki turned his head slightly, the better to attune his hearing to the gusting wind.
“Your Naming?” Star asked.
“Kurt Carpenter, the man who constructed the Home, wanted his descendants to appreciate their historical roots. We’re encouraged to scour the library books for any name we prefer. It’s bestowed on us during a special ceremony on our sixteenth birthday.”
“Do many pick a name as weird as yours?” Star inquired.
“Not many,” Rikki admitted, grinning. “You sure ask a lot of questions.
What’s your name?”
“Star.”
“How old are you?”
Star squared her shoulders and elevated her chin. “I’m a mature twelve, almost thirteen.”
Rikki chuckled.
“That’s what Rainbow, my mom, says,” Star stated stiffly.
“I believe you…” Rikki paused, turning. The breeze brought a peculiar shuffling sound to his ears.
“Is something wrong?” Star questioned him.
Rikki glanced at Hickok. The gunman was at least ten yards in front of them and making haste for the Home.
“What is it?” Star demanded, sensing his concern.
“Run and catch up with Hickok,” Rikki told her. He faced the forest and detected a large black hump moving across the background of the rustling trees.
“Why? What’s wrong?” Star stubbornly persisted.
“Do as I tell you. Now!” Rikki said harshly.
Star ran off.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi watched the hump cross the field, directly on their trail. He would make his stand right where he was, giving Hickok and Star ample time to reach the Home and safety. What was it? he wondered. A mutate, one of the deformed, pus-covered horrors now proliferating everywhere as a result of the War? Mutates were former mammals, reptiles, or amphibians, changed into ravenous monstrosities by a mysterious, unknown process. No one, not even wise Plato, the leader of the Family, knew the cause, the agent responsible for transforming ordinary creatures into devilish demons. Were mutates the result of the radiation released during the Big Blast, as the Family referred to World War Three, or the consequence of the widespread use of chemical weaponry during the predominantly nuclear war?
The black hump was proceeding slowly. Several thin appendages were visible, periodically waving in the air.
Rikki doubted this was a mutate. Mutates craved flesh, and their appetites were insatiable. They attacked and devoured anything and everything they encountered, in a frenzy of blood lust, without hesitation.
The thing wasn’t coming fast enough.
As if in response to his thought, the hump increased its speed.
Rikki assumed the Kokutsu-tachi and patiently waited.
The lunar illumination enabled objects to be seen clearly within a distance of ten yards; beyond that, although things were still perceptible, the shadows could play tricks on you. So, despite his best efforts to pierce the darkness, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi remained ignorant of the identity of the creature until it was almost upon him.
“May the Spirit preserve us,” the Warrior involunartarily whispered, his eyes widening in disbelief, when he finally realized the nature of the threat.
The thing was a giant spider.
Rikki whipped his prized katana from its scabbard and tossed the scabbard aside, the thirty-seven-inch-long sword gleaming, the razor-sharp blade reflecting the moonlight. This katana, the only genuine samurai sword the Family possessed, was Rikki’s by virtue of his martial arts mastery. Among the hundreds of thousands of books in the Family library, volumes carefully selected by the founder of the Home, Kurt Carpenter, were dozens of books on unarmed combat and various disciplines in the martial arts, the majority of which were written by a man named Bruce Tegner. The Family Warriors spent years being instructed by one of the Elders, a former Warrior, in karate, kung fu, jujitsu, savate, and diverse other styles of martial combat. Of the twelve Warriors, one had displayed exceptional skill and outstanding ability while taking the Tegner classes, as they became known. This Warrior had later selected, from the hundreds of weapons stocked in the Family armory, an ancient katana as his principal weapon. He would relinquish it upon his death.
The spider paused seven yards away.
Rikki held his katana in both hands and raised the sword to chest height, the blade vertical, his powerful arm and shoulder muscles tensed.
He had fought mutates before, many times, but never one of the rarer giants. As with the mutates, no one knew whether it was a consequence of protracted exposure to enhanced radiation levels, or a genetic imbalance triggered by one of the chemicals employed during the Big Blast, but cases of giantism occurred regularly. Five years before, four Family hunters, out after elk, encountered a giant wasp and were nearly killed. Inexplicably, the strains of giantism only appeared in insects or their close kin.
Like arachnids.
The spider, a six-foot-tall abe
rration of nature, moved several feet closer.
Rikki knew he’d seen this type of spider before, at its proper size, and he noted the features, trying to place it. The thing was black, with an extended, almost spherical abdomen, and two prominent jaw-like appendages. Its spindly legs, like the bulk of the body, seemed to possess a strange shiny quality.
Abruptly, Rikki remembered.
Just one spider, to his knowledge, had a strange shininess to its color.
The black widow Spider.
The black widow suddenly came at him, its jaws quivering, its toxic venom dripping from pronounced fangs.
Rikki couldn’t repress a shudder as the thing closed in. He waited until the last possible instant and swung the katana, the blade biting deep, raking the black widow’s eyes. He darted aside, to the left, swinging again, aiming at the cephalothorax, the front section of the spider, expecting an immediate kill. Instead, the blade deflected off the rock-hard carapace, the protective covering over the cephalothorax.
The black widow, despite its size, or perhaps because of it, was slower than a widow of normal size would be. It turned after the human, the fangs working expectantly.
Rikki backed away, searching for a weakness. He knew the arachnid was divided into three basic parts: the cephalothorax, the front portion; then a tiny waist, the pedicel; and finally the extended abdomen.
Familiarity with the flora and fauna was extensively taught in the Family school. With the decline of humankind after the Big Blast, the wildlife had surged to unbelievable numbers, reclaiming the land for its own. Knowing the habits and dispositions of the varied creatures became indispensable to the Family’s continued survival.
So how could he dispatch this menace?
The katana arcing downward, Rikki jumped in close to the widow, going for one of the rear legs. The meticulously forged blade did its work this time, completely severing the leg at its joint, a putrid liquid substance spurting over the ground. Before he could try for another appendage, the black widow hurtled sideways, its massive body slamming into Rikki and sending him sprawling. The jolt of the impact dislodged the katana from his fingers, the sword sliding a foot from his outstretched arms.
The black widow kept coming, its fangs snapping at Rikki’s feet.
Rikki rolled aside, avoiding the Widow’s mouth, lunging for his katana, and missing.
The black widow pushed itself forward, actually hopping, and landed on Rikki’s legs, pinning him to the earth.
Rikki was on his right side, his frantic fingers inches from the sword.
The black widow paused.
“Can’t say much for your dancing partners, pard,” said a deep voice, and Hickok came into view, running around the spider and stopping near Rikki. His Pythons were in his hands, cocked. “Don’t move!” he ordered.
“I’ll try and lead it away.”
“Save yourself!” Rikki urged, still striving to reach his katana.
“Be serious,” Hickok grinned. “If you’re hungry, gruesome, try eating these!” he said to the spider, pulling both triggers, the barrels pointed at the row of eyes above the mouth.
The black widow lurched, recoiling in pain, and heaved itself at this new danger.
“What’s wrong?” Hickok laughed. “Lead not to your liking?” He backed away from the arachnid, intending to provide Rikki with a chance to grab his sword. “Come on, ugly!” he taunted the horror.
“Don’t stand there!” Rikki shouted, finally free of the spider’s weight.
He scooped up his katana and leaped to his feet. “Kill it!”
“No need to fret, pard,” Hickok chuckled, still backpedaling. “This is a piece of cake.”
He tripped.
“Hickok!” Rikki yelled in alarm.
The black widow was eight feet from the gunman, an implacable killing machine, undeterred by its injuries.
Hickok, flat on his back, raised his Colts and fired at the eyes, again and again, one gun after another.
The black widow staggered but didn’t stop.
“Hickok! Move!” Rikki was in motion, running to the rear of the widow, his katana held over his head. He put every muscle in his body into a downward slash, uttering his kiai as he swung, the blade cutting like a hot knife through wax, cleaving the back of the abdomen in two.
The widow reared up and spun.
“Go for the eyes!” Hickok directed while reloading his Colts.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi obeyed, slicing his blade from one end of the row of eyes to the other.
In agony, the black widow thrashed and squirmed, one of its front legs catching Rikki in the chest and knocking him down.
“Don’t move!” someone commanded, followed by the booming of a shotgun, one shot after another, the buckshot blasting great chunks out of the spider’s face, spraying the grass with pieces of the spider’s flesh and a pungent sticky substance.
The firing finally stopped, and Rikki could detect a ringing in his ears.
He looked down at his clothes, both his tattered jeans and his faded brown shirt, and grimaced at the gunk covering his body.
The black widow was lying on the ground, its body shaking uncontrollably, its face a ruined shambles.
Hickok walked over to Rikki, his Colts trained on the quaking spider.
“Think it’s dead?” he asked uncertainly.
“Nothing could live through that barrage,” Rikki commented, rising.
“Who…?”
“Just little old me,” stated a stocky, black-haired man wearing a green shirt and pants made from an old canvas. His brown eyes twinkled as he approached, a Browning B-80 automatic shotgun cradled across his brawny chest. “I heard some shots and came running. Lucky for you I didn’t decide to have a snack on the way.”
“We were doing okay without your help,” Hickok said.
“White idiot speak with forked tongue,” the newcomer gravely intoned.
“Geronimo know better.”
“I’d like to have seen you fight this thing, using the weapons we have,” Hickok stated, peeved.
Geronimo, the only Family member with an Indian inheritance in his blood, grinned. “You went about it all the wrong way,” he said. “Anyone could see that.”
“And just how would you have killed this thing?” Hickok demanded.
“Your tomahawks wouldn’t of made a dent in it.”
Rikki chuckled. Hickok and Geronimo were the best of friends, but they never seemed to tire of razzing one another. Their continual squabbling was common knowledge and a constant source of amusement; indeed, someone had once remarked that the day they ceased teasing each other would be the day the world came to an end.
“I would have killed it the right way,” Geronimo remarked.
“Right way?” Hickok snapped, falling for the bait. “What are you babbling about?”
Geronimo made a pretense of yawning. “Everyone knows there is only one way to kill a spider.”
“How’s that, smart butt?”
“Simple.” Geronimo winked at Rikki. “You step on it.”
Chapter Two
“I think you have more muscles than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
“I exercise a lot.”
“My father was strong like you,” the girl revealed. “He’s dead now,” she added sadly.
“Both my parents passed on long ago,” the dark-headed Warrior informed her. “People die, Star. It’s inevitable. Try not to get upset over dying.”
“How can I help it, Blade?” Star asked, gazing up at him, her green eyes watering.
“The Family believes people pass on to a better place when they die,” Blade explained. “Whenever you think of a departed love one, remember they’re still alive, waiting for you to catch up, and keep in mind you’ll be joining them someday. It makes the sorrow of being separated slightly more bearable.”
“I understand,” Star said, considering his words. She studied the Warrior, marveling at his superbly conditioned physique. He was wearing mocc
asins and brown pants, the latter sewn together from an old tent.
Two Bowie knives hung from his waist, one on each hip. An automatic rested under each arm, suspended in a shoulder holster.
“What are those?” she asked him.
“Vegas,” Blade replied.
“And how did you get those?” Star inquired, pointing at the scars covering his broad chest, visible despite his dark tan.
Blade frowned. “You certainly ask a lot of questions.”
“Rainbow says you never learn things unless you ask,” Star said, gazing at the Block in which her mother was recuperating.
Kurt Carpenter, the wealthy filmmaker and survivalist, was responsible for the design of the Home. Carpenter had firmly believed World War Three was inevitable and, as with everything else he did, he had acted upon those beliefs. He had planned and built the Home, invited selected friends to the site when the world situation deteriorated to the critical point, and waited for the final folly. He had carefully picked the Home site, located far from any primary military and civilian targets, in northwestern Minnesota, on the outskirts of the Lake Bronson State Park.
The Home was watered by a large stream, entering the walls at the northwest corner and exiting at the southeast. Inside the compound, the stream was channeled along the base of the walls, forming a protective moat. The eastern half of the Home was devoted to agriculture and preserved in its natural state. In the center of the thirty-acre plot were the cabins, the living quarters for the married couples and their families. The western section contained the reinforced concrete Blocks, arranged in a triangular fashion, and devoted to specific functions. The armory was contained in A Block, B Block was the sleeping quarters for single Family members, the infirmary was C Block, D Block was their workshop area, E
Block was the library, and F Block was devoted to farming and gardening purposes. Below each Block was a survival chamber for emergencies. Each of the Blocks, beginning with A Block at the southern tip of the triangle, was positioned precisely one hundred yards from the other.
Blade and Star were standing in the open area in the center of all the Blocks. Family members were everywhere, engaged in their daily activities.
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