by James Axler
"Hold fire until they're in range," Margia cried. "Every bullet must count."
The tension was acute as the women of the Gate and Ryan's people stood firm, blasters ready but holding back until the last moment to begin fire. They were fanned out in a circle, but kept it tight and close to the wags.
Gloria stood upright beside Jak, who held his .357 Magnum Colt Python, his red eyes fixed on the approaching horde. Gloria had her Vortak raised, clasped easily but firmly in both hands, steadying herself for the jolt of the first shot. Despite the tension that coursed through her frame, fueled by adrenaline, she stood as easy as the albino at her side.
"Ready, sweets?" she murmured to him.
"Now," Jak answered without moving his white head.
Gloria let out an ear-piercing scream that acted as a signal for the onslaught to begin.
The distant rumble of the approaching horde, running and tumbling over one another in their crazed blood lust, chattering excitedly at the prospect of blood and flesh within their grasp, was suddenly drowned by the roar of massed blasterfire as the Gate and the companions started to fire. J.B. chose his Uzi, set to short, controlled bursts, over his other blasters. Ryan used the Steyr, sighting carefully so as to not waste a single shell.
And it was because of this that he noticed that these stickies were less vulnerable than any others they had encountered.
"Problem, people," the one-eyed warrior shouted over the noise. "These fuckers are gonna be really hard to chill."
"Why?" Gloria yelled back. "See through the sights," Ryan replied shortly. "Unless you blow the fucker's head off, it doesn't wound easy. They don't fucking bleed!"
"Shit—genetics," Mildred screamed above the noise, "work on the clotting agent."
"My, this will be fun," Doc remarked to himself, reloading the LeMat and attempting to sight yet another stickie for a full load of shot, this time raising his aim for a head shot. A body blow might not stop them, but at least a stickie with no head would find it impossible to keep moving.
The old man fired the LeMat, the charge catching one of the advancing muties full in the face. It was about twenty yards away when the grapeshot hit, and even at that distance Doc was able to discern the way the mutie's features blurred and distorted beneath a mist of blood as the shot spread across the head, traveling at a high velocity. Where the sharp, pinprick eyes and the needlelike teeth had previously been the prominent features in a bland, papery face, now they disappeared beneath a hail of metal and ripped flesh, the teeth smashed beyond repair and the eyes burst so that the viscera spread back into the sockets, driven back by the force of the shot as it ripped through the soft bone and softer flesh.
The head of the stickie—noticeably distorted at the rear of the cranium, Doc was able to note quickly before that cranium was ripped apart by the charge from the LeMat—vanished in a haze of blood, bone fragments and shredded flesh. The mutie, short of what little brain it possessed to power its motor functions, stumbled in its run and fell to the ground, crumpling like an old sheet dropped from a moving wag.
Doc was satisfied that it was one less, but knew with a sinking feeling that it wasn't enough. Even in the time it took him to reload the LeMat, having loosed the ball prior to the charge for once, the advancing stickie horde had gained ground. There were simply too many of them for a blaster such as his. With a sigh, he holstered the large percussion pistol and drew the swordstick from its silver lion's-head cane.
If it came to close combat, then he would be ready.
And he knew that it would.
Around Doc, the rest of the Gate warriors were reaching the same conclusion independently. The men behind were firing over their head with the machine blasters and rifles, standing on the wags to clear their own people, but the fact that—as men—they had little battle experience was showing up badly in the few stickies they could stop. The vast majority of ammo that was discharged caused some wounds to the advancing horde, but there were few shots that bit home to chill. The rapidity with which the stickies stopped bleeding meant that they were able to keep coming, some of them on their knees or in loping, stumbling runs where legs had been rendered useless by shots severing tendons or smashing bone. The lack of pain or blood loss meant that the injury didn't register in their mutie brain.
The horde advanced, leaving chilled stickies scattered around, but not enough to make much of a dent in their number.
The Amazons were discovering how handblasters could be excellent close fighting weapons, but relatively ineffective at longer distances. The lack of accuracy over the greater distance was telling now. As the stickies got closer, more of the women's shots were hitting home fatally, but the fact that the stickies had been able to get so close in the first instance meant that there were too many to chill with blasters alone.
Jak, Dean, Mildred and Krysty also had that problem. The albino's .357 Magnum Colt Python was an exceptionally powerful handblaster, but even he couldn't reload and fire quickly enough to chill all the advancing enemy. Dean's Browning Hi-Power, Mildred's ZKR and Krysty's .38-caliber Smith & Wesson were good blasters, and highly accurate, but couldn't cope with the sheer bulk of the enemy—especially an enemy that couldn't easily be stopped except by a chill shot.
Ryan and J.B. were faring better. The Armorer had pushed his Uzi to one side and hauled out the M-4000, letting fly with several charges of the viciously barbed metal flechettes that he used in his shot. The hot metal had spread over a relatively wide area, aimed at head height, and had taken out several stickies in one shot by spreading some splattered brain around the plain. Ryan had reverted to his SIG-Sauer, having realized that he needed to create a little more damage in the mutie ranks than the Steyr would allow him. The rifle was extremely accurate, and he had a good chill rate with it, but he felt compelled to try to make more of a dent in the vast numbers of the opposition.
Margia tried to wipe out a section of the horde on her side of the battlefield with a gren. A shrapnel gren of a vintage long predark, she pitched it into an area where there seemed to be a high concentration of the muties. It exploded with a muffled whomp, spreading earth from the large gouge it created in the otherwise flat plain. It took out a couple of stickies, and the blond armorer felt pleased to see so many go down…not so pleased a few seconds later, when she saw them start to drag themselves to their feet and continue—or, in the case of those whose legs were useless, just drag themselves onward.
Gloria and Jak stood back to back, picking off the stickies with single shots that inflicted maximum damage while still preserving as much ammo as was possible.
"Hand-to-hand soon," Jak murmured. "Too close to blast all."
Gloria cast him a glance over her shoulder. She smiled lopsidedly, her strong white teeth almost feral. Her piercing blue eyes shone wildly with the heat of battle.
"Suits me, babe," she answered him. "They'll have to go a long, long fucking way to get the best of us, right?"
Jak spared himself a grin, cold against the white of his skin. "Chill them before get that far."
The warrior queen holstered her blaster and unsheathed her panga in one smooth motion, left hand replacing the blaster while the right pulled the blade from her thigh. Stepping away from the albino, she raised her head high and let out a series of piercing whistles that formed a signal, before screaming loudly, tossing her fiery mane back in the heat and wind of battle.
For a moment, it was almost as if that scream had created an oasis of silence and calm around it. To Jak, holstering the Python and palming a knife for each hand, it seemed for just a fraction of a second that the whole world had been stopped by that scream. There was a frozen moment that heralded a turning point, and the next stage of the battle.
And then it passed. The silence—if it had ever been there—was broken by the yells and screams of the Amazons as they all followed their queen, holstering their blasters and drawing their blades.
"Dark night, this is going to be bloody," J.B. murmured to himse
lf, safely storing his blasters before unsheathing his Tekna knife. The Armorer ran a practiced eye over the encroaching horde of stickies as the words escaped his lips. If their numbers were consistent on all sides, then there were three or four of them for each member of the tribe and the companions.
Well, they'd had worse odds before now, although perhaps not with an enemy that refused so stubbornly to lie down and die.
The hand-to-hand battle began in earnest as the first wave of muties reached the advancing Amazons, who moved forward to meet their foe, gaining momentum in their movement for the first strike.
First blood went to Tammy. A stickie that had somehow made it through the onslaught without even picking up a clotting scratch was upon her, waving a sharpened tree limb that formed a pointed stake in one fist, the suckered fingers of its free hand reaching for her throat. She could feel its hot, fetid breath as it came within arm's length of her.
The young warrior gave the boiling fear in the pit of her stomach no thought, but merely sidestepped the charge and brought her blade across the stomach of the mutie as it lay open to attack. She knew from observation that a mere wound would be little use, so she drove the blade as deep as it would go and sliced across, splitting the stickie's abdomen in twain and spilling its intestines onto the plain. They hit the grass in a steaming, twirling mass. Tammy pulled her hand, hot and red with the stickie's viscera, from out of its stomach and followed her initial thrust with a slash across the throat The blood slick blade sliced through the soft, soapy flesh, splintering the soft bone, mashing the bone, flesh and tendon into a pulp that caught on the razor honed blade, tangling as it reached the spinal column.
The young warrior knew the only safe way to insure the chill was to sever the head or sever an internal organ. With a rebel yell that rang through the air, she exerted all the power of her young muscles, the tendons standing out on her knife arm as she held the stickie back by the shoulder with her free hand.
The mutie's spinal column was made of bone as pliable and soft as the rest of its neck and throat, and with one mighty heave the knife scored through it, severing the nervous system and taking its head off— if not cleanly, at least completely.
With a whoop, Tammy flashed the blade toward the next attacker, stickie blood showering off the end, while the corpse of her first chill slid harmlessly to the ground.
All around, there were similar scenes. Doc hacked and slashed with the swordstick, eschewing its usual function as a rapier-like blade in order to inflict the maximum damage. Unlike the pangas and machetes used by those around him, Doc's blade was of the finest tempered Toledo steel, and hadn't been manufactured to hack and slash. Rather, it was a weapon of accuracy.
But not here. A simple wound that would disable or cause enough blood loss to kill a normal human being or stickie wouldn't be effective on these genetically altered muties. So Doc had to forego his instincts and use the blade in a bludgeoning manner quite unlike that for which it had been designed.
And he was doing pretty well. His eyes glazed over as the blood of his enemies splashed on him, his white hair flying in the momentum of his movement, the tails of his frock coat whirling behind him. In reality he was in the Deathlands, with altered muties falling before him. But in the mind ravaged by time trawling and torture, unbalanced by the unimaginable experience of having existed across a period of three centuries, Doc was fighting battles that would take place after he should have died, and yet had taken place years before he was alive. The stickies in front of his eyes became Native Americans falling before the U.S. cavalry, became British soldiers falling beneath the pioneers, became the Vietcong falling beneath the Green Berets, became the Japanese falling beneath the U.S. Marine in the second of the three world wars, became Saxons falling before Vikings in the faraway lands that had birthed his ancestors, became the first Bronze and Iron Age tribes falling beneath each other's blows in the quest for better land, in the quest for survival.
In the ravages of his mind, Doc became all men, in all history, fighting for survival. There was no here and now anymore, only the instant where one man faced another knowing that it was kill or be killed.
Elsewhere, the battle raged on in a present that all involved knew could end for them at any second with just one wrong move.
Both Krysty and Mildred weren't renowned for their skills with knives, and both women were finding the going tough. They had blades with them, handed out earlier in the trip by Margia, but they weren't the experts that the Gate warriors had trained to be. Somehow, by some instinct the stickies could sniff this out, almost as if they could smell the apprehension coming off the women.
The larger proportion of stickies they attracted left some of the Gate warriors free to chill their attackers quickly and with a ruthless efficiency. Pangas and machetes hacked at heads after first disabling the attackers by severing their suckered hands with one swift blow of the highly honed blades. The Gate women were thus able to dispose of the stickies almost on a production line of chilling, and it wasn't long before some of those closest to Krysty and Mildred were able to assist them in disposing of the vast numbers they had clustered around them.
Dean and Ryan were fighting back to back, the older Cawdor slashing at his enemies with his panga, cleaving skulls and arms with ease. At his back, his son fought with an equal savagery, only his age and relative lack of experience showing in his lower chill rate. He held a machete that he wielded with an economy of effort that showed he had studied the methods of Jak Lauren when he had watched the albino practice. Behind his father, Dean could almost have been a shadow, with the same sculpted musculature and broad shouldered build, smaller only because he hadn't yet reached maturity, the curly hair glistening and dripping with the sweat of exertion. The only thing to separate the two was the livid and puckered scar down one side on Ryan's face, disappearing into the empty and patch covered socket, while Dean still had both eyes.
J.B. was fighting alone, his Tekna knife wielded with a scientific accuracy that marked him as a mechanically minded man. The savagery of his strokes was controlled, directed at the most vulnerable points on his attackers so as to disable and kill with the minimum of effort. His wiry frame crackled with an electricity that made his usual mild-mannered appearance disappear, and he seemed almost to grow in stature as he fought. The Armorer knew the strong points of his weapon as an attack blade, knew the best way to angle each stroke so as to inflict the maximum amount of damage, and cut through his assailants as though they weren't there.
The Gate were faring well against the army of stickies. So far, there had been no fatalities, as the stickies had been unprepared for the way in which the tribe had stood its ground, and for the manner in which the women had fought. The muties might have outnumbered the Amazons, but they didn't have blades or blasters, and although they surrounded the Gate on all sides, they couldn't easily break through their strong defensive formation. There was a number of minor injuries among the Amazons, but nothing that had disabled any of the warriors enough to bring them down and make them vulnerable to chilling.
Out in front, Gloria and Jak were setting the best possible example. The soulmate warriors who had forged a strong bond over the course of the trip were fighting superbly together. Each knowing that the other was there to cover their back meant that they could take chances that would otherwise have been too risky.
Jak's hands were a blur of movement, the lethal leaf-bladed knives slicing through the soft flesh of the stickies with little or no resistance, cutting through to vital organs and severing them so that no amount of rapidly clotting blood could prevent death, penetrating eyes and soft flesh to cut into the even softer tissue of the brain. Those stickies who managed to dodge the flashing blades were met with kicks from his heavy combat boots that snapped necks and limbs, disabling them long enough to fall prey to Gloria's panga.
The Gate queen herself was dispatching more than her fair share of stickies. Knowing that Jak was at her back gave her the confidence to
take the offensive against the horde of muties, rather than lie back in defense and wait for them to come to her. Launching herself forward in a series of flying kicks, she snapped necks and knocked the muties to the ground, following this with a series of slashing moves from her panga that severed heads with ferocity. Her eyes blazed like the sunlit sky, and her mouth was opened in a roar of fury that echoed her movements.
It was a hard battle, but by degrees the horde of muties grew less and less, the Amazons moving outward to gain ground, treading on the corpses of their chilled foes and driving the remaining stickies back and back.
Eventually even the enhanced brains of those remaining stickies got the point, and they retreated back across the plain, fleeing into the woodland.
Surveying the carnage, Ryan gave a sigh of relief and exhaustion.
"Fireblast, I thought they'd never stop coming. For a moment, I thought there were more and more coming out of the trees."
"Mebbe there were," J.B. pointed out. "We need to be more than triple red now. We're tired and strung out, and they may have fuck knows how many in there." He indicated the area of woodland circling the plain with a sweeping gesture.
"We beat them once, we can do it again," Gloria said, adding, "But only if we rest up now. Make camp and set up a guard. They'll need to regroup, too, if they're going to attack. So we should have some time."
With which she directed her people to make camp, clear the chilled and tend to the few minor wounds they had received.
While this transpired, Ryan gathered together his people. Speaking softly, he said, "It's not the stickies I'm worried about."
Doc noticed the puzzled look that Jak gave the one-eyed warrior, and said, "If I'm not mistaken, my dear Ryan, you allude to the fact that our little mutie friends were genetically altered?"
Ryan nodded. "And if we're approaching the place you've heard of, then—"
"Then the danger may not be from stickies," Mildred finished.
