by James Axler
All talk within stopped.
“Olá!” Ryan pounded the pommel of his sword against the wood. “Olá!”
People within whispered fearfully. “Fireblast…” Ryan muttered. “Ago!” He shouted. “Vava! Eva! Marco! Nando!” Ryan shook his head. “Boo!” he tried.
The whispering stopped.
“Ago! Vava! Eva! Marco! Nando!” Ryan repeated. He sagged in exhaustion against the door. Boards and beams thumped and rattled on the other side. Ryan nearly fell forward as the door opened. Warmth and light washed across him. Men and women dressed in plain tunics regarded Ryan in fear and wonder. All of them had a club or a stone in hand. A gray-haired woman stepped forward tentatively. “Vava?”
Ryan nodded. “Vava.”
She led him to an empty stool by the fire while others secured the door. Ryan counted fourteen people all between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-five. There was nothing in the room other than some crude wooden stools, a communal table and bunks along the walls. Ryan sheathed his sword and stuck a thumb into his chest. “Ryan.”
The woman nodded. “Moni.”
“Vava was your…” Ryan made a baby rocking motion at Moni. Moni burst into fresh tears and nodded eagerly. Ryan grunted to himself. It was the first piece of luck he had caught since stepping onto this pesthole rising up out of the Lantic. “Vava is…” Ryan made a fist and thumped his chest. “Good, bueno.”
Moni nodded hopefully. “Bom?”
“Bom,” Ryan agreed.
Moni seized Ryan’s hand in gratitude. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Feydor? Galina?”
His luck was holding. The Russian revolution had been here, as well. “Feydor?” Ryan shrugged. “Galina?” He shook his head. The slaves lowered their heads in mourning. Ryan’s eye widened as he looked over his hosts. The slaves wore crude sandals, and each had been hobbled by having the toes of their left foot cut off. All bore wounds and scars old and new on their inner elbows. A woman took Ryan’s coat and shirt and hung them by the fire. The slaves shook their heads at the number and severity of salt blasts Ryan had taken. Another woman went to a shelf and took up a crude earthenware jar. The one-eyed man sighed as she began applying some kind of salve to his wounds. The pitted scars on the slaves’ arms and legs showed they were no strangers to the less than lethal kindness of the islanders’ blasters.
Another woman filled a wooden bowl from a pot over the fire and gave it to Ryan. He ate. It was a thin stew of vegetables, stale bread and tiny shreds of meat Ryan made to be rat or squirrel. It wasn’t the hearty food of the other island. These people were slaves and they lived like it. They were given what the ville didn’t want and had to scratch out anything else in the small plots around their quarters. Ryan cleaned his bowl, made contented noises and nodded his thanks. Everyone smiled and nodded as the woman refilled his bowl.
A younger man stepped forward questioningly. “Ago? Nando?”
“Ago, Nando.” Ryan made a fist. “Bom.”
The man nodded and gestured as he spoke. All Ryan could make out was that he knew them but perhaps wasn’t directly related. Everyone was nodding and smiling nervously. Ryan finished his stew and got to business. He held up his bandaged right fist. “Ryan.” He held up his left. “Barat.” Ryan punched his fists together. The slaves stared as if hypnotized. Ryan opened his left fist and waved his hand dismissively. “Barat.” The slaves looked at one another in shock. Ryan pointed at them. “You.” Ryan pointed at himself. “Me.” He held up his right again and made a fist in unity. The slaves broke into excited talk.
A demonic howl cut the conversation like a knife. It rose above and then fell below human vocal range. The sound froze the blood in Ryan’s veins. A second, horrifically feminine ululating shriek answered from farther away in the hills. The slaves sagged. Some moaned and covered their heads with their hands in despair as a third roar tore the night from the direction of the ville. The sound was half summons and half victory.
They were hunting screams.
Something had picked up Ryan’s trail, and it was triangulating on the slave dwelling with two of its friends. Ryan spoke a single word. “Raul.”
The slaves flinched as a unit.
A second round of hunting screams tore out over the wind and rain, and all of them were closer. If whatever approached was anything like the abomination he had run down in the wag then he knew he was in no condition to fight three of them. Whatever revolt the Russians had tried to foment among the slaves and the sister islanders had died with them. Ryan reached into his coat and took out one of the starter blasters and slammed it on the table. The slaves stared at it as if it were a snake. Ryan suspected handling a weapon was a death sentence for any slave. Looking around, he didn’t see a single ax or shovel or tool. The only knives were short and rounded for utility.
Ryan closed his fist and jerked it upward in an obscene and unmistakable gesture of violation. “Fuck Barat.”
The slaves stared, dumbstruck.
Ryan pulled out a second blaster. “Fuck Raul.” He set down the third. A third round of screams shook the night outside. They were getting close. Ryan filled one hand with Mildred’s target blaster and the other with his sword and rose. He took a step toward the door and jerked his head. “Who is with me?”
No one moved.
Ryan shook his head. “Fireblast.” They were too conditioned to fear and servitude.
“Ryan.” The biggest man among the slaves stepped forward. He was white-haired, weathered and bent by untold years of labor, but still strong. When he rose he could look Ryan in the eye. “Cafu.”
“Cafu.” Ryan held out his hand. Cafu shook it. The man turned and gingerly picked up one of the little starter blasters. He stared at it in wonder. His knuckles suddenly went white around the grips. Tears spilled down his seamed face. Ryan could only imagine how many of Cafu’s friends and loved ones he had seen worked and bled to death, much less how many times hunting screams had filled his nights with terror and how many of his people he had seen taken. Cafu’s voice shook as he spoke his new word. “Fook…Barat.”
Moni seized up a blaster in both hands. “Fook Barat!”
The man who had asked about Ago and Nando took up the third. He thumped his chest. “Renan!”
“Renan.” Ryan nodded.
Renan gave Ryan a savage grin. “Fook Raul.”
“Bom,” Ryan said. He looked around at the rest of the slaves. “Bom?”
They all nodded and said “bom” or “fook” in the affirmative. Ryan watched as they filled their hands with clubs and stones. He considered the she-thing he had seen. Sticks and stones might drive off a nightwalker, but probably not before it had snatched a victim, and Ryan knew in his bones this night was a far more serious affair. He considered their arsenal. The starter blasters were woefully underpowered and inaccurate, purely a point-blank proposition. Mildred’s target blaster wasn’t much better. It had six shots, but it was Mildred’s deadeye accuracy that made it such a premium chiller rather than any stopping power. Nine shots against three abominations, and three of the shooters had never held a blaster before. Ryan kept the grimace off his face.
It was going to end up a brawl, and one they were very likely going to lose.
Cafu picked up a stool. Ryan stabbed his panga into the tabletop and one of the slaves took it. The one-eyed man overturned the table and arrayed Cafu, Renan and Moni behind it. He went and drew an X in the dirt six feet in front of the door. He spit on it and then pointed his blaster at the door. He nodded at those holding stones and pointed at the X. They all got it. Whatever came through the door was going to take everything they had in a volley. Mebbe killing one would be enough to dissuade the others. If not, Ryan knew he would have to take point and hope the slaves would pile on. He ran his eye over the bunkhouse. The walls were heavy timber. The ceiling was thick boards. Mebbe it would hold. Mebbe—
Ryan whirled and the women screamed as timbers rent and tore. Rain and wind lashed into the bunkhouse as the b
ack corner of the roof was ripped open to the sky. The nightwalker was female. Her filthy, milk-white face was a giant witch face of brutal knobs of chin, cheeks and brow. Fertility fetish breasts slopped down nearly as long as a man’s arm. The hag’s hunting scream froze every slave in their tracks. A woman howled as the she-creature reached down a huge, dripping white hand and seized her by the hair.
“Moni!” Ryan roared. “The head!” He tapped his own skull with his blaster. “The head! The head! The head!”
The spell broke. Moni scurried to the back of the bunkhouse as the nightwalker pulled up her struggling prize. The thing boomed something at Moni in Portuguese. Moni held up her blaster in both hands and screamed in answer. “Fook Raul!” She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Moni’s blind blast tore away most of the hag’s lower jaw. Moni screamed and fell backward as violet blood rained upon her. The she-creature made a horrible noise and dropped her prey. Moni and the woman clutched each other as the thing toppled backward and fell off the roof with an audible thud. Ryan kept his eye on the door.
It exploded into kindling.
A six-foot-tall and five-foot-wide thing burst into the room. It was bloated, bald and bullet-headed, and moved far too fast for its bulk. The nightwalker’s grotesque rolls of fat leaped and jiggled in all directions as it charged. It held a yard-long club crudely shaped into the form of a blaster stock. The business end was studded with Orca teeth. The massive mutant was past the X before any of the slaves could act.
Ryan shot it twice in the chest as it hurtled forward. Renan fired wildly and missed. Cafu took a concerted extra second to aim. His blaster boomed and the nightwalker dropped its war club as blood exploded out of its neck. It screamed and came on. Ryan braced himself and rammed it through as it came across the table. The thing bowled Ryan over anyway. Every ounce of air blasted out of Ryan’s lungs as four hundred pounds of filthy, screaming, bleeding, milk-white flesh fell on top of him.
The slaves piled on.
A forest of legs surrounded the pile. The slaves screamed and shouted out their long-suppressed rage. Clubs and stones rained blows on the nightwalker’s head and back. It flailed and screamed, but it was wedded to Ryan by the blade through its ribs. Renan lifted a hearthstone the size of a loaf of bread in both hands and brought it down against the nightwalker’s skull with crunching finality. He wheezed as its deadweight collapsed against him. The slaves roared in triumph. They shouted their defiance to the storming heavens above.
They were no longer slaves.
Ryan took a gasping breath as they rolled the vast bulk off him. They continued beating the corpse. Ryan shook off the cobwebs and got a knee underneath him. The shouts of triumph were instantly eclipsed by screams. Ryan blinked as one of the slaves flew overhead as if she had wings. The woman smashed into the far wall with the snap of breaking bones.
Horror surpassed itself.
The third abomination was eight feet tall if it was an inch. Like a giant scarecrow, its arms stretched out in an all-encompassing wingspan nearly as wide. Its knees came up to its chest as it folded like a spider to fill the bunkhouse from floor to ceiling. Renan charged it with his stone in both hands. The nightwalker slapped the stone away with ease. Renan’s head disappeared as a giant hand closed around it. Women screamed as the nightwalker ripped Renan’s head from his body. Blood geysered across the bunkhouse. The nightwalker upended the youth’s corpse like a goblet and gulped blood and fluids from the neck.
Ryan shot it in the chest.
The mutant’s head snapped around and it gave Ryan its undivided attention. He shot it twice more center-mass. Pinholes of purple blood appeared but without effect. Ryan raised his aim for the head shot, and the nightwalker flung Renan’s body at Ryan in response. The one-eyed man dodged most of it but Renan’s leg still clubbed him brutally across the chest. Stones pelted the creature and two more slaves attacked with clubs. The nightwalker closed a hand the size of a bunch of bananas into a fist. It hit the leading man like a battering ram and crushed the cage of his chest. The second man swung his club. The nightwalker caught the club and the hand holding it. The mutie ripped off the man’s hand at the wrist. The attacker staggered back, screaming. The nightwalker took the commandeered club and crushed the mutilated man’s skull.
Ryan raised his blaster and fired his final round.
Blood blossomed on the nightwalker’s forehead. It dropped the club and clapped a hand to its skull as it reeled back a step. Ryan lowered the empty weapon. The nightwalker lowered its hand. Bulging eyes regarded Ryan out of a purple mask of blood. The soft lead .38 bullet had caromed off a brow ridge of bone thicker than a thumb and filleted away flesh along the side of the nightwalker’s skull.
The Deathland’s warrior dropped the smoking, empty blaster and ripped his sword from the flesh of the fallen fat one at his feet. His eardrums tried to meet in the middle of his head as the nightwalker loosed its hunting scream in the closed confines of the bunkhouse. The caterwauling was cut short as Cafu flung a stool into the screaming mutie’s teeth. Cafu picked up the dead nightwalker’s war club in both hands and looked to Ryan desperately. “Ryan!” The women had retreated to the back of the bunkhouse. The two remaining men hung back, to guard them and out of sheer terror.
Ryan shambled forward.
Cafu cried out, “Ryan!” and followed. The two men behind joined the attack. “Ryan! Ryan!” The giant nightwalker’s hands shot forth to rend Ryan limb from limb. The one-eyed man dived beneath them and rolled up in a crouch. He slashed his blade beneath the knob of one giant, misshapen knee. The mutie screamed as tendons parted and it tilted back off balance. Cafu took the cue and swung his club like an ax. The tooth-studded weapon shattered the mutie’s patella. The nightwalker collapsed backward, kneecapped, and its screams registered fear. It raised a warding hand and Ryan slashed off the offered fingers. The mutie screamed again as Ryan’s backslash opened its elbow to the bone. Cafu pounded its other hand to pulp with his club. Fingers and bones broke under his assault. The other two men dodged the mutie’s flailing legs and landed blows wherever they could.
Ryan lunged hard and low.
The diamond point of his blade rammed underneath the nightwalker’s jaw, piercing the soft flesh beneath and crunching through the hard palate into the brain. The giant went limp. The bunkhouse was suddenly silent except for the ragged breathing of the victors. Cartilage cracked as Ryan ripped his sword free. He tottered toward the door. Cafu leaned on his club, gasping. Ryan stepped out into the rain. The she-creature had not gotten far. It crawled on three limbs through the mud of a garden plot, mewling and cradling its jellied lower jaw. The hag wasn’t even aware of Ryan until he yanked her head back by the hair and cut her throat. The female fell unmoving into the mud. Ryan returned to the bunkhouse. He felt like he’d been pounded like a nail, but there were no injured to attend to. There were only the living and the dead.
Ryan gestured at the clutch of sobbing women. “Moni?”
Moni got the four women moving and they gathered their few possessions. They pulled their rough cloaks around themselves. Moni got it across in pantomime that they would go to another farm. They said their goodbyes to the men and scurried into the night. Cafu and the surviving two men gathered around Ryan. Cafu made introductions. “Leto, Luis.” Leto wasn’t much younger than Cafu. Luis was about Ryan’s age and a head shorter. Ryan retrieved his panga, then reloaded the starter blasters. He kept one for himself and gave one to Cafu and one to Leto. Luis would have to make do with lumber until they could find him something better. Ryan examined the three men. They all looked angry. They all looked ready. Ryan now had local guides. He had the start of an army. The revolution had begun.
Ryan also had a wag that seated four. “Hey, you guys wanna go for a ride?”
The three men nodded grimly with no idea what was being proposed.
Ryan took a ragged breath. “Good.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jak made landfall just as the storm r
eally started to kick in. He figured no one would be stupe enough to take a boat out in a gale like this besides himself, so the Sister Isle, as Father Joao termed it, was the safest place to be. It took some persuasion to convince Father Joao to make himself useful, but they made it across the strait and got the boat up on the sand and tied off to a boulder. Father Joao peered up into the lashing rain. “Do you wish to take shelter or shall we just stand here until dawn?”
Jak was tempted to slash him again, but they needed to get out of the storm. “Where?”
Joao shrugged. “My church?”
Jak’s eyes slitted. He smelled a trap, but he was pretty sure he had Father Joao under control, and Ryan had said there was food, wine and supplies there. Jak shoved him. “Go.”
They slogged up a muddy path through the fields. Occasional lightning flashes lit the pounding darkness. Several times they wandered off the path and had to correct as they trod down millet grain. Father Joao mostly knew the way by heart. A pair of lamps hung high above the highest hill. Lightning showed Jak the church in stark relief. “Why lit?”
“It is always lit at night. It can be seen from most of the villages. It is a symbol. The light in the darkness.” They trudged through the muck and Joao opened the door. “Sacrilege!” Father Joao shook with rage as he took in the chopped-up pews. Portuguese profanity spewed from his lips in a torrent. “Nini!” He stamped his foot. “Nini!”
A frightened girl came out of one of the cells in the back. She was hardly any older than Jak and had a bruised look about her. Joao grabbed the girl, shaking her while screaming questions. Jak ended the interrogation by slashing the barrel of his blaster across Father Joao’s kidney. He gasped and buckled to one knee. The girl stared wide-eyed at Jak and ran across the church. Jak let her run. “Who she?”
