by James Axler
“Absolutely,” Shelly answered, taking the command chair, looking over the controls and weaponry. She liked machines. They never bled, screamed or died under your knife. Nice as summer rain, were machines. “Oh, he’s not going anywhere without a crutch for a couple of months, but Jimmy shouldn’t even have a limp afterward.” Then the woman paused in embarrassment.
“Glad to hear it,” Roberto said, unconsciously rubbing the stiff limb. “Wish we had you when I busted mine.” Then he noticed Jessica making a strange face. She had taken over the Ear until Jimmy was back on duty. The tough little man didn’t need a working leg to listen to fragging headphones.
“Something coming our way?” Roberto asked, moving closer.
“No, but I’m getting blasterfire just to the southwest of us,” Jessica replied slowly. “Rapidfires, wheelguns, some kind of black powder cannon, all kinds of drek, and it’s coming from the ruins we’re heading for.”
Rapidfires? That was interesting. Hardly anybody had that kind of firepower anymore. “Anything on the radar?” Roberto said, casually glancing over the control board.
“Bet your ass there is, Chief,” Quinn replied curtly, looking up from the glowing green screen. “Some kind of a wag, really big, and it’s made of metal. Not iron strips nailed over wood, but the good stuff like us, predark armor.”
Armor? His interest piqued, Roberto returned to the windshield and picked up a pair of binocs to scan the darkness ahead. He easily found the firefly sparkle of rapidfires near the river, then saw the other wag. It was big, with huge-ass windows, some sort of big chilling fork in front, and the whole thing was painted a bright yellow instead of a sensible camou.
“How the frag can you tell what kind of metal it is?” Jake demanded incredulously.
“The thicker it is, the darker the shadow it throws,” Quinn replied brusquely. “Chief…rapidfires and armor, do you think we have some competition?”
“Another trader in this area?” Jessica asked scornfully.
“I agree. Everybody we know is on the other side of the Deathlands,” Roberto said, adjusting the focus. “That fat bastard Hammerstein, Olivia, Fat Stephen, Broke-Neck Pete, all of ’em are pretty nuking far away from here.”
Sitting in the corner, Yates tilted his head at that last name, but said nothing.
“No, it must be another trader,” Jessica retorted. “No gang of coldhearts, or baron, has this much live brass. These folks are throwing it around like lead grew inside apples!” She flipped a switch and the ceiling speakers came to life with the sound of blasters, cursing and a deadly hooting.
“Stickies!” Jake growled, and started to suggest using the L-Gun, but then realized that even if it had the range, there was no way to aim tight enough to hit the muties, and not also chill the norms.
Lowering the binocs, Roberto hung them on a wall hook and limped quickly back to his chair. Norms fighting norms was not his business, but Kathleen would have helped anybody being attacked by stickies, so he also did, to honor her memory. Well, anybody except the nuke-sucker Ryan Cawdor. Sweet blind Norad, just to have the son of a bitch in the range of his L-Gun one more time…!
“All right, get sharp, people,” Roberto said, tightening the seat belt. “I don’t know if we can get there fast enough to save these norms, but we can at least burn out those stinking muties!”
“Pack ’em and rack ’em, boys!” Jessica said into a mike, her words echoing throughout the three war wags. “We’re going to stick it to the stickies!”
Eagerly, the crews shouted their approval and started slapping clips into longblasters, preparing for the coming slaughter.
SCRAMBLING AWAY from the campfire, the companions fired their blasters at anything that moved, desperate to reach the UCV only a few yards away. But the stickies were everywhere, loping low across the irregular ground and charging through the bushes. Cut off from the armored wag, the companions retreated from the muties, firing every step of the way.
Running low and fast across the hard-packed sand, the muties charged straight for the companions, sucker-covered fingers outstretched eagerly, and Ryan saw a group of them lumber out of the river. The bastards had sneaked up on them from behind! That was pretty smart for a stickie, and for one terrible moment, Ryan wondered if these might be more of those smart stickies created by Delphi. But even as he aced one, Ryan could see the mutie had nothing in its misshapen hands but suckers, no spears or clubs. Good enough.
“Head for the ruins!” Ryan bellowed, triggering a round. The SIG-Sauer barked and the 9 mm copper-jacketed bullet took a stickie smack in the temple, blowing out the back of its skull across the others in a grisly spray of bones, brains and blood. Already deceased, the mutie kept running for a few feet before limply collapsing to the ground.
Lighting a road flare, J.B. tossed it aside, and several of the stickies converged on the sizzling magnesium, clawing at the light in mindless fascination. When a few more joined the group, Jak tossed over his one gren. The clump of muties was blown sky-high, the tattered bodies sailing away into the night. One hit the shore, another splashed back into the river, but the concussion only excited the others to a fever pitch, and the muties raced even faster for the companions.
Working the selector pin on his LeMat, Doc switched to the smooth-bore 12-gauge and triggered the mini-shotgun. The blast completely removed the head of a female stickie, and she stumbled past the scholar, arms outstretched, her sagging breasts flapping obscenely.
With the other companions maintaining defensive fire, J.B. tossed two more flares. One died on impact, but the other stayed lit, rolling along, throwing off smoke and hellish light. As the stickies gathered around again, Krysty rolled in her gren, and once more the creatures were annihilated.
But more and more of them were steadily coming out of the river, and there were no more grens or pipe bombs.
Dangerously low on ammo, the companions reached the outskirts of the ruins and scrambled up a slope of loose masonry, trying for the second floor of an office building. Ryan and Mildred took out the first wave of muties as the others grabbed moldy pieces of predark furniture and threw them together as a crude barricade. Then J.B. sent down a withering hail of 9 mm rounds from the Uzi, while Ryan and Mildred rejoined the group.
With their back to a wall, the companions could now concentrate their blasters in a single direction, and they started taking turns chilling the monsters and reloading. Doing so again and again.
Holstering the empty SIG-Sauer, Ryan swung up the Steyr and started taking out stickies, the long 7.62 mm cartridges going through one mutie and also chilling the one behind. However, he knew this was only a holding action. There seemed to be a lot more stickies than the companions had brass, and when they ran out it would all be over but the screaming. There was more ammo in the UCV, but how to reach it with the muties in the way? Looking around frantically, he saw how close the next building was to the one they were in now, and evolved a fast plan.
“Cover me!” Ryan shouted, turning away from the fight and running deeper into the dark ruins.
Maneuvering purely by the silvery moonlight, the Deathlands warrior went to a couple of windows before finding one that overlooked an alleyway. It was a ten-foot drop onto loose rubble. Perfect.
Kicking out the few pieces of glass still in the frame, Ryan grabbed a warped closet door and yanked it off the rusty hinges. Awkwardly, he placed it on the sill and slid it across the alley and into another window. Thumping the makeshift bridge with a hard fist, he decided it should hold, and sharply whistled for the others. Rummaging in his pockets for loose rounds, he hastily reloaded a clip for the SIG-Sauer as the rest of the companions came running with the stickies close behind, hooting insanely.
“Bridge!” Ryan bellowed, placing his shots carefully, trying to block the rush of the muties with their own corpses. He succeeded, until the stickies started crawling sideways along the moldy walls like mottled insects.
The companions needed no prompting to scurr
y individually across the creaking door to the next building. Slinging the Uzi, J.B. thumbed a couple of the new cartridges into the scattergun and rained hellfire on the muties, giving Ryan a few seconds to get across, and then the one-eyed man used the Steyr to hold back the stickies as J.B. joined them.
Once he reached solid footing, the Armorer kicked the door off the sill, and it fell away, clattering between the two buildings before crashing on the ground to the sound of splintering wood.
Almost instantly, an inhuman face appeared in the other window and launched itself straight for Ryan. But the thing only got halfway across the empty space before dropping away to land with a sickening crunch.
Pushing the others out of the way, Mildred pulled a knife to cut her finger and smear the window frame with the fresh blood. Driven mad by the smell, the stickies swarmed to their deaths, determined to reach the delicious norm flesh at any cost.
Using a precious minute to reload their blasters, the companions broke for the hallway, only to find it missing, the entire center of the building gutted by fire.
“Now what? Some of them are going to survive that fall,” Krysty said, her animated hair coiled tightly against her head. “The dead ones cushioning the fall of the last few live ones.”
“Then I strongly suggest we put another alleyway between us and them,” Doc said, removing the single 12-gauge cartridge from the LeMat and inserting a new one.
“Sounds good,” Ryan said, sliding a replacement clip into the SIG-Sauer and working the slide to chamber a round. “Spread out, and find the fragging stairs!”
It took the companions only a few minutes, but the stairs were also gone, eaten by termites, time and acid rain. Searching quickly, they found another pair of rooms with matching windows, and used another door to cross over to a third building. This one was in much better condition, and they raced up the creaking wooden stairs to easily reach the sagging rooftop, their weapons out and ready.
The stars were out, twinkling merrily in the ebony firmament, and they could hear the excited hoots of stickies from somewhere in the earthly darkness.
“They got across,” Jak drawled, his head tilted slightly, a pale fist hefting the Colt Python.
“Then we better move faster!” Mildred urged, trying to tighten the bandage around her wounded finger. The trick had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now she realized that the smell of blood would only draw the stickies to them like bees to honey.
Suddenly, Doc plunged a hand into her med kit and withdrew the tube of glue. Thanking him with a curt nod, she wiped the bloody finger clean with the bandage, then tossed it away, and spread the sticky fluid along the small cut. It stung for a moment, then the pain vanished and the bleeding ceased completely.
“Any more grens or pipe bombs?” Ryan asked, concentrating on thumbing fresh rounds into a clip for the Steyr.
“Nothing. We’re out,” J.B. said tersely.
Inserting the clip, Ryan worked the arming lever and slung the longblaster over a shoulder. Five more shots and he’d be down to the panga. “Then we run,” he commanded.
Hopping over to the next building, the companions raced across the roof, and did it again. Finding themselves in a parking garage, they charged to the far side and crossed the street, then started going from office building to apartment complex, again, but this time they were heading back toward the UCV.
Reaching the last building on the block, the companions studied the moon shadows below for any signs of the stickies. It had been a while since they last heard hooting, but these river muties seemed to stay quiet until charging in the chill.
“I can just see the wag,” Krysty said, squinting into the night. “There doesn’t appear to be any stickies nearby.” Just then, the night wind brought the distant rumble of a diesel engine, but before she was sure it vanished again on the breeze.
“Let’s chance it,” Ryan stated. “Move slow and quiet until we reach the street, then give it everything you’ve got. The first one to reach the wag gets the doors open, and covers the others.”
“Don’t bother starting the engine,” J.B. added, removing his glasses and tucking them away safe into a pocket. “Just concentrate on getting some steel between us and these nuke-suckers.”
“Let’s go,” Ryan ordered, leading the way.
Easing down the old stairs, the companions paused at every floor, straining to hear any movements from the blackness, but they seemed to be alone and reached the ground without incident.
Now, the norms broke into a full run, dashing pell-mell for the safety of the armored transport. They barely got out of the city and back onto grass when the hooting sounded again from behind them—and there came an answer from in front of them.
Redoubling their sped, the companions could soon see the flickering campfire shining on the side of the war wag, the Lexan windows reflecting the crimson light back onto the area so it seemed bathed in blood. There were a score of aced bodies scattered on the ground, and Ryan felt sure a couple of them were still very much alive and playing possum.
Dropping a flare, J.B. kept running, but after a hundred feet or so, he stopped and turned, with the Uzi primed for action. Black shapes were silhouetted in the magnesium light, and the Armorer sent a long burst from the machine pistol into their midst, moving the rapidfire in a sideways figure eight. A dozen of the muties dropped with hoots of pain, but the rest continued on relentlessly.
Swinging around the Steyr, Ryan took out five of the stickies, then turned and ran again. That was it for ammo.
Moving ahead of everybody else, Doc reached the vehicle first, but paused at the rear doors to crouch and check under the wag first. A pair of inhuman eyes stared silently right back at him from the gloom, and the old scholar removed them from this world with one thundering stroke of the trigger.
Working the latch, Doc climbed inside and threw both of the aft doors open wide. Then holstering the LeMat, he twisted the lion’s head atop the ebony stick, and withdrew the shiny Spanish sword nestled inside.
The hooting of the stickies was noticeably louder, and Doc began to wonder if his friends had fallen, when they suddenly appeared out of the darkness with a dozen stickies close on their tail.
As the companions reached the doors and scrambled inside, Doc grabbed the S&W M-4000 from J.B. and discharged it into the night. Three of the stickies faltered, watery blood staining their rags, but they did not fall.
Yanking the tall man out of the way, Jak slammed the doors shut and the stickies smashed against the armored chassis, hooting louder than ever before.
Shoving the heavy bolts into place, Krysty made sure the doors were securely locked while Ryan strode to the front of the wag and got behind the wheel. The engines started instantly, the dashboard coming to life with winking lights and glowing indicators.
Ignoring all of that, Ryan tromped on the gas and shifted the gears, lurching the vehicle into motion. If it was possible, the stickies started making even more noise, frustration and hunger making them animated in their anger.
“Noisy fuckers,” J.B. muttered, expertly reloading a clip for the Uzi, then doing one for the SIG-Sauer. Reaching over, he yanked the blaster from Ryan’s holster, inserted the clip, worked the slide and shoved it back into place.
“Thanks,” Ryan said as he tried to coach the lumbering transport on to greater speeds.
Hooting wildly, the muties boiled out of the cool darkness and rushed directly into the blinding headlights of the UCV. Snarling a curse, Ryan revved the big Detroit engine and sent the armored wag hurtling into the mob. The vehicle didn’t even tremble as it crashed into the stickies, crushing their malformed bodies and sending the broken corpses hurtling away.
But now, more stickies rushed out of the darkness, throwing themselves onto the wag, clinging like bloated leeches, their disgusting suckers pulsating as they crawled across the Lexan windows.
Mumbling vehement curses, Jak thumbed a single round into the empty Colt, shoved the weapon out a bla
sterport and fired. Its guts blown to the wind, a stickie fell away, but another took its place and tried to reach through the blasterport with a questing finger. With a surly expression, the teenager sliced off the digit, and kicked it away under the jumpseats.
The UCV jounced as it rolled over some of the muties, faint hoots coming from directly below the soft floor.
Assuming an odd stance, Krysty leveled her blaster and fired. A stickie crawling past the blasterport jerked from the arrival of the deadly hollowpoint round, then went limp. But the lifeless body stayed in place, blood and other fluids trickling into the wind behind them.
Crawling onto the windshield, a stickie looked directly into Ryan’s eye, the lipless mouth hooting steadily as it wiggled around trying to reach the man, unable to fathom why it could not. Without a blasterport to use, Ryan couldn’t figure out any way to get rid of the bastard creature, and restrained himself from trying the horn or wiperblades. That would be sure to only make it more crazy, if that were possible. Then inspiration hit, and he executed a sharp turn and headed back toward the ruins.
Unexpectedly, there was a sharp twang, and the rope holding the rooftop hatch into place snapped. As the hatch slammed aside, a stickie dropped inside the wag, looking around and hooting in delight. Moving fast, Doc lunged forward, his sword skewering the creature directly through the chest. The mutie convulsed in agony, but still reached out for the norm with both deadly hands. Caught totally by surprise, Doc recoiled, trying to pull his sword free, but that only dragged the stickie along and the thing got hold of his arm.
“Die, motherfuck!” Jak snarled, stroking the trigger of his Colt Python, the big-bore handcannon booming louder than a tac nuke inside the confines of the wag.
The head of the mutie literally exploded, and the stickie dropped to the floor, pumping out thick, viscous fluids, but still holding on to the sleeve of Doc’s coat. With a foul expression, the man used the sword to slice off a piece of the fabric and regain his freedom. But the other muties now seemed aware of the breech in the armored hull, and were eagerly crawling for the roof.
