Cannibal Moon

by James Axler

  She looked dead.

  J.B. gripped her by the shoulder and gently turned her over. Then he leaned down and held the torch close to her face. As its heat radiated against her skin, the long strands of her prehensile, mutie hair coiled into tight ringlets of alarm.

  “She’s alive, Jak!” the Armorer said.

  “Mildred’s over here,” the albino said.

  J.B. shook Krysty back to consciousness and got her to sit up.

  “Oh, my head,” she moaned.

  “You’re going to be all right,” J.B. told her. “Just stay still for a minute. Get your bearings.”

  When he moved to check on Mildred, he found her already recovered and kneeling beside Ryan, who was coughing violently.

  Even with a filtering rag, it was difficult to breathe through the smoke.

  “Is he okay?” J.B. asked her.

  “Don’t know, yet,” she said.

  Mildred quickly checked Ryan for broken bones and flash burns, and found no serious injuries. “Jak’s still looking for Doc and Sprue,” she said as she stood. “They could be in much worse shape. We’d better help him.”

  About twenty feet away, the albino was standing over the seated old man and Sprue. Even in the weak torchlight, J.B. could see their hands and faces were coated with soot. He guessed the shock wave had to have landed them on their backs.

  Both men coughed rackingly.

  “It’s smoke inhalation,” Mildred said. “Get them on their feet. Get them moving.”

  As they did so, she took the Colt Python from her belt and handed it to Jak. “You’ve probably been missing this,” she said.

  He reholstered his weapon without thanking her.

  Miraculously, no one had been hit by falling debris. Aside from the smoke they’d breathed in, their injuries amounted to little more than contusions to the hands and face.

  They all regrouped around Ryan and Krysty.

  “What about the cannies?” the one-eyed man asked, glancing back in the direction of the freighter.

  If there was anything moving closer to the ship, they couldn’t see it for the smoke. There were no sounds of life, either. No moans. No cries for help. Just the roar of the bunker oil burning out of control.

  “They were a lot closer to ground zero than you were,” J.B. told him. “Shock wave probably blew them apart.”

  “Lot of gator food ’round here, then,” Sprue said.

  Doc broke into another fit of coughing.

  “Got to get you some fresh air,” Mildred told him.

  “Good luck finding some,” Krysty said.

  The burning ship had managed to wreath the entire island in smoke.

  “How are we going to get off this hellhole?” Mildred asked.

  “Same way we got on,” J.B. told her. “Cheetah Luis sent some of his fighters ahead to capture the barge.”

  Doc suddenly doubled over, hacking his lungs out.

  “Let’s get on with it, before Doc drops dead,” Ryan said.

  They crossed the flat, featureless island like penitents, shuffling along the path, filthy, bloody, faces wrapped to the eyes in rags, bone-weary from the exertions of the last two days.

  After what seemed like hours of trudging, they sighted a row of dim lights through the smoke ahead. Then they heard the water lapping at the shore.

  The barge emerged out of the shifting smoke, torches lining its deck. There were few people aboard, the sole survivors. As the companions stepped aboard, the Cajuns were dumping the dead cannie skipper and crew over the side.

  Cheetah Luis greeted them. He seemed subdued. “You were the last ones to make it out?” he said.

  “Looks like it,” Ryan said.

  “Mighty expensive victory,” the Cajun said as he looked around the boat.

  Cheetah Luis had lost two-thirds of his kinsmen fighters in the battle and subsequent explosion. Some of the freed prisoners looked shellshocked. They couldn’t believe what they had lived through. Some openly wept, their faces buried in their hands, mourning the loss of loved ones.

  “Way better than an expensive defeat,” Ryan told him.

  “Back home we still got a fight on our hands,” the Cajun said. “Got to hunt down the rest of the bastards before we can start fixing things like they used to be. Gonna be a long, hard road.”

  “You’ll find your way,” Ryan assured him.

  Across the deck, Harlan Sprue was already laying the groundwork for a fresh start. He was buttonholing the survivors, trying to recruit himself a new convoy crew.

  The barge backed out of the narrow cove, piloted by one of the Cajuns. He steered it over the black water toward the mainland, leaving the foul stench of burning oil behind. With the clean salt air rushing over them, the companions stripped off their rag masks.

  Mildred took a seat beside Ryan on the bow. To the east, dawn was breaking a bloody red.

  Cannie red.

  “We didn’t get all of them,” Ryan said.

  “Got a lot though,” Mildred said. “Put a serious dent in them.”

  “How long before the cure wears off and the bastards start to die back?”

  “No way to predict that,” Mildred said. “The important thing is they won’t spread any further.”

  “Couldn’t there be other cure carriers like La Golondrina out there?” Ryan asked. “The whole thing could start all over again.”

  “Anything is possible, Ryan. We don’t know what caused her to be source of cure in the first place. We don’t know how she became a cannie, either. Even she didn’t know that.”

  “How much of her is inside you?”

  “You’re thinking I might be carrying the cure?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “Ryan, just because I harvested her antibodies doesn’t mean I have the capacity to store them, or to make them for myself. The cure La Golondrina produced was the result of a complex set of unique biochemical processes. The genetic changes behind those processes were created by a series of events that cannot be reconstructed, even if we knew what they were.”

  “So you’re saying it’s over?” Ryan said.

  “I’m saying it’s over for now,” Mildred said. “Enjoy the sunrise.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-7341-5

  CANNIBAL MOON

  Copyright © 2007 by Worldwide Library.

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