by James Axler
"Got stickies here? What like?" Jak asked hurriedly. The mutie stickies shared some characteristics that were common, but as time went on there were generations that became more mutated, in strange and bizarre ways.
"Fuck it, Whitey. Stickie's a stickie to me. You muties may be able to tell each other apart, but I can't. Just know they're coming."
Jak's face grew whiter at the insult, but he stored his hatred for later.
"Okay, so we know the Sunchildren may all be armed after the raid, but we can assume the stickies won't be. Where the fuck do they come from?" Ryan continued, trying to figure where the stickie community would be, and thanking their luck that they had avoided them on their way to the ville.
"Does it matter where? Just chill the fuckers," Jenna muttered.
"Mebbe. But if we know where they come from, we can be ready for any second wave," J.B. said softly, in a voice like that of an adult explaining something to a stupe child. He ignored Jenna's look of pure hatred and continued, "The last thing we want is to be taken by surprise."
"Surprise is that there are any," Harvey answered. "Must be a nomad band looking for a new land. I haven't seen any around here since I was a kid."
"Let's hope they haven't left any at Samtvogel, then," Ryan said. "So what's your plan?"
Harvey gestured at the map. "Meet them here and here. Pin them from both sides, with outreaching parties in case they're running little surprises for us, figuring we'll do that. Mebbe they won't know they've been spotted, and we'll get lucky. Thing is, my boys aren't that many, and the rest of the folks here ain't really fighters. We could use some help."
Ryan nodded. He could see that the request came directly from the baron, and was sticking in the sec chiefs craw even as he asked. He confined agreement to a nod, not wanting to aggravate the situation by further comment. Besides which, time was short.
"Thank you, Ryan," Alien said simply. "I'll be with you as this threat hits Raw. We leave immediately."
HARVEY LEFT five sec men in charge of the ville. Each sec man headed a section, Raw being divided into geographical segments. The armed inhabitants were under their section leader. This left Harvey in charge of twenty sec men, with Alien allowing Harvey—as sec chief—to head operations. Ryan and his people were assumed to be under Harvey's direction. They were content to do this unless it led them into unnecessary danger, where they each privately reserved the right to take appropriate action.
They marched through the tunnels at double speed, unable to run because the width of the passageways demanded a disciplined exit. As they marched, Harvey assigned parties of sec men, directing them on their courses of action when they broke surface. At one junction, the party divided into two, the second group of sec forces heading for another exit, the better to approach the pincer movement Harvey directed.
Ryan's party followed Harvey and Alien, heading for the exit by which they had first entered Raw.
When they broke surface, the humidity hit them like a wave. The air just below the surface was less fresh, but was cooler and not filled with the sickly sweet smell of the forest undergrowth. As the first sec team emerged, they took up guard positions until all were safely out of the exit and in a position of defense. The entrance to the ville was closed and disguised before Harvey mustered his forces.
Having filled them in fully on the plan he had earlier explained in detail to Ryan and his party, he deployed his forces, sending them out on a long, semicircular ran that would intercept with the course the mutie war party was taking.
"You sure he's got that right?" J.B. whispered to Ryan before the parties split. "Reckon they will take the direct route?"
"Not much intelligence or tactical sense among them, and they'll probably want to take the most direct route," Ryan reasoned. "Figure Harvey's probably got it about right. Best to stay triple red on the run out, though. Just in case he's underestimated Sunchild himself—just like he thought he didn't have blasters."
The Armorer agreed, pushing his fedora back and polishing his spectacles. "Don't usually say this, but good luck. We may need it yet," he said, only too well aware that the forces they knew they could rely on—themselves—were to be split in two by Harvey's division of sec forces.
"Hey, Cyclops! You and the blaster boy stop yakking. We've got work to do," Harvey snapped at them.
Ryan's face set, hiding his anger. Harvey's ability to use his tongue harshly at the wrong moments would get him into serious trouble one day…but not today.
Not when there was a larger enemy.
THE MUTIE raiding party was making no attempt to disguise its progress, and Ryan was able to hear them from some distance. He was in an ambush party that included himself, Krysty, Jak and the baron. Downey, the silver-haired and snake-hipped sec man with the Sharps, was in charge, although he was suitably deferential to his baron. Alien had confessed to being no fighting man, and he was proving that by being more of an obstruction than a help, his bulk becoming easily snagged on the sharp spines running down the stems of some plants and tripping over tree roots hidden in the creepers that moved alarmingly around his heavy-footed tread.
There were nine other sec men in the party, and Blake was one of them. The wizened and dark sec man dropped back to help the baron straggle through the undergrowth. Jak fell back in line to assist the sec man.
"I hate to say this, Baron," Blake whispered, "but are you sure you're doing the right thing coming with us? I mean—"
"I'm your leader, and that means in times of trouble, as well as peace," Alien said hoarsely.
"Baron not much good if chilled," Jak commented pithily.
"Time to worry about that later," Downey whispered over his shoulder. "We're getting closer."
It was superfluous for him to mention that. The sound of the mutie raiding party was now loud, and its direction easy to trace. As Harvey had surmised, they were heading straight through the only viable path that led through the forest, beaten down by several generations of travelers to and from the sites of the underground ville's entrances. They were now trampling the undergrowth flat, the Sunchildren chanting and loosing shots into the air with no thought of stealth. Other, clumsy and high-pitched voices were mixed in with the chanting, arrhythmic and confused. These were unmistakably the stickies, carried along by the Sunchildren, hyped up to a fever pitch of destruction.
"How many of the fuckers?" one of the sec men asked.
"Can't see from here," Downey commented. "We need to get nearer if we can."
"Let me see," Jak whispered, moving forward. "Better chance on own."
Downey nodded consent, and Jak was gone, vanishing into the undergrowth in front of the group with barely a ripple of foliage, as though he had never been there.
The chanting grew painfully loud as Jak skipped across the creepers, dodging the raised tree roots and climbing up one of the stunted trees in order to raise himself higher, hoping to gain a better perspective.
He could see them, but not clearly enough. Leaping from one bough to another, he traversed three more trees before he could get a clear view of them.
He suppressed the urge to whistle. There were fifteen Sunchildren that he could count, plus twenty-eight—maybe thirty—stickies. It was hard to be accurate as they moved about in a milling, frenzied crowd.
This meant that the total sec force was outnumbered by more than two to one. Scanning the mutie party once more, Jak guessed that they had maybe a dozen blasters among them.
He was about to skip back into the forest from his position when something on the far side of the cleared path caught his eye. He showed himself a little more as he identified the waving branches as the movements of Dean, on the other side. The youngster had obviously had the same idea as Jak.
Their eyes met across the roof of foliage. Jak signaled ten to Dean, indicating that they should both attack after ten minutes tracking the party. Dean nodded, then was gone. Jak grinned, teeth drawn back in a predatory smile, then returned to his group.
&n
bsp; "Well?" Downey asked as Jak came into view. When the albino had explained the position, he added, "Okay, we'll trail them and then go for it. If we take them from behind, it'll buy us that extra few fractions of a second."
"Mebbe more," Ryan added. "The stickies will be too freaked to react that quickly. Good call."
"Thanks for the praise," Downey returned sarcastically.
As they moved off, Krysty noticed Alien casting a quizzical eye over the sec man, obviously bemused by his comment to Ryan a few moments before.
Her hair coiled tight, and she knew it had nothing to do with the current chase.
MILDRED FACED Harvey with anger blazing in her eyes.
"What the hell do you mean, leave it until they've made the first push? They'll be expecting us to go in ten and be backing them up. Why let them take the brunt?"
"Why not?" Harvey replied calmly. "I just say that we wait until the muties've got their attention focused one way, then hit the fuckers from the other way."
"But without them knowing, there's no telling—"
"Listen, bitch," the sec chief snarled, "who the fuck's in charge here?"
J.B. stepped forward and pulled Mildred back. "Not now, Millie," he said, adding in a softer voice when the sec chiefs attention was taken by one of his own men, "Who says we do what the bastard says anyway?"
Mildred grasped the meaning behind the Armorer's words and gave the briefest gesture of agreement. Independently, Doc and Dean had come to the same conclusion.
"We can't let that happen," the youngster whispered to Doc.
The old man cradled his LeMat and said with mock sadness, "Ah, but these old weapons, and indeed the old men using them, can be a trifle erratic at times."
RYAN CHECKED his wrist chron and stole a glance at Alien. The Raw baron was stone-faced, any emotion he may feel about going into a firefight tightly reined in. By his side were Jak and Blake. The small, wizened sec man seemed to grow in stature as he felt the time for battle come near; he was breathing slowly and deeply, his eyes faraway and focused on what was to come.
Looking around, Ryan could see that the rest of the sec men were also readying themselves in their own way.
Beside him, Krysty was hunkered down, her Smith & Wesson blaster clenched in her hand, her fingers coiled around the barrel and through the trigger guard with a deceptive languor.
The flame-haired beauty turned to him. "Not now, but later…then we need to worry," she mouthed.
Ryan nodded, then checked his chron again. It was time. They had been following at a distance, observing the mutie raiding party. Two of the muties had fallen by the wayside already—one of the Sunchildren and a stickie,—chilled by the random blaster shots from the hyped-up muties. Given a long enough approach to Raw, they could probably do a very good job of chilling themselves.
But there wasn't the distance. And now the time was up, and Harvey's men should also be ready. Ryan looked at Downey. The silver-maned sec man caught Ryan's eye and nodded.
"It's time," he said simply, throwing the comment over his shoulder. "Let's go get them."
And it began. Ryan sprang forward, the taut muscles on his thighs and the strong, powerful calf muscles propelling him forward in an explosive burst. He brought J.B.'s M-4000 across his chest, keeping a firm hold as he broke cover. Downey was beside him, moving over the ground as though he were hovering above it, snapping back the Sharps and chambering the first round ready for a mutie.
They broke cover in two waves, spread across a distance of only a few yards. Jak had moved through the ranks from his position beside the baron, the Python .357 in one fist, a leaf-bladed knife in the other. Blake was almost level with him, the small man showing a surprising turn of speed, the slim and elegant lines of his 9 mm Walther PPK seeming huge in his small hand. He trusted Jak totally, there having sprung between them an unspoken bond—the bond of two men who knew their job and were masters of their art.
Among the other sec men breaking cover was Jake, the huge bearlike man who dwarfed the Heckler & Koch he grasped, swinging it around as soon as he broke cover and had sighted the rear of the mutie party. He roared as his finger tightened on the trigger, loosing his anger and adrenaline in one blast.
First chill, however, went to Jak. A stickie at the rear of the party turned and lunged toward the ambush party. Not wasting a shot at this point, Jak's knife flashed through the space between them and connected with the stickie, slicing through the jellylike, pale flesh at the creature's throat and producing streams of thin, watery blood that ran down the creature's neck and chest.
The stickie stopped in midstride, confusion and pain written across its features, the blank eyes and sharp, needlelike teeth identifying it as a mutie even before its mottled, irradiated skin could be properly seen. He tried to scream, but a thin, pained keening was all that emerged, followed by a gurgle as it drowned on its own blood, falling forward as consciousness slipped away.
By the time the stickie hit the carpet of creepers across the forest floor, the majority of the ambush party had passed it and were in the middle of a firefight.
Downey and Ryan were side by side, the sec man snapping off shots from the Sharps that took out confused muties as they attempted to turn to face their attackers without careening into each other. Ryan targeted a densely packed area of mutie flesh with the M-4000 to cause the maximum impact.
"We fighting on our own, Downey?" the one-eyed warrior heard from beside him, interrupted by random burst of fire from an Uzi. It was a familiar sound, but an unfamiliar pattern, and Ryan guessed that it had been a long time since Alien had regularly used a blaster. And if they made it back alive, Harvey may have a few uncomfortable moments.
"That's a good question, Baron," the sec man replied, his tone still laid-back. "I'd sure as shit like to know the answer to that myself."
FROM THEIR COVER, the second ambush party saw Ryan and Downey emerge, saw Jak claim first blood, saw the heaving mass of muties turn to face the sec force.
"It'll be a massacre," breathed one of the sec men. "It must be four-to-one out there."
"Wait," Harvey said softly, a hard edge to his tone.
"No way," the Armorer muttered, readying the Uzi. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Mildred had already sighted one mutie from this range, possibly at the edge of target range, but her practiced eye gauged that it was just close enough for her to get a lethal shot. The Czech-made ZKR was a good blaster, with the high degree of accuracy demanded by its previous life as a competition weapon.
"Go, Millie," the Armorer breathed as his thin and wire-strong limbs shot him forward and out of the undergrowth. He heard Harvey curse at the same moment as the crack of Mildred's blaster resounded in his ears.
J.B. broke cover about fifty yards to the left of the other sec ambush party. He raised the Uzi and cut loose, the 9 mm rounds tearing at the exposed flesh of the Sunchildren and the stickies.
J.B. didn't know if the rest of the sec force had followed him, or if he faced the muties alone on this flank. Perhaps not quite alone. The roar of the ancient LeMat sounded near him, first once and then a second time in quick succession as Doc unleashed ball and shot, dispensing death and agony into another group of muties. The sound was followed swiftly by the crack of Dean's Browning Hi-Power as he picked off the most dangerous of the mutie party from this angle—those who were quick enough to turn and had avoided the rain of death from J.B. and Doc.
The Armorer sensed rather than saw Mildred appear from the foliage, adopting the same technique as Dean. They had the advantage of surprise on their side, which gave them the time to pick their targets as the slow-witted stickies and the confused Sunchildren had to adjust to the fact that they were being attacked from two directions.
More blasterfire rent the air as Harvey, now unable to hold back his men, led the rest of the ambush party into the fray.
Both ambush parties were attacking the muties from closer quarters now, and while handblasters were essential, it would hav
e been madness to use the M-4000 and the LeMat at such close range. The risk of chilling their own forces would have been too great. So Doc produced his swordstick, the silver lion's head grasped tight while the razor-sharp blade carved through the masses.
Ryan unsheathed the panga on his thigh, and used it as though the mass of mutie flesh were just so much foliage that needed chopping out of the way, hacking through limbs and torsos that blurred so much that it was only the bright robes of the Sunchildren and the hideous suckered and splayed fingers of the stickies that told them apart.
On the other side of the rapidly thinning mutie war party, J.B. had his Tekna knife in hand, thrusting with a cold and calculating precision, thinking not of the lives he was taking, but only the ones he was preserving back at Raw.
In the middle of the throng, Jak's white hair whirled around his head Like a whip as, dervishlike, he dealt death in close combat with the leaf-bladed knives, a flick of the wrist carving swathes through the war party, the Python safely holstered to enable him to ply his deadly trade.
Despite their greater numbers, and the fact that they were to some degree armed, the muties were unable to make their numbers count. Those surviving Sunchildren, including Sunchild himself, beat an early retreat, leaving the unarmed stickies to take the brunt of the attack. But not before Sunchild had imparted a chilling message.
The mutie leader had been considered a congenital idiot, and perhaps he was: but not so much that he couldn't sidle up to Alien in battle. Before the baron had a chance to chill him, he hissed, "Big chill come your way soon." And even as Alien leveled his blaster, the mutie leader was gone.
Ryan was close enough to hear, and wondered what the mutie meant by his statement. But that was for later. Now there was chill or be chilled.
The battle was over as soon as it had begun.
"Leave them," Alien roared as a few of the sec men turned to pursue the straggling stickies who were able to make their escape. "There has been enough slaughter. Let's collect ourselves and return home. They won't come back in a hurry."
