by James Axler
"Impressive dude, eh?" Bodie panted in Krysty's ear, the exertion showing on his fat face. He was using his blaster sparingly, a Tekna knife like the Armorer's clasped in his other pudgy hand. "Me, I'm not really much of a fighter. Always get nerves, you know? Talk too fuckin' much, like I am now. Nerves, y'see?"
Krysty raised her blaster and took off the top half of an advancing stickie's head with one shot. There were still a few of the stickies that had been in Sunchild's attack party at the ville, and they were now robed like the other Sunchildren—although instantly identifiable from their tiny eyes, needle-sharp teeth and splayed sucker fingers, as well as their almost bizarre lack of hair.
Bodie whistled. "Nice shootin', babe."
The titian-haired woman turned to him. "Don't call me 'babe.'" Then added, "Look out!"
Distracted by his nervousness and the finely muscled female fighting machine at his side, Bodie hadn't noticed a robed Sunchild come flying at him from his unprotected left-hand side. He was turned toward Krysty, and although her cry had made him turn, it wasn't quick enough. The mutie was on him in a flying leap, bellowing wordlessly as he clawed at the sec man, attacking even while still in midair.
The two hit the hard-packed earth with a thud that drove the air from both their bodies. Krysty couldn't blast the mutie as he and Bodie were too entwined, so she grabbed a handful of robe and flesh from near the mutie's neck and heaved upward.
The muscles in her arms stood out, and the cords on her neck grew taut. Her flaming hair whirled wildly with a life of its own as the mutie flew back in the air.
While he was still above the ground, she had leveled her Smith & Wesson blaster, putting a slug into his soft chest.
"Wow!" Bodie exclaimed. "That was something else!"
Krysty shook her head in amazement. "Just be careful unless you want to be chilled. I won't be beside you all the time," she added, chucking his chin as though he were a child.
Before Bodie had a chance to say much else, Krysty had disappeared into the fray, leaving him to watch his own back.
DOC HAD BEEN one of the last to hit the floor of the valley, picking his way down carefully so that he wouldn't fall and either chill himself or be a burden for any well-meaning Raw dweller who was close.
He needn't have worried. When he reached bottom, Mildred was waiting for him, using her ZKR to pick off approaching muties.
"By the Three Kennedys! Could it be that you are awaiting mine own humble presence?" Doc muttered as he righted himself.
"Well, I figured a crazy old buzzard like you may need some nursemaiding," Mildred said.
"Less than graciously put, my good woman, but nonetheless I appreciate the sentiment."
"Then stop talking and let's get moving," Mildred said quickly. "I figure it would be best for all concerned if you and me got to that nuke first, seeing as we're the only ones present who may have some idea of the tech."
"If Harvey is that close to Jenna, then he'll know of the technology involved," Doc replied. Then, as Mildred spared him a glance, he added, "Although I agree that such a thought only reinforces your point."
They began to move into the main body of Samtvogel. By the time that Doc had descended, the battle had moved inward, the advancing force pushing back the surprised Sunchildren until they were almost entirely contained to the central clearing, around their sacrificial altar—and, more importantly, the totem-decorated nuke.
Progress for Doc and Mildred was easy…almost too easy, so much so that an attack from the rear was so unexpected as to almost catch them off guard.
Almost, but not quite. They advanced through the slaughterhouse that was the outer reaches of Samtvogel, stepping over the chilled corpses and the dying, none of whom were conscious or fit enough to put up any kind of fight. Doc cradled the LeMat and had the swordstick unsheathed, but to preserve ammo Mildred picked off the few muties that came within range with her ZKR. There were other pockets of attack who, like themselves, had arrived after the first wave of attack. The main body of fighting was in front, as it was up to the stragglers like themselves to mop up resistance.
It was only because the sounds of strife were in front, and had the echo of distance, that Doc could differentiate the sound of movement from behind them. He whirled with a speed that belied the care with which he had advanced.
Behind himself and Mildred was a group of five muties, three men and two women. Two of the men were wounded, one dragging a heavily bleeding leg, the other with an arm hanging limp and useless. But all five had the fire of battle in their eyes, and were brandishing blades of varying sizes. They were only a few yards away, and advancing rapidly.
Mildred began to turn, but Doc snapped at her, "Eyes front, Doctor. Leave this to me. I would like to feel useful to some degree."
As he spoke, Doc raised the LeMat, and his last words were almost lost in the explosion of the percussion pistol.
The round caught the mutie with the injured arm full in the face. His head disappeared behind a spray of blood, flesh and bone. The woman to his left— perhaps his mate—screamed as she saw him disintegrate in front of her. It was a scream cut short by Doc's next shot, which caught her throat, ripping out her larynx and almost severing her spinal column. The rest of the shots were evenly spread over the group, cutting them down and either mortally wounding or instantly chilling them.
"Onward, onward, Doctor," Doc commanded.
"Yes, sir," Mildred murmured.
JAK HAD BECOME a fighting machine once more. Like Jake, he was primed, honed and let loose on an enemy. But unlike the giant sec man, Jak still kept his entire wits about him. There was a coldness within the albino, as icy as the whiteness of his hair and skin, that enabled him to stay detached in the middle of battle.
The mutie Sunchildren around were no match for the fighting skills of the albino. Eschewing the .357 Magnum Colt Python in a close-fighting situation, he used the leaf-bladed knives to slash his way through the collected tribe, with only one objective in view. Harvey had wanted the ville trashed and scattered, but Alien wanted information, and had made a request of the albino he had noted as such a strong fighter.
"Over to the left, Jak," Blake shouted from a few feet away. He still gripped the 9 mm Walther PPK he favored, but had let off few rounds, preferring to use the long, double-edged bayonet that was in his other fist, the honed blade almost as long as the small sec man's forearm.
Jak moved gracefully and seamlessly away from his compatriot, and to the right of the nuke.
Three passing moves with the knives disposed of dull-witted guards, too slow to even move before their lifeblood pumped from severed arteries.
Sunchild raised a rusting sword and bellowed in rage and frustration at his crumbling empire. He brought the blade down toward Jak's head, but the albino skipped around the blow, allowing the momentum to carry Sunchild forward…enough for Jak to chop at the exposed back of his neck, rendering him unconscious.
"Need alive…for now," the albino muttered as the mutie leader hit the ground.
HARVEY WAS in trouble, and it was all the fault of his own arrogance.
The sec chief had led the charge down the sides of the valley, arriving on the earth-packed floor only shortly after Ryan had chilled his first Sunchild. Like the one-eyed warrior, he had cut a swath through the surprised muties by using his Colt Magnum Carry blaster sparingly, and mostly chilling his opponents with the knife he always carried with him. The old Emerson CQC-7 was a highly prized tactical folding knife, and the razor-sharp blade was maintained by the sec man in the same chisel-sharpened state as when he first acquired it from the armory. Somehow—and the facts were vague enough to be worrying to Raw's baron if ever he heard them—the knife had found its way from a passing trader to the armory via the sec chief himself, with no questions asked or answers wanted.
Harvey had wanted the knife, and he had taken steps to acquire it. As with everything, his attention was focused. As it was now focused on attaining the nuke.
But that focus could be one-dimensional, and as the sec chief cut through the swarm of muties, he didn't notice that one of the Sunchildren he had cut wasn't quite chilled.
Ryan was in the vicinity, having fought his way through toward the nuke. Looking across, he saw the injured Sunchild drag herself up from the earth, her robes splattered with blood. A slash from the Emerson had cut her throat, and she had collapsed from the shock. But only veins had been cut, not an artery, and although she would eventually bleed to death, she was mustering all the strength she could for one last assault on the sec chief.
Ryan was in hand-to-hand combat as he saw this, and guessing what was to happen, doubled his efforts to dispose of the mutie he was battling. Shifting his balance, he knocked out the grip the mutie had on him by thrusting his arms up and out. While the Sunchild was off balance, Ryan's own powerful forearms crossed, catching the mutie's head in the middle of the cross. A flexion of the powerful muscles and a twist of his body weight insured that the mutie's soft-boned neck broke.
He was dead before he hit the dirt, and Ryan had already turned his attention to Harvey's predicament.
Ryan covered the few yards in a matter of seconds, but he was still not quick enough. His SIG-Sauer was holstered, and by the time it was unsheathed a clean shot would have been impossible, with the Sunchild and the sec chief too entwined.
Harvey, for his part, was taken completely by surprise. The Sunchild threw herself about his neck, attempting to drag him backward. His attention focused entirely on what was to the front of him, it was only the wiry man's strength that stopped him tumbling back under the sudden force from behind.
Harvey could feel the warm blood trickling from her, her fetid breath in his ear and on his neck, the panting and grunting of her breath as she tried to pull him down with all the strength she had left in her body.
The sec chief fought against it, pulling himself forward and attempting to throw her over his shoulder. But her weight was centered too far down her body, and the whole force was dragging too much for him to get any momentum on his own movements. Even more urgent was the fact that her arms were locked around his throat, and he couldn't breathe properly, gasping for breath. He hacked at her flesh with the Emerson, but in her dying condition she seemed impervious to pain, and not even the razor-sharp blade cutting through the flesh of her fingers could force her to relent.
Ryan could see the difficulty the sec chief was having, and unwound the scarf from his own throat. The long scarf was weighted at each end by carefully concealed and secured weights, which made the scarf a useful and unobtrusive weapon.
Useful like now. With a flick of his powerful wrist, judging the distance exactly with his practiced eye, Ryan kept hold of one end of the scarf and sent the other shooting toward the mutie. The tip of the scarf, weighted as it was, gained momentum in flight and cracked against the temple of the woman's head. A large bruise, weeping a thin trickle of blood, grew up almost as soon as the weight hit home, and she grunted heavily, her consciousness dimmed by the blow.
Harvey heard the crack, felt her heavy breath as she grunted, then felt her grip ease as her weight increased and became dead. She slipped away from him and down to the earth, still bleeding from her throat wound, and now with no consciousness to impair her way to death.
"Thanks, Cyclops," Harvey said hoarsely, rubbing his sore throat.
Ryan retrieved the scarf and wrapped it around his neck once more. He fixed the sec chief with a glare. "Don't thank me. Just remember you owe me," he said shortly, before plunging on into the fray.
Mebbe—just mebbe—that favor would count for something…
THE BATTLE WAS finally over. It had been short and bloody, and the vast majority of the casualties belonged to the Samtvogel dwellers.
"When I was still a fairly young man," Doc remarked to Krysty as they watched the Raw war party moving among the chilled Sunchildren to gather blasters or to chill any muties who might still be alive and therefore a threat, "when I was still in that time before the whitecoat horrors, they would take the Native American and treat him like this."
"Uncle Tyas McCann used to tell us of those days," the flame-haired woman replied. "He used to say that the law of dog-eat-dog was all that ruled. And the inherent stupeness of it was that he'd never seen a dog eat a dog unless they were put into a ring to fight for men."
Doc smiled. "An interesting point, my dear. And appropriate, I think. Yes, in some ways. Fear can do strange things. Is this the way a man like Alien seems to rule the rest of the time?" he questioned, sweeping the area with the end of his walking stick. "Was it necessary to lay waste to their lives? Certainly, they had coexisted long enough."
"Sure, but that was before the nuke."
"Before the whitecoat horrors," Doc said softly. "They will always return to haunt us, I believe."
"And your point is?" Krysty asked. "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want, or don't like, just to survive. You know that as well as anyone."
"But at what cost to ourselves?" Doc looked her in the eye. His own gaze was clearer and steadier than she had seen it for several days. "Consider that man," he said slowly and with measure, indicating Alien. "A life spent living a certain way, questioned and perhaps destroyed in a night. Consider the people. This was… easier?"
Krysty looked at Raw's baron. He stood in the center of the ville while his people scavenged, and a party of sec and some of the stronger ville dwellers— the blacksmith and the armorers among them—rigged the nuke with ropes and makeshift platforms to effect a way of carrying it back to Raw.
Alien was bowed, more like the vanquished than the victor. This was in contrast to Harvey, who was directing operations as though he, himself, had assumed the baronial role.
Krysty's musings were stopped as Mildred came up to them.
"No sign of Dean," she muttered shortly, keeping one eye on the party securing the nuke. "I've looked all over, and so has John. Haven't seen Ryan or Jak yet, but I'll bet you a whole heap of self-heats that I know what their answers will be if you ask them."
Krysty nodded. "He never left Raw. That's something I guess we'll have to deal with when we get back. And quick, 'cause I think the power base may be shifting in the ville before long." She gestured in Alien's direction with a slight inclination of the head. Mildred took in the situation at a glance.
The conversation was repeated almost word for word when Ryan, and then Jak, returned from scouting the remains of Samtvogel. But Jak had something more to add.
"Only Sunchild alive." He looked over to where the mutie baron was trussed, like a wild animal, tied to a stake driven into the ground while the nuke was secured. "Because Alien say."
"What about any survivors?" Mildred asked.
"Didn't you see them chilling any who hadn't already bought the farm?" J.B. asked softly.
"I meant those who may have got out of the valley during the fighting."
"None," Jak said simply. He indicated the road out. "Sec chill anyone reach there."
"Harvey's certainly made sure of this one," Ryan said grimly.
The one-eyed warrior led the way over to where the sec chief was preparing the nuke for the return journey. He seemed to be assuming sole charge of the nuke, while the baron—who should have been directing or overseeing operations—was standing to one side, seemingly lost in thought.
"Anything we can do to help?" Ryan asked.
Harvey cast an eye over the companions. "Not here," he said with an undertone in his voice. "Mebbe you could help fire the place."
"Fire?" Mildred asked.
"Damn, but I thought you blacks were smart," Harvey replied, ignoring both Mildred's angry look and the fleetingly hostile glances from Ant and Dee, who were busy with the nuke, but not so busy as not to hear. It didn't escape Jak's notice that Blake also cast a glance in the sec chiefs direction.
Perhaps there was an ally there when the crunch came down.
Harvey continued. "Look, this place ain't got no
one left alive. It's just some charnel house shitpit for the buzzards. Who knows what disease could spring up here unless we clean it up. Cleanse the area, y'know?"
"Alien's orders?" Ryan asked.
"Sure," Harvey replied. He called over to the baron. "Fire the place, Alien?" The baron replied with a noncommittal wave of his hand.
Harvey grinned. "Sure as shit good enough for me, Cyclops. So you want to do this?"
The sec chiefs insolent and superior gaze met the rock-steady steely blue eye. Ryan's gaze was stronger, harder. The sec chief looked away. "Find Cyclops Jr.?" he added as a final shot.
"No, but I think you knew that," Ryan replied. "I know he'll turn up. But not here."
Ryan turned to his friends. "We might as well get this over and done with."
None of them were happy with the circumstances surrounding the firing of Samtvogel, but the catch was that the sec chief had a valid point. Samtvogel could become a hotbed of disease with so many rotting chilled corpses within the valley, and this disease could then be borne to the forest by the bird life. So it was essential that the valley be cleansed with fire.
Ryan and his companions joined the members of the Raw war party who were engaged in preparing the firing. There were already numerous small fires blazing around the valley floor, and these would be the source of the bigger blaze. The lamps were being extinguished, and their oil collected. Some of the war party had discovered the storehouse where the supplies of fuel were kept, in an old outhouse to one side of one of the ranch houses, and this was added to that collected from the lamps.
Now came the part that seemed the most vile: the chilled mutie Sunchildren had to be doused with the oil, to enable them to burn. The areas in between were also drenched with trails of oil, stopping short of the fires. For the whole thing to go up before the war party had left the valley would be disastrous, and it was a fine line between leaving a gap that would prevent immediate firing, a gap that would be too large for the fire to jump when the real firing began.
But finally it was done. The war party assembled in the center of the ville.
