by James Axler
"Sure," he replied, impressed that she'd thought to ask first.
The woman tested the pistol for weight and balance, smiling approvingly. Her eyes followed the huge insect as it lunged and thrusted menacingly, feinting in toward the watchers, then cutting away, its hum increasing to a raging whine. Ryan's guess put it at close to a foot long, but it was moving very fast and erratically. If Mildred Wyeth really thought she could hit it, in midair, then she had a lot of confidence and nerve.
With the silencer, the sound of the SIG-Sauer was little louder than an elderly clergyman's clearing his throat. Mildred had braced her right wrist with her left for extra steadiness, shooting, Ryan was pleased to see, without squinting an eye shut. He was a lot better than average shot himself, but he was aware that his monocular vision prevented him from ever being outstanding.
On the evidence of that single, squeezed shot, Mildred was outstanding. The mutie insect disintegrated in a rainbow burst of shattered pulp as it was obliterated by the 9 mm full-metal-jacket round. There was virtually nothing left of its corpse to fall lightly to the dense foliage around them.
"Nice shot," Krysty said.
"Terrific shot," J. B. amplified admiringly. Ryan nodded his agreement. Jak gaped, slack-jawed.
"Could have been luck," Doc grunted, but his eyes were twinkling and he couldn't check a foolish grin from establishing itself across his face. "But," he added hastily, "I guess it wasn't luck. Just damnably good shooting. My congratulations, ma'am."
"Old hand and eye haven't lost much of their coordination." Mildred handed the warm gun back to Ryan. "It pulls a half inch or so left over fifty yards. If you like, I could fix it for you."
Ryan shook his head in amused disbelief. Now they were six again.
Chapter Fifteen
The friends continued northeast, stopping every hour or so to try to draw breath in the fetid heat of the jungle. Twice they crossed flowing water. On the second occasion Jak tripped over a web of tangling vines and tumbled into the river. Ryan was there first, crawling onto a fallen tree to peer for the vanished boy.
The silt was so thick that he feared for a dozen heartbeats that Jak might have been sucked under and trapped in the mud and weeds. Then his eye was caught by a tremor of movement, deep in the turgid stream. A flash of white, like a fish moving belly-up or like waving strands of albino hair.
Hanging on with his left hand to a moss-slick stump, Ryan swung himself over and down, his right hand reaching into the warm waters. He fumbled for a moment, then found the tangled skein of hair. He clutched at it, knotting Jak's hair in his fist and heaving up with all of his strength. Then J.B. was at his side, pulling on Ryan's belt to save the man from being drawn in after the teenager.
Krysty was also on the log, helping the Armorer to tug Jak from the river's sucking embrace. She tucked him under her arm and carried him to the bank. J.B. heaved Ryan to safety, and the two men also made it back to solid earth.
Jak lay on his back, arms limp, one leg folded under him. His eyes were closed and brown water trickled from his open mouth. His hair was matted and filthy, framing his white face.
"We going to stand around and watch the boy die?" Mildred snapped.
"I was..." Krysty began, but the older woman elbowed her aside.
"Cemeteries are full with folks who got there because of other folk's good intentions. Lad's swallowed most of the river. Give me room."
Mildred hoisted her pants and dropped astride the unconscious boy, digging fists hard under his rib cage and pushing. Jak expelled more of the river and jerked spasmodically, his left leg kicking out.
Mildred nodded to herself. "That's it, son," she said. "Let's fight for it." She bent lower and applied her mouth to Jak's bloodless lips, breathing into his body, then easing away again. She lifted his arms from the ground and then lowered them, repeating the process several times.
"Will our snow-headed chum be all right, Doctor?" Doc asked cautiously.
Jak gave the answer himself, suddenly coughing and spitting out a mixture of brackish water and vomit. Mildred had anticipated the reaction and dodged sideways.
"This is the moment I hate most. Been puked over when I summered as a lifeguard, premed school. Sit up, Jak."
The boy coughed and spluttered again, and she helped him with an arm behind the shoulders. His eyes were open, glowing like chips of molten ruby in the caverns of washed ivory.
"Better?"
"Yeah. What fuck happened? Tree grabbed me. In water. Thought farm bought."
"Ryan pulled you out," Mildred replied, standing and brushing moss and dead leaves off her blouse. "You should thank him."
"And Mildred brought you back to us," Ryan insisted, trying to wring water out of his clothes. He dislodged a black leech from his wrist and stared at the blurred streak of diluted blood where it had been happily feeding.
"Thanks, Mildred. Thanks, Ryan."
The woman grinned and patted him hard on the back, making him cough again. "Think nothing of it. Just take two tablets and call me in the morning if you don't feel better. You do have Blue Cross coverage, I take it?"
Jak shook his head, bewildered.
"No? Then I might just have to throw you back in the river."
* * *
It was the middle of the afternoon, and they'd been climbing steadily for the past couple of hours. The vegetation was beginning to show the first signs of thinning out, and the overwhelming heat was easing a little.
Krysty was taking her turn with Ryan's panga, which had by now lost its keenest edge. They had just beaten their way through a towering cluster of waxen, orange and scarlet flowers, whose twisted trumpet shape defeated even Krysty's knowledge of botany.
"Listen," she said, holding up the panga, the steel dripping emerald sap.
Ryan was next in line. "What is it, lover? Trouble ahead?"
She shook her head. "Two things. Heard them both, round about the same time. One of them is a kind of drumming."
"Drumming?" Mildred asked. "You mean the war brought some kind of weird natives along with the jungle?"
Krysty didn't smile. "Don't know, but it's definitely some kind of rhythmic drums. Could be three miles or more ahead. Over the ridge that we're heading for."
"You said two things," Ryan pressed. "What's the other one?" He noticed that her hair was suddenly curling in closer against her neck and shoulders, a sure sign that she "felt" some kind of trouble threatening them.
"Don't know. Mixed-up sort of signal, like some animal, or lots of animals. But it's overlaid with a lot of fear."
"How do you receive that kind of signal?" Mildred asked interestedly. "Do you see it in some way?"
Krysty looked at her, blinking as though she didn't recognize her. "Oh, sorry. Miles away. How do I feel threats? Don't know. Mebbe if I knew I couldn't do it. Mother Sonja taught it to me back in my home ville of Harmony. No. No, taughtisn't the right word. She showed me how to use something that was already within me. Can't tell you more than that, Mildred. Sorry."
"Orange alert," Ryan said. "Move a little slower. I'll take point, Krysty." He saw the argument surfacing angrily in her eyes and defused it quickly. "It's my turn, lover. That's all."
He took the panga and began to slice through the undergrowth, leading them slowly toward higher ground.
Fifteen minutes later they became aware of movements in the jungle around them. First it was small animals, swinging high and invisible in the top branches, chattering and squealing excitedly as they went. Then it was bigger creatures, lumbering along narrow, twisting paths, parallel to the track that Ryan had found.
Birds, many of them just brightly colored blurs, hummed between the low branches, squawking madly as they flew south. An animal resembling a panther, but lower to the ground and with light gold stripes across its flanks, came straight at Ryan. He drew a bead on it with the blaster, holding his fire until the last moment. The creature cut aside, breaking through a scented bush. Its eyes had been blankly stari
ng and its muzzle laced with white foam.
"Could it be a blaze?" Doc suggested. "I have seen this sort of terror down in the southwest, many years ago. Every living thing for fifty miles was racing for its very life."
"Wind's blowing toward us," Jak said. "Can't smell smoke."
J.B. took off his hat and smelled the air. "Yeah. No fire. Something else, though. Mebbe worse."
Ryan looked around them. There was an enormous tree about two hundred yards dead ahead, with multiple trunks that twined around one another. The leaves were dark olive green, shiny in the late-afternoon sun.
"Make for that," he ordered, pointing. "Give us some shelter and a fire defense from whatever it is that's coming this way."
At that moment he distinctly felt the earth tremble beneath his feet as if some massive underground monster surged deep below him.
"Fireblast! What the..."
The others felt it, though less strongly. Mildred jumped sideways and clutched at Doc's arm. Ryan noticed that the old man didn't make any attempt to remove it.
"This is a dreadful place, this Deathlands!" she gasped. "Maybe you ought to have left me frozen back there."
For several minutes the jungle had been filled with pounding, racing life. But the tropical vegetation was so thick that it wasn't possible to do more than glimpse what was happening.
A large brindled wolf, dangling a mewing cub from its jaws, appeared on the path, stopping as it saw the six humans blocking its escape. It snarled through bloodied teeth.
"Chill it," J.B. warned.
"No," Krysty said. "Let it pass. It's already terrified. Why chill it?"
They all edged back into the bushes and luxuriant shrubs, opening up the track. After a moment's hesitation the wolf moved toward them and padded quickly along, glancing over its shoulder as though it sensed something rushing behind it.
"A frightful fiend doth close behind him tread," Doc said quietly as the animal vanished.
"Listen," Krysty warned, standing stock-still, the silvered Heckler & Koch pistol gripped in her right hand.
"What?" J.B. probed.
"Can't hear a sound, lover," Ryan said.
"That's the point, isn't it, Krysty?" Mildred asked. "It's totally silent. So what put the fear of the Almighty into those creatures? What comes on silent feet?"
"Get to the tree," Ryan commanded, feeling a prickle at his nape.
The light wind had dropped, and the sweltering heat had returned. They seemed to stand at the center of a dome of overpowering stillness.
They'd closed half the distance between themselves and what Ryan could now see was a ponderous mangrove tree when he glimpsed something in front of them, across an area of more open ground that was dotted with light yellow flowering bushes.
His first thought was that a dam had burst somewhere up the slope ahead of them. It looked as if a stream of water, shimmering and gleaming, had forked around the massive trunk of the tree.
But his second thought was the right one.
"Ants! Mutie ants!" he yelled, glancing around for the safest escape route.
Behind them lay the jungle and any number of fleeing, terrified creatures. The flanks were cut off by impenetrable walls of jungle. Which left one possibility.
"Come on!" he shouted, springing toward the unknowable insect army.
Chapter Sixteen
The stream of ants was only the advance guard, which numbered in tens of thousands, rather than in tens of millions, but still enough to make the race for the shelter of the mangrove one of the most desperate of Ryan Cawdor's life.
Each ant was more than a foot long, with a carapace of fiery copper. The mandibles were huge, disproportionate even to the insect's grotesquely mutated size. Longer than a man's finger, they clicked together in a deafening warning as the ants picked up the approach of the six companions. Those at the front reared up on hind legs, their heads turning from side to side.
As Ryan led the charge, the very front row retreated a few yards, then regrouped in a solid phalanx of glittering death.
To hesitate was to die.
For the first dozen steps, Ryan tried to dodge the ants, but they were packed too closely for him to find any clear ground between them. The crunching of delicate skeletons beneath boot heels almost drowned out the clicking. Ryan kept moving, powering himself toward the tree, which was now only twenty yards distant. He didn't dare turn to see if the others were making it. A stumble would put a person on the last train to the coast.
He could now see something of the main body of the killer army beyond the mangrove. Not an inch of ground was free of the iridescent horde that swept toward him.
Weighing up the chances as he ran, Ryan had already spotted several low branches within easy reach. He became aware of Jak sprinting past, white hair streaming behind him like a snowy banner. The boy made the tree a torn fragment of time ahead of Ryan, diving for a branch and swinging himself onto it with a prehensile agility.
When Ryan was perched four feet from the carpet of ants, he was finally able to look around for the others. He saw Krysty running like someone dancing on hot coals, trying to pick her way between the mutie insects. J.B. was level with her, running flat-footed, deliberately crushing as many ants as he could.
Mildred and Tanner shared last spot in the desperate race.
"Go!" Jak yelled.
Ryan reached a hand down to Krysty and heaved her up beside him. J.B. made it on a lower branch to the left of the mangrove, standing up and looking down at the tide of insects, hand trembling over the butt of his pistol as though he wanted to spray lead into the limitless swell of the ants. But he recognized the utter futility of the thought.
"Doc!" Krysty cried, seeing the old man stumble and nearly fall, ants snapping at his knee boots. Mildred snatched his elbow, keeping him on his feet and bringing him close enough to the giant mangrove for J.B. to haul him up in a flailing tangle of arms and legs.
The woman screamed as one of the mutie insects managed to nip her just above the left ankle. It clung to her flesh as she staggered the last few steps to the tree. Krysty and Ryan both stretched out hands and pulled her off the ground.
"Jeez!" Mildred yelled. "Get that mother off of me."
Ryan swung a fist at the huge ant that pincered her leg in its sawing mandibles. Its thin neck snapped and the body fell away, legs twitching, to be immediately swallowed in the sea of its voracious fellows. But the head remained in place, feelers vibrating, huge eyes swiveling in their sockets. Blood was flowing freely through the thin material of Mildred's pants, soaking her sneaker.
"It's still biting me," she cried, her face contorted with pain.
Cautiously avoiding the snapping mandibles, Ryan squeezed the ant's head between finger and thumb. Its skull was as large as a rat's, and it was all he could do to keep a grip on it. He pulled it away from Mildred's leg, until the claws came free. The severed head wriggled in his grasp, trying to snap at him, until he dropped it to the ground. Ryan was unable to restrain a shudder of deepest revulsion.
"Best get higher!" J.B. shouted. "Bastards are trying t'figure a way of climbing up here after us."
Fighting to control his breathing, Ryan looked down. The clicking had stopped, and the army of killer ants was moving in a sinister, restless silence. It was like being suspended above a sea of molten lava, endlessly shifting, surging around the trunk of the tree.
The Armorer was right. Already a few of the nearer insects were on hind legs, exploring the smooth bark of the mangrove with their feelers.
"You okay, Mildred?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah, I'll make it. The bite burns, like it injected acid. Probably did."
"Thanks, ma'am," Doc called from his perch. "Never thought I might, mayhap, end my days as live food for ants."
Krysty had been peering above them, into the dark, leafy bows. The roots that twined beneath them all seemed to finally come together in a single main trunk. "That way," she said. "Got to find a place they can't come at us i
n numbers. Get up there and spread out."
Ryan looked where she pointed and nodded his agreement. "Yeah. Everyone? Jak, go first."
"Climbing on each other's backs," J.B. said. The place was so quiet now that he hardly needed to raise his voice for the others to hear.
The ants were forming a brazen pyramid, scrambling over one another's bodies, gaining height.
Within a few seconds their leaders would be into the lower branches of the tree.
Jak was up and away, barely using his hands as he scampered into the upper branches. "Here! Fuckers can't get other way."
Ryan motioned for J.B. to go second, helping Mildred and Doc as he went. Krysty went next, leaving Ryan alone on the low, angled part of the bole of the tree. As he readied himself to move, Ryan saw the first of the questing ants appear, its feelers tasting the air. He drew the panga, waiting a moment until the whole of the creature's body was in sight.
"So long," he grunted, the broad metal blade slicing easily through the center of the ant's swollen belly. A foul-stinking liquid squirted out, a few drops pattering on the skin of his wrist. Feeling it beginning to burn his flesh, Ryan quickly wiped it off with his sleeve.
Almost instantly a dozen more of the mutie insects came chittering over the side of the branch, scuttling toward him.
"Move, lover!" Krysty called from thirty feet above him.
"Yeah. Guess I'd better."
* * *
"This is what I believe is called a Texarkana standoff," Doc said. "We can stop them getting at us, but I fear that they can make it confoundedly difficult for us to remove ourselves."
Darkness was creeping over the land, drawing a cloak of night across the jungle. The drumming that Krysty had heard earlier had ceased. Clouds had come up and the setting sun, away behind them, was only visible as a crimson glow at the edge of the bowl of mountains.
"Could be the last hurrah for us," Mildred said quietly. They kept their voices down once they discovered that any noise they made seemed to provoke the ants to ferocious activity.
As long as the friends watched the main trunk of the mangrove immediately below them, the mutie insects had no way of reaching them. It wasn't hard to hold them off with the panga if they came crawling up.
