Deathlands 074: Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  It was a whispering, gentle hissing that grew louder by almost imperceptible degrees until it was clearly audible without his having even been aware of it impinging on his hearing. It was like the whispering of the sands as they moved, but accentuated by more movement within, as though there were several currents moving beneath the surface, making it whisper in different tones, until it built up into an overlap of harmonics that produced strangely shimmering and unsettling sounds.

  Ryan inclined his head toward Jak. The albino met his monocular gaze with a vulpine grin that grew ever wider.

  The one-eyed warrior was on the verge of blurting out the question. What the hell was this? His answer came to him with a sudden surprise.

  Spumes of sand shot up into the night, dunes rose and fell with the disturbances, and suddenly the pale desert floor was filled with dark shapes moving at speeds varying from a crawl to a scuttle.

  “Always life, even in desert,” Jak whispered softly.

  As Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the shapes, he could see that there were lizards, spiders, beetles and even a few skinny mammals that looked a little like hybrids between cats and rabbits. The shapes moved over and across one another, starting to engage in combat as some sought to use the others for food.

  It was a battle that occurred every night, with some emerging winners and some never even realizing they were losers as their lives were snuffed out. Ryan realized that the creatures were moving in the direction of the camp, and whirled to look behind him. There were none to their rear, just an empty expanse of sound.

  “What the hell is going on?” he yelled at Jak, the chatter of the creatures, shrieks of those that were buying the farm, rising to a louder and louder level.

  Jak indicated the sand around them and gestured to the rear. “Figure we’re uphill, sand deeper where they nest. Mebbe telling us where there’s water—”

  “That’s if they’re not headed for us because we’re a strange scent,” Ryan countered. He turned to the sleeping companions, but could see that the noise had penetrated their rest and they were beginning to waken.

  “Ryan, what—Dark night! What the fuck is that?” J.B. yelled, sleep driven from his brain by the shock of the sight that greeted him.

  “That’s trouble,” Ryan snapped. “Triple red, people. We need to get moving, and fast.”

  “Should take some out,” Jak commented. “Food what short of.”

  “Yeah, and mebbe that’s how they see us,” Ryan told the albino youth. “They’re not much on their own, but there’s thousands of the fuckers, and we’re not a hundred percent.”

  Jak shrugged. “Yeah, guess so.” He pointed beyond where the initial mass of creatures had come from. In the distance, the sands were exploding as more nests of lizards, spiders, beetles and small mammals were stirring after the temporary hibernations caused by the storm.

  “Oh my Lord, I never did like spiders, and I really don’t want a crash course in getting used to them now,” Mildred cracked as she helped Doc to his feet.

  “’Pon my soul, it’s almost biblical,” the old man breathed as he took in the sight that greeted him. “The plagues came down upon the deserts and—”

  “Yeah, some other time, Doc, or else you’re gonna be a lizard’s next meal,” Krysty snapped, cutting him off in midflow. “Why the hell are they all coming this way?”

  “Mebbe we’re uphill, and they come up this way to search for food and water,” J.B. said as he gathered his bags.

  “Make more sense if we were downhill,” Mildred snapped. “Could be they’re all down there because it’s easier to make burrows. Maybe this moves more with the storms.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ryan yelled. “Wake up, people, triple red. We need to outrun these little bastards before they overwhelm us. Just try to keep one step ahead of them.”

  The companions wasted no more words on speculation, but instead devoted their energy to outrunning the mass of desert life that was closing on them.

  Which wasn’t as easy as they could have hoped. They were still exhausted, having had no real chance to rest, and the sand was of an erratic depth and consistency, in some places being loose and clinging, in others relatively hard and compacted. For every step forward that seemed to buy them time and distance, there was another where a step meant sinking halfway up to the calf in the clinging sand, tugging insistently at them as they had to tug insistently to free themselves.

  Looking over his shoulder, Ryan could see that the creatures were gaining on them. He couldn’t tell if they were on an uphill gradient: certainly, the struggle suggested this, but with their fatigue and the erratic depths of the desert floor to impede them, it was almost impossible to tell. Doc was exhausted, and was already falling behind, despite the efforts of Mildred and J.B. to assist him.

  Then the worst thing that could happen in the circumstances occured—as Doc freed his left leg and took another step, J.B. moved over slightly to the old man’s left, took one step forward, and was swallowed up to the waist in a sudden cave-in. The sand, acting as a top crust at this point, was delicately balanced over a series of tunnels, and the Armorer had put his foot on a weak spot.

  He yelled in surprise and pain as his heel hit something hard and the jarring traveled up into his hip. Obviously, there was some kind of rock shelf under this part of the desert, and that was what he hit…but it wasn’t all.

  His yells grew as he was surrounded by a squealing, yelping mass of fur and teeth that scrabbled to get free of the collapse, using his body as purchase for their scrambled escape.

  “Oh my God,” Mildred breathed, stunned into a standstill by what was unfolding before her. Even as she muttered those words, the creatures were swarming over the desert floor, scuttling around and over her feet, some of them being pitched up to cling for safety on her calves and thighs as the mass exodus caused fighting among the fleeing rodents.

  For that’s what they were—rats, with slick black fur and red pinpoint eyes, large teeth and sharp claws threatening in their mass.

  Suddenly, the reason for the insects, lizards and other small mammals to be heading in this direction became clear, as did the reason that this area had previously been deserted. The companions now found themselves caught in a territorial war, a struggle for supremacy between the rats and the other life-forms that inhabited the desert wastes. It may even have been a nightly occurrence: the rats raiding the nests of the lizards and reptiles for eggs, the insects falling prey to them, as did the other mammals, which would be vulnerable attacked en masse. On the other hand, there was the exodus of these creatures toward the rats’ warrens, still fighting one another but somehow united by a survival instinct that told them to band together against a common enemy.

  Their warren violated by the unfortunate step of the Armorer, the rats had fled in panic and were now charging headlong toward their foes, regardless of who was in the way. They swarmed over Doc, the mass of them catching him around the calves and shins, making his knees buckle under their force. He thrashed at them with his silver lion’s-head cane, figuring that he could beat them off more effectively using it as a club than drawing the blade contained within.

  The old man was wavering dangerously. If he went down, the rats would engulf him and he would be in danger of buying the farm under a hail of angry, disease-ridden rodents. Ryan, Jak and Krysty moved back toward where Doc struggled, and Mildred was trying desperately to help J.B. out of the hole made by his fall. She wasn’t helped by the fact that the sand had closed around the hole as soon as the rats had freed themselves, the grains pouring into the opening like water, trapping J.B. up to the thighs in its elusive, slippery grip, still pouring in so that it would cover him up to the waist, the weight of it sealing him in, trapping his legs under the surface, and preventing him from moving.

  Some of the rats had reached where the mammals, lizards and insects were swarming over the sand, and a skirmish had commenced between them. The night air was filled with squeals, howls and screams of p
ain as the rats hit their foes like a furry wall, lashing and biting at anything that came near.

  A rustling roar from behind them, the air rent with more squeals, made Ryan turn around. He swore softly at the sight that greeted his eye: there were more rats, those still left in the other parts of the warren, that were now breaking surface, spreading like a sentient carpet over the surface of the sand. They swarmed toward the companions, and the one-eyed warrior knew that this was going to be a rough ride.

  The lizards and reptiles, with their toughened hides, were coping well with the attacks of the rats, their tails flicking and breaking the spines of the furry marauders, their tongues wrapping around the creatures and wringing the air from them as the bites of the rodents failed to penetrate the toughened lizard skin. And yet some of the rodents were making their own progress. Masses of them could chill a lizard by swarming over it, the sheer mass of bites getting through the hide, making the creature turn so that its soft underbelly was exposed, an easier target for the razor-sharp teeth.

  The insects, although smaller and easily swallowed or crushed by the weight of the rats en masse, had their own weapons to offer: venom from their shells or from their mouths and pincers pierced the rats’ flesh, penetrated into their bloodstreams and made them scream in the agony of being chilled.

  While the battle raged just feet from where they were standing, the companions faced their own fight. The rats that had swarmed out of the other sections of the warren were upon them, the sheer weight of the rodents moving around and beneath them making it hard to keep a steady footing, which was particularly important for Mildred and Jak, who were trying to help J.B. out of the sand, where he was now buried up to the waste. It was almost impossible to try to dig him out, as the sand was covered with rats that—although they had no interest in the Armorer, and had a mind only to join the battle below—were only too willing to lash out at any hands that tried to move them and scoop the sand. In their haste, they were climbing over J.B.’s torso, swarming over his neck and head and almost obscuring him from view.

  Ryan and Krysty reached Doc and helped the old man steady himself as he swiped at the rats with his cane. Together, the three of them began to move toward where Jak and Mildred labored.

  Ryan drew his panga from its thigh sheath, and he and Doc—who had by now unsheathed the Toledo steel blade contained within the cane—set about carving some space around the area where J.B. was trapped. While they did this, Krysty joined Mildred and Jak in helping to dig the Armorer out of the hole. They still had to fend off the occasional rodent, but the vast majority were now engaged in the struggle for survival just below them, and those that still lingered were, for the most part, deflected by the blows of Ryan and Doc.

  “Oh for a pipe to blow,” Doc grunted between sweeps of the sword.

  “What?” Ryan asked, bewildered.

  “A long story, and one I shall—” he grunted as another rat became history “—tell you when it becomes more provident. Though it could hardly be more appropriate.”

  J.B. struggled out of the sand pit, cursing and shaking himself, still feeling the rats scurrying over him. He turned to look at the carnage that was to his rear and stopped dead, silenced by the battle that was still raging.

  The companions watched, spectators who were glad to be no longer caught in the middle, as the fight continued. The small mammals were no match for the rats, and most of them were either chilled or retreating, but the match between the lizards and insects on one side, and the rodents on the other, was evenly balanced. Both had their weaknesses, but their strengths contrasted and evened up the fight. It was awesome to witness the struggle for desert supremacy.

  The struggle was brought to an end only when the sun began to rise. The knowledge that the day would soon become unbearably hot sent them fleeing back to their lairs, determined to make the shade before they began to fry. The ultimate battle for supremacy could wait until another night. Ryan wondered how often this had been played and replayed.

  The rats swarmed around the companions but seemed to ignore them, heading only for their warren, carrying the carrion from the battlefield with them to add to their supplies of food deep underground. Receding into the distance, the lizards and reptiles were doing the same. Nothing was to be wasted in this harsh environment.

  As suddenly as it began, it was ended. The desert was silent once more, with only the disturbance of the sand and some patches of blood and fur to mark the battle. Even those would soon vanish with the shifting of the sands during the day and with the coming of the next storms.

  “Not much chance of resting now that the sun’s coming up,” Ryan stated. “And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want another night like that if I can help it. I say we press on.”

  As he expected, there was no opposition to this plan. He told J.B. of Jak’s comments about their location and the best direction to strike out. The Armorer took his minisextant from out of his canvas bag and took a reading.

  “Yeah, if we go that away,” he said, pointing west, “then we should hit where Jak thinks. I just wish I could say how long it’ll take.”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes,” Ryan said, “and we’ve got no other choice. As long as we can get the hell away from here.”

  It was a comment that needed no argument after the rigors of the night. Wearily they formed into a line, with Ryan at lead and J.B. covering the rear, and began to march—slowly, achingly—toward whatever destiny next had in store for them.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  “Three days and nights. Let us hope that it does not extend to forty days in the wilderness.” Doc sighed in a distracted manner as he rose from sleep and took in the new morning around them.

  “If you keep being that cheerful, I might just put you out of your misery,” Mildred told him with a sour tone. “Anyway, when the hell did you get so damn religious?”

  Doc smiled beatifically. “One was always brought up with the good book, even when Mr. Darwin made certain parts of it seem a little like a fable.”

  “Two suns, two argument same. Shut up,” Jak ranted as he took a sip of water then grimaced before taking a chunk out of the lizard they had cooked the night before. “Boring.”

  Certainly, something had happened to Doc in the time between coming out of the jump and the current morning. Perhaps it had been the states of delirium followed by the storm, or perhaps it had been some jump-induced dream of which he had said nothing. Either way, he had been spouting in a religious vein ever since they’d begun their trek across the desert. For Mildred, daughter of a preacher in the predark world, this was irritating for some reason she couldn’t comprehend.

  After the attack on their first night out of the redoubt, and after J.B. had secured a direction from his minisextant, they had started to march. Pacing was difficult. It was an unknown distance balanced against their lack of water and salt tablets, and the sparseness of their diet. The fact that there was water and life present in the desert was a given—the events of that night had proved it. However, locating the obviously deep springs and trapping some of the wildlife was another matter entirely.

  The heat under the chem clouds, trapping and magnifying the intensity of the heat, set the pace for them. Regardless of any intent, to go any faster would have been to consciously buy the farm. If not right now, then a little way down the line. It would have used their water and salt resources too quickly.

  So they had kept the pace steady and set up camp for the night as the darkness fell, settling in against the freezing temperatures of a desert night. Away from the storm-ravaged area, the wildlife had been less intent on a power struggle and had emerged slowly, with more caution and with less obvious hostility.

  That made it easy for Jak to trap a few lizards and small mammals that strayed away from the safety of the pack. At the same time, the albino hunter observed their patterns of movement, attempting to divine where the water table came up through the sand, and rock beneath, to
be close enough to the surface for the companions to attempt a dig.

  He wasn’t so successful. The layers of sand kept the wells and springs of the desert running deep. However, a brief search did reveal more signs of scrub and plant life than before.

  Meanwhile, J.B. and Ryan rigged their own device to try to squeeze a little water from the unwelcoming desert. Using some plastic wrap that had been on some of the materials taken from the redoubt, they built small hammocks that collected the dew in their centers. The resulting water was brackish, but at least it showed that they could attempt to prolong their survival in this manner.

  Mildred and Krysty collected some of the scrub as they marched each day. It was few and far between, and mostly tinder-dry. Although not encouraging for the presence of water, it did signify that there was something present, and at the end of each day it meant that they had enough to build a fire that could keep burning—small, but bright—through the night, offering warmth and a warning to any wildlife that may be too bold.

  It also meant that they could cook the small mammals and lizards that Jak had caught. These were tough, stringy and none too tasty, but compared to the self-heats that were the only other option, they were like manna from heaven. It also meant that they could preserve the self-heats for a real emergency, and the salty meat enabled them to cut back a little on the consumption of the salt tablets, another commodity they might have to retain for an emergency.

  It took only two days for the companions to settle into a routine, and by the third day it seemed as though they had been marching forever. It was partly because their bodies were beginning to adjust to the conditions and the rules of consumption imposed upon them by the environment, and partly because they had no time scale they could work to, and so lived totally in the moment.

  Jak finished chewing on a piece of lizard meat and choked it down. It was tough, with little taste, but at least it didn’t have the chem taste of the self-heats.