by James Axler
Moving in a crouch, J.B. hurried to an outcropping he had made a note of the preceding afternoon. The tallest rock came up to J.B.’s collar, which meant he could crouch behind it and still observe the watchtower and the gate without being seen. By and large, sec men didn’t watch the inside of a ville, J.B. knew, and he counted on that to save him from chance detection.
Then J.B. hunkered down and waited.
It took close to an hour and a half, by J.B.’s chron, until the group came marching along the main street toward the gates. It was made up of five women, two of whom were dressed in the white robes of the Melissas. The women carried bags and cases with them, nothing big—probably just something to carry their lunch in and maybe some tools, J.B. figured. One of the women said something to the sentries that J.B. didn’t catch, but the gates were already being pulled back to allow them passage out of the ville. J.B. watched them go, and then the gates were winched closed after them, sealing the ville from the outside world.
“Women,” J.B. muttered. That made it awkward. He couldn’t just sneak out with the group, not unless their make-up changed day by day, shift by shift. If it didn’t, he’d stand out like a sore thumb.
J.B. pegged them for the engineering party that was traveling to the redoubt to repair the mat-trans. He couldn’t be certain, but it was hard to think of many reasons for going outside a self-sufficient ville like this, other than to fix the damage that had been inflicted by that bomb, or maybe to hunt wild animals—but they weren’t armed for that.
Even as he thought it, J.B. stopped himself, recalling something. When he had first come to this ville, he had seen beehives lining the approach. Man-made beehives, which meant someone was going out to gather the honey.
Doc!
Yeah, the old man had been assigned beekeeping duties, something a little less strenuous than house building or sod busting for his old bones. And if Doc was allowed out of the ville, then...
The plan began to take shape in the Armorer’s keen mind, slotting together in his brain the same way as a field-stripped Colt M-16. He just needed the right ammo before pulling the trigger.
Unnoticed, J.B. sauntered away from the outcropping and made his way back to the construction site he had been assigned. He would be a bit late, but he could make his excuses, tell the foreperson he’d slept late. Just as long as no one figured out where he had really been while the rest of the ville was asleep.
* * *
MILDRED LOVED GOING to work, simply loved it. As she strode through the arched doorway into the medical tower, she had a spring in her step and was actually whistling to herself.
One of the assistants—for everyone who helped out in a role here was called an assistant—looked up at the sound before returning to her duties, pushing a cart laden with “medicine” across the clean, sterile floor. The term medicine was relative, of course, but Mildred had been impressed with the medical acumen the Trai showed.
It was all down to honey. That sounded stupid, when Mildred said it out loud. But Petra and another assistant called Collette had showed her the core materials that were used on her first day here, and she had been learning about their derivatives ever since. The health benefits of honey were well documented in Mildred’s time. Manuka honey was highly prized—and highly priced—in the natural health aisle of many a twentieth-century supermarket. The nutraceutical benefit—which is to say, the positive long-term health effects—of honey was no secret, in much the same way aspirin was employed as a kind of catch-all to stave off many long-term illnesses.
Even so, the way the Trai employed honey in the medication here, refining it, mixing it, turning it into a salve and crude capsule and what her grandmother would have called a potion, now that was truly remarkable. And yet, despite Mildred’s initial skepticism, the honey-based medication was effective. No, more than effective—miraculous. Well, now, wasn’t that a word to be weighed carefully before employing?
Mildred made her way to Ricky’s room, stopping to help one of the other assistants when her cart toppled over, sending its contents rolling comically down the ramp. Everyone helped here, no matter their place in the hierarchy.
“Hey, Mildred,” Ricky said when he saw her. His voice was quiet and gravelly, as though it hadn’t been used in a while. It hadn’t. He’d been mostly asleep the past three and a half days.
“Ricardo, you’re awake,” Mildred said, smiling. “I’m so pleased. Oh, I’m so pleased.” Her words came in a rush. Ricky was no longer a patient; he was her companion, her ally, her friend. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m—” Ricky coughed, his left hand flicking around to his side and clutching it as he did so. After a moment, the fit passed and he tried again, quieter this time. “I’m okay. Did I...did I wrestle with a bull at some point?”
Mildred shook her head.
“Feels like I got on the wrong end of a stampede,” Ricky said.
Mildred leaned down and reached for the dressing over Ricky’s wound. “Lie still, let me take a look,” she instructed.
Ricky winced as Mildred plucked away the bandage on his side. Beneath, the wound looked as though it had healed. In fact, the skin showed no sign that it had been broken; there was no redness and no scarring. The only noteworthy thing was that it looked a little paler than the skin around it.
Mildred reached her fingers out and gently touched the piece of skin where the musket ball had struck. In the back of his throat, Ricky gasped.
“Tender?” Mildred asked.
“Yeah,” Ricky said. “Little...yeah. Tickles.”
“The healing is remarkable,” Mildred said. “You were lucky. The wound wasn’t too deep, but even a wound like that— I thought it might leave a scar. Anyway, you must be starving.”
“I could eat, for sure,” Ricky agreed. “When are we leaving?”
Mildred shook her head slowly, as if deep in thought. “I don’t know. Ryan and Krysty and the others seem to be settling in pretty well. We all are.”
They spoke a little more and then Mildred left the room to try to, as she put it, “rustle up something to clear the echoes out of your belly.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jak was working a hoe over a field when the bear showed up. It appeared without warning, galloping through the undergrowth, its dark fur ideal camouflage for the shadows cast by the trees at the edge of the farmland.
Jak was part of a three-man crew that had been tasked with turning the woodland into something farmable, which meant a lot of clearing and raking and sifting to get the surface free from clutter in preparation for sowing. His colleagues continued working the field when Jak stopped, his ears pricking up. Jak had heightened senses, not beyond human, perhaps, but certainly at the human animal’s very upper limit. He sensed the bear like a change in the wind direction, something shifting just beyond his field of vision.
His body tensing, Jak eyed their surroundings, his gaze working meticulously over the dark patch of tall trees that ran in a semicircle around two and a half sides of the would-be farm.
“Jak? You okay?” asked Sylvio, one of Jak’s colleagues.
Jak said nothing for a moment, his head swaying ever so slightly as he tried to locate the source of the disturbance in the trees. He had the point fixed, couldn’t see the thing but could see the location where he knew it had to be. The hoe still in hand, Jak began to pace toward the trees.
“Jak?” Sylvio asked again. He had been sifting earth when he had first spoken, tossing the bigger stones into a barrow so that they could later be dumped. Now he stopped and held the circular sieve up like a tiny, ineffective shield.
“Trouble,” Jak said without looking back. That was the old watchword; the code that told Jak’s old companions that something big was about to happen and that they had best be prepared. Jak used it now, even though the old codes meant nothing t
o these farmers.
The other member of the crew, a bearded, dark-haired man named Paul, with fearsome shoulders and the reach of a prizefighter, paused, his foot on the crossbar of the shovel he had been using to turn the earth.
“What’s he seen?” Paul asked, his quiet voice belying his huge size.
“I don’t know,” Sylvio replied.
Both men had worked with Jak only a couple days, but they had already picked up that he was a strange one, with his own quirks and his own outlook. They’d taken him on board as part of the clearing crew because Jak was a good worker who toiled without complaint, and often without a word for hours on end. A little eccentricity could be overlooked when a man worked hard without complaining. But this—walking to the trees, all fired up—this was something new.
Then the bear crashed through the trees like a freight train, all muscle and blackness, looming over Jak like a collapsing mountain. It was huge. Up on its hind legs, the beast had to have been twice Jak’s height, and at least as broad as Jak was tall. Its pelt was a velvety blackness that seemed to absorb the light around it, almost creating an absence where it moved.
Its arm was as broad as a tree trunk, swishing through the air as it emerged from the woodland, the round paw ending in pointed, black nails.
Jak sidestepped, bringing the haft of the hoe up until it covered his chest at a protective horizontal.
Behind Jak, Paul and Sylvio were voicing their astonishment. This area was considered safe. Melissas patrolled all of Heaven Falls, outside and in. The front of the settlement had the wall and gates to stave off human attack, but most of the Trai land enjoyed the natural protection of its inaccessibility. Human attackers were few, because it was so difficult to reach. Animals could occasionally slip past the patrols unnoticed and find a way to the settlement, drawn by the smell of food or by curiosity, or just plain old chance. Humankind had a tendency of thinking of places that they had settled as “theirs,” but Mother Nature didn’t make such delineations.
“Back!” Jak called as the bear began to explore the newly cleared field, trundling forward on all four paws. Its movements were ungraceful, a kind of up-and-down gallop that forced its head forward as it sniffed the air. It had seen them. Now it was thinking about its next move, whether attacking one or all three would be necessary to fill its empty belly.
“Don’t antagonize it,” Sylvio whispered.
Jak and his coworkers stood still, watching as the beast hunkered down, sniffing the freshly turned ground, then raising its head and scenting the air. Its eyes were bottomless black pools rimmed with red, its nose a twitching black smudge at the end of its snout. Two short, devil-pointed ears poked up from its head with the nubs of horns beside them—some kind of mutation brought about by the radiation that had been in the air since the nukecaust.
And then it moved, charging across the field—not at Jak, who was its nearest target, but at the two men who stood together in the field. Hoe clenched like a quarterstaff, Jak began to chase after it.
Chapter Fifteen
The mutie bear was standing in front of Paul and Sylvio in seconds, straining on its rear paws as it reached for them. The two farmhands scrambled away, running east and west to better split them as a target.
Paul was out of the bear’s reach in a split second, but his companion was not so lucky. Sylvio was the smaller of the two men by some considerable measure, and doubtless the weaker of the two targets in the monster’s mind.
The bear’s paw swung for Sylvio, curved claws snatching at his shirt and tearing it from his back in a shredded mess. Gobs of Sylvio’s skin came with the shirt as the bear’s razor-sharp claws snagged his back, and he collapsed to the ground with a scream of pain.
The bear snuffled over Sylvio, flicking the remains of the man’s shirt away. A moment later it was standing over him on all fours, its forepaws set to either side of his torso, hind legs spread out just beyond Sylvio’s feet. Charging across the field, Jak swung the hoe in both hands, using his own momentum to power the makeshift weapon so that it struck the bear’s back with a definite thud.
The bear stopped in what appeared to be surprise, then turned its head, piercing Jak with its black-eyed stare.
Jak swung the hoe again, this time raising it over his head before bringing it down, blade first, against the beast’s skull. It struck with another thud, snapping the tool’s shaft in two.
“We’ve got to keep it from the Home!” Paul shouted from somewhere behind Jak’s back. “Beast like that will cause untold damage! We’ve got to protect our Regina!”
Jak wasn’t worried about the Home. Right now, he figured they had more immediate concerns—like saving their own skins.
The bear lunged at Jak, swinging one mighty forepaw at his torso from where it stood like some strange table over Sylvio’s fallen body. Jak reared back, his heels scrabbling against the freshly turned soil as he took himself out of the path of that mighty limb. Jak managed to slip—just barely—out of the bear’s reach, but the soil remained loose where the ground had been turned and he went skidding over and crashed to the dirt.
Riled, the bear took a long step toward Jak, its dark form looming over him like a solar eclipse. Jak dodged as the bear thrust a paw at his head; the paw struck the ground, kicking up a shower of loosened earth that struck Jak’s face.
The albino could taste earth in his mouth now, caught up in his saliva as he scrambled backward, elbows and butt and feet, as if comically imitating a beached swimmer doing the backstroke. The bear followed, stalking over Jak with its teeth bared, the distinct smells of plant sap and raw meat rank on its breath.
A shadow moved overhead, almost from nowhere, and suddenly the bear seemed to stop in place while Jak continued to scramble on his back. Jak looked up, saw Paul—the muscular farmhand—grab the bear by its leftmost hind leg, clinging on to it like a human ball-and-chain. For a moment the two figures were stuck in that weird embrace—the bear finding itself suddenly unable to propel forward, the man clinging to its leg, trying to secure a stronger hold on its slick pelt. Then the bear turned its head and saw what had happened, and it kicked out. Paul held on, shouting something that was hard to make out. It was something about the Regina, maybe a curse in her name, but due to the strain Paul was exerting Jak couldn’t distinguish all the words.
During the brief respite, Jak got to his feet. He was aware of more movement behind him, as people in the other fields began to respond to the altercation. Then the bear flicked one of its forepaws at Paul’s face, and the short claws that lined its stumpy digits extended from hidden sheaths, jutting like a handful of flick knives to turn the man’s face into a crisscross of red.
Extending claws! Jak let that register for a half second, which was the time it took for Paul to let go of the monster’s leg and slump to the ground, his hands going up to his ruined face. That was the trouble with mutation—it didn’t work the same way twice. Sometimes there’d be gigantism and that would be the extent of the mutation, other times it was a new limb or a new kind of tail. Nature adapted things to survive.
Already, the bear had brought itself up to stand upright on its hind legs, and it snuffle-woofed in what Jak took to be a cry of victory. Standing upright like that, the bear was close to ten feet tall.
Jak reached into his sleeve, feeling the familiar handle of the leaf-bladed throwing knife he stored there. He had three on him, one in each sleeve and a third hidden in an ankle sheath. He had become too trusting in Heaven Falls, and in just four days he had sunk out of the habit of wearing the numerous hand-fashioned blades that had kept him alive during his time in the Deathlands. But this was no time for regrets; the bear was charging toward Jak across the field, trampling over the prone body of Sylvio.
Jak ran, scrambling over the turned soil, the throwing knife ready in his right hand.
The bear thundered on, a
force of nature made solid.
Jak’s right arm flicked forward, his hand moving up from under, moving with such rapidity and such grace that it looked as if he could bend the limb in a way that was impossible, as though his bones had become liquid. The knife left his hand as it reached a fraction of an inch above shoulder height, the point of the blade turned upward, taking it in a straight line at a twenty-degree angle, whistling as it cut the air.
The bear shook its head as Jak’s blade struck, and a gout of optic fluid spurted from one eye where it had been split by the projectile. The reaction, momentary though it was, slowed the beast from its charge, changing its trajectory just fractionally as it tried to get away from the searing pain that was tearing through its eyeball. In that moment Jak leaped, running up the side of the bear, using its moving body like a cliff face, wedging his booted feet and grasping hands into nooks and creases in the flesh to bring himself up the ten feet that would put him level with the thing’s broad face. By then, Jak had the second of his knives in his hand, slipped out from beside his left wrist, glinting silver as the sun reflected off it.
Jak was standing now, balanced perfectly against the bear’s torso, one foot higher than the other, using nothing but momentum and the angle of his body to hold him there as the monster continued to charge.
“Night falls,” Jak swore, pulling his hand back before plunging the blade into the bear’s remaining eye with all his might.
The bear roared in surprise as Jak’s blade cut deep, delivered with such power that it went in beyond the edge of the handle, the top of Jak’s index finger and thumb disappearing into the monster’s face.
Jak let go of the blade and sagged backward in the grip of gravity. He fell away with arms outstretched before initiating a flawless twisting flip that sent him six feet away from and to the side of the charging juggernaut. The bear plowed blindly on, both eyes gushing blood, its teeth bared in agony.
