by James Axler
“Violators die by the Regina’s command.” Adele spit in his face. “Die, violator!”
“That’s not in the plan, girl,” J.B. snarled. As he spoke, he shifted his weight, thrusting his left leg out and hooking his foot behind the leg of his attacker as she continued toward him. Then he pulled his leg back quickly, and Adele lost balance as her foot was pulled out from under her.
The Melissa crashed backward, her skull striking the metal banister with a bell-like clang. J.B. stepped forward, raising the M-4000 and pointing it at the woman’s face as she struggled to recover. He pulled the trigger and Adele’s face was turned into a bloody ruin, her brains exploding out the back of her skull.
Ricky was at J.B.’s side, the tension clear on his face. “The other one got away,” he croaked. “We should go after her.”
“No,” J.B. advised as he plucked his glasses from the floor. “Krysty and Mildred are up there. They’ll stop her before she gets back to the ville.”
Ricky looked as if he would contradict that, clearly frustrated at letting the Melissa go.
“You have to learn to trust your friends, kid,” J.B. told him, wiping Adele’s blood from his glasses on his shirt before replacing them on his nose. “Loners don’t last long in this world.”
Ricky accepted J.B.’s advice with a nod.
Leaning down, J.B. snatched his hat from the floor. “Might be more Melissas out there,” he said, indicating the stairwell door. “We aren’t out of this yet.”
“I thought you didn’t want to chill anyone you didn’t have to,” Ricky said.
J.B. shrugged. “Sec men or women choose the life,” he said grimly. “They know the risks.”
Ricky reloaded his De Lisle.
* * *
MILDRED AND KRYSTY were waiting in the trees close to the redoubt when the Melissa appeared. They had rearmed themselves, Krysty with her Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, Mildred with her trusty Czech-made ZKR 551 target pistol. Even now it seemed strange going back to weapons after almost two weeks of tranquillity in Heaven Falls.
Mildred spotted the woman first, seeing the glint of her trailing white robes as she hurried through the garage-like area of the redoubt toward the pulled-back door. “Look alive,” she whispered to Krysty. “We’ve got company.”
The women watched as the Melissa exited the redoubt, moving at a sprint.
“No sign of J.B. or Ricky,” Mildred said, concerned.
Krysty watched the Trai woman hurrying up the slope that led from the redoubt entrance. “No time to worry about them now,” she whispered. “Melissa’s making a beeline for Heaven Falls.”
“Beeline,” Mildred muttered with a shake of her head.
Then Krysty and Mildred stepped out from cover, weapons raised as the dark-haired Melissa came sprinting almost straight toward them.
“Freeze!” Mildred shouted.
The Melissa changed direction, moving at a blur.
Mildred pulled the ZKR’s trigger, sending a .38 round at the sec woman. “Stop her,” she shouted to Krysty as she loosed the bullet.
Impossibly the Melissa weaved out of the bullet’s path, her white robes swirling around her like surf in a whirlpool. Mildred cursed as her shot went wide.
Krysty steadied her grip on her blaster and took a deep breath, one hand cupped beneath her wrist as she tracked the running woman in the white robes. Then, letting out her breath slowly, Krysty pulled the trigger and sent a single shot at the retreating woman as she sped past them, just twenty feet away. The bullet left the chamber and powered from the Smith & Wesson’s muzzle with a bang of propellant, the smell of cordite immediate in the air.
The Melissa reacted to the sound, bringing one hand up and—incredibly—batting the bullet aside as it drilled through the air toward her. There was a thunderclap of noise as her hand met the bullet, knocking it away before it could strike her.
Krysty and Mildred watched the display with incredulity. This woman had just swatted a bullet from the air, moving with such speed that it could not harm her.
“Holy...! Bees move fast, I guess,” Mildred said breathlessly. “We’ve got to—”
“On it!” Krysty said, running after the Melissa.
Krysty’s hair trailed behind her like a flame as she ran, chasing the white-robed woman. The Melissa moved incredibly fast, her arms pumping in a blur, long legs eating up the distance with every step. She was heading for the settlement, no doubt to raise the alarm. Krysty had to prevent that. If she didn’t, if the warning made it through, then Ryan, Doc and Jak would be in danger, either captured as they tried to enter the honey store or simply found guilty by association.
Krysty’s cowboy boots pounded the ground, the blaster clenched tightly in her fist as she dashed up the grassy incline. The Melissa was moving too fast; she would never catch up.
Still running, Krysty raised the blaster, steadying her breathing as she drew a bead on the fluttering white robes ahead as they weaved between the trees, sending a .158-grain lead slug up the hill toward the retreating figure. The shot missed, clipping a low-hanging tree branch in a shower of sawdust.
The Melissa reacted to the shot, however, spinning on her heel to see who was following.
Krysty shot again, sending another slug at the dark-haired woman as she spied her. The Melissa leaped, her right hand snapping out to slam against the trunk of the tree next to her, using the force of the blow to swing herself around and out of the path of the hurtling bullet.
Krysty continued sprinting, hurrying up the slope as the Melissa dropped back down to the ground and adopted a combat stance.
“Violator!” the Melissa said accusingly, flexing her fingers in readiness.
Krysty tossed her blaster aside as she approached. It was useless against her fast-moving foe, and she wanted both hands free for what she was about to do. As she ran, she chanted a familiar prayer. “Gaia, help me in my time of need. O, Earth Mother, hear my plea!”
It was like being struck by lightning, ten thousand volts racing through Krysty’s body in the blink of an eye. That was the Gaia power, drawn up from the earth and bringing the woman alive in a way no one else could ever know. She felt her muscles burning with energy, felt her strength increasing, the force inside her growing. Behind her, Krysty’s sentient hair crackled with energy, spreading out from her head in jagged tangles of fiery red, so bright that they seemed to glow in the sunlight.
Then Krysty was on the Melissa, powering at her like a charging bull. The Melissa leaped, vaulting over the woman, one hand slamming down against her back. Krysty felt the blow—it was powerful and it seemed to echo through her rib cage—but she shrugged it off and changed direction, readying for her follow-up attack. The Gaia power made her almost invulnerable, and while it could not be tapped for long, while it flowed she felt invincible.
The Melissa landed in a billowing cloud of robes, turning in a superfast blur to face Krysty.
“Violator!” she repeated. “You betray the love of the Regina!”
Krysty charged once more, twisting her body to bring the crook of her right elbow around and slam it into the Melissa’s face. The sec woman responded with lightning quickness, blocking the blow with both hands and throwing Krysty off balance.
The redheaded beauty rolled away, bumping against the ground in a tight ball. The Melissa saw her advantage then and she pressed it, kicking one perfectly tanned leg at Krysty’s face as she recovered from the fall.
Krysty moved quicker, reaching out with her left hand and snagging the Melissa by the ankle as that bare foot rocketed toward her face. The movement was sudden, so sudden that the Melissa didn’t have time to counter. Her kicking leg stopped in place with such abruptness that she toppled over, falling forward and pushing all of her weight against her hip and knee joints where Krysty held her leg.
The Melissa shrieked, dropping to the ground.
Still holding the woman’s ankle, Krysty grabbed higher up the same leg with her other hand. Then she moved both her hands in a brutally swift use of counterforce, snapping the woman’s tibia and fibula bones with a hideous crack.
The Melissa shrieked again, not just from the pain but from surprise. She didn’t expect Krysty to match her move for move, countering her blinding speed with such incredible strength. Her speed came from imbibing the royal jelly, where all the Melissas got their power.
Krysty eyed the woman, scanning for weapons. She had none—of course she didn’t, that was the rule of Heaven Falls, and why would she ever need one given her superhuman speed? Krysty’s power was ebbing, though. Krysty moved swiftly from the Melissa, hurrying over to where she had tossed her blaster barely a minute before. The Melissa was cursing her, calling her a “violator” between her gasps of pain.
Krysty spotted the sheen of her .38 blaster glinting in the grass, and picked it up from the ground. Behind her, the Melissa was struggling back to her feet in a display of incredible bravery and agony. Her leg was ruined, the tip of the tibia bone jutting through the skin beneath her kneecap, strands of blood running from the wound like a map of the Nile.
Krysty turned as the Melissa began limping toward her, and raised the blaster in her hands. “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Krysty said in a voice that didn’t sound like hers. “In another world, one more meal and we could have been sisters.”
With that, Krysty pulled the trigger, blasting a single bullet from the weapon—not at the woman’s head but low in her gut where she could not move swiftly enough to avoid it. The Melissa hobbled in place as the bullet struck, sinking back to the ground with a screech of pain.
Krysty walked across the grass and delivered a second shot to the Melissa’s forehead from just a foot above her, silencing her screams in an instant. Then she sank to the ground, clutching herself, the .38 still in her hand. The power of the Earth Mother was retreating from Krysty’s body and with its departure, she would become as weak as a kitten.
* * *
J.B. LED THE way through the last corridor of the redoubt with Ricky covering his back. They took it slow, wary of an ambush after what had happened in the stairwell. Noise echoed from the concrete walls, the sounds of metal against metal, the low roar of what J.B. knew from experience was an acetylene torch.
“They’re trying to patch up the mat-trans,” J.B. told Ricky in a whisper. “I wonder where they got the knowledge to do that?”
Ricky looked confused. “Why didn’t they stop when the guards came to investigate the gunshots?”
“Probably they’re programmed not to,” J.B. reasoned. “What do you feel like you should be doing just now? Be honest.”
Ricky closed his eyes in thought for a few seconds. “Picking fruit,” he said. “To prove my love for the Regina.”
“Exactly.”
They reached the control room without incident. The lights were on, and two engineers were working on the mat-trans while a third had removed the front panel of an operating console and lay on her back wielding a screwdriver, her head peering up at the revealed interior.
J.B. leveled the shotgun and spoke in a loud voice. “Nobody move.”
The trio looked up at the intrusion and saw J.B. standing there like some grim angel of death.
“Violator! It’s the violator!” shouted one of the women inside the mat-trans chamber, pointing at J.B.
“Yeah, it is. I am,” J.B. confirmed. “But since you ladies aren’t armed and we’ve already taken out your sec crew, I would strongly recommend you play it cool and not try anything dumb.”
The woman under the console pushed herself up, clenching the handle of the screwdriver so that its blade pointed downward. J.B. didn’t hesitate; he stepped forward and thrust the snout of his shotgun into his adversary’s breastbone. The woman toppled back on her butt, still clutching the tool.
“Drop that,” J.B. said, “because next time I won’t hesitate to send you on the next train to the coast.”
The women exited the mat-trans chamber, determined looks on their faces. Ricky saw them move and he sent a bullet their way from the De Lisle, aiming the blast high.
“My friend asked you not to move,” Ricky said. “Do that again and he’ll stop asking so nicely.”
The women finally seemed cowed by that, and they all sank to the floor and sat with their hands behind their heads.
“We bumped into three Melissas,” J.B. told them, his blaster trained on the women. “You come here with any more’n that?”
“No,” said the woman who had been working at the open console.
J.B. believed her. For one thing, he had monitored the engineering teams as they’d exited Heaven Falls each morning, and he knew they tended to travel in a three-to-two Melissas ratio. The third guard this day was a sign that they had become more wary after the last incident here, but in a ville this size they wouldn’t have very many sec people to spare.
A brief discussion followed as Ricky and J.B. decided what to do with their prisoners. Ricky was worried they would escape, but J.B. told him that wouldn’t matter so long as they didn’t destroy the mat-trans. He proposed they secure their hands and then escort them to the surface, where they could be tied up until the companions returned. It would keep them out of trouble and prevent them alerting the Trai to the insurrection that J.B. and his crew were about to launch.
“What about wild animals?” Ricky asked. “Tied up like that, anything could just—”
“They can take their chances,” J.B. cut in. “Their sec crew tried to chill us. I think we’re showing more mercy than they should expect.”
Ricky searched the engineers’ equipment until he found some unused electrical cable. While J.B. held a blaster on the women, Ricky bound them tightly by wrist and ankle, giving them just enough movement so that they could walk but not run.
Once Ricky had finished, J.B. surveyed the mat-trans and grilled the prisoners about its status. One of the women confirmed that it was now operational.
Ricky and J.B. escorted the women through the redoubt and searched for explosives. The redoubt hadn’t been stripped of supplies, and they found many packs of MREs, as well as magazines of ammo in various calibers. J.B. snagged several that would fit his weapons, and some spares suitable for the other companions. Bullets were hard to come by in the Deathlands—you grabbed what you saw when you saw it.
Soon after, they found a stash of explosives, and J.B. took some time deciding what best to use. He chose several detonators and pocket-size plas-ex charges, which looked like lumps of clay and could be molded for ease of use. He placed the explosives and a few other choice items into his trusty satchel and then he and Ricky escorted their prisoners topside.
Mildred and Krysty were waiting for them outside. Krysty was sitting on a patch of grass with her head bowed low.
“She okay?” J.B. asked.
“Had a little scuffle with a friend of yours,” Mildred explained. “Dark hair, white dress. You know who I mean?”
“Old sparring partner,” J.B. confirmed with a nod. “Gave us the slip.”
“She was a fast mover,” Mildred said. “Krysty tapped into the Earth Mother to restrain her.”
“They’re all fast movers,” J.B. stated grimly.
The companions tied the three engineers to separate trees, far enough apart that they could not help one another and could only converse by shouting. Then they set off back to Heaven Falls, using the high paths that J.B. had discovered less than a day before. They could only hope that Doc and Ryan had managed to persuade Jak to join them, and that all three were still safe as they put their part of the plan in motion.
* * *
WITHIN HEAVEN FALLS, Ryan, Jak and Doc waited in the plaza be
tween the towers. They occupied one of the benches while Doc explained how the honey was stored.
“There are six levels to the storage facility,” Doc said, pointing out the tower that contained it. “Each one is filled floor to ceiling with clay vessels containing honey.”
“Six levels?” Ryan mused.
“Five or six,” Doc confirmed. “I did not go up to the topmost level, but from my brief exposure to the interior I would confirm that, at the very least, the bottom two stories are full with the third floor close to capacity.”
“Lot honey,” Jak said.
“It forms the core of the Trai’s diet,” Doc reminded him. “The cakes and pastries they eat, the mead they drink, even the sweetened water.”
“Brain messin’ goo.” Jak spit. “No good.”
Ryan shielded his eye from the sun as he watched the doorway to the storage tower. “I can see two women in there,” he said quietly. “Guards?”
“I believe so,” Doc confirmed. “My superior gave them some specific information before we were allowed inside.”
“What information?” Ryan asked.
“Regrettably that was something that I was not privy to,” Doc told him.
“How many guards?” Ryan asked. “Just the two?”
“Yes, but the door can be locked,” Doc told him. “Furthermore, there may be people inside who are in the process of delivering or removing honey for use by the ville.”
“This is the heart of the infection,” Ryan told his companions. “We need to be certain that it’s destroyed. That means someone needs to go in there and eyeball it.”
“Me,” Jak said. “Owe them.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, it’ll take two people to cover the hives and you’re fastest, Jak. Doc, you know where all the hives are located?”
“Yes. But they are painted white and easy enough to spot,” Doc confirmed. “Jak should have no trouble.”
“Good,” Ryan said, reaching down to grab his Steyr Scout longblaster, which he had brought with him wrapped in a blanket to disguise it. “You and Jak work in opposite directions. I’ll take on the store. This honey trap’s about to burn.”
