by James Axler
"But the sperm for our in vitro procedures—"
"Shadow Man doesn't have to cooperate for us to get what we want from him."
Chapter Fifteen
Nightfall at Ground Zero found all of the companions seated around a corner of the propane burner, taking turns cooking their dinners over the leaping rows of flames. The sizzling flesh and smoking droplets of fat filled the air with a gamy perfume.
Krysty was right, Ryan thought as he looked around. Hell had definitely changed for the better.
The thieves who had made their living by preying on the weak or sick were nowhere near the burner. They kept to the shadows along the edge of the ring of klieg lights, leaving the honest slaves to complete their meager meals in peace. Even the most hardened robbers were going to go hungry this night. Those who had attempted to steal food from their usual targets had been soundly beaten by their fellow prisoners, and turned away. An unspoken mutual defense policy was in effect. The slaves would no longer permit individuals to be isolated and victimized.
As Dean cooked his rat shish kebab, three skinned, headless bodies threaded nose to butt on a long piece of wire, he said, "You know, these things may be kind of greasy tasting, but the crispy parts are real good. I especially like the crunchy little feet."
"Not a lot of food on these critters," J.B. commented, "but it sure sticks to your ribs."
"One rat goes a long way," Ryan agreed.
Doc belched discreetly into his fist, then said, "I find it helps to try to imagine it as roast squab."
"That takes one hell of an imagination," Mildred said. She stared dismally at the charred carcass on the end of her wire spit, a single bite missing from the backstop. Mildred was having trouble choking down her meal; in fact, she couldn't even raise it to her lips.
"Same sort of dark, oleaginous meat," Doc stated.
"The metallic aftertaste is what gags me," Mildred said. "Like I've swallowed a bullet."
"A robust burgundy would certainly help to wash it all down," Doc admitted.
"If we had a robust burgundy, we could forget the fucking rat," the Armorer offered.
Jak didn't need to pretend the meal was anything but what it was. The mutie albino had lived wild and free his entire life, gladly accepting whatever Deathlands had to give. For him, protein was protein, whether it flew, walked, swam, slithered or crawled. He held a roast rat by the tail and chewed the head and shoulders noisily, using his back molars to pulverize both flesh and fine, fragile bones.
"What happened to your new friend?" Mildred asked Doc. "The guy who helped us load up our sledge. I figured he was going to eat with us, but I haven't seen him since we came out of the mine."
"That gentleman seems to have vanished, I am afraid," Doc replied. "And just when I was about to introduce him to Ryan and Krysty. I am sure he'll turn up later."
"If you're not going to eat any more of that rat," Ryan said to Mildred, "let me give it to Gabhart. See if he can keep it down."
"I'll come along with you," she said. "It's time to check on him again, anyway."
Downwind of the blue and yellow flames of the heater, Gabhart lay curled in a tight ball. He shivered violently, though he was sandwiched between insulating layers of rags they had stripped from the dead thieves.
Mildred gently touched his forehead. "Fever's a whole lot worse."
"Is he conscious?" Ryan asked.
"Colonel?" Mildred said, giving him a little shake. "Colonel, come on, wake up."
There was no response.
"Is this the total collapse you were telling me about?" Ryan said.
"No, he hasn't sloughed off his lung or intestinal tissue, yet. I'm afraid this is just the prelim."
"Bad way to go," said J.B., who had joined them.
"He could still come to?" Ryan asked.
"Anything's possible," Mildred admitted. "Miracles do happen, occasionally. It's a whole lot more likely that he'll slip into the terminal stage of the sickness without ever regaining consciousness. That would be the kindest thing for him."
Ryan turned to the Armorer. "Tell me again what he said about the manacles. Tell me everything."
J.B. repeated the story he had already related, almost word for word.
When he was done, Ryan said, "So, it sounds like the cuffs won't cut off our hands and feet as long as we stay on the road."
"That's how I read it, too," J.B. agreed.
"And the road runs all the way back to the camp, where they keep the comp that controls the cuffs." Ryan scratched the dense black stubble on his cheek. "If that's the case, then all that's keeping us here are the guys in the battlesuits."
"Pretty big 'all,' if you ask me," Mildred said. "It's the same 'all' that's going to laser us into chunks even if we make the camp and break up the computer."
"We've got to take this one small step at a time," Ryan told her.
Then he turned to J.B. and said, "Gabhart said nothing about a way to defeat the battlesuits?"
"Never got to ask him the question. He conked out on me, first."
"It's possible that there's no way to defeat the battlesuits," Mildred said. "At least not with what little we've got here at hand. I mean, all we have for weapons are pickaxes. If a centerfire slug can't get close to one of those suits, how the hell is an ax going to do any damage?"
After a long silence, Ryan said, "We need to sleep on it. Mebbe something will come to us by morning."
"Mebbe the colonel will wake up and give us what we need before he croaks," J.B. said.
The companions crawled into the shallow, circular dimples in the glass's surface, downwind of the heater, and out of the direct glare of the encircling klieg lights.
Krysty and Ryan curled up together in the same dimple and quickly fell asleep.
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN, Ryan awakened to Krysty's warm, soft lips brushing his.
"Mmm," she said. Her fingers tangled in his hair, and she pulled his mouth onto hers.
"You did real good yesterday," she said as she drew back. "You deserve a proper reward."
From the way her hand lingered on the back of his neck, Ryan knew she wanted to give him more than just another kiss.
"This hellhole is the wrong place for love," he said.
"There's no such thing. Let me show you."
Ryan winced slightly as her fingers found and fondled him through his clothes. His grimace didn't deter her one bit. And despite his misgivings, her stroking produced the desired effect almost immediately.
"See what I mean?" she said, smiling up at him.
Ryan didn't say anything.
Krysty snuggled closer. "We may never get another chance, lover," she whispered, her lips once again brushing against his. "You wouldn't want to die knowing we'd missed it, would you?" The tip of her tongue tickled lightly over his lips and pushed gently between his teeth.
They kissed deeply.
Ryan was the one who pulled back. The taste of Krysty's mouth and the feel of her tongue lashing against his seemed to steal the air from his lungs; the intimate contact left him hungry for more.
He pushed up to his knees and looked around. In the hard light of the kliegs, no one else was stirring. The other companions were out of sight in their own dimples.
"Do it quiet," he told her as he lay down beside her.
"Quiet as a mouse, lover," she said, unfastening his fly with practiced fingers.
Krysty did try to keep it under wraps; he had to give her that. Biting her lower lip and digging her nails into her palms, she managed to stifle herself while he thrust into her over and over again. But in the end, she couldn't hold back. She arched up from the glass and let out a piping cry.
Ryan covered her mouth with his hand and finished in a sprint, along with her. Afterward, they lay in each other's arms for a long while, finally falling into a light sleep.
It seemed as if they had only just drifted off when they were awakened by the thwup-thwup-thwup of approaching rotor blades. The noise got louder and loude
r and then the gyroplane's landing lights speared down on them from the black sky. As the aircraft descended onto a flat spot outside the ring of klieg lights, Ryan and Krysty had to turn their heads and shut their eyes to avoid the wind whipped glass dust.
The gyroplane's arrival roused all the slaves. Raising their heads above the edges of their dimple beds, they watched the aircraft's doors open and three troopers step out.
"Is Dr. Huth here?" one of the new arrivals shouted. "Is Dr. Huth still alive? He's been summoned back to the main camp."
A tall, lanky man sitting on the other side of the compound jumped to his feet. "Here!" he cried. "Here I am!" With that, he hurried across the flat land, towards the troopers.
"What the blazes?" Doc said, scrambling to his feet. "The man's a doctor?"
People began to boo and curse and shake their fists at the frantically running man.
A slave standing near Doc said, "He's not a medic. He's a stinking whitecoat. He's the bastard who brought all these black suited fuckers over here." The slave bent, grabbed a stickie head by the chin and mouth and lobbed it in Huth's direction. "Bastard!" he cried.
Several others launched similar missiles, which landed with dull smacks on the glass.
Ryan picked up an ax from the ground and in a blur of arm motion, sent it spinning over the compound. His lead was right on target; the arc of the throw was a bit high, though. The tool cleared Huth's head by about a foot and skittered across the glass. Seeing the merit in what Ryan had done, and the fact that the guards had exacted no penalty for the attempted murder, other slaves looked to their tools, as well. As the whitecoat zigzagged toward the gyroplane, he dodged a veritable rain of hurled pickaxes.
Covering his head with his arms, Huth moved behind the protection of the troopers battlesuits. The armor deflected the barrage of tools; it provided an invisible shield that sent the projectiles veering off at steep angles. When the troopers raised their laser rifles to fire on the mob, the downpour of axes stopped.
"Ryan, I am at a loss here. I thought the man was just another slave. What is going on?" Doc said.
"I know Huth," the one-eyed man said. "I met him in the other reality. He was the director of the Totality Concept on the alternate Earth. He developed the trans-reality technology for FIVE and set up the first expeditionary force led by Colonel Gabhart. How he ended up at Ground Zero on this Earth is anybody's guess."
"Maybe he's just lucky?" J.B. said.
Doc turned to Jak and said, "It would appear my initial induction concerning his education was correct after all. The man has obviously earned advanced degrees."
"Told you," the albino said. "Bad smell."
"If not that, a sorry state of affairs to be sure. We should never have saved the miserable wretch. I can only blame myself for that. You were right, my dear Jack. We should've left him there to feed the rats, then his existence might have served some greater ecological good."
Jak grunted in agreement.
It soon became apparent that the new batch of troopers hadn't completed their mission at Ground Zero. After securing Huth in the gyro, they joined the mine guards and marched with them in formation, pulse rifles at the ready, driving a wedge into the milling slaves. It wasn't clear until the last moment what their intentions were. At a silent signal, they charged into the mob, using their rifle butts to club back those who didn't move out of the way fast enough. They beat a path straight toward Ryan and the others.
At a shout from Ryan, the companions pulled together into a defensive hand-to-hand formation. J.B., Ryan, and Jak took the front, Mildred and Krysty guarded the sides and Doc and Dean covered the rear. All of them stood back to back.
"Use your axes to deflect their gun butts," Ryan said as the troopers bore down on them.
The battlesuited soldiers split ranks around the point of contact, surrounding the companions. When they attacked, they did so all at once.
Ryan dodged a rifle butt to the face, then used the curved point of his ax to hook the weapon's trigger guard. He gave a mighty jerk and pulled the rifle out of the startled trooper's hands. The trooper just stood there, watching as it sailed off over Ryan's head. Instinctively, the one-eyed man fired a roundhouse left punch into the side of his helmet.
Ryan was surprised that his hand made contact without being deflected by the armor's EM shield. It made good contact, too. The helmet didn't give at all under the punch, and the blow hurt his knuckles. If it stunned the trooper, he didn't show it. Before Ryan could block, a gauntleted hand was wrapped around the front of his throat.
Ryan tried to counter by swinging the ax into the man's side, aiming for his kidney, but the point hit something solid long before it hit the target. A very strange something. Power in, power out. With the same force he had applied to the blow, the handle was ripped from his grasp. The ax bounced away on the glass. And his arm went numb all the way to his armpit.
J.B. paused in his own self defense long enough to side kick the trooper's weight bearing leg, right behind the knee. Nothing happened. J.B.'s boot hit it square, but the armor kept the leg from buckling.
Then J.B. had all he could handle. A rifle butt caught him in the ribs, and he twisted away to avoid a second blow.
In this kind of free for all brawl, it was impossible to keep track of anything except what was right in front of you. The troopers had the same problems, too. Everybody was juking, swinging, ducking. Either hitting or being hit.
Ryan half turned to the left and stepped around the trooper's right hip. The instant he got his weight shifted, he had the guy. He body slammed the soldier to the ground, driving his shoulder into him. Ryan knew he'd made an impression on the guy because the hand around his throat let go. The trooper didn't move for a couple of seconds. In those seconds, Ryan tried to get his helmet off so he could do some more serious damage. He hit the release button, but before he could twist the helmet off, another trooper came to the rescue, clubbing him with the stock of his laser rifle.
Ryan snap kicked the trooper in the middle of the chest, shoving him back a good yard and putting his gun butt out of range. The armor didn't dent or buckle around the kick, even though he had put a good deal of heel into it. Mebbe Mildred was right, he thought, and there was nothing they could do about the battlesuits.
"Dad! Dad, they've got Krysty!"
At Dean's cry, Ryan whirled. Battlesuited troopers had separated Krysty from the companions fighting square. They had her surrounded and were battering her with their gauntleted fists.
Ryan threw himself at the nearest trooper, grabbing his arm from behind as he raised it to hit Krysty. He jerked the man off his feet and sent him spinning away.
J.B. tried to break through, as well, and for his trouble got a rifle butt in the side of the head that dropped him like a rock.
Ryan lunged forward, through the gap he had created. Krysty was already slumping to the ground, unable to fight off the rain of blows from all sides. Before Ryan could reach her, he took a gun butt from behind that made him see stars and put him on his knees.
The follow up blow to the base of his skull knocked him out, but only for a second.
As he heaved himself up from the glass, the troopers had Krysty by the arms and were dragging her away. Her head drooped like a broken doll's. Her eyes looked dazed, and there was blood on her mouth and cheek.
Ryan growled a curse and charged after them.
When they saw him coming, the troopers leveled their pulse rifles at him, muzzle first and waist high.
"Stop where you are or we'll fire, Shadow Man," one of the troopers warned him.
Ryan stopped. He had no choice. There were too many weapons in too many hands. He could see he couldn't get any closer without being sawed in half. "Let her go, you bastards!" he shouted.
"Don't worry," the trooper told him, "we're only going to borrow your red-haired friend for a little while. We'll bring her right back when we're done."
With the sights of their weapons sweeping the surroundi
ng crowd, the troopers backed their way across the flatland to the cargo door of the gyroplane. As Krysty was hustled inside, the slaves started shouting angrily and they surged forward, rushing the landing site. More axes sailed through the air, and two of the klieg lights shattered and winked out. This forced the guards to fire a series of warning shots to cover the aircraft's departure. Though the shots weren't that close, most of the slaves hit the deck to avoid the energy pulses.
Ryan didn't go belly down on the glass and he didn't duck. He stood rigidly upright, watching grimly as the gyro with Krysty in it lifted off. The black aircraft rose into the sun, which was just breaking through banks of gray clouds on the horizon.
"We'll get her back, Dad," Dean said as the gyro wheeled away toward the Slake City camp. "We'll get her back."
Chapter Sixteen
Krysty came to inside the gyro, buckled into a contour seat by a cross-chest harness. The cramped interior's red lights swam as the aircraft made a sudden, gut-wrenching takeoff. For a moment the G-force had her stomach down around her boot tops.
When the pressure eased, she noticed the man sitting in the seat next to her. He had a high forehead and long skinny legs. Filthy and dressed in fetid rags, he smelled like a slaughterhouse on a hot day. He wore a big smile on his gap-toothed face.
"What are you grinning at?" Krysty demanded.
"The turn of my fortune at last," he said. "Moments ago I was doomed, like you and your friends, to die a terrible, lingering death. Now I am saved." He showed her his manacle-free wrists.
"Lucky you."
"No, it has nothing to do with luck," he said. "Dredda Otis Trask finally came to her senses." Still grinning, he tapped the side of his head. "What's in here is priceless, you see. I have a track record of success that belies my chronological years. My rise to professional prominence was meteoric. I assure you I have solved problems whose complexity and implications would crack your tiny mind. On my own world, statues were raised in my likeness. Halls of academe were named after me. I was emulated and bitterly envied by my peers."
