Perception Fault

by James Axler

  Only silence greeted him. Steeling himself, Ryan bent over and staggered up the stairs, breathing loudly with each step. At the top, he crawled out onto the landing, wheezing as if severely injured while looking around at the room.

  The sniper’s position was ahead and to the right, a form still bent over the longblaster, scanning outside. Another figure was in the window next to him, next to a small scope mounted on a tripod, but looking back at the staircase, a weapon pointed at the crawling form that had just appeared.

  “Hey, stop right— Jeez, Carly, is that you? What happened?” The voice turned from commanding to concerned, and Ryan felt a small hand on his arm, trying to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get you over— Hey, you’re not—”

  The mistake was realized too late, as Ryan had already grabbed the spotter’s arm in a steely grip while he shoved his Sig Sauer into the man’s chest and pulled the trigger twice, shattering ribs and holing vital organs. The coldheart let out a startled grunt and collapsed to the floor. Ryan kicked the blaster out of his hand and aimed at the sniper, who had heard the commotion and was drawing a small blaster of his own. Their weapons went off almost simultaneously, and Ryan felt a small puff of air against the side of his head from the bullet’s passage as his own shot hit his target in the upper chest. The shooter fell back against his blind and tried to lift his blaster again, but his second shot went wild into the darkness. Panting with the effort, he stared at the weapon in his hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds, then lifted his gaze back to Ryan.

  “Bastard….” was his last, high-pitched word, then his head lolled, and the blaster slipped from his lifeless fingers. Ryan had been covering him while scanning the rest of the room, but finding no one else here, went over to the sniper’s body. Something about him had caught his attention, and Ryan removed the drab-green cap from the body’s head to find a surprise underneath.

  A woman. Not even a woman, a girl, maybe in her late teens at most. Ryan didn’t feel that much of a twang of conscience. Women were just as lethal in the Deathlands as men, more so a lot of times. And there was the fact that she had been trying to kill him just a few minutes ago. No, what he was more concerned about was who was training what should have been a ragtag group of bandits to have this much skill and precision.

  Something had definitely changed in Denver, and Ryan was suddenly very curious to find out what.

  Chapter Five

  J.B. poked at the charred remains of what had been their dinner with the blade of his knife, shaking his head. “Damn shame.”

  “Got that right.” Ryan had made his way back to the rest of the group to find them all puzzling over the unusual fight.

  Mildred arched an eyebrow at both of them. “You talking about the turkey or that paramilitary force we just encountered?”

  “Bit of both.” Ryan exchanged a glance with J.B., who nodded. “Someone’s got a base of operations here, and is supplying people with quality weapons—” he indicated the pile of blasters and magazines he’d taken from the bodies on his way out of the sniper’s building “—and the training to use them well.”

  “Too well.” J.B. was methodically sorting the pile of weapons into types, then calibers. “Wide range, from an AK-47 to a Webley revolver—wonder where that came from?—but all are well-tended, oiled and everything.” He hefted the longblaster Ryan had brought back. “Remington 700, composite stock, 10x sight, very clean. Good trading value.”

  Mildred grimaced. “Whoever sent those people out here probably has a difference of opinion on that.”

  “Mebbe, but we’re holding them now. Possession’s a hundred percent of the law out here, you know that.”

  “Speaking of, what about the coldhearts themselves?” Krysty waved at the three corpses that had died trying to capture J.B., Mildred and Doc. “Some are in ragged uniforms, and others—like the ones you ran into—well dressed, and all with matching shirts. What about that?”

  Ryan took off the shirt he’d worn back to his friends and examined the embroidered insignia on the right sleeve. Not a patch, the symbol—a lightning bolt diagonally bisecting a field that was red, with a small sword on the upper left, and blue with what looked like an unrolled scroll of paper on the lower right—was stitched directly into the cloth. He had no idea what it meant. Wealthy barons with delusions of grandeur often outfitted their sec men in matching uniforms, thinking it gave their ville an appearance of respectability and power. Ryan often thought it simply made the hired thugs easier to identify and kill.

  Doc rubbed his temples with his long fingers. “And, except for the ones that our good man Ryan took out, they did not seem all that interested in chilling us, but rather were looking for captives. Standard operating procedure, if they were out to collect slaves, but that was not the impression I got. It is all most peculiar.”

  “Don’t forget stickies,” Jak piped up from the other side of the fire as he cast long looks into the darkness.

  “And those collars they were wearing. What’s that about? Is someone controlling them? We have a whole lot of questions, and no answers.” Ryan shoved the weapons into a large backpack he had liberated from the sniper’s building. “We’ll move to the high building and hole up there for the night. Between the bastard stickies and what looks like the vanguard of an army, there’s too much trouble around to be staying out in the open. Let’s strip the rest of the bodies along the way. No sense letting anyone else find these blasters. Once we’re secure, we’ll rig a few alarms, and take turns watching throughout the night. In the morning, we’ll head farther into the city—carefully—and see if we can get some idea of what’s going on here.”

  “What we eat?” Jak asked.

  Ryan jerked his thumb behind him. “Rations back at the sniper position.”

  “Great.”

  There were no further objections, and they all packed up, doused the fire and headed for cover.

  GUNFIRE AWOKE RYAN the next morning, jolting him out of bed with his Sig Sauer in his hand before he realized it was off in the distance. Looking around, he saw most of the others were also awake, from a sleepy-eyed Mildred to a yawning Jak, who had taken the most recent watch. Only Doc’s stentorian snoring continued unabated.

  After a quick sweep of the building to ensure no one had entered during the night, the other five broke their fast over a small fire built in a section of aluminum vent that Ryan and J.B. had taken apart and reshaped to form a rough chimney. After choking down the vacuum-packed, nearly indestructible rations that tasted bland whether they were hot or cold, spiced or plain, the five ascended to the roof to see if they could spot where the shots were coming from.

  The remains of the former neighborhood around them were flanked by hills to the north and west. Now that day had broken, columns of smoke to the north were easily visible as black plumes dotting the horizon. The blasterfire continued, single shots echoing over the foothills of the Rockies, interspersed with bursts of automatic weapons fire here and there, interspersed with the sustained roar of a light machine gun, followed by the heavier boom of another automatic weapon.

  J.B. identified the various sounds as if he was listening to bird calls. “M-60 belt-fed dueling with a .50-caliber heavy. Someone’s got a bit of firepower on their side. The pops we’re hearing are AK-47s, and I also caught a few M-16s and some lighter caliber weapons, .38s, .45s.”

  Krysty stood at the edge of the rooftop, the cool morning breeze blowing her hair away from her face. “Doesn’t sound like anything we want to get mixed up in, lover.”

  “Mebbe, mebbe not. Been thinking about it since last night. It looks like someone’s raising an army, or trying to, and every time that happens, it leads to all kinds of trouble.”

  “Trouble to whom?” Mildred asked, shading her eyes with her hand as she gazed north. “We slip out now, head back to the redoubt, jump somewhere else, and leave whoever’s out there to kill each other however they want. So far I’m siding with Krysty on this one, boys. I’m all for fighting
the good fight, doing what we can when we can, but that doesn’t involve marching into what sounds like a war zone up there.”

  Ryan eyed the black woman for a moment. “You’re right, it may not be our kind of trouble, but there’s plenty of places around here where it could be their kind—and Krysty and J.B. know of two of them.”

  “Not fair, Ryan.” Krysty hadn’t taken her eyes from the horizon, but her tone carried unmistakable reproach.

  “Neither is the world.” Ryan didn’t have to look at J.B. to know he’d already come to a similar conclusion. He didn’t know how the Armorer felt about Cripple Creek, the town he grew up in, but he doubted the man would simply walk away from a potential threat to it. And he was sure that Krysty wouldn’t put up with invaders swooping down on the ville of Harmony, where she grew up, to steal conscripts and turn them into trained killers, if there was anything she could do to stop it.

  “I’m about as keen as you all are to go walking into what might be our deaths, but I think we need to check out what’s going on up there. Besides, someone came after us last night, and I want to find out who’s holding the other end of that leash.”

  “And take them out?” J.B. stared at him speculatively. “If we head up there, it won’t be a pleasure trip. Don’t want to get caught between two barons feuding. We’d be like a bug between two rocks—squashed.”

  Ryan digested his friend’s take on the situation and nodded. “If we didn’t like what we saw once there, we either head out or do what we can. Lots of times we don’t really have a choice, but here we do. What about you, Jak? You been quiet ever since we came up here.”

  The albino youth was also shading his eyes against the morning light, the rising wind from the mountains to the west ruffling his white hair. “My people not been free if you not come stop Baron Tourment and men. We fight, we move, we survive all time. Not think much ’bout tomorrow. Comes if when comes. Got chance help people, mebbe we should. But only if good fight. One we got chance winnin’.”

  “Amen to that, my snowy-haired young friend.” Everyone turned to see Doc, dressed for travel, ascend the last of the stairs to the roof. “My apologies for tarrying in bed so long. Methinks the porter had not received my wake-up call last night. But it is a glorious morning, and after we enjoy a fine repast, I, for one, am looking forward to seeing more of this ‘Wild West’ as they refer to it in the newspapers back east.”

  “Doc?” Krysty approached him warily, aware of how fragile he could be when he regressed to this past state. “You’re not back in the nineteenth century anymore, you’re here, with us, remember?”

  For a moment, the old man stared at Krysty as if she was the one who had lost all reason, not him. Then his mouth split into a wide grin, revealing his peculiar set of teeth, and he laughed, long and loud, the joyous sound echoing off the deserted ruins of the buildings around them.

  Along with everyone else, Ryan was surprised by Doc’s reaction. Normally he responded to being wrenched back into the present with depression, and usually denial, rambling and tears. This sort of reaction made him fear the white-haired old man had finally slipped over the edge of sanity once and for all. He caught J.B.’s eye, who nodded and casually took three steps to the left to stand on Doc’s flank, ready to tackle him if needed.

  And indeed, Doc was trying to speak, but wheezing and gasping as he was, he couldn’t get any words out. He held up one hand while resting the other on his knee as he whooped and coughed. “Just a…just a minute…dear friends…oh, the looks on your faces…” At that he broke into a fresh gale of hilarity, nearly falling over in his mirth.

  Ryan gave J.B. a hand signal to stand down. Crossing his arms over his chest, he waited for the latest jocularity to subside.

  “Upon my soul…that is as good a jape as I have had in many a long year…”

  Mildred caught it first. “Jape? That was a joke, old man?”

  “Indeed it was, my ebony-skinned companion. I am aware that I trip the time fantastic now and again, and I thought it might be good for a chuckle if I only pretended to have gamboled down memory lane once more.” The stony looks on the faces of his companions made him sober up quickly. “Er, perhaps it was not quite as amusing to you all as it was to me.”

  “Oh, yeah, it was amusing all right—about as funny as a dead baby on a pitchfork.” Brushing roughly by the old man, Mildred stomped down the stairs to the floor of their camp.

  Krysty simply sighed and followed the other woman down, while Jak muttered something about, “fuckin’ senile white-haired bastards,” and followed. J.B., phlegmatic as usual, patted the scholar on the shoulder. “Good one, Doc.”

  That left him and Ryan alone on the rooftop. Ryan stared at Doc, nonplussed. He thought he’d seen every kind of quirk from the old man in their travels together, but once again, Doc had pulled the rug out from under him. He didn’t know whether to be angry, disappointed, stoic or what, so he settled for asking the obvious question. “What the fuck was that all about, Doc?”

  And the old man’s lined countenance, which had maintained its composure in the face of the mixed emotions of the other group, finally broke, collapsing into an expression of profound sadness. He walked over to Ryan, his hand reaching out to the other man’s shoulder, his fingers curved to grip his flesh like the talons of a hawk. But when his rheumy-eyed gaze bored into Ryan’s lone good eye, it had the unsettling clarity of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Don’t you see, my dear Ryan? Do you truly not see the irony of it all? It is either make jokes when I can, even when the subjects are my trusted friends, or one day I shall truly go insane in this place.”

  He relaxed his hand and headed to the stairs, singing some sort of ballad under his breath in a language Ryan didn’t understand, and leaving the even more confused man alone on the rooftop. With a shrug, he took one last look at the pillars of smoke to the north before heading down to help pack up.

  Chapter Six

  Between the various weapons they’d found, everyone had gotten the chance to top off their ammo. They decided to cache the weapons in the ductwork of the building, figuring they’d come back for them later.

  Ryan also suggested they each take one of the shirts—not to wear right away, but to use as camouflage in case they ran into more of the green militia first. Everyone had one hidden on their person, ready to pull on if necessary.

  The one-eyed man took the lead as they headed out, holding J.B.’s M-4000, the Steyr slung. If he surprised anyone, he wanted the shotgun’s overwhelming firepower to be available at a moment’s notice. Krysty followed, her crimson hair tucked away, then Doc, then Mildred, with J.B. and Jak bringing up the rear.

  His plan was simple—head north until they reached the top of the hills, which should give them a better view of what was going on below. Once they had accomplished that, then what came next all depended on who was doing what to whom.

  Ryan took a moment to lay down the ground rules. “Everyone keep your eyes wide-open, and remember, it’s not just coldhearts we’re watching out for. Those stickies may be running around, too, so anyone sees anything out of the ordinary, pass the word triple-quick. If we encounter overwhelming force or get split up, circle around to the cache building to regroup. Give any stragglers twelve hours, then head for the redoubt.”

  He saw the dark looks that came his way upon hearing the last words, but pretended not to. What they were heading into was too dangerous for a divided group to try to take on. It was better to run away and live to fight another day. Besides, even as he gave the orders, he was pretty sure none of the others would follow them if anyone did get caught.

  The first hour was slow going. Ryan had removed the scope from the Remington and used it to scout the terrain ahead—block after block of dilapidated suburbs consisting of crumbling, falling-down houses that could hide a veritable army of coldhearts. He made sure to scan each building along the path they took, watching for any sign of movement. Only when he was sure it was safe
did he give the signal to move out, and even then they took it one house at a time, leapfrogging in rotation and covering one another.

  The sounds of fighting grew louder as the morning sun ascended into the light purple sky. By the time it was overhead, they’d left the housing neighborhood behind and were climbing up their target hill, which was larger than it had first looked, when they heard the rough roar of ill-maintained engines coming their way. Ryan gave the signal to seek cover wherever they could, but the group was caught in the worst position possible, on an upslope, with the nearest cover at least one hundred yards away. Everyone scattered, hitting the ground and trying to camouflage themselves as best as they could in the knee-high grass covering the hill. Ryan dived to the dirt and rolled left, shotgun out and aimed at where he thought the wag might come over the hill.

  But instead of a wag cresting the top, the first thing they saw was a running human, sobbing with fear and exhaustion as he fairly flew over the top and began leaping down the other side of the hill—right toward Ryan. The approaching person wasn’t wearing the green shirt of the force that had ambushed them the previous night, which meant they were probably part of the opposing side.

  Only one way to find out, Ryan thought. The runner was now only a few steps away and moving so fast he was one misstep from tripping and falling the rest of the way down the hill. Ryan let him take two more huge leaps, then rose and put out his arm to clothesline the fleeing man, careful to catch him across the chest instead of the neck.