by James Axler
A snow-white blur appeared at the shaman’s shoulder, pushing his blaster aside. Jak took two steps toward the mutie, until it seemed the spear held in its hands had nowhere else to go except into his chest. However, the albino youth dodged the stone point by leaping into the air above the shaft. At the apex of his jump, his steel-toed combat boot pistoned out, its tip connecting with the lizardman’s temple. The sharp crack of breaking bone echoed over the splashing footsteps, and the creature was down, its face smashed into the wall where it had fallen in midstep, still clutching its spear. Landing with hardly a splash, Jak toed the lizardman’s limp body, making sure it was dead.
Donfil had just managed to get his gun back under control. “Thank you, Eyes of Wolf.”
The teen nodded at the shaman’s blaster. “Too much noise. Bring mutie bastards running. Let’s go.”
“Right.” Approaching the mortally wounded lizardman, Donfil raised the butt of his blaster and slammed it on the mutie’s head, knocking the creature unconscious before pulling his harpoon out. “Yes, but which way?” The Apache shone his light down the leftmost corridor. Ryan had already risen and checked the right.
“This way looks blocked off. I see some open doors, but the hall ends in a big wall of rock. Let’s go your way.”
Donfil frowned. “You don’t think Krysty is nearby?”
Ryan’s smile was tight. “If she’d been held this close to the entrance, she would have escaped already. Probably would have found her before we came in. Come on.” Slogging through the water, he pushed forward, sweeping from side to side with his light, blaster ready to fire at the slightest glimpse of scaled skin or huge, black eyes.
This hall was lined with more metal doors, most of them rusted and hanging from one hinge, the glass in their windows long gone. Ryan, Jak and Donfil cleared each one they came to it, making sure no mutie surprises lurked in the dark recesses. They kept their lights pointed at the floor immediately in front of them to avoid alerting anyone ahead to their position. The building creaked and groaned as they went, and every time it did, Ryan half expected the ceiling to come down on their heads. The staccato machine-gun fire couldn’t be heard anymore, but he assumed that was because they were deeper underground now.
The passage ended in a right turn, and Ryan caught the flicker of orange light coming from somewhere around the corner. Dousing his light, he motioned for the other two to do the same. He edged to the corner, sliding his feet through the water so he wouldn’t warn anyone nearby with an errant splash. Right at the edge of the wall, Ryan carefully stuck his head out for a look.
Two lizardmen stood in front of a pair of closed double doors with large, frosted windows set into them. The wavering orange light came from the room beyond them. These two were dressed much differently than the other muties they had encountered so far—for one thing, they were actually wearing clothes. Simple squares of cloth covered their waists, and their necks and wrists were decorated with twists of copper wire from which strange ornaments dangled—green boards that Ryan knew to be from the insides of computers, the keys from keyboards woven into a necklace and hanging from one’s protruding snout. Their weapons were better, too—straight shafts of polished metal, with gleaming steel spearheads attached, not crude stone. They were obviously guarding whatever lay in the next room.
One of them was looking over its shoulder through the window, but the other one happened to be staring right at the corner of the hallway, and immediately spotted Ryan the moment he appeared. With a startled snort, he nudged his companion and stepped forward, lowering his spear.
Stepping from cover, Ryan braced his blaster and fired twice. His first bullet entered the approaching guard’s open mouth, chipping off its front teeth before puncturing the soft palate at the back of the throat and spiraling into its brain. The guard took one more step before the lack of neural commands caught up with its legs, and it began to fall.
Before that was done, the second bullet caught the second guard as it was turning to see what the commotion was about. The slug penetrated its vestigial ear canal, shattering the tympani and tunneling through the beast’s brain before exiting out the other side, taking a fist-size chunk of bone and brains with it. Emitting a startled grunt—the last noise it would ever make—the second guard slumped against the corner of the hall, stuck between the wall and the door, which sagged open slightly under the added weight.
Springing forward, Ryan caught the first guard’s body before it could splash heavily into the water, sticking out his leg so the spear shaft bounced off it and slid into the water. “Psst!” he hissed to Jak and Donfil, who rounded the corner and grabbed the second body. They hauled the corpses to the nearest open room and dumped them just inside the door, hoping a casual look around might miss them.
The moment they hit the floor, Ryan headed back to the double doors. Once the other two had caught up with him, Ryan signaled the plan. He’d go up the middle, Jak to the right, Donfil going left. Ryan tapped the barrels of their revolvers and nodded, making sure they got the message to blow away anything in their way. From inside, they heard muffled sounds—wet, meaty slaps and an incoherent cry that might have been of pain or pleasure. Ryan’s face tightened as he thought of the ways they might be violating Krysty. He pushed the sudden, noxious catalog of atrocious thoughts out of his mind and raised his SIG-Sauer again.
Poised at the door, he counted down with his fingers. Three…two…one…go!
Shoving the door open, Ryan burst into the room to witness a scene of shocking carnage.
The first thing that caught his attention was the huge, bas-relief figure on the far wall, a crude, humanoid figure sculpted out of mud, with scales covering her body. She had large breasts, outstretched arms ending in claw-tipped fingers, and hair consisting of a dozen waving snake bodies, their mouths open and dripping venom.
But what was much more important to him was the tableau underneath the giant effigy.
Four lizardmen, each dressed in garish accoutrements similar to, but more ornate than what the guards outside wore, were sprawled around a dais in front of the statue, their splayed limbs and bleeding heads indicating that they had died suddenly and violently.
Krysty stood on the raised platform, still in her damp jumpsuit, broken ropes dangling from her wrists. She clutched the head of a kneeling mutie. As Ryan was checking his aim, she twisted its head clean around, the snap of cracking vertebrae heard throughout the room. The lizardman’s body trembled once, and fell to the floor when she let it go.
“Krysty!” Ryan ran to her just as she started to topple over, catching her in his arms.
“Ryan…knew you’d come. Had to use…power of Gaia…to free myself.”
He hugged her tightly, his gaze going to Jak and Donfil, both of whom had cleared the room without firing a shot, and who nodded back at him. “I’ve got you, you’re safe now. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”
She pushed back to look at him. “Wait! We can’t go. Not yet. They’re planning to destroy the ville. We have to stop them!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Time go, Ryan,” Jak said from a pair of doors on the other side of the room, where he was peeking through the windows. “Someone come and be pissed seein’ bodies here.”
“Just a sec,” Ryan said, turning back to Krysty. “What are you saying?”
“They’re planning…to attack the ville. All at once…leaders whipping the rest into a frenzy…at least a hundred of them. They’ll massacre everyone.”
One hundred minus six, Ryan thought, but frowned as he considered the problem. “Okay, but how are we supposed to stop them?”
Krysty had regained enough of her strength to stand, although she still held on to Ryan’s arm. “As they were taking me through…the passages I saw a sign next to a room…just down the stairs there. It contains radioactive material. We open it…flood the entire building. Kill them all. Take only a few minutes.”
“Doesn’t sound like it leaves us a gnat�
��s chance in hell of making it out of here ourselves.”
“No, we can rig it to open slowly.” Krysty grabbed the remnants of rope that had bound her and thrust them at Ryan. “It’s our best shot, otherwise we have to fight them out there again.” She faced him, all bedraggled hair, filthy clothes and flashing eyes. “We’re not going to leave those people out there to these things’ savagery. By Gaia, the things I’ve seen down here—” She swayed for a moment, but brushed off Ryan’s hand. “You stopped the cannies, now I’m putting my foot down—this ends here. What was it you said to Mildred? ‘You can either help, or get out of the way.’ Now strip them of those clothes or get the hell out of my way!”
Krysty turned to begin stripping the nearest corpse. Ryan pushed the body of one of them over with his foot, finding her Smith & Wesson blaster tucked into the belt of one of the priests. Grabbing it, he straightened and stared at her for a long moment, watching her, coiled and efficient, as she stripped the body and moved to the next one. A wave of love swept over him at that second. “Krysty?”
She was busy stripping another of its gaudy tabard. “Yeah?”
“You’re gonna need this.” He tossed her the weapon, which she plucked out of the air with one hand. “Thanks, lover.”
Donfil came over while Ryan was stripping the last two bodies. “Exit corridor is clear. Why are we not leaving?”
“Krysty says the nest plans to attack the ville in force. She wants to flood the building with radioactive material to chill them once and for all.”
“Is that possible?”
“She thinks so, and doesn’t seem inclined to leave until we do this, so yeah, we’re going to try. Better than trying a straight-up fight in the ville itself.”
“All right, I’m with you.”
“Good, then take this.” Ryan shoved two sets of rough clothes at him. “Krysty, we have to move, now!”
“Done, come on.” Arms full, she trotted to the set of doors on the other side of the room. “Are we clear, Jak?”
“So far. What plan?”
“Just follow me.” She peeked out the glass and frowned. “Funny, there should be a lot more muties out here.”
“J.B., Mildred, and Doc are making a diversion on the lake right now, during which we’re supposed to be getting you out of here.”
“Good, easier for us.” She pushed through the doors and turned left. Ryan was right behind her, followed by Donfil, then Jak. Krysty crept about ten yards down the hallway, then turned right again, leading them to a vertical passageway with a ladder leading down. “This way. It’s right off this corridor.”
She dumped the armload of clothes down the shaft first, causing a surprised grunt from below. Grabbing the light from Ryan, Krysty shone it down just in time to catch a lizardman’s surprised face appear in the circle of light, throwing its hand up to shield its sensitive eyes.
“Shit!” Still holding the light, Krysty jumped down through the hole, not touching the ladder as she fell. There was a quick scrabbling from below, then a loud thwack, and a muffled mewling.
“Damn,” Ryan muttered as he swung onto the ladder and descended, his feet and fingers sending showers of wet rust down as he gripped each rung. Above, he heard someone else climb on, but he only had an eye for what he found when he stepped off the ladder.
Breathing hard, Krysty stood over a fallen lizardman, its hideously distended jaw hanging off its face. As Donfil hit the bottom, he shone his light over, revealing the wet blood on the heel of her cowboy boots, and it all became clear.
“Finish it.” Ryan was already scanning the small, square chamber for the door Krysty had claimed was here, catching the sharp snap of the lizardman’s neck breaking as he looked around. Small corridors led away in two directions, but he paid no attention to them after making sure they were empty.
“Ryan?” Donfil pointed to a shadowed alcove containing a heavy steel door with the familiar three black, rounded triangles arrayed around a small black circle against a bright yellow background on it. A large, red-and-white sign, dotted with rust, hung on the wall next to it. Warning! Nuclear Containment Unit! Radioactive Materials Inside!
The sign went on to say that the outer entry door to the containment unit had to be sealed and locked before the inner door was opened. All personnel had to be wearing level 4 hazmat protection to enter, and personnel had to submit to a chemical bath immediately upon exit.
“That’s it.” Krysty trotted to the door and reached for the large wheel in the middle. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Ryan placed his hand gently over hers. “Hold on a moment. Let’s get a look inside first.” While he calmed her, he snuck a look at his rad counter, finding that it had gone down to the midpoint of the green range. “Shine that light in this porthole first. Let’s make sure that inner door is sealed before doing anything we might regret later.”
Krysty’s fingers tensed on the metal, and for a moment he thought she might resist him, but she leaned into him and sighed. “You’re right, lover. Sorry. I just want to get this done and get the hell out.”
“You and me both.” He wrapped an arm around her while taking the light from her other hand and shining it through the thick, cloudy window. “Fireblast! Can’t see much in there. Jak, get over here.”
The albino teen stalked over, catching the flashlight as he approached the door. “See if you can make out whether the inner door is closed.”
Standing on his tiptoes, the skinny teen could just barely get his eyes above the bottom sill of the window. “Looks like—yeah, shut.”
“Okay, stand back.” Jak got out of the way as Ryan gripped the wheel firmly and applied pressure, slowly at first, then more and more, until the veins stood out on his arms. “Donfil, give me a hand.”
The shaman broke off from watching the rightmost corridor to walk to the other side of the door and grasp the lower part of the wheel firmly.
“On three—one…two…three, now!” Both men strained at the wheel with all their strength. For a moment nothing happened, then, with a high-pitched shriek of metal, the wheel budged an inch, then another. One more mighty heave, and it rotated a quarter-turn, then another, then Ryan was able to turn it by himself, although still with an effort.
“All right—let’s crack this and see what we can see. If my rad counter touches red, we get back out, all right?” When everyone had nodded in agreement, Ryan pushed the door inward.
A wave of stale air whooshed out over them, carrying the smell of metal and dust. Ryan checked his counter, but it had only risen to high green, just below red.
“So far, so good. Let’s go.” Stepping into the room, the first thing Ryan saw was a slumped skeleton next to the inner door, its bony fingers still clutching a small-caliber blaster close to its head. A faded, dark rust-colored stain on the wall above its holed skull left no doubt what had transpired here more than a hundred years ago.
“Pop inside door and get hell out, right?” Jak asked, still hovering near the first doorway.
“I do not think it will be that easy, Eyes of Wolf,” Donfil said, pointing to a sign next to the inner door: Warning! Nuclear Containment Unit! Radioactive Materials Inside! Outer door must be closed before inner door can be opened!
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Krysty breathed as she stared at it.
“Yeah.” Ryan’s shoulders slumped. “If we’re going to do this, somebody’s got to stay inside to open the outer door once this room’s flooded with radioactive material.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“No, no, there must be another way.” Krysty went to the smooth metal wheel of the door and pulled on it before anyone could stop her. Unlike the other mechanism, this one looked new, and even shifted a fraction under her hands before stopping hard. “Come on—help me. If all of us try, we can get it open.”
Ryan, Jak and Donfil exchanged glances, and Ryan walked over to Krysty, gently taking her hands, which clenched into tight fists, from the wheel. “Kr
ysty, you know that isn’t going to help.”
“It has to! We can’t just leave someone in here to sacrifice themselves—”
“I will stay.”
Ryan, along with Jak and Krysty, turned to look at Donfil, who was stood straight and tall, his shoulders back, the top of his head almost brushing the ceiling, every inch the proud Mescalero Apache. “Donfil, you don’t have to—”
“No, One-Eye Chills, I do. I would certainly not ask any of you to do this for our ville. You have done enough already. I am sure of my purpose now. This is where the Great Spirit has been guiding me—only when I stepped inside this building did I begin to feel a moment of peace. And now, upon seeing what must be done, I understand that this is where I am meant to be.”
Krysty started to speak, but Donfil cut her off. “Fire-Hair Woman, you and the others must leave. Doubtless the lizardmen will be coming soon, and you do not wish to be caught between this—” he smacked the inner door with his palm “—and their anger.” He walked to the inner door, his steps stately and dignified. “Go now, my friends. I only ask that you let the ville know what has happened here.”
Ryan stared at the shaman, then at his friends, knowing there was nothing left to say. It was Donfil’s choice, and as far as Ryan was concerned, it was the right one. It was the only way they could do what needed to be done. There was only one thing left.
Krysty walked over to the skinny shaman and hugged him hard. “Farewell, Man-Whose-Eyes-See-More.”
Donfil regarded her with grave eyes. “Farewell, Fire-Hair Woman. Until we meet in the next life.” Krysty turned and walked out without looking back.
Jak was next, staring up at the towering Apache, his slight stature incongruous next to the tall man. He nodded goodbye. “Chill lots, Donfil.”
“I intend to, Eyes of Wolf. If you see any out there, may you have happy hunting as well.”
