by James Axler
“Anytime, Doc!” Library answered, unleashing another arrow into the back of a stickie ripping off strips of hide from a team of screaming horses.
“Volley fire, on my command!” Dewitt commanded, ramming a fresh charge into a musket. Cocking back the stone-tipped hammer, he aimed over the railing. “Three…two…one…fire!”
Along the catwalk, a dozen of the travelers cut loose with an orchestrated barrage from their longblasters. The thundering discharge rivaled the storm overhead in sheer volume, but billowing gun smoke masked any results in the sea of animals below.
Jerking open the cylinder of the LeMat, Doc dumped out the spent brass and began shoving in fresh rounds, when a stickie grabbed the railing and starting climbing over the barrier. Snapping the partially loaded blaster shut, Doc pulled the trigger three times before finding a live round. The muzzle-flash illuminated the hideous mutie in crystal clarity as it sailed away from the catwalk to land on top of a generator housing. It stayed there, stuck to the dusty metal by the rows of moist suckers.
Overly excited by the sound of blasters, a swarm of stickies converged around the generator, hooting wildly and waving their arms in the air.
“By the three Kennedys, we have got to locate that entrance and seal it shut!” Doc shouted over the blasterfire and growls, removing the single exhausted cartridge to quickly shove in nine more brass.
Kneeling, some travelers fired their crossbows directly through the perforated flooring of the catwalk, impaling a pinkish flapjack that was gorging on the fallen body of a still-living horse. Both mutie and horse were chilled.
“Well, there’s no way we’re going to find it up here!” Krysty countered, slapping her last magazine into the M-16 rapidfire. “Not in this weak light!”
“John, we need some more road flares!” Mildred declared, ramming the stock of her Winchester into the face of a hooting stickie climbing up the smooth cinder-block wall. The stunned mutie fell away, taking along the weapon stuck to its suckers.
“All out!” J.B. replied, firing his scattergun downward. Crouched on top of a wag, amid a sea of punji sticks, a cougar leaped upward for the catwalk. In midair, the animal was torn apart by the hellstorm of double aught buckshot.
Grabbing the Navy flare gun in her belt, Cordelia looked up at the skylights in the ceiling awash with acid rain, then tucked the blaster away again. With a grin, she lifted an alcohol lantern high and threw it over the railing to smash onto the floor near where the first bear had been seen. If there was a breech in the wall, it had to be close to that area. A fireball erupted, the bluish light revealing a set of tattered plastic curtains.
“What the fuck are those?” Cordelia demanded as several deer walked through the shredded partitions, closely followed by a mutie spider almost a foot tall.
“That how get in!” Jak snarled, emptying his M-16 into the spider. The 5.56 mm rounds tore ragged holes on the soft body. With a high-pitched wail, the huge mutie dropped to the floor, the serrated mandibles snapping closed. Then a dozen much smaller spiders scurried out from underneath the gory form and began to feed upon their deceased parent.
“But how do they get in from the outside?” Alan demanded, kicking a wolf in the throat, his hands busy reloading a blaster.
Working the arming bolt of the Galil to free a jam, Ryan grunted at the sight of the thick plastic sheets—a bastard sound curtain, a room divider used by the whitecoats working here to hold down the noise of the generators. Possibly there was a cafeteria on the other side, or at least a break room with vending machines. However, neither of those should have any access to the outside.
“Let’s take a look!” Quickly aiming her crossbow, Library let a shaft fly and neatly pinned back the plastic curtain. But there was only darkness beyond. Then a swarm of squirrels poured into view, several with splotches of discolored fur, or patches missing entirely.
“Can’t see dreck from up here,” Ryan growled, switching the Galil from single-shot to full-auto. “We gotta do a hard recce!”
“No prob. I’ll do that!” a traveler offered, frantically ramming a fresh charge of black powder into his musket. However, his haste proved fatal when the over-packed weapon discharged, sending both it and most of the man’s fingers spraying upward. With a scream, he fell, hugging the ragged end of his arm to his chest.
Unable to pause in the battle, Mildred kept shooting and tried to ignore the cries of pain. However, Dewitt rushed to the aid of the fallen man, clubbing a stickie out of the way with his fishing tackle box. The mutie staggered away from the minor blow, its face gushing blood with a score of small punctures.
Pivoting at the hip to shoot the stickie in the throat, Mildred felt a rush of professional pride. Dewitt had spiked his tackle box so that it could be used as a weapon. She almost laughed at the bitter irony of death by medical kit. Welcome to the Deathlands!
Suddenly, a flaming arrow shot from a wag lanced past the plastic curtains. As it disappeared into the darkness, more arrows came from the convoy. Slowly, the gloom was brightened by the accumulating firebrands, the flickering light revealing the lobby of the building, the sagging ruin of a reception desk, a jumbled pile of plastic chairs and a row of dreck-splattered vending machines. More importantly, there was a large crack in the floor, with small animals climbing out of the jagged opening to look around in confusion.
“Cover me!” Ryan shouted, hopping over the railing and dropping onto a wide steam pipe. He almost lost his balance as his combat boots slipped, from the layers of rust and dust sprinkling away. But grabbing a fluorescent light fixture, he moved onward, carefully shuffling along the pipe to jump down to a feeder pipe, and then to the top of a generator.
A score of small animals ran away at the clang of his landing, but several stickies eagerly moved closer, hooting at the arrival of the tasty two-legs. However, their hands couldn’t reach Ryan at his present location, so he ignored them and waved for another flight of firebrands.
As arrows flew into the darkness once more, Ryan cursed at the sight of a curved brick wall inside the crack. That was a bastard storm drain…and suddenly he realized the truth. The local animals had to have been taking refuge inside the power plant for years, mebbe more, using the predark sewer system to gain entry into the lobby and offices. But they had never gone inside the main section of the building because of the plastic curtains. Designed to baffle the noise of the generators, they also held back the foul air of the decomposing people. However, when the companions smashed open the loading doors and vented the place, the wind had ripped the curtains loose, allowing the creatures full access.
Nuking hellfire, we did this to ourselves! Ryan fumed privately, then out loud shouted, “There’s a bastard storm drain we have to close! Toss me down a pipe bomb!”
“No good, old buddy!” J.B. answered. “I don’t have anything powerful enough for that big a job!”
“Used all!” Jak yelled, shooting a flapjack wiggling along the ceiling. Undamaged by the passage of the bullets, it continued onward, to disappear into the shadows.
Without a word, Alan sailed over the railing to land on top of a wag. Dodging tentacles and claws, he raced along the punji sticks and barbed wire to jump to the next wag, and then another. Kneeling, he gave a complicated knock, and a split second later a roof hatch jerked open and he scrambled inside.
Nothing happened for a moment, then the rear door to a wag was slammed aside and a wooden plank extended to crash onto the floor, accompanied by five travelers with their blasters blowing hellfire and death. Standing in the middle of the group was Alan, pushing a large wooden barrel along the sloping plank. There was a short fuse jutting from a bunghole set into the top.
As the group started across the floor, a stickie raced toward them, only to be cut down by a burst of blasterfire from Ryan on top of the generator. “We got your back!” he shouted, slapping in his last magazine.
The air was thick with the smoke from the black powder weapons, and carried the strong taste of sal
t. More stickies came forward, and the companions tore them apart with short bursts, then the travelers on the catwalk feathered the corpses to make sure nothing was playing possum.
Moving around a complex set of pipes, Alan and his men stayed in a tight formation, the travelers shooting at anything that got close, and kicking aside any corpses, or grisly debris, that might impede the progress of the heavy barrel. Passing a team of screaming horses, Alan slipped in some fresh crap on the floor, and as he landed sprawling, a wolf darted out of nowhere. As it leaped, Alan desperately swung up a machete, then cried out as the wooden barrel rolled backward over his boot.
Landing on top of him, the wolf tried for his exposed throat, but Alan managed to block the attack with the machete. Swinging around their muskets, his men took aim, then realized it was impossible to chill the wolf with their longblasters without the .78 miniballs coming out the other side of the animal and also acing their leader.
Raising their weapons like clubs, they started forward as another hooting stickie appeared. Turning fast, they blew it away, just as Ryan jumped off the generator to land on the back of the wolf, his combat boots centered on the spine. There was an audible crack of bone as the wolf went flat on top of his intended victim, who then slashed it across the throat.
“Th-thanks,” Alan gasped, shoving the corpse aside.
“No prob,” Ryan grunted, passing over the Galil and putting both hands on the barrel to start shoving it forward. It was a lot heavier than he expected, and he really needed put some serious muscle into the job to keep the thing rolling along. As he proceeded across the floor there came a soft, whispery sound from within, and he guessed the contents. This was probably the main supply for the whole bastard convoy!
Using the rapidfire to lever himself off the floor, Alan briefly checked over the weapon, then began limping after Ryan. The pain was tremendous, but he said nothing, merely dragging his left foot along behind, the hem of his pants already turning dark with blood.
More animals and muties attacked, but now the people on the catwalk renewed the defense, and the little group on the ground soon reached the plastic curtains, wounded, but very much alive, and still moving.
It was an effort to get over the jamb in the floor, but Ryan put his full strength to the task, and finally got across the threshold. Once past the curtains, he cursed as the barrel started to roll forward all by itself. Fireblast, the bastard floor was tilted! he realized.
Brandishing a longblaster, one of the guards stepped forward, but paused, unsure what to do. Then Alan triggered a burst from the Galil, angled high. A fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling danced from the arrival of the 5.56 mm rounds, then came smashing down onto the floor, spraying out white shards of curved glass. Crashing into the wreckage, the barrel stopped just short of the crack, less than a foot away from the blackness.
“Bastard good shot,” Ryan declared, pulling out a butane lighter and flicking it alive.
“This ain’t my first fandango,” Alan grunted, then swung around the rapidfire to shoot directly at the one-eyed man.
Ryan flinched as the muzzle-flash stung his cheek, then he heard something scream with pain and scamper away. He started to nod thanks, but saw a motion on the ceiling, and instead brutally shoved Alan aside. With a wet plop, a large flapjack landed exactly where he had just been standing.
Both men cut loose with their blasters at the monstrous thing, the Galil and SIG-Sauer tearing away gelatinous hunks of the translucent body until the mutie ceased to move, and began to turn a solid white.
“Everybody start running!” Ryan ordered, kneeling to light the stubby fuse. “A few more of these things get inside, and we’re all on the last train west!”
With a pyrotechnic sputter, the black length of twine soaked in black powder ignited, to start sizzling toward the huge barrel.
“Haul ass, people!” Alan bellowed, hobbling away at his best speed.
Dropping their longblasters, two of the guards grabbed their leader under the arms and lifted him off the floor, to start running away.
“Fire in the hole!” Ryan shouted, sprinting past the plastic curtains. At the rate that fuse was burning, it was going to be close. Too damn close.
High on the catwalk, everybody burst into frantic motion at the clarion call of the ancient battlefield warning, the companions and travelers dashing away from the area toward the blocked staircase.
Down on the floor, Ryan, Alan and the guards barely got behind the housing of a generator when the universe seemed to explode. The power plant rocked as a hot wind slapped their faces, and hellish tongues of writhing flame completely filled the shuddering building, accompanied by the gut-wrenching sound of breaking glass.
AS THE ACID RAIN FELL, the howler found itself irresistibly drawn to the north, then quickened its progress at the sight of the crashed aircraft carrier sticking out of the ground.
The glow of its cloud intensified as the mutie maneuvered through a slim crack in the hull to reach the dark interior. Traversing the sideways corridors and decks, the howler proceeded mindlessly to the nuclear generator as if compelled by forces beyond its comprehension, concentrating on reaping the rich harvest of uranium-238 from the core of the reactor.
Several of the oval hatchways set into the bulkheads were seriously warped by the crash, and the mutie had to make complex detours throughout the vessel, switching from one deck to another, removing crumpled doors and burrowing through access panels, before finally reaching the main power station.
As it entered, a 9 mm Colt auto-sentry bolted to the ceiling gave a single loud click, then went still forever, the brief microsecond surge of activity completely exhausting the very last spark of the weapon systems emergency reserve power.
Pushing aside piles of skeletons, chairs and assorted equipment, the howler unearthed the primary fuel port. Incredibly, the radiation-proof shielding was undamaged and still sealed tight. But guided by something deep inside, the howler wisely attacked the much weaker steam pipes going from the reactor to the turbines of the huge electric generators. Those pipes were only made of a four-inch-thick titanium-steel alloy, and the glowing cloud soon weakened them enough that the howler could smash them into jagged metallic splinters.
Snaking a jointed limb along the interior of a pipe, the mutie bypassed numerous valves and relays to eventually reach the uranium core at the heart of the reactor, only to find it cold and inert. Over the centuries, the unstable isotope had reverted into a more base form of inert matter.
Furious over the betrayal, the howler wildly attacked the machinery, ripping out control boards and servomechanisms.
Unexpectedly, a section of the wall disengaged to slide away, and out stepped a black metal droid. The machine possessed a globular body and six telescoping legs, making it resemble a spider. The eyes were small black dots set into curved recesses of the face, barely distinguishable in the glowing green light of the howler, and bolted to the bottom of the curved belly was the ferruled rod of a compact Bedlow laser.
With a low pneumatic hiss, the tarantula swiveled its head and its Bedlow laser in opposite directions, then locked both on to the howler across the room.
Instantly recognizing danger, the mutie immediately expanded the glowing cloud to its maximum size, then turned to flee. However, the fresh piles of destruction hindered a rapid escape, and the howler promptly found itself trapped amid the endless coils of cables and loose wiring.
Audibly throbbing into operation, the Bedlow laser sent out a scintillating rainbow beam of hellish intensity that burned through the glowing fog and the mutie inside. Cut in two, the howler wailed as it fell apart, the cloud dissipating to fully reveal the segmented horror within.
Unaffected by the esthetics of the living nightmare, the tarantula advanced through the topsy-turvy room, its slim ebony legs finding purchase on the walls, floor and ceiling. As it had been programmed to do, the built-in comp of the droid swept the polychromatic energy beam steadily back and forth across
the howler until there was nothing remaining of the creature except for a bubbling pool of molten steel on what had once been the wall.
Calmly waiting a few minutes for the steel to begin to solidify, the tarantula then proceeded to the nearest exit, only to find the hatchways serious distorted and completely useless. With no other recourse, the droid chose the shortest distance to the outside, and began burning a series of holes through the bulkheads.
Carving an opening through a particularly thick one, the tarantula paused at the sight of an armorial wall. The material was colored a soft green, with horizontal stripes of gold.
Backing away, the droid choose a new direction, and several hours later emerged from the side of the battleship. Bathed in the rain, the tarantula perched on the hull and attempted to contact the Pentagon for fresh instructions, but there was no reply. Switching frequencies, the droid then tried for the NORAD High Command, then for the Situation Room of the White House. Nothing. Puzzled, the tarantula switched to the civilian airwaves, then finally the internet. But the result was always the same—only the soft crackle of background solar radiation, as if radio had never been invented. Even the brand-new GPS network wasn’t functioning.
Boosting its transponder to full power, the tarantula swept the skies for any telecommunications satellite in orbit—military, governmental, civilian or even foreign. Instantly, it connected with several machines of unknown origin, but as they started relaying garbled information about a worldwide thermonuclear war, the tarantula promptly dismissed them as malfunctioning. If there had been such a conflict, the droid would have been properly notified via official channels.
Locked in a subelectronic dilemma, it paused for a long second, then, automatically falling back on preestablished protocols, walked down the side of the hull to the ground, and patiently waited for the rain to stop. It knew that the stars would emerge eventually, and after orientating itself by stellar cartography, the tarantula would proceed directly to the nearest redoubt, and wait in the antechamber for somebody with the proper B12 authority to come and issue new instructions.
