Latitude Zero

by James Axler

  "Could be other side. By water," Jak suggested.

  "Yeah," Ryan agreed. "Could be. Knowing muties, they won't be that well hid. Doesn't look like they're either in the valley or on the tops, so you could be right."

  Krysty stopped, wiping grit from the corner of her eye. "I got a bad feeling, lover. There's something about this. Maybe it's not muties."

  "Skullface?"

  "Don't know. I can't see enough. There's something around that— Gaia! I just don't know."

  At the entrance to the pass the ground was covered with a lot of misshapen boulders and piles of earth of varying sizes. None of the three paid them much attention, concentrating on the caves of blackness in the depths of the cutting.

  Which was a mistake. A dozen screeching figures leaped from their dusty hiding places.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT HAD BEEN a trick common among some Indian tribes during the middle 1800s. Young warriors would lie hidden beneath heaps of sand, not moving for hours on end, totally invisible, suffering intense discomfort while they waited for their enemies to ride by.

  The muties must have seen the great pillar of orange dust that the wag train sent soaring skyward, visible for miles in any direction. And it must also have been quickly obvious that the fifteen rigs were taking the old winding blacktop from east to west. Even for a mutie, the timing of an ambush wasn't that tough to figure. But what took Ryan completely by surprise was that the muties had actually pulled off their plan with so much cunning.

  There was a fraction of a moment to recognize that these were all scalies, without a single stickie among them. They were almost naked, with just rags of cloth knotted about their genitals. It looked like they were all males, but with scalies it was hard to tell. Their leathery skin glistened in the sunlight, and all of them were armed with axes or long-bladed knives.

  Odds were twelve to three, and the initial element of shock was on the side of the muties. But Ryan, Krysty and Jak all had blasters drawn and ready for action.

  One of the creatures erupted from the dirt almost under Ryan's feet, making him stagger sideways, nearly losing his balance.

  "Fireblast!" he gasped, finger tightening instinctively on the trigger of his SIG-Sauer blaster.

  The high-velocity round hit the nearest of his attackers a glancing blow, burning across its ribs on the right side, making its scaley jaw drop in shock. A hideous screech of pain came from its open mouth, its fetid breath making Ryan gag. There was time for a second, better-aimed shot at the staggering mutie, the bullet hitting precisely where Ryan had hoped— between the eyes, knocking it on its back where it continued to scream for several anguished seconds.

  Before he could get off a third shot, one of the scalies grabbed at him, its clawed fingers splitting the skin on his arm, blood coursing over his wrist and fingers. Ryan nearly dropped his blaster in the violence of the attack.

  He heard the double boom of Jak getting off a couple of shells from his hand cannon and the lighter noise of Krysty's pistol. Then everything vanished around him in his own lethal struggle for survival against three determined scalies.

  One of them had its hands locked around the SIG-Sauer, wrestling it away from him. His own blood-slick fingers were weakening, and the other two were going for his throat and face.

  Seeing defeat lurching before him, Ryan suddenly let go of the gun and threw himself backward. The mutie in front of him toppled away, caught by surprise, landing on its back, the blaster dropping from its own hand. The other two scalies also fell away from Ryan, standing looking at him through their deep-set eyes.

  On his other hip Ryan carried the heavy panga with the eighteen-inch blade. He'd taken the trouble last night to clean and oil the weapon, making sure the honed edge hadn't been damaged or dulled by the flood waters.

  Now he drew it.

  The three scalies that faced him had drawn their own weapons. One was a long-handled ax, a second held a heavy, short-hafted hammer and the third an ice pick.

  "Come on, you bastards," Ryan snarled, beckoning them toward him. He heard two more shots from Krysty's blaster, and Jak's Magnum boomed once more. But he didn't dare to take his eyes off the trio of scalies shuffling in closer, all making a soft mewing sound.

  He snatched a second to wipe his bloody hands on his pants, taking a firmer grip on the hilt of the panga. He moved it slowly from side to side, hearing the steel hiss in the warm air.

  The scalie with the ice pick kept looking behind at the fallen blaster. Finally it went for the weapon, dropping the pick and plucking the SIG-Sauer from the ground, fumbling with the firing mechanism. Ryan moved fast, dodging two clumsy blows from the ax and the hammer, the panga swinging shoulder high.

  The scalie blinked at him, wincing from the threat of the cleaver.

  Ryan's aim was true.

  The steel sliced through the mutie's arm, halfway between wrist and elbow. The hand, still gripping the blaster, dropped to the earth. In a spasm of ruined tendons, the index finger tightened on the trigger and the severed limb fired one round into the sky.

  Before the pistol hit the dirt, the panga was following through, up and across once more. The sticky, yellowish blood of the scalie was smeared along its length. Ryan felt the satisfying jar as his second blow reached its target.

  Had he been fighting a normal man the steel would have passed clean through in a simple beheading stroke. But the mutie's skin was far tougher, deflecting some of the force of the blow. It still hacked the side of the throat apart, opening the artery beneath the creature's ear, sending it reeling, sickly ichor pumping from the wound.

  Ryan was dimly aware that Krysty was yelling, and he caught a high-pitched string of vile curses from Jak. But his attention was focused elsewhere.

  The Trader used to impress on any new members of the war wags' crews: "Save yourself first and always. Then, and only then, can you worry about trying to save a comrade."

  Two down, two still up and coming.

  The one with a hammer made a grunting charge. Ryan considered cutting for its groin, buf it was so stooped it was impossible. Instead he chose to ghost sideways out of the scalie's path, swinging the panga one-handed, inflicting a deep gash in the back of the mutie's left thigh. The hamstring was sliced apart, and the creature went down with a yelp of shock, the hammer clunking from its hand.

  The last mutie stood for a moment; unable to force the reality through its brain that it now fought alone against the one-eyed murderous human.

  The hesitation gave Ryan the opportunity to step in at the back of the crippled scalie and open its throat in a single deep slash.

  "You and me," Ryan said grimly, coming in at the fourth scalie in a crabbed, shuffling walk, feinting with the panga at groin and then the throat.

  The mutie lost its nerve and turned away from him.

  Its movement was too slow to give it even a half chance against Ryan's electrifying reflexes.

  The panga had a rough point, and Ryan thrust with it, feeling it find a path between the ribs at the back on the left.

  The scalie threw its head back, so that its slit eyes stared into the sun, its voice giving a shriek of terror and shock. Ryan slid the panga out again, watching the mutie take a handful of stumbling paces and then crash face first onto the ground.

  There was no time for hesitation.

  He'd laid all four of his attackers in the warm sand. But there'd been eight others.

  A quick look told Ryan that they'd divided equally, with four going for Jak and the remaining four rushing Krysty.

  The woman's blaster had put down three, two obviously chilled and one gut-shot and struggling to get up. Almost without thinking Ryan put a shot through its angular gatorlike skull.

  Krysty had just kicked her last opponent smack in the loincloth, and it had fallen to its knees in front of her, jaw gaping, spittle and bile dribbling from its pendulous lip. She put a bullet between its eyes and turned to see how Jak was coping.

  The white-haired yout
h's huge Magnum had blown away three out of the four scalies. One lay on the ground, virtually headless, half its left arm also missing. The second had been shot through the chest, not normally a terminal wound for a mutie. But the .357 round had angled sideways and exited beneath the right arm, taking half the ribs and lungs with it, blasting the heart to ruptured rags of torn tissue. The third one had been shot in the back of the head, removing anything that resembled a face and spreading it in shards of crimsoned bone over a twenty-yard radius.

  The fourth scalie was standing a few paces in front of the albino teenager, making threatening gestures with an old hiltless hunting knife bound to a length of wood to make a crude spear. Jak was holding his blaster in both hands, struggling with it.

  "Problem?" Ryan shouted.

  "Fucker's jammed!"

  "I'll take him out," Krysty called. "Move out of the way, Jak."

  But it eventually penetrated through the clouded brain of the mutie that this wasn't a good place to hang around, that eleven of his comrades wouldn't be eating around their fire that night and that his own chances were slim. He spun on his heel and began to run with a clumsy speed toward the nearest wall of red rock.

  Krysty leveled her pistol, but Jak waved her away. "Mine," he said, dropping the useless blaster in the dirt, plucking out one of his throwing knives. He gripped it by the taped hilt and snapped it toward the fleeing mutie.

  Ryan watched the spinning steel, the light dancing off it like a tossed diamond. But the ground dipped suddenly and the running scalie stumbled and nearly fell. The knife hummed past his shoulder, clattering harmlessly among some jagged boulders ahead of him.

  "Angry!" Jak yelled, his voice echoing from the valley ahead of them. His hand snaked down for one of his other knives, but Ryan was there first. The mutie was close to cover, and it was never a good idea to let an enemy escape if you could help it.

  The SIG-Sauer coughed once and the scalie went over in a tangle of arms and legs, raising his own small cloud of dust, a cloud of dust that quickly evaporated, leaving nothing.

  "Twelve up and twelve down," Ryan said.

  " Would've chilled second knife," Jak moaned, running lightly toward the rocks to retrieve his blade, examining it carefully for any scratches or damage.

  "Probably," Ryan agreed, reloading his blaster. "But if you'd been unlucky there wouldn't have been a chance for any of us."

  "Funny they were all scalies," Krysty commented, looking at the corpses.

  "Funny? Didn't hear a lot of laughing."

  "Peculiar, if you prefer that, you pedantic son of a bitch, Ryan."

  "Hey, keep gentle, lover."

  She was still angered by his flippancy. "The ground opens and up jump a dozen scalies. It was a close call."

  "Sure. I know that. Sorry. But why's it peculiar? The scalies?"

  "Ward said stickies as well. No sign of them around here."

  "Fucking good," said Jak, pulling a face. "Hate stickies more'n anything."

  Ryan nodded. "Know what you mean, Jak." He looked toward the line of waiting wags up on the ridge, a half mile off. He knew that J.B. and the others would have heard the fusillade of shots and would be waiting anxiously for any news. He glanced at his wrist chron. Another few minutes and he knew that the Armorer would have been leading a charge after them.

  Maybe a rescue charge.

  Maybe for revenge.

  WARD SLAPPED RYAN on the shoulder, his face cracked into a huge smile.

  "Jehosophat! You folks went and wiped out a round dozen of those limbs of Satan! I can't scarcely credit it, son. And one of you a woman, too," he said, marveling at the idea. Krysty dropped him a sarcastic curtsy.

  Elder Vare was less impressed. "The Almighty did choose to help you outlanders, after all. It's obvious you'd all have been destroyed by the ungodly creatures from the blasphemous pit of nuke-warped entities if it hadn't been for divine aid. No credit to you for that."

  He sniffed and turned away, his flock of preachers dutifully following at his heels like a crowd of sour-faced buzzards. Only Sharon Vare seemed pleased, and she blew Jak a kiss as she trooped after her father.

  "How about the water?" Mildred asked. "While we've been waiting for these heroes to get back, the sun's been sliding down. How about if Doc and I rode ahead on a couple of your horses and recce the water hole?"

  Ryan looked at J.B., raising a questioning eyebrow. "What d'you think? Should be safe. Still an hour or more to dusk."

  "Guess so."

  "What about the stickies?" Krysty asked. "Ward said they'd seen corpses of stickies as well as scalies, didn't he?"

  "Yeah. Mebbe you—"

  Doc held up a hand. "I realize that there are good reasons that you don't want the good lady and myself to entertain a venture with some degree of hazard to it, Ryan."

  "What reasons?"

  Mildred ticked them off on her fingers. "In my case it's sexism and racism. And in the case of the old fart there, it's plain ageism. That answer your question?"

  "All right; Make sure your blasters are clean and loaded and keep your eyes peeled. We got ambushed by those bastards."

  "And if I see my granny I'll speak to her about how to suck eggs," Mildred snapped.

  Mildred rode a bay mare with a placid manner. A couple of dozen water bottles were strung across the saddle horn. Doc's gelding was similarly adorned. The old man looked down at the others, grinning at Jak's worried expression.

  "Don't worry, my dear boy. We shall be back before you know it."

  "Not worried."

  "Then don't look it."

  The boy shook his head. "That Sharon Vare. Keep on."

  "She keeps on at you, Jak?" Ryan asked. "What about… or maybe I shouldn't ask you that?"

  "Says likes me, but wishes was cleaner and taller. She said."

  Jak stretched himself up to his full five feet and nearly four inches and tried to brush dust off his pants.

  Doc grinned. "Tell her next time you'll be on stilts and carrying a tennis racket!"

  As Doc and Mildred heeled their mounts toward the mouth of the steep valley, they disturbed forty or more buzzards that were gorging themselves on the feast of mutie flesh. The dozen bodies—or their ragged remains—lay where they'd dropped, now eyeless and missing all of the delicious soft tissue.

  "You truly wish to trace this other cryo-center, Mildred?" Doc asked.

  "Absolutely. You know what it's like to be stranded out of your own time, Doc." She shook her head. "Shit! Nobody knows it better. You gotta think now and again how good it would be to talk to someone from your own time."

  He nodded. "I swear to you that not an hour of a day passes that I do not think about that."

  For some minutes they rode on in silence.

  The sun was sinking fast behind a low range of hills to the far west, throwing long blocks of shadow over the desert.

  The sound of the horses' hooves clattered on the rocky trail. Other than the patient circling buzzards, there was no sign of life.

  From the open jaws of the ravine to the clump of dusty trees around the water hole was only a quarter mile or so. It was just possible to catch the glint of reflected light from among the trees. Doc, leading, reined in and leaned his arm on his mount's neck, considering the prospect before them.

  "See anything?" Mildred asked.

  "No. Not a single capering Pathan to threaten our lives."

  They moved on at a walk, in among the trees. The sun was well down, and the ground between the stunted trunks was impenetrable darkness.

  They tethered the animals to a wind-blasted live oak and started to unsling the containers. The actual pool was in a natural rock basin, its surface covered in a sheen of dust and dead insects.

  "Looks good," Mildred observed.

  At that moment, the stickies came slobbering out of the shadows.

  Chapter Thirteen

  DOC GLIMPSED them first, emerging from the darkness, shuffling across the sand like the living dead.

/>   "By the three Kennedys!" he roared.

  Mildred swung around. "Oh, fuck," she said in a normal conversational voice.

  There were five of the horrors—four males and one that was probably female, though technical details like gender weren't always that easy to determine with stickies.

  They were all barefoot, wearing the usual assortment of cast-off rags. One of the men held an old sword with a tassel of maroon ribbon dangling from its hilt. A second, younger mutie, had a knife in each long-fingered, suckered hand. The other two men had short-hafted axes. The woman held a long-barreled remake musket, the muzzle pointing in the vague direction of Mildred and Doc.

  The faces of the muties were a fugue to genetic malformation. The foreheads sloped sharply backward, giving them something of the look of a homicidal sheep; the ears were residual, like knobs of inflamed gristle jammed on each side of the skull; the hair was long and stringy, matted with grease and dirt; the upper bodies were generally muscular and wiry, tapering to narrow waists and spindly legs. Stickies weren't good walkers and were hopeless runners. Their eyes had a feline, split pupil, often bloodshot and encrusted with a yellow slime. Their noses were nonexistent, only raw holes between eyes and mouth that ceaselessly dripped gobbets of mucus.

  Their mouths were almost lipless, peeling back to reveal the teeth, most of which were needle pointed, the remainder broken or missing and giving the appearance of a neglected arsenal. The fingers were exceedingly long and tapered, with small suckers across them—suckers that also covered the palms of the hands and often extended to the feet as well.

  Stickies only really relished three things. They loved killing any weaker creature, using their mutie hands to tear skin and flesh off the living bones. They were also mystically attracted to loud explosions and to large fires.

  The woman was nearest, shuffling toward Mildred, eyes lighted with a voracious fire of hatred. The black woman didn't hesitate. To fumble with her pistol would have meant death. She simply swung the half-dozen water bottles that she'd taken off her saddle, hanging on the leather straps, using them like a flail.