by James Axler
Past the empty corral were neat rows of small log cabins radiating from a large pool of water encircled by a low stone wall. A bamboo pipe rose from the middle of the pool, and the water bubbled out steadily, the splashing sounding oddly like rain.
Approaching the pool, Ryan and J.B. checked their rad counters, but the devices remained silent. Holstering her blaster, Mildred swung around the med kit to unearth a small water testing kit she had salvaged from a department store in the Bikini Islands. The kit was designed for checking the PH balance of water, but it was the only chemical test the physician owned. As she dipped in two strips of litmus paper into a little test tube, the blue did nothing, but the red strip turned a brilliant shade of electric blue.
“Alkaloid poison,” she declared, tossing away the water and strip. “Can’t know for sure, but from the prevalence of fungi on the cow pies in the corral, I’d guess they used some sort of magic mushroom. Psilocybin is a powerful hallucinogenic, and would easily drive anybody not familiar with the effects over the edge.” Tucking away the kit, Mildred frowned. “And if it’s a mutie form of the mushroom, then anything is possible. Even death.”
“All right, don’t eat anything in the ville, and only drink from your canteens for tonight,” Ryan added.
Most of the cabins were just piles of blackened timbers and loose stones, only a few were still standing. None of them had an intact door or window. Every cabin had been thoroughly ransacked, anything of value taken, and everything else smashed in an orgy of destruction.
Incredibly, the easily identifiable pattern of bullet holes were everywhere in the wooden carvings, the holes enlarged with blunt instruments, probably stone knives, to retrieve the crumpled wads of precious metal. Blast craters dotted the ground, telling of the use of high explosives. Bones were everywhere, scattered randomly, many of them clearly gnawed upon by wild animals or, worse, by even more wild people.
As the cold night wind blew over the ville, nobody spoke, and no words were necessary. The ruthless slaughter of Hill ville had been complete. It was a terrible price to pay for straying from established rules.
Moving carefully among the dead, the companions tried not to step on any of the bones, not out of respect, but to not announce their presence with a loud crunch. The ville was dead, long deserted, but the natural shelter would be very attractive to many creatures: wolves, bears, muties and even the former residents. What better place to hide than the very ville you had been chased out of so many years ago?
Doing a fast recce of the small ville, the companions found the place totally deserted, aside from some field mice and a colony of fat coonies.
That was when the companions spotted the hanging house. A score of ropes had been tethered to the ground, the ends thrown over the roof of a large log cabin. A dozen skeletons hung from the knotted ropes, the bodies supported by the slanted roof. It was a chilling sight. Death would have come from slow strangulation, or from starvation, not the fast, clean break of a proper noose.
“Bad way to get aced,” Krysty said, her hair flexing wildly.
“There is no good way to die, my dear lady,” Doc retorted grimly, making the sign of the cross and muttering something in Latin.
“Amen,” Mildred added, bowing her head for a moment.
Curiously, Liana watched the strange proceedings, but said nothing. They paid homage to the dead as if they were a baron on his throne. She had never heard of such a thing. Then the woman relented as she recalled her own prayers to her aced father. Maybe she had more in common with these people then she had ever considered before.
Returning to the pool, the companions located what might have once been the home of the local baron, but now there was only a large burned area on the ground, milkweeds growing in profusion amid the charred timbers, smashed window shutters and splintered roof shingles.
However, off to the side was a smaller log cabin in relatively good condition, aside from the lack of a door or any windows. The inside was carpeted with windblown trash and piles of jumbled skeletons, many of the bones gnawed upon by rats or something equally small.
“These are sec men,” Doc said, gesturing the LeMat at the bare feet. “The invaders didn’t take the boots of the civies. This must have been their last stand.”
“Then it’ll do fine for tonight,” Krysty said, sliding off her backpack. “I’ll get some food ready, if somebody else clears away the bones.”
“I can do that,” Liana offered, also dropping her pack.
“Okay. Doc, stay with them and keep a watch out for anything,” Ryan commanded, hefting the Steyr. “Jak and Mildred, check the firewood for any additional poisons…No, forget that. Use the busted window shutters and furniture. Those should be safe. J.B. and I will close the front gate.”
“Make barricade?” Jak asked.
“This is more my style,” J.B. answered with a grin, pulling a pipe bomb into view from his munitions bag.
Everybody got busy, and soon the cabin was cleaned of human debris and a brisk fire was blazing just outside the front door, the smoke trailing up to vanish into the foggy sky. In short order, the interior was warm and dry, and Krysty started cooking. Wisely, Jak and Mildred decided to take no chance on any split firewood, and gathered only the already burned timbers from the other cabins. Any dangerous chemicals in that wood should have been completely burned off long ago.
With Ryan standing guard, J.B. rigged a trip wire across the opening in the wall, each end attached to a lead pipe bomb filled with bent nails as shrapnel. Anything or anyone trying to come through the wall was going to be removed from this plane of existence. Then they laid a spare blaster on top of the sandbag nest, and wired it to another pipe bomb. Anybody trying to nightcreep the ville would grab the invaluable blaster, and his or her violent demise would give the companions plenty of notice that trouble had arrived.
Dinner was simple, just some MRE food packs, a few self-heat cans of tomato soup and plenty of coffee.
Since Ryan and J.B. rigged the trap at the front gate, Doc took the first shift of standing guard, snatching a cup of black coffee to hold him.
Unearthing a wooden spoon from within her borrowed clothing, Liana did what she could to help in the preparation of the meal, quietly marveling over the casual display of metal utensils. It was the wealth of a baron, and yet the companions treated the steel as if it was as common as wood. In spite of common sense, she was starting to get the feeling that everything they had said was true. Maybe the world really was just an island in a lake, like a stone sitting in a small puddle. The thought made her mind reel, and she concentrated on making dinner, trying not to fantasize about a world of mountains, lakes and valleys.
When the food was ready, Liana gamely helped Krysty dish out the spaghetti and meat balls, but she was utterly repulsed by the sight of the wormlike food, in spite of the wonderful smell. However, Liana found the tomato soup delicious, and sopped it up with canned bread with gusto.
During the meal, the companions asked Liana a thousand questions about Northpoint ville, and the best way to acquire a boat. In the end, they decided that the wisest choice was to simply jack one from the docks, and then head due south. Thunder Bay in Canada was just a dozen or so miles to the north, a lot closer than the United States. But that direction was also where the kraken came from, and nobody traveling north had ever come back. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan was about three hundred miles to the southeast, and the city of Kalkaska only a few additional miles over land, but that would be a lot safer than trying to sneak past an underwater mutie larger than an ocean liner.
“Or rather,” Ryan decided, thumbing loose rounds into an empty magazine for the Steyr longblaster, “we’ll head south after first returning to the Harrington to get more brass and weapons. If we do encounter a bastard kraken, then I want some heavy iron on our side for at least a fighting chance at survival.”
“Not matter how big, one implo gren ace anything,” Jak declared confidently, stropping a leaf-shaped knife
along a whetstone.
“Hopefully,” Krysty added, adding some powdered milk to her aluminum cup of coffee. “However, I do recall seeing some LAW rocket launchers in the hold. If they’re still good, we should be able to blast through anything in our way.”
“Hopefully being the key word,” Mildred retorted, spreading hundred-year-old butter across a slice of nutcake.
Just then, there was the muffled boomed of an explosion, closely followed by a yowling scream of pain.
“They are here!” Doc bellowed from the darkness, and they heard a single boom from the LeMat. Then dead silence.
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Ryan charged out of the log cabin, the rest of the companions following close behind.
The night air grew cold fast away from the crackling flames, and now they could see the black silhouette of Doc standing on top of the sandbag nest. The scholar looked like he had gone insane, waving his arms as if assailed by a swarm of invisible hornets. Then there were several throaty growls, and something large jumped past Doc. The two silhouettes intertwined for a split second before the man fired both of his handcannons. The fiery light of the double muzzle-flash highlighted a cougar even as the furry body crumpled sideways from the point-blank impact of the two blasters.
“It’s the cats!” Ryan shouted.
Swinging up the Uzi, J.B. took careful aim and put a long burst of 9 mm Parabellum rounds into the shadows below the scholar. An answering yowl of pain sounded, and then numerous dark shapes raced away from the man, spreading out in several directions.
“They strike from behind!” Doc shouted, triggering both the LeMat and the Ruger. The twin stilettos of flame stabbed downward to briefly engulf the head of a snarling cat before it exploded from the brutal arrival of the LeMat miniball and the .45 Magnum round.
Then a dozen shapes erupted from the overlapping shadows of the ruined ville, streaking low and fast across the weedy ground.
“Aim for the shoulders!” Liana shrieked, almost dropping the new blaster in her haste to thumb back the hammer. She fired at a shape in the gloom, but there was no response.
“Drive bone splinters into heart!” Jak yelled in agreement, shooting his Colt Python and the Para-Ordnance. “Skull too thick!”
The thundering discharge of the Magnum weapon completely overwhelmed the sharp report of the smaller revolver, but something yipped near a tilting wood pile and vanished inside a badly damaged log cabin.
Hefting his blasters, Jak snorted at the obvious ploy. Even if there had been only one of the cats, the albino youth knew better than to follow any night hunter into close confines where its agility, teeth and claws gave the beast a chilling advantage. Then inspiration hit, and Jak kicked at a loose rib cage on the ground, sending it flying through the sagging window. A split second later, Jak fired both weapons at the open doorway. There came the smack of lead hitting flesh, followed by a scream. But there was no death rattle, and Jak strongly doubted that the big cat was really aced.
“Frag the shoulders, go for the big three!” Ryan countered, firing steadily at the speedy animals. Hit smack in the open mouth, a cougar jerked aside, blood gushing from the terrible wound.
“Eyes, mouth, throat!” J.B. translated for the newcomer in their midst. As the monster cats crossed a pool of moonlight, the Armorer had spotted an odd discoloration across the shoulders of each cougar, and sagely guessed it was some sort of crude armor, probably just leather and wood, to protect their vulnerable spot. In spite of their unkempt appearance, J.B. knew that these weren’t wild animals, but the main defense of Anchor ville. And it seemed that the local baron had traded some of their agility for a greater degree of resilience. Even as J.B. tried to track one of the cats down with the stuttering Uzi, he was forced to admit it had not been a triple-wise decision. He had hit one cat several times already, and the 9 mm rounds had scored only minor flesh wounds.
“Form a circle!” Mildred shouted, recalling a book she had once read about hunting lions in Africa. These mountain felines were not the legendary king of the jungle, but the same basic hunting instincts were probably driving them onward.
Quickly putting their backs to one another, the companions formed a circle and started firing into the darkness, aiming slightly ahead of any movements in the dense shadows. A cougar was aced, then another wounded, and the rest of the animals retreated slightly, then began to race around the companions, using the ruins as cover.
“Millie, on my right!” J.B. shouted, firing to the left.
Pivoting in that direction, Mildred cut loose with both of her blasters, and a cougar staggered from the small-caliber wounds. But it did not stop. Letting the empty Beretta fall away, Mildred assumed a two-handed grip on the Czech ZKR and held her breath, waiting patiently, listening to the sounds of the night as the deadly beast came ever closer to finally enter the reddish light of the dying campfire. Instantly, the ZKR spoke once, and the cat dropped in its tracks, its left eye gone, the neat hole oozing blood and brain fluids.
“How many of these fuckers are there?” J.B. demanded of nobody in particular after killing three more of the beasts.
“How in nuke-shitting hell should I know?” Ryan shot back angrily, triggering the Steyr directly into the face of a hidden cougar. The big head snapped back, and Ryan kicked it in the exposed throat, the bones audibly cracking from the powerful impact of the steel-tipped combat boot.
Unexpectedly, a cougar lunged for Jak from inside the burned-out ruin of a cabin just as he was dropping the magazine from the Para-Ordnance. Spinning, the teenager put his last round from the Colt Python into the animal, driving it back toward the sandbag nest, then he threw the empty Para-Ordnance.
Tumbling through the darkness, the albino teen unerringly hit the trip wire for the second pipe bomb, and the night came alive with a strident explosion. Blown apart, the bloody chunks of the cat flew away to wetly smack into the fieldstone wall and splash into the pool of water.
As if summoned by the blood offering, another cougar erupted from the pool and streaked toward the companions. Krysty, Mildred and Liana all tried to shoot the beast, but in spite of its huge size, the creature moved incredibly fast and proved almost impossible to track. Training the Uzi on the thing, J.B. hit it twice, but it only darted away, seemingly immune to the pain.
Trying to target the cat, Ryan noticed the odd demeanor of the soaked creature. The eyes were forced wide open, but the ears drooped, the tail lashed about insanely and white foam was dribbling from the black lips. Fireblast, the cougar had to have drunk some of the poisoned water! The cat was dying, but for the moment it was feeling no pain, not even bullet hits, and before it keeled over, the creature could easily take several of the companions along with it into the great abyss.
Working the bolt on the Steyr several times, Ryan jacked out the live rounds, then he pulled the trigger to make it click. As expected, the trained cougar immediately charged for the supposedly unarmed victim. For a single moment, Ryan considered going for the Desert Eagle, then realized he’d never get the blaster out in time.
Backing away as if frightened, Ryan waited until the very last second, then thrust the longblaster forward like a spear, the barrel punching into the chest of the beast like an awl. Snarling in frustration, the big cat clawed for the two-legs so temptingly out of reach, its sharp fangs snapping for the hands holding the weapon.
“Ace the fucker!” Ryan commanded, incredibly lifting the Steyr higher so that the cat hung suspended from the end of the longblaster like a fish on a spear. Confused for only a moment, the cat swung its hind legs forward and slashed bloody furrows across Ryan’s shirt, red blood welling from the deep scratches.
In ragged unison, the rest of the companions tore the animal to pieces under a concentrated barrage of hot lead, until the tattered body finally went limp and slid from the barrel to the ground.
“T-tough b-b-bastard,” Ryan slurred, hunching his shoulders. Then the big man went deathly pale an
d dropped to the ground, nearly lost among the tall weeds.
“Lover!” Krysty cried, rushing closer to kneel alongside the man. She rolled him over and inspected the scratches across his chest. It was as she had feared—some of the water from the fur had to have gotten into the cuts.
“Canteens!” Mildred barked, pouring the contents of her container across Ryan’s muscular chest.
The water sluiced away the blood and sweat, revealing four straight lines, the puckered flesh already turning an angry yellow in color. The physician tried not to curse at the sight. Damn it, the mushrooms were mutations! Every treatment she had for a psilocybin overdose might cure Ryan, or kill him instantly. But with no other choice, she had to go with her best guess. If the mushrooms had mutated too much from the original strain, then they wouldn’t have any effect on human beings, or cougars; they’d simply kill.
Running past the sizzling campfire, the rest of the companions dashed into the log cabin where they had made camp, and soon returned with their canteens.
Carefully, the precious water was poured over the cuts, while Mildred kneaded the flesh with her finger tips to try to force out every drop of the mushroom alkaloids that she could. When there was no more, Mildred added the small bottle of witch hazel from her med kit, just in case the dirty claws of the cougar had been carrying any infections. The witch hazel would also help neutralize the alkaloids of the mushrooms.
Studying the man, Mildred kept any expression from her face. Water and witch hazel—it wasn’t much, but there was nothing else to do.
“Was it enough?” Krysty asked, her beautiful face pinched tight in worry.
“Maybe,” Mildred said. “I don’t know yet.”
Around the companions, the night was still, even the ever-present cicadas were quiet. There was only the merry splashing of the poisoned water from the bamboo spill pipe.
Tugging on his sleeve, Liana pulled Doc aside and started to talk in a hurried whisper, the old man’s dark expression becoming even more grim.
