by James Axler
Jak whipped up the chain, knocking the woman’s jaw with its tail end. She toppled from her seat, looking dazed. “Up,” he told her. One word, an angry instruction.
The woman crawled across the curved surface of the wag, trying to get away from Jak.
The wag continued on, traveling slower than walking speed but shunting everything in its path aside.
Across the other side of the wag to Jak, Ryan had yanked Mitch from his seat and he rammed the barrel of his blaster into the man’s stomach, driving it upward—hard—as he held the man by the collar of his shirt.
“You don’t have the guts to chill me,” Mitch said. It was a ludicrous thing to say, the kind of moronic bluff only an idiot would try.
“What?” Ryan asked, his voice grim. “Do you think I’m going to leave you to your pets, some kind of poetic justice?”
Mitch nodded, wincing as the one-eyed man before him shoved his blaster harder into his soft gut. “Yeah, that’s the ticket, Ryan,” he said, his voice strained and breathless. “Poetry justice, just like what you said.”
Holding the man in place, Ryan turned his head, watching the grunting, squealing boars scramble aside as the wag trudged onward through the darkened barn on its trundling wheels. Lit by the fires that powered the heavy wag, Ryan saw that there were bones there, both human and animal. Mitch and Annie had locked other people in this barn for their perverse entertainment, doubtlessly laughed as they heard them scream and die, screwing each other senseless as they reached their insane form of ecstasy.
“Poetic justice?” Ryan snarled. “Do you see how hard I am laughing, Mitch?”
As Mitch began to answer, Ryan pulled the trigger of his blaster, drilling a bullet up into the man’s gut and beyond. Mitch spluttered, a thick line of dark red liquid oozing from his mouth.
Across from him, Annie was scrambling away from Jak as the albino teen brandished the chain. She had heard the muffled gunshot as Ryan blasted her husband, and she looked up, shrieking with disbelief.
“No!” she cried. “Mitch, my darling. My darling.”
Ryan let go of Mitch’s body as it went limp in his hands, and watched as it tumbled from the wag and down onto the wooden slats of the barn floor. In the firelight cast by the stokehole, Ryan saw the boars circling, watching their fallen owner with dark, malevolent eyes.
Jak made to tie up Annie using the length of chain, but Ryan held his hand up, stopping the albino youth in his tracks. “Let her be now,” he instructed, his voice drained of all emotion.
Annie leaped from the wag, down to where her husband lay, blood pooling around his stomach wound. She pulled his thin figure close to her, cradling the man’s head in her lap and kissing him on the forehead. “Mitch, my darling, darling brother,” she sobbed as the family of angry boars closed in on them.
Above her, Ryan swung into the driver’s seat and began yanking at the levers, gunning the engine and aiming the vehicle toward the still-solid back wall of the barn. Across from him, Jak was settling into Annie’s seat at the side of the stoked fire.
“Hang on, Jak,” Ryan instructed as he picked up speed.
Jak braced himself as the wag lurched forward, increasing speed until it smashed through the far wall of the barn and out the other side, splinters of rotted wood crashing about them like rain. With a shift of levers, Ryan swung the mighty wag around and drove past the outbuilding and the dilapidated house, heading back along the dirt track toward the town of Tazewell.
Chapter Eight
J.B. pulled the binocs from his pocket and squinted into the eyepieces. He could make out the trees and run-down buildings all around them, stark lines against the darkening night sky, but he could see little else. There was something moving out there, he was sure of it, could feel it in his bones. He stashed the binoculars in his pocket and strode swiftly back to where Krysty perched at the side of the road.
“Krysty,” he said, his voice low, “I want everyone gathered up and back in the wags right now.”
Krysty cocked a thin, red eyebrow as she looked at him. “Did you see something out there, J.B.?”
“No,” he replied, “but I can feel it. Sure as shit, something’s out there watching us.”
Krysty nodded. She had known J.B. a long time and felt no desire to question his instincts. He might not be as in tune with his surroundings as their half-feral companion, Jak, but the Armorer wasn’t one to jump at shadows, either.
J.B. checked the load in his M-4000 scattergun, eyeing the edge of the road as Krysty went off to gather the various passengers of the wag convoy. Then he reached to a hidden loop inside the back of his coat, pulling out the 9 mm mini-Uzi he had stashed there. “Come on, you sneaky bastards,” he muttered, “let’s get a look at you. Prove me right.”
Beside the convoy, Krysty was giving out instructions, swiftly ensuring that everyone was back in their own wags and under cover. Mildred leaped out of the truck cab that was the second wag, her work on Paul Witterson’s wounded arm complete, and chased after Krysty as the taller woman made her way along the road to instruct the other vehicles.
“What’s going on?” Mildred asked, keeping her voice low.
“J.B. says there’s something out there,” Krysty explained before turning to Charles Torino, the amiable driver of the third wag in the train. “Everyone here who should be here?” she asked.
“All present and accounted for, sister,” Charles replied with a friendly smile. “You got trouble?”
“Not yet,” Krysty told him, “but we may be expecting us some.”
Torino nodded once. “Let me know if you need a spare hand,” he told her.
Beside Charles, Doc pushed open the passenger door and stepped out of the car. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid,” he told Charles and Mary Foster, who sat with her baby in the back of the wag, “but ’twould appear that duty calls.”
A moment later, Doc took up a position in the shadowy fields by the edge of the road, the modified LeMat in his hand. He tapped the old weapon against his leg anxiously as he waited for whatever it was that J.B. had sensed.
As Krysty hurried Maude and Vincent, who had left their tractor while they answered their respective calls of nature, a sound howled through the trees. “Go!” Krysty instructed them. “Back to your wag. Quickly now.”
The couple didn’t need to be told twice; they rushed away, peering behind them as they climbed into the back of the converted tractor.
All around it was dark, the sky a deep indigo now, dotted here and there with stars. Wisps of fog, rainbow-tinted like spilled gasoline, wavered across the sky on the far horizon, more of the ceaseless fallout from the devastation that had begun a hundred years before and yet never seemed to end. There were noises, the irritated tsk-tsking of crickets’ legs, the distant baying of dogs, the whispering flutter of wings. Krysty walked back along the road, sticking close to its edge, her Smith & Wesson in hand.
A little farther up the road, standing between two stationary wags, Mildred waited with her ZKR 551 target revolver held low to her body. She had removed her satchel of medical supplies, tucking it down on the ground beneath one of the wags.
Doc stood close to the edge of the tarmac on the far side, his blue eyes narrowed as he tried to discern something among the withered trees and scrubby grass that surrounded the blacktop. It was impossible to tell—there might be nothing at all, or there could be a hundred men staring at him, unmoving, just feet away. It was too dark to see. He strained his ears, stilled his breathing, picking through the natural noises of nocturnal life and trying to do the impossible, to find something that—just maybe—didn’t belong. But all he heard was the ticking over of wag engines, the uncomfortable shuffling of their passengers. He cursed himself for an old fool; it was like hunting for a needle in an auditory haystack, he knew, but there weren’t exactly a wealth of options presenting themselves to him at this moment.
Out at the front of the line of stationary wags, a blaster in each hand, J.B. picke
d his way forward slowly, scanning the horizon. He could hear something, but not really hear it. Smell it, mebbe. Leastways, he could sense it. Something was waiting just out of reach. Something that came out at night, something that knew its prey was stranded.
Slowly, reluctantly, J.B. began to walk backward, his eyes darting this way and that, searching for that telltale sign of movement.
Back at the lead wag, the one that had become buried in the tarmac, J.B. called up to the driver. “You got some lights in that rig, Croxton?” he asked.
Croxton assured him he had. “Couldn’t travel by night without them, J.B.,” he said. “It’ll take a little time getting the generator up and running though.”
“Do it,” the Armorer instructed firmly.
Croxton turned the ignition key and the wag’s engine rumbled back to life, chugging contentedly as it spit black exhaust through the upright pipes. He let the engine idle for thirty seconds before reaching for a switch on the dash, a makeshift junction box with an old-fashioned light switch on its top. As the engine ticked over, Croxton poked his head from the window and tried to locate J.B. in the darkness around them. After a moment, he gave up and simply called out his instructions. “J.B.,” he said, “I’m turning on the lights in five seconds.”
Unseen by the old farmer, the Armorer nodded. He was waiting on the spongy tarmac at the front of the sunken wag, stood between the headlights of the cab, the scattergun and Uzi poised like natural extensions of his arms. He narrowed his eyes to slits, barely leaving himself any vision at all, as he counted down from five to one in his head. Then the headlight beams burst into life, bathing the area before the wag in a flickering, yellowish glow.
J.B. saw them immediately, and so did Croxton and the girl-crone Daisy. Scalies.
Hundreds of them surrounded the convoy.
“Dark night,” Dix murmured.
“WAG’S GOT A LOT of pull,” Ryan explained as he wrestled with the controls of Mitch’s converted harvester, urging the heavy vehicle away from the farmhouse and its outbuilding. “More than enough to get Croxton’s wag out of the tar.”
Jak nodded as he sat in the passenger seat and reloaded his .357 Magnum Colt Python.
Ryan grimaced, yanking the levers on the old wag, urging it to speed. The patched-together wag bumped across the fields and hurried toward the road.
THIS WASN’T THE FIRST time that J.B. had seen scalies. In fact, Ryan’s disparate group of companions had crossed paths with scalies on numerous occasions in their long trek across the shockscape. Indeed, the actual term “scalies” was a disingenuous one, for it referred to several different types of mutation that the group had encountered in the Deathlands.
The group that emerged from the trees, fields and buildings all about them seemed to be very mutated, with hard, crustlike skin on their upright, naked, repellently deformed bodies. There had to be at least fifty of them, the Armorer realized. And that was just the ones he could see. Even as he watched, more scalies poured from the shattered buildings along the main street. Many of them carried weapons, clubs and knives, and J.B. ran his eyes across the group, picking out a few blasters among them. They had to have been nesting there, waiting for the night.
Nocturnal scalies, Dix thought. It explained something, of course—just why Mitch and Annie had been in such a rush to get home as dusk turned to night. Which brought another question to mind—just where the heck were Ryan and Jak? They should have been back by now.
The Armorer stood between the headlights of Croxton’s lead wag, knowing that he was perfectly hidden as he stood between the dazzling beams. Raising his voice, he called to the approaching scalies, thinking there might be a few of them intelligent enough to understand him. If they were smart enough to carry weapons, maybe they could listen to reason. “Attention, locals,” he called. “We’re just passing through. Don’t mean you no harm. You let us pass and we’ll be out of your way before you know it, that I promise.”
The scalies continued to surge forward from the wrecked structures, a slow, building wave that was searching for a shore to crash into. Was it possible, J.B. wondered, that the scalies had set the slushy tarmac as a trap for anyone passing through Tazewell? Ensnare wags and then pick them off at their leisure? It seemed a complex plan for muties, but not an impossible prospect.
Movement caught the corner J.B.’s eye, and he peered across just in time to see something hurtling through the air toward the lead wag. Off-target, the thing fell short and to his left, and he ducked his head behind a hunched shoulder as the object—a homemade grenade—exploded.
“Playtime’s over,” Dix murmured, turning the M-4000 scattergun and the Uzi on the crowd and holding down the triggers. The scattergun boomed in his right hand, while a steady stream of bullets spurted from the mini-Uzi in his left, mowing down the front line of scalies in the direction of the gren thrower. From behind him, J.B. heard his compatriots begin their own defense against the onrushing mutie army.
In quick succession, J.B.’s blasts knocked down a dozen approaching scalies, felling them like saplings. He held his position and reloaded, first the Uzi, then the scattergun. His first volley had made the scalies slow down warily, but that wouldn’t last long. Outnumbered, he needed a miracle.
The Armorer’s mind was racing. They needed to pull back, form a tight defensive perimeter, somehow halt the scalies’ advance. The sheer weight of numbers would be overwhelming unless they could figure some solution. Nocturnal scalies? his mind asked. What the hell do you do against nocturnal scalies?
As his scattergun boomed in another explosive flash that lit the road and its surrounds, a savage smile crossed J.B.’s features. Light. That was the answer.
The scalies weren’t closing in on him, but it wasn’t simply because of the stream of bullets he was feeding them—it was the light. The lights of the old truck rig were holding them at bay. He just needed a big enough light.
NEAR THE MAIN GROUP of the parked wags, Doc held his LeMat steady as he tracked the movements in the trees around the road. There were human shapes moving there, scalies choosing their positions in the darkness.
Even as Doc watched, the fronds of a bush parted and three leather-skinned scalies pounced out into the road, boldly showing themselves at last. Standing his ground, Doc depressed the trigger and blasted a bullet through the skull of the leader, dropping him in a shower of blood and bone. The two remaining muties halted, looking at their fallen colleague, wondering what to do. Doc didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger again, driving his next bullet through the skull of the mutie to the left.
From somewhere behind him, Doc heard the horses whinnying, spooked by all the noise and explosions. He paid it no attention, trusting Charles or someone would calm the horses.
As his second comrade dropped to the floor, leathery hands over his destroyed face, the final scalie turned tail and ran back into the woods, glancing fearfully over his shoulder as Doc held his weapon on his retreating form.
This first skirmish had been successful, but it was a lucky escape, Doc realized. If they weren’t careful, the sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm them.
SUDDENLY, A NOISE came from the roadside bushes just beside Krysty, where Maude and Vincent had been urinating just minutes before. Krysty spun, training her Smith & Wesson on the space between the trees. “Stay in the wags,” Krysty ordered, not bothering to check on her charges.
Krysty took a step closer, her blaster steady. The bushes were blobs of darkness on darkness. There could be people or creatures there for all Krysty knew. It was damn hard to see, as there was barely any light; just what little came from the stars overhead, the sliver of waxing moon.
“Who’s there?” Krysty challenged, her voice loud.
No answer. Nothing.
“Who’s there?” Krysty repeated, inching closer to the bushes, her feet leaving the hard artificial surface of the road and squelching on the muddy soil.
Again, there was no answer. Just the wind rustling th
e spiny leaves of the bushes, the shadowy branches of the trees above.
The blaster held firm before her, Krysty looked swiftly to the left and right, trying to make out something in the gloom all around. Her green eyes flicked to the ground below, back up to whatever was ahead of her. And then she looked above her head, and as she did so something moved, dropping from the branches overhead, a dark shape, black on the ink sky.
Krysty fired, more of a flinch reaction than a planned effort, and the .38 flashed to life, lighting the darkness all around as the bullet raced from the blaster’s barrel. In that half-second flash, Krysty saw the creature that dropped towards her. It was humanoid, but not human. It wore no clothes, and its skin was hard and leathery, callused plates like armour crisscrossing its chest. The thing was completely hairless, bald with a long, angular face. Its mouth had been open, displaying a jaw filled with needle-thin teeth like the spines of a porcupine. Its eyes were wide, saucer-shaped with a black splodge of pupil amid a yellow base; they reminded Krysty of a cat’s eyes, or those of an owl. The eyes had reacted in that flash of light, dilating, and the mutie had given out a noise, a breathy grunt of pain like the hydraulic brakes of a bus.
Even as Krysty’s brain raced to process what she had seen in that half second, the creature landed beside her on all fours, thudding into the spongy earth. Krysty turned toward it, ducking her head as she swung the blaster she held at the mutie’s face.
And then it was upon her, barreling into her like a runaway wag. Krysty’s blaster went off again, though she didn’t know if she had meant to fire it or if it was an automatic reaction, it all happened so fast. By then she was falling, the breath blurting out of her as the creature crashed against her ribs.
