by James Axler
He had to go with the flow.
They passed through a pair of double swing doors, the lower halves of which were covered with scuffed metal kick plates, and entered what looked like Whitecoat Heaven. The floor was carpeted in dark red; there were ceiling tiles, and chairs and couches along the white walls. In front of them, and partially blocking their path, was a curving counter behind which a half dozen men and women in lab coats sat working at comp stations. They all wore respirators.
“Do you ever take those breathing masks off?” Ryan asked Lima. “Or were you born with them?”
“The respirators are because of you and your friends. We can’t risk spreading your contamination to the redoubt core. Everyone there is unaltered.” Lima gestured for the men in black suits to enter a room on the right.
That door had a metal kick plate, too. The room beyond was divided by a full-width interior wall; a heavy glass window allowed monitoring of the isolated enclosure on the other side. A row of office chairs were set out for spectators. Ryan was bum-rushed through the door beside the window—it had a bright yellow Biohazard sign. The same yellow as his jumpsuit. Although there was a small hospital bed, what drew his attention was a massive stainless-steel bathtub filled with a slurry of ice and water.
When Ryan looked back, he saw two female whitecoats staring at him through the glass. Their expressions were hidden behind their respirators.
Lima waved for the women to enter the room. In addition to the clipboards, both carried hypodermics loaded with something pink.
“Secure him,” Lima said.
One of the black suits drew a semiautomatic blaster from its hip holster and pressed the muzzle to Ryan’s temple while the other grabbed both his wrists and lifted, bending him over, putting strain on his shoulder joints to control his movements.
Lima seemed amused by Ryan’s steely glare. “Sometimes the decontamination treatment causes an extreme violent reaction,” he said. “Everything we’re doing is for your own protection.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not fighting you,” Ryan said. “I’m going along with the whole rad-blasted program. Why not just cut the crap and tell me what this is all about? How did we end up here? Who are you? What is this place? And what is that tub of ice for?”
“Does the lab rat need to know what’s coming?” Lima asked. “Will that make its ordeal less agonizing? I think not.”
Something ugly glittered in the man’s eyes.
“Will it be more amusing to watch the rat discover the truth? Most definitely.”
He turned to the women and said, “Inject him.”
The whitecoats exchanged concerned glances; neither of them moved to obey.
“But we can’t roll up the sleeves with his hands behind his back like that,” one of them said.
“Inject him through the fabric. Don’t argue, you idiot. Just do it!”
As the women approached him on either side, Ryan stiffened. The sight of the pink liquid inside those hypos triggered something primal deep within him—whatever the hell was in those needles, he wanted no part of it. The man behind him raised his arms a foot higher, forcing him onto his tiptoes, off-balance, and the hammer of the blaster at his ear locked back with a gritty click.
“Stand still or he’ll blow out your brains!” Lima said.
Unable to lift his head because of the elevated arm hold, Ryan spoke to the floor. “You’ll regret this.”
Maybe because they thought the threat was empty, maybe because they were more afraid of Lima than a one-eyed man in handcuffs, the two women jabbed him in either deltoid. The pink gunk burned as it shot ever so slowly into his muscles. The injections took a long time because the payload was so large and so thick. When they had finished, the women jerked out the needles and stepped well back from him. It felt as if they’d just pumped a couple of boulders under his skin.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Lima asked. “Do you want a lollipop?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, “your head on a stick.”
“Those kinds of remarks might intimidate weak-minded rabble in the primitive shit hole we pulled you from,” Lima said, “but in a civilized society they are simply infantile and pathetic.”
“What happens next in a civilized society?” Ryan asked through gritted teeth.
“We sit back and watch while the drugs do their work.” Lima nodded to the black suits, who shoved him over to the side of the bed. “They’re going to reposition the cuffs. It’s for your comfort and safety, so please do not resist.”
Ryan let them drag him onto the bed, the head of which was tilted up. They then unfastened and relocked one of the cuffs around the steel bed frame. From shoulder to fingertips, his arms felt as though they’d been hit with pickaxes. Even though he had one hand free, there wasn’t much he could do with it except make a weak fist. As they hauled him onto the clean but holey sheet, he saw the full-length, rubber barrier beneath it.
“Do you expect me to piss myself?” Ryan asked.
“Stranger things have happened. Now we’re going to retire to the observation room and leave you to enjoy your experience.”
As the door closed, Ryan tested the strength of the rail by jerking on the cuff and was instantly sorry. Contracting the muscle sent a spearpoint twisting deep in his right shoulder. And the rail didn’t flex.
On the far side of the glass, Lima and the two women took their posts, clipboards balanced on their knees.
It felt as if the pink gunk was expanding, ballooning under his skin and his muscles began to throb with every heartbeat. Every time his shoulders tensed involuntarily, an ache traveled down the nerves of his arms, to his wrists and fingertips. And along with the ache was an intense burning sensation.
Maybe he had made a mistake in not giving the order to fight balls-out from the start? Maybe he was too nukin’ cagey for his own good?
He shut off that line of thought. There was no point in second-guessing himself. The logic that led to his decision still stood. Trapped on a remote freezing waste, apparently outnumbered, chained and disarmed, they had to find a way back to the mat-trans. It was their best, and perhaps their only chance to escape.
The air in the room seemed suddenly a lot warmer. Beads of sweat started dripping down his face and from under his arms. Every time he breathed in, it felt as if flames were licking down his throat and inside his nose, scorching his lungs. His joints ached, and his leg muscles started to cramp. Groaning, he pulled his knees to his chest and curled on his side.
Would Lima go to this much trouble just to get a victim to torture like J.B. had said? No, he decided, the torture and humiliation was a bonus, a welcome entertainment. Whitecoats as a breed lusted after facts, not victims. The costs and the consequences to individuals meant nothing to them.
Beneath the yellow coveralls, a coating of perspiration lubricated Ryan’s entire body—even between his toes. It was getting harder and harder for him to hold a train of thought for more than a second or two. The window and the door opposite the bed began to swim before his eye, as if he were looking through heat waves rising from sunbaked tarmac.
Poison, Ryan thought. These bastards are testing poison on me.
Then a rushing sound came from the ceiling grate directly above him. The suction from a tremendous updraft plucked at his hair and scalp. He was struck by a series of wrenching, head-to-foot chills. Perhaps from the current of air sweeping over his body? Perhaps from what had been put into his body? The shakes became so violent they made the bed frame rattle. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. Or maybe it was all inside his head? The sound, the sensation, nothing but fevered hallucinations?
He couldn’t hold that thought, either.
The world around him blurred, and when it refocused he was staring into a pair of gleaming, violet eyes. Long blond hair framed a face
he knew all too well. Sharona Carson, wife of Baron Alias Carson, stood over him naked, her body oiled, reflecting the dancing firelight from the great stone hearth beside them. He was naked, too, on his back on a bearskin rug. Golden goblets of red wine and a crystal decanter were set out on the flagstone floor. In the withering heat of blazing logs, Sharona parted her knees and opened her thighs to him.
“I am a treasure,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she stroked herself. “Plunder me, you one-eyed bastard.”
“I don’t want this,” Ryan heard himself say. Low-pitched and gravelly, it didn’t sound like his voice.
“Oh, yes you do.” She pointed a finger at his loins and laughed. “Very definitely you do.”
Ryan tried to move and couldn’t raise the back of his head from the rug. It was so hot it felt like the side of his body facing the fire was about to burst into flames.
Sharona knelt, straddling his hips, and leaned forward, the tips of her long hair grazed his face and chest, crawling slowly across his skin. Then she straightened, reaching behind her back—and down.
He gasped as her fingers closed on him, and as if of its own accord, his right hand shot up to seize her by the throat.
With a rocking jolt, scene and setting changed. No longer on his back, no longer naked, he ran full tilt down a narrow, low-ceilinged hallway. His companions raced ahead of him carrying torches. Their speed and arm motion made the flames flicker wildly, producing a strobe light effect. It was difficult to tell where the floor ended and the walls began. They were trying to put distance between them and the muties in pursuit. They didn’t know how many of them there were; Ryan couldn’t count the number they had already chilled. The handle of the panga felt slippery and wet in his fingers, and the smell of spilled blood was thick in his nose. He gulped for air through his mouth, but try as he might he couldn’t quite catch his breath, like he had been running uphill for miles.
Part of him recognized the situation—he had been here before. It was like the redoubt in New Mex they had just left, only it was hot. Why was it so nukin’ hot?
As they all rounded a corner, J.B., Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc and Ricky skidded to a sudden halt, forcing him to stop, as well. Torchlight revealed a concrete stairwell and steps leading upward, right to left. The wall between the floor and the first landing above was carpeted in pale skin and writhing, spindly forms. The stickies were in a mating pyramid, sucker hands fixed to the wall and to one another. The crackle and hiss of the torches mingled with the moans and squeaks, and a chorus of wet, rhythmic sucking sounds. There were easily fifty of them in sight, thrusting and squirming in ecstasy. The copious juices this frenzy produced flowed over their naked bodies from top to bottom like a milky waterfall, and pooled on the floor at the foot of the wall. In the narrow space, the acrid stench was gut-wrenching.
Before the companions could retreat, the hairless heads of those at the bottom of the pyramid turned toward the blaze of the torches, which reflected in unblinking eyes as black as night, soulless shark eyes. Maws drooling with pleasure suddenly bared rows of savage needle teeth.
Stickies loved chilling even more than mating; the prospect of it sent them into an even higher gear of frenzy.
Mass coitus interruptus ensued. The muties closest to them peeled away from their coupling. They were spindly bastards but strong. Their sucker hands could pull the flesh from bone, or fasten hard with the natural adhesive they produced and then rip at will with their jaws.
Bare feet and puddles of love juice on polished concrete made for poor traction. The onrushing stickies slipped and slid, some fell, some dropped to all fours, scrambling to try to gain purchase, which gave the companions a momentary advantage. Ryan lunged forward, bringing his panga down in a tight, full-power arc. The heavy blade split the crown of a kneeling stickie’s skull, cleaving it apart like a ball of soft, moist cheese all the way to the chin. When he ripped the panga free, dark blood geysered from the crevice and sprayed across the tops of his boots.
Blasterfire roared in his right ear as Doc, Krysty and Mildred shot into the uncoiling mob of muties. The stickies dropped in bunches, as if their strings had been cut. Each high-powered slug passed through three or more bodies before ricocheting off the back wall. Their skinny torsos and soft skeletons weren’t substantial enough to slow the bullets’ flight. In such tight quarters, bounded on three sides by concrete walls, free fire was very dangerous.
A point brought home as Ricky fired his Webley Mark VI into a mutie’s open mouth. The heavy .45 ACP bullet took off the back of the stickie’s head, sparked off steel stair railing, sparked off the concrete and then whizzed past Ryan’s ear, whining down the hallway behind them.
“Back up!” Ryan shouted to the others. “Back the way we came!”
They turned as one and fell into a full retreat, running single file with Ryan bringing up the rear. Mildred and Jak had the lead with torches. Over the slap of their bootfalls and the pounding of his heart he couldn’t hear the stickies behind them, but he knew they were coming, and that they would never give up the chase. He sheathed the panga and drew his blaster. The companions sprinted blindly through the winding corridors until Mildred let out a shout.
“Got a map!” she said.
Every redoubt had floor plans, either framed behind heavy plastic or etched into the walls. It was a necessity given the complexity of the structures.
They paused only a few seconds, just long enough for Jak to read the map and find their route to safety. It was also long enough for the stickies to close the gap. With no one behind him, Ryan rapid-fired his SIG Sauer into the pale mass of bodies that filled the hallway, wall-to-wall. Torchlight glittered in a sea of black eyes.
“Go! Go!” he shouted, as the blaster’s muzzle flashed and stickies dropped in bunches, tripping those running up behind them.
Ryan stopped when the slide locked back on an empty chamber, then turned. The hallway ahead was already dark, only a faint light coming from his companions’ torches. As he ran, by feel he dropped the empty mag into his palm, pocketed it and reloaded. Really pouring on the speed, he caught up to his friends as they mounted another stairway, this one free of mating muties.
Jak led them three floors up, down a long corridor, and unerringly to the redoubt’s mat-trans. As they rushed through the anteroom’s doorway, Ryan stopped. “Get into the mat-trans and get ready to jump,” he said. “I’ll hold them off here.”
Ryan holstered the SIG Sauer. It was a last resort. In his mind’s eye was the image of the hallway jammed with pale bobbing heads and spindly waving arms. An unending supply of muties. And a limited supply of bullets. He drew the panga, quickly wiping the sweat and blood from his hand on his pants. He could hear their feet slapping the concrete and their mewling, and braced himself to defend the entrance.
“Are you ready?” he shouted over his shoulder.
There was no answer.
“Are you ready?”
Then he heard the deep, resonant hum of the mat-trans. He looked over his shoulder and his heart sank when he saw the mat-trans door was sealed. The transfer was already in progress. The companions had left him behind.
To die.
With forehand and backhand slashes of the long knife, he chopped down the first wave of stickies, lopping off heads, arms, hands indiscriminately. But he couldn’t keep up the pace for long; no one could. There were too many of them and they leaped over the bodies of their dead. Before he could reach for the SIG Sauer, suckered hands gripped his arms and face, tearing at his flesh. As the mass of stickies pulled him to the floor, he felt a wetness spreading between his legs. He was pissing himself, and it burned like fire going out.
The sensation brought him back to consciousness.
With a loud clunk the rushing sound above him abruptly stopped and the upward suction ceased. The bed frame began trembling so violently that it st
arted to walk across the floor. The window glass shimmied in its frame. Was he dreaming this, too? Or was the redoubt coming apart? Were the hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete and steel about to collapse, crushing them, burying them forever? Everything in the room was shaking, clattering. He realized this was no hallucination; this was real.
The connecting door opened, and whitecoats and black suits rushed in.
Ryan couldn’t move. All his strength was gone. Over the rattling bed and the pounding in his skull, he heard them talking.
“His body temperature is 106,” one of the women said. “And climbing.”
“We need to get him into the tank at once. Uncuff him.”
Ryan was lifted bodily under the arms and dumped feet first and fully clothed into the ice-filled water.
It didn’t feel cold.
Tears streaming from his good eye, Ryan threw back his head and screamed.
It felt like molten metal.
Chapter Four
As Dr. Lima exited through the double doors, he removed his respirator and stowed it in the rather small pocket of his lab coat. The breathing mask stuck out the top and made an unsightly bulge at his hip. The precaution was annoying and probably unnecessary, but protocols for the Deathlands’ research had been laid out, and they had to be followed to the letter or there would be hell to pay. He walked briskly to the nearest elevator, entered and pressed the button for the main level.
