by James Axler
Ricky watched all of this without emotion, quickly reloading his Webley revolver. Behind him, the last Melissa stared with sightless eyes, a red-rimmed hole in the center of her forehead where Ricky’s first bullet had chilled her. Speed wasn’t everything—ruthlessness could win the day in the Deathlands. Survival was everything, and he had learned that from the best.
* * *
RYAN WAS DOING all he could to avoid the punishing attacks of the Regina in the burning honey store. The woman moved in a blur, faster than Ryan’s eye could follow. It was all he could do to block as she kicked and punched him backward, forcing him deeper into the burning tower.
A savage kick to his chest sent Ryan tumbling back, and he slammed against a burning wall as black smoke billowed around him. He struggled away, patting at his smoldering coat, sinking to the floor.
“You still love me,” the Regina stressed. “You still feel the love that will save you.”
Ryan did. He could feel the emotion tugging at him—adoration for this woman who was trying to chill him.
No. I have to see past it, Ryan reminded himself. Have to remember what this woman is—what all these people have become.
“You will obey me,” the Regina instructed. “You will execute the violators of my law—for love is stronger than the bonds of friendship.”
Slumped by the burning wall, Ryan’s hand slipped to the sheath on his thigh, and he tried to remember what it was he had been thinking before the Regina’s words started buzzing in his mind.
Adoration is not love. Blind devotion is not love.
The Regina stood over him as the walls burned, red-gold flames highlighting her perfectly coiffed blond hair. “Love me,” she instructed.
“No,” Ryan snarled, powering his fist up with all his strength until it met the Regina’s jaw with a loud crack.
“I love Krysty,” Ryan told the Regina as she stumbled back, astonished.
“Die!” the Regina yelled, leaping for Ryan, her hands hooked like talons.
Ryan let her drop onto him, using her weight to thrust the blade of his panga into her gut. “You first,” Ryan replied, forcing the blade in deep.
* * *
J.B. HAD RELOADED and blasted off a single shot from the M-4000 before Nancy reached him. The blast had been almost at ground level where J.B. was lying in the dirt, and Nancy had stepped over it easily. Then she was on him, yanking the Armorer from the ground with one powerful hand, swiping his blaster away with the other.
“Violator!” Nancy screeched. “Look at the damage you have caused.” She slapped his face, left then right then left again, forcing J.B. to turn his head. “Do you have anything to say for yourself before I execute you in the name of the Regina’s love?”
“Going to...thank...me,” J.B. muttered through bloodied lips, “tomorrow.”
Nancy pressed her free hand against the Armorer’s face, shoving his glasses aside and pushing her fingers against his eyes and under his lips the way a man would grab a predark bowling ball. J.B. fought to get free, but the woman was impossibly strong, and her grip on his clothes held him above the ground so that he could not get any leverage. He growled through gritted teeth as he felt the woman’s fingers press against his eyeballs.
And then, without warning, another explosion rocked the ville, and J.B. felt Nancy’s grip loosen. It was the medical faculty blowing up and caving in on itself, the last but one tower to be destroyed by the companions.
J.B. took advantage of his foe’s momentary surprise, kicking out against her shins with all the force he could muster. He felt her grip slip from his face and he kicked out again, launching himself from her grasp and tumbling back hard against the ground.
There were three other Melissas with Nancy, and when J.B. looked he saw them stalking toward him.
“And me without my shotgun,” he muttered as he reached into his jacket for his other weapon of choice, a Mini-Uzi.
As he did so, the Melissas swooped toward him, white robes billowing like wings, dancing across the ground like birds taking flight. In that moment, J.B. could not deny that they looked beautiful—the perfect idealization of the human form, angels descended from Heaven. He raised the Uzi and held down the trigger, sweeping the weapon in a swift arc.
* * *
THE REGINA SQUIRMED at the end of Ryan’s blade as he wrenched it across her stomach, creating a ghastly, bloody wound.
The Regina was fast, but speed couldn’t save her up close like this. No amount of superhealing was going to stem the flow of blood that rushed from the awful rent in her gut.
Ryan stepped away, yanking his blade free. The Regina collapsed, her mouth stretched open in silent agony, blood cascading down her torn dress.
“Your empire’s over,” Ryan told her as flames licked at the wooden walls and ceiling of the narrow corridor. “Your dream of spreading is finished.”
The Regina looked at Ryan with desperate eyes, her hands clenched around the wound in her gut. “Love me,” she croaked. “Love the Home.”
“No,” Ryan told her as he wiped the blood from his blade and sheathed it. “I’m going to burn it down.”
Ryan stepped over the fallen queen and hurried down the burning corridor, running toward the exit where daylight shone through the flaming doorway.
* * *
BULLETS WERE FLYING everywhere. J.B. zipped through a whole magazine just keeping the Melissas at bay.
But bullets were coming from another direction, too—and more than one, in fact.
Mildred, Doc and Jak had joined the fight, gathering at the plaza after completing their respective missions. It was like shooting fish in a barrel—the companions were the only ones who were armed, and while the rest of the population of Heaven Falls had finally realized that their best option was to run away unless the Regina told them different, it left the superhuman Melissas fending off an attack from all fronts.
Rearmed, Jak threw two of his leaf-bladed knives, and they drummed into the throat and breast of one of the Melissas.
Doc fired his replica LeMat, sending a devastating .44-caliber lead slug into—and through—another Melissa’s back, turning her guts into offal in a blinding flash.
Mildred showed more finesse than her companions. As the towers collapsed around the plaza, she reeled off carefully placed shots at Nancy and the other remaining Melissa, clipping one of them in the flank but missing the fast-moving Nancy by an inch.
Nancy flew at J.B. in a rush of speed and anger. The Armorer dropped back, feeling the ground slam against his back and shoulders as he tossed the empty Uzi aside. Then the Melissa was on him, clawing at his face like a wild animal. J.B. punched her hard in the gut, and she momentarily fell back. As she did so, Jak drilled a throwing knife into her right eye socket, ending the Melissa’s attack.
At that moment Ryan came crashing through the flaming doorway of the burning storage tower. His clothes were blackened with smoke and so was his face, the skin red beneath. He was clearly exhausted. But he was alive.
The one-eyed man staggered away from the burning tower as it began to lurch behind him. And then, as J.B. watched, a second figure emerged through the fire, her trailing dress alight with flames.
“Ryan!” J.B. shouted in warning.
Ryan turned but he was slow now, exhausted from all he had been through. The Regina of Heaven Falls, the queen bee, was on him in an instant, her burning flesh reaching for his.
But it only lasted an instant. Another figure was there, one that had not been there just seconds before, and this one, too, had brought flames with her: the flame-red locks of her flowing hair. It was Krysty, running at speed through the debris of the crumbling towers. She met with the Regina just as the woman reached for Ryan, body slamming into her like a speeding freight train hitting a cow that had strayed onto the tracks.
The Regina lurched backward, her feet scrambling for purchase on the ash-strewed ground. Krysty kept moving, knocking into the woman again, driving her fist into the Regi
na’s jaw.
“Stay the hell away from Ryan,” Krysty shouted. “Get out of our heads.”
The Regina crashed back into the crumbling storage tower, the fire licking at her flesh and clothes. Standing in front of her, Krysty pivoted and kicked, driving her booted foot into the woman’s wounded belly. The Regina hurtled back through the doorway of the tower and the flames roared brighter, hiding the doorway forever behind their burning curtain.
A loud crack shook the air, and Krysty turned and ran, grabbing Ryan by the collar of his coat as she did so. Behind them, the storage tower crumbled in on itself, its integrity ruined by fire, collapsing in a pillar of flame.
Krysty threw Ryan to the ground, holding her hands over his head to protect him as clay pots and cylinders went firing in all directions, shattering on the ground. The other companions did likewise, protecting themselves from the death throes of the burning building.
Chapter Thirty-Three
After that it was just mopping up and dealing with the loose ends. The innocent people of Heaven Falls had scattered to the mountains as the towers crumbled, too scared and disorganized to fight Ryan and his companions. Where once they had worked together, without the Regina they were nothing, their reasoning lost in a miasma of confusion, like waking from a coma dream.
J.B. set the last of the charges at the tower that had served as the Regina’s palace, though truly there was little need. The central tower had taken a lot of damage from the buildings that had burned and collapsed around it, and it was already so ruined that it looked as though it would fall over in a strong breeze. While he primed the charges, the last occupants of the tower were ushered out, mystified by what had happened.
Krysty apologized to Ryan for leaving things to the last minute to come help him. “I had to wait to gain the strength to summon the Earth Mother’s power,” she explained.
“And you did—just in time,” Ryan told her, his face still black with soot. “Nothing like an old-fashioned firefight among friends to shake you out of a daze, huh?”
Krysty laughed at that, and helped Ryan brush ashes and dirt from his clothes.
Ryan had been sucked into this plot, and Krysty knew she had been part of the reason why. “We thought we’d finally found heaven on earth,” she said sadly.
Ryan shook his head. “No,” he told her. “I’ve already found that—and I find it again each time I look in your eyes.”
* * *
WITH KRYSTY’S HELP and Mildred’s know-how, J.B. concocted a herbicide that would destroy the plants in the immediate area around Heaven Falls, a kind of scorched-earth insurance. Krysty brought her knowledge of all things botanical while Mildred figured out what to substitute given what remained in the limited stores of the farmers. For his efforts, J.B. brought a working appreciation for the napalm he had sourced from the redoubt, which he assured the women was the best herbicide known to man.
After that, the companions regrouped and made their way back to the redoubt.
* * *
“I GUESS THEY were muties,” Ricky said as the companions strode across the mountain path.
Behind them, the fires were burning out of control in the place that had once been Heaven Falls, the columns of red flame making it appear more like a vision of hell now.
“They were still changing,” Mildred confirmed, “mutating as we watched.”
Leading the way, Ryan slipped through the open doors to the redoubt, the Steyr held horizontally over his shoulders. “Humans turning into something else,” he said. “Never let it be said that this world isn’t full of surprises.”
“And every one of them a new horror,” Doc declared, though there was a light, mocking tone to his words.
Bringing up the rear, J.B. and Jak stood at the redoubt doors for a moment, checking that they were not being followed. The three women who had been repairing the mat-trans were still tied to trees scattered around the entrance, but J.B. was okay to leave them. He wasn’t one to leave an enemy close behind him. They would free themselves in time, or someone would come for them. There were plenty of folks wandering the mountains now, with the destruction of their ville. Someone would stumble on them before very long.
“Lock up,” Jak said, intruding on the Armorer’s thoughts.
“Yeah,” J.B. agreed, reaching for the makeshift pulley system that had been used to operate the door. He used his knife blade to cut the ropes, then he and Jak pulled the door closed for the last time.
“Did you ever wonder why that guy tried to blow this place up?” Krysty asked the others as they reached the control room.
“He broke the conditioning,” J.B. declared, “same way I did.”
“People can be allergic to honey,” Mildred told them all. “That’s not so unusual. If that was the case with William, he would have chosen a different diet from the others and would not have become sucked into the whole queen-bee-and-worker-drone setup.”
“Mebbe,” J.B. said, “or mebbe he just didn’t have a sweet tooth for honey. That’s what saved me, anyhow.”
“Saved us all,” Ryan said. “And thanks.”
J.B. met Ryan’s gaze and he saw something there he hadn’t seen in a couple weeks: friendship. “You sure you don’t want to chill me for wrecking the life you and Krysty had going?” he asked.
Ryan shook his head. “There’s a better life out there. For all of us. I’m certain of it,” he said.
“Then let’s find it,” J.B. said, stepping into the mat-trans with the others. “Together.”
“Together.”
Ryan entered the chamber last and closed the door, wondering, as he made his way to Krysty’s side, whether the mat-trans would work. He had no need to worry. As he sat beside his lover, the mat-trans powered up, and in a moment the companions were gone in the blink of an eye.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460324448
First edition January 2014
SIREN SONG
Copyright © 2014 by Worldwide Library
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