by James Axler
Making no noise on the steps, the companions descended to the lower level, with Jak signaling all clear every few paces. A single light shone from an open doorway at the far end of the hall. They passed a few other doors on both sides of the hallway, most hanging open, revealing empty rooms inside. As they progressed down the dark tunnel, the voices became more distinct.
“—take us to the rest of your people, that’s all I’m asking. If she don’t get help, she’s gonna die!”
“What do you expect us to do? Whatever sickness she’s got ain’t like nothing I ever seen before!”
“’Sides, it’s hard to believe you don’t mean us any harm with that blaster pointing at us.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m out of patience, and I’m through asking!”
“Look, we can’t go anywhere until the storm dies down. And she’s right, all we could do is make your friend comfortable until she passes aw—”
A low, loud, bone-chilling moan interrupted the second speaker, the sound of someone in mortal agony. It continued for several seconds, cutting off the argument inside and making Ryan’s skin crawl. He exchanged a glance with Mildred, her eyes white and wide against her dark skin, and got a shrug in return as they drew closer.
Jak stepped up to the side of the doorway now and looked at Ryan, who was already handing him a small, polished metal mirror. Jak crouched and carefully extended it past the door frame to get a look into the room. He held it there for a few seconds, angling it around while the discussion of taking the injured woman somewhere continued. Finally Jak pulled his hand back and turned to Ryan, signaling what he’d seen.
Four people inside, all on far side of the room. Hurt one lying down. Two scavvies sitting against the right wall. Man with blaster standing between them and woman.
With a clear picture of the interior and its occupants now, Ryan was ready to take them. He pointed at Jak, then at the left interior wall next to the door. Jak gave him a curt nod, but waited while Ryan detailed what the rest of their strike party was going to do. When everyone was ready, he held up his hand and counted down from three fingers...two...one.
The albino stepped through the door and took up his position on the left side, while Ryan went in and took up a position on the right side. J.B. came next, followed by Mildred and Krysty. Ricky was staying outside with a nearly unconscious Doc.
“Nobody move, and nobody has to die,” Ryan said, the muzzle of his blaster dead center on the standing man, who turned his head to look at the newcomers in shock. They stood amid several empty freestanding shelves lining the walls, indicating this had once been a storeroom.
It was the break one of the raggedly dressed people sitting against the wall had been waiting for. He launched himself at the man, barreling into him and sending him staggering across the room. The blaster flew from the man’s hand, skittering across the floor to stop in front of J.B., who stooped and picked it up without taking his eyes off the two struggling, cursing figures.
“Fireblast!” Ryan said, striding forward. The scavvie crouched on top of the other man, who was dressed in a relatively clean light blue jumpsuit, and pummeled him with wild, flying fists. The former hostage taker was doing his best to protect his head and face, but his assailant was so pissed that only one out of every three blows was landing.
“All right, enough of that!” Grabbing the one on top by the back of his ragtag jacket, Ryan hauled the short wiry guy, arms still flailing, off the downed man. When the guy tried turning to punch Ryan, he simply lifted him off the floor and held him in midair.
“What’re you— Let me go! You gotta kill him before they kill all of us!” the captive yelled in a high-pitched voice. He was dressed in a patchwork combination of what other people would have called rags, but on closer examination, Ryan saw they were stitched with care and fit the guy’s small frame well. His pants were a mix of canvas, blue denim and leather, and his shoes were worn construction boots that had been repurposed with what looked like rubber patches on the toe and heels. Ryan turned him around to see his face, revealing short-cropped, dirty blond hair framing a definitely female face now twisted into a combination of rage and fear.
“Look, just calm down, all right? He’s unarmed now, and it doesn’t look like you’re in any real danger.”
“You don’t understand!” she cried. “They’ll—”
Another loud groan interrupted her, and everyone glanced over to see another person lying on the floor, a jacket fashioned into a crude pillow under her head. The woman was dressed in the same kind of jumpsuit as the man, except her abdomen was grossly distended, making the fabric bulge out.
“Just relax, Sammee,” the man on the floor said through swelling lips. “Please, help her if you can. That’s all I ask.... I’ll do whatever you want, just help her.”
“You best do what Tully said, kill both of them quick before they come for all of us,” the second person sitting against the wall, a lanky black-haired man, said.
“I’m not taking orders from any of you right now,” Ryan said. “J.B., Jak, watch these three. Mildred, check her out.”
“It’s all right, I’m a healer,” Mildred said as she crossed the room and knelt by the sweating, ashen-faced woman holding her bloated stomach with both hands. “Do you know how long you’ve been pregnant?”
The woman shook her head, but broke in as Mildred began asking another question. “Not...pregnant. It’s...dying.”
Mildred’s brow furrowed. “It? What’s it?”
Sammee opened her mouth as if to answer, but instead let out a high-pitched scream at the top of her lungs. Mildred placed a hand on her stomach, then drew back. “It’s distended and hard...and, oh, my God.”
As Ryan and everyone else watched, something stretched out the woman’s skin from the inside, creating a small bump as if poking at her, then retreated.
“Do you have a parasite living inside you?” Mildred asked as she pulled out her small medical kit. “Do you know how long it’s been there? Or how you contracted it?”
Sammee shook her head. “Dunno—just know it’s killin’ me—” Her words turned into another scream of pure pain.
“I’m going to try to cut it out of her!” Mildred selected a scalpel and positioned it at the top of her stomach. But the moment the blade touched the woman’s skin, she jackknifed forward, tendons in her neck popping as she strained against something inside her, mouth open in a silent scream, then fell back onto the floor, motionless, her wide eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Mildred checked her pulse at both the wrist and carotid artery. “She’s dead. I’m sorry.”
“No! No! No! No!” The other man crawled over to his dead woman and cradled her in his arms. “We were leaving, gonna make a new life...” He looked at the ceiling and screamed, “We were going! We would have left you alone! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” Mildred was already preparing a small tranquilizer shot, one of the precious few she had, and stabbed it into the man’s arm as his screams faded into loud sobs. The man didn’t notice, just cried until the drug took effect, and he slumped over into unconsciousness. When he was out, Mildred closed Sammee’s eyes, removed the jacket from under her head and covered her with it.
For a moment, no one moved. Then Ryan spoke. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Let me down and I’ll tell ya.” With both of the jumpsuited people out of commission, the blonde fist fighter had calmed down a bit.
“All right—just remember who has all the blasters.” When she nodded, Ryan carefully lowered her to the floor.
Tully straightened her clothes and walked back to her partner before saying anything. “You know I’m Tully, and this here’s Latham.” She nodded at her bearded companion. “We’re part of a group heading west. We come from south of the Lachan Mountains, but over the past few years the barons over there hav
e been gettin’ more and more greedy, putting folks off their land, and killin’ them that don’t go peaceful. When we had enough, we headed west. Heard of plenty of good land out there, with few people to bother us. We’re just lookin’ to settle down somewhere and farm and live without any trouble.”
Ryan nodded. He’d heard this story many times before. Tales of some sort of fabled Eden were a dime a dozen—and worth just about as much, too. “Go on.”
“I will, but first...” Tully rummaged in her pack and pulled out a metal canteen. Opening it, she took a drink, then offered it to Ryan. “You all look pretty dry.”
Ryan slowly reached for it, trying not to betray his eagerness. “Thanks.” He forced himself to take one mouthful—even though every last inch of him cried out to drain the entire container—then handed it to Krysty. “One swallow each. Jak, have Ricky bring Doc in here.”
While he instructed the others, Tully talked quietly with her companion, who grudgingly surrendered his canteen to Ryan and the others. Each of them took a second, precious gulp of the flat, metallic-tasting water, savoring it as if it were the finest predark liquor.
“We’d encountered another dust storm like the one outside a few days ago, and hunkered down in a ville a few miles east of here. That’s when we were attacked—” Tully nodded at the sleeping man and his dead companion “—by these folks.”
Jak frowned. “Not seem like much threat. Chill and keep movin’.”
The man called Latham snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw them in action. These two—” he waved at their prisoner and the corpse “—don’t even come close. Can’t put them down, not easily.... They take a shitload of damage and just keep comin’.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “They’re...different. They all move and fight together, like...ants or somethin’. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know I never seen humans actin’ that way before.”
“Anyway, they first struck as the storm was dyin’, and carried off a half dozen of our people,” Tully said. “Came back a few nights later—and our own people were among the force hitting us.”
Latham stared at the ground, and Tully paused for a moment as she glanced at him, then shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it. We had to—had to chill them that we’d called our own just a couple days earlier...before they did the same to us.”
Ryan exchanged a glance with Krysty and J.B. Through their travels, they’d encountered many strange and terrible sights, so this one wasn’t that far-fetched. A rogue experiment created by whitecoats, some odd mutation that affected an entire population, or even a strange sect that practiced an unusual form of combat could be behind this new potential threat.
“The elders held a meeting and decided to send parties out to find help. That’s what we were doing when we came across this building.” Tully spit into a corner. “That fuck got the drop on us, and tried to force us to take him and her back to our people. Then you all showed up, and now here we are.”
J.B. had been examining the man’s weapon while the two were talking, and now he looked at Ryan while holding up the blaster, a brand-new-looking matte black 9 mm Beretta 92-F. “Wherever he’s come from, they got good tech.”
“Yeah, they had other weapons, too—longblasters,” Latham said. “If it hadn’t been for Tully and some of the others, our group wouldn’t have survived.”
“What do you mean by that?” Krysty asked. “You’re not a mercie?” At the other woman’s frown, she elucidated. “A hired blaster, coldheart, that sort of thing.”
The smaller woman grimaced. “Naw, just got a temper, that’s all. Our people don’t practice violence.... It’s just not our way. But when I saw others bein’ carried away or killed, I knew I had to do somethin’. I jumped one of them, got his weapon away and shot him. Shot a bunch more and freed some of the caught ones so we could drive them off.”
“But they’ll be back,” Latham said. “We all know it.”
Ryan and J.B. exchanged weary glances at this part. Along with the pipe dream of Eden, a place to live in peace and quiet, right behind that was the idea of not being bothered by any bandits or raiders or anyone, or not having to take up arms to defend what was yours. Ryan and his companions knew that was only wishful thinking on those people’s parts, since it was always easier to take than to work, to steal and destroy instead of build and create. There was no shortage of people willing to turn to that kind of life to sustain themselves. It was plain survival in the Deathlands, a way of life. Eventually, the takers would come calling no matter where you were—or how well you thought you’d hidden yourself.
“So keep moving,” J.B. said. “If they come and go like you say, they have a base of operations, and once you get out of range, they’ll leave you alone.”
“A lot of us want to do just that, but the elders don’t want to leave family members behind, even ones who’ve been...changed like these two,” Tully said. “If we push on now, we’re doomin’ them to whatever captivity they’re stuck in. If we stay, we risk losing everybody and everything to these people. That was why we were lookin’ for help. We got food and water, that’s all we can really offer anybody, but that should count for something, right?”
Ryan nodded. “Right.” And so does the idea of someone nearby having predark technology and ammunition, he thought. “Why don’t we all get some rest while the storm blows itself out, and when it’s done, we’ll figure out what to do, okay?”
Tully blinked, as if the idea of these new people actually helping them had never occurred to her. “Uh...sure, okay. I mean, we’re already in your debt for savin’ us from them. The least we can do is feed you before you head out on your way.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Krysty said.
“Don’t suppose you have any of that food on you right now?” Ricky asked.
Latham nodded at their bedrolls in a corner. “It won’t go very far among all of us, but you’re welcome to what we have. We’re not too far from the main camp—well, we weren’t till you found us—but because you’ll be walkin’, they’re about a day’s travel away.”
“You got a faster way of traveling?” Ricky asked.
Latham nodded. “Easier to show you than tell you.”
“What about them?” Mildred pointed at the other two.
“Didn’t seem to have much on them,” Tully said. “And they weren’t too hungry, either, for some reason. Only took a couple of bites. Don’t know why.”
“Stress, or whatever parasitic creature was in that woman, may explain part of it,” Mildred said. “I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at her if I got the chance.”
“Not now,” Ryan said. “We’re all pretty strung out. We also need to get some rest—” and talk about what we should do, he casually signed to the rest “—before figuring out what to do next, okay?”
They shared the scavvie farmers’ meager rations—a couple of mouthfuls of relatively fresh bread and dried meat—and used a self-heat tab found on the still-unconscious man to make a cup of watery broth for Doc. Within a few minutes, the two, along with Doc, were fast asleep, leaving the rest of the group free to talk. Even so, Ryan moved them all out into the hallway, finding a vantage point where he could keep an eye on the sleeping scavvies and the jumpsuited man, as well.
The conversation was brief and to the point. “Not a convoy of wags loaded with ammo and trade goods, but it’s a damn sight better than nothing,” J.B. said.
“Besides, do we have much of a choice?” Krysty asked. “With the mat-trans gone, it could be a couple hundred miles or more to the nearest redoubt. At least if we go with these people, we have a shot at finding wherever the others are coming from, mebbe even locate a redoubt of their own. Solve a couple problems at once.”
“Exactly,” Ryan replied. “Our low ammo and supplies are major problems, so we might as well stick with these folks and s
ee what we can see. At the very least we’ll get fed, and if things go our way, we could get a hold of a lot more than that.”
“Maybe when he wakes up in a few hours, we can ask him about where he came from.” Mildred yawned. “Don’t know about you folks, but I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to take advantage of the relative peace and quiet here and sack out.”
“Works for me,” J.B. said. “Watches?”
Although tempted to let everyone get some shut-eye, Ryan knew all too well the potential folly of trusting folks they’d just met. “Two-hour spans. I’ll take the first, Jak second, Krysty third, Ricky fourth.” He nodded at the three sleepers in the next room. “They shouldn’t give any trouble, but even so, don’t get too close. Everybody get some rest while you can. Jak, I’ll wake you when your turn comes.”
Chapter Nine
Though surrounded by the hot, baking plains and the searing dust storm, for some reason Jak dreamed of his home, deep in the swamps of what had been Louisiana long, long ago.
It wasn’t a true dream, just a series of disjointed images and sounds...trickling water...a snake slithering through the deep forest...and perhaps a slaughtered animal being dragged toward a ville for butchering.
It was this last sound that caused the albino’s eyes to pop open and blink to see Ryan standing over him. “Time, huh?”
The black-haired man nodded. “Heard some scuttling earlier—there may be a rat around here. Keep your eyes open.”
Jak rolled his eyes. “No shit. Why not teach me suck eggs, too.”
As the albino got up and stretched, Ryan walked over to Krysty, curled around her protectively and was asleep in seconds.
Jak watched the sleeping couple for a moment, wistfulness passing over his scarred features. The land they were traveling through reminded him of the area around the farm he’d stayed on for a few months with his wife, Christina, after leaving the companions. Those had been good times—until she and their baby girl had been killed and the homestead contaminated by a bunch of rad-blasted crazies. With the life he’d built in ashes, Jak had rejoined the companions, and been with them ever since.
