Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  Ryan swore and gestured to his people to adopt defensive positions in whatever cover they could find.

  Using shrubs and clumps of trees to locate themselves in areas less likely to be hacked through, they settled in quickly. Jak was the only one to use the treetops, as he was the only companion swift enough to make it in the time they had.

  Or at least, that was how it should have been. But as they waited, tension extending each second into hours, it became apparent that something was wrong. There was little sound from the woods beyond, and the five-man hunting party failed to appear.

  Up in the branches, Jak scanned the area around. He cursed to himself, slowing his breathing and focusing on every slight sound or movement. The sec party had been able to locate the companions from the noise they had been making, and had opted to split up to encircle their enemy. They knew the area and were hiding themselves well. Even Jak was having trouble locating them.

  So what chance did the others stand, mired on the ground?

  MILDRED WAS HUDDLED close to the bole of a tree, her Czech ZKR pistol raised, barrel skyward, ready to aim in any direction, at the slightest sound. She was scanning the surrounding area intently, but could see nothing. There was no movement, no sound, no indication of anything that could pose a threat.

  That was when she heard it—a rattle and a hollow sound, like someone had kicked a stone against a tree. She pulled the ZKR down so that it was leveled, then turned toward the source of the noise.

  As she turned, she felt a pricking in the side of her neck, like an insect bite. She slapped at it and felt the protruding dart.

  Dammit—she knew immediately that the noise had been a decoy and she had fallen for it, leaving herself open to a shot from the side. She opened her mouth to call a warning, but it felt as though her chest was tight and her vocal cords had seized up. She felt her balance fail, and as she fell forward, the world spun briefly before blacking out.

  JAK HEARD MILDRED FALL, whirled and saw her hit the ground. He also caught the flicker of movement as the sec man came out of hiding, moving over to check Mildred’s condition.

  The albino youth took this as a chance to move in on the sec man, swinging across the limbs that were intertwined above the ground, noiselessly slipping lower so that he was able to launch himself downward from behind, hoping to take the man out without giving him a chance to use the blowpipe.

  He should have known. Even as he fell, he realized that the sec man had been leaning over Mildred for far too long just to check on her. He’d known Jak was up in the trees somewhere, and was waiting for him to make the first move. The sec man began a half turn as the albino plummeted earthward, moving his body to meet the full impact.

  Jak was holding a knife and hoped to get the blade into position for a chilling blow as he landed. He got in one thrust, but the sec man managed to parry it with an arm, taking a slice out of his bicep, but preventing the knife from being anything other than a painful irritation. At the same time, he raised his other arm, opening his clenched fist to slap Jak on the side of the head with his open palm.

  The albino reeled back. It shouldn’t have been a blow to cause that, being light compared to the punishment Jak had taken in the past. And yet there was something about it. Realizing—but too late—Jak raised his hand to the side of his head, using his fingers to probe where the aftershock of the slap was still tingling.

  He could feel the small dart. It was almost flat to his temple, the point of it having only just punctured the skin. He cursed and pulled it out, throwing it to one side. Maybe he had caught it in time, maybe it hadn’t released any of its toxin into his bloodstream as it hadn’t been driven in. Even as he reeled back, he knew he was hoping where there was no hope. The sec man stood in front of him, legs apart, in a stance that was wary and ready to spring: but he didn’t see Jak as posing a problem now.

  Blinking, feeling himself grow numb and his vision clouding and becoming distant, Jak knew that he was done for. If this was a lethal toxin, then he was a chilled piece of meat. If not, then he could only hope that he would have a chance to fight back when he came around.

  That was the last thought running through his head before the dark curtain fell.

  J.B. WAS SWEATING. The Armorer’s patience had already been stretched far too thin by Doc, let alone a wait for an enemy that refused to show. Every sound, every movement of wildlife put him on a hair trigger, just one ounce of pressure away from ripping it to shred with a burst from the Uzi.

  When it came, though, it was as if all that pressure slipped away and he locked into a calmer, cooler frame of mind.

  It was to his right, behind a clump of flowering shrub, the large purple blooms of which gave a good expanse with which to hide. Too good. There was no way he could tell if there was anyone there. To spray ‘n’ pray would be a spectacularly futile act, as it would do little except betray his position and invite attack.

  There was only one thing he could do if he wanted to avoid being trapped in this position. He had to take the initiative. Using all the skills he had picked up during decades of simply staying alive, J.B. moved out from his position, keeping low and using whatever cover he could, moving toward the shrub. He paused at every new piece of cover, ready to fire if there was any indication that he had been spotted. All he could hear each time was the sound of his own shallow breathing, all he could feel was each drop of sweat running down his brow, down his back.

  He made the distance between last cover and the shrub, going into a roll to come up to the rear of the purple blooms, Uzi raised to see off any opposition.

  The space behind the shrub, which he felt sure harbored the enemy, and from which it would have been impossible to move without betraying position, was empty. J.B. frowned, for a moment nonplussed. It was only when he heard the faintest movement behind him that he realized he had been fooled by someone who knew the woods much better than he ever could. He had only half turned when he felt the prick of the dart in the back of his neck. Before he had completed a 180, the world spun on its axis and started to darken.

  KRYSTY KNEW THERE WAS danger here. Her doomie sense was telling her, so strong that it was making her feel sick to the pit of her stomach. But that was good. She remembered Mother Sonja explaining to her that this gift was to preserve life, to give due warning of when the darkness of death was to descend.

  It was just a pity that it wouldn’t tell her from where it was choosing to make an appearance.

  She shifted uncomfortably. She felt that she was in good cover, but there was something about the nagging insistence of her mutie sense that told her she was wrong, and if she didn’t get the hell out then it would be too late.

  She grasped her .38 Smith & Wesson in both hands, eyes never ceasing to scan the surrounding area. It was too quiet, as though the chattering wildlife they had previously disturbed knew that there was more trouble and had evacuated the area.

  Every fiber of her body was screaming for her to move. She could see nothing, hear nothing around her to suggest she was in danger, but she could ignore it no longer. She identified another patch of cover she could move to. It wouldn’t be too hard to remain hidden while she moved.

  As she edged out, she realized why her senses had been screaming at her. One of the enemy party rose up out of tree and shrub cover, directly in front of her, waiting patiently for her to show herself, knowing she was there. Krysty leveled her blaster and squeezed off a round.

  It went high and wide, her aim ruined by the dart that caught her in the forehead, the impact making her jerk at the last. She steadied her hand for a second round, but couldn’t stop the world from spinning.

  “FUCK IT,” Mildred cursed, the words escaping her lips before she had a chance to stop them. Then she cursed herself for making noise and giving away her position. Her heart was racing, thumping so heavily against her rib cage that she thought it was going to break through. There was no way that she would usually be so stupid as to jump like a frightened rabbit at
one blaster shot in the silence, but the lack of rest and continuous physical and mental stress since landing from the jump had left her strung out in a way she couldn’t remember.

  Breathing deeply, trying to keep it together, she closed her eyes for a second and counted to ten. She could hear nothing except the light rustle of a gentle breeze around the woods, so she felt okay about keeping her eyes closed for—

  Shit, she shouldn’t let her grip slip in this way. She heard a faint increase in the rustling and the crackling of ferns under a tread that, no matter how light, was still enough to register.

  Mildred opened her eyes and found herself staring at a man who stood with a blowpipe, almost unable to believe that it had been this easy.

  Before she had even got the Czech ZKR leveled to snap off a shot, the dart struck her cheek, making her start and slap her hand to her face. It had to be a toxin on the dart, but was it fatal or merely temporary?

  As the world faded, it occurred to her that it would be a stupid way to buy the farm. After all she had endured, to lose her life because of one small panic attack.

  RYAN HEARD THE SHOT at the same time as Mildred, and kept his attention fixed on the direction from which it had emanated. There was no follow-up, and nothing else to indicate any kind of action. The shot had been a pistol shot, and its timbre indicated that it came from Krysty. Unless it was a random shot, then the lack of follow-up meant that she was in trouble.

  Ryan didn’t want to betray his own position, but he couldn’t in all conscience leave her to it. Dammit, he was sure J.B. was moving over there to give assistance anyway. And the fact was that they were in a stalemate, and someone had to do something to break it.

  The one-eyed man had never been afraid of taking chances. It was the only way he’d managed to stay alive for so long. All risks were calculated; some were just more so than others.

  Slipping from cover, Ryan made his way through the undergrowth to where he had heard the shot. Although he was looking for Krysty, it wasn’t long before he could see Mildred, slumped on the turf. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing. She was in the open, and he would have to break cover. If she was down, then what the hell had happened to Krysty after she had fired that lone round?

  He paused, checking the surrounding area. It was deathly quiet. If there was anyone waiting, they were damned good. The fact that he seemed to be the only one of his people to respond was worrying, but that could wait.

  Shouldering the Steyr and drawing the SIG-Sauer as it would be more maneuverable in the circumstances, Ryan recced around him one more time before taking a deep breath and moving out into the open.

  Mildred was facedown. He turned her over.

  Ryan heard movement behind him. Working on pure instinct and adrenaline, he rolled away from Mildred and in the opposite direction to the sound, snapping off a shot from the SIG-Sauer to give himself some kind of covering fire.

  But even as he was midroll, he heard more movement, this time in front of him. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t adjust himself… He felt the snicking of a dart as it hit him, didn’t feel it as it was in the numbed scar tissue on his cheek. With his good eye he caught a glimpse of a woman half hidden by the leaves, a blowpipe in her mouth. He kept rolling, now unable to stop himself as the world began to lurch beneath his still moving, now rubbery and uncontrollable body.

  As he began to black out, he heard a man say, “Lord, thought we’d never get that bastard. Fuckin’ fine shot, Jude. Let’s—”

  And then the dark.

  THEY WERE TRUSSED like hogs and carried to the ville.

  The two hunting parties met, the sec patrol calling the other with a series of bird and animal calls that were used as a code. The party that had followed the first combat were already on the trail of the companions, and hadn’t far to go before they met with the sec patrol.

  A brief description of the carnage they had seen made the sec patrol sorry that they hadn’t chilled the bastards.

  “No, save them for Erik. He’ll have plans for them, I’m sure,” said the hunter with the bullet belt. She was still consoling the fat man, who was visibly shaken even now by what he had seen previously.

  “Easy for you to say, Collette. Your sister wasn’t among the chilled,” he commented bitterly.

  “All the more reason for you to keep your hate,” she answered. “Think they’ll get off lightly? Erik needs something like this to help the catch. You wait and see,” she added in reply to his bewildered stare. “First we got to get this scum back to Ewelltown.”

  The inert and trussed enemy loaded onto poles they cut from the surrounding trees, the two hunting parties shouldered their burdens and made their way along long-trodden paths to the small fishing village.

  Ewelltown was hardly large enough to be called a ville. A series of timber huts and shacks, with a few buildings constructed from the remains of old houses or from recycled brick and concrete, it could have numbered no more than a couple hundred inhabitants. Despite their seeming isolation, they were of a relatively healthy stock, with evidence of a wide gene pool. The lack of interbreeding was due to the nature of the village’s subsistence. They relied on fishing the bay in which they sat, and the waters beyond out into the reaches of the seas surrounding the swamplands that lay across the bay.

  Isolated by land due to the dense woods and the desert that sat beyond, they were able to trade via the waters, and the influx of other fishers and traders by sea gave them the opportunity to escape the inbreeding that had degenerated so many other small, isolated communities.

  However, they were now poverty-stricken, more so than ever before. The fishing stocks had dried up in recent months, which left them no basic diet beyond the small amount of crops they could raise on land reclaimed from the woods and whatever fruits they could take from those very woods. Unfortunately, the toxic nature of some of the soil meant that much of the fruit was inedible, and also accounted for the sparsity of land they could use for farming.

  That had never been a problem, as the rich fishing stocks had left them plenty to trade with those who came in on ships from around the swamps and the sea beyond. Until now, when a school of predators—unseen, but running deep and occasionally ripping nets—had started to drain the stocks.

  Now there was little jack, little trade and little food, which was why a previously uninterested people had taken to hunting small game in the woods…and why they had stumbled across the companions and been found so wanting in combat. They were fishers, not hunters, and not sec…and now they would be avenged.

  Word had spread to the village by the time that the hunters arrived with their trussed captives, still unconscious from the effects of the darts. Families were out to meet them as they took them past the dwellings, and down to the docks, where the wooden boardwalks extended out to the docking for the fishing ships, lying idle where there was little for them to do.

  But perhaps not for long.

  “…THINK THEY MAY BE COMING around soon…some of ’em, at any rate.”

  The voice was strong and assertive, the sound of a big man who was used to being obeyed. That was the impression Krysty had as she stirred, rising back to the surface. She tentatively opened an eye, peering at the painful light. She flexed her arms and found them almost numb. Her legs were the same. As she gained better use of her faculties, she figured that she was tied—a little more than securely—and that she was on her back, which would explain the light being so strong, if nothing else.

  More and more she opened her eyes, gradually adjusting to the light. She discovered that she was right. She was trussed and bound to a pole that had been laid horizontally on some kind of perch. Moving her head—and neck movement was about all the secure binding gave her—she could see that she was on the end of a row: the rest of the row comprised five other poles, on which were placed Ryan, J.B., Mildred, Doc and Jak, all of them as securely bound as herself. They were all facing the sun. There was little else she could see except some wood, some water and
a whole bunch of angry-looking people. The air smelled of ozone, fish and hate.

  “Hell, looks like they’re coming around—the redhead sure is.” The voice was female and harsh. Straining, Krysty could see that it was a woman with a string of bullets slung across a generous chest. She had a fat man beside her, and his eyes bored into Krysty’s as they met. He would have chilled her—and the rest of them—as soon as look, if he could.

  No question that they were fish food. To assume anything else after the five chilled they had left behind would be triple stupe.

  But why this? Why not just chill them and have done with it?

  A face loomed over her. It was thin, hatchetlike and sparsely covered with gray hair. Weathered and lined, the eyes were cobalt-blue. Could have been a kind face, a good face under any other circumstances. But not now. Krysty was a little surprised when he spoke and the voice issuing forth was the one she had identified as that of a leader when she was coming consciousness. Somehow, the voice and face didn’t fit. No reason why they should. Shit, her mind was still cloudy, still wandering.

  “Well, looks like they’re all ready,” the voice said as the face disappeared, presumably examining all the others. “Guess you should know what’s gonna happen to you and why. I’ll tell you what. You’re good fighters, and mebbe another time things would have been different. I know there are plenty here who are pissed at what you did, but a fight’s a fight, and you have to risk buying the farm. Trouble is, if we weren’t so desperate for food, then none of us would have been out there. But those who are chilled have left family behind, and they want vengeance. Fair enough. And mebbe it gives us a chance to get rid of two problems at the same time.”

  Krysty opened her mouth, tried to speak. She was surprised that the others had remained silent, then discovered why: no sound would issue from vocal cords that were still paralysed by the toxin from the dart. She tried to move her fingers and toes and found that they wouldn’t respond. So feeling was returning, but only gradually.