Seedling

by James Axler

  Mildred was at J.B.'s side, the two of them fight­ing like a team. He was spraying attackers with the Steyr AUG blaster, while the woman selected her tar­gets with scrupulous care, not missing a single kill.

  Ryan stood his ground, watching his friends head­ing for the safety of the tunnel, trying to judge the best moment to move himself. He kept glancing around at the hysterical mob, looking out for scalies within striking distance.

  But he was also looking for something else.

  A young boy, solemn-faced, with a shock of black curly hair.

  "Dean!" he shouted, the name tasting odd on his lips. "Dean, you there?" But there was too much noise, gunfire echoing off the vaulted roof, mingling with screams and shouts. He could hardly even hear himself calling.

  He tried one more time, cutting the cry short as he saw the ultimate bad sight—at least twenty scalies, running in a well-drilled platoon, all hefting car­bines. They had appeared from a side tunnel, not far from where Krysty and the others had nearly made it. Ryan guessed they were some sort of mutie elite force.

  J.B. saw them first, hesitating and then checking his blaster. "Only got three rounds left in the mag," he shouted.

  Doc was effectively blasterless, and Mildred's re­volver held only six rounds to begin with. Krysty had fired well over half the thirteen that her P7A-13 held.

  The Armorer gave Ryan the hand signal that meant they were nearly out of ammo.

  Putting the smooth butt of the G-12 to his shoul­der, Ryan got ready to do business. If he failed to get all aces on the line, then life was just a few heart­beats long.

  The triple-fire rate of the Heckler & Koch caseless was so fast that a burst sounded like a man snapping his fingers. With fifty rounds in the mag Ryan had only sixteen chances.

  If anyone who was totally deaf had been watching the squad of muties, they'd have seen an odd sight. It was as if they were all possessed of some demonic dancing sickness. One by one they went spinning sideways and backward, grabbing at one another as they staggered. A few tried to return the fire, but Ryan was death, the destroyer of worlds, cold and ruthless, picking the scalies off one by one.

  It was over in less than fifteen seconds.

  Twenty scalies were lying, dying, in a welter of gushing blood and shards of splintered bone, some still crying out in their harsh, croaking voices. Im­mediately a few of the quicker-witted prisoners moved in to grab the carbines from the clawed hands.

  Other muties were trying to shoot at the outies, but the human slaves were milling around, causing such a shambles that it was impossible.

  Someone tipped the huge bowl of fish stew into one of the fires. There was a hissing sound as a great cloud of noxious steam filled that part of the scalies' base. Another fire was extinguished by bodies falling into it, and the light was fading fast.

  "Go!" Ryan yelled, waving the empty rifle above his head, gesturing to J.B. to lead Doc and the two women back toward the river.

  The Armorer paused, dropping an empty clip from his blaster and reaching in his coat pocket for a fresh mag. Ryan shouted to him again, urging him to get moving out. J.B. shrugged his shoulders and turned on his heel, leading the other three in a sprint along the tunnel.

  The massacre of the top squad of scalies had re­doubled the panic and bedlam behind Ryan.

  He glanced around once, his good eye piercing the gloom and smoke. He somehow still hoped that he might see a small figure running toward him, arms wide, calling out his name, yet knowing the absur­dity of the idea.

  The attack had failed miserably. Now the scalies would be that much more careful and vengeful. It wouldn't be surprising if they carried out reprisals against their own prisoners. Any future rescue at­tempt would be unimaginably more difficult and would probably take weeks to organize and execute.

  Faced with the terrifying firepower of the Heckler & Koch automatic rifle, the scalies weren't interested in coming at him again, contenting themselves with making their own escape across the bodies of their victims.

  Just one of their big central fires was now burn­ing, and the scattered wall torches threw only small pools of distorted light. Apart from the general im­pression of twisting bodies and ear-bursting screams, it was impossible to pick out any individual.

  Ryan remembered the old maxim of the Trader— "he who fought and ran away saved his ass."

  "Time to go," he said to himself.

  As he began to back off along the slippery wall, a spear came hurtling out of the gloom and smashed into the stone less than a yard away from him, its point bending from the force of the impact.

  Ryan ducked, combat boots slipping in the wet, bringing him to his hands and knees. Then he straightened, and faced a heavily built scalie, standing less than fifteen feet away from him. The crea­ture held an ax, short-hafted, with a polished, curved blade, in its left hand. In its right was a rusting Smith & Wesson 459-M, pointing straight at Ryan's chest.

  "I be blasting you into blood and bits," the crea­ture said in a croaking voice.

  The long, lizardlike skull was thrusting toward Ryan, a twisted grin of triumph on its peeled lips. The hooded eyes stared unblinkingly at him, and the clawed fingers tightened convulsively on the butt of the automatic. It grinned. "You be chilled, outie."

  Beyond the mutie Ryan thought he caught a flicker of movement in the shadows, but it vanished. The empty G-12 hung in his hands, useless. At that range there wasn't even a chance of throwing the rifle at the scalie. The SIG-Sauer P-226 was fully loaded in its holster, equally useless.

  "Do it, then, you mutie piece of shit!" Ryan snarled.

  The one-eyed warrior's last conscious thought contained a mixture of killing rage and regret at the futility of dying in a stinking hole under a ruined ville. And he felt a deep pain at not seeing Krysty again.

  Behind the straddle-legged scalie there was an­other movement in the blackness, a tiny flame of light off steel.

  DEAN HAD FOLLOWED the menacing guard as it ran toward the scene of the gunfire. He gripped the little knife as he chased it, not knowing why he was pur­suing the scalie. All his life Rona had drummed into him to keep out of trouble and remain inconspicu­ous. Now, for the first time, he was going directly against those instructions.

  The whole place was in mind-blowing confusion.

  His heart pounded at the thought that someone had actually dared to come into the home base of the scalies and start chilling them. There was a burst of gunfire like he never heard before, and he glimpsed a whole squad of twenty or so of the killer elite muties go down in a twisting, lurching massacre.

  But the light was dimming and he couldn't see properly, just enough to track the scalie with the ax as it moved toward the big tunnel to the river. Then, with breath-stopping finality, he saw the tableau, only just ahead of him. The broad back of the guard masked the man that it was holding at blaster point.

  Dean padded silently closer, half crouched, the knife held point up, the way his mother had taught him.

  Readying itself to shoot, the guard shifted a little to one side, legs wide, braced to kill. And Dean, for the first time, saw the man who was about to die—the lean face, the matted black hair and the patch over the left eye.

  And he knew.

  RYAN WAS REACHING for his blaster, knowing that it was an utterly pointless gesture, when he saw the strangest thing.

  The scalie rose onto its toes, dropping the blaster, dropping the ax, which rang like a bell on the concrete. Its mouth gaped open and a strangled, bub­bling cry came from its throat.

  Dean used every fiber of his strength as he struck at the creature, aiming his blow between the scalie's thighs. He thrust the point up and into the soft geni­tals, twisting as he drove it home. He felt the rough­ness of cloth against the back of his hand and then a convulsive, shuddering contraction of muscle. A warm wetness streamed over the boy's wrist as he withdrew the knife.

  Ryan didn't waste time wondering about the ap­parent miracle. He drew the blaster and put
a single round through the scalie's throat, the bullet angling upward and exiting through the top of its skull, bringing a fist-size chunk of bone and a splatter of brains with it.

  As the creature fell, Ryan saw behind it the person who had saved his life, still holding a short-bladed skinning knife in his right hand, the steel smoking a little in the cold, damp air.

  It was a boy, lightly built, wearing a collection of patched rags. His face was partly in shadow as he looked down at the thrashing corpse. Then he looked up, and Ryan saw the curly black hair and the deep-set, serious eyes. The boy appeared to be around eleven or twelve years old, maybe a little younger.

  And Ryan knew.

  He holstered his blaster and held out a hand to the silent boy. "Hello, Dean. Hello, son. It's time to go."