Shatter Zone

by James Axler

  Tracking the murky shape with the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer, Ryan jerked a thumb to the left and began to retreat from the bookstore. Nodding in agreement, the other companions were close behind, moving as softly as possible. That was a stickie inside the building. The muties were the scourge of the, hard to chill and often traveling in packs of dozens. The only reason the mutie hadn’t taken over the was that they were stupe and easily outmaneuvered.

  Tightening her grip on the MP-5 rapidfire, Mildred wondered if she had inserted a full clip into the blaster after that last fight with the gators, or was it only partially full? But this wasn’t the time or place to double-check. She would have to make sure to only fire in short bursts. As gently as possible, Mildred clicked the selector switch from automatic to single shot.

  As if on cue, there came a musical jingling from a shop bell and the door to the bookstore swung open on creaking hinges. Blinking its oversize eyes at the sunlight, the big male stickie tilted his head to look directly at the massed companions.

  Nobody moved or spoke for a single long second, the incredible sight of the mutie using a door just like a norm paralyzing the stunned companions into immobility.

  It hadn’t dumbly pushed the door open, Ryan realized in shock. The mutie had turned the knob first to disengage the lock. How was that possible?

  Then the stickie gave a loud hoot, the end of the cry rising in pitch. Without warning, the window exploded, showering the companions in shards of milky glass, and out rushed a dozen of the humanoid creatures, uncaring of the sharp glass they raced over with bare feet. But even as the companions recouped from the startling arrival of the muties, they felt shocked at the sight of the stickies waving thick sticks with a sharp rock attached to the ends with ropes.

  “No way!” Ryan shouted in disbelief, even as he cut loose with the Steyr. The 7.62 mm rounds blew away two of the stickies, the dying muties dropping their clubs as they slumped to the sidewalk gushing watery blood from the gaping head wounds.

  “Son of a bitch!” J.B. cursed, hammering the muties with a long burst from the Uzi, the copper-jacketed 9 mm rounds punching through the heads of the creatures with grisly results.

  But as the first wave of stickies fell, more climbed through the broken window and charged at the companions, waving their crude weapons. Then the one standing in the doorway reached back inside the store and pulled out a wooden spear, the tip blackened by fire to make the point hard and more lethal.

  Fireblast! Ryan fired the SIG-Sauer once, blowing out the brains of that monster, then swung up the stock to smash the face of another as it tried to grab him by the throat. Incredibly, the next stickie backed away and tried to duck around the longblaster.

  What the hell was going on here? These stickies were dodging an attack, almost as if they were intelligent. This was worse than any jump nightmare!

  Jak cut loose with the Colt Python, blowing tongues of flame from the blaster, then flipped a knife into the eye of a second mutie. Both fell, oozing blood onto the sandy predark street.

  Instinctively thumbing back the hammer on the Ruger as if it were the LeMat, Doc blew off the misshapen face of a stickie, the grisly remnant hitting a nearby wall with a wet splat. An eye clinging to the bricks stared blankly back at Doc, making the scholar shuddered in revulsion.

  Ruthlessly, Krysty sent a fan of hot lead from the MP-5 across the shambling things, and Ryan put two more rounds into the bigger stickies to finish the job. But even as the last mutie kneeled on the broken asphalt, it looked up to croon at the cloudy sky in a new and different kind of hoot that none of the companions had ever heard before. Almost immediately, a distant hoot answered.

  “Dark night, the bastard is calling for help!” J.B. gasped, dropping a spent clip from the Uzi and slapping in a spare. “What’s going on here? Did we jump to another world?”

  “Is Kaa back?” Krysty demanded, her hair writhing in fright at the terrible name.

  Even as she frantically reloaded, Mildred considered the matter and knew that she had no possible answer. Nobody knew for sure where the stickies came from in the first place, whether they were accidents of Nature caused by the nuclear holocaust, deevolved humans, escaped genetic experiments, bioweps, or whatever. But there was one, singular, unarguable factor about the mutants. They lived, and anything alive always tried to improve itself, to make the next generation stronger, smarted, better. Perhaps the stickies had just taken the next step in evolution.

  In spite of herself, Mildred shivered at the idea. Stickies with weapons.

  “Into the store, fast!” Ryan directed the companions, pocketing an exhausted clip and sliding the Steyr off a shoulder.

  “What was that?” Doc demanded, stupefied. “Are you mad, sir?”

  “The call came from over there,” Ryan stormed impatiently, walking over the chilled mutie. “So we know the store is empty, now move it or lose it, Doc!”

  Hesitantly, the scholar did as requested, his face twitching with unease as they moved into the building. The interior of the store was the same as the others, stripped bare with nothing remaining. Why there would be stickies inside an empty building, Ryan had no idea, but these were new stickies. It would be impossible to guess their needs and goals.

  As the companions checked their blasters, the hooting from outside was becoming steadily louder. And closer.

  “Sounds like too many take out in stand-up fight,” Jak stated gruffly.

  “I’ll agree with that,” Krysty added, opening the bathroom door with her rapidfire. For a second, the woman almost fired at the sight of angry eyes on an inhuman face. But then relaxed when she saw that it was her own reflection in a broken mirror.

  “Everybody out the back door,” Ryan directed, pulling a gren from the pocket of his fur-lined coat. Very carefully, he checked the color coding on the military ordnance before removing the ring with a jerk, then casting it aside.

  Already moving that way, Jak eased open the metal fireproof door at the rear of the store, peeking outside with his MP-5 rapidfire at the ready. The exit lead to an alleyway with a sagging wooden fence and a couple of rusted cars. An empty street showed at either end.

  “Clear,” Jak announced curtly.

  “Move,” Ryan ordered, flipping off the arming lever of the canister. As the gren began to trickle smoke, he rolled it into the middle of the store as the companions rushed into the back alleyway. Standing rearguard, Ryan added another smoke canister to the first just as a big male stickie appeared in the broken front window. Even through the billowing smoke, Ryan could see there was a necklace of human teeth around its neck, and the mutie raised a spiked club to shake it menacingly.

  With a dry mouth, Ryan added a third gren, then moved fast, ducking out the back door, and kept going. His thoughts were chaotic, but cold. Escape. Keep moving, and get as far away from this pesthole as possible.

  Ryan just reached the end of the alleyway when the door slammed open and a detonation shook the entire building. Waves of chem flame washed out of the doorway and from the windows, the heady blast rattling the wooden fence and setting it ablaze. Then the ancient partition fell apart, simply too old and weathered to withstand the raging thermite explosion.

  The hooting from the store changed to inhuman howls as Ryan ran to rejoin the others, the heat rising steadily from behind. The thermite had gone off two seconds early! He’d have to remember that in case the others were malfuncs, as well.

  Turning the corner, Ryan drank in the cool fresh air as the light and heat continued to intensify from the burning store behind. But the wailing cries were now mixed with angry hooting from elsewhere in the ruins. As Ryan reached the sidewalk, a stickie appeared and thrust a wooden spear at him. Dodging out of the way, Ryan fired the Steyr from his hip and cut the mutie down. Then another spear flew by the man, the wooden shaft flashing past his good eye.

  Astonished, Ryan turned to see more armed stickies advancing around the burning building. They had come at him from two different directions
in a flanking maneuver. Damn, the stickies were hunting him instead of the other way around! Normally, they loved fire and would always rush to investigate something ablaze before going after a person. But not these bastards.

  Working the bolt-action as fast as possible, Ryan blew away the closest stickie, and charged out of the alleyway just as Jak and Krysty appeared, tossing grens. With his combat boots slapping against the loose sand, Ryan was almost across the street when the charges detonated, the combined blast of the antipers grens seeming to shake the universe.

  Just then a sharp whistle caught Ryan’s attention and he changed course to head for J.B. standing on the next corner. The Armorer was pulling something from his munitions bag, and when Ryan saw what it was, he redoubled his speed to streak right past the man in a desperate attempt to gain some needed distance. This was going to be close.

  Ripping off the safety tape, J.B. yanked the arming pin and flipped the lever, then threw the gren straight at the window of the corner store. It smashed through the snowy pane in a loud crash of glass and disappeared inside.

  Pivoting on a heel, J.B. grabbed his hat and started sprinting after the other companions. Down the block, they had taken secure positions behind a rusted police car, and were all aiming blasters in his direction.

  The mob of hooting stickies had arrived and started up the street. Counting under his breath, J.B. reached ten and dived for the sidewalk. When Ryan and the others saw that, they needed no further prompting and did the same, hugging the concrete as if their very lives depended on it.

  Reaching the corner store, the stickies paused to look inside as if suspecting a trap…and were enveloped in a bright flash of light, followed by a muffled whomp.

  A hard wind swept the intersection as half of the five-story building vanished, compacted into black lump by the irresistible force of the implo gren. The remaining walls cracked, and the rest of the structure tumbled into the street. The two stickies still standing hooted in horror as the falling debris of the building engulfed them completely, and the last vestiges of the armed mob disappeared from view, buried under the crumbling tonnage of stone, bricks and bent steel.

  As the dust clouds from the destruction spread down the empty streets, the companions rose shakily to their feet and breathed a sigh of relief. Then more hooting came from above, and the friends looked skyward to see additional stickies on the roof of a movie theater.

  “Shitfire, the town is infested!” Ryan cursed, blasting away with the Steyr. Krysty and J.B. were right behind with their own weapons, spent brass arcing through the air.

  But then a strange whistle came from out of nowhere, and a fireball of gargantuan size arched upward to crash onto the theater in a blazing torrent. Burning stickies flew off the roof to land in the streets in sickening smacks, the lumps of smoking flesh twitching before finally going still.

  Chapter Twelve

  “By the Three Kennedys,” Doc whispered in shock, even as another group of stickies loped around the corner.

  Swinging around their weps, the companions braced for a fight. But these muties were facing down the side street and ignoring the armed companions. Seizing the moment, the friends backed away to gain more combat room while they reloaded with frantic haste.

  Hooting nervously, the stickies waved their clubs, and one threw a spear. It went out of sight around the corner, and there came a loud metallic clang. A moment later a huge lumbering wag rolled into view.

  The vehicle was a predark bus covered with sheets of corrugated metal. A grillework of thick bars protected every window, and a dozen armed men stood on the roof protected by a low sandbag wall, a crude ironpipe railing holding the stout barrier in place.

  A plume of dark smoke rose from behind the sandbags, but none of the men seemed concerned, so Ryan guessed whatever they were burning had something to do with the fireball launched the earlier. Probably a catapult.

  However, the stickies went crazy at the sight of the lumbering wag, and insanely charged the vehicle. One mutie went under the spiked tires, torn apart even as it was crushed flat. Another stickie leaped onto the grillework covering the driver’s-side window, and a scattergun roared from inside the wag, the fiery discharge cutting the mottled creature in two. As the legs fell off, the upper torso reached inside the wag, and a man cursed, the words changing into an anguished wail.

  “The enemy of my enemy,” Ryan muttered, finishing the ancient quote with a blast from the Steyr. A stickie on the sidewalk had its head removed, the body walking onward for a full yard before toppling over dead, the suckers covering the discolored skin opening and closing like dozens of silently screaming mouths.

  Slamming the rusted wrecks of predark cars out of its way, the driverless juggernaut careened along the street, the man behind the wheel beating at the inhuman hand still attached to his bleeding face. Jumping the curb, the bus knocked over a lamppost, and a man went flying off the roof to hit the asphalt with a sickening crunch of bones.

  As the stickies converged on the unconscious man, the companions peppered the hated creatures with their blasters, the MP-5 rapidfires hosing the foul muties with high-velocity lead.

  Inside the wag, a large man with skin as dark as Mildred’s, pulled a handcannon and aced the driver with one expert shot. Yanking the body out from behind the steering wheel, the newcomer took the chilled man’s place and fought to bring the careening wag under control. Directing the wag back into the street, the driver slammed on the brakes. They squealed in wild protest, but the rampaging wag shuddered to a stop, rocking back and forth for a few moments before coming to a complete halt in the middle of an intersection.

  Shouting orders, the men on top rushed to the sandbag wall and sent a flight of arrows from homie crossbows into the wave of stickies. Hit twice, one of the humanoid creatures leaped on top of a mailbox and hurled a club. Notching a fresh arrow into his crossbow, a man got smashed in the temple with the flying cudgel and his head cracked open wide, red blood and gray brains gushing from the monstrous wound. Shrieking in pain, the man dropped out of sight behind the bags and two other men spun around to lower their crossbows and mercifully chill their mutilated comrade.

  Waving his arms, the stickie on the mailbox hooted in victory, then a man on the roof of the wag threw down a liquid-filled glass bottle with a burning rag tied around the neck. The crude Molotov shattered on the mailbox, the oily contents erupting into thick flames. Covered with fire, the hooting stickie fell backward off the mailbox and started blindly running about, waving its sucker-covered hands. At a full rush, the thing slammed into a store window shattering the centuryold pane of glass and cutting itself. As it fell, the hooting stopped and the men on the wag feathered the smoking corpse with a dozen additional arrows purely for the sake of revenge.

  As the men cheered, another stickie dropped its club to run at the wag, threw itself onto the side. The mutie stayed there for a moment as fresh gelatinous ooze poured from its multiple suckers, then the creature began to climb up the smooth metal.

  Aiming carefully, Mildred put a pair of 9 mm rounds into its head, then Ryan blew off an arm, stopping its ascent.

  Behind the steering wheel, the big black man stared at the companions in puzzlement as he hastily reloaded his own black-powder handcannon. Son of a mutie bitch, who the frag were these rists?

  As the dying stickie reached in through the grille, a young man with a bushy mustache rushed over and shoved his crossbow into the face of the creature. The arrow went through the mutie’s head, spraying out a ghastly mix of bones, brains and blood. Losing its grip, the stickie fell away, but the leg stayed attached and the corpse hung off the side of the wag, dribbling watery life onto the sandy street.

  Another stickie turned to throw a spear at the companions. Krysty ducked out of the way, the shaft going through her living hair. She braced for the onslaught of pain, but apparently the spear had only parted the filaments, not broken any. Feeling sick at the thought of what might have happened, Krysty furiously swu
ng her MP-5 to center on the thing, but Ryan beat her by a heartbeat. The booming Steyr SSG-70 sent out a single skull-shredding round. The stickie reeled away with its head blown open.

  Meanwhile, a pair of stickies leaped onto the iron grille of the wag and started beating on the bars with their clubs, making a hell of a racket. The driver shot one with his blaster, then a man on top fired an arrow downward into the top of the stickie, the barbed end coming out between its legs. Gushing blood, the mutie went limp and dropped to the ground, twitching as if struck by lightning.

  Then something moved in the sky, and Ryan cursed at the sight of a stickie leaping off the top of a nearby building.

  Working the bolt to lever a fresh cartridge into the longblaster, Ryan tried to track the mutie, but it was too late. The hooting stickie landed on the roof of the wag among the men and lashed out with both arms. A man had his crossbow knocked away, the shaft going for the clouds, but another screamed as his face was ripped off, the pulsating red muscles under the skin stretching like warm taffy in the sun.

  Pivoting fast, another man fired an arrow at the stickie, but the shaft went completely through the creature with no apparent effect. Reaching out, the stickie grabbed its new victim by the throat. Startled, the man tried to pull away while he fumbled for a knife. Then a thunderous report sounded and the arm of the stickie was blown off at the elbow.

  Smoke pouring from the barrel of the .44 Ruger handcannon, Doc broke open the exhausted blaster and started reloading with fresh brass shells from the pocket of his frock coat.

  Startled at first, the rest of the newcomers seemed to finally see the companions, and cheered at the unexpected support. Only now even more stickies jumped onto the vehicle and started moving for the men like ghastly spiders.