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Death Hunt
James Axler


The treacherous new world of post-nuclear America guarantees no inalienable rights–no promises of freedom, liberty or justice for all. Instead, chaos and bloodlust thrive–but so do the innate strengths of the human spirit, and the virtues of honour and courage.Ryan Cawdor has endured the worst that Deathlands has to offer and continues to push on, leading his companions through a land of madness and treachery, seizing each new day with a deep, primal hope that refuses to die….Ryan's razor-sharp edge has been dulled by the loss of his son, Dean–but grief is an emotion he cannot indulge if the band is to escape the chains of sadistic Baron Ethan. His thriving ville offers a special commodity: blood sport. Now with the group's armorer, JB Dix, imprisoned and near death, Ryan and the others are forced to join Ethan's hunt–as the hunted. But the perverse and powerful baron has changed the rules. Skilled in mind control, he ensures the warriors will not be tracked by high-paying thrill-seekers. Instead, they will hunt each other–to the death. In the Deathlands, the odds of survival just got worse….









Ryan could feel the poison start to seep into his mind


The one-eyed man’s willpower was always strong, but his mind was distracted by the need to take in air. He didn’t have the immediate strength to break eye contact, and by the time he was able to breathe evenly, and devote his full attention to Ethan, the tentacles of hate were already beginning to take hold. Jak was his friend and comrade-in-arms, sure…but if they took out Jak, then J.B. would be freed…. No, he knew that wasn’t the case, but why the hell should Jak escape this torture? What made him so special?

“Chill him.” The words escaped from Ryan’s lips before he even knew it was what he felt.

Ethan stepped back and looked across the line at the three companions who were now fully under his influence. Then he caught Jak’s baleful glare.

The baron threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. This was going to be one hell of a hunt.




Other titles in the Deathlands saga:


Pilgrimage to Hell

Red Holocaust

Neutron Solstice

Crater Lake

Homeward Bound

Pony Soldiers

Dectra Chain

Ice and Fire

Red Equinox

Northstar Rising

Time Nomads

Latitude Zero

Seedling

Dark Carnival

Chill Factor

Moon Fate

Fury’s Pilgrims

Shockscape

Deep Empire

Cold Asylum

Twilight Children

Rider, Reaper

Road Wars

Trader Redux

Genesis Echo

Shadowfall

Ground Zero

Emerald Fire

Bloodlines

Crossways

Keepers of the Sun

Circle Thrice

Eclipse at Noon

Stoneface

Bitter Fruit

Skydark

Demons of Eden

The Mars Arena

Watersleep

Nightmare Passage

Freedom Lost

Way of the Wolf

Dark Emblem

Crucible of Time

Starfall Encounter: Collector’s Edition

Gemini Rising

Gaia’s Demise

Dark Reckoning

Shadow World

Pandora’s Redoubt

Rat King

Zero City

Savage Armada

Judas Strike

Shadow Fortress

Sunchild

Breakthrough

Salvation Road

Amazon Gate

Destiny’s Truth

Skydark Spawn

Damnation Road Show

Devil Riders

Bloodfire

Hellbenders

Separation



Death Hunt




DEATH LANDS ®


James Axler







…if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and win for themselves the domination of the world.

—Theodore Roosevelt,

1858–1919




THE DEATHLANDS SAGA


This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope.…




Contents


Chapter One (#uea9359a9-3575-55a1-9c84-d3f79b332fc8)

Chapter Two (#u6f872e0b-36b5-53d6-a832-7ac4414fa689)

Chapter Three (#ue7ce39df-a02e-572a-a5cf-288288828e99)

Chapter Four (#ua15dc7f4-0bee-5c10-858c-e25c5a646ef8)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


“‘It’s a mighty long way down the dusty trail…’”

“Don’t—”

“‘Where the sun bursts hot on the…’ By the Three Kennedys, the next line has completely escaped me!” Doc exclaimed.

“That’s a blessing, if nothing else,” Mildred murmured. She’d been pleading with Doc to stop quoting half-remembered lines, which she found more irritating than if he had been able to quote whole stanzas, for what seemed to be hours. It couldn’t really have been that long, but time was beginning to drag.

The companions were seated in the kitchen area of a redoubt, the last of the dried and still-edible frozen goods in pots on top of the stove. The self-heats had been securely stowed for their journey ahead; they’d leave when their chrons told them it was daylight up above.

A pall of gloom hung over the six friends, caused by the fact that there were only, now, the six. Ryan had veered between raging anger and deep sorrow in the time following the discovery that Sharona had jumped and taken Dean with her.

Although all of the companions had been shocked at the sudden departure of the boy, and hadn’t known what to make of the circumstances, it seemed that Cawdor had been hit on a deeper level—from which a scar had formed that was more pronounced than any physical reminder of his hard, raging life. Questions consumed Ryan’s mind. Had she tricked the boy? Or had he left of his own accord, without a word to his father and friends? Where were they now? What was to become of them? He had withdrawn into himself, not even wishing to share his anger, pain and confusion with Krysty. For several days he had been little more than a spectral presence, haunting the corridors of the redoubt where they were now resting.

He finally emerged into their midst, and spoken, his tone grim, resigned. But it was the dulled quality of his one good eye that was the biggest sign of his pain, its hard glitter and diamond-hardness temporarily gone.

“Wherever that bitch has jumped, and wherever they both are, there’s no way we can follow. And she knows that…” He didn’t add that it was Dean who would have told her or that this was the hardest thing of all to bear. “But even if we can’t follow, we can still hope…I can still hope,” he added after a pause. “All we can do is carry on. I want us to get out of here as soon as we can.”

There were no arguments from the others. To jump from this redoubt would remove Ryan from the source. To move on in physical space would make the moving on within him that little bit easier to initiate.

The companions scoured the redoubt, stripping the place of anything useful. No one spoke much, and the task was achieved in triple-quick time. They were soon entering the mat-trans chamber, settling into positions that would reduce the stress and agony that came with every jump.

It was the one-eyed man himself who closed the chamber door, folding his length into a sitting position, knees drawn up protectively as the chamber air began to crackle as a white mist whirled wisplike from the metallic disks on the floor and ceiling.

The obliquity of the jump was something Ryan welcomed.

The deviation, however, didn’t last long.

He was haunted by dreams, not the surreal nightmares of a mat-trans jump, the effect of every atom being broken, twisted and turned into an electron stream shot from one unit to another before being painfully reassembled. Those kinds of nightmares, at least, had shape to them. They were sickening, and exposed every fear and loathing contained within the human brain. But they were just nightmares, just the subconscious dredging up the detritus and spewing it out in protest of the battering it was taking from the jump.

These hauntings were worse. They weren’t nightmares. They weren’t even dreams: neither in the sense of having coherence nor in having narrative; not even the distorted logic of most dreams. Instead, they were fragments: wisps as much as the white mist that had swirled around him before he’d finally passed out, with as much substance and with as much seemingly benign malevolence.

A succession of images and memories passed through his brain like a cavalcade; Dean as a small boy—absurd, this, as Ryan hadn’t known of Dean until the boy was nine—Sharona as she was before the rad sickness; the Brody school in which he had enrolled the lad when he had found him again. The circumstances of his rejoining their party the last time, after being used as a gladiator in a sport of barons. What had happened since: snatching him from Jenna, the twisted wife of Baron Alien, who had mixed old-occult practices and the old tech nuke to make her own new way of promulgating a master race…Fireblast, but Ryan had thought Dean had been lost forever.

The last image ripped from his head and held up in front of him was of Dean as he had last seen him: at rest in the redoubt, with plans for the next day. Plans to explore the underground base, to join his father and friends in stripping it before moving on to their next location, the next step in their search for…

Well, for what? What was there now, beyond survival? Twice before Ryan had found his son and then lost him. Was there to be a third chance?

Ryan opened his eye with the feeling that, should he part his lips, his intestines would vomit themselves out through his mouth and the pressure would blow his brains down through his nose.

Except, this time, he wouldn’t fight it and he wouldn’t care.

But he did. The nausea and sense of being turned inside out, the pounding in his skull, as some kind of consciousness returned…served to kick in his sense of survival. Operating on instinct rather than intellect, he pulled himself together, battling to regain the full use of all his senses as rapidly as possibly, lest the mat-trans chamber be vulnerable in any way, leaving them open to attack. He was first on his feet and the first to organize the six companions into a party capable of securing the immediate area.

As always, it was Jak and Doc who took longest to recover from the jump. Doc’s body and mind had been through too much to withstand the jumps, but still the seemingly old man’s stubbornness pulled him through. As for Jak, he was tough, but there was something in him that didn’t respond to the jumps. The albino was always the last to come around, puking painfully as his body readjusted.

J.B. and Mildred exchanged concerned glances as they secured the area. Ryan, perfunctory about the operation, made himself go through the motions, seemingly not as sharp as usual. Fortunately, Krysty could feel the darkness coming off him, which had nothing to do with her doomie sense and everything to do with her feelings for the one-eyed man, and was able to cover and compensate.

A thorough recce determined that the redoubt was secure, so they settled in for some rest before heading into the outside world. In itself, the redoubt had been no problem. Deserted, it had remained untouched since the advent of skydark. The only signs of passing time were the layer of dust that had gathered where the gently wheezing air-conditioners had slowly begun to wind down without continuous maintenance. The air was slightly stale and some of the comps had cut out where transistors and fuses had died of age.

As with most of the redoubts they had visited, there was no sign of life. Unlike many of those other redoubts, there was little sign that the land around the installation had suffered much upheaval. The levels they explored showed little other than minor cracks in the reinforced walls and ceilings.

And unlike other bases, this one hadn’t been completely stripped. The armory would replenish their ammo supply and the clothes stores would provide much-needed new underwear, T-shirts and fatigues for those who wanted them.

The companions rested, then spent a whole day taking inventory and planning their next move. Another good night’s sleep refreshed them enough to tackle the unknown that lay beyond the redoubt. They knew from preliminary recces that the levels were intact up to the surface, that the maps and charts on the walls of some of the offices and comp rooms suggested they were in the northwest of the Deathlands, an area prone to erratic climatic and temperate conditions. All levels to the final exit door were known territory: what lay beyond was in question.

Which was how they found themselves gathered in the kitchen area, waiting for their last meal, Doc’s impatience and anxiety expressed in the way he once again sang old snatches of half-remembered songs and poems.

“How long before we eat? I’m getting antsy waiting down here,” J.B. muttered.

“Yeah—get going. See what face,” Jak agreed.

“It’ll be ready when it’s ready, like everything is,” Ryan commented flatly.

“It’s not like you to get all philosophical on us,” Mildred said with a note of surprise she couldn’t quite disguise.

Ryan shrugged. “Had some time to think, and I’ve had a lot to think about. But, fuck it, you just have to keep on, right?”

“If you say so, lover,” Krysty said gently. “But it doesn’t mean we should give up.”

“Give up what?” Ryan asked. The clearness of his good eye as he fixed it on her betrayed that he was genuinely confused as to her meaning. Was she saying to never give up on looking for Dean, or did she mean never give up on their quest? But what use was looking for the promised land when he would never be settled inside?

“Give up on anything…on each other,” Krysty said.

There was little else to say. Ryan knew she was right. If nothing else, the companions had to look out for one another. They had been through too much together and lost too many friends along the way for it to be any other way.

He nodded. Brief, but enough. “You’re right. Let’s eat, get ourselves together and get out there.”

Within an hour they were ready to go. At least an hour remained until, by their estimation of the time zone, the light would be good enough to call it daybreak.

“Dark night, let’s not leave it any longer. Even if it means watching the sunrise, I need to get out of this pesthole,” J.B. said irritably.

They used the elevators to move them through the base, unwilling to expend unnecessary energy now that they were laden for the journey ahead. There was a silence over the group as they entered the elevator that would take them to the top level. Mildred, looking around at the companions, felt that it would benefit them to get out of the redoubt and into whatever was outside. Action would break the torpor that hung over them.

However, whatever was outside, in fact, was their next problem.

Knowing they were in the northwest, and that the earth and rock around the redoubt hadn’t suffered from shock waves and tremors, they knew little about what was beyond the exit door. As they left the elevator and moved up the gentle incline toward the thick, reinforced exit door, the unknown began to assume importance. Would the exit be blocked by a rockfall? Were they in a valley, or up the side of a hill where the scree may have eroded and thus leave them stranded? Was the redoubt entrance under water? What was waiting on the outside?

There was no way of knowing until the lever was pressed, and the door began to rise. There were outside sec cams, but they had long since ceased to function as a result of the nuclear winter following skydark.

Ryan waited by the lever to the main door as the last set of interior sec doors ground shut. When they had closed, the companions were standing within a shallow channel of space. The reasoning was simple. If there was danger, they could defend the channel until the outer sec door was closed again, thus eliminating any risk of an enemy gaining access to the labyrinthine redoubt, indefensible with the small force they had at their disposal. Natural dangers were another matter.

“You realize that if there’s water out there, you’re going to have to be pretty damn quick,” Mildred said as Ryan prepared to open the door. “The pressure if we’re below sea level will shoot it through the gap…”

Ryan agreed. “We should have enough time to get the door closed before this fills up,” he said flatly. “Anyway, chances are it won’t be under water. The tunnels would be fucked with that much pressure, and there’s no sign of dampness or leakage.”

Mildred nodded. Ryan was right. There hadn’t been signs usual of a high water table and they had rarely seen a redoubt with less stress damage or water infiltration. Nonetheless, there was a worry nagging at her that Ryan wasn’t one hundred percent on the ball right now.

“Okay, triple-red and in position,” Ryan said as he moved to press the lever, which they all knew was usually Dean’s job.

The companions fanned out on either side of the sec door. Krysty and Jak lined up behind Ryan. The one-eyed man had unholstered his SIG-Sauer, which he held in his left hand as he pressed the lever with his right. Jak had his .357 Magnum Colt Python to hand, while Krysty had her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson ready for action.

On the far side of the channel, J.B. took the front position, choosing to shoulder his M-4000, which, with its load of barbed-metal fléchettes, would wreak havoc on any flesh-and-blood enemy who may be lying in wait. Behind him, Mildred was ready with her Czech-made ZKR 551 target pistol. It wouldn’t cause as wide a range of damage as J.B.’s blaster, but with Mildred’s crackshot ability it was just as effective. Doc took the rear. The most vulnerable of the companions because of the mental and physical battering he had taken, he nonetheless had a streak of sheer granite will within him that would always make him a formidable opponent. If nothing else, he had his LeMat percussion pistol, which had the ability to inflict maximum damage on anything hostile that approached.

Ryan pressed hard on the lever and the outer door began to grind and open slowly. There was no inrush of water. Neither was there a trickle of rock and gravel to presage a landfall to indicate they were blocked in by rock.

As the door opened wider, the light from the redoubt tunnel flooded onto the land beyond. Dawn hadn’t yet broken, and Ryan cursed under his breath, knowing that the light streaming from the redoubt made them an easy target. He released the lever and flattened himself against the wall, motioning to the others to do likewise.

From what he had seen before pulling back, the land beyond the redoubt entrance was barren and flat, and there was a track that led from the door to the level ground. It was a shallow incline, and the dust on the track was undisturbed, suggesting that no one had been sniffing around the redoubt entrance for a long time.

He tried to still his breathing and to listen, straining for any noises that may betray anyone waiting in ambush, but he could hear nothing. He looked at Jak. The albino youth’s hunting senses were so finely honed that he had an almost preternatural grasp of the natural world around him. Jak shook his head briefly. He could neither hear nor smell anything dangerous out there. Ryan then looked at Krysty. With her doomie sense, her sentient hair would curl tightly and protectively to her scalp if there was imminent danger. The Titian mane was free-flowing.

The one-eyed man signaled across to the Armorer. They would move out, covered by their companions, and recce the area. He counted to three and signaled.

The two men rolled under the partly open door and hit the dirt outside the redoubt at the same moment, temporarily blind to the area beyond the arc of light as their eyes adjusted to the surrounding gloom. Ryan went left, J.B. right. Both held their blasters ready to fire at the least provocation.

Ryan felt the ground give beneath his feet. It was hard-packed dirt, suggesting that the area was dry, but there was a soft top layer, almost like dust, which made him feel that the place in which they had landed was like a desert. The impression was reinforced by the sparse trees and vegetation that loomed as darker shadows against the earth and sky as dawn approached.

His eye scanned the immediate area for cover and saw only a small cluster of rocks barely large enough to shelter one person. He made for the rocks, ready for an enemy to spring into view or to open fire. There was nothing to suggest the rocks were being used in such a manner. He skidded to a halt, hunkering down by them and pausing to look around.

All remained quiet.

He looked across to where the Armorer lay flat against the ground, one hand clutching the M-4000, the other clamping his battered fedora to his head. Their movements had thrown up a cloud of dust that shone in the approaching dawn as the first rays of the sun hit the motes.

J.B. shook his head. All was clear on his side of the track.

Ryan turned to signal the others to follow, then realized that they wouldn’t be able to see him. It was too dark outside the redoubt.

He rose to his feet and looked around. As the sun began to crawl above the horizon, he could see that the redoubt had been built into a hillside that had long since eroded, leaving the roof of the reinforced concrete tunnel almost exposed. The track had obviously, at some time, led down into the lee of the hill, but the weather conditions over the past century or so had virtually leveled the ground for as far as he could see. Which suggested that there were harsh storms—possibly chem storms—and that the desert wind was potentially deadly. They would have to get moving and try to find their way into a more hospitable terrain as soon as possible.

“Come on out. It’s clear,” he called as he walked back toward the entrance, waving J.B. back to the light as he did so. By the time he was within the pool of light, the Armorer was at his side and the others had emerged from the entrance.

“It looks bleak,” Mildred murmured.

“No animals. Bad sign,” Jak added.

Ryan had to agree. If the terrain could support little in the way of wildlife, then it was unlikely to welcome the companions.

“We need to move as soon as the sun’s up. Mebbe we’ll get a better look around in the light. And once it’s up, we can get a direction. Right, J.B.?”

The Armorer nodded, already searching his capacious pockets and baggage for his minisextant.

“What do you think caused that?” Mildred asked, facing the entrance and noticing the way the hill had eroded.

“Chem storms,” Krysty replied. “They could strip anything down if it’s stuck in them long enough.”

“Then I would venture to hope that we are not that unlucky,” Doc commented. “Although…”

J.B. had turned and was looking toward the horizon. The rising sun looked bloated and purple through the shimmering haze of cloud that hung sluggishly in the sky. Purple clouds—the sign of toxic chem—seemed to hover malevolently above the desert floor. As the light spread over the land, he could see that the foliage that had struggled to survive was stunted and twisted where years of chem-soaked rains had affected plant DNA structures. The earth had a faint purple-brown tinge in its dry constituency where the chemicals had infected the soil.

J.B. took a reading and pointed to the south-southwest.

“Sea’s over that way, I reckon. Depends how far north we are in the first place, though. Guess the sea should keep the land cleaner over there,” he added, unable to keep the uncertainty from his voice.

“Only one way to find out. And we sure as hell can’t stay here,” Ryan said simply.

They struck out in the direction indicated by J.B. once he’d consulted his minisextant and his old plasticized map. Ryan led the way, with J.B. bringing up the rear. Between them, Krysty and Mildred were followed by Doc and Jak, the albino mutie changing his position in the line to cover Doc’s back now that Dean was gone. It was a small thing, not even spoken of among them, but it was indicative of the changes they would have to make. Without the younger Cawdor, the dynamic of group security and battle plans had changed: regardless of personal feelings, to adapt for their survival they would have to almost forget that he had ever been among them.

The arid landscape that stretched around them was revealed in its immensity as the sun fully rose and cast its light over the land. As far as they could see, in every direction, the layer of dusty soil covered hard-packed earth that was streaked with the purple of the chem clouds above. It wasn’t desert. This was definitely soil rather than sand, but it seemed all the more desolate because of this. The few grasses that were spread in sparse croppings were tough, spiked blades that threatened to cut anyone who brushed against them. Few plants could survive in the nutrient-drained, chem-raddled soil, but those that did were sickly specimens that seemed to wither under the hot sun.

And a hot sun it was. The chem clouds, sparse purple and yellow wisps across the sky like a malevolent gauze, offered no protection from the harsh rays. Rather, they seemed to rap and to magnify the intensity of the heat, giving off a humid and fetid odor, with an underlying and poisonous sweetness that made breathing an effort.

As they marched, the companions were grateful the redoubt had given them plentiful supplies of water, since anything they would find—if at all—in this wasteland would be tainted and possibly deadly.

Grateful, also, for the salt tablets that Mildred had looted from the pharmacy in the redoubt and for the protective clothing that they had been able to find. The jackets Mildred, Doc, Jak and J.B. had chosen had been made for the old Pacific northwest weather, and so were thick and heavy. They also had hoods and visors that kept off the worst excesses of sunstroke, even if they made you sweat heavily underneath.

A whole day’s marching was slow and painful. Doc’s breath rasped painfully in time to their footsteps, and Jak stumbled and fell a couple of times, needing water and salt tablets more than the others. His small, slight frame had a surface area to mass ratio that made him lose water and salt quicker than any of the others, especially beneath the heavy protective jacket.

Mildred looked back at the pair several times as they marched, concern evident in her face.

The barren land seemed to stretch endlessly on all sides of them. Should they have struck out and tried to find life of some kind? Should they have taken another day or two’s rest—the ancient air-conditioning system could possibly have coped—and then made another jump, rather than risk being fried out here? Ryan had seemed to be motivated by more than just his survival instincts this time. It was a desire to escape the confines of a redoubt, and to just do something…anything. Or was she just reading that into the situation because she was tired, hot and cranky?

They stopped a couple of times on the first day, taking advantage of the sparse shade offered by a few stunted trees. The shallow root systems of the twisted trunks spread over a long distance before petering out, suggesting that they took whatever sustenance they could from the rain as it fell. It was likely that there was no water table unless a person dug deep—something that the lack of damage to the redoubt had earlier suggested—and that the only viable source for survival were the rains. Considering the dryness of the topsoil, it was likely there was little in the way of rainfall on anything approaching a regular basis. Looking at the deadly chem clouds floating above them, and the vast expanse of nothingness around them, the companions were glad for these signs: to be caught in a chem storm with no shelter would potentially be deadly.

Still, they trudged on in the heat, moving at a pace that seemed to deteriorate as the sun moved painfully slowly across the sky. Covering nowhere near the distance they usually would in such a time, the fall of twilight was promising. The temperature dropped rapidly, and although they all knew that before long it would be bone-chillingly cold, the sudden descent to a lower temperature was welcome after the stultifying heat of the day.

They continued until they came to the shelter of a stunted copse of trees. Ryan signaled for them to stop and, using the wood around them, they set about building a fire. The arid wasteland seemed deserted, but the light and heat was for protection as much as their own warmth. It would enable them to keep a lookout for any marauding nocturnal creatures. There had been no sign of any kind of life so far, but that wasn’t surprising considering the intense heat of the day. Anything that could live in such conditions would have to be hardy, and also nocturnal. The night, when they were trying to rest before the rigor of the next day, would be the dangerous time.

The companions organized themselves into watches and tried to rest. But, despite the clothes and thermal blankets they had taken from the redoubt stores, the cold seeped into their bones. When the time came to be roused for watch, none of them could safely say that they had gotten much rest.

As the sun rose the next morning, the companions were out of sorts and tired. Not one of them had had a good night’s rest.

“Gaia, but I hope this changes soon,” Krysty said as she stretched, looking up to the green-purple sky and making the most of that brief period between the chill of night and the heat of day.

“It can’t stretch like this for much farther. We should hit the coast soon,” J.B. stated.

“Trouble is, what kind of condition are we going to be in when we do?” Mildred commented. “The salt tablets won’t last forever and neither will the water.”

“We press on. Can’t turn back,” Ryan said simply.

Doc fixed Ryan with a stare. His blue eyes, sometimes clouded with troubled visions that only he could see, were today startlingly clear. He could almost see into Ryan’s heart, see the pain. But at what cost to the rest of them? He chose to say nothing—this wasn’t the time—and handed out self-heats to the other companions, leaving Ryan to last. The one-eyed man gestured that he wasn’t hungry.

“My dear boy, I do not care whether you are or not. You have to eat, keep up your strength. We are relying on you, do not forget,” he added with emphasis. “You are of little use to us if you do not have the energy reserves to march or to fight…and of little use to yourself in such a case, I should not wonder.”

Ryan frowned and studied the old man intently. He was right, of course, he was. The one-eyed man took the food. It was bland and chemical-tasting, as self-heats usually were, but it was energy. That was all that mattered.

“J.B., you reckon we’re still headed in the right direction?” he asked. The Armorer checked his minisextant with the sun and confirmed that they were still on south-southwest. “Then I figure we keep going. We’ve come too far to turn back. It has to get better…”

“More out there,” Jak commented. “Smell it, hear it. Mebbe not much, but something survives on more than this.” He bent and took a handful of the dry soil, letting it run through his fingers.

“Then let’s go,” Ryan decided. “Sooner we move, sooner we get the hell out of this.”

They broke camp and set off once more. Mildred wondered if she was the only one to detect the double entendre in Ryan’s choice of words. From the way that Krysty was looking at the one-eyed man, she suspected not.

Jak had been correct. It was a subtle change, and it took some while for them to notice, but the Gila monster that sprung across the line as they marched brought it home. The conditions were improving. The air was still stifling and the heat from the sun was still intense, but there was a lessening in the humidity. Looking up, they could see that the cloud cover was spare, the chem clouds allowing more of the sky to show through untainted. The soil around was still dry, but there were signs of lichen and fern. The grasses looked less stark. They were softer clumps, thicker and more lush. The trees appeared to twist less, the root systems seemingly able to burrow a little deeper into the earth.

Stopping to take note, Jak could tell that there was more wildlife. He could hear birds, see a few in the distance. Obviously poor, scrawny creatures, they were there, nonetheless. As were the reptiles and insects—more than that Gila monster or the dung beetle that now crawled across his combat boot. Even the presence of a dung beetle suggested mammals from which it could scavenge. Small one, mebbe, no more. The albino could sense no danger in the shape of larger predators.

Jak allowed himself a small smile. “More life—mebbe food and water and not so much heat,” he said to the others.

“Mebbe. Press on some more before we rest, see if we can find out what,” Ryan replied. For the first time in days, a smile creased his seemingly ever-grim visage.

They moved forward with a renewed sense of purpose and a pace quickened by expectation. And as they moved, so the landscape around them seemed to improve with every half mile they traversed. The dusty top layer of soil gave way to hard-packed ground beneath, which became that much softer beneath the trampling of their feet. The patches of grass and lichen spread out so that the exposed soil became an exception rather than the rule. And the musk of animal life grew stronger around them, becoming almost tangible.

Which should have been a warning.

The farther from the redoubt, the more the landscape began to resemble something that could feasibly support life. It was almost as if the redoubt itself had somehow acted as the epicenter for the desert area. Perhaps it had. Although the toxicity would have abated within the area itself, it was possible that the military activity in the redoubt had concentrated on chemical warfare, which was reflected in the desolation. The thought crossed Mildred’s mind and she made a note to check herself and the others for any signs of contamination that may occur in the next few days. Assuming that the next few days would be quiet enough to allow for such a check.

It seemed as though quiet might be the case as the day slowly faded into twilight and they put distance between themselves and the barren land. It was still stiflingly hot, but even so the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the lusher vegetation allowed for more shelter from the direct heat of the sun.

It also provided hiding places for the wildlife that became more prevalent.

Jak slowed and focused his attention on a clump of turquoise-berried shrubbery wild with red and yellow leaves among the green.

“What?” Ryan questioned briefly, stopping as he noticed the albino hunter slow down.

Jak answered him with an almost imperceptible nod, not bothering to shift the glare of his red eyes from his target. In a smooth, fluid motion he palmed a leaf-bladed throwing knife from within his patched camou jacket. The knife left his hand with minimal effort, flashing through the air and into the clump of vegetation.

There was a squeal—fear and pain mixed on a screeching note—and the bush seemed to take on a life of its own, exploding as two creatures shot outward in a blur of motion. They were moving away from the companions, fleeing in fear, but the death rattle from the shrub suggested that there had been a third creature and that Jak’s aim had been true.

Ryan moved toward the vegetation, the SIG-Sauer in his hand, ready to blast anything that may present the merest hint of a threat. He used his heavy combat boot, raised tentatively, to open up the dense foliage. It would take an incredibly strong bite or claw to go through the toughened leather, and he was unwilling to risk a more vulnerable hand or arm to the task.

“Fireblast! That’s not a pretty sight,” he breathed as the creature in the shrubbery became visible.

The others joined him.

The creature was some kind of mutie raccoon, larger than any they’d seen before, with a heavily developed back and hindquarter musculature that made it look like some sort of hybrid raccoon-badger. Its snout had been cleaved by the knife, the razor-honed point making short work of the bone and flesh, Jak’s unerring arm driving it up and into the frontal lobes of the creature’s brain. The mutie lay in the last twitches of death, staring up at them with eyes that could no longer see.

“Shit, that’s a mean-looking bastard,” Mildred whistled.

“Yeah, and his little friends are going to be pretty pissed at what we’ve done when they get over the urge to run,” Krysty added thoughtfully. “They’ve been tailing us, right?”

Jak nodded. “Smelled them couple a miles back. Part of pack, getting closer, bolder when they think we don’t know.”

“They’re pretty quiet for something so big,” Krysty stated. “I thought I could feel something, but I didn’t hear them.”

“Guess we’d better be triple-red, then,” Ryan said decisively. “If we’re their game, they’ll be back. Figure we’re probably the biggest, tastiest-looking prey they’ve seen for a while.”

The companions set off once more, keeping closer and staying on the alert. Blasters were drawn in anticipation of an attack. As they became aware, it seemed that there was more noise, more movement. Was it because they had been slack before the chilling or had the scent of blood stirred up the creatures of the woods?

Small rodents scuttled into the undergrowth as they approached, causing J.B. and Ryan to draw beads, fingers tightening on triggers before relaxing as they realized there was no threat.

Doc and Mildred directed their attention to the skies. They were entering an area where there was a denser canopy of leaf and branch cover than before. What kind of birds were sheltering in the cover provided? And not just wildfowl. There was also the possibility of snakes dropping onto them from above.

“Over there,” Jak snapped suddenly, gesturing them to halt. He slipped out of line and into the cover of a grassy knoll. He emerged, dragging the corpse of what looked like some kind of wild dog. It had been gnawed at the hindquarters, the stomach and ribs stripped bare. The head and forequarters had been barely touched. The animal almost had a look of surprise on its muzzle, its glassy eyes seemingly shocked even in the moment of chilling.

“Fresh, mebbe less than day. No flies, maggots, no rotten meat smell. Must be close. Mebbe we stray onto their hunting ground.”

He didn’t add that the dog looked powerful and that the mutie raccoons were either powerful in a pack or were even more formidable than they had guessed individually.

“Need to stay triple alert now,” Ryan said quietly. “They could be close.”

“Not all that close, dear boy,” Doc said, suddenly sinking to his knees and examining the still intact forequarter of the beast. “I suspect we may be in spitting distance of something approaching a ville.”

“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked, puzzled.

Doc smiled grimly and traced a scar line on the joint of the dog’s foreleg. “This is no mere scar, and I suspect that this creature may not have been as wild as it was once. Dr. Wyeth, would you confirm my suspicions?”

Mildred came over and hunkered down beside Doc. “This had better be good,” she muttered. “It’s not my idea of a good time to kneel down and look at a hunk of rotting carcass.”

But her imprecations went no further. She squinted, taking a closer look at the scar. Dammit, but the old fool was right.

“Shit, that’s been stitched. This is a domestic canine, which means we must be near some kind of settlement. There’s no way it would wander far if it was used to living with people, and it doesn’t look like it’s been dragged that far.”

Ryan’s face split with a crooked grin. “Signs of life. That’s something, right? We’ll move on out, keep heading seaward. Who knows how far we are from the coast, but at least we know that there’s someone between us and the water.”

Spirits lightened by this revelation, the group picked up the pace. If they could find some kind of settlement before darkness fell, it would be safer than making camp out here.

But, as they moved on, Krysty frowned. The strands of Titian hair around her neck and shoulders started to curl, wrapping themselves close to her nape. She shot a glance at Jak and could see that he, too, was in a heightened state of awareness.

“Yeah, approaching from there—” he nodded as his gleaming red eyes caught hers “—and plenty of them.”

Even as he spoke, the others became aware of a crashing in the undergrowth that was growing nearer with every second. A pack of the mutie animals was approaching at speed.

Ryan unslung the Steyr, and slammed the bolt. “Triple-red. Fire as soon as you sight,” he yelled. Even as he spoke, he was aware that the gloom of twilight under the cover of the trees would make for great pools of shadow that would disguise the movement of the creatures. Hoping the light would hold out long enough, he knew there would be places where he would have to shoot on sound alone, which would be difficult once the firing started, obliterating all else.

The first of the mutie creatures, driven by a lust for blood and, perhaps, some primeval desire for revenge, appeared from the undergrowth only a few yards from where they stood. It leaped across the intervening space, its powerful haunches propelling it through the air. Ryan raised his rifle and fired a solitary round. The creature’s flight was checked, the force of the shell almost changing the mutie’s trajectory as it spun sideways, falling to the ground with a hideous cry of pain. A second shell finished it off. The one-eyed man was taking no chances that the wounded animal might fight back.

Rather than retreat, the chilling of the lead creature just made the muties more ferocious. They began to pour out of the undergrowth, reaching double figures with a frightening speed. Mildred, Krysty and Jak, armed with their handblasters, picked off the animals singly, aiming—like Ryan—for accuracy. But there were too many animals and not enough space and time in which to maneuver.

“Doc, take the left hand with shot. I’ll deal with the right,” J.B. yelled over the bedlam of squealing muties and blasterfire. As he yelled, he unslung his Smith & Wesson M-4000.

“Understood,” Doc shouted, for once not wasting words. The Armorer’s intention was clear: they were the only two of the companions with the firepower to put a serious dent in the marauding forces. While the others picked off the animals in front of them, it would be up to Doc and J.B. to try to stem the flow from the darkness beyond.

It was no time for subtlety.

Doc used the shotgun chamber of the LeMat, firing into the darkness, the percussion pistol roaring as the shot emerged from the barrel of the old blaster, moving at high velocity into the darkness, spreading out to put deadly pellets through anything that got in its way. The squeals and cries from the darkness suggested it was an effective tactic.

Likewise, J.B. fired off a blast from the M-4000. The normal shot charge from such a blaster would be effective, but the Armorer had loaded barbed-metal fléchette rounds that, when propelled at immense velocity, would turn and twist in the air, ripping chunks out of whatever they came into contact with, causing irreversible internal damage on any carcass they entered.

The twin-pronged attack had the desired effect. The numbers of attacking creatures were immediately lessened; many turned and fled in fear or injury. The rest of the companions had the precious seconds they needed to pick off whatever attackers remained.

In the aftermath, the air stank of blood and cordite, the carnage obvious, even in the encroaching darkness of the night.

“Shit, too late to find a ville now,” Ryan murmured. “We need to move on a little, pitch a camp, before the stragglers return to attack again.”

“We should be okay,” J.B. commented. “There’s enough chilled meat here to keep most of the predators for miles around busy until sunrise.”

Krysty allowed herself to shiver. “Let’s get moving, then, before any of them come out of cover.”

Doc smiled. “That would be wise. And, of course, the smell will be awful here.”

Jak snorted. “Yeah. Sooner pitch camp better—downwind, right?”




Chapter Two


Jak stayed on watch through the night. Their camp was another five hundred yards from the scene of the slaughter, but even so the albino youth felt a nagging sense that there was still danger in the air. When Ryan asked him, he shrugged. He couldn’t say what it was, but that he just had a sense of it. The woods were too alive for the night; something was making the wildlife restless.

Krysty had been unable to shed any light on Jak’s unease. She was still running on adrenaline from the battle against the mutie raccoons and couldn’t sense anything.

Jak stayed silent, as still as a rock, looking back into the darkness. His red eyes were like coals in the night, burning bright toward the scene of carnage. He refused attempts to relieve him, telling Ryan he wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway. He could smell the blood and the hunger as the smaller scavengers came out of hiding to pick clean the carcasses the companions had left behind. He could hear the sounds of the feeding frenzy, of the crunch of bone and rending of flesh mixed with the squabbles as predators competed for the choicest pieces.

But he could hear more than that. Beyond, and almost hidden beneath the surrounding sounds, he could hear a migration. Smaller animals, birds—these were the vanguard. They were moving toward the area where the raccoon fight had taken place; but they weren’t motivated by the need to feed. It was more than that. They weren’t carnivorous creatures, and would, in truth, be at risk from the scavengers around the carcasses.

So what was scaring them so much that they were blindly running into trouble? It had to be something big, which was why he felt the need to stay awake, to listen and to try to read the sounds of the night. The sounds were too far off to be an immediate threat, but the group was moving fast enough—if the flight of the creatures he could detect was an indication—to trouble them the following day.

By the time dawn had broken, the companions were all awake. At first light, they struck camp. By this time, the flight of the smaller creatures was obvious to all, so close had it become. Yet what lay behind it…

“It’s trouble, no doubt about that,” Krysty said softly, her tone betraying the worry that she felt. Her hair was nestled close to her scalp, her doomie sense working overtime now that she had rested.

“Yeah, but what?” J.B. queried. “Is it the kind of trouble where we try and move out of the way, or is it the kind where that’ll just get us blasted in the back?”

“A dilemma, my dear John Barrymore, a dichotomy that we must solve if we are to save our skins,” Doc whispered.

“Any idea what it is, Jak?” Ryan asked. “It doesn’t sound like a sec party of any kind…” The one-eyed man had been speculating to himself that, if they were near a ville, the noise of the previous night’s firefight with the mutie raccoons may have carried. And it would be understandable if the ville baron’s response to unexpected blasterfire was to send out a party to hunt down the possible threat. But the disturbance seemed to be natural. He couldn’t hear men, horses, wags. And there had been no other blasterfire.

Jak didn’t answer him at first. His attention was still so focused on the source of the flight that it took a while for him to snap into the space occupied by his companions.

“Not men,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Not just animal.”

“What does that mean?” Mildred asked, voicing the confusion they all felt.

“Means not know, not get it,” Jak replied. “Ryan, let me recce. Stay here, give half hour,” he said, tapping his wrist chron.

Around them, the birds chattered and swooped in and out of the foliage and the grasses rustled as small mammals and reptiles moved past them, taking care only to avoid the companions.

Ryan assented after some thought. “Triple-red, okay?”

Jak flashed Ryan a grin—as if he was ever anything else—and moved off into the jungle, running against the flow of the wildlife.

“Okay, people, get hard,” Ryan said to the others, indicating the cover of nearby trees. “Safe to assume we can’t outrun it. We need to know what it is. Let’s hope Jak finds out.”

JAK MOVED THROUGH the woodland like quicksilver, using the clumps of trees as cover, swift and surefooted. This was his natural environment, giving himself over to his finely honed hunting instincts and not thinking consciously, letting his senses tell him what to do. Even through the heavy combat boots his feet seemed as tactile as his hands, searching out the uneven sections of the woodland floor, groping for and avoiding treacherous roots and divots.

He was soon past the mass migration of wildlife, and skirted the clearing where they had defended themselves against the mutie raccoon pack, pausing briefly to note that the scavengers who had followed in their wake had made short work of clearing the carcasses. Few scraps of flesh remained, and there weren’t even that many bones left to mark the battle. Only fresh stains where the blood-soaked earth hadn’t yet been fully absorbed into the woodland floor.

In the eerily empty zone past the migrating creatures, there was a cone of silence, one that was soon broken by a noise that he recognized immediately. One that had been hidden enough by the other sounds to disguise it sufficiently until now. And the scent, sickly sweet, that was also too familiar.

Stickies…

Jak slowed and moved with more caution. The stench of them filled his nostrils and he could hear their movements—fast, slithering, almost reptilian—as well as the hissing breathing and the wordless mewling of the pack.

Stickies tended to move in packs, like herds of cattle, but not normally this fast. And he had never known a pack to cause such a panic among the wildlife of an area. Something out of the ordinary was occurring here and he needed to find out just exactly what it may be.

His senses told him that the pack was at least thirty strong—he couldn’t keep track after counting that many different noises—and moving with speed. They would be on him in a few minutes. He knew he could outrun them once he’d completed the recce, but he needed to get closer, undetected. He jumped for a handhold on a tree limb that was just a foot above his head. He tested its strength, knowing it should hold him easily enough.

Jak pulled himself up into the tree, using the leaf cover to hide himself. He took a good look around. There were enough trees to provide cover for him to circle the pack, always assuming the branches were strong enough to take his weight. Or else he could stay here and wait for the pack to come into view. Unfortunately, from his present position, the trees that provided him with cover also prevented him from getting a good look at the pack.

Jak was patient. He could wait all day and all night for his prey, immobile and focused. But that was when time wasn’t such a pressing issue. Right now, he couldn’t afford to wait.

Testing each limb as he moved, Jak clambered from tree to tree. He was high enough for any noise to be put down to birds fluttering in the branches. Besides, stickies weren’t climbers. As long as he could stay high, he could evade them if he was spotted.

It took only a few trees before he was upon them. He stopped and looked down. The noise they were making had covered any of his own and he felt certain that his presence had not been detected.

They were a heaving mass of mutie flesh, moving almost as one. The black, shining eyes, bereft of intelligence; the fleshless lips over jagged, razor-sharp and yet rotten teeth; the papery, pale skins and the hands with the suckerlike pads on the ends of the fingers. Their very presence seemed to emit an aura of decay. And they were agitated in a way that he had never before seen. As the stickies moved, they tore up anything in their path. The foliage, vegetation and shrubbery that littered the woodlands, even the grasses, were torn from the ground, leaving a churned-up trail in their wake.

Most stickies were mindlessly destructive at the best of times, but this was more than that. It was no wonder that the animals, reptiles and birds had wanted to flee. Anything in their way would be ripped to shreds. Not even for food, but just because it was there.

And the companions were right in their path. Waiting.

Jak turned and moved swiftly through the trees until he was sure he was beyond sight and sound of the pack. He dropped onto the woodland floor and began to run, picking his way nimbly over the roots and the uneven earth. All the while, his mind was racing. By the time he reached the companions, there would be only the slightest of distances between himself and the stickies. Although he was moving fast, the extra distance in circling them would tell. It would be enough time for the group to adopt a defensive position and to try to blast their way out of trouble, but not enough time for them to move out of range and to safety. They couldn’t rely on keeping one jump ahead when they didn’t know what the terrain in front of them was like.

But this was a large pack, and whatever had stirred them up had made them a savage and vicious enemy that would attack regardless. Stickies were normally cowardly, and a taste of blasterfire would scatter them, fear overcoming rage. However, he felt that this pack had something stronger driving them on.

And that was another problem to weigh—what if the thing that enraged the stickies was hot on their tail? Fighting off such a large and maddened pack would be hard enough. To then have to fight another enemy may be a step too far.

Jak was in sight of the companions, who broke cover as he approached. He was barely breathing hard, despite his exertion, but it still took valuable time for him to spit out everything the recce had told him. As he came to the end of his report, the pack was within hearing.

“Fireblast and fuck it, we stand and fight,” Ryan snapped. “Too late to do anything else. They’re moving quick.” He directed the companions back to the positions they had adopted while awaiting Jak. “Fire on sight—just try to chill the bastards as they come through.”

They had one chance to clean this up quickly. Because of their pack mentality, and because the woodlands were becoming more dense, there was a narrow channel through which the stickies would probably try to squeeze. With the companions in cover on either side of this channel, they may just be able to take them out quickly and en masse as they formed a bottleneck to move through. Stickies weren’t smart enough to back off and spread out, striking back at an enemy by spreading their attack front.

The companions could smell the muties before they were upon them, the sickly sweet odor of their sweat filled their nostrils and made them gag. Stickies were vile enough in ones, twos or small groups; but this strong, and it was almost enough to make a challenger give up and run. The companions trained their blasters on the narrow channel, waiting for the first of the muties to hove into view. They had to be close. The noise they were making was now deafening, the smell overpowering.

The foliage trembled, shook and finally was ripped asunder as the pack of stickies burst into the clearing. The wait had been so tense that it was almost a shock when they finally broke cover. They were ripping up anything in their path, each almost oblivious to the others around it, their collective state whipped into a rage of fury and fear—fear that seemed to be coming off them in waves, and was driving them onward. The mass of mutie flesh filled the clearing in less than a few seconds.

Fingers had twitched on triggers, tensing and untensing for the moment when they would have to squeeze to unleash a barrage of blasterfire at the optimum moment to cause the most damage.

And now that moment had arrived.

“Fire!” Ryan yelled. “Aim at their heads.”

The roar of blasterfire was intense, so loud that it washed over the noise made by the pack, drowning everything in the liquid shout of the pistol and machine-pistol action. The screams of the first stickies to feel the impact were lost in the hurricane of sound, but the reactions of their fellows showed that the initial burst had registered through the ranks.

Jak’s Colt Python had the force of a Magnum round. The slugs he squeezed off ripped through their initial target, the rippling force of the bullets causing fatal damage almost instantaneously, the exit velocity such that the slugs cannoned into the head of the next stickie in line, taking it out at the same time.

Krysty, Mildred and Ryan had blasters that demanded more precision: the Smith & Wesson, the ZKR and Ryan’s favored Steyr all taking out one stickie at a time with rapidly delivered single shots that ran true and chilled.

But it was J.B. and Doc who could do the most damage. The LeMat percussion pistol’s second chamber, with its heavy ball, could do a similar job as the Colt Python, the heavily charged ball driving through one stickie and taking out the mutie directly behind as it retained enough momentum to cause lethal damage. It was, inevitably, the shot chamber that was the most deadly, the pellets striking home at a number of targets. Those that it didn’t chill immediately were either trampled beneath the feet of others as they fell, or turned and lashed out in blind anger and pain, fighting with their own.

However, it took valuable time to reload the LeMat, so it was as well that J.B. could fire repeatedly from his Smith & Wesson M-4000, each cartridge load of barbed-metal fléchettes causing damage to the stickie hordes. The pump action enabled him to fire swiftly, and his natural skill and affinity with weapons made reloading a fluid and fast motion, which seemed to come as second nature.

The channel into the small clearing was soon filling with the chilled and the injured, forming a block to the other muties. That should have been the end of matters. Stickies were normally cowardly and would run if attacked by any kind of superior force.

Not this time. Whatever had frightened and agitated them scared them far more than the prospect of being chilled by weapons fire. Instead of turning back to something that terrified them more than the blasterfire, they continued to advance. And if they couldn’t move in a straight line, they would try to find a way through the denser foliage.

Ryan cursed under his breath when he saw them begin to divert. It was always a risk to stand and fight such a large number of stickies simply because of the sheer weight of their numbers. The only advantage that made it even feasible was that the stickies would be likely to follow the same route through the woods and thus would be concentrated in a small area.

The fact that they were now spreading out, moving into areas where it would be hard for the companions to hit them in bulk, and would be able to use the cover of the trees, made it a much more difficult task—one that verged on impossible at the best of times, let alone now. The companions had been marching all day and hadn’t had time to recover from the previous night’s fight with the mutie raccoons. This had been—they had hoped—a similar situation. Not now.

“Spread out,” Ryan yelled.

“There’s a lot down, they’re thinned out,” J.B. shouted. “Watch for them circling…Jak, what can you see?”

“Less half left,” the albino mutie replied pithily. “Still moving blind,” he added.

“So are we,” Krysty yelled at the Armorer and Jak. “Be our eyes.”

Down on the forest floor, Krysty was right. The dense foliage echoed with the sounds of chilled and chilling stickies, mingling with the enraged cries of the remaining pack and the rustle of the foliage as it was disturbed. There were sounds from all around, making it hard to pinpoint the danger. The light was poor, the woodland in shadow and it was almost impossible to pick out movement through the density and the dark. She, Ryan, Doc and Mildred were blinded at ground level. But J.B. and Jak were still in position up trees and had a better view of what was going on around.

Better, but still not great.

“Shit, can’t see too much,” J.B. yelled over the noise. “Three of them to your right, Millie, about three o’clock.”

Mildred furrowed her brow, frowning heavily as she tried to pick out one noise from another. At the Armorer’s words she turned to her right and squeezed out three shots at the first noises she heard. Screams of pain confirmed that she had found a target with at least two of the shells. But the third hadn’t quite finished the job. An enraged stickie, pouring blood from a neck wound, crashed through the undergrowth and was upon her before she had a chance to move. It crashed into her, driving her backward into the bole of a tree and knocking the breath from her. Her lungs ached for oxygen and lights danced in front of her eyes as she was momentarily stunned. She felt the creature’s hot, fetid breath on her face and, as the lights cleared, could see the blind hate in its pinprick black eyes, all the more intense for the white and hairless skull surrounding them. The stench from its body made her mouth fill with bile. The feel of the suckers on its fingers made her flesh crawl.

It was the gag response that brought her just enough time to react. The stickie made her so nauseous that she projectile vomited into its face. The hot stream of bile and puke hit it squarely, filling its mouth and nostrils, stinging its eyes. The stickie screamed, suddenly blinded, and released its grip, staggering back and clawing at its face. Dragging air into her lungs with a painful, rasping gasp, Mildred brought up the Czech ZKR so that it was level with the creature’s face as it managed to blinkingly clear its eyes. The last thing it would have seen was the barrel and dark maw of the 551 as Mildred squeezed the trigger to release a slug. The exit wound took half of the creature’s thin, eggshell skull with it.

Mildred spit onto the ground, trying to clear her head and the bitter taste of bile from her mouth. That had been too close for comfort.

She dragged herself upright from the bole of the tree, shook her head to clear it and entered the fray once more. She was needed….

Doc was having problems. The LeMat was difficult to reload in a hurry and a cry from the Armorer had alerted him to the fact that a couple of stickies were headed in his direction. Realizing that he wouldn’t have the time to reload the cumbersome percussion blaster, he rapidly holstered it and withdrew the sword from within the silver lion’s-head swordstick that contained the blade tempered and made from the finest Toledo steel. The seemingly old and frail man was deft and quick with the blade, as many had found to their detriment, and he had to use all his skills when one of the stickies burst through the undergrowth and was on him before he had a chance to drag the blade fully from its sheath.

“By the Three Kennedys, I’m not falling that easily,” he breathed, putting his weight on his back foot to stabilize himself as he flicked his wrist, the tendons straining as he rolled the blade emerging from the stick, changing its upward trajectory into an arc so that, as the tip cleared the sheath it flew toward the stickie, arcing across its throat and slicing into the thin, pliable flesh. It parted like rotting meat, the carotid artery severed. The creature stopped in its tracks, mutely clutching its torn neck before tumbling to the ground.

Meanwhile, Ryan had shouldered his Steyr and had drawn the SIG-Sauer. The rifle was fine for distance shooting, but close-quarters fighting required a handblaster. He started to fire at the sounds coming from the undergrowth, but it was so dense that he couldn’t tell if his shots were having any effect in the bedlam.

“Where are they?” Krysty yelled to J.B.

“I don’t know. They’re getting lost in the woods,” he replied, switching from the M-4000 to his Uzi, which he set to single shot as he slipped down to ground level. “Just keep triple-red. Try to pick ’em out.”

Picking them out was something that Doc could do only too well. With an instinct that told them he was less dangerous because of his lack of a blaster, the stickies were concentrating on him, somehow communicating with one another in a way that only they could understand. He was holding his own, the sword a flashing blade that sprayed the air with crimson as he claimed victims. But he was outnumbered and having to spin in circles just to keep the weight of the numbers at bay.

Jak, picking off those he could from up in his tree, could see that Doc was being overwhelmed. He smiled. A cold, vulpine grin of expectant bloodlust. Time to help Doc out.

Slipping down the tree after a last look around to take in the positions of both his companions and of those stickies visible in the density, Jak slid the .357 Magnum into its holster. The Colt Python was a formidable blaster, but inappropriate for the kind of fighting he would have to engage. In close quarters, there was always a chance that the Magnum shells would pierce a stickie and go clean through, possibly damaging a compatriot too close to the action. He didn’t want to chill Doc while he was trying to save him.

As Jak ghosted through the trees, he could almost taste the stickies as they converged on the old man. Their smell cloyed his sensitive nostrils, sharpening his hunger to thin them out a little.

Doc was fighting hard, fighting well, but he was hugely outnumbered. The stickies came at him from every direction and it was all he could do to thrust, parry and slice a few at a time. His actions drove back those whose blood spilled onto the ground, but they were just replaced by others, equally as intent on ripping Doc to shreds. He was backed up against a tree, holding them at bay on three sides, and praying that none would approach from the rear to pin him to the bough.

“Doc!” Jak yelled by way of warning.

“Thank heavens. I could not wish for any more,” Doc gasped breathlessly.

The stickies were so intent on their task that they paid no heed to the shout from behind them. They couldn’t ignore the whirlwind that swept into their midst, however, rending them asunder with an attack of staggering and intense ferocity.

Jak had palmed a razor-sharp, leaf-bladed knife from the many hiding places in his patched and tattered camou jacket. He had one in each hand, held loosely to facilitate movement, but firm enough so that they wouldn’t drop. His eyes glittered as he focused on the pack in front of him. Some had been cut by Doc; they smelled of blood and fear. It was a sweet smell to him, goading him into action.

The albino teen became a grim-faced chilling machine. Moving quickly, he sliced and chopped, going for vulnerable body areas that would slow and disable first. Many of the stickies he slashed would die from internal injury or loss of blood, the pain preventing them from fighting; to chill every last one of them, one by one, would be too slow a task. Speed was of the essence, here, so unless he was able to strike a chilling blow first time, it was better if he disabled the stickie, returned to it later to finish it off, after Doc was safe.

The blurring form of Jak cutting a swathe through the pack caused enough disturbance for those at the forefront to be distracted, torn between continuing their attack on the old man or turning to face the new enemy.

It was all Doc needed. The distraction Jak caused enabled him to get off his back foot and begin an offensive. He stepped forward, the flashing Toledo steel blade proscribing fatal arcs through the air, striking home chilling blows on the stickies in the front ranks before being swiftly withdrawn and put to the test once more, striking true and removing the enemy from the fray.

Between them, the two companions were able to cut through the muties with ease, turning to deliver chilling blows to those who were still alive and twitching.

It felt as though the tide was beginning to turn. But not, perhaps, for Mildred and Krysty. At shouted cries from both Ryan and J.B., they had all tried to find a central point at which they could converge, a point from which they could fight back-to-back, knowing that they stood no chance of hitting each other if they were the source of noise, directing fire. It would have been a simple enough plan if not for the fact that darkness was descending too rapidly in the already gloomy cover of the forest and the noise was such that it was hard to pick out direction as they exchanged calls, desperately trying to locate one another.

Stickies loomed in and out of the darkness, confused by the shooting, angered by the chilling of their fellow pack members, bloodlust fuelled by the smell of their own dead—and driven almost to distraction by the sound of beating hooves and distant cries that could faintly be heard over the pandemonium.

Whatever had whipped the pack into such a frenzy in the first place was now catching up with them. It would be a case of “shoot first, ask questions after.” The four companions, isolated in their search for one another, fighting off stray stickies who stumbled upon them in the darkness, knew that they would also be easy prey for whatever pursued the stickies.

Ryan and J.B. had holstered their blasters, unwilling to indulge in a firefight when there was a good chance of hitting each other in the confusion. Ryan had taken the panga from its thigh sheath; the heavy blade was causing stickie blood to flow copiously. Likewise, J.B. was using his Tekna knife, taking out the mutie attackers as they stumbled across him, or vice versa as he tried to find the others.

For Mildred and Krysty there was no such luxury. The women didn’t have knives. Unwilling, like the men, to indulge in hazardous blasterfire, both used their blasters as clubs. It was fortunate that the muties were prone to blindly rush into attack and that the women were trained and practiced in unarmed combat. It was relatively easy for them to use their skills to stop the muties laying hands on them, even though the clammy, sticky-padded fingers clung to their clothing and flesh when the muties were able to lay hands on them—hard to dislodge and repulsive to the touch. Once the creatures had been disarmed and brought to ground, the butts of the handblasters delivered fatal, skull-crunching blows, the thin skulls of the muties caving easily.

But it was the weight of numbers that caused the women to tire rapidly.

Jak and Doc had dispatched their opponents with ease and were about to set out to find their companions when Jak stayed Doc with a hand on his arm.

“Listen,” he said simply.

Doc’s face screwed and contorted with the effort to distinguish one noise from another in the melee. Then he turned to Jak, an astonished expression on his features.

“Men on horseback? Truly, we are fortunate,” he enthused.

“If friendly,” Jak commented wryly. “We not trust. Find others.”

“I’ll certainly agree with that,” Doc concurred. “I fear we would be better trusting to your skills in this task than mine, so perhaps you should lead,” he added.

Jak smiled, a brief ghost flickering across his white, scarred visage. “Good call,” he said wryly.

The two companions plunged into the mayhem. With their blades still firmly grasped, they were able to dispose of any opposition they encountered on their search for the others.

Mildred was their first find. She was in the act of dispatching one stickie with a jackhammer blow to the side of its skull while twisting to evade the sucking grasp of one that had approached from the rear. Doc’s sword carved the air and took off the stickie’s left ear before slicing down into its neck. With a high-pitched scream of pain, it whirled away from Mildred, releasing her to turn to Doc. Before the old man had a chance to follow through on his attack, Mildred clubbed the back of the mutie’s skull, reducing its brains to mush.

“I have never—and I mean, never—been so glad to see you, you old buzzard,” she breathed heavily.

“I shall take that as a compliment, my dear Mildred,” Doc replied. “We must find the others. Another enemy is almost upon us.”

“Aw, shit, this is just going to be one of those nights, isn’t it.” Mildred spit.

“This way,” Jak commanded, leading them off. He could hear Ryan cursing loudly as he hacked at an enemy. He was heading in that direction when Krysty came crashing out of the undergrowth.

“Gaia, but am I glad to see you,” she said. “Where—”

“This way. Quick,” Jak snapped, interrupting her. He moved toward the sound of Ryan’s voice.

The one-eyed warrior pulled his panga from the neck of a chilled stickie. He looked up as he heard them approach.

“Thought that didn’t sound like stickies,” he noted, eyeing them. “Where’s J.B.?”

“Here,” came a voice from nearby, followed shortly by the Armorer as he crashed through the trees. “Shit, that was hard work,” he panted, pushing his fedora back on his head and wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “We must have been closer than we knew. It’s just so fucking dark now.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got more company,” Ryan commented, wiping down his panga before sheathing it and unholstering his SIG-Sauer. He checked and reloaded as he said, “Must be what was driving those stickies berserk. Figure we’ve seen most of them off, and the others are probably running from whoever this is—but I don’t know about you, but I’m too tired to run.”

“I’ll go along with that,” J.B. agreed, taking down his Uzi and checking before smoothly clicking it on to rapid bursts.

Jak frowned. “Wait—spreading—trying round up stickies.”

Ryan lifted his head and listened intently. Jak was right. He could hear the remnants of the mutie pack being driven back toward them.

“Fireblast! They’re coming right through here,” he yelled. “Cover, now! Triple-red!”

The companions sought whatever refuge they could in the cover of the trees. They had converged on a natural path formed by an avenue of trees and it seemed that the horsemen were intent on driving the muties back through this path.

The stickies were being encircled and pincered, there was no doubt about that, either, but there was no escape. What was going on?

The few stickies that were left were driven past the companions’ cover. Once level with the area where Ryan’s people were in hiding, a volley of shots rang out from blasters carried by the horsemen. The few remaining stickies were mowed down in the hail, their bodies jerked by the impact and thrown across the path. They remained still, smelling of death: that unpleasant odor of cordite, blood and excrement.

Ryan could see exactly where all his people were. They would have been hidden to the casual view, but he had noted their cover. In turn, they knew where he was. He signaled them to remain in hiding. Let the horsemen make the next move.

One rider came into view, walking his horse slowly. He had a Remington slung over his shoulder and was clad in animal skins tied over ragged leggings and a jerkin. He had a beard flecked with gray and long hair tied back from his face. He stopped almost directly in front of where Ryan was in cover, and looked around from his mount.

“You might as well come out, people. We know you’re here and we’ve got you surrounded. Chill me, and you’ll be as fucked as these mutie bastards.”




Chapter Three


Ryan knew from the sounds of horses and men around them that the stickies had been driven and chilled at this spot for a reason. The riders had heard and possibly seen some of the battle that had taken place on their approach, and they were making a point. Now they were all around, and there was no way that the companions could escape.

Casting his eye over the hiding places of his companions, Ryan could see that they were as aware of this as he was and were waiting for a sign.

The bearded rider kissed his teeth. “Come on. You know you’re surrounded and you know we could drop you where you hide. It wouldn’t be hard. But why haven’t we done that? We want to parlay first, see who you are. One thing—you’re not stupe. You could chill me now, no prob, but that would just bring the rest of us down on you and you know that’s bad move. So I’m still here. And I appreciate that. But we don’t have forever.”

Ryan signaled to the others, hoping they would see through the gloom, and stepped out, hands loose at his sides, no weapons in view.

“You’d think we did have forever, the way you can’t stop talking,” he said calmly, stepping into the clearing, avoiding the stickie corpses but still making sure he was out of range of the mounted man’s foot. Although his body language bespoke relaxation and compliance, he kept himself alert and ready. Careless meant chilled.

“I only talk so much when I have to wait,” the bearded man said. “My name is Ethan, Baron of Pleasantville. Looks like we ran these fuckers right into you. Wasn’t the purpose.”

“I kind of gathered that,” Ryan returned guardedly. “It’s not the usual thing to do with them.”

Ethan paused, then laughed. It was a loud, hearty laugh and showed no malice at Ryan’s comment. “I don’t know,” he gasped finally, “it could be a kinda new sport, I guess. But it’s the last thing you needed, right? After all, I know most what goes on around here and I don’t know you—so you’re either traveling through or lost from somewhere.”

Ryan nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Got that right.”

“So why don’t you call the rest of your people out, then we can get back to Pleasantville and you can rest.”

Ryan smiled, his eye showing that there was no humor in the gesture. “Rest, yeah, that’d be good. But mebbe it’ll be a permanent rest, nice and cold…nice and chilled.”

“One-eye, I could have had that done right from the start—and you know it,” Ethan said in a low voice.

Ryan knew that he was speaking the truth. To root out the companions and chill them wouldn’t be much harder than culling the stickies. The riders surrounded them and the companions were fatigued from two extensive firefights. Odds were that the baron of Pleasantville was genuine, and Ryan had little choice but to play the odds right now.

“Okay, you win,” he said softly, raising his arm and gesturing.

From their concealment, the companions came forth, until it seemed that Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc and J.B. had joined Ryan in forming a circle around the baron. All of them were careful to keep their arms by their sides, hands free of weapons.

Ethan studied them. “That all?” he queried. Ryan nodded and the baron gave a low whistle. “Now that’s what I call interesting damage you caused out here,” he added almost to himself. Then, seeming to remember where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, he whistled again—this time sharper and harder, the sound piercing the forest.

The foliage began to rustle and ripple as though it were alive with movement. Through the blanket of cover emerged a dozen riders, all clad similarly to their baron. The horses were a mix of squat pony stock and sleeker beasts. Similarly, the compose of the sec party itself was a mix. Short and tall, fat and thin, black, white and all shades between. Whatever kind of a ville Pleasantville may be, it certainly had no problem with ideas of physical difference.

It crossed Mildred’s mind that the Pilatu could have done with such an example. But then she remembered that Dean had been with them then and experienced a sense of loss she hadn’t felt for a long while. What, she wondered, must Ryan be feeling?

The riders surrounded the companions so that Ethan now sat in the middle of two rings: the inner a possible threat, the outer his protection. In truth, the clearing wasn’t large enough to accommodate all the horses and people that were now gathered there, and the companions could quite literally feel the breath of the horses down their necks as the animals jostled, the smell of death unsettling the beasts.

“This really all of them?” Ethan asked his men. Ryan knew that the one who answered would be the second in command. He made a mental note of who that sec chief may be. He was a hook-nosed, craggy man, with long dreadlocks down his back. He looked to be part white, part black and part Native American. But all mean…He had the still, calm air of a born mercie who would have no problem chilling everyone in the clearing—friend or foe—without a second thought.

The man shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, ain’t no others. They’re good, give ’em that.”

“Some are a whole lot better than others, if y’ask me,” another rider said lasciviously. He was a squat, fat man with one clouded eye and scars across his forehead. He smiled, but looked about as far from the idea of a jolly fat guy as it was possible to get. He nudged the side of his mount with his heel and the horse’s head came down, pushing at Krysty’s shoulder. “I’m betting this one could be real good, y’know what I’m saying?”

It wasn’t just the words, it was the way that they were used. There was something in his tone that couldn’t be ignored. Krysty focused on this and forgot that they were surrounded and outnumbered by a hostile group.

“Watch what you’re doing, fat boy,” she growled, stepping to one side.

“Whoo-hoo. What do we have here?” he jeered. “She’s a real feisty one, ain’t she?”

“Cut it out, Jonno,” the sec chief said wearily. But there was no real authority in his tone. It was something he was saying for the sake of it, not because he meant it.

“C’mon, Horse, it’s just a little fun,” the fat man whined before leering at Krysty. “Could be a whole lot more fun, though…”

Krysty backed away from the horse, her body tensing. Her Titian mane had closed around her neck and shoulders protectively, signaling her sense that she was in some kind of danger.

The companions tensed with her. They knew that they were hopelessly outnumbered, but they would always defend one of their own.

Ryan kept his eye fixed on Ethan. The baron was watching the developments with interest. The one-eyed man guessed that he was using this situation as a yardstick for how they would react, how stupe or smart they would be. Imperceptibly, Ryan signaled to the others to stay. They were watching him for a lead, and although they had the desire to fight, they knew that he was playing the odds.

The sec chief—Horse—sighed heavily. “Jonno, cut it out. Do I have to give you more bastard scars than you already got?”

“Shit, you big-haired fucker, it’s only some fun. Right, Baron?” the fat man asked, looking across at Ethan. The baron stayed impassive, which the fat man took as a sign of assent. “Yeah, only some fun,” he added, almost to himself. He leaned forward over the front of the horse and reached out for Krysty. “Just a little fun, honey. Now you-all ain’t gonna do anything with all your friends here about to get chilled if they get in the way, are you?”

He reached out and looped his fingers in her hair, trying to tug her toward him. The strength of the prehensile mane surprised him and a flicker of a frown crossed his face. He allowed it to pass, paused until he thought he had the measure of her strength, and then tried to pull her to him.

At first Krysty held back, making him tug harder, sit farther forward on his saddle. Then she acquiesced, moving a few steps closer and letting him believe that he had the upper hand.

It worked. He was still seated forward on the saddle and was complacent. He would offer little in the way of resistance.

Timing her actions, she waited until he was at the optimum point, then stepped back suddenly, wrenching her head, straining her neck muscles and feeling the hair tug on her scalp. The sentient tresses had encircled his hand to hold it in a viselike grip. It wasn’t something she could do consciously, but as a result of the fear and adrenaline that coursed through her body. She felt a searing pain as her neck muscles protested. Her hair, protective of her body and strength, let loose of the fat man’s hand.

It was enough. His balance completely thrown, he fell forward with a startled yelp, crashing onto the ground at her feet, landing heavily on a dead stickie. The yelp turned into a yell of disgust as he struggled to his feet, eyes blazing.

The mounted riders reached for their weapons, but a gesture from Horse stopped them. The sec chief could see that the baron was studying this with interest. Likewise, Ryan stayed his people. Krysty would have to deal with this on her own and he had no doubts about her capabilities.

The fat man was facing her. She backed off him to give herself more room to maneuver. He took this as a sign of weakness and a savage grin crossed his features.

“You won’t be so pretty—or so keen to fight back—when I’ve finished with you,” he snarled, pulling a long-bladed hunting knife from beneath the layers of skins and furs.

Krysty allowed herself the smallest of grins. He was telegraphing his intentions far too much, and taking him out would be easier than she thought. A fact that became obvious as he lunged at her with all the finesse of a runaway rhino—except that he had none of the danger. She moved aside to allow his arm to thrust past her harmlessly, then caught him at the elbow, snapping his arm backward and at the same time kicking back with the heel of one silver-tipped cowboy boot so that it cracked into his shin and raked down, splitting the cloth and flesh and hammering into the bone.

The fat man howled in pain and toppled over. Krysty took the knife from his hand and dug one knee in the middle of his back, pinning him to the ground. She pulled his head up by his hair with one hand and held the blade of the knife against his throat.

“One good reason,” she whispered. “Just one…”

The click of blasters being drawn and beaded answered her. The riders had been still long enough and now their weapons were trained on her. Horse held his hand aloft to stop them firing.

There was a second—so tense it seemed like an hour—before Ethan spoke.

“Seems to me you met your match, Jonno, and you got what you deserved. But don’t chill the fucker, lady. He’s too good a hunter to lose over his bad manners.”

Krysty let the fat man go and stood, stepping out of his immediate range as she did so. She didn’t want to give him the slightest chance to strike back. He stood and dusted himself down, shaking his head to clear it, cursing under his breath. He turned and glared at Krysty, then at his knife, which she still held by her side.

“I was only joking, y’know,” he said accusingly.

“Well, you’re not funny. And no fighter, either,” she added with venom.

The uneasy silence was broken by the baron’s harsh laugh. “More like you’re a better fighter.” He chuckled. “Jonno’s good, all right, but you’re better. All of you, by the look of what you did before we got here.”

“You’ve got to watch your own back,” Ryan said, emphasizing the dual meaning of his words with a look at the riders encircling them.

“You’d be as chilled as those stickies if I wanted,” Ethan commented, spitting on the nearest corpse for his own emphasis. “You’re interesting people, that’s for sure.”

“I cannot but think that ‘interesting’ is an unusual epithet for such a situation,” Doc mused.

The baron laughed again. “Y’see what I mean? What the fuck are you talking about, old man? You pitch up in the middle of a bunch of rabid stickies, whomp the fuck out of them, face off with a superior force in terms of arms and numbers, and then stand there and discuss the meaning of words…Shit, if that ain’t interesting, then you tell me what is.”

“A fair point, if a little forcefully delivered.” Doc Tanner smiled.

“Good,” Ethan said decisively. “Then you come back to our ville and we learn a bit more about you. In return, you get fed and watered, and get to rest.”

“And if we say no?” Ryan queried.

Ethan’s smile hardened. “Did I say you had a choice?”

The one-eyed man looked at the horsemen surrounding the companions. He didn’t like the fact that they were being told what they had to do. Handing over power to another wasn’t something that came easily to any of them. On the other hand, they were in no practical position to fight; they could already have been wiped out. The baron seemed open enough to want to learn about them, and any hint of hostility came only when he was apparently crossed. That was worth remembering. What was also worthy of consideration was that the companions needed rest and food and it would be stupe to turn up the chance of this. Any problems could be dealt with as they arose, when they were rested and in a better condition. Looking at his friends, Ryan could see that they were all bruised, dusty, tired. Some had cuts that needed attention and their postures were slumped, tired.

“Okay, we’ll come with you,” Ryan said slowly, testing the baron with his choice of words.

Ethan allowed himself a small, tight smile, acknowledging that he understood the one-eyed man and that he, too, would play the game.

“Good,” he said finally. “Now we wouldn’t expect you to walk, as it’s some way. You have any objection to sharing our horses?”

Ryan looked around at the riders. Some of the horses looked as though they wouldn’t support more than one man, but others seemed sturdy enough. He looked back to Ethan and shook his head briefly.

“Okay. As for you, Jonno,” he directed to the fat man, who was still standing where he had fallen, “you can take the lady with you. But she gets to keep that knife of yours for now. A trophy,” he added to Krysty. “Make sure the fat bastard doesn’t try anything else on the way back.”

The fat man said nothing, but his expression betrayed his less than charitable feelings about the baron’s decision. The ripple of laughter that spread through the other riders did little to improve his disposition and he looked sullen as he climbed back onto his horse, grudgingly holding his hand out for Krysty. The Titian-haired beauty made a point of ignoring this and mounted behind him without acknowledging his gesture.

Horse, the sec chief, took over, assigning a rider to each of the five companions, taking Ryan on his own mount. It was obviously a gesture of respect. Next to the baron, he was the highest-ranking rider, and he was acknowledging Ryan’s leadership. The one-eyed man took this in the spirit it was intended and nodded his thanks as he mounted the stallion that carried the sec chief.

When they were in position, Ethan held up his hand. “We go back the same way. Take it easy. The horses must be exhausted after the chase and some have extra loads. Keep alert, but I don’t figure on there being trouble, do you?” he asked of his sec chief. Horse gave a brief shake of his head, his dreadlocks brushing against Ryan, as hard and wiry as his body. Ethan nodded, pleased. “Let’s go…”

The hunting party started back through the forest, taking the path that had been carved by the pack of stickies as they had rampaged, tearing their way through the foliage and trees. It was only by taking this path that the companions became aware of the extent of the damage caused by the pack.

“What the fuck were they doing?” Ryan whistled, looking at the churned-up earth and devastation left in their wake. “I’ve seen a shitload of stickies in my time, but I’ve never known them to act like this. And to stay and fight like they did to us. Usually they run…”

Horse grunted. “Your guess is as good as mine. They attacked some farmers on the edge of the ville and we set out after them. Expected an easy hunt, chill them, then go home. But I’ve never seen stickies move at that pace. Something spooked them.”

“Figured it might have been you,” Ryan said guardedly. “After all, you were at their rear.”

“Only ’cause we hadn’t yet caught up with them when they ran into you,” the sec chief replied.

“Yeah, guess so,” Ryan agreed, keeping the hint of doubt out of his voice. Why chase after them when they had already passed by the ville? There was something about the story that didn’t quite ring true, but that could wait until later, until Ryan had recce’d the situation a little better. What was important now was to get to the ville and to rest. As the horses trotted gently over the rough earth, the one-eyed man felt every little rut in the ground as a jarring pain. His eye was heavy and he felt his body begin to give in to the fatigue that had been staved off for so long by the adrenaline rush of combat and the need to keep alert.

On their own shared mounts, the other companions were finding that they, too, were falling prey to their tiredness. Krysty kept herself awake by sheer willpower, not trusting herself to so much as doze while she had to ride behind the fat man. For his part, Jonno was trying to make amends for his earlier attitude by keeping up a nonstop stream of banalities.

“Look, I’m really sorry about earlier. I just got carried away. I was only fooling, and I misjudged. You know what it’s like in the heat of battle, you kinda find it hard to switch off and get back to being normal. Whatever the fuck that is, y’know. But I don’t want us to have got off on the wrong foot. Ethan wouldn’t like that, and he’s not the kind of dude you screw with, y’know what I’m saying? It’s not that he’s a bad guy, and he’s a great baron, right, but you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him, y’know? That’s just bad news for everyone involved, right? Hey, are you listening?”

Krysty answered with a grunt, then added, “Look, apology accepted, and I don’t care about the rest right now. Just keep your eyes on the path ahead and keep riding, okay?”

Jonno pursed his lips. No one talked to him like that. They all tried but they paid. All the bitches who laughed at him for being fat and ugly and scarred. He would just bide his time and get her when she didn’t expect it.

J.B. and Mildred were seated behind riders who said nothing beyond initial hellos. They were glad of it; the last thing they needed was to have to concentrate on conversation after the battle. Particularly, Mildred, who was sure that she would throw up again if the ride was any more rocky.

Doc was behind a large, heavily muscled rider with an ebony skin that seemed to shine in the moonlight that lit the path cleared by the stickies. The old man could feel he was slipping. Nothing seemed real anymore. What was real? A man who had lived his life over three different centuries, with large chunks removed between them, Doc’s grasp of reality was always a little loose, and now he was sure that he had descended into madness. In the distance, riding toward him, he could see a Brougham driven by his beloved Emily, the wife he had left behind in the nineteenth century, and who would never have known what happened to him, just that he vanished one day, without trace and forever. Perhaps it was better that she didn’t know; that she could never see him as he was now, aged and beaten by the fates. God, but he missed her. And here she was, driving toward them. Seated beside her, he could see Rachel and young Jolyon, the children he had never seen grow to maturity, and who had been dead for longer than he could know—longer, indeed, than he had been alive. How could a father so outlive his children? It wasn’t natural. But then, what had happened to him hadn’t been natural.

They couldn’t see him like this. They couldn’t. He turned his head away from them as they approached, tears streaming down his face, his body shuddering in convulsive sobs.

“You okay, man?” the rider asked him, a worried note creeping into his voice.

Doc didn’t answer. It took all his effort not to turn to look at his wife and children as he heard the Brougham approach, gaining with every second. If he could only…if he could just…just wait until the sound was on the wane. If he could only keep his will intact for that long, then surely his sanity would also follow?

It was no good. As the Brougham approached, he felt compelled to turn. It was a force far greater than his meager willpower could cope with—the force of longing, despair and loneliness. Everything he had ever held dear to him had been snatched away—or else he had been snatched away from it. His wife, his children…

Doc gave in to his longing and turned to face the oncoming Brougham. His eyes were wide, tears coursing down his cheeks. As the vehicle passed him, he could see Emily, Rachel and Jolyon turn to look at him. They were the ages they had been when he had last seen them, but changed. Their eyes were empty and their skins were dry and mummified. They were husks. As he, himself, was now…

Doc looked away, crying out in pain and rage. The rider in front tried to keep his eyes fixed on the path ahead. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. There was nothing…

The other riders exchanged glances and shrugs. If they were expecting any of the companions riding with them to explain, they would wait in vain.

Jak had questions of his own. He was riding behind a wide, fat-bellied bald man whose apparent bulk wasn’t just due to excess weight. Underneath, there was a lot of muscle, as Jak had found when he had almost fallen from the horse early in the journey, the horse stumbling in a rut and throwing both riders forward. The bald man had moved with the motion, but Jak had been taken unawares and almost thrown. As he’d toppled, the man had shot out an arm and grabbed Jak. The albino youth had, in turn, taken grip of the arm. He had expected soft flesh. Instead he’d gripped muscles and tendons that were like barbed wire wrapped around brick.

“Thanks,” he had said simply as he clambered back.

“No problem—name’s Stark,” the man had replied with an equal simplicity.

Both were men of few words, but had found a respect for each other in that seemingly inconsequential moment. Jak had thought the man a blubber mountain and had found hidden depths. In return, Stark had been impressed by the albino’s lightning-quick reaction, and the wiry strength with which he’d flung himself back into the saddle; all the more remarkable after the firefight he had just been through.

Since that moment they had conducted a conversation that had been drawn out not by the lack of things to say, but by the natural manner of both. Jak would ask an elliptical question and Stark would pause for a long while, considering an answer that wasted no words. He would then phrase a question of his own and Jak would reply in kind.

Neither had passed comment on Doc, but Jak chose that moment to ask what he felt was an important question.

“Why you hunt stickies?”

Stark waited for some time, then said, “Like Ethan said.”

“So why follow so far when they move on? No sense if they not cause damage. Waste of energy and ammo.”

“Mebbe. But like I say, it’s as Ethan says.”

Jak pondered this. There was a coded message in there, if only he could unlock it. His keen senses were jangling with the rush he always felt when there was danger ahead. It wasn’t like Krysty’s mutie doomie sense, it was something altogether more instinctual, a preternatural development of his instincts that had been honed by years of survival, years of hunting.

“Ethan always tell how it is?” Jak asked finally.

A long pause. “Ethan always tells it how he sees it.”

Jak considered that. Stark picked his words very carefully and he hadn’t actually agreed with what Jak had said.

Their conversation lapsed. The pauses lengthened into silence as they rode on through a night that was now approaching dawn. The other companions were having trouble keeping conscious as fatigue and lack of sleep tried to claim them. But Jak, who had spent so many hours in a state of inert awareness waiting for prey, was able to focus and to stay alert.

So it was that he noticed something very strange, something that made his instincts quiver more than ever.

As the mounted party traversed the trail ripped up by the stickies, the ville of Pleasantville became visible in the distance. A shattered metropolis lay beyond, remnants of old skyscrapers and buildings dimly visible in the early-morning haze. But the ville itself seemed to have been constructed in an old suburban area. It was still too dim for him to fully distinguish, even though his red albino eyes found the twilight of evening and dawn more conducive than the bright light of a daytime sun. However, there was something that made no sense if what Ethan had told them was the whole truth. For, to reach the ville, the riders now left the track that had been carved by the pack of stickies. A track that veered off to one side of the farthest outcrop of the ville, past the last buildings and signs of life that Jak could see.

Surely they had been told that the pack had attacked farms on the edge of the ville, which was why they had been chased. But the track, clearly visible because of the devastation it had caused, veered off way past the last sign of tilled land, cutting across an area that could only be described as a wilderness.

Why had Ethan lied? It looked as though the stickies had passed close to the ville, but hadn’t actually made contact. So why mount the chase at all?

Jak was sure that the answer to this question would also provide an answer to the churning sense of anxiety gnawing at his guts. They were riding into a danger of some kind, of that he was certain. What it was had to be determined, but as he cast a glance at the rest of the companions, tired and battered on the backs of their mounts, in no condition to fight, he was concerned that they were riding into trouble when they were least capable to deal with it.

The ground was now softer under hoof, less rutted and destroyed. The movement of the horses became more fluid, lulling the already exhausted companions into a stupor, with no bone-jarring ruts to shake them out of their torpor. Jak wondered if any of the others had noticed that they had left the stickies’ path, and that it deviated from the ville.

Why? Why had they been lied to? Why had the stickies been hunted so ruthlessly? Was that what had whipped them into a frenzy, or had something else happened to make them that way…perhaps so they could be hunted?

Jak felt the movement of the horse begin to lull him. A sense of fatigue and exhaustion swept over him, making it hard to concentrate.

Shit, whatever faced them, he needed to sleep first. He had no choice.

He jolted awake suddenly. What had caused him to stir? His head was pounding, his heart racing. The last thing he could remember was the ville coming into sight and feeling so, so tired.

Jak raised himself on one elbow and took a look around. First thing to strike him as weird was that he was lying down. How the fuck had that happened without his realizing it? His eyes adjusted easily to the gloom and he could see that the other companions were also in the room with him. There were two windows, with thick hangings that kept out the light, apart from at the very edges where they weren’t flush to the windowframe. Through these gaps, Jak could see that it was a bright light, but not the intensity of midday. Probably late afternoon, early evening.

The room itself was plastered and painted in a light color that trapped whatever could get through the hangings and magnified it. In this half light, Jak could see that the others, like himself, were in beds that were covered with blankets and quilts. Their weapons and supplies were by each bed, as though taken off individually and placed by the right bedside. He looked down: he was still fully dressed. He guessed that his friends were, too. The only other furniture in the room was a long wooden table, set against the far wall and bare apart from a pitcher and six cups.

It would seem that the companions had been lifted en masse from the horses when they had reached the ville, then put to bed like children. A gesture of this magnanimity was something that was unknown in the Deathlands, and Jak was curious as to why they had been afforded such respect. No one was that nice unless they expected something in return. But what? He couldn’t shake the memory of the track forged by the stickies, veering off away from the ville. It had been such a little, and such a stupid, lie. There was a connection of some kind, but he was too tired to work it out right now.

Jak stood, every muscle in his body aching as he did so, the rigors of the firefight and the ride not yet cured by his rest. He could feel every last blow that he had taken during the battle with the stickies, and was sure that the others would feel the same when they awoke. Tentatively he walked toward the table, testing his strength. He was sore, but still quite supple. His limbs hadn’t stiffened with injury as he feared they might. But he could tell that his speed was impaired. Movement was more…not difficult, but awkward. He reached the table and picked up the pitcher, sniffing at the contents. He could smell nothing but the faint aroma of the wood from which the pitcher was made. Jak dipped a finger into the clear liquid and then licked it. No taste other than what you’d expect from water—the faint coppery tang of earth and perhaps a hint of metal from whatever piping had carried it to an outlet.

Figuring it was safe to drink—or at least, as safe as any water—he poured some into one of the cups and drank deeply. His mouth felt as though someone had held a jolt party in there; it was thick and dry. The water eased it.

Jak put down the cup and turned as he heard stirring from behind him. Ryan was starting to come around, raising himself.

“What the fuck happened?” the one-eyed man asked slowly, looking around him and taking in his surroundings.

“Guess were more tired than thought.” Jak shrugged. “Water,” he added, pouring another cup.

Ryan got up from his bed and walked slowly to Jak, taking the cup from him. “Thanks,” he said after drinking deeply. “So this is Pleasantville. I see they’ve left us all our stuff,” he continued, indicating the packs that had been stowed by their bedsides. “Mighty nice of them. A bit too nice,” he added, exchanging a look with Jak. The albino youth nodded.

“Yeah. Triple-red on that,” he said simply.

By this time their lowered voices had penetrated the consciousness of the others and they were all beginning to stir. Krysty and J.B. were next up and they shared Jak and Ryan’s caution. Mildred pulled herself out of bed, but didn’t immediately go to the others. She knelt beside Doc’s bed and checked him.

“Old buzzard was hallucinating out there,” she said over her shoulder to the others. “Just want to see that he’s okay.”

Doc opened one eye and fixed her with a baleful glare. “My dear Dr. Wyeth, pray tell me what is hallucination and what is not, when all—either concrete or fancy—seems so tangible that you can reach out and touch it. Whether or not ’tis there, does that make the emotion it causes any the less real?”

“Yeah, you’re okay,” Mildred muttered. “Now get the hell up and drink something before you dehydrate.”

When all six companions were up and clustered around the table, the door on the far side of the room opened and Horse stepped through. The tall, gaunt sec chief eyed them, then nodded in some private satisfaction.

“So you’re all still here and all awake. Good. Ethan wants to see you. Now.”




Chapter Four


With some hesitation, the companions followed the sec chief, leaving their weapons and supplies by the sides of their beds. To attempt to retrieve any of them could easily be construed as hostile action and, until they knew what they were up against, it was best to maintain innocence. Besides, the sec party could easily have taken their weapons away while they’d been unconscious and not have treated them with such respect.

It wasn’t as if they were exactly unarmed now. They might not have their blasters, but Ryan still had the panga sheathed at his thigh, and his scarf—a deadly weapon in experienced hands with the lead weights sewn into the ends that turned it into a bolo—around his neck. Doc carried his swordstick with the silver lion’s-head, and J.B. was equipped with his Tekna hunting knife. As for Jak, it would have been interesting to see if anyone could have found the number of leaf-bladed throwing knives secreted on his person.

So, if Ethan, baron of Pleasantville, and his sec chief trusted them enough not to do a body search, to take away Jak’s jacket and Doc’s cane, and to leave their weapons by their bedsides, then why should they feel any suspicion? Not for any reason that could be rationalized. Just their instincts telling them that people in the Deathlands—particularly barons—were never normally this friendly.

Horse led them along a maze of corridors lined with windows that showed that they were moving through more than one building. Some of the old suburban sprawl of houses that constituted part of Pleasantville had been joined together by stucco-and-brick corridors that made several houses and shacks into one single building. It would be possible to travel almost an entire circuit of the ville without actually setting foot outside into the elements.

It would also make finding the way around more difficult if you weren’t familiar with the ville. This was something that always set alarm bells ringing loudly in Ryan’s head, and they were certainly deafening right now.

“Why does Ethan want to see us?” he asked the sec chief in as neutral a tone as possible. It was the first time any of them had spoken since leaving their dormitory, and Ryan felt his voice sound unnatural and loud in the quiet corridor. They had passed no one on their journey, and although they could see people outside and through the windows of other buildings, it was almost as though they had been purposely isolated from the ville inhabitants until they had seen the baron. It didn’t help their sense of paranoia.

The sec chief seemed to take a long time to answer, leading them through another corridor, not looking back. For a moment, Ryan thought it possible that the man hadn’t heard his question, and started to speak again. But Horse finally broke the silence, looking back over his shoulder. His dark skin and sharp features accented his hooded eyes, which stared coldly from under his nest of dreadlocks.

“Ethan just wants to get to know you better, see where you’re from, where you reckon to be going. It’s not a problem, is it?”

The wording of the second sentence was innocuous enough, but it was the tone of his voice—it carried an undertone of menace, as though he were daring them to say that it was.

Or was it just that customs and manners were different here and the mix of races and accents that had gathered over the generations had produced a strange speech pattern? Certainly, they had heard so many different modes of speech over the years.

Ryan looked over his shoulder at Krysty. She was his barometer of mood—her mutie doomie sense was liable to pick up the slightest tremors, even if she had no conscious idea herself. Her Titian mane was flowing, not tight and coiled, but there was some agitated movement from the strands around her neck.

She noticed Ryan staring at her and gave him a puzzled look. The sense of danger—no, not even that, but rather of caution—was so slight that she wasn’t aware of it herself. The one-eyed man returned her look with a slight, crooked grin and turned back to the sec chief.

“No, it’s not a problem. Not unless you want it to be. Not at all,” Ryan replied.

So there may be no problem right now, but it was a time to be triple-red. That was okay—he could tell from his brief glimpse of the others that they felt entirely the same way, without needing to be told.

Finally they seemed to reach the end of their journey. The corridors, which had been sparse up to now, were becoming more and more decorated. Animal heads mounted on wood, paintings that looked both new and scavenged from predark times and tapestries of bright colors were hung from the walls in an organized fashion, as though someone had applied some thought to their placement. That little fact alone gave Ryan a clue as to the man they were about to meet properly for the first time.

A pair of white-painted double doors—modest but tellingly clean—marked the end of the corridor. Horse stopped in front of them and knocked twice, standing back to wait for a response.

“Come,” a voice intoned from the other side, loud enough to be heard, but calm and unhurried.

The sec chief put a hand on each door and opened them. They were on the verge of the baron’s lair and each of the companions felt a tightening in the gut. Now they would find out if this was going to be friendly, or if they would have to fight.

They followed Horse into the baronial chamber. Like the corridors outside, it was decorated in a combination of paintings, animal heads and tapestries, tastefully arranged against a brilliant white wall. The floor was polished wood, shiny and slippery underfoot. The furnishings were sparse but comfortable: two sofas and three high chairs covered in a multicolor tapestried material that matched some of those on the walls; two long tables against the walls, with books and papers neatly arranged on the top, along with a wooden bowl of fruit and a pitcher of—presumably—water, and an old, mid-twentieth-century desk in a dark wood, polished and cared for, restored to its original sheen. Behind the desk was a late-twentieth-century swivel chair, carefully restored with animal hide, dyed and colored to resemble the original black leather or PVC covering.

Ethan was standing behind the desk, leaning forward and supporting himself on his knuckles, resting lightly while he perused a document unfurled on the desktop. Behind him, a window onto the outside framed him in a halo of light. If this was the effect he wanted, then it succeeded. It painted him as a man caught in the middle of a busy day running a ville, a man looked up to with a godlike status. If it was chance, then he was lucky. If it was deliberate, then he was a clever manipulator.

Which one was it?

Ethan looked up. “Ah, good,” he said lightly, folding the document so that its contents would be concealed before coming round his desk and striding across the room to Ryan, taking the one-eyed man’s hand and forearm in his own and grasping them firmly. “You are, I trust, well rested after the rigors of yesterday?”

“It was good of you to look after us,” he answered evenly.

Ethan gave a crooked grin. “Not at all, not at all. The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you. As you may recall, I described you as ‘interesting,’ and I haven’t changed that opinion in the slightest. You fascinate me, and if you wish, you can look on my hospitality as a way of satisfying my own curiosity. Now come, sit down.”

Ethan led Ryan toward the sitting area, Horse indicating to the other companions that they should follow. They sat, following Ryan’s lead as he and Ethan reached the sofas. They were soft and yielding. Ryan felt a twinge of concern, as they were so soft that springing from them if attacked would be difficult. But why be too concerned when there was only Ethan and Horse in the room, and the baron’s attitude was distinctly nonthreatening?

When they were settled, the baron lifted one of the high chairs and placed it so that he was positioned in the middle of the two sofas, able to see all parties. He sat, leaning forward with one elbow on his knee, fist under his chin, the very model of attentiveness.

“You can go, Horse. I’ll summon you when I need you,” he said to his sec chief without looking up. The dreadlocked sec boss nodded almost imperceptibly and withdrew, closing the doors behind him.

“So,” Ethan began when it was certain that they were alone, “I’m thinking that you have a tale to tell. You see, we have regular patrols around the territory, as we have to protect the trade routes to and from this ville. We have a thriving economy from our trade, and we live better than many baronies. But vigilance is the price we pay. You see my drift?”

“I’m not sure,” Ryan said guardedly. He was all too aware of what Ethan was saying, but wanted the baron to come out with it himself. Unfortunately, Doc still wasn’t as sharp as at his best and took Ryan’s words at face value.

“My dear boy, I feel sure that our kind host here means to ascertain how we came to be in his lands without seeming to have passed any of his patrols.”

Ethan smiled, noting the flicker of exasperation that flared briefly in Ryan’s eye. “Precisely,” he said levelly. “I’ve never known anyone to get past our lines without warning.”

“What about stickies?” Jak asked.

Ethan’s face darkened and something hard and cold shone through. “We thought they would be no problem, just pass through and then go without even bothering us. Whatever stirred them up, it’s an error we won’t make again.”

It was a plausible enough explanation, but there was a darker undertone to the baron’s voice that suggested this wasn’t the entire answer. It served to remind them to keep on guard, especially as Ethan picked up his subject again without hesitation.

“Point is, we knew they were coming, as we left them. We didn’t know you were here until we stumbled on you and damn near chilled you along with the stickies. Now how does that happen?”

“To tell you the truth, we don’t really know. We came from the northeast, across the dry plain. We should have been visible enough,” Ryan stated. He would let Ethan work it out from there. He wasn’t going to explain anything beyond that.

“My people avoid the plain. Nothing can really live on that shit, and I’m mightily impressed that you got across it. But we circle it with our patrols and we should have sighted you before you hit there. It’s not that big a place and there’s nothing to conceal you if you’re observed from the surrounding territory. My guess is that you’re not telling me the whole story, here,” he added, eyeing Ryan carefully.

“My guess is that mebbe some of your patrols aren’t as thorough as you’d like, or not as observant,” Ryan returned coolly.

The baron gave Ryan a cold, hard stare that was difficult to read. It was as though he had deliberately hooded his eyes to block out all his feelings. From what they’d already seen, Ethan didn’t take kindly to not having his word instantly obeyed. But weighed against this was the fact that he was fascinated by the companions and could sense that there was some bigger story lurking behind their guarded words.

He spoke again after a long, considered pause. “Okay, if you won’t tell me, there’s not much I can do. No, that’s not true. Actually, there’s an awful lot I can do. We have methods of torture that would normally break a man in less than a day—that’s if he survived. But you people aren’t like that, I can tell. You’re not the kind who give anything away, and I figure you’d rather buy the farm than give me the satisfaction. Besides all that, you’ve proved yourselves to be exceptional fighters, and we can always do with those in Pleasantville.”

“Really? You strike me as not having much trouble,” Ryan replied.

Ethan gave a small smile that was entirely lacking in warmth. “Why d’you think that is? Because we fight hard for what we’ve got, and we fight hard to defend it. And people—by which I mean other, lazier barons who would want to take rather than build—know this. So they leave us alone. There’s a lot of jack and a lot of goods in this ville, and we wouldn’t be able to hang on to it if we didn’t know how to. Y’see what I mean?”

Ryan nodded. “So what do you want from us?”

Ethan smiled again. This time, there was a knowingness behind the eyes. “You don’t waste words, do you? I like that, although I wish you’d waste a few in telling me where you came from and where you learned to fight like you do. So I figure that mebbe you will if you hang around for a while, get used to us. Mebbe you’ll like it enough to stay. We could always do with people like yourselves, who contribute to the well-being of the ville.” He leaned forward, so that he was looking Ryan directly in the eye. “I’ll tell you what I offer. You can stay in Pleasantville for as long as you like. You’ll work for your accommodation and food, but it’ll be good work, not crap. I want you to work with Horse and look at our sec strategies, in return for which we learn things about combat from you. If you like it, then you join his men and stay on. If not, you leave and carry on to wherever you were going. And mebbe—and only if you want—you tell me how the fuck you ended up in the middle of that forest.”

Ryan looked at the companions. Despite the rest, they were still battered from the firefight with the stickie pack. A few more days or a week in the ville, with good beds and food, would do them a lot of good before they moved on. He didn’t trust Ethan one bit, but if they could play along and buy a few days, then that would benefit them. At the moment they were in no state to stand and fight if they said no and Ethan turned on them.

“Yeah, okay,” Ryan said with an inclination of his head. “We’ll do it.”

“Good.” Ethan said no more, but had a smug expression as he rose and walked over to his desk. There was a bell-push on one corner, and he depressed it. Wherever the other end of the connection may lay, it wasn’t audible, and it had to have been some distance, for they waited a few minutes before the double doors opened and two sec men walked in, their blasters conspicuous from their belts, hands seemingly casual but ready for action.

J.B. noticed this, and he also noticed Ethan indicate with a subtle gesture that relaxed the sec duo.

“These boys will clear you out of last night’s dorm and find you regular accommodation. They’ll also tell you a bit about the ville as you go. Okay, boys?”

The two sec men grunted. They didn’t seem as though they would be garrulous mines of information. Ethan turned away, his audience with the companions over, his attention already focused on the papers on his desk.

Ryan rose, followed by the others, and walked toward the doors where the sec men waited.

“I hope you’ve figured what we could be getting into here,” J.B. muttered as he joined his old friend. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“With you on that,” Ryan returned in an undertone, “but we can’t just leave—not yet. Play them along a while, see the lay of the land.”

J.B. agreed, but his jaw was set tight. This wasn’t like the Ryan he knew. It was as though he were holding back, not sure of a course of action. The Armorer couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Ryan so indecisive.

As the companions walked through the double doors, they noted that one of the sec men held back, so that they were led and followed by an armed man. With no blasters of their own, it was an uncomfortable feeling.

“We’ll collect your stuff, then show you where you’re staying,” the leading sec man said in a deep, coarse voice that seemed out of place with his wiry, shaven-head form. “You’ve been allocated billets around the ville.”

“You mean to say we’re being split up? And that Ethan already had it worked out?” Krysty asked suspiciously.

“Course he did, lady,” the sec man at the rear piped up—literally, as despite his bulk and the beard that sprouted from his cleft chin, he had a voice that was almost falsetto. “The baron worked out what you do from what you were carrying, and made plans accordingly. He always plans for every eventuality.”




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