Prologue

 

The Past

 

The figures were locked in a two-step, supporting each other as they weaved across the arid landscape. Their feet stumbled, uncertain of the next step as they walked clumsily over the uneven terrain. Above their heads, the wild sky was a deep, striking blue, without a single cloud hanging in place to battle back the hot sunlight.

 

There was an absence of any kind of hill, or mountain or coverjust flat, broken highwaysix lanes of highwayas far ahead as the eye could see.

 

Pieces of broken pavement and scraps of long-dead automobiles littering the roadway kept tripping up the two menthat, and the state of near exhaustion they barely endured as they picked their way northward along the abandoned stretch of road.

 

Once, the highway had been known as Interstate 77. Now it was just another road, one of thousands that still crisscrossed the former United States of America, unmaintained and forgotten.

 

Far behind them, long hot miles back down the interstate and directly off an exit ramp near the remains of a single ruined overpass, were the burned and crumbling remains of the play palace and amusement park that had been known to many as Wille ville. But it had an earlier incarnation meaningful to good Christian soldiers, as Freedom City, U.S.A.

 

Before the darkness fell across the world, the site had been a queer mix of Bible-thumping religion and overblown Vegas-style entertainment. The crown jewel of the attraction was a sparkling, modern, twenty-four-story hotel with all of the amenities, including a private, hidden casino in the basement for those "very special" guests of the Lord.

 

Freedom City U.S.A. was also equipped with an amusement park for children, a fully functioning television studio with satellite hookup and live feed, a radio station broadcasting on both AM and FM wavebands, private quarters for the staff and employees, and an eighteen hole golf course with special tee off spots for senior citizens.

 

All of these diversions were offered for free to select members of the church group who sponsored the dream of the compound's owner and president. The master of Freedom City was a "born-again" showman, promoting his land of fun through publishing and radio, but primarily via cable TV with regular appeals for money to help do the Lord's work.

 

He had taken the title of televangelist, one of those new words that sprung into being when meshing the old and the new.

 

He claimed to be able to produce miracles, healing the sick on a daily basis. The lame threw down their crutches. The ones committed for life to wheelchairs stood up and danced. The blind were made to see. The men, women and children who held their diseases close, hidden in their bodies as cancer tumors, were made whole and well again.

 

These acts were performed live with a very special handpicked studio audience who got to enjoy the pleasures of Freedom City after their television debuts. And for the poor souls unable to travel, they too were offered salvation by pressing their hands up against their TV screens at home, and told to channel their energies through the very lines of fiber optic cable carrying the broadcast signal into their neighborhoods.

 

The Lord had chosen to respond to all of these good works done in his name by allowing the miracle producing head of the church and complex of Freedom City to be exposed as a lecherous and greedy little troll, who wept like a baby once his sins became public. Once the word was out that their leaderthe good married reverend himselfhad been discovered in a bedroom of one of the hundreds of hotel rooms housed in the twenty-four story crown jewel of his empire with two women half his age, the holding corporation for the entire kingdom had been plunged into a non-ending series of investigations and exposes. All of the media attention culminated in the leader's imprisonment, bankruptcy and ruin.

 

The dream was over.

 

The park was closed. The golf course was padlocked shut. The hotel was turned over to private enterprise, rented a few times a year for business conventions.

 

Then, less than a decade or so later, the literal end of the world the former Baptist millionaire had promised for so long finally did happen. When it did, concepts such as religion, and inventions such as television, and businesses with corporations and strong men of leadership involved in tawdry affairs with young girls were utterly, totally, completely moot.

 

Over a hundred years later, Freedom City, U.S.A. I had become a ville run by a man with an iron fist and a handpicked team of security men. At first, the area was under the command of one Baron George Frederic Sokolow. Sokolow was a brutal man, but trusting and fair. His successor, by way of betrayal, had been one Baron William Elijah.

 

Unfortunately for Freedom City, U.S.A., the good I and proper Biblical name of Elijah was not chosen as the site's new appellation. The name of the place became Willie ville.

 

Now, all gone, Freedom City had died thrice. The first time had left the structures intact with the soul removed. The second had seen all around it fall into waste and ruin.

 

The third found it blown into bits and burned to the ground, overrun and destroyed by legions of muties.

 

The two figures fleeing from Willie ville kept moving. To their right, skeletal skyscrapers of the city known as Charlotte towered high, but the city and its artificial canyons lined with sidewalks and parking meters wasn't their destination.

 

"We there yet?" the taller of the two asked in a drugged, slow voice, a voice like a sleepy playback on an elderly tape recorder with dying batteries.

 

"What do you think?" the other retorted, his voice a wet, phlegmy sound. "Look around, stupe. We're not even past Charlotte yet, and I sure as hell don't want to go in there. I hear there's patches of hot rad spots."

 

The shorter of the pair, the man with the fast quip, was hairless, and his scalp was a mix of bright red new skin intermingled with blackened scabs and old scar tissue. His companion had enough shaggy brown hair running down from above a lean, hairless forehead to the nape of a narrow back to provide ample tresses for each of them.

 

Both of them were wearing sunglasses. The bald one with the ugly head had a pair of black knockoff RayBan eyewear, in the classic boxy style of the 1950s. The long-haired figure wore a pair of amber aviator's glasses, with thin metal frames of gold. The glasses were a size too small, but still better than braving the sun without any eye protection.

 

The first man with the injured head and face had been trapped when things had gone to hell weeks earlier in Willie ville. A semicompetent sec man and hired mercie by trade, he'd been unlucky enough to rouse the ire of the now-deceased Baron Willie Elijah, and on the day the ville was blasted into ruin, he'd been strapped with other unfortunates to a great wheel used to raise and lower the elevator car that traveled between floors of the twenty-four-story hotel jutting from the center of the baron's ville.

 

Unfortunately for those who manned the elevator wheel, the baron had chosen the penthouse as the roost of his domain, where he could look out on all that was his and rest assured it was good.

 

This aerie was also home to his family and followers, and where many of his sec men who hadn't incurred his wrath and been banished to the wheel stayed, as well. All of them, and more, had been up there on top of the world the day Willie ville began to die.

 

There had been an explosion within the upper floors of the former pleasure palace, and the elevator carfull to overflowing with panicked men and womenhad come crashing down at a terrific rate. The wheel that the slaves had been strapped to spun faster and faster, whipping them around like insects struggling to keep their footing on a traveling vehicle.

 

Under the sounds of the explosions and screams came the sickening snaps of breaking bones and the haunting noise of naked flesh being ripped open and torn apart. Then there were more blasts of horrific intensity, followed by fire as the entire twenty-four floors of the hotel came tumbling down into the basement.

 

The two men now leaning woozily on each other for support had been among the few survivors from the devastation in Baron Willie's headquarters.

 

In the instance of the man wearing the RayBan sunglasses, the end result created by the flames was a scarred visage that suggested the aftereffect of a novelty wax head placed within a microwave oven. Flesh had bubbled and melted. The forehead was slashed with still healing wounds and bits of black shrapnel that had yet to work themselves out of the skin. No eyebrows were above the currently hidden eyes, but one eyeball was wide-open, glaring and minus an eyelid.

 

The other eye was half-closed in a mess of scarring.

 

The nose was missing, gone as if it had never existed, and when he breathed, air was sucked in through the remaining narrow holes above the ruined mouth. There were no lips to be seen, only a wet orifice cluttered with scraps of white teeth and a bright red tongue between cheeks stubbled with clumped patches of beard and blotches of crimson.

 

His injuries made it impossible for him to fully close his mouth. Like his nasal cavity, his mouth hung open, panting as air went in and out of his lungs like an overworked bellows. Smoke inhalation from the fire had created a permanent rasp when he breathed. The fire had also claimed the man's ears.

 

He fell to his knees, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to regain his breath. The second figure placed a hand on his fallen friend's shoulder and waited silently.

 

The placed hand was strange, inhuman, dirty andwrong. The fingers looked as though they had an extra joint between the midbend and the knuckle, and indeed they were so equipped. The fingers also came with two additional bonusesa multitude of tiny suckers, each little mouth capable of sticking to almost any chosen surface, and a thin secretion of bioproduced adhesive.

 

The hand was the first clue in separating the pair, for the man on the ground, despite his horrific injuries, was a human. A "norm" by birth, now a freak by accident and lucky to be alive.

 

The standing figure behind him was a mutant, and there would be no changing that birthright. The mutie was commonly called a "stickie" due to the suctioning fingers, which could tear flesh off bone.

 

Stickies had the same suckers on their long tongues, as well.

 

There were also other ways of identifying a stickie. Their speech patterns were usually slow and monosyllabic. Many times their teeth were sharp, both by nature and because stickies enjoyed filing their teeth down into needles for shock value. And many had the unusual trait of being born without any ears, so their hearing was limited, making them seem even slower and dumber to a human foe. The lack of ears also forced most stickies to be loud talkers, making them seem even more annoying to all except for their own kind.

 

No one knew why most stickies were missing ears.

 

There were two kinds of stickies. The one in the aviator's glasses was the more intelligent kind. A second breed of stickie came with very little in the upstairs attic, no body hair and suckers on their feet. Also on the hands and feet of these murderous unfortunates were highly developed sucker pads instead of fingers and toes, the digits exuding a gelatinous ooze even more adhering than the secretion characteristic of their brighter kin.

 

"How much longer?" the stickie asked slowly.

 

"I don't know," the scarred man replied as he gulped oxygen. "We're heading north, so I know by the sun we're going in the right direction. I couldn't begin to tell you what kind of time we're making. We're killing ourselves now, and we haven't gone near far enough. Trip is going to take weeks on foot in the condition we're both in. Mebbe even months, unless we find some kind of wag or horse."

 

The listening stickie used its other hand to adjust the cap it was wearing. The letters "PTL" were stitched in yellow on the blue hat, a souvenir of time spent in servitude in Wille ville. The creature had no idea what the initials stood for, nor did it care, since it couldn't read anyway. The hat had three things in its favor it fit snugly over long hair, it wasn't filthy like the rest of the stickie's clothing and the wide brim kept the sun off its pale face.

 

"No wags here, norm," the mutie said, its shaded eyes surveying the surrounding landscape. The closest thing to a means of vehicular transportation were the stripped frames of abandoned automobiles.

 

"Don't call me that," the man snapped. "I'm not a norm. I'm no longer a man. I'm one of you now. A filthy, stinking mutie."

 

The stickie pondered this for a long moment. "You want me to call you Lester?"

 

A wet rasping sound came forth as he inhaled, then exhaled. "Hell, no."

 

"That was your name."

 

"Not anymore. Forget you ever heard it."

 

The stickie pondered this before answering. "Have to call you something."

 

"Just shut up, okay? Shut up and keep walking. Let's see if we can make that tractor-trailer rig up there. Can use it to camp in tonight."

 

"Whatever you say, Norm, whatever you say." The stickie reached down and offered a helping hand.

 

The newly christened Norm knocked the assistance away and awkwardly got to his feet on his own.

 

"Fuck you, mutie," he said proudly.

 

The stickie looked at him, its expression unreadable behind the aviator's glasses. "Saved you, Norm. Saved your life."

 

"I can't say I'm grateful, you ugly prick." Spittle and drool flowed freely from the slash of the man's ruined mouth, splashing out in drips and drabs and hitting the mutie in the face. The mutant didn't appear to mind. "Did I ever say thank you? Can't remember that I did. Wish you'd let me finish burning like a candle in that shithole."

 

"Need me," the stickie said, pointing a long bony finger to itself. The finger turned and pointed at Norm. "Need you."

 

"Yeah, yeah, you've told me. Word got out before everything back at the ville went to hell, didn't it? About the western part of Carolina crawling with muties? Fucking Lord Kaa-kaa and his plans to unite all the mutants."

 

"Lord Kaa," the mutie said in tones of reverence. "Lord Kaa."

 

"Yeah, whatever. Lord Kaa sent word outhow, I have no fucking ideato all of you freaks in the baron's mutie zoo about this place."

 

"Budd wasn't in the zoo," the stickie said firmly, identifying itself by name.

 

"Excuse me, all the freaks in the zoo combined with all the mutie turds working the grunt detail on the elevator wheel with us dumb-ass norms who were stupe enough to get Willie-boy all pissed off. I was a good sec man for a long damn time for my baron, the dried-up old skank. I make one mistake, and he drops me. Just because I missed that old bastard's blade hidden in his walking stick."

 

Norm muttered all of these details in a singsong voice. Reciting the same account over and over had committed the rant to memory. Budd didn't protest, but merely listened.

 

"Bet One-eye put his pal up to hiding the shiv. Yeah, I miss one old fart's blade, and my boss fucks me up the ass in front of everybody and next thing I know I'm stuck in the basement turning the elevator wheel with guys like you."

 

The mutie pondered the words. "Budd had been at the wheel for many days. Weeks."

 

"And what did you do to earn your stint?"

 

"Nothing. Budd did nothing."

 

The scarred man stopped walking and turned to face his associate. "Wrong. Budd was born with oozing hands and a strong back. Face it, all you stickies were fucked from birth. But you'd learned to accept it, right? Until you mutie bastards got the word Kaa was coming to save your sorry asses, freeing you from the fields and the wheels and the baron's mutie zoo. Kaa might have pulled it off, too, except the cannies and the scabies and all you stickies got a serious murder lust and started killing one another off."

 

"Lord Kaa couldn't contain us all," Budd said simply. "The blood fever came. We were unable to stop ourselves."

 

"Good thing, or we wouldn't be going north. Kaa had the right idea, but he was too weird to pull it off. Muties always have needed a strong hand."

 

"Like yours, Norm."

 

"Yeah, like mine. We'll go to Winston, Budd. We'll start over there, me and you both. Hell, guys like us, we're heading for the promised land!"

 

The stickie didn't answer as it continued concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Norm was allowed to straggle along under his own steam now. Despite what some said, muties did possess rudimentary emotions, and Budd was both hurt and angered by his companion's caustic comments about Lord Kaa. The mutant could have broken the smaller human into pieces, if it had chosen to. Instead, Budd had accepted the responsibility of companionship.

 

"What happened to Lord Kaa, anyway?" Norm asked after a few moments, growing bored with the sound of his own labored breathing.

 

"Budd doesn't know. Lord Kaa was there, then he wasn't. He disappeared."

 

"Chilled, most likely. Yeah, he's probably back there in Wille ville under a ton of burned brick and dead muties."

 

"Budd doesn't agree. Kaa lives."

 

"Budd can kiss my ass. I don't give a shit what you think."

 

"Then, leave me."

 

"You wish. Of course, we both know that's the problem here," Norm said, his voice trailing off. "The fact is thisyou stickies couldn't find your dicks with both hands in a stiff wind."

 

"Norm helping Budd."

 

The man took off the sunglasses for a moment and rubbed his injured eyes. "I guess so. Somebody has to. Navigation isn't your strong suit, and I've heard about this stickie hive where we're going. Some of the other sec men I worked with back at Willie's before the ville got toasted had pulled duty time at the human outpost near our new home. Muties have the entire city to themselves, and the norms live farther out from it, safe and snug in their own pocket of protection."

 

Norm took another breath. "Yeah, I guess we're in this together, mutie, like it or not."

 

"Why?"

 

"Like I told youI'm mutie now. I'm Norm the half-melted mutie. Way I look, your kind is the only ones left in the Deathlands that can accept me without gagging."

 

"You are a strange norm, Lester," Budd said.

 

The shorter figure's one good eye flashed with anger. "For the last time don't call me that. Call me Norm. Lester's dead. Buried back in Willie ville. If we make it to where I'm planning, I've got some plans, Budd. Big plans. Your Lord Kaa? He was a friggin' piker compared to what I'm planning to take over and rebuild. All you stickies need to take over your lives is some guidanceand me and you, we're going to give them all the lessons they need."

 

Silence. More steps.

 

"Norm?"

 

"What?"

 

"Are we there yet?"