Chapter Five

 

The single shot of the SIG-Sauer was explosively loud within the confines of the underground network of labs, so loud that Alton Adrian easily heard the shot from where he was hiding inside a silver steel entryway outside of the main cryogenics laboratory.

 

"Skrag! One of the muties must be packing heat," he whispered to himself as a chill went down his spine and settled in the small of his back. A stickie with a blaster was triple-bad news. Weapons were hard enough to find in that part of Deathlands.

 

Blasters were hard to obtain and costly to maintain. Even with a blaster, finding ammunition was even harder unless you had the extra jack to pay top price. Most of the stickies Adrian had ever heard of or seen went for a more basic approach to offensethey used their own substantial strength and incredible mutant abilities to attack their foes bare-handed or with clubs.

 

Taking a deep breath, he warily slid out of the cool entryway and crawled on his hands and knees down the corridor. The smoke was thick there, and by staying low he could breathe easier and have better visibility.

 

He paused, wondering if he was indeed heading in the right direction, when more sounds of violence came crashing around the corner less than fifteen feet away from where he was crouched. Already he missed the cool of the room near the freezie chambers.

 

He had two choices go back the way he came or investigate what was causing all of the stickie ruckus.

 

"Follow the ruckus," he decided. Perhaps he could gain the upper hand somehow. He hadn't spent all this time hoping for a big score to see it pissed away by a bunch of idiot muties who liked to set fires.

 

 

 

ONCE RYAN HAD FIRED the first shot, the battle was on. He flattened against the wall, firing a few more rounds blindly into the smoke.

 

"Come on," he barked, and the rest of the group filed in past the burning parts of the room. The fires didn't seem to have opened into full flower yet, blossoming out in red-and-yellow petals. The walls, while scorched, weren't ablaze.

 

"Want to seal off the gateway, Dad?" Dean was standing at the door, where a twin for the sec keypad was recessed in the door frame.

 

"Do it," Ryan replied. "We might need a back door if things get bad in here."

 

The boy reversed the order of the locking code, and the door gave off the same queer clicking noise that indicated the magnetic lock had thrown true.

 

"The fire may burn itself out," Krysty said. "Not much here to flame on, really."

 

"Mebbe," Ryan agreed, coughing from an unintended lungful of smoke. He strained to see as they stepped farther into the burning room and near a doorway that led into a wide corridor. He could see more humanoid figures at the far end of the wall, slowly moving closer.

 

"More stickies heading this way," he reported to his friends.

 

Then, before any sort of battle could begin, the ceiling fell in, the smoky air above them transformed into a mass of cool white clouds, jetting down violently and without warning.

 

"What is this bastard stuff?" Ryan bellowed.

 

"Stay calm," Mildred yelled back over the rattling of the released emissions. "It's halon gas! I've seen it before. They used it in predark times to fight fires instead of water in sensitive areas with computers."

 

Looking up, they all saw that the gas had been released from a series of shiny sprinkler heads mounted into the ceiling tiles.

 

"Can it hurt us?" Krysty asked in a concerned voice. "Should we hold our breath or something?"

 

"No. It's a chem dump, a deluge. Expensive as hell, but it won't harm anything, including people. It's inert. Can't damage equipment or paper and disappears like a vapor. Leaves everything behind except for fire untouched," Mildred replied.

 

"Sounds more like the neutron bomb of the firebug set," J.B. observed sourly.

 

Already, the chemical was doing its magic, beating back the flames and clearing the air, revealing the damaged lounge area and the remaining three stickies who now could see the humans quite clearly, and vice versa.

 

"Feel wet," Jak said, running the palm of a hand down his pant leg.

 

"Halon gas dries quickly, Jak," Mildred told him. "You'll never know it was there in a few minutes."

 

"This fire was big enough to trigger any safeguards. I wonder what took the gas so long to launch?" Ryan said, watching the stickies regain their equilibrium from the sudden appearance of the artificial cloudburst.

 

"No telling," Mildred replied, sharing Ryan's attentive gaze on their foes. "Since this isn't a standard redoubt, I'm wondering what's keeping this place powered up enough to operate a gateway anyway."

 

"Must be a nuke gen somewhere around here," J.B. said bluntly.

 

Mildred chuckled. "If this is more of a private setup, I'll bet the locals never dreamed there was a small nuclear power plant right under their feet."

 

Like others of their kind, the muties were clumsy as they entered chaotically into what passed for a stickie attack stance. The freakish deformity of their bodies was painfully obvious as each of them turned to face Ryan and the rest of the group of friends.

 

The only weapons they carried were torches, and a few blades and other sharpened hand-to-hand weapons. No blasters were in evidence.

 

Normally the muties didn't need them. However, in such close quarters, their attack against human rifles wouldn't last for more than a few seconds. Chilling the stickies would be a simple task.

 

But then the ceiling fell in for a second time, the lightweight tiles buckling on top of the group of friends as two more of the murderous muties came crashing down into their midst.

 

One of the stickies bounded forward with a wordless cry, slamming into J.B. before he could raise his scattergun. The mutant's hand adhered instantly to the side of J.B.'s face, the suckered touch driving a scream even from the stoic Armorer's throat as he tried to twist away. His wire-rimmed spectacles were slung from his face as he struggled.

 

Afraid he'd hit one of his comrades in the now tightly fought battle, J.B. took out his Tekna knife and used it against the stickie who was intent on ripping away his face. He slashed out with his blade again and again at the stickie's arm, hitting a vein that carried what passed for blood in the mutie. A thin film of tacky ichor sprayed out, coating the stickie's face and upper body.

 

"Fireblast!" the Armorer cursed, throwing himself back in disgust even as the upper epidermis of his face tore away from the stickie's finger-pad attachments. With the pain came relief, the pain of freedom much preferable to the horror of being drawn closer to the subhuman mutation.

 

The moment direct contact with J.B.'s skin was broken, Mildred squeezed off a shot from her pistol, finishing the job J.B.'s blade had started when he cut a hunk out of the stickie's arm. However, Mildred wasn't going for the extremities. She went for the head shot, the chunk of lead escaping her blaster with a loud crack as it almost instantaneously entered the stickie's nasal cavity, entering in a clean, deadly motion and crashing through the lower part of what passed for the mutie's brain.

 

The bullet exited the back of the stickie's skull, punching out in a spray of gray matter and blood and bone. As the grue flew out, it splattered against the back wall of the hallway with a wet slap, narrowly missing Doc, whose swordstick's blade tip just slid into the eye socket of the second attacking stickie. Doc slid the stick out and back a second time with all of his strength, shuddering when he felt the blade scraping bone in the pulped socket.

 

J.B. stumbled forward, his normally weak vision seriously compromised by the loss of his glasses and the blood pouring down from the torn flesh of his forehead into his naked eyes. He kept moving, to provide less of a target while keeping his immediate area clear of attackers.

 

"Son of a bitch!" J.B. cried out, incensed by his handicap, swinging his knife in a searching circle. "I'll gut all of you bastards!"

 

In the heat of the battle and confusion, no one even noticed when J.B.'s booted foot came down hard on his dropped spectacles, shattering the already cracked right lens and cracking the left lens.

 

Across the room, Ryan was involved in his own struggle. The distraction of the pair of muties falling into the band's midst had given the other three stickies time to advance. Having lost one eye, Ryan was well aware of the fear men possessed when it came to preserving their vision. Taking his cue from Doc's fancy work with the ebony swordstick, Ryan also went for his opponent's eyes. Muties, at least stickies, shared this phobia, and the lead one screeched out in terror as Ryan dug both of his thumbs into the freak's ghastly pale eye sockets and pushed with as much force as he could muster.

 

Thin blood, sticky and pink, came squirting forth like tiny fountains from the twin thumb gouge. It ran down the stickie's cheeks like tears and covered Ryan's hands and upper arms.

 

The mutie's tongue came slithering out, long and lank, adorned with dozens of tiny suckers mirroring the ones on the creature's hands. Ryan bit down hard on the impulse to gag. His adversary's creature's breath was unbearable, and the odor coming from the stickie's burst eyeballs was even worse.

 

The tip of the tongue brushed against Ryan's wrist, slithering like a snake over the band of his wrist chron before touching flesh.

 

The thought of an oral caress from a stickie was too much, even for a hardened warrior like Ryan Cawdor. He pulled his thumbs back and locked his hands and fingers together, swinging them down, then up in a rapid, fluid motion. As he brought the double handful up, he smashed a twin fist into the unfortunate mutie's chin, slamming the already maimed creature's mouth shut with terrific force, causing the dumb, blinded bastard to bite off its own tongue.

 

The abnormally long tongue fell to the floor, and the dying stickie soon joined it.

 

The remaining two were summarily dispatched with equal and deadly force. Shots rang out from Krysty's .38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson and Dean Browning Hi-Power. Unlike Mildred, Krysty was no former Olympic champion when it came to target shooting, but she was a fine shot at such close range.

 

The volley from Dean's pistol also struck true, but the boy had gone for a shot to the heart instead of the head, forgetting that stickies had internal organs that were sometimes positioned differently than those belonging to an ordinary man.

 

The shot was a killing wound, with an assist. On the fringes of the action, peering in for where his talents might best be needed, was Jak. Spying Dean's quandary, Jak calmly whipped out a throwing knife and sent it spiraling into the neck of the stickie that Dean's bullet had previously entered. The combination of critical injuries finished off the mutie.

 

And then all of the attackers had fallen, and the conflict was over.

 

"Everybody okay?" Ryan asked from behind clenched teeth, his injured shoulder singing a lusty song of agony now that the adrenaline surge was fading away.

 

A chorus of replies came back affirmative.

 

"You don't look all right, J.B.," Ryan noted. "Mildred, see if you can get his face to stop bleeding."

 

"On it," she replied, striding over with a clean cloth and a small bottle of disinfectant she kept packed away in case of injuries such as these. "Need to find a few bandages or some med tape. That should take care of you, John."

 

"You're the doctor, Millie," J.B. replied. "Don't think the bastard had a chance to get too much of a grip. Feels like he just took off a top layer or two."

 

"Well, I'll be the judge of that. Ugly as you are, a few more scars won't hurt," the woman teased.

 

"Thanks," he replied glumly. "Nice to be loved."

 

"Where are your glasses, John?" Mildred asked, noting their absence for the first time since the struggle had ended.

 

"Damn stickie knocked them clean off. Must've landed on the floor somewhere."

 

"Shit," Jak said. His tone made them all look at him.

 

"There a problem?" Ryan asked.

 

"Found specs. What's left," Jak replied from a squatting position near a bloody corpse. The albino held up the twisted frames. One of the lenses was shattered, with bits of glass hanging in the frame and scattered like fine grains of salt on the floor. The other lens was in better shape, but not by much. A crack the size of a bolt of lightning stretched down the center.

 

"Aw, hell," the Armorer said as Jak walked over and handed him the remains of his eyewear. "Don't think duct tape is going to help hold these together."

 

"How's your vision minus the specs, J.B.?" Ryan asked, concerned that his friend might be crippled without the glasses.

 

"I can get around, if that's what you're getting at. Just don't expect any precision shooting from me and I'll be okay."

 

"Soon as we get out of here, we'll try to find you a replacement pair. I can't have my best shot stumbling around blind."

 

"I'm your best shot," Mildred protested. "And don't worry about John, I'll be there to help keep him from stumbling."

 

"Not ready for a damn white cane yet," J.B. said.

 

"Glad to hear it," Ryan replied.

 

"You think we're underground, lover?" Krysty asked Ryan as he turned to let Mildred finish ministering to J.B.'s facial wounds.

 

He considered the question for a moment. "Probably. Least ways, I'm guessing we're underground. Fits the usual pattern, even if this is the most fucked-up redoubt I've ever encountered."

 

"Still say this isn't a redoubt," J.B. protested as Mildred dabbed some of the antiseptic on his chin. "Son of a gun," J.B. hissed. "What's that, Millie? Acid?"

 

"It's germ-free John. It's supposed to hurt. Kills the infection."

 

"Ever hear of the cure being worse than the disease?"

 

"If this isn't a redoubt, let's start exploring and see what it really is," Dean suggested, hopping down from an abandoned gurney and stepping over the dead stickies to check out the end of the corridor.

 

"Wait, Dean. Don't go running off on your own," Ryan growled, but the impetuous boy had already gone around the blind corner.

 

And come face-to-face with the haunted eyes of a new threat.