As the rags came away in her hand, a dirty and multicolored bandage that unraveled onto the earth, Krysty could see that Tilly had no hair to speak of, just small tufts of down that appeared on a red raw scalp. It looked as though someone had taken her by the hair and roughly sliced away the skin. Her forehead was heavily lined and crisscrossed by scars.

 

 Around her eyes, the skin was baggy, making her burning eyes seem ancient and old when fully revealed. Her face was scarred with the remains of old burns, her lips almost gone and her nose hollow and devoid of flesh.

 

 "They set me on fire after taking my scalp. They wanted the hair and skin for DNA tests. The burns were for tests on antibiotics. When I was thrown out to die, the sec men took me because they hadn't been allowed to mate and felt the urge…" She uttered the last part with as much of a sneer as she could muster from her broken face.

 

 Ryan kept his gaze steady on the woman, noticing that Krysty didn't flinch in her face. From the corner of his eye, Ryan could see that the other guards weren't moving. There seemed to be an unspoken assumption that Tilly, if not actually outranking them, was certainly of a higher standing.

 

 Ryan had been at the mercy of psychotics in charge of sec forces many times. It was never a good experience.

 

 Krysty was breathing shallow and fast, trying to stop herself from appearing shocked or disturbed by either Tilly's appearance or her actions.

 

 "Take a good look, bitch," Tilly breathed, her voice reduced to a harsh, venomous whisper. "Take a good look, 'cause you'll end up like this, too. You and the black bitch."

 

 "Tilly don't like women much," Mac said. It didn't escape anyone's notice that the irritating humor was gone from his voice.

 

 "Of course she doesn't," Mildred said quietly. "We remind her too much of what she used to be."

 

 Krysty breathed a sigh of relief as Tilly whirled away from her, trailing rags like banners behind her in the now gentle breeze. With a few strides that seemed to float her across the surface of the ground without touching, Tilly was in front of Mildred, waving the knife in her face.

 

 "Shut the fuck up," she screamed, an edge of madness seeping into her tones. "Just shut the fuck up, or I swear I won't wait until the ritual. I'll chill you now, and it won't be quick. It'll be slow and—"

 

 She was cut off as Mildred snaked out a hand and gripped Tilly's knife wrist. The ragged woman was taken by surprise, a blank look of incomprehension crossing what was left of her face as Mildred twisted her arm. With her free hand she snatched the knife from the weakened grip, at the same time twisting farther so that Tilly had to turn or risk dislocation of her elbow or shoulder joint.

 

 "Hold it right there," Mac snapped, raising his blaster. With an indication of his eyes, he made sure that the other two covered Dean, Krysty and Ryan while he covered Jak, whom he trusted least.

 

 J.B. flicked his eyes toward the lip of the chasm. Tod had Mildred and Tilly in his sights, and a quick estimate told J.B. that the spray from the gigantic blaster would almost certainly chill him, as well.

 

 "Okay, it's okay," Mildred said coolly, dropping the knife and pushing Tilly away from her so that the woman fell into the dirt. "I was just making a point." She looked at her companions and shrugged. "There's nowhere to run yet, anyway," she added.

 

 Tilly picked herself up, claimed her knife and hastily rewrapped the bandages around her head until she was completely swathed. She stood back, a little apart from her fellow valley dwellers, her eyes flashing loathing from within the shadows.

 

 Tod looked up to the skies and sniffed. "I'd say we better get across real soon. There's a change in the air, and we don't want to get caught out here when it happens."

 

 Mac nodded. "Okay. You and Tilly get across and stand guard on the insiders as they come across."

 

 Ryan watched with interest as both Tilly and Tod crossed the divide. The ragged woman was no surprise, bounding across the three-yard gap in the chasm with a lightness of foot and a grace that landed her safely on the other side. Tod, on the other hand, was a revelation. Despite his height, considerable bulk and the size and weight of his homemade blaster, Tod made the leap look like a step into the void, covering the distance with ease.

 

 "Your turn," Mac said when Tod and Tilly were facing them across the gap, the annoying grate of humor returning to his voice.

 

 "Me first," Jak said simply. He took a short run and launched himself into space, arms and legs bicycling to gain those precious few extra inches. He landed on the other side with a puff of dust around his feet.

 

 Ryan looked around at his companions.

 

 "I'll go next, lover," Krysty said, looking less than enthusiastic. She psyched herself up by taking deep breaths, calling on Gaia to give her the strength to propel herself across the gap.

 

 Her concentration was so intense that she didn't even realize that she had made the run-up until she was in midair, sailing across the divide. Her limbs felt weightless, buoyed by the air currents around and beneath her.

 

 It was a feeling so exhilarating that she was almost sorry when she touched down delicately on the other side. But almost immediately her strength felt completely sapped, her limbs heavy. She collapsed into a heap as Jak rushed to her.

 

 He was stopped by a knife that thudded into the dry, hard ground at his feet.

 

 "Leave her, or the next one is in your guts, red-eye."

 

 Jak stared across at Tilly with the eye of one who was keeping the score, but he held his tongue and stayed where he was.

 

 On the far side Dean chewed his lip. He was younger than the rest, in some ways fitter. But he was still growing, his frame sometimes outreaching the strength of his musculature. It would be a real test of his stamina and ability to get across.

 

 "Let me go next," he said. And before Ryan could say a word, Dean ran to the edge of the chasm with measured strides, flexing his knees and getting as much spring as he could into his leap.

 

 As he flew through the air, he could feel his lungs almost burst with the effort and the amount of oxygen he had taken into his body.

 

 As he began to dip, he knew it wasn't quite enough.

 

 On the other side, Jak could see the slight decline in Dean's flight and knew the youngster was hitting trouble.

 

 Dean knew that he wouldn't quite make it. He flung out his arms to grasp at the loose dirt on the edge of the chasm as he slammed into the rock-studded wall. His fingers grappled for purchase as the showers of dirt flew into his eyes, mingling with the sweat of exertion and fear that made it hard to see what he was doing. He moved his feet, frantically searching for some kind of foothold from which to propel himself up.

 

 The rocks under his toes moved as he put the slightest pressure on them, slipping free from the earth and thudding into the darkness, setting off mini-earth slips. The sounds echoed and receded into the distance below, a darkness Dean dared not look down on as the cold, dry earth scored his cheek. He was losing ground, slipping down farmer until…

 

 It seemed like an eternity to the youth, but it was only a couple of seconds. A couple of seconds in which Jak would pluck him out of trouble. Ignoring Tilly's sore-throated roar to stay where he was, and taking no note of the badly thrown knife that thudded into the ground on the edge of the chasm, Jak propelled himself forward with a stride that his short stature didn't seem capable of achieving. His snow-white hair whipped out behind him as he flung himself full-length with the second step, one arm shooting out into the abyss, strong fingers grasping for Dean's wrist or fingers.

 

 His eyes stung so much, his vision blurred so much that Dean registered Jak's hand, sinewy fingers extended, as only a lighter blur on the dark surface of the earth and rock face. Jak's fingers groped for Dean's hand and found it as the boy's fingers lost their hold and slipped on the dry, treacherous earth.

 

 Jak's fingers closed around Dean's in a strong grip that bit into the boy's flesh. The pain jolted Dean out of the enclosed world of earth, dark and struggle. Instinctively he knew what was happening, and brought his other hand around, scrabbling all the while on the surface of the almost sheer face to grasp Jak's wrist.

 

 But he was still a long way from safety. His feet were treading air and earth that slipped away beneath him, letting him fall a fraction of an inch with each pedal of his combat boot.

 

 Jak and Dean were roughly about the same size, but if anything the young Cawdor was slightly taller, slightly heavier than the whip-thin albino. On the surface of the earth, while Ryan, J.B. and Mildred watched helplessly from the opposite side, Jak was dragged across the ground by the double pull of gravity and Dean's lack of purchase, dragged farther and farther until the top half of his body began to poke out over the edge of the abyss, the gradual increase in weight balance on the lip accelerating the rate at which he was pulled forward.

 

 Jak grunted heavily with the effort of trying to pull himself back, to pull Dean up and over the edge. His right arm took Dean's weight, feeling the pull on every sinew and tendon as the boy's weight strained on the limb. His left arm was held down at his side, clawing at the earth as he tried to dig in and gain some purchase with the toes of his boots.

 

 Krysty shot a glance at Tod and Tilly. The ragged woman seemed to have expended her anger at Jak's action, and like the giant was watching the tableau impassively.

 

 Another second ticked past, agonizingly slow. Krysty decided to take the chance that they would let her assist. They seemed too keen on their ritual chilling to want to waste all their captives' lives. So it was worth the chance…

 

 Krysty hurried to Jak, shrugging off her fur coat. It was too bulky for right now, and would hinder her chances of giving aid.

 

 She hit the dirt before the coat, on her knees and grasping Jak by the waistband of his camou pants. Feeling her strength as she pulled him back from the lip, Jak redoubled his efforts, toes biting into the ground and forming small horizontal steps as he scrabbled back.

 

 As Jak's whole torso was once again on flat earth, Krysty relinquished her grip and moved around to the edge of the chasm. Looking over the lip, she could see Dean's face, contorted with the effort of pushing against the side of the dirt chasm until his legs felt like molten lead, the muscles burning with a heavy fire. His hands clung to Jak's whipcord arm, the veins and muscles bulging as Dean's fingers bit into the white flesh. The boy had enough sense to reach under the sleeve of Jak's patched coat, which his weight would otherwise have dragged off Jak's body. The sleeve had worked its way up Jak's arm, showing the white flesh going red where Dean's fingers scored into it.

 

 Krysty stretched herself full-length and reached down, taking hold of Dean by his shirt, pulling on it until it came out of his pants and gathered around his neck.

 

 It was enough to help him scramble the extra few inches for Krysty to grab his belt. With that much firmer hold she was able to take more of the boy's weight and relieve the strain on Jak.

 

 As he got closer to the top, and the lip of the chasm gained a slight diagonal incline from the continual slipping of surface dirt, Dean was able to gain more of a foothold and so propel himself onto the plateau at the top, where he collapsed into a heap, panting heavily as he drew precious air into his lungs. The fire in his aching muscles began to abate.

 

 Jak rose gracefully to his feet, rubbing life back into his bruised and numbed limb.

 

 After checking that Dean was recovering, Krysty collected her fur with as much nonchalance as she could muster, casting a disdainful glance at the still impassive Tod and Tilly.

 

 "That was a damn good show," the giant said, nodding slowly. "Reckon as you could mebbe do it again?"

 

 Once Dean was on his feet, Mac gestured to Ryan with his blaster.

 

 "Reckon it's your turn now, One-eye. See if you can give us as much of a show as your brat."

 

 Anger blazed within Ryan, but he kept it hidden, the only outward signs a twitch at the corner of his mouth and a whitening at the edges of the puckered scar under his eye socket.

 

 It was the suppressed fury that gave him the explosive energy to cover the distance with ease.

 

 J.B. was next. As with most things the Armorer did, it seemed to be a matter of little effort and an offhand glance. After polishing his glasses, the wiry weapons expert took a short run and threw himself across the divide.

 

 It wasn't the most graceful landing, but it was perfunctory. The only thing that worried J.B. was the way his ankle twisted as he hit the ground. He felt a slight pull, and a pain that was halfway between a stab and an itch. He noticed the slight sensation of weakness as he walked over to the others. He decided to say nothing for the while, hoping that he could walk it off.

 

 Mildred was the last to jump. Waiting until last had done her nerves little good. There was a small demon inside her that she had never confronted—her fear, not so much of heights but of drops. As a child, she remembered looking at pictures of the Grand Canyon in books her father possessed, and being struck not by the grandeur but by the sheer fall to the bottom.

 

 And now she had to jump across a sheer drop.

 

 "Did you ever hear about a guy called Evel Knievel?" she said to Mac and his silent sec men. She received a blank look in return. "Forget it," she said. "Just an old woman rambling about things you wouldn't know."

 

 She took the jump with a greater ease than she would have thought possible. It was a strong temptation to close her eyes as she soared through the air, but she resisted, knowing that she had to keep them open to judge her landing.

 

 It was close to the edge, but not over. The urge to look over her shoulder and into the abyss was almost overwhelming, and she risked a quick glance over her shoulder.

 

 The drop into blackness zoomed in and out of focus, and she felt herself sway. A hand steadied her. Looking around, she saw J.B. in front of her, grasping her arm.

 

 "Thanks, John," she said, smiled. "Nearly lost it there."

 

 J.B. returned the smile. "About time I helped you out," he said simply.

 

 Tod gestured to them to band together, waving the giant blaster. It crossed J.B.'s mind that with a blaster like that they could be spread in a hundred yard radius and still be picked off by one load of shot, but he kept his peace as they moved together under the watchful eyes of Tod and Tilly.

 

 Mac and the other two sec men crossed the divide with ease, leaping with a surprising grace to cover the distance.

 

 "Mutie jackrabbits, not men," Jak muttered.

 

 "Guess they've just adapted to the conditions," Mildred offered by way of reply.

 

 "Shut up and move," Tilly's hissing tones cut short any further discussion.

 

 "HOW MUCH FARTHER to your ville?" Ryan asked after they'd been walking for some time. They were going through another whirl of the seemingly constant storm, the wind rising to a howl loud enough to necessitate Ryan shouting. The dirt and dust whipped at them, stinging.

 

 J.B. was aware of the pull in his ankle getting worse. Mildred had also noticed the way in which he was shifting his weight on his left foot, and gave him a questioning glance to which she received a short shake of the head in reply.

 

 Ryan repeated his question. "I said, how far—?"

 

 "I heard you the first time," Mac replied in a slow drawl, cutting across Ryan. "It's as far as it takes."

 

 "You always talk, not them," Jak said, indicating the two sec men who brought up the rear of the party. "They have no tongues?"

 

 Mac smiled again, that lazy saurian smile that was beginning to make Ryan wish he could ram it so far down the potbellied man's throat that it would come out of his ass.

 

 "How did you guess that, boy?" Mac drawled. "Show the whitey, boys," he ordered the other two.

 

 They complied, opening their mouths as they walked. Both men had their tongues torn out by the root, a gaping red gap in the maw of their mouths, obscene and wet.

 

 Mildred winced. It looked like a primitive and painful extraction, even from a distance. "Don't tell me, let me guess," she directed toward Tilly. "The sec men from the redoubt again?"

 

 The ragged, bundled head shook, the voice emanating from within almost quavering with repressed hate.

 

 "Not sec men. Whitecoats who wanted the body parts."

 

 "Nice," Mildred murmured. "And you think we're part of that?"

 

 "You came from there, so it stands to reason," Tod butted in before Tilly could summon the venom to answer.

 

 "You stupe or something?" Dean exploded, fatigued and sick of their seeming stupidity. "Why were they after us?"

 

 "Like I said, to make us think you weren't with them. Make us easy to fool." Mac shrugged. "It figures out."

 

 Dean was about to hotly respond when a gesture from his father stopped him. He trusted Ryan's judgment. Although young, he knew enough about himself to be aware that he had to control his impulsive temper.

 

 "Seems to me that you live on the far side of the valley," Ryan remarked. "We've covered a lot of distance."

 

 "I'd say that was smart, if I didn't reckon you knew that anyway," Mac answered. "After all, seems to me that you should know where we are when you raid us often enough."

 

 Ryan ignored that and continued on his line of thought. "Yeah, I'd reckon you live on the rim of the valley. Can't grow jackshit down here. Never get anyone passing by. Mebbe you can scratch a living on the edge of the valley. And you'd have to live as far away from the redoubt as possible."

 

 "And why's that, One-eye?" Tilly asked, her paranoia scenting an insult.

 

 Ryan didn't want to disappoint her. "Because you're good in these conditions, but you've got no real armory to speak of—not if that shit is the best you can do." He gestured at the homemade blasters before changing tack. "That's okay against foot soldiers, but they've got wags at the redoubt. Good ones. Ones that many a trader would chill for. Mebbe ones that we could help you get."

 

 Tod furrowed his brow, resting the giant blaster on his massive shoulder so that the pipelike barrels stuck into the air.

 

 "You sure are a strange one, Mr. One-eye. Start by cussing us out, then offering to help. Just what do you want?"

 

 "Same thing as you…to survive," Ryan said simply. "Besides, they've got one of our people still in there."

 

 "You'd want to go back?" Mac asked.

 

 Tilly cut across him. "Of course they would," she spit. "Motherfuckers would just be going home."

 

 "Have it your way." Krysty sighed, tired of the way the ragged woman always dented any attempt to build bridges or find common ground, let alone work a means of escape.

 

 Looking around, she could see that escape wasn't a viable possibility. There was nowhere to run to. Perhaps when they reached the ville, on the rim of the valley, they might find a way out, a way they could double back and try to get Doc.

 

 If Doc was still alive.

 

 They sank into silence, trudging across the storm-swept plains, moving slowly from a heavily dust-filled zephyr into a calmer drift and then into the swirl, and subsequently into the calmer eye of another whirlwind. The valley dwellers seemed hardly to notice the changes in the weather. The force of the storm didn't impede the pace they set, and their vision seemed to be unimpaired by the conditions.

 

 It wasn't so easy for the others. At times the strength of the gale-force winds drove them back, seeming to pluck them off the ground and make every step forward seem like two steps back. The sudden flurries of dust, dirt and stones scoured their exposed faces, made their eyes run with irritated tears until they were dry and sore.

 

 It was draining, and Ryan looked around to see how his people were doing. It wasn't encouraging. Jak and Dean were particularly hard hit, both weakened by the effort of saving Dean from plunging into the chasm. They straggled behind, the dumb sec men prodding them into desultory attempts to keep up. Krysty was in front of them, her coat pulled around her to try to ward off the worst of the wind-blasted dirt and dust. The most worrying was J.B. The Armorer was keeping pace with Mildred, his arm around her shoulders as she helped him support his weakened ankle. But Ryan could see that the pace was beginning to tell on him, and his limp had become more pronounced. The dust was sticking to his sweat-stained forehead, and he grimaced at every other stride.

 

 "J.B., how's it going?" Ryan asked as casually as he could.

 

 "Been better," the Armorer replied laconically. "Been much better."

 

 "We should really stop," Mildred interjected. "Get John's ankle bound before we have to cut that boot off."

 

 Ryan took a look at their captors, who were seemingly paying them no attention.

 

 "I'm not sure they'd let us," he commented.

 

 J.B. smiled at the wry humor. "Not the most hospitable of folks," he added.

 

 "Can't figure them out," Ryan continued. "They're slack, like they don't care if we're watched or not."

 

 "Mebbe they're not," J.B. said, glad of something to take his mind off the pain of every other stride, which had grown from an itch to a stab like a rusty nail in the ankle joint."Where can we go to out here? No weapons to fight with, and not as used to the conditions. Mebbe they've got more to fear from other sides."

 

 "A raiding party in wags from the redoubt?" Ryan mused.

 

 "Could be. Could be something else."

 

 "What the hell could there be out here?" Mildred asked, bemused as she tried to imagine any kind of indigenous life.

 

 "You'd be surprised," Mac drawled slowly, still keeping a watch all around him.

 

 "Yeah, and…?" Mildred asked after she tired of waiting for him to enlarge.

 

 "Weird shit, missy…weird shit. Just pray we don't get sniffed out while we're out here," he answered cryptically.

 

 Mildred raised a questioning eyebrow at J.B., who shrugged. The man with the blaster didn't have to tell if he didn't want to. And there was no way of making him.

 

 They continued in silence for a while, J.B. relying on his good ankle as the pain grew harder and blunter in the damaged joint, each impact on the uneven earth making it increase. He tried to disguise it. There were a number of reasons, not least of which being that he didn't want to be left behind as a liability by their captors, forcing Ryan into a decision about action.

 

 But he knew that if it came to the crunch, he would be found wanting for speed and maneuverability.

 

 WHEN THE MOMENT CAME, it was unexpected.

 

 As they began to march through a slough in the valley floor where a trapped zephyr made the dust storm whip up, scouring and scratching at their bodies, their pace was slowed to a crawl. The wind howled and moaned, and the air was full of earth, small pebbles and even larger chunks of rock that they had to dodge. The surface of the ground became a writhing, shifting mass of loose earth, churned up continuously by the trapped zephyr.

 

 "Couldn't you find an easier route?" Ryan yelled through the encroaching confusion.

 

 "This is the easiest," Tod shouted, somehow imparting this information blandly, despite having to raise his voice.

 

 Although the zephyr could have covered no more than half a mile, visibility in the swirling fog of earth was reduced to a few feet.

 

 Krysty felt her senses tingle, and was at once acutely aware of danger, but not of the source.

 

 She moved closer to Ryan, grasping his arm and pulling him toward her so that she could yell—albeit as quietly as possible—in his ear.

 

 "Trouble coming, lover."

 

 "What kind?" he asked, inclining his head so that his mouth was near her ear as he shouted over the noise of the storm.

 

 Krysty shook her head. "Can't say. It's just getting stronger, that's all." She shivered. "We need to keep alert."

 

 Ryan looked around him. His people were clustered in a small group headed up by Tod and Tilly, with Mac and the two tongueless sec men bringing up the rear. Their flanks were unprotected.

 

 Ryan cupped Krysty's cheek in his hand. "We always need to keep alert," he said. "Let's warn the others."

 

 He moved off and spoke rapidly to Dean and Jak, while Krysty headed for J.B. and Mildred.

 

 "How's the ankle?" she added to J.B. after telling them of the situation.

 

 The Armorer shook his head but didn't speak, the pain bringing him to his most taciturn.

 

 "Dammit John, you shouldn't have to walk on it," Mildred said heatedly. "I should have strapped it up hours ago, at the very least."

 

 "Sometimes we just can't do what we should," J.B. gritted, leaning a little heavier on Mildred as the pain broke through his concentration.

 

 Krysty and Mildred exchanged glances. It was obvious that the Armorer's injury was worse that he was letting on, and that could make things difficult if they were attacked by anyone—or anything.

 

 Meanwhile Ryan had told Dean and Jak of Krysty's feeling, trying, impossibly, to shout quietly. There was no way that he wanted Mac and his sec men to know— at this stage—that Krysty had mutie traits. Chances were that they were muties themselves—hell, it seemed obvious after their leap across the chasm—but people across Deathlands were suspicious of any mutie traits.

 

 Because of the very weather conditions that made him have to shout, his voice failed to carry back to Mac and the mute guards. They showed no interest in what he was saying, contenting themselves with a desultory glance around the swirling storm fog.

 

 "Mebbe surprises for everyone," Jak said, palming one of the razor-sharp leaf-bladed knives from his patched jacket.

 

 Ryan hid his surprise behind an impassive mask honed through years of experience. Dean didn't find it so easy, and his father looked back to see if his surprise had registered with their captors.

 

 It didn't seem so.

 

 "Hot pipe!" Dean exclaimed. "How come they let you keep them?"

 

 "Just take blaster—not bother search me," Jak commented with a shrug that spoke volumes.

 

 "Triple-stupe bastards," Dean said. It was lost in the storm, but Ryan and Jak got the gist and nodded their agreement.

 

 "Guess they didn't expect you to conceal anything," Ryan mused.

 

 "Not used searching. Murphy's men were," Jak said, palming the blade back into its hiding place.

 

 It was a good point. Ryan had become increasingly aware, as had Jak with his fighter's instincts, that their captors were used to a certain set of conditions and a certain set of enemies. Used to them to the degree that they didn't expect anything outside of their limited experience.

 

 That could be good. If the chance came, Ryan felt sure that his people could take their attackers, despite the advantage they had of carrying blasters.

 

 If the chance came. First they had the possibility of an outside attack.

 

 Ryan, Dean and Jak dropped back a little, until they were level with Krysty, J.B. and Mildred. Ryan viewed the Armorer's stance with concern.

 

 "How bad is it?" he asked.

 

 J.B. grimaced in reply, gesturing with his hand to indicate it was okay, but…

 

 "No bullshit, J.B.," Ryan said carefully. "I think we can take them if the chance comes, so I need to know for sure."

 

 "For real? Might as well dump me now," J.B. said flatly, drawing an appalled glance from Mildred. "Slows me up too much. I'm as much use as a fart in a methane tank."

 

 Ryan merely nodded. It would take a lot for him to leave J.B. behind.

 

 But maybe what they were about to face was a lot. The sudden spray of earth and the inhuman roar as it rose from the ground was certainly no small problem.

 

  

 

 Chapter Thirteen

 

  

 

 "Dark night! What kind of mutie is that?" J.B. whispered, rooted to the spot as the creature rose out of the earth, showering dirt and dust that caught in the whirl of the storm and formed an almost opaque curtain around the rising shape.

 

 "Fireblast! Scatter," Ryan yelled, pushing Dean away from him and falling in the opposite direction, temporarily blinded as specks of dust hit his good eye, making it sting and close in a mist of tears. He felt the earth beneath him as he hit, rippling with the disturbance of the uprising.

 

 He rolled, blinking and clawing at his eye to clear his vision. As he righted, it returned to him in a blurred and distorted form. He almost wished it hadn't.

 

 It was a lizard of some kind, hideously mutated and grossly enlarged, but probably descended from the Gila lizards that still roamed the desert plains. Its tail flicked out behind it as it emerged from its hiding place and looked around, the cold, blank eyes taking in the scene of confusion, unblinking in the face of the storm and protected by a thick yet transparent skin that covered the eyeball.

 

 Ryan estimated the creature to be about twenty feet in length, stretching up to five and a half feet in height at the tip of its head. About half of the body length was in the tail, which flicked ominously behind. The bandy, scaled legs were planted firmly in the soft, freshly churned earth, sinking deep into the soil.

 

 Casting a glance behind him, Ryan could see that their captors had retreated several yards and were spreading out into a fan formation to try to deal with the creature from a variety of angles, spacing themselves so that it wouldn't be able to take more than one of them with the wickedly vicious tongue that now shot out toward Dean.

 

 Ryan watched helplessly, knowing that he wouldn't be close enough to help his son. The tongue, dripping venom, snaked out at speed. Dean was still on his butt, where he had fallen when pushed by his father as the lizard erupted from the earth.

 

 The boy yelped in shock and surprise, but had sense enough to allow his instincts to take over. Pushing himself up with his feet, balancing by thrusting his arms behind him, he scooted backward in an ungainly crab-like manner. Ungainly it might have been, but it allowed him to get up enough speed to evade the tongue, which lashed at the earth.

 

 The lizard retracted its tongue, screeching in frustration.

 

 Ryan made it across to his son in a few strides, plucking at Dean's arm and helping the boy scramble to his feet. Father and son retreated a few more yards before taking shelter behind a pile of rocks and earth strewed about when the lizard erupted onto the surface.

 

 "Good evasive move," Ryan panted. "You're learning fast, son."

 

 "Either that or get chilled," Dean replied with a grin. "But why aren't they trying to chill that thing?"

 

 "Mebbe they've just got to take their time. They must be used to them," Ryan answered.

 

 But it was a good point. What were they doing?

 

 It was a question that J.B. and Mildred were also asking themselves. They had dived to the ground and inched toward the scant cover offered by a few rocks. It wasn't much, but on the flat valley floor it was all they could find.

 

 J.B. eyed the fan formation adopted by the outsiders, and also ran an appraising eye over the blasters before taking another look at the lizard.

 

 "They haven't got a hope," he said flatly.

 

 Mildred furrowed her brow. "What do you mean, John?"

 

 J.B. pointed to the lizard. "You see the scaling on that? It'll be like the armor on a war wag. Those homemade blasters are powerful, but they won't have the ammo to get through. Either ordinary lead or the collection of junk that goes in that giant bastard's blaster? Not enough."

 

 "You're right," Mildred said flatly, following his reasoning. "They need steel-tipped—"

 

 "Or some good plas-ex to pitch down its throat," he added with grim humor. "None of the calibers will be strong enough, and the shotgun blast may itch it a little, but otherwise it'll just ricochet off—"

 

 "Right, so heads down," Mildred shouted as she saw Tod draw a bead on the lizard.

 

 The giant leveled his blaster, then raised the barrels slightly, sighting along them to line himself with the lizard's head. It turned its eyes to him, impassive as he pressed the trigger and took the bucking recoil as though it were nothing more than a feather.

 

 The lizard raised its head and screeched, turning to one side so that the load of metal and scrap discharged by the homemade shotgun hit the scaly, armored skin and flew off at a variety of angles, showering the ground around with hot metal. There was a very slight scorching on the scaled skin, but otherwise no damage.

 

 Ryan saw Tod mouth a curse before the lizard turned to him, flicking out its lengthy tongue.

 

 In order for him to get within a truly effective range, Tod had also moved within reach of the lizard's tongue. He was too stunned by the ineffectiveness of his blaster to move quickly, which was his downfall.

 

 The tongue whipped across the space between them, the venom hitting the giant before the tongue itself as droplets shot off the end, propelled by the speed at which the snaking pink rope moved.

 

 Tod screamed as the venom hit him, eating like acid through his patched denims and dissolving his skin. One drop hit him below the left eye, stripping the skin away on his cheekbone, leaving raw and bloody flesh. The eyeball caught some of the vitriol and seemingly dissolved, the aqueous humor running down onto the exposed and bleeding mess of his cheek.

 

 The scream stopped with a choke as the tongue curled around his head, muffling and choking any resistance. He was pulled forward and onto his belly as the lizard began to retract its tongue, dragging him toward it, his legs kicking in the dust, arms flailing at the tongue that encircled his head.

 

 The fact that Tod was such a big man made the lizard slower than usual in retracting its tongue. Slow enough to allow Tilly to run at it with a piercing scream, wielding one of her knives. Mac and the two mutie sec men covered her with blasterfire that pinged off the lizard's skin as though they were insects buzzing against it.

 

 Ryan thought she'd go for the weak spot on the lizard, but he became instantly aware of the bond that existed between Tilly and Tod as she headed for the tongue wrapped around his head, hacking at it with the knife, trying to free him, regardless of the fact that the acid had to have already brought him close to death, his arms and legs becoming more and more feeble in their thrashing; regardless of the way that the venom ate into her own rags, scarring skin that was already raw and weeping from old burn wounds.

 

 The lizard made a rumbling sound in its throat and moved one large foot, the claw coming loose from the soil in a shower of dirt and dust. It was in pain, and concentrated entirely on that which was causing the pain: Tilly.

 

 Mac and the sec men had no ideas on how to tackle the lizard. They just kept blasting ineffectively. But the fact that its attention was focused on the two human objects occupying its immense tongue meant that there was an opportunity for someone with a better idea to act, providing they could move swiftly.

 

 Like Jak.

 

 Ignoring the whining slugs from the sec men's blasters as they rained around him in ricochet, the small and wiry albino took to his feet, running low to the ground and zigzagging to keep as much out of the lizard's eye line as possible. Ideally he would have run straight toward it, taking a path between the side-facing eyes and so hitting the creature in its blind spot. He remembered a mutie hare that had run into him when he was young. Walking across some swamp ground, he had seen the creature running toward him and had figured it would move out of his way. But it didn't. Instead, it ran straight into him, breaking its mutie-weakened neck on the toecap of his heavy boot. Jak had wondered why, until he realized that the hare had eyes on each side of its head, facing out and around…but unable to swivel so that it could see what was in front of its nose.

 

 It was a lesson he had never forgotten. Unfortunately, right in front of the lizard's nose was its acid-venom tongue, wrapped around Tod's head.

 

 The creature's attention seemed focused on its tongue and the irritation caused by Tilly screaming and trying to hack at the pink, thick and veiny length with one of her knives. Her screams were part frustration and part pain as the acid venom ate through her rags and into her flesh.

 

 Tod had stopped moving. She was too late; he was already dead. The only thing that was keeping her going was frustration and hysteria.

 

 Good. Let her distract the creature so that it didn't notice the small albino figure who flitted in and out of the corner of its vision.

 

 Ironically Jak's progress was slowed by the sudden diminution of the storm. The whirling dust had given him some cover from the creature, and now he had to hope that its attention didn't stray to the sides…at least not until he was underneath the body and into another blind spot.

 

 His progress was slowed by the churned-up earth. It slipped under his feet, undermining his balance, making it hard to maintain speed and keep upright. Sweat ran down his matted hair, dripping off the strands that hung over his face, stinging his eyes.

 

 Jak ignored it, focused only on the task he had set himself.

 

 He circled to the creature's left flank, so that he was running parallel to, and almost underneath, its body. He could feel the coldness coming off the scaly skin. He bent as low as he could, coming up the side, boots slipping and sliding on the loose clods of earth and the powdery topsoil.

 

 His companions watched him as he moved to one side, his head just appearing over the top of the lizard's body before he ducked lower, lost to view as the still fighting Tilly and the corpse of Tod blocked their view. The body was getting closer to the mouth, leaving a wet, indented trail on the ground as it was slowly dragged closer to the maw.

 

 Around on the left flank, Jak moved in closer to the drooping belly. His red eyes glittered with concentration as he took in the narrowing gap. It was about twelve inches. He was small and slight enough to make it without having to scrabble out some of the loose earth and so alert the creature as to what was happening beneath it.

 

 Without hesitation Jak sank onto his belly and snaked beneath the creature, slithering like its kind as he prised himself between the belly of the lizard and the loose earth between its splayed feet.

 

 He turned as he moved beneath, coming out under the head of the beast on his back. Drops of saliva and tongue venom dripped around his head, but he didn't notice. If it fell on him, there was little he could do to prevent it. He accepted the risk with his usual unspoken fatalism. In the Deathlands you either chilled or got chilled. There was no other choice.

 

 Free of the lizard's body, Jak was directly beneath the soft throat and jaw of the beast. He could feel, rather than smell, its fetid breath as it filled the air around him.

 

 Jak pulled his body upright, sitting beneath the throat of the lizard with his knees pulled up, ready to spring to his feet. He palmed one of his leaf-bladed knives. They were designed and honed for throwing, but were also useful in hand-to-hand combat. The razor-sharp edge should have just the cutting power he desired. The last thing he wanted was for it to get stuck.

 

 Ignoring the stench that filled his mouth and nose, Jak took a deep breath and thrust down with his calf muscles, propelling himself up with a force that made his stomach muscles ripple and strain with the effort. He rose to his feet beneath the creature, and before he was more than halfway up he made the first sweeping incision in the soft scales that covered the gizzard.

 

 Even the softest parts of the mutie lizard were tough, and Jak felt the resistance jar his arm as the knife bit into the scales. But with a little extra push, he penetrated the skin and felt the knife bite into soft flesh. He pulled across from left to right, feeling the flesh rip and tear as the point moved through the gizzard, the hilt of the knife left behind, following with just that slight degree of drag as it caught on the tougher skin.

 

 Blood started to drip from the wound, a shower that turned into a torrent as Jak hit an artery. The lizard released its tongue from around Tod as it tried to scream in agony, finding that its voice was reduced to a gurgle.

 

 Beneath the lizard's slit throat, Jak was hit by a sheet of stinking, hot blood that turned the ground beneath his feet into a mud bath. It covered him plastering his hair to his head, staining him as red as his albino eyes.

 

 The lizard's tongue whipped through the air in a random series of jerks, any control lost as the creature began to lose control of its motor functions.

 

 Tod's corpse lay on the ground, the head giving off steam as the heat from its enclosure hit the colder air of the storm. All who were looking on were grateful that the storm could obscure their view to some degree, as the giant seemed intact until their eyes reached his neck. There, any semblance to a human being ended. Strips of raw flesh hung off the skull, which in itself seemed to have shrunken and altered shape in some degree. It was as though the acid venom had somehow softened the bone, and the pressure of that immense tongue wrapped around the head had meant that the skull had been compressed so that it seemed elongated, and much too thin for its body.

 

 Tilly took one look at it and fell to her knees, howling in terror and heart-wrenching pain. She rocked back and forth, lost in her own world.

 

 It was to prove fatal. Jak had taken his drenching and stayed beneath the head of the beast for a good reason. While the tongue thrashed about aimlessly but dangerously, it was impossible to try to second-guess the creature's movements. There was a danger that it could collapse on him, but Jak would rather take his chances of using his speed to get free than risk being caught by the tongue.

 

 Such a thought didn't enter Tilly's anguished mind. She just stayed on her knees and howled.

 

 It was only a matter of time until the tongue caught her.

 

 Krysty tore her eyes away from the inevitable, catching sight of Mac and his two mute sec men. They had all stopped firing, and were watching the tableau in front of them in slack-jawed horror. She saw Mac mouth something and shake his head sadly.

 

 Turning her attention back to the direction of the giant lizard, she could see that the tongue had flicked in an arc and caught Tilly around the head. The speed and momentum of the tongue had hit her with a blow strong enough to knock her over. And it would have done. However, the tongue was rough, equipped with suction to grasp its prey. At such a speed and force, the tongue attached itself to her head and wouldn't let go. The momentum of the tongue was greater than the resistance of her neck, and her head was ripped from her shoulders, her anguished howls suddenly lost in the storm.

 

 Tilly's head wasn't firmly grasped in the tongue, and as it reached the farthest point of its wild loop, there wasn't enough suction to cling on to the severed head. It flew off into the storm, tossed by the currents in an irregular arc that carried it out of view.

 

 The wild swings of the dying lizard's tongue began to lessen, and it began to sink toward the earth. Underneath the throat, which was still spurting blood in gouts, Jak felt the lizard begin to tremble and sway. The clawed feet quivered in its death throes, churning up the mud pit its lifeblood had created.

 

 It was now or never. The head of the lizard began to drop, coming close to pushing Jak's head down, pitching him face first into the mud.

 

 The gap under the belly had closed. There was only the one way out—under the jaws and past the arcing, deadly tongue.

 

 Jak went for the narrowing gap, crouching low and pulling his feet from the bloody ground beneath him. He was still clutching the stinking, bloodstained knife that he had pulled from the lizard's throat as he emerged into the open.

 

 Sheltered from the storm by the bulk of the lizard's body, he was hit by the wind with a violence that pushed the air from his lungs. He gulped down clouds of dirt that made him choke, but even this felt clean after the stench and the blood.

 

 Ryan saw Jak emerge, coughing and stumbling, blinded by the storm and the shower of blood that still stung his face. He could see that Jak was trying to avoid the thrashing tongue, but that his vision was impaired and his senses still adjusting to the change in conditions.

 

 The tongue was beginning another arc. It was slower now, with less speed and momentum. It wouldn't rip Jak's head off, as it had Tilly's, but the venom would still be enough to cause him considerable injury.

 

 The arc of the tongue would take it right across Jak's path, and there was no way that he could see it from the angle at which he was headed.

 

 Ryan didn't waste breath shouting. There was only one course of action open to him, and he took it. Breaking cover with a push of his powerful leg muscles, the one-eyed warrior propelled himself across the expanse of earth between cover and Jak. The albino was stumbling over loose rocks, his eyes still partially blinded by the dust and blood.

 

 Noting Jak's position and speed, Ryan decided it would be better to keep his eye on the tongue as it swept toward them with an almost mocking slowness. Mocking because he still had to make up ground on an uneven surface that moved beneath his feet.

 

 Ryan felt his heart pound as he sprinted across the surface. His muscles ached as he pushed them against the resistance of the storm and the yielding earth, aiming for Jak as the albino stumbled, trying desperately to clear his vision.

 

 The tongue swished toward the albino teen who unwittingly turned toward it. Ryan cursed under his breath, unwilling to waste any of the oxygen in his bursting lungs as he launched himself forward.

 

 Jak gasped, the breath driven from his body, as Ryan crashed into him, pushing him back into the earth with a pile-driving force. The lizard's tongue flicked over their heads, reaching the apex of its arc before sliding back across them as Ryan pushed himself into the soil, regardless of the albino beneath him. He could smell the creature's blood on Jak as he crushed his face into youth's hair.

 

 A solitary drop of venom dripped from the end of the tongue and dropped onto Ryan's back, burning a small hole through his jacket and shirt, corrosive on his skin and burning a spot on his flesh. He gritted his teeth at the pain, his eye screwed up in concentration as he tried to blank the pain.

 

 When he looked up again, the creature lay on the ground, twitching violently as the last motor functions ceased to operate and the final sparks of life were extinguished.

 

 Ryan picked himself up, flexing his back muscles and feeling the raw spot of flesh throb. He'd have to get Mildred to look at that later. He reached down and held out a hand to Jak, helping the albino to his feet.

 

 "Owe you," Jak said, wiping the mud from his face.

 

 "Owe you," Ryan replied. "You chilled that bastard and saved us all."

 

 He and Jak returned to the main party.

 

 Mac and his two mute assistants were holding their blasters casually across them, not trained on any of the companions. Ryan gave him a quizzical look.

 

 "Guess I'm mebbe not as suspicious as Tilly was," he said in reply. "Whitey there risked a lot to save us."

 

 "How come you don't know how to fight against those things?" Dean interjected.

 

 Mac turned to the boy. "Son, you tell me how you're supposed to beat a mutie like that. Whitey risked everything, and let's be honest. He wouldn't have stood a chance if the fucker hadn't been busy chilling Tod—"

 

 "Woman took attention away," Jak added. He knew that he could probably have taken the creature anyway, but figured it would do no harm to get on the right side of their captors, now that the blasters were lowered.

 

 "More important, is there anything else like that out here?" J.B. asked.

 

 "Few weird things," Mac said vaguely. "Don't see them that much. We live on the rim—they live down here. Neither gets too interested in the other. You get my drift?"

 

 The Armorer smiled wryly. "Doesn't help us much at the moment, though."

 

 "Can't have everything," Ryan said. He looked past the lizard, in the direction they had been heading, men back at Mac. "We got much farther to go?"

 

 Mac shook his head. "Another half hour, mebbe." He looked at his wrist chron. "Should get us there before sunfall."

 

 "Then let's get going," Ryan said, wondering if Mac had realized that the balance of power had shifted within the group, and that Ryan's people now held the upper hand in terms of numbers and blasters. He noted that J.B. had retrieved Tod's giant blaster, and was carrying it across his shoulder with some effort, his pockets stuffed with the homemade cartridges.

 

 If Mac had noticed, he remained silent. He hadn't even mentioned Jak's knives. The potbellied valley dweller led the way, carrying his blaster over his shoulder.

 

 It seemed to Ryan that he had made a decision without even bothering to put it into words.

 

 "Let's go, people," Ryan muttered as his companions fell into step—with the mute sec men—in Mac's wake.

 

  

 

 Chapter Fourteen

 

  

 

 Doc's fragile mind was still reeling from shock as Murphy prodded him in the small of the back with his blue 9 mm Beretta, reclaimed from where it had been left in the armory. It was good to have the blaster back, and it gave Murphy a sense of confidence in handling the old man.

 

 "Come on, old fart—out of here," Murphy snapped. "You've got to be prepared."

 

 Wallace glared at him. "Treat him with some respect. He's going to be part of the mechanism. Besides, regs say that a POW should be treated according to convention."

 

 Murphy looked blankly at Wallace for a moment, then it clicked that the Gen was referring to a prisoner of war. He tried to hide the contempt in his eyes for the Gen. He had always believed that Wallace read the regs too literally, but this was just more proof.

 

 Doc dragged himself back into what he laughingly thought of as reality, prompted by the pain in his back where the Beretta's muzzle was digging into him. He assessed the exchange of hostile glances, put it together with what Ryan had said to them earlier about his feelings regarding Wallace and Murphy and shrewdly played the lunatic while he waited for a chance to drive a larger stake between the two men.

 

 "This pathetic old man—treat him with respect?"

 

 Murphy spit. "He wouldn't know if you were or not. He's mad!"

 

 Wallace looked into Doc's eyes. The old man hooded them with a film of madness, ironically using all the sanity and intelligence he could muster to create the opposite impression.

 

 "Hmm… You wouldn't be completely sane if you'd been through all the doctor has been through. I guess a little insanity is excusable. Besides—and strictly off the record—are we sure about the mental stability of each component in the mechanism?"

 

 Murphy shrugged. In truth he'd never even thought about it.

 

 "But it's their unity that gives them strength. The good doctor will actually benefit from being joined to the mechanism. It will help him regain his equilibrium."

 

 Murphy didn't bother to answer. Doc shuddered involuntarily and tried to hide the revulsion he felt.

 

 "Let's just get him prepared, then." Murphy's voice held a weary tone that he couldn't disguise. He pushed the muzzle of the blaster into Doc's back. "Come on— sir," he said with a barely disguised irony.

 

 They left Wallace looking at the rat king. Two tech in vacuum suits had entered the chamber through a decontamination anteroom, and were busy unplugging the dead component from the mechanism. Doc cast a sideways glance as he and Murphy left the observation room.

 

 The sight stayed with him as they walked down the corridor. The component being removed wore a military uniform denoting high rank in the Marines. Like the others, he was glassy-eyed, with skin stretched tight across his ancient skull, clothes flapping loose on his limbs.

 

 In truth the only thing to differentiate him from the others attached to the mainframe was that the vital signs on his own monitors had ceased to function. Just by looking at the once-human frame, there was no way of telling which of the bodies attached to the mechanism were alive and which were dead.

 

 As they left the room, Doc had caught a glimpse of one of the vacuum-suited tech beginning to unplug the diodes and leads from the one-time Marine officer's skull, pulling the ends from the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes, small pieces of decaying gray matter attached to their ends.

 

 With a grim chuckle Doc hoped that they would clean the leads before they plugged him in.

 

 Murphy frowned when he heard Doc laugh.

 

 "What's so funny, you old bastard?"

 

 "Nothing that would amuse you, my dear boy," Doc said sadly. Then, taking the opportunity of a conversational opening, added, "Do you really think that Wallace's plan will work?"

 

 Murphy shrugged noncommittally. "Hell, we all follow regs. That's all."

 

 "Is it really all? Do you not sometimes question a rule book that's over a hundred years out of date? Written for other times than these?"

 

 Murphy allowed himself a wry twist of the lips that might have been a grimace, might have been a smile. "Mebbe you aren't such a crazy old fart after all. You figure that me and the Gen don't exactly see eye to eye on some things?"

 

 "That's a distinct possibility," Doc said as Murphy led him into a lab and gestured to him to sit on one of the chairs in the center of the room.

 

 Murphy seemed to relax, but still kept the Beretta trained on Doc. "I guess there'd be no harm in me telling you, as you'll be chilled soon enough. Oh, yeah," he continued in acknowledgment of Doc's raised eyebrows, "don't think that this bunch of inbreds and muties is going to be able to wire you up to that thing."

 

 Doc mused that Murphy himself didn't seem that stable or without the faults he saw in his fellow redoubt dwellers, but decided it would be more diplomatic to say nothing at this stage.

 

 Murphy continued. "I think the Gen is barking mad. Not his fault, not after all this time. But we're getting nowhere stuck down here trying to keep all this old tech going. The idea that the Reds will be back, shit that died with skydark," he said.

 

 "Then why don't you take over?" Doc asked with as much ingenuousness as he could muster.

 

 Murphy gave another of his twisted half smiles. It suddenly occurred to Doc that these were a result of his own inbreeding flaws.

 

 "There is a cabal of us who want to change things, get rid of the heredity shit and try promotion on merit."

 

 Doc nodded sagely. He had no idea of the social structure of the redoubt, but wanted Murphy to keep talking.

 

 Murphy was starting to get enthusiastic. "See, the main problem we face is that we've got limited resources down here—in real terms, that is. We've got jackshit in the way of fresh blood, and although blasters are up to par, we're getting low on plas-ex and grens. We need to trade more, but that's not in the regs. Instead we waste time with old projects that go nowhere, like the rat king. Or all the old tech that stops and starts and can't be used against the outsiders. They're the enemy now, not the Reds. Anyway, R&D ain't that anymore, they're just a bunch of cretins, retards and muties who can barely keep the old shit in working order, let alone make something new."

 

 "Very fine words, Sarj. Are you going to repeat them in front of the Gen, or aren't you quite brave enough for that yet?"

 

 Murphy whirled at the sound of the cool, sardonic female voice. Dr. Tricks stood in the doorway, arching one of her perfect eyebrows in a way that made Doc go weak at the pit of his stomach. Truly, she was beautiful.

 

 "Don't do that to a man!" Murphy breathed heavily.

 

 Tricks walked into the room, no, perhaps glided with a hint of a wiggle would be more accurate, Doc thought, and put her arms around Murphy's neck. She kissed him delicately on the cheek.

 

 "What's the matter? Think I'm going to tell the Gen all about your little plan?"

 

 "I know you wouldn't."

 

 "Why?"

 

 "Because you want me, and you'll only be allowed when the regs are gone." Murphy smiled. "Then it won't matter if you're not good breeding stock."

 

 "Not like that pig Panner," Tricks breathed in his ear.

 

 It didn't escape Doc's notice that a flicker of irritation crossed Murphy's brow at the mention of the name. Remembering it was the sec woman he had chilled, Doc felt it best not to comment. But certainly there was a dynamic going on here that he wasn't, as yet, privy to.

 

 "Why are you telling the old man all this, anyway?" Tricks continued, not appearing to notice Murphy's brief flicker of irritation.

 

 Murphy shrugged. "What does it matter? He'll soon be chilled."

 

 "But I thought I was to prepare him for the Moebius MkI?" Tricks questioned, drawing back from Murphy.

 

 "Yeah, but he won't survive, will he? I mean, you aren't going to be able to cut open his brain, are you? Not like the others."

 

 Tricks shook her head. "Not like that. But the Gen doesn't want it like that." Murphy gave her a quizzical look, and she continued, "No matter what you think about Wallace, he's not entirely stupid. He's well aware that we just don't have the expertise to open up the skull, to trepan like the others and direct-inject the brain. That was lost a long time ago. I could do it, but there isn't anyone else around here that I'd trust to assist on the operation. You know how I feel about the techs I have to deal with. They're morons who can't be trusted. But Wallace is determined that I link up Tanner to the Moebius, and he wants me to work out a way of connecting the old man without cutting into his skull. He won't die."

 

 "For that, madam, I am in your eternal debt," Doc said with a mocking bow designed to disguise the relief he felt. While he was still alive, there was still hope of escape in some manner.

 

 Tricks gave him a look of pure disdain. "I don't think you'll be saying that when you enter the mainframe and become something other than what you are."

 

 Doc furrowed his brow. "You talk in conundrums, dear lady."

 

 Tricks shook her head. "I can't tell you exactly because I've never experienced it—obviously," she added with a small and musical laugh that was almost perfection. Perhaps, Doc mused, that was her mutation—to appear perfect in the midst of such imperfection. She cut short his thoughts by adding, "All I know is that Moebius takes the intellectual capacity of its components and fuses them into one intelligence. So you become something other than yourself as the others bleed into you."

 

 "I am not sure that I like the sound of that," Doc said quietly.

 

 "Dr. Tanner, you don't have the choice," Tricks said.

 

 She turned to Murphy. "Strap him in the chair, then leave us alone."

 

 Murphy pursed his lips as he strapped the unresisting Doc into the chair, handing his Beretta to Tricks so that she could cover them. For his part Doc reasoned that there was no chance of escape at this time, and so allowed Murphy to manhandle him.

 

 "I'm not sure I like this," Murphy said to Tricks as he stepped back from the secured Doc and once again took charge of his Beretta. "Wallace won't like it."

 

 "The Gen has given me a free hand here," she replied sharply. "I've had to work out this damn procedure for myself, and I can't trust any of the inbreds or muties I have to work with to assist and get it right. I've got my tits on the line here…until we get the chance to change things, I have to go along with the Gen, okay? This is going to be hard, and I don't need any distractions."

 

 Tricks picked up a hypodermic from a tray on her workbench and flicked the end before squirting a thin stream of liquid into the air to knock out any air bubbles.

 

 "Get going, Sarj," she said with her back to Murphy. "Tanner can't give me any problems now, and I need to concentrate."

 

 "Okay," Murphy muttered tersely, investing the word with a multitude of hidden meanings. "I'll be outside. Wallace will expect that, at least."

 

 The automatic door slid shut behind him with a rusting squeal, making Tricks wince.

 

 "I wish the maintenance techs would sort that door out," she murmured before turning to Doc. "Now then, I can't promise this won't be unpleasant. But at least I won't be opening up your brain." She giggled at that, and for a moment Doc saw the creeping edge of insanity that seemed to dwell beneath the surface of everyone in the redoubt.

 

 Any further speculation was cut short as Dr. Tricks rolled up the sleeve of his frock coat, and the shirt underneath, before spearing him in the vein that ran down the joint of his elbow. She depressed the plunger on the hypodermic, and Doc felt a warmth spread through his veins, a velvet softness that hit almost immediately.

 

 During his time in the whitecoat hell that was the headquarters of Operation Chronos, Doc had experienced almost every kind of sedative and painkiller that had ever been formulated.

 

 This felt like the purest heroin…perhaps pure enough to kill him with one hit.

 

 "BY THE THREE KENNEDYS! A nightmare of morphia bliss and sullen joy. Ah, Alice, where is the Mad Hatter now? The Cheshire cat grins at me from beyond the boundaries of space and time. Yet he wears a white coat, my dear. Why is that? And why do you look at me so? For you are beautiful, and I have loved you truly…more truly than the spoken word can tell…"

 

 Doc's hand reached for Tricks's arm, fingers clawing at the air. In his eyes she could see the anguished terror of a man trying to keep a hold on what he believed to be reality while the images of his subconscious ramblings ran riot across his mind.

 

 With a moue of distaste she removed his hand from her arm and let it fall to his side, still clawing in involuntary spasms.

 

 "You poor bastard," she whispered, stroking Doc's sweating brow. "This is a complete waste of time, but at least I won't kill you. I promise that. You alone know what it'll be like for you when you get into Moebius, but at least you'll still be alive…after a fashion."

 

 Somewhere beneath his fevered ramblings, Doc was aware of what she was saying to him, and realized that there was no escape from being linked into the rat king. But he wouldn't have his skull trepanned, and he wouldn't have electrodes and diodes placed in the soft gray tissue of his brain.

 

 Through a fog of fevered rambling, babbling softly to himself all the while, Doc was able to follow Tricks's movements. Her soft fingers probed across his skull, parting the leonine mane of long white hair to find areas of the scalp that she marked with a stubby indelible pencil, licking the end and murmuring to herself as she found the spots she was seeking.

 

 She turned away, and Doc could hear her moving instruments on her workbench, the clatter of metal and the soft curses as she sought one particular item.

 

 She turned back, and he heard the buzz of electric clippers before he saw them in her hand. Humming tunelessly to herself, she shaved away small portions of his hair, making perfect circles of pink, exposed scalp around the small, purple indelible crosses.

 

 She switched off the clippers and headed back to the bench, returning to Doc with a series of rubber-tipped electrodes, small pads attached to the ends.

 

 "This won't hurt, Dr. Tanner," she said distractedly as she began to attach them methodically to the exposed areas of scalp. "I've been reading up on you from the material salvaged from the computer files. You really are a most remarkable man. It's interesting how your body seems to have taken the immense physical strain. I wouldn't have thought it would have manifested in such a fashion. Still, you never stop learning, eh? There," she added, standing back, "that's that done. There's no way I'm going to open you up, but this should secure you to the mainframe."

 

 With immense effort Doc managed to croak, "Why…others not like…this…?"

 

 Dr. Tricks put a hand on her hip and struck a pose that would have had a younger, less befuddled Doc Tanner thinking of his beloved Emily. Tricks's large, liquid brown eyes stared at him with an intensity that made him feel as if he wanted to melt into them.

 

 "It's quite simple," she said softly. "The original Moebius was made to last longer than it has, really. With the correct maintenance, it could still be going strong. Skydark changed all that. I'd guess the components were—shall we say—coerced into taking part. The removal of part of the skull and the direct inject was to make sure there was no going back. Seems to me that it wasn't strictly necessary, from a scientific point of view."

 

 Through the mist of the drug, Doc recalled the savagery of the whitecoats he had encountered in the twentieth century, and made a small moan of agreement.

 

 "You, on the other hand," she continued without acknowledging him, "are another matter entirely. I can't risk chilling you, not with Wallace breathing down my neck. I have to keep you alive, at least until Murphy gets his act together and we can dismantle the useless projects and utilize our resources properly. So you get the soft option…of sorts."

 

 She smiled, and it made Doc shiver, even through the narcotic haze.

 

 He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He heard her turn and leave the room. There was a mumbling of voices, too distant through the drug to be coherent. With his eyes still closed, Doc heard footsteps into the room—the heavy clatter of combat boots. For one delirious moment he hoped it may be Ryan and John Barrymore, leading an attempt to free him.

 

 A slim hope, which was dashed as he heard Murphy's voice bark an order. The chair was unbolted from the floor, slipped onto a frame that jarred him, and he was wheeled out of the lab.

 

 He opened his eyes to see the strip lighting of the corridor ceiling slowly flash by above his head. He tried to look around, but his head felt too heavy and stuffed with cotton wool to respond.

 

 He was wheeled into an anteroom and left there. It could have been a few seconds, or it could have been a few years. Time was elastic and without meaning. Finally men in biohazard-suits entered the anteroom and sprayed him with what he took to be some kind of antiseptic. That done, they wheeled him into the main chamber.

 

 Doc was positioned where the now-departed Marine officer had spent the past century. He felt sharp pains in his hands and arms as the feeding tubes were inserted, felt the pressure as the liquid started to drip into his bloodstream.

 

 Was it imagination, or could he already feel his muscles start to atrophy?

 

 The tech finished attaching him to the apparatus that would keep him alive and prisoner in this room. Now came the moment he had been dreading. They took the cables attached to his head and inserted jacks into the mainframe computer. A series of codes was punched in.

 

 Doc felt a tingling sensation begin at the back of his brain and braced himself.

 

 Suddenly he was no longer in the room. A rush, a blinding light, and an immense spasm of pain that ran through his entire frame, making him convulse in spasms that passed slowly. The lights began to settle into shapes, the oppressive silence melted into white noise that resolved into pulses of static sound that eventually shaped into words.

 

 "Welcome to the torture machine, Dr. Tanner. Welcome to our nightmares."

 

  

 

 Chapter Fifteen

 

  

 

 Even though the storm was abating, and the conditions meant that they could see more than a few yards in front of them and weren't scoured by sprays of dirt and dust, it was still a long, hard slog toward the ville.

 

 "Don't these storms ever stop?" Mildred asked as she shook the dirt from her braids.

 

 Mac shook his head. "Not in the valley. That's just the way it is."

 

 They continued in silence through the relative calm. Limbs ached, skin was sore, resistance was low. Escape was the last thing they could think of at the moment. Despite the talk of a ritualistic chilling, Ryan felt they needed to reach the ville and assess the situation from there.

 

 And then there was Doc. If there was a chance they could get him back, then this would have to be taken. It would also give them access to a mat-trans.

 

 But before all else they had to actually reach the ville.

 

 The terrain was still flat, but there was a gradual incline on the distance. Looking ahead, Ryan could see the lip of the valley begin to form. They had to be only a few miles from the ville by now. It seemed to Ryan that the wild storms were contained within the bowl of the valley, and as they reached the edges the winds were allowed by nature to dissipate.

 

 There was more foliage and growth here. Not enough to support farming, but certainly a scattering of scrub that was more than they had seen so far.

 

 The natural corollary of this was there had to be wildlife of some kind. Ryan glanced at Jak, who was scanning the brush.

 

 "Things move—not dangerous…yet," the albino added with a lupine grin.

 

 J.B. turned to Mac. "What lives here?"

 

 Before the sec man answered, Ryan noted that the Armorer's limp had grown worse. J.B. was almost dragging his left foot, relying more and more on Mildred to support him.

 

 Mac gestured expansively with his blaster. "Could be anything lives out here in this rad-blasted hole. Don't rightly know, as we never stick around long enough to find out. You follow my drift?"

 

 Ryan nodded, a wry grin cracking his dried and chaffed lips. For the first time he felt empathy with their captors. "Best way. Imagine the worst and you don't get surprised."

 

 "Right, One-eye. There are stories of strange creatures that live here, between the outside of the valley and the heart of the storm. Can't ever say that I've rightly seen anything, though. I guess they may just be as scared of us as we are of them."

 

 "That I doubt," J.B. interrupted. "Never seen a wild mutie creature that didn't want to rip your heart out."

 

 "Unless you rip first," Jak added.

 

 Dean didn't seem to be paying attention to the idle chatter, looking over to the left as he walked, with an intent expression.

 

 "What is it?" Krysty asked, noticing his distraction.

 

 "Don't know," Dean commented shortly. "Not yet. Some kind of movement over there."

 

 Krysty stopped and followed the line of Dean's arm. About fifty yards away, still partly obscured by the remnants of the storm, there was something that looked to Krysty like a small hill.

 

 "Gaia! What's doing that?" she exclaimed.

 

 Her cry brought Ryan and Mac back from their position at the front of the group. The two mute sec men, standing to Krysty's rear, made signs at Mac.

 

 Ryan gave him a questioning glance.

 

 Mac shrugged. "Yeah, weird. Looks like that hill over yonder—" he gestured with his blaster. "—is making itself as we watch."

 

 Ryan focused his one eye on the distant mound of earth. It was true. It was growing as he watched, a sign of something powerful. To see it grow from that distance meant that a generous amount of earth was being moved.

 

 "Don't like," Jak said pithily. "Anything moving under ground cause lot surprise."

 

 "Good call," Mildred said, looking around at the scrub. "Who knows what's lurking here?"

 

 Ryan turned to Mac. "Can I suggest we get out of here before whatever's doing that decides to come looking for us?"

 

 "Good idea." Mac turned to the two mute sec men. "Let's press on."

 

 Gesturing with his blaster, he led the way toward the lip of the valley and his ville. Ryan noticed that Mac had suddenly increased the pace at which they proceeded, obviously rattled by the sudden appearance of the earth mound, and wondered if J.B. would be able to keep up.

 

 The Armorer was finding it hard. The pain in his ankle was like a hot poker with every step, and despite Mildred's help it was difficult to keep up any kind of speed. What he desired most was just to sit down, ease his combat boot off his swollen foot and rest the aching limb. Yet he knew that this was impossible until they reached the ville. So he drove himself onward, sweat dripping off his brow, making his spectacles slip on the bridge of his nose and gathering around the brim of his fedora as he gritted his teeth and kept going.

 

 Now that they were near the edges of the valley, and the storm was reduced from a roar to a whisper, it was possible to hear other noises. Dean was aware of a rustling from the brush to his left—the same direction as the mound—and whirled in surprise.

 

 "Hot pipe! What's that bastard thing?" he yelled, taking a sideways step to move more toward the center of the group.

 

 Mac raised his blaster and fired into the brush. There was an agonized yelp, and a creature flung itself toward the group. It rushed at J.B. and Mildred, almost as though it had instinctively picked out the weak link in the group chain.

 

 "Dark night," J.B. breathed, falling back and pulling Mildred with him as the creature, now in its death throes, flung itself at them. As they hit the ground, it flew over them, thudding to earth a few feet away, twitching.

 

 "Take a look at that," the Armorer said, pulling himself painfully to his feet and hobbling over to where it lay.

 

 "That's an evil-looking bastard," Mac said, bending to examine it. Ryan crouched beside him.

 

 "Just look at those," he commented, indicating the creature's teeth. "They could really do some damage."

 

 "And would have done, if John hadn't been so quick," Mildred added, shrugging off the twinge of pain in her shoulder where she had landed awkwardly.

 

 The creature was a sobering sight as it lay on the dry earth. The blood had ceased to flow where the creature had died, but enough had leaked out to color the dull earth, framing its corpse. It was eighteen inches long in the body, with short, dark gray fur. The head had elongated jaws and almost reptilian black eyes that were now hollow and empty in death.

 

 The jaws were what drew the attention immediately. Long and powerful, they had large incisors that were sharpened almost to points. Mac prodded the jaws with the barrel of his blaster and pushed back the dead lips. The other teeth were also sharpened, uneven and yellow with scraps of meat and vegetable matter caught between them.

 

 The body was thin and wiry, with short front paws that had wicked claws and powerful back legs that could spring long distances. The muscles seemed bunched, almost bursting out of the fur. The tail was vast and bushy, almost as long as the body, with a gradation of gray coloring that would probably act as good camouflage in the colorless scrub.

 

 "That's the most bastard evil-looking squirrel I've ever seen," Ryan said.

 

 Mildred nodded her agreement. "Nasty little mutie. Let's hope its little brothers and sisters don't decide to exact vengeance on us."

 

 J.B. pushed his fedora back on his head and cast a glance around at the scrub. "If that's a nest of some kind," he said, indicating the distant mound, "and that's the direction this little fucker came from, then I wouldn't give much for our chances if we don't keep moving."

 

 "Good call," Ryan said, turning to Mac.

 

 "So I guess this is as good a time as any to ask for our blasters back."

 

 The sec man looked at him askance. "You've got to be kidding, One-eye. What guarantee have I got that you won't just chill us and be on your way?"

 

 "None, I guess," Ryan said calmly. "But we outnumber you already, and it wouldn't be too hard for us to try and take you down. We could, but it'd be triple stupe right now. If there are more of these little bastards, then we need to all be prepared, or else none of us are going to reach your pesthole ville."

 

 Mac thought about it, but not for too long, as he cast a worried glance across to the mound. There were rustlings in the brush that could have been more of the creatures approaching, or could have been nothing more than the breeze in that part of the valley. Did he really want to take that chance?

 

 "Okay," he said finally. "Give them the hardware."

 

 The mute sec men unhooked their backpacks and opened them. Ryan received his panga, the SIG-Sauer and Steyr, returning them to their places on his body and feeling at once better balanced. J.B. was glad to see his knife, Uzi and S&W M-4000. Jak received his Colt Python .357 Magnum to go with his secreted knives. Testing the balance of her ZKR, Mildred felt more comfortable with the encroaching dangers. Dean checked his Browning Hi-Power and looked around, scanning the horizon. Last blaster out of the backpacks was Krysty's .38-caliber S&W. She pocketed it in her fur coat, preferring to wait until it was necessary to draw.

 

 "That's better," Ryan said, checking his group. "We can all cover ourselves and each other now."

 

 "Just as long as it is each other," Mac added warily.

 

 "Listen, stupe, if I wanted to blow you away right now, I could," Ryan gritted, leveling the SIG-Sauer at Mac's chest. "But I don't. You want us for this bastard ritual chilling—we want you to guide us out of here. It's equal now. When we hit your ville, it's everyone for themselves. But until then…"

 

 He lowered the SIG-Sauer.

 

 "Guess I can't argue with that," Mac commented, switching his attention to the surrounding brush, where the noise and scufflings were on the increase. "Also guess we've got something to worry about."

 

 They were clustered together on a rough trail that ran through the brush, worn down over a space of decades by raiding and hunting parties that had ventured that far into the valley. It was less than three feet across before the wild foliage started to take hold again, springing up sparsely but with enough clumping of brush to provide cover for something small and deadly, like the mutie squirrel that lay at their feet.

 

 "Okay, let's move off," Ryan whispered, assuming command as Mac seemed unwilling to move, and set off in the direction of the lip of the valley, Mac falling in behind him.

 

 Mildred hung back to support J.B. as he hobbled to bring up the rear.

 

 "I'm a liability, Millie," he said quietly, grimacing through the pain.

 

 "Don't think about it, John. We just need to keep going until we're out of danger. With that psychotic bitch out of the way, and three sec men outnumbered by us, I guess we might have a chance to negotiate with the ville's baron. If we can do that, then I might get a chance to have a better look at that ankle."

 

 "Don't kid yourself, Millie. This isn't going to get better, and I don't want it to be the reason you're chilled. First sign of trouble, you think of yourself."

 

 "Like you would?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

 

 Despite the pain, it still raised a smile from the Armorer. "Mebbe."

 

 Looking ahead of her, Mildred could see that already a gap had opened up between them and the rest of the group. Ryan wasn't setting that fast a pace. It was more an indication of how J.B.'s ankle was slowing them.

 

 Mildred was about to call to Ryan to wait for them when it happened.

 

 There was a sudden silence from the brush, as though all the hidden life within had, at a silent command, ceased to move. A moment of eerie silence was then broken by a wild screeching that began as one animal and increased as more and more joined in the cry, a cacophony of screeching that drowned out the fading noise of the storm.

 

 "Fireblast! What the—?"

 

 Ryan's shout was interrupted by the explosive crack of Dean's Browning Hi-Power as the boy sighted one of the mutie squirrels springing from the brush.

 

 The creatures had incredible power in their heavily muscled back legs. It was almost as though the creature had taken flight, its jump describing a sharp arc as it achieved a height of just over six feet, starting to descend with its elongated jaws distended, teeth flashing as it headed straight for Ryan's good eye.

 

 Dean was a good shot. He fired at the creature, judging its airspeed in a fraction of a second. The slug from the Browning ripped through the top of the creature's skull, entering through one eye and exiting just behind its flattened ear, taking a chunk of the skull with it. Its trajectory thrown off by the impact of the bullet, the creature spun in the air, landing just in front of the one-eyed warrior.

 

 Ryan would have appreciated Dean's fine shooting if he had the chance. But he was far too busy taking evasive action against another of the squirrels, which had emerged from the brush behind him. He turned quickly on his heel as the sound of the disturbed brush reached him.

 

 The mutie was coming at him from a lower trajectory, its front paws tearing at the air with its wickedly sharp claws as it sprung toward his groin, looking to tear into his flesh. Ryan crouched and lowered the SIG-Sauer, loosing off a round that tore a chunk of fur and flesh from the side of the creature, spraying a fine mist of blood behind it.

 

 The mutie squirrel bared its teeth in a squeal of agony as Ryan sidestepped the flailing arc of its trajectory and stamped on the skull, his heavy combat boot crushing the bone and smearing the brain on the earth. He was unwilling to waste ammunition when he was unsure of how many of the creatures were lying in wait.

 

 There could have been a few, or hundreds. He couldn't allow the latter option to occupy his mind.

 

 Bedlam had broken out around them as the creatures sprang from the brush in attack. Krysty fell to one knee, keeping a still poise about her as she picked off as many of the creatures as possible before having to take the chance of reloading and being temporarily defenseless.

 

 They seemed to have a group intelligence about them, as they concentrated less on her the more she put down. So when she had to reload as swiftly as possible, she was granted the respite she needed.

 

 Mildred, too, was having no little success in picking off the creatures. She adopted a classic firing stance and peppered the air with slugs from the ZKR, shooting fast and accurately—and thereby buying herself time to reload.

 

 The two mute sec men weren't faring so well. Neither was an excellent shot, and they were missing more of the flying squirrels than they were hitting. As their blasters ran out of ammunition, they found themselves using the rifles as clubs, both reversing the blasters and swatting the creatures out of the air. They were marginally more successful in this, as the number of stunned squirrels littering the path attested. Fortunately most of those hit had their spines or skulls broken, only a few managing to return to enough sense to pose a problem. The sec men had to try to stomp on them without missing those creatures that were still in flight.

 

 Dean picked off the squirrels as they sprang at him from all sides, but was hindered by the mute sec men, who were near enough to cause him problems with their flailing blasters, forcing him to duck and weave on one knee to avoid being caught by the flying rifle butts. His success rate was lower than Krysty's or Mildred's, so more of the creatures concentrated on him, and he was fighting a losing battle.

 

 Jak came to his aid. He had dispatched a flying squirrel with every slug from his Colt Python, and hadn't bothered to reload. His childhood in the Louisiana swamps had been spent stalking and killing wildlife far more dangerous than even these killing machines. The Python was holstered in a blur of silver metal before his hands delved into the patched coat and withdrew some of his knives from their hiding places.

 

 Jak's eyes burned sightlessly, lost in a fearsome mixture of blood lust and intense concentration as his arms became a whirling blur. He held two of the razor-sharp knives in each hand, his whipcord wrists twirling them in a figure-eight pattern that sliced the very air, ripping and tearing at anything that came within range, absorbing any shock that might come from the jar of blade on bone as he disposed of the many creatures that flew at him.

 

 Their almost group mentality caused them to cease the intensity of their attack on Jak, allowing him to help Dean by taking out those squirrels that the boy missed in his attempts to avoid the desperately flailing mute sec men.

 

 But the man facing the most problems was J.B. He had decided to use his Uzi on the creatures. The rapid-fire pattern of the blaster would have been a problem in less skilled hands. The cluster of people near him would have been endangered as he spun to attack the squirrels as they flew at him from both sides of the brush.

 

 The Armorer was no ordinary marksman. He fired in short, controlled and accurate bursts, the pressure of his finger on the trigger both firm and yet gently caressing. Honed by years devoted to the art of weaponry, his instinct took over from his consciousness, and he registered the flying creatures not as a danger but as targets that had to be eliminated. This approach displaced the fear from his conscious mind and enabled him to fire calmly and accurately.

 

 He would have had no trouble if not for the flailing sec men. One of the flying squirrels, dealt a glancing blow by a rifle butt, was deflected in his direction. It landed too far away for the sec man to stomp on it, so he ignored it. Mildred didn't notice it as she fixed her sights on an airborne danger, blasting it in the skull with the ZKR.

 

 The creature landed, stunned, and rolled toward J.B. The Armorer saw it from the corner of his eye, and raised his foot to crush its head.

 

 He raised his left foot.

 

 Acting on an instinct that forgot to remind him about his injury, or take it into account, he slammed the foot onto the prone body of the squirrel.

 

 An agony of red-hot needles traveling up his legs made the Armorer drop his Uzi from its firing position. He screwed up his eyes, gritted his teeth and emitted a small high-pitched scream that was all his tortured and tensed vocal cords would allow. There was no power in the injured ankle, and all the force he had put into his action was translated into pure pain.

 

 His foot was ineffectual on the squirrel, which squirmed beneath his boot, screaming for its life as its powerful front paws dug into the material of his combat pants and into the soft and tender flesh that lay above the top of the boot.

 

 J.B. was beyond screaming at the pain generated by the clawing. He felt little of it, as the agony from his untimely foot stomp was still coursing through his body.

 

 The creature used its purchase on his leg to haul itself from underneath the sole of his foot, clinging on its own injured agony to try to inflict damage with its dying breath.

 

 The elongated jaws opened, the sharp teeth poised as it moved its head back to get a good, firm, darting bite at his leg. J.B. regained enough awareness through the red mist of pain to drop the barrel of the Uzi even farther, until it was parallel to his leg. He put the snubbed, open end of the barrel against the creature as the head darted in.

 

 The mutie squirrel sunk its teeth into J.B.'s leg the same instant that he fired. He'd had enough presence of mind, through the pain mists, to switch to single shot.

 

 At such close range, he felt the heat of the blaster burn into his leg, scorching the material of his pants. Not that it was any worse than the pain he was feeling through the wounds inflicted by the squirrel. If anything, the pain there was so immense that he felt he would black out at any moment: It was so intense that his leg was beginning to numb, overloaded with agony.

 

 There was little left of the creature as the slug tore its body to bloodied shreds. The remnants of the corpse were scattered around the Armorer's feet as it splattered onto the ground. Most of the skull had also disappeared in the blast, only the snout remaining. One eyeball— miraculously undamaged—hung loose on a tendon. The teeth, firmly embedded in J.B.'s leg, were all that kept it anchored in place.

 

 "John!" Mildred shouted, her attention drawn momentarily from the attacking hordes by the action beside her.

 

 She stepped closer to him in a sideways motion, keeping her ZKR trained to pick off any of the creatures that decided to attack. Eyes still scanning the brush on both sides, she crouched to where J.B. had fallen. He was sitting upright, cradling the Uzi with one hand trying to pick the snout from his leg, a glassy stare coming into his eyes.

 

 Mildred glanced at the wound and winced. "Leave it, John," she said sharply, hoping to get through the mist of shock that was fogging his perception. He stared at her, blankness falling like a curtain over his gaze.

 

 "Leave it," she repeated, gently pushing his hand away from the wound. "Let me look at it in a moment," she said softly.

 

 "Uh-huh," J.B. replied vaguely.

 

 "How bad is it?" Krysty yelled, casting one eye toward Mildred and J.B. while she kept vigilance on the brush.

 

 "Hard to tell," Mildred answered, moving slightly away from J.B. in order to keep her area of brush covered. "I need to get a good look at it. It's the leg he already damaged, and those mother teeth will probably infect the wound." She cursed Wallace and his military lunatics, who had removed most of the medical supplies from her many coat pockets. But they were slack. Maybe she still had something in there. If not, J.B. was in for a rough ride.

 

 The waves of attacking squirrels had slowly decreased.

 

 "Know we winning," Jak said to no one in particular as he wiped the blood from his knives to stop them slipping in his grip.

 

 "Seems to me those little bastards knew our weak links and concentrated on them," Ryan commented, taking the opportunity to reload his SIG-Sauer.

 

 "Hell, Dad, all animals know when they're beat," Dean said wearily, checking his Browning. "Just some of us don't give up."

 

 Ryan suppressed a laugh. Sometimes he could see so much of himself in Dean that it was like having a mirror. "More than that, son," he said, returning to the subject. "It's like they knew who was faring best against them, and somehow targeted the others."

 

 "If Doc was here, he'd give us a rambling lecture about psi powers against natural instinct and observation," Krysty commented wryly as she joined Mildred at J.B.'s side. "How is it?" she asked, switching her attention to the concerned woman.

 

 "Not so good," Mildred answered curtly. "It was bad enough with his twisted or sprained ankle," she continued, indicating the way that the Armorer's flesh was swollen and spilling over the top of his boot, "let alone right here." She prodded with a surprising gentleness at the area ringed by the remains of the snout. J.B. flinched, even though she never made contact.

 

 "Need get teeth out," Jak commented, coming over to look. "Now. Meds left?" he asked of Krysty and Mildred.

 

 The black woman shook her head angrily, her beaded plaits swinging around her head. "Those asswipes at the redoubt took just about everything when they stripped us. We might have got the blasters back from the armory, but they weren't kind enough to leave everything else in there."

 

 But even as she spoke, her hands were restlessly searching through every pocket of her coat, opening flaps and probing into the corners of cavernous folds of material. With an exclamation somewhere between amazement, disgust and relief, she came up with a sealed roll of medicated bandage and a small bottle of pills. The label revealed them to be nonspecific antibiotics. She worried about a potential allergic reaction, but had no choice. They might help fight whatever rad-altered infections he could pick up from the vicious teeth that were embedded in his leg.

 

 "It's not much, but it'll have to do," she said grimly. "The teeth will have to come out."

 

 "Leave to me," Jak said, producing another of the leaf-bladed knives from within its patched hiding place. With no further comment he set to work, prying the teeth from the wound.

 

 The two mute sec men had moved into position behind the Armorer, and took a firm grip on him, holding him steady as he writhed and twitched in pain.

 

 Ryan looked away, scanning the horizon. "How far now?"

 

 Mac joined him, just away from the group. Despite his impassivity throughout the whole of their trip, he actually looked a little sick at the operation Jak was conducting.

 

 "Not far. Mebbe carrying your friend will slow us down," he speculated.

 

 Ryan glared at him. "We still outnumber you, friend."

 

 Mac gave him a weak smile. "Okay. If you can carry him at a pretty normal pace, then just about twenty minutes more. It'll be past sunfall now, and that's always a danger. But I guess those weird things have had enough for now."

 

 Ryan studied the path and brush around them, littered with the corpses of the mutie squirrels. "I hope so," he said shortly before turning back to where J.B. lay.

 

 Dean and Krysty were preparing lengths of the medicated bandage to bind the wounds, while the mute sec men had J.B. in a firm grip. When they caught Ryan looking at him, both seemed to communicate a kind of sympathy through their eyes.

 

 Jak had almost finished his task, under the watchful direction of Mildred. The bloodied remains of the snout had been sliced away, the knife paring the fur and flesh from the bone so that Jak could get a better view of how the teeth were embedded in J.B.'s leg. The bone was almost as clean as if it had been boiled.

 

 The teeth were firm in the jaw sockets, so there was little opportunity for Jak to pry loose the bone before extracting the teeth from the wound. He cursed to himself, knowing that this would make it more difficult for him to cleanly remove the teeth.

 

 Jak grasped the bone carefully but firmly in one hand, while he began to pry the teeth loose with the other. Mildred kept a close watch on J.B.'s leg, using a piece of bandage to wipe the dribbling blood from the localized area as the teeth moved in his flesh. With the blood wiped away, it was easier for Jak to see what he was doing.

 

 "Fuck mutie bastards," he cursed, as the jawbone seemed to take forever to pry loose. Finally it came away in his hand, and he tossed it over his shoulder, moving rapidly out of the way to allow Mildred to take over.

 

 Mildred didn't have much to work with, but she used another length of medicated bandage to clean around the deep puncture marks. She wiped away the dribbles of blood from the wounds. It was fortunate that the teeth had been sharp, as the wounds they left were like needlepoint rather than large, jagged tears. Consequently they were actually bleeding less than she had feared.

 

 It wasn't much, but at least it was something.

 

 After binding the Armorer's wound, Mildred gestured for the bottle of antibiotics. Mac, who had managed to turn back now that the worst of the operation was over, gave Mildred a canteen of water from his backpack, and she forced J.B. to swallow a couple of the pills.

 

 Semiconscious, he sunk back onto the earth.

 

 "Let's get moving," Ryan said. "The sooner we reach this ville the better."

 

 He left unspoken that once there, they would work on figuring out a way of escaping. It might seem like jumping from one danger to another, but if the talk had been of a ritual chilling, then it wouldn't be likely to happen straight away…and that would give them the most precious of commodities—time.

 

 Ryan took J.B. by the feet, and Jak moved to take him under the arms. It wasn't the best way to carry him, but it would have to do.

 

 They walked in silence.

 

 THE SUN HAD BEEN DOWN for nearly an hour by the time they reached the small ville. If ever there had been a ville that deserved to be described as a pesthole, then this was it. A few fires around the edges of the shacks and huts that comprised the ville were all that protected it from the encroaching dangers of nocturnal predators.

 

 Ryan couldn't see if there were any wags in the dim light, but somehow he doubted it.

 

 Mildred looked at J.B., strung out between Ryan, her heart sinking. She had been hoping to pick up some sort of supplies from the ville to improve J.B.'s condition, but from her first look, it seemed likely that she was better equipped than they were.

 

 They walked unchallenged into the heart of the ville, Mac leading the way. If there were any guards around the outskirts of the ville, Ryan didn't see them.

 

 Mac answered his unspoken question. "No one moves out or across the valley after sunfall. You've seen it in daylight. It's far worse in the dark. Never know where you are. The insiders are as wise to that as we are. They've never attacked us by night, 'cause they wouldn't want to risk crossing the valley."

 

 "What about people from outside the valley?"

 

 Mac grinned with a return of the old sick humor, now that he felt safe on home territory. "They get this far, then the storms eat 'em up anyway. They're our friend, as well as our enemy."

 

 They continued until they were in a rough earthen square that served as the meeting point for the ville dwellers. In the dim light provided by the lamps and fires, faces appeared from the doorways of huts, keeping their distance but peering with interest at the newcomers.

 

 Particularly at Dean.

 

 "Why are they staring at me like that?" he whispered to Krysty.

 

 Krysty looked in the darkness, and could see that there weren't many children in view, and those who were all seemed to have some kind of deformity springing from either rad-blasted genes or inbreeding— faces with squat, snuffling noses dripping with mucus; hare-lipped, gap-toothed grins; slack jaws that hung open over black eyes.

 

 "I think you're probably the first child without a mutation or genetic problem they've seen for some time," she whispered. "This could be a good thing for us if we play it right."

 

 Ryan was too close to Mac to acknowledge her verbally, but he heard…and agreed.

 

 When they were all in the small square, there were muttering and rustling sounds from the huts as a small crowd gathered on the fringes.

 

 Ryan and Jak lowered J.B. gently to the ground. He was mumbling softly and incoherently. Mildred bent over him and felt his skin and took his pulse. He was too hot, and his pulse was racing. If they could have some water boiled, and a dry, relatively clean place clear of the ground, she could clean the wounds and redress them, maybe give him more of the antibiotics. She was uncertain how stable or effective the pills would be after so long, but they were better than nothing.

 

 "John needs to be rested and cleaned up," she said to Mac. "So if you show us where we're sleeping, and get me some hot water…"

 

 She trailed off, noticing that the potbellied sec man was looking at her uncomfortably.

 

 "Reckon it may not be that simple, missy," he said softly. "See, all outlanders or insiders are killed to appease sunup. Without sacrifice to the sun, well, the storms could get worse."

 

 Mildred regarded him coldly, suddenly aware once again of the light scouring of dust and the perpetual breeze. It was much less than at its worst, but still ever present.

 

 Mac flinched before her stony gaze.

 

 "You mean to tell me that after all we did to try and save that freakin' rag woman and that fat giant, after all we did together to fight off those freakin' squirrels, you'll sell us down the river and let us be chilled to try and stop a storm that never ceases?"

 

 Mac couldn't look at her. He stared at one of the huts. "Mebbe Abner will make the decision…under the circumstances. But it's not up to me."

 

 "Not up to you," Mildred spit back, looking at J.B., whose eyes flickered wildly behind closed lids, encountering terrors in his delirium that only he could ever understand.

 

 "It's okay, Mildred," Ryan said softly. They had their blasters and other weapons, but they were a man short and in the middle of the ville. He wanted to buy some time, and if it meant being nice to these bastards, then so be it.

 

 "No, let the black woman speak."

 

 The voice was wheezing, old and had a sly quality that immediately pricked Ryan's suspicion. It came from the edge of the clearing, and the speaker walked through the small crowd as it parted for him.

 

 He was shorter than Mac, and if anything, even more potbellied than the sec man. His breathing was labored, and his long, thinning and straggly hair was a dirty gray streaked with black. His long mustache and beard were similarly peppered.

 

 "Are you the baron of this ville?" Ryan asked him.

 

 The man looked puzzled. "Baron? That's not a word I know for what I am. I'm the leader of this here ville, if that's what you mean. Just like my pappy before me, and his pappy. We always have been, long as there's been a ville. I've heard other outlanders talk of barons, but not the insiders with the stupe uniforms."

 

 "We're outlanders, I guess, certainly not from the redoubt."

 

 "The what?" the old man asked, furrowing his brow.

 

 "He means the place where the insiders come from," Mac offered. "Guess that's what they call it."

 

 The old man nodded, then smiled at them. "Anyways, you can call me Abner. Least I can do, all things considered. Got to be friendly now."

 

 "Why?" Ryan asked.

 

 Abner smiled again, ingenuously. "Hell, boy, the sun don't like it if we're not real friendly to those we chill for him."

 

  

 

 Chapter Sixteen

 

  

 

 The hut in which they were imprisoned was a round adobe structure of mud and straw. The walls were flimsy, with patches where the mud had caked dry too quickly and not been bound by the straw which was visible in the flickering shadows cast by the old hurricane lamp that sputtered smokily in the center of the hut.

 

 J.B. lay near the center, an equally foul-smelling poultice on his wounds.

 

 "Are you sure this will work?" Mildred asked Krysty skeptically. "Back when I was in med school, they weren't exactly hot for herbal medicines."

 

 Krysty shook her head. "I know, but when it's all you've got… When I was young, back in Harmony, Mother Sonja taught me how to blend healing things from the most unlikely sources. It might smell like shit, and no one knows how it works, but if there aren't any meds, then it's got to be worth a shot."

 

 Mildred joined Krysty by J.B.'s side. In the light of the flickering lamp, his brow was dripping with sweat, matting his already soaking hair and running in rivulets down his face and neck.

 

 Mildred stroked his forehead gently, feeling the heat rise from him. He responded to the pressure of her touch by muttering incomprehensibly, opening his eyes for a second but not really seeing.

 

 Krysty moved the poultice, made from rags she had persuaded Abner to give them. The wound underneath was cleaner than before, pus and a clear discharge being drawn from it and onto the rags. A cauldron of lukewarm water—boiling when left by Mac earlier—stood to one side of the hut. Krysty stripped the pus-covered rags from the outer covering of the poultice and threw them into the cauldron.

 

 "Water's next to useless," she commented. "Too cool to be any good, and we've got no more rags. Time to find our own."

 

 Without comment Ryan, Jak and Dean all started to strip down to their underwear. Having acquired it at the redoubt the day before, it was relatively clean, and having been under their other clothing, was protected from the ravages of the dust and dirt that had assailed them in the storms.

 

 All three men took off the regulation military white T-shirts and handed them to Mildred. Jak also handed her one of his leaf-bladed knives, with which she sliced the material into strips, handing it to Krysty. The material formed a new dressing on the poultice, which was replaced on J.B.'s injuries.

 

 "Will he make it?" Ryan asked, speaking for the first time since their imprisonment.

 

 Mildred shrugged. "This gunk is working by the look of it, and he should be past the crisis of his fever before too long. If he gets through that okay, then he'll live. The question then is how fit will he be to move when we make a break."

 

 She tried to keep her voice even, to sound offhand about J.B.'s chances. But she was fooling no one: they all knew how much it was eating into her.

 

 "I'm just wondering if we should make a break," Ryan said quietly.

 

 Dean looked at his father sharply. "We've got to, Dad. There's J.B. to get out of here, and Doc to get after. Besides, I don't want to be chilled as part of some dumb-ass ritual to the frigging sun."

 

 Ryan regarded Dean coldly. His one eye blazed anger. "Remember who's in charge here, boy. The only chance we have is if we work together, not pulling separately. Before you jump to conclusions, hear me out. I've got no intention of being chilled, either. Trader used to say that when your time was up, you had to go down. Well, I don't feel like going down without fighting. But there's more than one way of fighting."

 

 "Sorry," the boy muttered.

 

 Jak put an arm around his shoulders. He was only a few years older than Dean, and yet in terms of harsh experience he was an old man.

 

 "More one way skin mutie rabbit. Mebbe not best blast way out—'specially when no blasters."

 

 Dean bit his lip and smiled. It was a good point. Still stunned by Abner's pronouncement, none of them had been ready for the sudden swarm of ville dwellers, who had taken it as their cue to rush forward and disable the outlanders, moving like a mass of ants that engulfed their enemies, sheer weight of numbers pinning them to the ground and enabling the ville dwellers to strip them of their weapons.

 

 Or almost all of their weapons. Jak's throwing knives were so well hidden in the patches and folds of his coat that it would have taken a long and thorough search to uncover them.

 

 There hadn't been time for such a search. They had been picked up by the swarm and rushed into the hut.

 

 Once in there, Mac and his mute sec men had trained their blasters on them while Abner had told them that he would assist them, in whatever way his people could, to heal J.B.'s wounds. It was important that the sun receive a "whole" sacrifice, and not a damaged one.

 

 And so they had been left here. At least, as he had warned them that the outside of the hut would be guarded, Mac had had the grace to look embarrassed at his behavior.

 

 "Why can't we make a break for it?" Dean continued impatiently.

 

 "Because walls have ears for one," Krysty snapped, losing her patience, "especially walls that are made of mud and straw. And for two, how can we move with J.B. in this condition?"

 

 "I guess…yeah, I guess so," Dean said quietly.

 

 Ryan beckoned them into the center of the hut, where they crouched around the prone Armorer, as though watching him. Ryan spoke low and soft.

 

 "We're better fighters, but this is their terrain, and they're used to the weather conditions. Besides which they outnumber us. We've got a short while to prepare something. They won't chill us in this ritual until J.B.'s at least coherent. Thing is, what exactly do we do?"

 

 "Mebbe," Jak said, scratching idly, "mebbe need take Abner."

 

 Ryan nodded. "They seem to follow him blindly, so yeah, if we have him, that's a powerful bargaining tool."

 

 "How far are we going to get out there with John like this?" Mildred looked down at J.B. and shook her head. "The thing he'll need most is time, and that's just what we don't have."

 

 "Then we'll buy it." Ryan looked his son squarely in the face. "I've got an idea, and I need to know I can rely on you totally."

 

 "Dad, you don't even have to ask," Dean replied.

 

 THE STARS TWINKLED faintly through the ever present curtain of dust. It was a lighter breeze than usual on this night, stirring motes on the surface of the tracks that comprised the roads of the small ville.

 

 Mac sighed and leaned on his blaster, his arms crossed and resting on the mouth of the long, roughly beaten barrel. It was bored smooth inside, but the outer metal was still pitted and uneven, where he hadn't been bothered to shape or smooth it. The butt rested in the dirt, trigger a long way from his finger. He was supposed to be on guard, but felt tired after the long trek from the redoubt back to the ville. They had been on a scavenger hunt, hoping for some equipment that had been left by the insiders, and hadn't bargained on walking into a firefight between the prisoners and some of the insiders.

 

 And it had been a real firefight. Mac had never really gone along with Tilly's idea that it was part of some plot to infiltrate the ville. After all, how would the insiders know that they were going to be there, let alone that they wouldn't just chill anyone they captured?

 

 He sighed to himself, barely able to keep his eyelids open. It had always paid to go along with Tilly, because she was insane and might just tear your throat out if you said the wrong thing. Tilly and the giant Tod had been two of the best fighters in the ville, and now they were gone. Mac shook his head sadly. They were good to have on your side. What his people would do now worried him.

 

 He yawned. It wasn't his problem. Except that if not for the outlanders, he'd be as chilled as Tilly and Tod. Even so, Abner had wanted to use them for the ritual chill. It didn't strike him as being a good move. Their skills would be good for the protection of the ville. Besides which, he figured that he owed them for his life.

 

 But he was just a sec man—the chief, sure, but still just a sec man. He couldn't go against the leader.

 

 He was so occupied by his thoughts that he didn't notice the slight scuffling behind him, didn't notice first Jak and then Dean emerge from around the side of the hut, covered in dirt and mud, pieces of straw still clinging to their clothing.

 

 Jak picked up a rock from the ground, a jagged but basically round rock that fit into the palm of his pale hand, and brought it down with a sharp and fierce force on the back of his skull.

 

 "I CAN'T SAY I feel good about sitting on my ass doing nothing while they're out there risking their necks." Mildred's tone was angry, but from frustration rather than anything else, as she soaked strips of cloth in the now cold water, squeezed them out and applied them to J.B.'s fevered brow.

 

 "Can't say I don't agree with you," Ryan said, squatting by the hurricane lamp and drawing patterns in the dirt with his finger. "Fact of the matter is, I'm itching to get out there, but it just isn't possible."

 

 "I know," Mildred whispered. "I just feel the frustration, too, I guess."

 

 Ryan didn't answer. There was nothing to say. The plan had been worked by himself and Jak, but this was one of those rare occasions where Ryan could do nothing but sit and wait.

 

 The albino had noticed that the adobe wall at the back of the hut had a small gap of a few inches, forming a hollow that bit into the wall and the earth beneath. It formed a small channel into which the inhabitants of the hut had to urinate and defecate, a kind of primitive sewer.

 

 Jak and Dean were small and slender enough to squeeze through the gap without disturbing the fragile wall too much. The albino teen was certain that the back of the hut wouldn't be guarded, and if it was, then the guards wouldn't expect anyone to crawl out through the channel. The sec men in the ville were too used to defeating any enemy using the storms. They had little idea of what to actually do with any captives.

 

 It was a theory in which he had been proved correct. He and Dean had squeezed through and come around to the sole guard at the front of the hut without encountering anyone else.

 

 Now they were on their way to where Abner lay sleeping, while Ryan, Mildred and Krysty stood watch over J.B.

 

 "SO WHERE DOES this guy Abner live, anyway?" Dean whispered to Jak as they slunk from shadow to shadow, in and out of the huts and shacks. It was incredibly quiet, as though all life ceased with sundown. Perhaps it did. If the ville scratched a living from the soil, with only the occasional opportunity to trade, then it was probable that the inhabitants were ruled by the rise and fall of the sun, working the land as long and hard as they could.

 

 If that was so, then it would make it easier for them to find Abner and make him see their point of view.

 

 If they could ever work out where he was.

 

 Jak stood in the shadows, his ruby eyes raking the darkness. His night vision was better, in some ways, than his day vision. Because his albino traits left him sensitive to the light, he was able to make out shapes in the darkness without an excess of light blinding him.

 

 "Guess look for biggest shack. No baron live in shithole," he answered finally.

 

 "The whole place is a shithole," Dean replied with a grin.

 

 Jak returned the grin. "Some less shit than others. Like that…"

 

 Dean followed Jak's arm. About fifty yards in front of them lay a shack with a veranda. It was the only one they'd seen so far that had such a structure. And there was more—two sec men were seated in old cane chairs at each end of the veranda, cradling handblasters. It was impossible to tell from that range, and in this light, but by the shape of them Jak suspected that one was a .44 Magnum, long barreled and deadly. The other was a .50 Magnum Desert Eagle. Both were deadly blasters, even given that they probably weren't in the best of condition. None of the blasters Jak had seen so far in this ville were well cared for.

 

 "Looks like it could be the place," Dean murmured.

 

 Jak nodded. "Big shack, two sec men…not home of shit shoveler, even in shithole."

 

 They withdrew farther into the shadows to watch and observe. They stayed there for almost half an hour, crouched in the dark and ignoring the cramp in their aching limbs. Neither had been able to rest adequately before setting out to search for the dwelling.

 

 Nothing happened. The guards didn't move, seeming to be sleeping fitfully. There was no movement other than the snuffling of a stray dog.

 

 "These guys are slack," Dean commented eventually, shifting to rid himself of the pins and needles running down his leg. "I don't think they'd know what to do if they were attacked."

 

 "Mebbe not, but no need to take for granted," Jak returned. "Act like best sec men ever seen."

 

 Saying no more, he slipped Dean two of the leaf-bladed knives to use as weapons and gestured to indicate a roundabout pattern for the boy to follow so that he would come up to the sec man on the left from behind, hitting the man in his blind spot.

 

 Dean nodded and set off, leaving Jak to make his way around to the right.

 

 The albino took off, using the shadows as cover. His dark camou clothing kept him well hidden, and his face, hands and hair were streaked with mud, disguising the usually all-too-conspicuous white. He kept low to the ground, running swiftly and lightly in the way he had learned as a youngster in the bayou. He passed shacks where the windows were open to the outside, and could hear the animal sounds of rutting humans or the contented snores of sleepers from within. Whichever, he was careful not to disturb them, nor to kick up dust when he passed the doorways to huts that were covered only by haphazardly hung pieces of old sacking.

 

 It was a twisting route, as the paths through the ville were winding and not in any kind of order that could be described as a road. Once or twice Jak nearly lost his bearings, and hoped that the less experienced Dean hadn't become hopelessly lost.

 

 Rounding a corner, Jak got the sec man in his sights. He was approaching him from an angle and from behind. If he was quiet enough, it was doubtful that the sec man would ever feel the knife as it slipped between his ribs and punctured his heart.

 

 Stealthily Jak moved in. He was less than three feet behind the man, and poised to strike, when he heard a muffled groan from the other end of the veranda. It startled Jak's target out of his slumber, and he sprang to his feet, looking around in confusion.

 

 It was obvious that Dean had found his way to his target and taken care of him. It was just unfortunate that his route had turned out to be a fraction easier than Jak's, and his chill had been achieved more quickly.

 

 The sec man turned toward the far end of the veranda and raised his blaster.

 

 He didn't speak or make a sound, so there was still a chance to keep things under cover, as long as Jak acted quickly.

 

 Springing forward, Jak reached up while in midair. He was shorter than the sec man and had the disadvantage of being on a lower level, the veranda forming a six-inch platform around the house. But he had the element of surprise.

 

 If the sec men in this pesthole had been more familiar with keeping prisoners, and in being attacked from the outside with any degree of regularity, then it was certain that Jak's task would have been well-nigh impossible. The sec man would have been expecting an attack to parallel Dean's on his colleague.

 

 Instead he was an easy prey. Jak's hand snaked out in the darkness, grabbing the man's straggling blond hair and jerking back hard. A surprised gasp was all that escaped his lips before he fell into Jak and onto the knife as it slipped between his ribs and punctured his vital organs.

 

 He tried to scream as he died, but only a harsh gurgling escaped as blood bubbled from his lips.

 

 Jak fell back, the sec man becoming a deadweight as he slipped into unconsciousness and death. Jak's feet planted themselves firmly as he landed, swiveling so that the chilled sec man's weight was used to Jak's advantage, pitching him past the albino to collapse in the dust.

 

 Jak knew he was dead and didn't bother to look back. He had bounded onto the veranda by the time the sec man was laid flat on the ground.

 

 Dean was waiting for him by the entrance to the shack, grinning. "What kept you?" he whispered.

 

 Jak returned the grin, but said nothing. He gestured to Dean to follow him, then tried the old wooden screen door that hung lopsidedly in the doorway. It wasn't locked, and Jak had almost expected it not to be. They were too sloppy in this ville, protected only by the weather conditions and seclusion of the valley.

 

 Inside, the shack was pitch-dark, the scant outside illumination from the moon and from the protective fires around the ville shut out by the sacking that hung over the windows. It also served to trap the filthy smell of unwashed humans and raw sewage, which seemed concentrated, as though the shack hadn't been cleaned out for a long while.

 

 Jak and Dean slid in the door and up against the wall, flattening themselves into the dark and waiting for their eyes to adjust to the new level of darkness. It took several seconds, in which time both youths used their ears to take in as much detail as they could from the sounds around the room.

 

 Heavy snoring came from one corner of the room, to their left, and at the back. Away from any of the windows. Not so stupe, then. The snores came from two people. One had to be Abner. The other was from a woman. It was higher pitched, lighter, and followed by a small groan that was unmistakably female. There were the sounds of someone shifting in his or her sleep.

 

 Eyes now adjusted to the dark, Jak could see that they were sleeping on an old iron bedstead, raised from the floor. There were few items of furniture in the room, all salvaged from predark and in varying states of disrepair. Craftsmanship was obviously not high on the list of priorities in this ville.

 

 There was no one else in the one-room shack, no other sec men. Even more stupe. Did the old man want to get chilled?

 

 The floor was unprotected boards. To make their way across to the far corner and the bed without making a noise to wake Abner was going to be a hit-and-miss affair, made easier by the lack of extra sec men, but still risky. What were the chances that the old man would sleep with a blaster as readily as a woman?

 

 Jak tapped Dean on the arm and gestured for him to follow the line of the walls around to the bed, keeping low under the window openings. Jak would follow the line around the opposite wall.

 

 It took a matter of seconds for them to skirt the edges of the room, where the boards would be least likely to creak. They met at the foot of the bed. Abner and his woman were still snoring, oblivious.

 

 Without a word Jak strode forward and put his hand over Abner's mouth, pinching his nostrils with his thumb and forefinger. The old man's breathing was cut short, and he spluttered into wakefulness, his eyes staring wide in shock as he began to rise—into the point of the leaf-bladed knife that Jak held with his other hand.

 

 "Make noise, get chilled. Your choice," Jak whispered.

 

 Abner's staring eyes, flicking across Jak and registering fear, said everything.

 

 The woman stirred in her sleep, then awakened slowly.

 

 "What is it?" she asked sleepily, raising herself on one elbow. The filthy sheet and blankets covering them fell away, revealing her young and newly formed breasts. She couldn't have been more than fourteen years old.

 

 Seeing Jak standing over Abner, she opened her mouth to scream, only to suck in her breath and squeal when Dean moved into view, holding the point of his knife to her throat.

 

 "Don't make me use it," he said softly, trying not to stare at her breasts.

 

 Wide-eyed, the girl shook her head.

 

 Jak spoke softly in the darkness. "Come with us. Keep quiet."

 

 Abner nodded. Jak stood back, and the old man rose from the bed. He was naked, his sagging gut hanging over his balls, making him look like a eunuch in the darkness. He reached for his clothes, draped on the end of the bedstead.

 

 "Uh-uh…" Jak reached out to the ragged garments, shaking them before handing them to Abner. An old bayonet fell from the material. Even in the near-black, Jak could see that the weapon had a serrated edge, the kind that tore and splintered bone on its removal.

 

 There were no other weapons in the clothes, and Jak allowed Abner to dress quickly before ushering him toward the door.

 

 He left Dean to deal with the girl.

 

 "You just stay here, stay quiet," Dean whispered. "I won't harm you unless you shout or scream, so don't do that. Okay?"

 

 The girl nodded, clutching the sheet to herself—more in the manner of a shield from the knife than in any kind of modesty.

 

 Dean left her, turning his back to follow Jak across the room.

 

 He was only a few steps behind the albino when he heard the rusty click. Whirling on his toes, Dean caught the barest glimpse of the girl kneeling on the bed, her nakedness now fully exposed as she grappled with the old blunderbuss that Abner kept by his side in the bed. The rusty click had been the old hammer being hauled back.

 

 She started to raise her head and aim the blaster.

 

 She never made it.

 

 Without pause for thought, Dean judged the distance and range, taking the largest part of the target to get the maximum chance of a hit. The knife left his hand and was embedded in her breastbone before she had a chance to blink.

 

 Eyes still wide in shock, the girl fell onto the stinking mattress, dropping the blaster under her.

 

 Abner started to shout, either in shock or outrage, but was stopped by the sudden pressure of Jak's knife on his carotid artery. He watched in silence as Dean hurried to the now dead girl and turned her over to remove the knife and to make the blaster safe. She had died with the hammer still cocked and ready, not even given the reflex time to squeeze the trigger.

 

 "Good chill—you remember," Jak whispered in Abner's ear. The old man tried to nod, but stopped when he realized that it pressed the blade into his artery.

 

 Dean took the lead as they left the shack, Abner stumbling momentarily when he saw the bodies of the chilled sec. It was a simple matter to return to the adobe hut where Ryan and the others were waiting. Mac was still lying outside, still unconscious.

 

 Dean pulled the wooden gate open, and Abner walked inside with Jak's knife at his throat. When Dean had shut the gate behind them, Jak withdrew the knife and stood back, at the same time gently pushing Abner so that the baron stumbled into the center of the room, where he came to stand near the still shivering and muttering J.B.

 

 Mildred, bent over the Armorer, looked up but said nothing.

 

 Ryan was standing, arms folded, partially in shadow. Krysty was beside him. They said nothing.

 

 "What is it you want?" Abner asked in a tremulous voice.

 

 Still no one spoke.

 

 "Look, you…you can have anything you want, friends," Abner stuttered in a pitiful voice. "You can leave before morning, with supplies. We don't have much, but it's yours."

 

 "Right, we leave the ville and end up in the valley, where your sec men can outnumber us in an environment where they're more familiar with the conditions. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," Mildred scoffed without looking up.

 

 Abner gave her a puzzled look. "Why would we come after you?"

 

 "The ritual chilling." Ryan spoke softly, his voice all the more menacing for its relative calm. "You haven't forgotten that, have you? You still need victims for it. Us."

 

 Abner spread his hands and shrugged. "So we don't make a sacrifice to the sun…it won't be the first time."

 

 "Fat man give in too easily," Jak muttered.

 

 Abner turned to the albino. "Why not? You've got me at your mercy. I'd have to be triple stupe to try and hold out on you now."

 

 "But later?" Ryan asked.

 

 Abner shrugged again. "Okay, I could send sec men against you, true enough, I guess. But why waste time on outlanders when we have enough trouble just surviving and coping with the insiders when they come for us?"

 

 Ryan said nothing for a moment. He could see the fear and worry in Abner's eyes, reflecting the smoky glow of the hurricane lamp. He had the baron on the run, if he played it right.

 

 Finally he spoke. "I don't usually do deals. I like to clean the mess up and get out of the bastard ville before the shit starts to spread. But I'll make an exception for you."

 

 Abner looked relieved, but still had to ask. "Why?"

 

 Krysty answered. "J.B.'s sick and needs time to recover. That coldheart Wallace also has one of us still in the redoubt. You want them out of your face. We want them out of the way so we can get our man back and leave this bastard place. So we need manpower. You need more fighting skills."

 

 "A deal?"

 

 Ryan nodded. "A deal. You don't chill us. You help us get our man out."

 

 "And in return?"

 

 "We teach you things you never dreamed of. You'll have a chance of ridding yourselves of Wallace, Murphy and their sec men. More, you'll have a better than even chance of beating away any other attackers you might get."

 

 Abner scratched his chin through his beard and rubbed absently at his dangling belly.

 

 "Guess I'm not in any position to say no, even if I want to," he mused. "I don't agree, you just chill me and go."

 

 "That's about it," Ryan assented. "Thing is, at least the other way we both get a chance for what we want."

 

 Abner nodded. "That's true, boy. I don't say I trust you, but I guess I'll go along with it."

 

 "I can't say that I trust you, either," Ryan replied. "We'll just have to live with it."

 

 SUN UP CAME as a wan light reflected red through the light mist of dust. The inhabitants of the ville rose to go about their tasks only to find that something radically different had happened in the night.

 

 At Abner's request, the bodies of the two sec men and that of the young girl had been laid out in the rough square at the center of the ville. They lay in the early-morning sun, starting to swell in the rising heat.

 

 Abner stood at the head of the corpses, with Ryan, Krysty and Jak behind him. The old man carried his blaster, and the companions had their own blasters, retrieved from the shack that laughingly passed for an armory. It had crossed Ryan's mind that J.B. would have wept to see blasters stored in such a way, had he been able.

 

 Instead the Armorer lay in Abner's bed, attended by Mildred and Dean. The two of them acted as security for each other, as well as nursing J.B. on his route to recovery. The Armorer had passed the crisis of his fever during the night and was now lying peacefully. Once he recovered his strength, the real problem would be in how long it took his ankle to heal. In the corner, not forgotten, lay Mac. The sec man was still unconscious.

 

 Outside in the rough square, the curious ville dwellers gathered to hear Abner speak.

 

 "Listen here, all of you. These good people, who were to be our sacrifice to the sun, did this last night…" He spread his free hand to indicate the corpses. "They chilled these folk without a second thought, and spared me only because they propose a bargain."

 

 "What bargain could be enough to appease the sun?" came a voice from the back of the crowd.

 

 "Good question, friend," Abner said with a note of ice in his voice that didn't escape Ryan's notice. "What do we need more than anything? To rid ourselves of the mother insiders. These good people have a man inside that they want back. We help them, they train us so that we can grind the mothers into the dirt once and for all. That seems fair to me. After all, the sun must have sent them—look what they did to two of my best sec men without even trying."

 

 There was a thoughtful silence from the crowd. Any doubts were kept unspoken in deference to Abner's underlyingly sinister air of command.

 

 "This should be an interesting experience, lover," Krysty whispered to Ryan.

 

  

 

 Chapter Seventeen

 

  

 

 Doc found himself standing in a room similar to the one in which his corporeal form was lying prone. Blurring and wobbling at the edges of his vision, the room contained the mainframe computer, the couches, the trailing wires, but not the skeletal forms that were molded to the couches.

 

 These men were now standing in front of him, clustered in the middle of the room. They looked as they had to have when first joined to the mechanism—fat, sleek, well-fed military and intelligence services men, middle-aged and experts in their own fields of diplomacy and conflict.

 

 Fields that were too rapidly rendered barren by sky-dark.

 

 One of them smiled. They all smiled.

 

 Doc shivered. Their eyes reflected only the same glow of insanity that he had noticed in Wallace.

 

 "Welcome to the mechanism. It wasn't designed to admit fresh blood, but the technicians have done a fine job in joining you. It was unfortunate about our colleague, but we were warned that accidents and acts of nature could occur."

 

 "Acts of nature?" Doc spit, backing away from the man's outstretched and welcoming hand. He checked himself when he realized he was in cyberspace, a virtual reality where they couldn't physically harm him.

 

 "Death can come to us all. From nowhere," the man continued in a bright tone. He lowered his hand awkwardly, feeling snubbed by Doc but not wanting to lose face. He turned the lowering into a sleeve-tugging gesture on his Air Force uniform.

 

 "I hardly think from nowhere. Extreme old age is hardly an unexpected cause of death," Doc said with a heavily sardonic tone.

 

 The Air Force general looked momentarily confused. "Old age?"

 

 He turned to his companions, and they muttered among themselves, obviously excluding Doc by choice. Doc took it as an opportunity to survey the room further.

 

 It was an almost perfect replica of the room in which they were all strapped, with one glaring omission: the wall where the glass observation window into the control room beyond was situated. There was no window. There was nothing but a blank wall.

 

 Doc also noticed that the door into the anteroom was open. What lay beyond that?

 

 He was interrupted from his reverie by a cough. He turned back to find them looking at him again.

 

 "I find that we have some questions to ask you before we accept you into our fold," the Air Force general said softly. "Not the least of which is how you came to be here. My colleague here—" he indicated the sole soberly suited man. "—was under the impression that the Chronos operatives had tired of your constant disruption and had used you as part of an experiment in forward time travel. You were their great success in trawling, but as for forward travel…" He shrugged.

 

 Doc felt a bile of anger begin to rise. A "success"? He remembered the obscenities that were Judge Crater and Ambrose Bierce, remembered the pain and agony of being trawled by the cruel whitecoats and was painfully aware of his own mental instability. So that was 'success'?

 

 "Do you know what's happened outside your moribund and absurd machine?" Doc snapped.

 

 "No," the general answered ingenuously, so much so that it took Doc aback.

 

 The uniformed man continued, "We have been cut off from the outside. Some sort of communication breakdown. It happens, even in the best-run complexes, and this is such advanced technology. We've been running through simulations, waiting for the call. But so far there has been nothing. In truth we, ah, have rather been hoping that you can tell us."

 

 Doc was drained of anger by his surprise. For a moment he forgot that these men were part of a project that had ripped him from the bosom of his family and hurled him—twice—into futures that he should never have witnessed. For a moment he looked on them as human souls as lost as himself, trapped by harsh circumstance in a world for which they were not made.

 

 "Have you been fed no information about the world?" he asked. "Hasn't Wallace been giving you the data?"

 

 One of the men—Army by his uniform, and bunching large fists in frustration as he spoke—said, "Wallace is a good man, but it seems to me he's losing his grip. I've noticed a deterioration in his mental capacity over the time period we've been hooked up."

 

 Doc was about to comment that he felt Wallace was bordering on insanity, when it suddenly struck him: the Army man was talking about the General Wallace who had been in charge of the redoubt when they were initially hooked up to the Moebius MkI. He had no idea that he was now several generations of Wallace down the line.

 

 "Do you actually know how long you've been linked together?" Doc asked quietly.

 

 The Air Force man looked puzzled, scratched his head and turned to the others for guidance. They all seemed to be at a loss. Finally he said, "Something you will soon realize Doctor, is that time has no meaning as such in here. Once you become part of the rat king, as you just have, then the outside world and all its concepts become very, ah, abstracted is probably the best word."

 

 "To a ridiculous degree," Doc commented. "There is no need for this computer. There are no Reds anymore. There's little of anything anymore. Your obscene plans caused the end of the world as you know it."

 

 "You mean there's been a war?" the Army man asked after some whispered consultation.

 

 Doc gave a hollow laugh. "You could call it that. Skydark. A total nuclear conflagration that has laid waste to the world. What we used to call the United States is now the Deathlands. And believe me, gentlemen, it more than lives up to that name."

 

 There was more whispered consultation. The Army man turned to Doc.

 

 "So who won?"

 

 Doc felt an urge to giggle. It crept up his throat, making him choke. He began to laugh. At first it was soft and low, but it grew louder and louder, harsher and harsher, verging on hysteria. Tears of laughter ran down his cheeks, turning to tears of rage and sadness.

 

 They watched him impassively, only the occasional puzzled flicker of a frown giving away any emotions.

 

 Doc finished, doubled up and in agony from cramps in his ribs. Which, if he tried hard to concentrate, was absurd. How could he get cramps when he wasn't, as such, real?

 

 He pulled himself upright. "Nobody won, you cretin. Everyone lost. There is no world as you know it. There's nothing. Just outposts of mutated idiots trying to take little degrees of power and justify their pathetic existence. Just a few people trying to make their way in the rad-blasted world without being chilled by those of little sense."

 

 One of the men in suits stepped forward and spoke for the first time. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with any of the models we've used for our simulations over the years. And those models were very carefully planned and plotted to cover any eventuality. There's no chance that anything could have happened outside of that."