With a snap as loud as a gunshot, the rope broke

“Rona!” Dean Cawdor yelled, as the rushing water of the nameless river yanked him off the drowning horse to send him tumbling downstream.

Sharona screamed his name somewhere distant, but the crashing waves of the white-water river overwhelmed the sound until there was only the rumbling thunder of the icy wash.

Dean fought his way back to the surface, pulling in a lungful of air. Through the spray he saw his horse slam into a boulder, blood gushing from its mouth, its eyes going blank before the animal was swept away.

A line of jagged boulders rose out of the spray. In a surge of adrenaline, Dean tried to slip between the deadly outcroppings. He made it past the first two, but the third smacked his arm with stunning force.

Then an undertow grabbed him, dragging him away from air and light.

Prodigal’s Return

Death Lands®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;

Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;

Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;

Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;

Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;

Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 B.C.

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prologue

With a snap as loud as a gunshot, the rope broke.

“Rona!” Dean Cawdor yelled as the rushing water of the nameless river yanked him off the drowning horse, sending him tumbling helplessly downstream.

Sharona screamed his name, but the crashing waves of the white-water river overwhelmed the sound, until there was only the rumbling thunder of the icy wash. Swimming furiously, Dean fought his way back to the surface, pulling in a desperate lungful of air. Through the spray he saw his horse slam into a boulder, blood gushing from its mouth, its eyes going blank before the animal was swept away—the contents of both saddlebags floating after it.

Throwing himself forward, he strove to reach the sinking animal. There was still a longblaster in the gun boot alongside the saddle, and a rope coiled over the pommel. If I can just get hold of that, he wished desperately.

But the cold water was quickly sapping the strength from his arms and legs, and his sodden boots felt as if they were lined with lead plate. Realizing the hopelessness of the task, he abruptly changed direction and started slogging toward the rocky shore. The spray made it hard to see clearly, and the speed of the water was making the shore race by in a blur.

Stay sharp! Dean commanded himself. Lose it now and you’ll be in a bastard world of hurt.

Just then, something brushed against his leg under the water, and Dean felt a visceral rush of raw terror at the possibility of a river mutie. Kicking furiously with both legs, he felt his combat boot slam into something, and a bubbling roar came up from the muddy depths, heading quickly away.

But his relief lasted only a moment as another boulder loomed suddenly from the blinding spray. Snarling a curse, he grabbed hold of a passing tree and rolled himself onto it a split second before it slammed into the boulder. With a crack of thunder the tree shattered, and Dean was sent hurtling forward, still clutching a broken branch amid a maelstrom of dead birds, leaves, wood chips and pinecones.

Going under again, he almost didn’t reach the surface in time, his lungs laboring with the burning need for air. Erupting from the white-water river, he clawed wildly for anything to help him stay afloat. But his clutching fingers encountered only the turgid water and random bits of flotsam. His stomach was starting to hurt now from the cold, a sure sign of reaching the end of his strength. Making a hard decision, Dean started to unbuckle his gun belt, willing to lose the precious blaster to stay alive for a few more seconds, when a line of jagged boulders rose out of the spray.

In a surge of adrenaline, Dean tried to slip between the deadly outcroppings. He made it past the first two, but the third smacked his arm with stunning force, and the entire limb went numb. Spinning about, he lost all track of direction and speed, then cracked his forehead against an unseen boulder. For a brief moment, warmth flooded his face, and the water turned red. Then an undertow dragged him down, away from the air and light toward certain doom.

Even as darkness filled his world, Dean clawed for the knife on his belt and began slashing wildly at his arms and chest. More blood welled from the shallow cuts, but then his heavy bearskin coat fluttered away in the tumultuous river.

Pounds lighter, he felt strength return to his weary limbs, and more determined than ever, the young Cawdor fought to control his passage down the icy river. His world coalesced to chaotic swimming, dodging boulders and trying to reach the shore. Any shore. It made no difference now. Long minutes passed, maybe hours; he had no way of telling. Swim, fight, breathe, live became his only thoughts for an unknown length of time. Then his boot brushed the bottom, dislodging loose rocks, and he dug and clawed his way through the shallows toward the muddy bank.

Grabbing fistfuls of weeds, Dean hauled himself out of the battering water, every inch of freedom gained fueling his will to live. There were trees and bushes only a few feet away.

Struggling out of the sticky mud, he barely managed to crawl onto dry land before collapsing. Totally exhausted, he sprawled on the blessed riverbank, gulping in air.

He had to have dozed for a while, because the next thing he knew a crimson dawn was starting to lighten the cloudy sky. Instinctively, his hands and feet started to tread water again before reason returned. Safe. He had made it onto the riverbank.

Even if I do feel like the loser in an ax fight, Dean thought, grunting at every movement. He had a nuke storm of a headache, his throat was parched and every inch of his body felt bruised and sore. But he was most definitely alive.

Levering himself onto his knees, he patted his clothing to make sure his weapons were still present. His folding knife was long gone, but he still had the big bowie knife, and his Browning Hi-Power .38 was tight in its holster—although a quick check showed the pistol was completely choked with mud. Trying to fire it now would only cause a back blast that would remove his hand. His stomach was rumbling with hunger, but cleaning the blaster was the first priority.

Crawling to the edge of the river, he washed the weapon thoroughly, dropping the magazine to make sure the rush of water reached every crevice. Later on, he would disassemble the blaster and give it a through cleaning and oiling. But his father had taught him that a fast wash would do in times of danger.

“Which this is, since I have no bastard idea where I am,” Dean growled, slamming the magazine back into the weapon and working the slide to eject a round. “Much less where Rona is by now.”

The memory of his mother screaming his name from the other shore of the wild river filled the youth with a sharp pang of loss. But he knew she was a fighter, and would survive on her own just fine. She had for many years. Sharona had stolen him away from his father and the others, and Dean had been really pissed about that. But his mother had convinced him that she needed him, that Ryan would never have allowed Sharona to stay with the companions. So if Dean would stay with her for a little while, she would let him go back to his father sometime soon. She needed him. The confused youth had given in.

Dean hadn’t been alone since he was nine years old. Rona or her old faithful friend, or one of the companions had been around to lend a hand when it was needed.

“But not today,” he muttered, shaking the blaster to try to remove any lingering moisture. Until further notice, he would have to fend for himself. Oddly, the idea didn’t feel him with unease. He had learned a lot traveling with his father and the other companions; and Dean felt sure there were damn few things in the Deathlands that he couldn’t chill, outrun or outthink. Except for a howler, mebbe.

Thoughts of his father, Krysty and the others flooded his mind. He felt bad about what his mother had done. But she needed him, and that was that. He’d had to look after her like he did before. He knew Ryan would never forgive him. Perhaps when he was a little older he’d try to find him—if he lived that long.

Rising to his feet, Dean stomped to help restore circulation while he took stock of the area. The river rumbled steadily along, disappearing out of sight. There were fruit trees and bushes on the other side, but they might as well be on the moon, so he turned his back to the display of inaccessible food. Out of sight, out of mind.

Outcroppings on this side of the river rose to foothills that were backed by proper mountains. There were a lot of pines and oaks in sight, as well as a wide field of grass. Dean knew a few parts of a pine tree were edible, but reaching them involved a lot of hard work for a small return. Thankfully, he saw a copse of cacti only a few yards away, and lurched in that direction.

Shuffling over to a forked cactus, Dean paused to check for any signs of a feeder hidden under the ground. But there was no indication of the subterranean mutie, and Dean eagerly drew his bowie knife to hack off the crown of the plant. Clear fluids welled up from the juicy pulp within, and he stabbed the chuck of cactus with his knife, carefully removing the needles, before carving out the pulp. It was sticky and sweet, and tasted like life itself. Smelled good, too, like a flower blossoming in the dead of winter.

Most of the cactus was inside his belly before Dean felt some of his strength return. Spearing one last chunk, he walked back to the river to wash the mud off his clothing. Then he knelt on a relatively dry section of ground to carefully disassemble, oil and reassemble the Browning Hi-Power. With internal nylon bushings, the predark blaster supposedly never needed to be oiled, but J.B. had taught him well. It was always better to be safe than buried.

Trying the action on the piece a few times, Dean grunted in satisfaction, then reloaded the blaster and tucked it away. Washed and armed once more, he decided it was time for some real food. Pine trees were a favorite home for a lot of birds, which translated into eggs for breakfast and, with any luck, something roasted for lunch. Falcon was the best, but there was nothing wrong with owl, or even robins—although it took about a dozen to make a decent meal. Plucking that many tiny feathers was something Dean wouldn’t wish on a fragging coldheart.

“Afterward, I’ll start searching for a ville,” he muttered, brushing back his damp hair. He took some comfort in the sound of a human voice, even though it was just his own.

The riverbank was alive with chirping insects and croaking frogs, a virtual chorus of nature. If the trees proved to be barren, he’d eat the bugs and frogs. Food was food. He would honestly much prefer a nice roasted crow over a baked frog stuffed with cicadas. Still, whatever didn’t chill you made you stronger, as Mildred liked to say.

Crossing an open field, Dean breathed in the morning air, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. Scattered beams broke through the dense cloud cover, causing what Doc used to call the cathedral effect. The air smelled faintly of river moss and punk. A small field of cattails waved gently in the morning breeze, pretty, but useless.

Watching the ground for any sign of animal spoor, or worse, the gnawed bones dropped by muties, Dean was about halfway to the trees when he heard the sound of distant thunder. Fearfully, he looked up at the roiling storm clouds overhead. Swirling black, laced with orange and purple and dappled with shafts of golden sunlight, they seemed normal enough. And there wasn’t any sign of precipitation, much less the tangy reek of a dreaded acid rain that could melt the flesh off a person in only a few minutes.

Dean had seen that happen once, and it was something he would never forget. He had made it safe into the wreck of a predark car, the metal roof and old glass windows offering more than enough protection from the deadly rain. But an old man had been caught in the downpour, and had never made it to the wreck alive. In the morning there was only his skeleton lying on the muddy ground, a bony hand outstretched, still trying to reach the door handle.

Shaking off the unpleasant memory, Dean frowned as the thunder sounded once more, much louder this time. Blasting baron, that wasn’t thunder, but horses!

Caught out in the open, he knew he wouldn’t reach the safety of the foothills in time, so he drew his blaster and knife, and stood waiting for the riders to appear. They might be sec men from a ville, out hunting muties, or slavers trying to recapture an escaped prisoner, or worse, cannies looking for fresh meat for the stew pot.

Grimly, Dean mentally prepared himself to take his own life rather than be taken prisoner and ritually stripped of his skin, then consumed alive by the demented throwbacks. Even barbs treated captives better than that, though not by much.

Just then, a large number of horses galloped over the horizon, the riders bent low in the saddles. Instantly, one of them shouted something, and the entire group changed direction, to head straight toward Dean.

Controlling his breathing so as not to appear frightened, he allowed the riders to come to him. He had five, mebbe six seconds to gauge who these folks were before the confrontation. In life and death, timing was everything.

The riders seemed to be norms, not muties, and there were only men, no women in sight. That wasn’t good or bad. The horses appeared to be in fine shape, not underfed or overly whipped, which meant the riders weren’t fools. However, their clothing was scraggly and heavily patched, with a wild mismatch of predark fabric, fur and what looked like tent canvas, as if the men had been scavenging through the ruins of some predark city, taking whatever they could find. Only a few of them wore boots. Most were wearing wraparounds, thick animal fur held in place with wide leather straps. It was the kind of clothing Dean would have expected to see barbs wearing.

Or clever folks pretending to be barbs, he thought, which might be the case, as every rider had a longblaster in a gun boot alongside his saddle, and was carrying another slung across his back. They were dressed like outcasts, but armed better than most sec men in a ville. The odd mixture made Dean suspicious of the group, and just for a second he wished that he had made a dash back to the river.

As the pack drew near, he raised his blaster and fired a round into the air both to catch their attention and let them know he had live brass. A lot of people carried empty blasters, and tried to avoid fights through sheer intimidation. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it made you a passenger on the last train west.

Reining in his chestnut stallion, a tall man stopped a dozen or so yards away, and the rest of the ragged group came to a halt close behind. Dean grunted at the display. There was no doubt who was in charge.

The leader was a thin man of mixed Asian descent, his skin faintly golden, but his face heavy with black stubble. He was wearing a black knit cap and buckskin shirt, and had numerous weapons—a Walther PPK .38 in a shoulder holster, an AK-47 slung across his back, and what looked like a Remington shotgun tucked into the boot near his saddle. There were a lot of AK-47 assault rifles in the group, and a few men with 40 mm gren launchers attached. All looked to be in fairly good condition.

“Morning,” the skinny man said, resting an arm on the pommel of his saddle. “What are you doing this far from Donner ville?”

Instantly, the gesture put Dean on the alert. It seemed casual, but effectively hid the newcomer’s gun hand from observation. These folks like tricks too damn much to be anything but coldhearts, he reasoned, and swiftly changed his tactics.

“Looking for you,” he lied, trying to sound like his father. “The name’s Cawdor, Dean Cawdor, and I want to join the gang.” That statement caused an expected ripple of smirks and snorts.

“Looking for us, way out here, on foot?” the leader asked skeptically, shifting slightly in the saddle.

Sheathing the knife and blaster, Dean shrugged. “Lost my woman, both horses and my best dog, trying to cross that rad-blasted river.” Then he patted the checkered grip of the Browning. “Still got my blaster, though. Held on to that like a cross-legged virgin in a gaudy house.”

Now the group of coldhearts guffawed, and Dean felt some of the tension ease. It was just like his father had always said—make the other fellow laugh and you’re halfway done making a deal.

“Mighty bad luck,” the leader drawled, removing his arm from the pommel.

“Sounds more like mutie shit to me,” snarled a fat man with a cloth tied around his head in lieu of a hat. He was wearing one ragged shirt over another, clearly too stupe, or lazy, to sew on a patch, and around his throat was a necklace of dried ears, some from norms, a few from muties.

“Wasn’t talking to you, tubby,” Dean said, not even glancing at the corpulent rider. “So, you them, or not?”

“Them?” the skinny man asked, feigning innocence.

“The coldhearts that have been hounding Donner,” Dean continued, struggling to recall the name of the ville they had just mentioned. “I’ve had enough of the baron, and wanna join.” Then he tilted his head as if challenging them to give the correct answer.

Studying the distant foothills and weedy fields as if expecting an ambush of ville sec men, the skinny man said nothing for a few moments. “Yeah, we’re them,” he said at last. “I’m Wu-Chen Camarillo, and this is my gang, the Stone Angels.”

“The Stone Angels,” Dean repeated without inflection

“Nuking A! And we rule this fragging valley from Glass Lake to the Iron Mountains!” a bucktoothed man added fiercely, a scarred hand resting on a throwing hatchet sheathed on his thigh.

An old friend named Jak had taught Dean about that particular weapon, and he now marked the short man as one of the most dangerous in the group. It took a long time to learn how to control the unwieldy weapon, which meant the coldheart had a lot of patience and determination. That was a powerful combination.

As the rest of the coldhearts muttered their agreement to the declaration, Dean nodded along, as if it were a well-known fact, even though he had never heard of the gang before. One blaster against fifty made for triple-bad odds. His only real weapon here was intelligence. He hoped that would be enough to survive.

“Yeah, so I heard,” he said. “Wasn’t interested in joining up with a bunch of gleebs.”

That caused more smiles from the riders. Clearly, they had nothing to fear from one youth, and if he did want to join, well, they always needed fresh boots in the saddles.

“What was your name again?” Camarillo asked, a touch of humor slightly warming the demand.

“Look at them clothes and hair!” The fat man chortled. “Mud Puppy, his name be Mud Puppy!”

“Shut up, Bert,” Camarillo snapped. The youth was barely old enough to grow fuzz on his face, yet he stood facing the Angels without the slightest sign of fear. If nothing else, the kid had iron, and that was always in short supply in this line of work. Too many gleebs thought a blaster made a person brave. But a blaster was just a tool, nothing more. Just a tool, like a hammer or a shovel. It was a cold heart that made you truly dangerous.

“Mud Puppy. Funny, that’s exactly what your mother called me,” Dean said in a smooth, even tone, “just before I parked my tool in her drawer and we fucked in the gaudy house that employed her.”

The crowd of coldhearts laughed uproariously at the joke, and even Camarillo smirked, but Bert looked as if he were going to explode.

Reaching into a pocket, Dean withdrew an empty brass shell. “Here. I forgot to pay for her services,” he said, flipping the valueless shell toward the red-faced man. “Keep the change.”

“Mutie-loving freak! Gonna chill you twice for that!” Bert roared, sliding out of the saddle while drawing a monstrous remade Colt .45 revolver.

As the man landed on the ground, Dean drew and fired the Browning in a single motion. Startled, Bert flinched as his handblaster went spinning away from his grip to land in the weeds. Immediately, the cicadas went silent, and there was only the soft murmur of the river mixing with the gentle snorting of the impatient horses.

“If you didn’t have that blaster…” Bert muttered, rubbing his stinging hand.

“I would still have taken you,” Dean said, trying to sound bored. “Mr. Camarillo, you want this feeb alive, or not?”

“That’s your choice,” Camarillo replied, swinging around the AK-47 and working the arming bolt. “But if you want to ride with us, then you gotta chill him without blaster or blade.”

Weighing his options, Dean said nothing as the rest of the coldhearts pulled out blasters. He had upped the odds, and now the numbers were falling. Handle this wrong, and the next thing he saw would be an eternity of dirt. Warily, he gauged the adult as twice his size, and easily a hundred pounds heavier. Some of it was obviously fat, but there had to be a lot of muscle, too, as the bastard still moved with the speed of a jungle cat. Big and fast, he’d be a formidable opponent even to somebody with a blaster. Dean wondered if this was this some sort of a test to join the gang, just to see if he had any iron in his guts. Unfortunately, there was only one way to be sure.

“Fair enough,” he said, clicking on the safety and tossing aside the blaster, then the bowie knife.

The weapons were still in the air when Bert charged, his huge arms spread wide to prevent the youth from escaping.

For the moment, Dean did nothing.

“Don’t get too much blood on his boots!” a laughing coldheart added, cradling a lever-action Winchester. “They look just my size!”

“I want that knife,” the ugly coldheart added, sucking on his oversize teeth.

Roaring in victory, Bert closed on Dean, but at the very last second, the young Cawdor ducked out of the way and savagely drove the toe of his combat boot into the groin of his attacker. Gasping in pain, Bert staggered, then unexpectedly pulled a machete from behind his back.

Startled, Dean threw himself backward. Bert almost gutted him anyway, the blade slicing open his damp shirt and leaving a bloody gouge across his chest. Ignoring the minor pain, Dean tried to rush the man and grab his arm, but Bert fended him off, delivering two more slashes across the youth’s chest.

“Thought this…was supposed…to be a fair fight,” Dean panted, frantically dodging to the left, then the right.

“That wouldn’t tell me anything about how good you are, now, would it?” Camarillo replied, tracking the combatants with the fluted barrel of the deadly Kalasnikov.

Constantly shifting about, Bert was swinging the machete as if swatting flies, wild and unpredictable. Ducking out of the way again, Dean bent low, then grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the fat man, but deliberately missing. As Bert easily dodged the clumsy attempt to blind him, Dean dived into the cloud and came out with the bowie knife. Spinning, he thrust the point of the blade forward, and Bert backed off with blood on his dirty cheek.

“That be cheating!” the bucktoothed man cried, hefting the throwing hatchet.

“Cheating would have been going for the blaster,” Camarillo said, resting the AK-47 rapidfire on his shoulder. “Blade against blade is a fair fight.” Then he added, “If that hatchet grows wings, Hannigan, you’ll be the first one chilled.”

Scowling darkly, Hannigan gave no reply, but his hate-filled gaze never left the frantically moving youth.

Thrusting and lounging, Dean tried to slash the fat man in the belly, or the armpit. Steel slammed into steel with an audible clang as the big knife met the predark machete. The two combatants stood locked together for a long moment, then Bert spit into Dean’s face, and the youth brutally swung the knife downward, the razor-sharp blade slicing off several pudgy fingers. Shrieking in pain, Bert dropped the machete and backed away, trying to staunch the geyser of life with his other hand.

Flipping the bowie into the air, Dean caught the blood-streaked blade and threw it. Turning over once, the knife slammed into the fat man’s chest, going all the way into the guard. Staggering, Bert gasped and wheezed, crimson spurting from his ruined hand.

“End it,” a short coldheart commanded, working the lever action of his Winchester longblaster.

Saying nothing, Dean looked at Camarillo.

“Do as you’re told, boot,” the chief coldheart ordered.

Dean grunted at the term. Boot as in boot camp. Military slang for a new recruit. He was in. Retrieving the Browning, he inspected the blaster to make sure it was undamaged. Then, from fifty feet, he aimed and fired, putting a single round into the left temple of the floundering Bert. The fat man jerked from the impact of the 9 mm Parabellum round, then dropped onto the churned grass, trembled and went still forever.

Dean was shaken at the coldblooded chilling, but it was survival, plain and simple.

Holstering his blaster, he then retrieved the bowie knife and wisely cleaned it on the grass, instead of using the shirt of the corpse as he usually would have done. A wise man only insulted people he planned on chilling, and he needed the cooperation of these coldhearts for a little while to help him stay alive.

At least until I can get someplace where I can try to build a life, Dean added privately.

“Bert was a friend of mine,” Hannigan said through gritted teeth, his fist clenched on the shaft of the hatchet.

“Get better friends,” Dean growled, sheathing the bowie. “Anybody want his stuff, help yourself, blaster included. The clothes are too big, and I have a better knife.”

Greedily, a couple of the coldhearts glanced at their chief. Camarillo gave a nod, and they slid off their horses to start eagerly looting the warm corpse.

Going over to the riderless horse, Dean briefly inspected the mare and found her to be in decent shape, just desperately in need of a good curry.

“Easy, girl, easy,” he whispered, patting the muscular neck of the animal to try to calm her. Horses didn’t like the smell of blood, and he needed the goodwill of the animal even more than he did that of the coldhearts. Still recovering from his ordeal in the river, he was exhausted from the short fight, and way too close to falling over. But he had to appear strong in front of the others. Any weakness now would result in an endless series of challenges, and eventually he would tangle with somebody faster. Or get a knife in the back, which he considered to be far more likely.

Finished with their grisly task, the two coldhearts returned to their horses carrying various personal items from the dead Bert, including the horrid necklace of dried ears.

Dean noticed that a lot of the coldhearts wore similar decorations—ears, tongues, fingers.

“I owe ya one, boot,” a scraggly coldheart gushed, tucking away his new possessions. “The name’s Natters.”

“No prob,” Dean replied casually.

The other coldheart said nothing, then gave an open-mouthed grin showing that he lacked a tongue.

“He’s McGinty,” Natters said with a jerk of his thumb. “Lost his tongue in a bar fight. Nobody seems to know why or how.”

“And he ain’t talking,” Dean finished, climbing into the saddle. He tried not to flinch, feeling the residual warmth of the prior owner. Bert may have been a fat bastard, but he had come closer to acing him than anybody else before.

“What are your orders, sir?” Dean asked, checking the longblaster tucked into the gun boot. Incredibly, it proved to be a remade BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle. Suspiciously, he dropped the magazine. As expected, it was empty. No wonder Bert had used a machete.

“Stay close, boot, and follow us back to camp,” Camarillo stated, shaking the reins of his horse. “You fall behind, and I’ll personally put lead in your head!”

“Then I get what’s left.” Hannigan chuckled, patting the edged weapon at his hip.

“Bring a blaster, gleeb,” Dean growled in return, kicking his horse into a gallop. “Better yet, bring a dozen to make it a fair fight.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan frowned at that, then slowly smiled, displaying his oversize, crooked teeth. “Deal,” he whispered, the word barely discernable over the pounding hooves.

As the Stone Angels moved across the wide grassy field, Dean settled into the steady rocking motion of a seasoned rider, and began to wonder exactly how long he might have to stay before he would finally be able to slip away from these people.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Chapter One

Scrambling over the bank of a dried river, six people hastily pelted across the uneven ground, their hands frantically reloading blasters. Their clothing was torn and dirty, their faces gaunt from hunger and exhaustion.

Suddenly, a weird sound came from the riverbed, the noise making them spin fast just as a glowing green mist appeared along the bank.

“Fireblast, here it comes again!” Ryan Cawdor shouted, triggering his longblaster a fast three times.

Instantly, his companions cut loose with a thundering cacophony of weapons. Gray and black smoke billowed from the blazing gun barrels, spent brass flying in every direction.

Rising over the earthen bank, the green mist flowed along the loose sand and rocks, leaving behind a glassy streak of fused ground. Deep within the incandescent fog, something unseen gave voice once more to a high-pitched howl full of rage, pain and unbridled hate.

“What in nuking hell does it take to stop that thing?” J. B. Dix snarled, yanking out the spent magazine from his Uzi machine pistol and shoving in a fresh one. Jerking the arming bolt, he sent another long burst of 9 mm rounds into the cloud. Most of the steel-jacketed lead simply flew out the other side to pepper a low sand dune.

“Hard stop what not see,” Jak Lauren muttered, sending off three booming rounds from a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python.

“Not sure we want to see it!” Dr. Mildred Weyth countered, squeezing off a single .38 round from her Czech ZKR target pistol.

“Stinking howler,” Jak growled, firing again.

Instantly, the howler inside the billowing cloud doubled the volume of its inhuman keen, and the companions painfully winced at the sonic assault.

“Don’t know if that hurt it or just made the mutie angry,” Krysty Worth said, dumping out the spent brass from her hammerless Smith & Wesson Model 640 revolver. Pocketing the casings, she dug into another pocket of her bearskin coat and started thumbing in fresh cartridges.

As the creature inside the green cloud flowed by a stand of cacti, the plants began to visibly wither, and by the time the howler was past, they were only shriveled lumps on the fused sand, thin tendrils of smoke rising from the scorched remains.

“Egad, the accursed abomination is like some Dantean monster from the very depths of inferno!” Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner announced in a stentorian bass. Thumbing back the hammer on a massive single-action LeMat revolver, the tall man aimed carefully, then stroked the trigger. The huge Civil War-era weapon boomed louder than field artillery, black smoke vomited from the pitted muzzle and a lance of flame extended for almost a foot.

As the colossal miniball hummed through the air to vanish into the cloud, the howler actually moaned even louder, but whether in pain from a hit or pleasure from a miss, there was no way of knowing.

“Shoot it again, Doc,” Ryan commanded, shoving another magazine of 7.62 mm rounds into the open breech of the Steyr SSG longblaster. “At the very least, your handblaster slows the bastard thing down!”

“That was my last load, my dear Ryan,” Doc replied, his hands already moving in the complex procedure of purging the chambers of the revolver clean as a prelude to packing in fresh black powder, lead and wadding.

“Then we better start using boot leather!” J.B. shouted, grabbing his fedora and turning tail to start a hasty retreat.

After reloading their own weapons, the companions followed suit, running a hundred feet, only to turn and fire, then run again. For the past day they had been fleeing from the unstoppable mutie. They were low on brass and close to exhaustion, but with their wag destroyed there was no other choice. Run, fight, and run again, to survive for a couple more minutes, another precious few yards. But they could do that for only so long. Soon the companions would fall, and be aced. It was just a matter of time.

Ever since the howler had erupted from a predark iron mine to set their wag on fire with a single touch, the companions had been fighting a losing battle, trying desperately to find some way to trap the thing, block its advance or divert it by sending it after slower prey. There should have been a lot of stickies in this region of the Deathlands, and the humanoid muties were oddly attracted to explosions, especially the sounds of blasters firing. The fight should have summoned an army of the things. But so far there had been no sign of stickies, only the endless desert sands.

Charging between two large dunes, Ryan saw the wreckage of some ancient machinery partially buried in the loose sand. Car, truck, helicopter, submarine, he didn’t care. It was made of metal, and the location was perfect, which gave them a fighting chance at life.

“Rig it!” he commanded, dropping to a knee to steady his shaking hands.

“Last one!” J.B. countered, pulling a half stick of dynamite from the munitions bag slung at his side.

“No choice!” Ryan yelled, as he looked through the low-power telescopic sights of the Steyr sniper rifle. The howler was tight on their path, never wavering or detouring. That almost made the one-eyed man smile. Stupidity was its own reward.

While the rest of the companions sagged against the shifting sands for a blessed moment of rest, J.B. wearily got to work planting the explosive charge inside the rusted remains of the machine. Unfortunately, his hands shook with fatigue, and he kept dropping loose items. With a snarl, he slapped himself hard across the face, the smacks almost sounding like blasterfire. The pain banished the fog from his mind, and he quickly went back to work. But even as he did, tendrils of sleep began to creep once more through his brain, leeching away his thoughts and offering the sweet release of slumber.

Holding his breath to help steady his aim, Ryan peered through the telescopic sight, adjusted for the wind, then put three rounds smack through the middle of the cloud. There were no visible results. The howler didn’t move faster or slower.

However, as Ryan forced himself to stand, he was more than satisfied. The expenditure of brass had been expensive, but worthwhile if it kept the bastard thing coming this way. One of the very first lessons he had ever learned from his old teacher, the Trader, was to never be predictable in a fight. That was the path to oblivion.

“Done,” J.B. stated, smoothing out the sand over the trap. He tried to get back up, but stumbled, his strength failing.

Without comment, Mildred grabbed him by an arm, and Krysty took the other to lend some assistance. He nodded in thanks and started shuffling away, searching through the pockets of his battered jacket for anything edible.

Stepping close, Doc offered a piece of smoked fish. J.B. took it with a grunt and shoved the morsel into his mouth. The previous day the delicious smoked salmon had been a very special treat, a gift from the grateful baron who had traded them a functioning wag for the life of his youngest wife, rescued from a band of cannies. Now it was only food, consumed in a swallow and forgotten.

As the companions hurried away from the sand dunes, Jak glanced behind and saw the howler pause before entering the narrow passage. Had it seen J.B. lay the trap? Okay then, time to up the ante. Jerking his hand, the young man caught a leaf-bladed throwing knife as it slipped out of the sleeve of his camou jacket. With an underhand gesture, he sent the blade flying, and heard a solid thump as it hit something inside the swirling cloud.

Instantly, the mutie moved forward once more, and there came the soft snap of breaking string.

“Now!” J.B. yelled, throwing himself to the ground.

A split second later, a bright flash of light washed over the area, and a deafening thunderclap shook the desert. Already in motion, the companions hit the ground half a heartbeat before a hissing barrage of shrapnel passed over their heads. Giving a low grunt of pain, Doc slapped a hand to his shoulder, where the fabric of his coat was soon stained red.

“Please, oh dear God…” Mildred whispered, almost afraid to look backward. Then she cursed bitterly as a greenish light pulsed through the swirling smoke and sand, still moving onward.

“Begone, foul Visigoth!” Doc bellowed, awkwardly firing the LeMat twice with his left hand, his right clenching the wound.

The first miniball hit sand, but the second ricocheted off something metallic, making the howler expand the cloud in a protective gesture.

Startled, Ryan narrowed his eyes in amazement. The cloud could change size? That was a protective gesture, which meant there was something in the world that the nuking thing feared. He had no idea what that might be, but the simple fact that the mutie had any kind of a mortal weakness gave him new hope.

“How far go?” Jak muttered, wiping the sleeve of his jacket across his sweaty forehead. A true albino, the youth was normally pale as new snow, but now he was nearly pink, flushed from the sheer effort of endlessly putting one boot in front of the other.

“Half mile mebbe,” J.B. replied in a throaty growl, rising stiffly from the ground.

“W-we’re n-not gonna make it…?.” Mildred sighed, her shoulders sagging.

Grabbing the physician by the arm, Ryan spun her and slapped her across the face. Mildred jerked back from the stinging blow, and placed a hand on her cheek.

“We’re gonna make it if I gotta kick your ass all the way!” Ryan snarled, his chest heaving. “Now move!”

Common sense overwhelmed her feelings of rage, and Mildred mutely obeyed, shuffling away from the man as if he had began to issue a green cloud himself.

“Tough love,” J.B. said, bumping her with a hip. “Next time, I’ll slap you. Then you can do me.”

“D-deal,” Mildred said with a weak laugh, a touch of hysteria creeping into her raspy voice.

Back in her own time period, the physician would have had access to dozens of chemicals that could have kept the companions mentally alert and physically strong for days. But these blighted days, her medical kit consisted of only what she could find in the ruins of decaying hospitals and veterinary clinics, along with whatever she could cobble together: upholstery needles to sew wounds shut, nylon fishing line as sutures, raw alcohol to clean wounds, razor blades instead of scalpels, and leather straps for tourniquets. There were a few precious drugs hidden among her meager supplies, but they were all soporifics, designed to put patients to sleep so that they could stand the terrible pain of meatball surgery, nothing that would keep the companions awake.

Heat lightning crackled across the stormy sky as they forced themselves to keep moving. The sand was starting to become mixed with dark earth and rocks, clearly indicating that they were coming out of the desert. That was a good sign, and it put some much needed strength into their heavy legs, their shuffle becoming a brisk walk. But the surge quickly faded, and they returned to a slow stagger, pausing only to fire the occasional round at the howler.

“Any more plas-ex?” Ryan asked hopefully, levering a fresh round into the Steyr. Five more rounds, and he would have to start using his 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol, which had much less range.

“All gone. Used most of it getting us away from this thing in that box canyon,” J.B. answered grimly, his canvas munition bag hanging unnaturally flat at his side. “I’m down to two homie pipe bombs, some firecrackers, a couple of road flares and one, count it, one Molotov that I’m saving for an emergency.”

“And this does not qualify, sir?” Doc demanded, askance.

“Not yet,” Jak snorted, unscrewing the cap on a canteen to take a fast drink. He offered it to the others, but there were no takers.

Pausing at the top of the dune, Ryan saw that it abruptly ended at a rocky cliff that overhung a large pool of water. Lush green bushes grew in abundance along its mossy banks, along with a couple of juniper trees, and schools of rainbow-colored fish were darting about in the clear shallows. Suspiciously, Ryan checked the rad counter on his shirt, but it remained silent. Fireblast! He had hoped it might be a nuke crater and the rads might be enough to fry the howler. Then he grinned. However, mebbe he still could turn the water to their advantage.

“My dear Ryan, I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking,” Doc rumbled, sending two more booming miniballs into the misty howler.

“It’s only fifty feet or so,” Ryan guessed, moving closer to the edge of the cliff.

“That should be enough!” Krysty said unconvincingly, thumbing her last three rounds into the revolver. The cylinder closed with a hollow click.

“Okay, I’ll give us some cover,” J.B. said, pulling out the Molotov and a butane lighter. “Everybody, get ready to move!”

As the howler started up the dune, the companions cut loose with their blasters, the sheer barrage of hot lead holding the indomitable creature at bay for a few precious moments.

Quickly setting fire to the oily rag tied around the neck of the whiskey bottle, J.B. then dashed it on the rocky soil directly in front of the mutie. As the fireball whoofed into existence, the companions turned and jumped.

The fall was short and they hit the water hard, their shoes and boots actually bumping the bottom of the pond. Bitter cold engulfed them, returning a semblance of clarity to their minds even as it stole some of the strength from their bodies.

Kicking hard, Ryan swam back to the surface and stroked for the nearby shore. Dripping wet, he and his companions moved quickly into the bushes and ducked. A few seconds later, a green cloud appeared atop the cliff. The howler moaned even louder than before, and incredibly, moved away, heading back down the dune.

“Thank Gaia, it worked,” Krysty whispered, allowing herself to relax for the first time in a day.

“And we sure needed the bath.” Mildred chuckled briefly.

“Hey, where blaster?” Jak asked, checking his empty holster, then looking about on the spongy moss.

“Over there in the shallows, near the lily pads,” Ryan said, pointing.

Frowning, the young man dropped to his stomach and began to crawl to the pond, trying to stay as concealed as possible.

“Speaking of which, it seems that I am unarmed once more,” Doc muttered, drawing the LeMat, only to slam it back into the holster at his side. Wet black powder was dribbling out of the weapon like ebony blood. The antique blaster would be completely useless until it was thoroughly dried and painstakingly reloaded.

“Here ya go,” J.B. said, sliding a scattergun off his back and tossing it over.

Making the catch, Doc checked to make sure the pump-action 12-gauge was fully loaded. At close range the S&W M-4000 could open a person like a tin can. Although what, if anything, the barrage of lead pellets would do to a howler was anybody’s guess. However, the scattergun had a much greater range than the sword hidden inside his ebony walking stick.

Just then, the green cloud returned to the little cliff and went straight over the edge to plummet into the pool. It hit with a large splash, and the plants along the bottom of the cliff began to wither and die.

“Run, Jak, it’s back!” Mildred yelled, through cupped hands.

Swinging up the longblaster, Ryan started putting 7.62 mm rounds into the cloud until he ran out. Slinging the Steyr, he drew his SIG-Sauer and began hammering the howler just above the surface of the pond. Under the water, some sort of a physical form was visible, more insectlike than norm, along with several mismatched legs, as if the creature had been built from a dozen different bodies.

At the first shot, Jak rose from the water with the Magnum in his grip and fired twice at the mutie, before turning to wade toward shore.

Heading for the pale norm, the howler moved through the pool, the water becoming dull and murky as hundreds of fish rose lifeless to the surface, pale blood oozing from their gills.

“Move fast, my friend!” Doc bellowed, charging out of the bushes to trigger the scattergun at the cloud.

As Jak reached the shore, he slipped in the mud. Reaching out, Doc started to grab the young man by the collar of his leather jacket, then withdrew his hand, unsure what to do for a moment, especially as the collar was lined with razor blades.

“Get him out of the bastard water!” Ryan bellowed, over the gentle coughs of the silenced blaster in his fist.

Firing the scattergun with one hand, Doc thrust out his wounded arm. Floundering in the slippery mud, Jak grabbed the man’s hand and just managed to make it onto the shore before an expanding ring of greenish water reached the bank. Instantly, the lily pads began to turn brown and the frogs went silent.

“Incoming!” J.B. shouted, lighting the fuse on a pipe bomb.

Moving with purpose, Jak and Doc sprinted into the bushes. Once they were clear, J.B. tossed the pipe bomb into the discolored water, then turned to join his fleeing companions.

As the howler approached the shore, the water erupted into a boiling geyser of flame, mud and dead fish. Violently thrown backward, the mutie was blown out of the pond, to smack against the rocky base of the cliff. The sandstone facade shattered, sending out cracks in every direction like earthen lightning bolts. The ever-present cloud began to thin as the howler slid back down into the water, and the glowing nimbus of greenish light faded away.

“John, you got him!” Mildred shouted, coming to a stop.

“Mebbe, but I’m not going nearer,” J.B. said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Besides, I don’t trust that bastard thing any farther than I can piss in the wind,” Ryan growled, working the slide on his blaster to eject a misfired round.

“Distance doth make the heart grow fonder,” Doc expounded, easing his right hand into the pocket of his sodden coat. “And my dear Jak, please allow me to apologize for not rendering more swift assistance.”

“No prob,” Jak replied, straightening the collar on his jacket making the deadly razor blades hidden among the feathers and random bits of metal jingle slightly. “How arm?”

“It has been better,” Doc admitted, fumbling to reload the scattergun.

“Mildred can fix you up once we’re able to stop running,” Krysty said, taking the weapon from the wounded scholar. There was a row of spare cartridges sewn into loops along the strap. She eased one free and pulled down the pump to thumb the fat round into the breech on the bottom.

Just then, a low moan sounded from somewhere.

Lurching into action, the companions took flight, pelting through the bushes and shrubbery. In the distance was a proper forest of trees, pine, oak and white birch stretching to the horizon. But the woods was a two-edge blessing. It meant the companions were that much closer to their goal of safety, but going through the trees would also slow them significantly.

“I just hope the howler is chilled and not merely knocked out,” Mildred grunted, holding on to her med kit while jumping over a fallen log.

The crumbling wood was alive with termites, and that triggered an old memory from high school biology class. A termite. That was what the howler vaguely resembled inside that bizarre cloud; it looked similar to the intermediate stage of development when a newly born termite briefly possessed both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton. Bones inside and outside, with muscles anchored in each. Double protection.

My God, no wonder the thing was bulletproof, she realized in growing horror. In the intermediate stage, the insect was virtually unkillable, and a thousand times stronger. Increase the size of the insect from a quarter inch to nine feet tall, and the strength would be multiplied that much more. Bullets and grenades would be no more than minor annoyances to such an abomination. The companions would need an antitank rocket, or even an implo gren, to have a chance of damaging the adamantine creature.

“Don’t waste any more time shooting!” Mildred bellowed, redoubling her frantic speed. “Just run! Run for your motherfucking lives!”

It was her profanity more than anything else that spurred the rest of them to increase their speed, and they were almost at the trees when a greenish light began to pulse into being from the direction of the pond. Then came an inhuman moan, more of a growl this time, followed by the previous low keening.

“Sounds pissed,” Jak muttered in an almost conversational tone.

But nobody replied, the rest of the companions saving their breath for the all-important task of leaving the area immediately. When they entered the woods, it took a precious moment for their sight to adjust, but they never stopped moving. They merely slowed a little until able to see clearly again, and then resumed full speed.

The going was tough, with low-hanging branches threatening to knock them unconscious, and exposed roots trying to trip them. But the companions raced on, knowing that death followed on their heels.

Never pausing to rest, the howler relentlessly continued after them through the forest, leaving behind a swatch of decaying trees, the bark turning black before peeling off the trunks. Squirrels and birds dropped lifeless from the crumbling branches, and the leaves fell in droves as if it was late autumn.

“Dark night, what I wouldn’t give just now for a bazooka!” J.B. snarled.

“’A horse…a h-horse…m-my k-kingdom…f-for a horse,’” Doc wheezed, his face unnaturally pale and shiny with sweat. His right arm flopped loosely as he ran, the coat sleeve dark with blood.

Seeing his state of near exhaustion, Krysty made a hard decision and called upon Gaia, the Earth Mother, for additional strength, repeating a special mantra. Almost instantly an inhuman power surged through her body, and the woman no longer felt tired or weak. Renewed, she scooped up the much taller man as if he were a small child, and darted ahead of the others, disappearing into the shadows ahead.

“May God grant they make it in time,” Mildred whispered, straight from the heart. She knew that Krysty could summon amazing strength in times of extreme need, but it faded quickly, and afterward she would be as weak as a kitten.

“So let’s buy them some time!” Ryan snarled, pausing to turn and fire his blaster a fast five times.

In the high branches of a pine tree, a nest exploded with the arrival of the 9 mm rounds. Through the broken twigs, yellowish egg yolk dribbled out as a mother stingwing rose into view screaming for revenge. Launching herself forward, the deadly mutie streaked through the tangle of branches to flash along the nettle-covered ground, searching for the unknown transgressor.

Keeping strategically mum, the companions ran on. But a few seconds later, the howler moaned loudly. Screaming in unbridled fury, the mutie abruptly changed direction and dived at the hellish cloud with both needle-sharp talons arched for a kill. Silently, it vanished into the glowing fog, and never came out again.

“Son bitch ate stingwing. And that was a big one!” Jak gasped in disbelief, glancing over a shoulder.

The trees unexpectedly thinned to reveal an irregular plain of dark crystalline material that gently sloped away. Fireblast, Ryan thought, that’s a nuke crater!

“This…isn’t on…my map,” J.B. huffed, barely able to keep abreast of the others.

“Oh, yes, it is!” Mildred yelled in delight, looking far ahead.

A squat black structure appeared at the bottom of the glass bowl, the satiny smooth metal completely unscratched by the nuke strike from a hundred years ago. It looked to be a redoubt, an underground fortress designed to withstand even a direct strike from a thermonuclear weapon. Lying near a titanic door were two tiny figures, one with flame-red hair and the other with longish silvery locks. Neither was moving.

Glancing at his rad counter, Ryan started down the slippery incline. He nearly fell twice, even his U.S. Army combat boots having trouble finding purchase on the smooth fused earth. Then the companions grabbed one another by the arm and began to glide along like ice-skaters, helping to keep each other moving. It was touch and go in a couple areas, but they finally reached the bottom of the crater.

Scrambling across the glassy surface, Ryan went straight to the blast door. He found a small keypad set into the wall beside the entrance, and slowly tapped in the access code. The one-eyed man breathed a sigh of relief as the colossal door began to ponderously move aside.

But as if on cue, the glowing mist appeared on the slope and began to descend rapidly.

“Here comes,” Jak announced, hefting his blaster.

“Screw it, help me with Doc!” Mildred commanded, struggling to hoist the limp scholar over her shoulder.

Reluctantly holstering his piece, Jak moved to lend some assistance, while Ryan simply lifted the supine Krysty in his powerful arms and stood impatiently near the slowly opening door. Live or get chilled; it was all just a matter of timing.

“I’ve got your back,” J.B. stated, pulling out the last pipe bomb, then flicking alive a butane lighter.

Licking dry lips, Ryan wanted to say something to his old friend, but nothing came to mind.

When the crack between the door and the wall was just barely large enough, Ryan roughly shoved Krysty through, then squeezed inside himself, ripping his shirt and losing some skin in the process. Jak went through next, with less damage, and Mildred easily passed him Doc, then followed. Clean air blew from a wall vent. The interior was brightly illuminated by clear fluorescent lights set into the high ceiling.

With a dull boom, the blast door finished opening completely, paused, then began to slowly close once more.

“Come on, John!” Mildred pleaded, watching as the howler reached the bottom of the slope and came directly their way. Somehow, it seemed larger now, and ever faster than before. Then the physician realized that it was merely a fear-induced panic that was altering her senses. Not that it really mattered. Only a moron wouldn’t be scared shitless in this situation!

“Not yet, Millie,” J.B. answered, biting the fuse on the pipe bomb and leaving only a nubbin.

The disturbing keen of the howler echoed across the irregular expanse of fused earth, making it sound as if a dozen of the creatures were present, and the greenish glow of the cloud reflected off every shiny surface, creating a scintillating display of emerald flashes.

The overall effect was hypnotic, as he lit the tiny fuse and rolled the explosive toward the mutie, J.B. wondered if that was a deliberate ploy of the creature.

Undaunted, the howler flowed over the pipe bomb, which reappeared behind the creature, completely undamaged, the smoldering fuse extinguished a hair away from the lead cap.

“Son of a mutie bitch!” J.B. snarled, stepping back into the mouth of the access tunnel. Swinging up the Uzi, he emptied the blaster into the glass just in front of the howler, sending a spray of broken shards into the cloud.

Appearing alongside him, Ryan, Mildred and Jak opened fire with their blasters, hammering the approaching howler as the massive door continued its slow progress.

Out of brass, Jak started throwing knives into the cloud.

When her ZKR target pistol clicked empty, Mildred backed away. As the SIG-Sauer ran out, Ryan dropped the blaster to grab the S&W M-4000 from alongside Doc. Pumping the choke on the scattergun, Ryan chambered a 12-gauge cartridge and thrust the barrel past his friends to discharge the weapon inside the green cloud. The muzzle-blast of the scattergun sounded oddly muffled, but the howler actually stepped backward as the blast door slid past them to close.

But at the very last second, the writhing tip of a glowing tentacle stabbed through the ever-narrowing opening. With a living being blocking the way, the door automatically paused, then began to rumble open once more.

Chapter Two

Snarling a curse, Ryan triggered the scattergun at the limb, doing no visible damage. Then J.B. lunged forward to attack with a sizzling road flare, and the mutie quickly retreated. However, the blast doors were already in motion.

Rushing to the internal keypad, Jak punched in the access code to try to stop the process. Sometimes that worked, but this time there was no result, and the armored portal continued to open.

On the floor, Doc feebly twitched, and his ebony sword stick rolled over to Jak. The albino teen snatched it up and twisted the silver lion’s-head grip to extract a length of shining Spanish steel. As the glowing cloud inched closer, he wildly slashed through the allotropic mist, going for the head, while J.B. did the same with the road flare, much lower. The howler voiced strong displeasure at the attacks, and something shifted about inside the impossible mist, never ceasing its effort to get closer and gain entry.

Inexorably slow, the blast doors finished their programmed journey inside the wall, then once more started across the twenty-foot span to cycle shut.

Finding his pockets empty of brass, Ryan drew his panga, the curved blade gleaming brightly in the fluorescent lights.

“Mildred, drag Krysty and Doc to the elevator!” he snarled, thrusting and jabbing at the terrible mutie. “If we’re not there in five, or you see green, get in the mattrans and jump without us!”

Shocked at the very idea of leaving the group, Mildred started to object, then reluctantly saw the wisdom of the heroic act. If the companions were separated, but still alive, there was always a slim chance of them finding each other someday.

“John, I love you!” she shouted, taking Doc and Krysty by the collars of their jackets.

“Heaven or hell, Millie, I’ll see ya there!” J.B. yelled over a shoulder, igniting a second flare with the dying flame of the first.

His heart beating wildly, Ryan started to add something for Krysty, but there was no need for words, and she wouldn’t hear him anyway. The two of them were more than lovers and friends, they were soul mates, and he would find Krysty again.

That is, Ryan thought grimly, if I’m still alive in thirty seconds!

As the stocky physician hauled the unconscious bodies around the first turn of the zigzagging tunnel, the howler had to have noticed the departure, and forcibly advanced, uncaring of any damage it might have been receiving from the flame and steel. When the greenish cloud got closer, the three men guarding the door began to feel ill, dizzy and disoriented, their sweaty skin prickly painfully.

“You’re not getting in!” Ryan bellowed defiantly, ramming the long barrel of the Steyr into the cloud. He hit something hard, and his hands instantly felt as if they were on fire. A wave of incredible pain rushed up both his arms, stealing the last of his flagging strength. Knife and longblaster tumbled to the floor, and Ryan reluctantly retreated, fighting against the agony racking his exhausted body. His stomach heaved, his vision blurred and he crumpled to the floor, still trying to rise and rejoin the fight.

After kicking the panga back to the trembling man, Jak swung his leg around to slash a sideways kick at the unseen thing inside the cloud. There was a crack as the steel-reinforced toe of his Army boot contacted something breakable, and the howler cut loose with a strident wail that told of serious damage.

“The sides!” J.B. shouted in a burst of sudden understanding. “Dark night, the rad-blasted thing is only armored in front! We gotta hit it from the sides!”

But he was speaking to himself. A shuddering Jak was on the floor, using the sword to frantically hack at the laces of his boot. Half of it was dead white, the military leather crumbling away to reveal the steel support inside, the metal heavily corroded and dissolving.

Torn for a moment between helping his friend and keeping up the defense, J.B. wavered, and the howler slipped into the redoubt.

However, just as the mutie crossed the threshold, the overhead lights instantly changed from a pleasing blue-white to a flashing dark red, and a Klaxon began to sound somewhere deep inside the subterranean fortress. Unexpectedly, dozens of small vents snapped open in the smooth walls, and thick columns of white foam blasted out to slam into the howler. In perfect synchronization, additional vents opened in the floor and hissing torrents of superheated steam exploded forth.

Steadily moving back and forth, the sweeping cascades of foam and steam bodily forced the determined howler back outside, and sent the glowing cloud tumbling along the glassy floor of the ancient bomb crater.

Rigidly, the redoubt maintained the double assault, concentrating on the narrowing opening of the blast door until it finally boomed shut and audibly locked.

Stunned beyond words, J.B. lowered his flare, and was trying to process what had just happened, when the foam and steam abruptly cut off. It was replaced with a medicinal-smelling orange gel that squirted all over the men from new wall vents.

Sputtering and coughing, Ryan awoke. The three companions struggled to get out of the way, but the gel followed along, drenching them thoroughly until every inch of each man’s body was soaked. They tried not to get it in their eyes and mouths, but hit from every direction, they found no escape, and soon the gel was everywhere. Oddly, it didn’t taste that bad, sort of like overly sweet orange juice, and inevitably some of it even went down their throats.

On and on, the deluge continued unabated, until the Klaxon finally stopped and the ceiling lights returned to their normal color. Then the gel turned off, and down from the ceiling came a gentle shower of soothing, lukewarm water. As the antiseptic gel was sluiced off their bodies, it sluggishly flowed along the floor, to vanish into gurgling drains hidden in the corners. In only a few minutes, the companions were clean again, and soaked to the skin.

“What that?” Jak demanded weakly, looking like a melting snowman. What remained of the bedraggled boot was still on his foot, but the material was no longer disintegrating.

“Musta been one of those antiradiation protocols that Millie theorized about,” J.B. said with a weary laugh, casting aside the extinguished road flare.

“Guess so,” Ryan muttered, feeling oddly refreshed from the strange cleansing. Actually, it made a lot of sense. The redoubts were designed to survive a nuke war. Mebbe the whitecoats had showed some smarts for once and included some autosystems to keep out anything too hot with rads.

“Never knew could do.” Jak sighed, putting his back against the cool armarglas wall. Glancing down, he saw his foot and wiggled the toes. That had been close!

“There’s tons of stuff we don’t know about these places,” J.B. replied, removing his streaked glasses. He tried to wipe them dry, but everything he wore was absolutely soaked, so he was reduced to trying to shake them clean, which accomplished nothing at all.

Just then they heard the sound of running boots. Pulling knives, the men braced for an attack. But it was Mildred who came into view around the corner, her ZKR in one hand and a crowbar in the other.

“Hey, Millie,” J.B. said, lifting his chin in greeting.

“I heard the siren…?.” She sniffed at the strong smell of sweet oranges. “Now, where in the world did you find some antiradiation foam?”

“Gel,” Ryan corrected wearily, tucking away the panga. “Came out of the ceiling.”

“Protocols,” Jak added, as if that explained everything.

“I see you had a close encounter of the third kind,” Mildred said, noting his partially dissolved boot.

“Not aced,” Jak replied with a philosophical shrug.

Moving closer, she cupped his face with both hands and checked his eyes, then put two fingers on the carotid artery in his throat. The pulse was good, as was his color, pale as it was. “You seem okay,” she said hesitantly. “But if you have any stomach pains, or sudden hair loss, let me know right away.”

Once more, Jak shrugged. If he ever got rad-poisoning, he was already carrying the only known cure. It was holstered at his hip.

“Where are the others?” Ryan asked, craning his neck to see behind the stocky woman. There was only empty corridor in sight.

“I shoved them into the elevator and sent it to the bottom floor,” Mildred said, resting the crowbar on her shoulder. “I figured that even if the howler got inside, it wouldn’t be intelligent enough to press the call button.”

“Smart move,” Ryan told her, rubbing his missing eye with a fist. He honestly couldn’t recall ever being this tired before in his life and still be able to move. “Let’s go join them. If we don’t get some sleep soon, we’re going to fall over.”

“What about mutie?” Jak asked, looking at the blast doors.

“Sleep is more important,” J.B. countered, fighting back a jaw-cracking yawn. “Dark night, right now we’re so dead tired we can’t even jump out of the redoubt! If we tried to use the mat-trans, the jump would probably ace us.”

“Damn near does anyway,” Ryan growled, starting forward, his combat boots squishing juicily.

Past the last turn of the zigzagging tunnel, the companions entered the parking garage of the redoubt, which housed several different types of vehicles. Everything was parked randomly, completely ignoring the neatly painted yellow lines on the smooth terrazzo floor, as if the staff had been racing to get inside the redoubt when skydark was about to hit. The companions scowled at the metallic chaos. Whatever had happened in those final moments of civilization had clearly come without much advance warning.

Several of the vehicles were smashed into one another, the windshields badly cracked and the concrete underneath badly discolored from the hundred-year-old fuel spill. There was a LAV-25 armored personnel carrier that had obviously been hit hard by something, the dense plating gashed to reveal the crushed engine.

Only a couple of large black sedans seemed to still be airtight. Grinning skeletons were slumped behind the wheels, their nylon shoulder holsters carrying the rusted remains of what had once been sleek blasters. In the backseats were more skeletons, the tatters of their neatly tailored military uniforms draped over bony shoulder blades. One skeleton had a severely cracked skull, and a burnished steel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, a pitted Desert Eagle .50 blaster in a bony hand, the slide kicked back to show that it had been fired until the magazine cycled dry.

Annoyed, J.B. grunted at the sight. The poor bastard had managed to fight his way into the redoubt, then got aced in a car crash. Sadly, the companions wouldn’t be able to recover anything from that wag, or from any of the sedans. Each license plate bore a row of stars showing the vehicle was reserved purely for generals, which he knew from experience meant the sedans would be heavily armored, NBC class, proof against any form of attack.

“Think should do sweep?” Jak asked, as they headed down the corridor.

“No need,” Ryan stated gruffly.

When they reached the elevator, the one-eyed man pressed the call button. It took two tries. “If there’s anybody else in the redoubt, they would have heard the siren and shown up by now.”

“True enough,” Jak said. Then purely on impulse, he went to a nearby stack of fifty-five-gallon drums and clumsily rolled one over in front of the door as a crude stop. It never hurt to plan for the unlikely. Mildred had an old word for that, paranoia. But to him it was just plain common sense.

The companions had to wait only a few minutes, checking their meager assortment of weapons as they did so, before there was a musical ding and the elevator doors opened. Sprawled on the floor inside were Doc and Krysty. She was missing the belt from her pants. It was cinched around Doc’s wounded arm as a makeshift tourniquet, a blood-streaked handkerchief sticking out the sides.

“Damn, you’re fast,” J.B. said with a strong note of pride in his voice.

“Had to be,” Mildred replied, kneeling to check her patients. Each was fine, just so deeply unconscious she felt she could have safely performed major surgery on them without the benefit of anesthesia.

As Jak and J.B. got comfortable on the hard metal floor, Ryan went to the controls and sent the elevator down again, but after only a few seconds of operation, flipped the emergency button, stopping them between floors. The alarm started to ring, and he disabled it with a thrust and twist of the panga into the controls. Done and done. Now if anybody wanted to reach the sleepers, they’d have to pry open the steel doors, or else come through the roof hatch. Either of which would make more than enough noise to wake the companions. He admitted this wasn’t a perfect bolthole, merely the best available at the moment. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

As sleep began to claim him, Ryan remembered learning that sage bit of wisdom from his father, Baron Titus Cawdor, and then teaching it to his own son, Dean. He wondered if the boy was still alive. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think about his son, or wonder why he’d run off with Sharona after all they’d been through together. He hadn’t even said goodbye. It had been about three years since he last saw Dean.

A boy could change a lot in that span of time, Ryan thought muzzily, sleep dragging him down into a warm darkness.

Moments later, the elevator was filled with the rhythmic noise of exhausted people snoring, then only the hushed sounds of gentle breathing.

Chapter Three

Dropping the Molotov off the ville wall, Dean Cawdor saw the glass bottle full of shine shatter on a steel hinge and splatter liquid fire across the complex array of ropes and pulleys used to haul the mammoth front gate closed. In only a few seconds, the burning ropes began to snap apart and the pulleys sagged, the main locking bar sliding away from the stout iron hoops set into the gate.

“Angels!” Dean bellowed through cupped hands. Then he quickly dropped flat as a hail of blasterfire tore through the empty space he had just occupied.

While a squad of sec men charged along the top of the wide stone wall, Dean rolled over to fire his Browning Hi-Power a fast five times. Four of the guards jerked, brains exploding out of the back of their skulls as the steel-jacketed .38 rounds cored through. The fifth guard staggered about blindly, a bloody furrow along her temple. As the unlucky woman started to walk off the wall, Dean shot her in the heart to mercifully prevent the her from getting gangbanged to death by the invading cadre of coldhearts.

From outside the ville, a sizzling red flare arched into the sky and gently exploded in a pyrotechnic display of colors.

A moment later, the unlocked wooden gate of Alpharetta ville violently exploded as the rapidly accelerating steam truck, Atomsmasher, crashed through, its chugging engine visibly radiating waves of heat, the steam whistle screaming loudly.

“Angels!” Camarillo bellowed from inside the small control room, both hands operating the mechanisms.

Chorusing the rally cry, fifty armed coldhearts on horseback galloped through the splintery breech, their bodies lumpy from heavy canvas jackets lined with slabs of green wood.

Caught directly in the path of the huge steam truck, a dozen of the ville sec men went under the razor-sharp blades attached to the double row of thirty iron wheels, their high-pitched shrieks of unimaginable agony cut short.

Huffing and puffing, the Atomsmasher continued onward, crunching a muzzle-loading cannon, along with the group of sec men trying to aim the weapon. The brass barrel of the cannon visibly bent as it went under the colossal invading machine, the horrified people torn to pieces from the terrible spinning blades.

Reloading his blaster, Dean tried not to cringe at the horrible sight. They were falling like wheat before a crimson sickle.

Charging out of the stables, another crowd of people saw what happened, turned and fled, dropping their own crossbows, spears and zip guns.

Running along the wall, Dean turned his eyes away from the oncoming slaughter. Supposedly working as an advance spy for the Stone Angels, he had attempted to warn the locals of the coming attack. But the baron and sec chief hadn’t believed the teenage outlander. The damn fools never did. They were always positive it was just some sort of trick to extract free brass from the ville arsenal.

Stupe bastards. I try to help every ville the Angels attack! Dean raged, reluctantly chilling a sec man struggling to load a crossbow. Why don’t the triple-stupe barons ever listen to reason? If the locals could ace the gang, or at least Camarillo, then he would be free from the gang’s odious control.

Dean had been riding with the Stone Angels for several months. He had hoped to slip away and head out on his own, but he had made a mistake—he had stopped Hannigan from cutting the throat of a newborn child that wouldn’t stop crying. It was just bad luck that Camarillo had noticed the act of kindness. The coldheart boss had kept an eye on the youth from that point on. The prospects of getting away from the gang were greatly diminished. And Dean knew that should he escape, the brutal Camarillo would take it out on the slaves.

Dean was now as much a prisoner of the coldhearts as any of the slaves toiling in the camp’s kitchens, chopping firewood or cleaning the outhouses. Unwillingly, he had been forced to help the coldhearts build Camarillo a massive war wag from the assorted wrecks found in the junkyard of some predark ruins. A combination of several Mack trucks, two bulldozers and an antique steam locomotive, the Atomsmasher was an iron-plated juggernaught of unbelievably destructive power.

Trying to make amends for his act of kindness, Dean had managed to earn some small degree of freedom from Camarillo by offering to work as the advance spy for the coldhearts. The chief of the Stone Angels had been suspicious at first, but now seemed to think that Dean was finally becoming one of them. In truth, his hatred of Camarillo grew every day, and the last thing Dean planned to do before escaping would be to ace the coldheart leader by cutting out the heart of the brutal bastard.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen today, Dean sourly noted, discharging the stolen crossbow at a snarling sec man charging his way with a swinging ax. The arrow missed, so Dean used another precious .38 round in the Browning. Dropping the ax, the sec man clutched at his red belly and groaned into oblivion.

With its steam whistle keening, the Atomsmasher crashed through a crowd of people foolishly trying to surrender. Laughing inside the control room, Camarillo wiped the spray of warm blood off his face and blew the whistle again. The strident keening noise terrified the horses of the sec men, making the animals throw their riders to the ground. However, the terrible sound had no effect whatsoever on the horses of the coldhearts, who had grown accustomed to it.

Running along the wall, a platoon of Alpharetta sec men fired nonstop at the colossal Atomsmasher, and the galloping coldhearts shot back with black powder scatterguns that boomed louder than grens. The sec men were aced, their chests blown open, guts flying to the wind, as they tumbled off the wall.

Suddenly, a sec woman wearing sergeant stripes appeared carrying a pipe bomb, the fuse sputtering away. A dozen coldhearts trained their blasters on her, but all of them missed.

“Alpharetta!” the sec woman yelled, hauling back an arm to throw the bomb.

Snarling in rage, Camarillo thrust the barrel of an AK-47 through the iron bars covering the windows of the Atomsmasher and cut loose with a long burst, the hail of 7.62 mm hardball rounds stitching the sec woman from groin to throat. Gushing life from a score of wounds, she collapsed, and a few seconds later a thunderous explosion rocked the wall, a section of the stonework crumbling away as her tattered body went sailing into the distance.

“Damn, so close,” Dean muttered in frustration, taking a flintlock from a hand lying on the wall, the arm no longer attached to a body. Nearby lay a bag of powder and shot, the leather splattered with glistening brains. Grimly, he checked to make sure the weapon was properly loaded, then ran for the stairs leading down to the ville. Things were about to get nasty.

As the Atomsmasher reached the center of the ville, it was met by the baron of Alpharetta, sitting astride a black stallion. A burly man sporting an enormous beard, he cradled a Thompson .45-caliber rapidfire. As the steam truck turn toward him, the baron cut loose with the weapon, but the soft-lead rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the heavy armor of the converted steam truck, leaving behind only a dabbling of gray smears.

Laughing, Camarillo pulled some levers, and the Atomsmasher lurched into motion.

Frantically kicking his horse into a full gallop, the baron tried to escape by going around a building. However, Camarillo drove the vehicle straight into the tavern, coming out the other side in an explosion of smashed adobe bricks. The baron and his horse were hit broadside. Both man and beast were sent flying by the brutal impact, smacking into a nearby tannery. As they slid off the bricks to the cobblestone street, the Atomsmasher rolled over their bodies, audibly crushing them flat.

“The baron is dead!” Camarillo bellowed joyously. “The ville is ours!”

Shouting in victory, the Stone Angels climbed off their horses and started running into buildings, shooting anybody they found carrying a weapon—blaster, knife, hammer or pitchfork. Man, woman or child, it made no difference. If the people resisted, they were aced.

“I surrender!” a wrinklie shouted, raising both arms high. “Please, I surrender!”

“What’s your job?” a bald coldheart demanded, walking closer, a brace of blasters balanced in his hands.

“Sir, I’m a blacksmith, sir,” the old man replied, as respectfully as possible.

“Sorry, already got us one of those.” The coldheart sneered, discharging both weapons. The head of the old man exploded, chunks of bone and brain spraying to the littered streets.

“We got a blacksmith?” Dean asked, feeling sick to his stomach.

“Nope!” The coldheart grinned, sauntering away in search of other prey.

Just then, a screaming woman charged out of an open doorway with three coldhearts close behind.

“Gotcha!” one of them yelled in triumph, grabbing her by the ponytail and pulling downward.

With a cry, she crashed to the ground, and two coldhearts pounced, ripping off her skirt, then grabbed her legs and pulled them apart. Grinning fiendishly, the first coldheart started to unbuckle his pants.

“Better leave this one alone,” Dean said quickly. “She’s the ville healer. The boss will want her at camp.”

Muttering curses, they did as he requested and released the woman, to go back into the building.

“I…I ain’t no healer, mister, just a gaudy slut,” she stuttered in a whisper, her face tight with fear. “Don’t know nothing about healing and such.”

“Then lie, or they’ll chill you bad,” Dean commanded under his breath, helping her to stand. “Wash any wound with clean water, then wash it again with shine, and wrap it with a clean strip of cloth. Now, find a friend, and claim she’s your assistant. Remember, clean water only! Savvy?”

“Another healer? Yes, of course, I savvy,” she replied, grabbing her ruined skirt off the street and wrapping it back around her hips. Then she asked, “Why are you doing this?”

A piercing scream rent the air as the three coldhearts reappeared with another woman in tow. Plump to the point of being obese, she was wearing a stained cook’s apron over a denim dress. Most of her clothing was already gone, ripped to pieces, her large soft breasts flopping about. Tearing off the rest of her garments, the coldhearts hauled the weeping woman into an alley, then her screaming really began.

With no time to explain the value of human life, Dean hauled the gaudy slut over to the Atomsmasher.

“Whatcha got there?” Camarillo asked, smoking a cigar inside the control room.

There were several coldhearts stationed around the huffing engine, along with a line of chained people, all of them men. Most of them were badly beaten, with teeth missing and arms clearly broken, judging by the weird angles they hung. But Dean knew these were the lucky ones. The women in Alpharetta ville would suffer much worse before they were finally allowed to be chained as slaves.

“Found us a new healer,” Dean said, trying to sound proud as he threw her at the chain gang. “Catch of the day!”

The woman landed in a sprawl.

“A healer, eh?” A fat coldheart chortled, wiping his mouth on a sleeve. “I hear they know all kinda secret things about pleasing a man.” The other coldhearts eagerly nodded in agreement.

“Leave the healer be, and do your damn job,” Camarillo said, tapping the ash off his cigar. “There’ll be more than enough quim to go around later on.”

Grumbling in disappointment, the coldheart roughly hauled the woman to her feet and started attaching a collar around her neck.

Confused, one of the prisoners scowled. “Healer?” He started to say more, but stopped at a cold glance from Dean, whose hand rested on the holstered Browning.

“Good job, Tiger,” Camarillo said. “Now, go celebrate with the rest of the boys. You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks!” Dean replied, turning away quickly so that the man wouldn’t see the open disgust on his face.

Hoping to avoid most of the bloodshed and rape, Dean headed down a relatively quiet street. Turning a corner, he nodded at a group of coldhearts shuffling out of a redbrick building, their arms full of crossbows, gun belts and blasters.

“We found the armory!” one shouted, thrusting out a hip to show the three blasters tucked into his belt. “Not much live brass, but—”

In an explosion of glass, a sec man dived through a window to bury a knife into the back of a coldheart. As the other Angels dropped their loads to claw for weapons, Dean drew and fired the Browning in one smooth motion. With a horrid gurgle, the sec man staggered, blood gushing from the hole in his chest. As he fell, the coldhearts converged on the corpse, kicking it with their boots, and firing their blasters so often the ragged clothing caught on fire.

Taking his leave, Dean felt almost good about saving the sec man from days of public torture for attacking an Angel. The coldhearts knew some tricks that even cannies wouldn’t use on their living food, and Camarillo was always happy to find some unlucky bastard to use as an example. Prisoners became more docile and obedient after discovering that any act of rebellion opened a doorway that led straight into the depths of hell.

Heading across the ville, Dean encountered several people hanging from trees, some alive, some not. But without a legitimate reason, any effort on his part to ease their suffering would only have put him in their place. He wanted to help these people, but not at the risk of his own life. If they were family, of course, kin helped kin. But not total strangers. Survival came first in Deathlands.

Trying to ignore the screams coming from every direction, Dean turned a corner to find a chilled sec man splayed in the street, his body severed in two from the spinning blades attached to the wheels of the Atomsmasher. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, Dean quickly knelt to search the corpse. The holster was empty, but flipping over the lower half of the torso, Dean found the loops of the gun belt full of brass in a caliber suitable for his BAR longblaster. Taking it all, Dean continued on while stuffing the precious ammo into different pockets to prevent it from jingling together when he walked. Clinking brass could chill your ass, his father, Ryan, used to say. Words of wisdom, indeed.

Something exploded in the distance, throwing a dozen bodies high into the sky. Dogs howled, a woman screamed and coldhearts cheered in delight.

Discovering a tavern, Dean slipped inside, hoping it hadn’t been looted yet. Usually, he wasn’t a drinker, but this day was surely the exception. However, he was too late. The shelves behind the counter were empty, and the limp bodies of sec men and ville people lay everywhere, the sawdust on the floor lumpy with spilled blood. Ah well. He was just about to leave when a pretty woman came racing down the stairs, chased by Hannigan.

“Come back here!” Hannigan growled, and he dived forward to tackle her around the knees. She slammed into the floor, throwing up a small cloud of dirty sawdust.

“Get the fuck off me!” she yelled, kicking out and beating at him with her fists.

“Shut up, bitch!” Hannigan laughed, punching her in the belly.

Going pale, the woman struggled to breathe as the coldheart pulled a knife and grabbed the front of her blouse.

“Well done, brother! Thanks for catching her for me!” Dean said with a fake grin, hauling the limp woman to her feet. “The stupe bitch got away from me before. You’re gonna pay for that, slut!”

“Mutie shit, I found her!” Hannigan growled menacingly, his throat tight with barely repressed lust.

“Sure, but only after she got away from me!” Dean pointed at her broken nose, with no idea how the damage had happened. “That’s my mark on her face.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan weighed his options, then wisdom took control, and he moved his hand away from the sawed-off scattergun at his side. As a raw recruit “Mud Puppy” hadn’t been frightened of him, and now, months later, “Tiger” Cawdor, a blooded Angel, was one of the toughest bastards in the gang, and greased lightning with his fancy blaster. Only a triple-stupe droolie would challenge him in a fair fight.

“Take her.” Hannigan sniffed, hitching up his gun belt. “The bitch is too old and stringy, anyway.”

“Thanks, brother!” Dean chuckled, slapping the hated man on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “I owe you one!”

His face a mask of repressed fury, Hannigan lumbered out of the tavern, firing his blaster at a corpse in the gutter for no valid reason.

“Thanks, but I’ve never seen you before,” the woman said, wiping the blood from her face with a sleeve. “I broke my nose running away from the first wave of coldhearts as they came over the wall.”

In case somebody was watching, Dean drew back his arm as if to cuff the woman. “He would have raped you, girl,” he whispered urgently, “and I won’t.” He stepped closer and she flinched. “Now come with me if you want to keep sucking air!”

Unsure for a moment, she looked into his eyes and was startled to see only kindness there. Nodding in understanding, she did nothing as Dean grabbed her by the collar to roughly drag her to an undamaged house across the street.

As Dean approached, a coldheart walked out with a skinny, bucktoothed young woman. She was dressed in rags, most of her body fully exposed and covered with dark bruises.

“Hey, Tiger, done found me a virgie!” The coldheart laughed. “That be a first.”

“Good work, Natters!” Dean complimented the man, feeling sick to his stomach for the woman. Her shoulders kept moving as if she was crying, but there were no tears on her cheeks. “You done in there?”

“All yours, brother!” Natters laughed, leading his captive away like a dog on a leash.

Going inside, Dean checked over the house. It was small, with just one room and a single door, no windows. Perfect. Closing and locking the door, he sighed in relief. “Okay, this buys us some time,” he said. “Wish I could help your people more, but I’ve been treading water with these bastards for a while, and they still don’t completely trust me yet.”

Silently, the woman stared at him, not sure what to do.

“Come on, scream,” Dean ordered, taking a chair and sitting. “If somebody passes by, it has to sound like you’re fighting for your bastard life, or we both get aced. Savvy?”

“You…a roughrider?” she asked hesitantly, clutching the front of her ripped shirt.

Though he’d never heard the slang word before, Dean could make an educated guess to the meaning. “No, I like women in my bed,” he said honestly, and then for some unknown reason felt compelled to add, “Not that I’ve had that many.”

That comment caught her totally by surprise. Suddenly, she decided to trust the handsome stranger.

Taking in a deep breath, she cut loose with a blood-curdling shriek.

Startled, Dean blinked from the sheer ferocity of the cry, then smiled as he heard a couple of coldhearts laugh outside, and somebody thump the locked door.

“Not so hard, Tiger!” a voice called. “Let her breathe some, unless you like riding the peach off a corpse!”

“Shut up, I’m busy!” Dean shouted back, punctuating each word with a grunt.

Chuckling, the coldhearts walked away, singing and firing their blasters.

“I’m Althea,” she said. “Althea Stone.”

“Dean Cawdor.”

“Tiger?”

“Just a nickname,” he said with a scowl.

“What should we do?” Althea asked, sitting on the bed.

“Better rip those clothes some,” Dean replied, pulling out a knife and tossing it over. “Then cut me on the cheek. Gotta make this look real.”

Making the catch, Althea tested the balance of the blade, then slashed out, her hand a blur.

Caught completely off guard, Dean jerked at the stinging touch of steel, then used fingertips to check his face. There was a shallow cut along his jawline. Damn, she was quick!

Flipping the knife over, Althea slashed at her clothing, then added a few cuts to her legs. Dean was impressed. The blood would make folks think he had been her first, which would prevent most of the other coldhearts from bothering her, acknowledging an unspoken rule that she was his. He would have to keep a watch out for Hannigan. Someday soon, he would have to chill the man.

Finished, Althea threw the knife back. It thudded onto the floorboards between his boots. “Can’t let them find me with a weapon,” she said, starting to remove her clothing.

“Hey now, that’s not necessary,” Dean said, raising a palm.

“Gotta make this look real if somebody checks,” she replied, letting the tattered garment flutter to the floor.

As she finished disrobing, Dean said nothing, transfixed by the unbelievable beauty of the young woman. She had scars, of course—everybody alive did—but her skin was beautiful anyway, glowing with health. Her breasts were pert and firm, her stomach flat, and the delta between her legs was completely hairless.

“You shave down there?” he asked, his throat oddly tight.

“Never had no hair there,” Althea replied, sitting on the bed, which squeaked slightly. “Guess mebbe I got a little mutie blood in me. Most of the people in this ville do. We had a former baron who… Well, to say that he was crazy as a shithouse rat wouldn’t half load the blaster on that story.”

“Reckon so,” Dean said, crossing his legs. The little cabin felt uncomfortably warm.

“Now what?” she asked, pulling a blanket to cover herself. She wondered how it was possible that she was feeling an attraction to the coldheart. He had a kind face and intelligent eyes, but he was still an invader destroying her home and everybody she loved. Yet he had gentle ways, and the mixed messages confused her greatly.

“Now we wait for the chilling to stop. That should be sometime around dawn,” Dean said, removing his gun belt and laying it on a rickety table mostly held together with duct tape. Then he hesitated, not really wanting to take off his shirt or his pants, although for vastly different reasons. Choosing the lesser of two evils, he pulled off the buckskin shirt.

Inhaling sharply, Althea felt a visceral surge at the sight of his powerful chest and broad shoulders. Dean had the muscles of a blacksmith, and his wide chest was thickly matted with black curly hair, except for three white strips that looked like old knife wounds.

“I can see why they call you Tiger,” Althea said, starting to reach for the scars, then stopping herself. She was inexplicably drawn to the gentle killer.

“Anything’s better than Mud Puppy,” Dean snorted.

“What?”

“Never mind. Spent brass.” Turning away, he took off his combat boots and pants, then paused again, unwilling to turn around in his turgid state.

Guessing the cause of his unease, Althea turned down the oil lantern.

Relaxing slightly in the darkness, Dean padded barefoot across the cabin to sit in the wooden chair alongside the little bed.

“Mebbe you should join me under the covers,” Althea suggested.

Finding it difficult to think, Dean cleared his throat, trying to choose the correct words and not offend. He felt dizzy, almost drunk, and his heart was pounding.

Moving onto the bed, he sank into the ancient mattress as he lay next to the young woman. He could feel the heat coming off her naked body.

After drawing up the covers, he didn’t move for a long time. Then Althea whispered his name, and he pulled her close. Hugging each other tightly, they both tried to ignore the pitiful screams and wails coming from outside. Unexpectedly, there was a prolonged chatter of blasterfire, followed by an ominous silence that was infinitely more disturbing than the previous shrieks of terror.

Chapter Four

Groggily coming awake, Krysty started to reach for her blaster, then saw where she was and gradually relaxed. They’d spent the night inside the elevator? That was clever!

With her prehensile hair flexing and moving, she checked for any damage from the fight, but found only some bruises and scrapes, nothing serious. Her belly was empty and audibly demanding food, but aside from that she felt just fine, and not in the least bit tired from the previous day’s exertions.

With a snort, Ryan came awake, his good eye snapping open, then narrowing as he looked about, making sure the companions were alone.

“Morning, lover,” Krysty said, reaching out to straighten his leather eye patch. “I take it the howler didn’t get inside.”

“Not for long, anyway,” he replied, giving a half smile. Then he frowned. “Fireblast, what’s that awful mucking smell?”

“Me, I think,” Krysty said hesitantly, taking a sniff of her soiled shirt and grimacing. “Yes, it’s me. Probably Doc and Mildred, too. How did you and the others get so clean?”

As he briefly explained, the rest of the companions began to stir, yawning and stretching, then immediately checking their blasters.

Levering himself erect, Ryan checked to make sure the access panel in the ceiling hadn’t been disturbed while they slept. Meanwhile, J.B. did the same thing to the elevator doors and control panel.

“Clear,” Ryan announced.

“Same here,” J.B. replied, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

Holstering the blaster, Ryan grunted. “Okay, our first task will be to recce the redoubt. We need to make sure that bastard howler is still outside, and that there is nobody else inside the base with us.”

“Then food,” Jak declared. “Feel like been drinking acid rain belly so empty.”

“Indeed, my dear Jak. I heartily concur,” Doc stated, moving his tongue around the inside of his mouth with a dour expression. “Although I would think anything we consume to break our morning fast would taste infinitely better if the ladies, and myself, took a quick trip to the showers.”

“Smell like bayou,” Jak admitted honestly.

“Hey, Doc, I’ll scrub your back if you scrub mine,” Mildred said with a straight face. Then she burst into laughter at the scholar’s shocked expression. “Silly old coot, you fall for that joke every time!”

“That is because, madam, I am always terrified that someday you may actually carry through with the vile threat,” Doc replied haughtily, retrieving his sword stick from the floor. Twisting the handle, he inspected the blade. There were some minor stains on the steel, but otherwise the sword was in fine shape. Especially considering the situation.

The companions waited patiently a few minutes for Doc to reload the LeMat, then dutifully returned to the garage level. Warily advancing along the access tunnel, they were greatly relieved to see that the blast doors were tightly closed, and there was no fresh dampness on the walls to show that the howler had gotten inside again, only to be repelled by the auto-defense systems.

“The big ugly bastard might very well be standing right on the other side of this,” J.B. said, thumping the black metal door with a fist.

“Good,” Ryan stated bluntly, over a low rumble from his stomach. “Let it rot out there. Come on, let’s finish the sweep, then have some food.”

“How are our supplies, madam?” Doc asked with intense eagerness.

“We lost a lot of stuff in our mad dash across the state,” Mildred said with a sigh, pulling out an ancient yellow notepad. She kept track of the supplies these days, even though everybody carried some of the foodstuffs. That way if one backpack was lost, the entire group didn’t go hungry. There was a lot of wisdom in not putting all your eggs in one basket.

“And?” Ryan prompted impatiently.

“And we should still have two cans of beans, four self-heats and nine MREs. That’s three days’ worth, five if we stretch it.”

“We’re a lot lower in brass,” Krysty said, opening her blaster to check the cylinder. “I’ve got three live rounds left, and a pocketful of spent brass for reloading.”

“Got nothing,” Jak snorted. “And down five knives.”

“Well, my Uzi is out, and the scattergun has one, count it, one remaining 12-gauge cartridge,” J.B. added glumly.

“The Steyr is empty, and I’m down to six rounds in the SIG-Sauer,” Ryan said, not bothering to check. He would have to be aced and buried for at least a week before he didn’t know the exact amount of live brass he was carrying.

“Two live rounds,” Mildred said, hefting the target pistol. “That’s why I came running with the crowbar.”

It had been a very long time since the ZKR was this light, and Mildred hated the feeling of vulnerability. Safety meant a loaded blaster in your hand, with good friends standing alongside.

“Alas, I am also down to only two rounds,” Doc stated, displaying the massive LeMat. “I have lots of lead miniballs, primers and cloth wadding, but most of my black powder seems to be missing. Lost in our hasty egress across the desert.” He paused. “But I do still have my sword stick.”

“Okay, we’re going to eat before anything else. Empty bellies make for weak arms. Then we scav for anything usable as a weapon, before checking the armory down on the third level.”

Everybody nodded in agreement.

“At least here in the tunnel we know one direction we won’t be attacked from,” Krysty said, glancing at the huge blast doors. “That’s something, anyway.”

“Prefer more brass,” Jak countered, hunkering down to rip open an MRE pack. He passed around the cheese and crackers to give everybody a taste, then split the envelope of beef stew with Doc. Ryan did the same thing with Krysty, and Mildred shared an MRE of spaghetti and meatballs with J.B.

The food was cold but filling, and tasted absolutely wonderful, especially after their last few meals consumed on the run.

The companions made their way to the service bays and checked the abandoned vehicles. They located no weapons inside the trucks, which was rather odd, since most predark soldiers kept some sort of a handgun in their vehicle. J.B. found a box holding a dozen road flares behind a front seat. Eight of them were useless, split open from internal corrosion, but the remaining four seemed in decent condition.

“Better than nothing,” he said glumly, tucking them into his munitions bag. “But not by much.”

Turning their attention to the workbenches, Doc stood guard with the LeMat and his sword while the rest of the companions carefully chose some of the larger wrenches and pry bars. Several acetylene welding torches still held a small amount of charge, but the tanks were prohibitively heavy, and while the flame was lethally hot, the range was pitifully short.

“Lots of juice in the gas pumps,” Ryan said, checking a pressure gauge. “But without any glass bottles, we can’t make Molotovs.”

Tightening the jaws on a massive Stillson wrench, Jak scowled. “This mil base. No beer in fridge?”

“Sure, lots of it. In cans.”

“Damn!”

“We’ll find some whiskey bottles in the CO’s office,” J.B. stated confidently. “Never yet found a commanding officer who didn’t have a private bar hidden somewhere.”

“Rank doth have its little privileges,” Mildred stated.

“Speaking of rank,” Doc said, lifting a small plastic envelope from a box on the workbench. Using his teeth, he opened it and extracted a scented pine tree, which he hung off a button of his shirt. “Until we hit the showers,” he explained unnecessarily.

Everybody smiled at that, and even Ryan almost grinned.

“We don’t smell that bad,” Krysty scoffed, crossing her arms.

“Yeah, do,” Jak stated honestly, looking apologetic.

Fed and somewhat better armed, the companions took the stairs down to the third level, pausing several times along the way to try to hear if anybody else was moving around in the redoubt. But aside from the gentle murmur of the air vents, the base was quite literally as quiet as a grave.

On the third floor, the main corridor was lined with doors. Each office was full of furniture and not much else, aside from stacks of government forms, the ancient paper much too scratchy to even use in the bathroom. Then Krysty smiled, remembering how once a desperate Dean had tried using carbon paper as toilet paper, the results of which had been with him for almost a full week.

At the end of the corridor, the hulking steel door to the base arsenal was ajar, which was almost always a bad sign. Sure enough, the cavernous room proved to be empty, the shelves and gun racks containing nothing but a thin layer of dust, the scuffed floor littered with empty mylar bags and mounds of excelsior stuffing.

“Okay, five minute recce, then we move on,” Ryan said, pulling out the SIG-Sauer and taking a guard position near the open door.

As the rest of the companions spread out, J.B. headed straight for a repair station in the corner. There was nothing usable in sight, all of the reloading machinery empty of anything being processed. Then he spied a plastic box marked R&R. Inside the “repair or reject” container, he found a pile of ammunition magazines with busted springs. Sure enough, several of them had a round jammed inside. Using a screwdriver, he gently forced out the live brass, and soon had a small pile of 9 mm rounds. Sorting out the bullets too badly corroded with age to risk using left him ten good brass. Since the SIG-Sauer and the Uzi took the same caliber, J.B. split the find with Ryan, both men dutifully reloading their weapons with the meager supply.

Probing with his sword into the mounds of foam peanuts, Doc located an unopened crate of M-60 machine guns. The weapons were thickly coated with Cosmoline protective gel and in perfect condition. Unfortunately, there were no belts or ammo boxes or even loose brass, so Doc turned his back on the stash of deadly man-portable rapidfires. A blaster without brass was only deadweight.

Sighing in disappointment, Mildred closed the door on a first-aid cabinet. Aside from a box of elastic bandages, which she took, everything else on the shelves was over a century old and couldn’t be safely used, even in an emergency.

J.B. opened a cupboard and removed a couple glass bottles of vinegar from a shelf. “These will do fine for Molotovs!”

“Why do they store that in here?” Mildred asked, clearly puzzled.

“Nothing cleans off Cosmoline better than vinegar,” J.B. stated, already turning away to continue the search.

Deciding to check the drawers of the wooden desk, Krysty found a metal box bolted into place inside. Now, that was curious. The box was locked, but as a small child she had learned how to open such things with only a knife and a slim piece of wire. The trick didn’t always work, but this time it did, and inside the lockbox were a pile of laminated security passes, a dusty S&W .38 revolver and a plastic-wrapped cardboard box marked Remington.

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