Child Of Slaughter

The leader sighed and shook his head. “What have they done to you?”

“They? They, who?”

“Your captors, of course. The ones who took you from us.” The leader spread his arms wide. He held Doc’s silver lion’s-head swordstick in his left hand. Doc’s LeMat revolver was holstered at his hip. “We took you back, but they must have done something to you first. Taken your memories or senses. I only hope they didn’t ruin you for your holy work.”

“What sort of holy work is that?” Doc asked, marveling at his command of the English language.

The leader just stared at him with apparent pity and worry. “Have no fear,” he said coolly. “We will heal you, my friend.”

Doc cleared his throat, uncertain of what to say or do next. The only thing he knew for sure what that he’d never seen these particular muties before in his life. “If, as you say, we are friends, perhaps you could humor me. Perhaps you could tell me your name.”

“Though it hurts me to have to tell you, I’ll do it,” the mutie said. “My name is Exo. And yours is Dr. William Hammersmith.”

“I suppose it is.” Doc shrugged. “What else can you tell me about myself, friend Exo?”

“You have been a naughty boy, Dr. Hammersmith.” Exo ticked Doc’s ebony swordstick back and forth. “It’s a good thing you’re so important and such a good friend.”

“Naughty?” Doc straightened. Without the swordstick and LeMat revolver, he felt utterly naked. “In what way was I naughty?”

Exo pulled a stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy out of the vest pocket of his uniform. “You ran away. If you hadn’t done that, the interlopers never would have taken you.”

“I see.” Doc nodded, thinking how appropriate it was that his doppelganger had a penchant for escape. Doc himself, after being snatched through time from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, had tried numerous times to get away from his whitecoat captors. “And you say these interlopers seized me against my will?”

Exo peeled back the plastic wrapper and slid the candy stick between his lips. “Why else would you have stayed away so long, leaving your critical work unfinished?”

“Hmm.” Doc frowned and rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “And what is this work to which you refer, precisely?”

“Perfecting the Shift, of course.”

“Ah, the Shift.” Doc nodded, then tipped his head to one side and squinted. “Which is, of course…?”

Exo took the candy stick out of his mouth and swept it in a semicircle. “All around us! The deadliest place in the Deathlands!” Stomping forward, he jabbed the swordstick at Doc’s chest. “And you are making it even deadlier.”

The mutie’s breath was rancid enough to choke a horse, but Doc stood his ground. “Is that so?”

Exo narrowed his gaze. “I can see by the look on your face that you still don’t remember it all. But no matter.” The mutie reached over and cupped the right side of Doc’s face in his hand. “You still have time for it to come back to you. The journey to the core will take days, and we have other business to conduct on the way.”

Doc couldn’t help leaning his head away from Exo’s hand. “What business is that?”

Exo laughed that high giggle of his, the one that so belied his threatening personality. “Teaching your kidnappers a lesson, dear Doctor. Teaching them the price of intruding in the Shift, where they are not welcome and never will be.”

He was talking about Ryan and the others, and Doc knew it. “What price is that?”

Exo paused a moment, his face completely unreadable. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and shouted in Doc’s face, “Death! Torture, mutilation and death at the hands of the shifters!”

Doc cleared his throat and took a step back. “I do not suppose you would consider letting bygones be bygones?”

Exo giggled and tossed away his candy stick. This time, when he lunged, he threw Doc down on the ground and pummeled him with his fist and the head of the swordstick until Doc started fading again.

“The Children of the Shift never forgive!” As Exo said it, the other muties roared in agreement. “We understand only one thing! Swift and brutal retribution without hesitation or mercy!”

It was then that Doc lost consciousness. His last thought before he went under was if this was how Exo treated his friends, then Ryan and the others were really in for it.

Chapter Six

Ricky tossed a rock into the bubbling lava and watched it melt in an instant, casting up a plume of steam.

“That’s some hot stuff, man.” He elbowed Jak, who walked beside him at the front of the group. “Get too close, and it’ll give you a sunburn.”

“No want get close.” Jak was a good thirty paces from the lava channel, where he’d stayed since the team had started hiking. He was only too happy to let Ricky stay between him and the superheated flow. “Enemy not come that direction.”

Ricky raised an index finger. “Unless things change again, that is. It happened before.”

Jak snorted. “We ready. Learned lesson.” He smiled grimly. “Expect unexpected.”

Just then, Ryan trotted forward from the middle ranks. “Guys.” They parted, and he formed up between them. “What’s the good word?”

“All quiet for now,” Ricky said.

“All hot,” Jak added.

“What about back there?” Ricky bobbed his head toward the rest of the column. “Anything we should know about?”

Ryan shook his head. “Krysty hasn’t gotten a signal since we set out. No seizures, no funny feelings, nothing.”

“That good,” Jak said, “for her.”

“Not so good if we want to find Doc, though,” Ricky stated. “If we run out of lava channel, we’ll need to find another way to pick up the trail.”

“My gut tells me something will turn up.” Ryan narrowed his eyes and scanned the scenery—clusters of sandy humps rolling in all directions, split up ahead by the arrow-straight river of lava. “As crazy as this place is, I’ll be more surprised if something doesn’t turn up soon.”

Ricky kicked up a spray of sand with the toe of his boot. “Why do you think it’s like that? This place? Why do you think it’s so crazy?”

“If Doc was here, he’d have some kind of scientific explanation. As it is…” Ryan sighed. “Krysty says something awful happened to the earth around here, but, you know, the same could be said for much of the Deathlands.”

“Skydark cause somehow?” Jak asked. “War aftereffect?”

“Or something since then?” Ricky queried. “Some kind of science project gone wrong, mebbe?”

“Any of the above.” Ryan shrugged. “Right now, I guess it doesn’t much matter. We just need to find Doc and get the hell out of here before the phenomenon kills Krysty.”

“Survive first.” Jak nodded in agreement. “Explain later.”

“Hmm.” Ricky stared at the lava-filled channel as he kept marching along. “What if it’s all in our minds? Some kind of mass hallucination?”

“Someone mess with heads? Not first time.” Jak thought about it for a moment, then pointed at the channel with the barrel of his Colt Python. “How about dip toe in there and tell if illusion?”

“You first.” Ricky laughed. “But what if it is an illusion? We wouldn’t know it, would we?”

The one-eyed man blinked at him. “Krysty might.” He frowned. “Which might be the reason she keeps getting pounded by these psychic attacks, come to think of it.”

“We stop attacks sooner or later.” Jak popped one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives out of the spring-loaded scabbard in his right sleeve.

“Let’s stay alert to all possibilities.” Ryan tightened his grip on his longblaster. “Until we learn otherwise.”

“My possibilities always same.” Jak stabbed the air once more with a nasty flourish. “Cut and shoot till run out things to cut and shoot.”

“I think I speak for all of us,” Ricky stated, “when I say that’s a plan we can all get behind.”

Suddenly, a loud hissing noise in the distance caught everyone’s attention. They swung in the direction of the noise, and they all saw the source at the same instant.

Ricky shook his head at the sight. “What the hell is that?”

“Something I’m pretty sure shouldn’t be here,” Ryan told him.

Some fifty yards in the distance, on the same side of the lava channel as Ricky and the others, a plume of steam shot straight up from the ground, climbing at least thirty feet into the sky.

“First lava in Nebraska, now geysers,” Ryan said. “What next? A volcano?”

“Careful what wish for,” Jak stated.

Just then, a second geyser erupted from the ground on the opposite side of the channel, ten yards closer than the first.

That was enough to drive Ryan into action. “Incoming!” He shouted the words over his shoulder, making sure everyone behind him could hear.

But they didn’t really need to. Just as Ryan yelled his warning, Krysty let loose with her latest bloodcurdling scream.

“Form up!” Ryan charged back to Krysty’s side, leaving Jak and Ricky to hold the point of the column.

“Ready test theory?” Jak cocked the Python with one hand and balanced a throwing knife by the tip with the other. “Not fight back, mebbe hallucination not kill?”

Ricky’s eyes danced over the landscape, watching for the first hostile movement. “Not a chance.”

“Thought you say that,” Jak said. “Not believe own theory, huh?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ricky told him. “But even if this is all a hallucination, there’s no way I’m going to let it kick my ass.”

Chapter Seven

Ryan swept his longblaster left and right, waiting for whoever was coming—or whatever unnatural phenomenon was on the way, in which case, the blaster would be useless.

Behind him, Mildred supported Krysty with her left arm while brandishing her .38 ZKR 551 revolver in her right hand. “Another geyser at two o’clock.”

“I see it.” Ryan wondered if the geysers were a prelude to an attack or disaster…or perhaps the only manifestation of the phenomenon this time. “That makes three.”

“At least we’re out in the open,” said J.B., who was at the rear flank with his Mini-Uzi at the ready. “Not too many hills in this spot, either. Not many places for an ambush.”

“No shock wave yet…” Krysty forced out the words between clenched teeth. “No flash…of light…”

“So the worst might still be coming.” J.B. checked the Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun slung at his back and reassured himself it would be there when he needed it. Then he straightened his fedora hat, tipping the brim up just enough to clear his line of sight.

“Oh, no.” Krysty sucked in her breath. “It’s coming. I feel it.”

J.B. felt nothing, then suddenly he did. Like both times before, he felt caught between forces that were pulling and pushing him simultaneously. His heart hammered, because he knew what was next.

He tried to brace himself, but the shock wave still blew him around and threw him down on one knee. There was a hum, then a rumble, and he squinted against the flash he knew was coming, but it did him no good. The light still caught him by surprise; he clamped his eyes shut, but it still seared his vision, replacing the texture and color of sight with a curtain of featureless white.

J.B. held his Mini-Uzi tightly, though, and listened hard for the sounds of approaching enemies. He knew his comrades’ footsteps by heart; those of attacking strangers would stand out like drumbeats in a parade of flutes.

But the only new sound he heard had nothing to do with footsteps. It was a creaking sound, coming from nearby…very nearby. It was like the creaking of a tall tree as it bent and shifted in a stiff wind.

He listened closer as his eyes began to clear. The sound was getting louder, even closer than he had thought.

Then he felt the ground move, and he leaped aside. The creaking was as plain as day now; it had been coming from under his own feet.

His vision cleared just in time to see a spike of white stone shoot up from the ground where he’d been standing. It pushed straight upward, stopping only when it reached a height of more than ten feet.

J.B. blew out his breath in a quick sigh of relief. If he hadn’t jumped when he did, he would have ended up speared on the tip of that spike.

As he stood there, he heard shouting from his teammates and spun, swinging his Mini-Uzi into firing position. But the threat they were reacting to wouldn’t be fazed by a barrage of 9 mm rounds.

It was another pale pillar, bigger than the first, rising from the ground among Ryan, Krysty and Mildred. Luckily, no one had been impaled by the monstrous spike as it leaped toward the sky.

Again and again, he heard the creaking sounds, followed by the whoosh of sand giving way to climbing pillars of stone. He saw one of them flash upward near Ricky, sending him rolling toward the lava channel, his pell-mell tumble halted just in time by a sprinting Jak.

“So it’s these things now?” Mildred hollered. “Stalagmites outside of a cave?”

Just as she said it, another spike shot up from the ground near J.B. He backpedaled out of its way, then turned in a circle, trying to decide where to go next. If those things could punch out of the ground anywhere without warning, there wasn’t a safe place to be found.

Furthermore, what if they weren’t the only threat? “Look alive!” he called out to the rest of the team. “Get ready for incoming!” He knew it was good advice. There were no signs of attacking muties, and they hadn’t come when the sinkhole opened up that morning, but they’d used the upheaval once before to attack.

Looking around at the landscape, J.B. saw many more stalagmites bursting aboveground, studding the plain and even stabbing at crazy angles from distant hillsides. Before his eyes, the sparse terrain was becoming a forest of pale towers, each one gleaming like a predark bleached church spire in the blazing midday sun.

What had once been mostly open space with few places to hide was quickly turning into the perfect setting for a sneak attack by enemy forces.

In which case, J.B. and his comrades wouldn’t be hard to find at all. Krysty couldn’t help herself; she kept screaming as her inner torment continued.

“Anybody else get the feeling we’re sitting ducks?” J.B. shouted.

Just then, Ryan opened up with his best take-charge voice. “Three groups! Krysty and Mildred in the middle! Jak and I at twelve o’clock, J.B. and Ricky at six o’clock!”

“Seen anyone yet?” Ricky asked as he took up position by the nearest stalagmite.

“Nope.” J.B. set up on the other side of the same pillar, facing in the opposite direction. They needed to catch whoever came at them from either side and be ready to pivot quickly to help the others. “You?”

“Just the ones in my imagination.” Ricky braced his shoulder against the stone pillar and slowly combed the barrel of his De Lisle carbine from side to side. “But they have to be coming, don’t they?”

“Indubitably, as Doc might say.” J.B. listened for approaching footsteps but just heard more of the distant creaking and whooshing. The stalagmite forest’s growth spurt seemed to be nowhere near an end.

Then, suddenly, there was a loud creaking from just a few feet away. J.B. turned with weapon in hand, expecting another spike to erupt from the ground, but he got more than he counted on this time.

A fresh spike did indeed launch skyward with a whooshing sound of displaced sand. It was well away from J.B. and Ricky, so neither of them was at risk of being speared, but they were both in very real danger nonetheless.

For there was a crimson-skinned mutie rising up along with it, one arm wrapped around the pillar’s pale girth, the other arm bracing a slightly rusted AK-47 assault longblaster that was pointing at J.B.’s head.

Chapter Eight

In predark days, Mildred had been an award-winning free shooter. Being cryogenically frozen for a century and thawed years later hadn’t diminished her marksmanship skills one bit.

Which was why, when she saw her beloved J.B. in danger, she was able to move so decisively. Through a gap between stalagmites, she cranked off a fast, tricky shot with her target revolver that punched a hole dead center in the mutie’s forehead.

As the mutie dropped from the stalagmite he’d been riding, J.B. whirled and waved at Mildred. Through their years of traversing the Deathlands, they’d both saved each other’s lives too many times to count. It was second nature these days, something you expected from friends and comrades.

Or, in the case of Mildred and J.B., it was something you expected from lovers. Each new nightmare they faced brought them closer together and made them fight all the harder to keep what they’d found.

Even in hell itself, it turned out, it was good to have something to fight for. Ryan and Krysty certainly felt the same way.

Though at the rate Krysty was going, Mildred wondered if she would live out the day. As the predark doctor turned back to her after blowing away the mutie, she saw that Krysty had slid to the ground at the base of the closest spike. She was crouching there, screaming with eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping her temples with desperate ferocity.

Unfortunately, Mildred had no time to tend to her. Before she could drop to Krysty’s side, she heard the telltale creaking and whoosh of another rising spike in her immediate vicinity.

Spinning in its direction, she saw the latest pillar shooting high and fast with a pair of crimson arms looped around it, supporting a mutie who was clinging from the other side.

As the pillar punched upward, the mutie swung around and released one hand to flash a .38 revolver from a holster on his hip. Almost instantly, he started firing, tracing a path that would soon cut a swath across Mildred’s torso.

Springing into action, Mildred launched herself away from the stalagmite where Krysty huddled, drawing the mutie’s fire. She heard rounds spitting into the sand behind her as she bolted for the nearest spike, intending to use it for cover.

Another mutie happened to step out from behind the spike, wielding a .380 ACP Glock pistol.

Mildred hesitated an instant, then cut suddenly left, just as the second mutie opened fire. Rounds traced her path as she ran, closing in with each shot.

With two muties blasting away at her, Mildred needed an opportunity and found one. She heard the creaking noise again, followed by the whooshing, and she pinpointed the source: ten feet away, the tip of a new spike was nosing out of the sand.

Reaching deep, Mildred picked up her pace, charging straight for the soon-to-rise spike. Bullets hissing behind her, she leaped forward just as the spike began to rise.

A second later, and she would have been pierced through the belly, but she cleared it. The spike jumped upward just as her body sailed out of its path.

As Mildred hit the ground and rolled, she heard bullets zinging off the newborn pillar. Stopping her roll, she leaped to her feet and dived behind it.

Then, popping halfway out from behind the pale spike, she quickly found the second mutie, sighted in on him and pulled the trigger. A crimson blossom erupted on his chest, and he went down.

As for the first mutie who’d swung around and driven Mildred away from Krysty, he was down for the count. Peering between pillars, Mildred saw Krysty standing over him, whaling away at him with her powerful fists.

“You go, girl.” Mildred smiled grimly, then heard a sound and whipped around just in time for someone else’s fist to slam into the side of her head.

Mildred’s vision went dark before she could get a look at her attacker. She was dimly aware of her legs folding up underneath her, her body collapsing, and then…she was off in the nothingness, the perfect black vacuum of absolute unconsciousness.

Chapter Nine

Ryan and Jak fought back-to-back, blasting away at the muties working their way toward them through the forest of spikes.

Jak’s .357 Magnum Colt Python coughed out a round, and a mutie screamed in agony. “Another bite dust.” Jak spun the revolver around his index finger, then blew on the barrel as if puffing away smoke. “Jak six, muties zero.”

Ryan snorted and kept sweeping his longblaster from side to side. “But the bastards keep coming.” He thought he saw movement and flicked the barrel toward a spike, then realized it was a false alarm and continued his sweep. “How the hell many of them are there anyway?”

“More are, more fun for me.” Jak cocked the Python and went back to combing the surroundings with his bright red eyes. “Hey, muties!” he shouted.

As if on cue, a mutie leaped between distant pillars, crossing from one to the other. Jak didn’t fire, but he fixed his gaze on the mutie’s new cover like a dog watching a fox’s den.

Just then, Ryan heard a blaster shot fired nearby. He listened to the echo, trying to tell what specific weapon had put it out there, but the spikes upset the acoustics, and he couldn’t read the weapon’s signature.

“I hope the others are all right.” With the shape Krysty was in, he was worrying more than usual, second-guessing his call to split up the team.

“Down one man, muties surrounding, ammo low.” Jak grinned a wolf’s grin. “Of course all right.” The mutie twitched from behind his pillar, and Jak jerked his blaster’s barrel to follow. “Just another Deathlands day.”

Suddenly, a body darted from behind another spike at ten o’clock and ran into Ryan’s field of vision. He caught it out of the corner of his eye, swung his longblaster around to fire…and lost his shot. Whoever was over there disappeared behind another pale column.

“More company,” Ryan said quietly. “I think they’re taking up position, getting ready to move.”

“Want move first?” Jak asked. “Or stay sitting ducks?”

Ryan thought it over for all of a second. “Let’s move out and work our way back in.” He pointed toward the cover of the figure he’d glimpsed a moment ago and headed in that direction.

“Getting bored one place anyway.” Jak headed in the opposite direction.

As Ryan worked his way between jutting spikes, he walked as softly as he could, keeping his longblaster at the ready. He paused at each fresh spike, ducking quickly past it to check for muties sheltering behind, then sliding around the column to take that shelter himself.

It unnerved him a little when he heard Krysty shrieking in the distance, but he kept his head and kept moving. He knew her well enough to realize that wasn’t the kind of cry she made when under physical attack. The only cry she ever uttered in battle was a raging war whoop as she shattered bones and drew blood with abandon.

Ryan glided around an especially thick pillar, then stopped and flicked back behind it. Two muties were creeping past on the other side, one carrying a sawed-off shotgun, the other a remade M-16 fitted with a rusty bayonet.

Ryan breathed slowly and adjusted his grip on the Scout longblaster. Then he eased himself around the pillar and froze. Suddenly, a bayonet and a double-barreled sawed-off were staring him in the face.

The muties had gotten the jump on him. They had to have heard or sensed him, maybe spotted his shadow, and doubled back. Now Ryan was royally screwed.

“Surrender!” the mutie with the sawed-off shouted. “Throw your weapon aside and get on the ground.”

“You first.” Ryan didn’t blink. He had the Scout aimed squarely at the bayonet-wielding mutie’s abdomen. As long as he kept it there, he still had a chance of keeping them off balance.

The mutie with the M-16 drew the blaster back, getting ready to ram the bayonet into Ryan.

At that moment, the mutie’s head exploded. His body crumpled backward, dead before it hit the ground.

While the other mutie gaped, Ryan seized his opportunity. Without a heartbeat’s hesitation, he cranked off a shot, putting a round right through his head.