Judas Strike

Reaching the crest of a dune, Ryan paused as his stomach loudly announced its emptiness with a long sustained rumble. Yeah, it had to have been a while since that big meal at Cold Harbor ville. Ryan searched his pockets for anything edible and found only sand. Turning, he glanced at the dead crab and saw that it was already covered with a flock of seagulls tearing the corpse apart with their needle-sharp beaks. The man touched his blaster, then decided against it. Raw gull tasted like he imagined used underwear would. He wasn’t quite that hungry yet. Besides, he was down to the last full clip for the SIG-Sauer. Best to save every round until absolutely necessary. If he didn’t find his backpack, there might not be any more.

Hobbling down the far side of the dune, Ryan found the tracks where he had been dragged into the weeds and followed the marks with his blaster firmly in hand. The dune was cut with a rain gully that ended in a fan of small rocks, which extended across a pristine white beach. A hundred or so feet away lay a lone figure sprawled on the sand. Long flame-red hair covered the features, but the woman was wearing Khaki coveralls, a bearskin coat and blue Western boots decorated with the outline of a spread-winged falcon. There was no question it was Krysty Wroth, and her chest rose and fell in a regular pattern. She was alive.

As Ryan worked his way across the beach, a fat blue crab crawled into view from the other side of the supine woman and started dribbling white goo from its segmented mouth onto her right arm. In one smooth move, Ryan aimed and fired. The distance was fifty yards, but the soft-lead slug slammed the crab off the top of her breast and sent it tumbling into the ocean. The mutie hit with a splash and sank out of sight, leaving a trail of green blood in its descending wake.

Reaching the woman, Ryan checked her over quickly and was relieved when there were no signs of damage. “Krysty, it’s me,” he said softly, shaking her shoulder.

Her eyelids fluttered, then opened wide. “Ryan?” she croaked, her long hair flexing and moving around her lovely face as if the red filaments were endowed with a life of their own.

“Alive and well, lover,” he answered gently.

Coughing hard, she tried to sit up and became instantly wide-awake. “Gaia! What’s wrong with my arm?”

Drawing his knife, Ryan brought her up to date while cutting away the tacky goop. When he was finished, Krysty pulled her arm free from the white residue smeared on her coveralls. The material stretched but didn’t rip. Rising carefully, she swayed for a moment, then stood easily, her animated hair a wild corona in the breeze.

“Any sign of the others?” Krysty asked, drawing her blaster and checking the weapon. Safe in its leather holster, the S&W .38 revolver was undamaged, the stainless-steel piece still shiny with oil. Cracking the cylinder, she ejected four spent shells and tucked them into a pocket of her bearskin coat before thumbing in fresh rounds. Without her pack, the woman was down to only five spare rounds for the revolver.

“Not yet,” Ryan answered truthfully. “But we can search for them later. Gotta find some shelter for the night. It’s getting dark, and those crabs will be a triple bitch to ace in the dark.”

“Could use some food, too,” Krysty said over the growling of her stomach. Briefly, her hands checked pockets and came up empty. Not even a used piece of gum. “Got your canteen? Mine was in my backpack.”

He shook his head. “Same here.”

“Gaia! Hopefully those washed onto the same island as us,” Krysty said, remembering only a few days ago when the precious supplies had sunk into a shark-filled harbor. They had gotten them back, but at a terrible cost.

“Hell, I’m surprised any of us survived that rocket attack from the PT boat,” he stated. “Got no idea how we stayed afloat in the water for so long.”

Grunting in agreement, Krysty looked along the beach in both directions. The clean white sand was perfectly flat where the waves reached. Not a footprint was in sight.

“We could split up,” Krysty suggested. “Go both ways and save time.”

“Trader always said never to divide your forces in unknown territory,” Ryan said, quoting his old teacher. “We’ll go a hundred yards toward that dune, and if we don’t find anything, we’ll try the other way. Folks almost always turn to the right, do it automatically if they’re hurt or confused.”

Brushing some loose sand from her shaggy coat, Krysty studied Ryan for a moment, then smiled.

“Sounds good, lover,” she agreed, putting some feeling into the words. “Lead the way.”

The compact sand of the beach made for easy walking in spite of Ryan’s bad leg, and the couple reached the turnback point in only a short time. After glancing around, Ryan started back when a motion in the sky caught Krysty’s attention.

“Gulls,” she said, pointing. “Might be circling a kill.”

“Probably only some dead fish, but we better check,” he agreed, rubbing the wound on his thigh. It was throbbing now, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

Continuing onward, the man and woman went past a stinking pile of rotting seaweed. Just beyond that, the beach started to rise in irregular mounds of what they could tell were pieces of predark buildings and broken sidewalks. Wreckage from skydark. A fallen collection of marble and bricks blocked the way, and the pair was forced to wade waist deep into the surf to get past. Both kept a sharp watch for crabs, but none was in sight below the foamy waves.

Once back on the shore, Krysty stopped in her tracks and Ryan scowled as they saw the corpse of a gigantic spider sprawled in the wet sand farther down the beach. The mound of flesh rose more than six feet high, the splayed legs dangling loosely in the shallows. Its head was completely gone, the yellow-and-black body fur charred as if by fire, loose strips of flesh hanging off the gleaming white bones of an internal skeleton. And its entire length was covered with dozens of the blue crabs. Sharp pincers ripped away strips of the rotting flesh as the shelled scavengers steadily tore the spider apart. The skin writhed from endless motion inside the body, and a crab wiggled into view from the neck stump to pass out a glistening length of entrails. Some small crabs danced around the crowd of larger blues, occasionally darting forward to grab a morsel of food for themselves. The rest of the meat was being carried into the shoals by the bigger crabs. They disappeared beneath the waves, only to return moments later with empty pincers.

Frowning deeply, Ryan saw that he had fought one of the small crabs. These new ones were huge, and looked brutishly strong, their legs as thick as soup cans. He wondered if the companions had ridden the dead insect like a raft. Made sense.

In a flash of white, a gull dived from the sky toward the ripe corpse and a crab perched on the spider’s back leaped into the air, slashing with both stingers. A spray of feathers went swirling, but the undamaged gull winged once more into the sky, crying loudly in frustration.

They fought in teams, Ryan realized, and with assigned tasks. Just how smart were the creatures?

“Too damn smart,” Krysty said aloud, as if reading his thoughts.

“No sign of the others,” Ryan said, studying the area for strips of cloth or human bones. “Best we check the other side. Just to be sure.”

Thumbing back the hammer on her blaster, Krysty started to walk inland to go around the feeding ground. Ryan limped along as best he could, but a couple of the smaller crabs scuttled over to investigate. Once they were in the weeds and out of sight of their brethren, Ryan dispatched the muties with his silenced pistol, then Krysty crushed their heads under her boots to make sure the crabs stayed dead.

The muffled crunches of splintering chitin caught the attention of the large blue patrolling on top of the spider, and its eye stalks extended fully to watch as the two-legs traveled around the precious lump of food. Since they kept their distance and didn’t threaten the horde, the big male saw no reason to attack them and continued its vigil against the winged predators in the sky.

Stopping on the crest of the dune, Ryan and Krysty could see there was nothing on the lee side of the huge corpse to indicate that any human had been slain by the crabs. But the lack of physical remains didn’t raise any false hopes. It didn’t mean the others were alive; it simply showed that their friends hadn’t been chilled and eaten here.

“Back we go,” Krysty said listlessly, holstering her piece.

“Later,” Ryan countered, walking along the top of the dune heading toward a ragged cliff. “First, we eat.”

Shielding her face with a cupped hand against the setting sun, Krysty soon spied what he was referring to. Food, and lots of it.

Working their way back to the shore along a rocky arroyo, Krysty and Ryan splashed into an irregular bay dotted with hundreds of small tide pools. Basins of seawater had been trapped in depressions in the hard ground as the tide withdrew, accidentally leaving behind some of the bounty of the sea. Most of the puddles contained only water and colorful shells, but several were impromptu aquariums housing an assortment of small marine life, tiny fish, sea horses or waving kelp.

Kneeling in a pool, Ryan reached into the inches of water and came up with a fat oyster. “Dinner,” he announced, tossing over the mollusk.

Krysty made the catch and eagerly pulled out a knife to open the hard shell. The oyster resisted and failed. “There must be hundreds of them,” she stated, chewing steadily. “Enough food for months!” The raw meat was slimy but delicious. However, her stomach rumbled unabated, the tiny morsel barely denting her ravenous appetite.

Tossing her another, Ryan readily agreed. He took the third oyster himself, splitting the shell and slurping down the creature intact. Chewing would have only wasted time. Casting the empty shell aside, he started to pass Krysty another when he saw the woman was already splitting an oyster she had located.

Together, the couple waded across the basin raiding every tide pool, devouring the oysters equally. They almost feasted on a small squid, but the nimble creature squirted out oily black ink when captured and squirmed from Ryan’s grasp to escape back into the rising sea.

“Too bad,” Ryan said, washing his hands clean in a puddle. “They taste like chicken.”

Spitting out a flawless pearl, Krysty started to make a comment when she was interrupted by the crackle of distant gunfire, closely followed by the dull thud of a black-powder gren.

“Sounds like us,” she stated, sheathing the blade.

“Could be. Let’s go see,” Ryan said, and they began to splash toward the sounds of combat.

Chapter Two

Not far away, a group of armed people strode around the base of a predark lighthouse. Located at the far end of a sandbar that jutted into the ocean, the hundred-year-old structure was intact and undamaged from war or weather. The sloping walls of granite blocks were as strong as the day it was built, and the resilient Plexiglas panels unbroken around the crystal-and-glass beacon atop the tower.

The roof was covered with bird droppings, and piles of seaweed and driftwood partially buried under windblown sand were banked against the base of the tower. The white paint had been removed by sheer passage of time to expose the blue-veined granite blocks composing the building. Unfortunately, there was no door in sight, and fat blue crabs were underfoot everywhere. It seemed as if the more the companions shot, the more crawled out of the water. It was as if the damn creatures were attracted to explosions.

Swinging his shotgun off his shoulder, J. B. Dix rammed the stock of the weapon against the side of the lighthouse. The resulting thud gave no indication of weakness, or even of empty space beyond the adamantine material. The lighthouse was a fortress.

Adjusting his glasses, the wiry man returned the shotgun to its usual position over his shoulder slung opposite the Uzi machine pistol.

“Nothing,” he said, rubbing his unshaved chin. “Anybody got some ideas?”

“Well, the balcony is too high to reach,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth stated, her hand resting on a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. The faded lettering M*A*S*H was almost unreadable, but the bag was neatly patched and contained a meagre store of medical supplies.

Held at her side was a sleek Czech ZKR target pistol, a state trooper gun belt with attached holster strapped over her regular belt. Loops for extra ammo ringed the gun belt, but most of them were empty. The vacant sheath of a small knife peeked from her left boot, and a long thin dagger bearing the logo of the Navy SEALs hung from her belt.

Just then, something blue scuttled around the side of the lighthouse, closely followed by three men armed with blasters, their faces grim and unsmiling. As the crab came close, J.B. crushed it underfoot. The shell burst apart, and the hideously mangled mutie started thrashing about.

“Bastard things are everywhere,” Dean Cawdor complained, kicking the bleeding creature into the waves. It disappeared with a splash. “I killed six more on the other side.”

“Good,” J.B. snorted. “The more aced the better.”

The young boy nodded in agreement. Almost twelve years of age, Dean was beginning to resemble his father in frightening detail and already carried himself with the calm assurance of a seasoned combat veteran. A Browning semiautomatic pistol was in his hand, jacked and ready for trouble. There was a slash across his denim shirt, showing some badly bruised ribs, minor damage incurred from the exploding bridge at Spider Island. A fat leather pouch hung from his belt distended with ammo clips, but the pack rode high, telling of scant ammo in the precious collection of magazines. An oversize bowie knife rode at the small of his back with easy access for either hand.

The nearby waves gently crested on the rough shoreline, foaming and breaking endlessly. A seagull winged silently overhead, something small and wiggling held tight in its deadly beak.

“Normally, a lighthouse would be placed on a cliff or jetty to maximize visibility,” Mildred said thoughtfully, gazing at the railing that encircled the walkway around the beacon on the top level. “Must have been some major earthquakes to move it to sea level.”

“Built to withstand the worst weather possible,” J.B. said. “Only reason it’s still standing after skydark.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean said. “There’s no door, so I say we keep walking along the beach.” He hitched up his belt. “We haven’t even covered half of the island yet.”

“Very true, my young friend,” Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner rumbled. In a frock coat and frilly shirt, the silver-haired gentleman appeared to be from another era, which, in fact, he was. “Yet the panoramic view offered by the sheer height of this construct should be invaluable in helping to locate your father and Krysty.”

Doc’s clothes were of the finest material and patched in a dozen places. He was leaning on an ebony swordstick, the silver lion’s head peeking out between his fingers, and a mammoth revolver was hung at his waist. The LeMat was a Civil War weapon holding nine .44 rounds, with a single shotgun round under the main barrel. The blaster used black powder, not cordite, but the solid lead miniballs did more damage than a sledgehammer at short range.

“Besides, with the tide comes those damn crabs,” Mildred added grumpily, watching the shoreline for any sign of the nasty muties.

“Indeed, madam. Our local cornucopia of antediluvian crustace is merely another reason why shelter for the night is mandatory,” Doc espoused, baring his astonishingly white teeth.

“Still gotta get inside,” Dean stated stubbornly.

“Tower short,” Jak Lauren said, crossing his lean, muscular white arms.

A true albino, the teenager was dressed in camou fatigues with a bulky Colt Python .357 Magnum hung from his belt. An ammo pouch lay flat at his opposite hip. His camouflage leather jacket was decorated with bits of shiny metal and feathers, and more than one sec man had seized the teenager by the lapels only to have his fingers cut off by the razor blades sewn into the lining. At present, the arms of his jacket were tied around his waist, showing a lot of his pale skin. His hair was shoulder length and bone-white, his red eyes peering out of his scarred face like ruby lasers. More than a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden on his person, with two more tucked into his belt. The handle of a gravity knife was visible in his left combat boot.

“Is it?” Dean asked suspiciously. “Looks okay to me.”

Doc walked closer to the structure as if seeing it for the first time. “By the Three Kennedys, it is too short,” he stated in agreement. “By necessity, lighthouses are always tall, sixty to eighty feet high. This is only, say, thirty.”

The man glanced at the ground. “The lower half must be buried beneath the sand. The front door must be buried, twenty, thirty feet underground.”

“It’ll take days to dig that deep by hand,” Mildred said, scowling. There was already traces of purple on the horizon. Night was coming fast.

“Try a gren,” Dean suggested.

“Only got one,” J.B. answered, titling back his fedora. “I’m saving that for an emergency.”

“If we could reach the balcony,” Mildred continued thoughtfully, “then getting inside would be no problem. Even if the door is locked, we could go through the lens itself. Those were made of glass to withstand the searing heat of the beacon.”

J.B. removed his hat, smoothed down his hair, then replaced it. “Sounds good. But how do we get up there?”

“Mayhap there is another way in,” Doc rumbled.

Going to the lighthouse, Doc put his back to the building and gazed out over the field. He appeared to be counting under his breath.

“There!” Doc said, and walked briskly to the end of the sandbar where there was a short stack of rocks covered with seaweed. Removing handfuls of the soggy greenery, Doc exposed not jumbled rocks, but broken bricks. Tossing them aside, he soon exposed a perfectly square hole that went straight down and out of sight.

“It’s a chimney,” J.B. said with a grin, slapping the man on the back. “Good work, Doc. I didn’t know a lighthouse would have a house attached.”

“A cottage, actually,” Doc replied primly. “But yes, many do.”

Cupping his hands as protection from the sea breeze, Jak lit a match and dropped it down the opening. The tiny flame fluttered away and was gone. The teenager then lit another and stuck his entire head into the passage.

“Too small me,” his voice echoed, and he stepped away from the chimney. “Mebbe Dean, too.”

Dubiously, the boy eyed the flue, then used a stick to measure the opening, then himself. “Tight,” he agreed, and slid his backpack to the ground. He removed his canteen and belt knife, then unbuckled his gun belt and took off the ammo pouch.

“I’m going to need every inch to get down that,” Dean stated, shucking his Army jacket.

“What if filled with crabs?” Jak asked pointblank. “Trapped where no help, no light. Candles iffy.”

“Here, this will help,” Mildred said, rummaging in her med kit to extract a small flashlight. She squeezed the handle on the side of the device several times to charge the ancient batteries, and flicked the switch. The light was weak, but still serviceable.

Dean accepted the flashlight and tucked it into his shirt for safekeeping. Then he double-checked his blaster, making sure there was a round under the hammer for instant use.

“You see or hear any of the blues, get out of there fast,” J.B. said sternly. “Just cut and run.”

The boy nodded in agreement, his thoughts private.

“Now, lad, there should be plenty of ropes and tackle near the base of the tower,” Doc said, the wind blowing his hair across his face like silver rain. “Along with torches and cork jackets to rescue people from drowning. Just toss a line over the balcony and we shall climb up.”

“Gotcha.” Dean climbed onto the pile of rubble and carefully slid his legs into the brick-lined darkness. He wiggled back and forth a bit, going lower with each move, until his hips passed the top of the flue and he unexpectedly dropped. J.B. and Jak both snatched a wrist, but Dean had already stopped himself by grabbing the top layer of bricks.

“Thanks,” he panted, shifting his stance in the flue until his boots were more solidly braced on the rough surface. “I’m okay now.”

The adults released the boy, and he started into the darkness once more. The rest of the companions backed away from the hole to allow the greatest amount of the dying sunlight to illuminate his way. In only a few moments he was gone from sight.

“How you doing?” J.B. called after a while.

“Busy,” the boy’s voice echoed back upward, closely followed by a muffled curse.

Long minutes passed with only the sound of the surf and the breeze disturbing the peaceful ocean front peninsula. Overhead, the always present storm clouds began to darken as the setting sun drained all color from the world, the shadows growing long and thick. Doc and Jak began to gather driftwood into a pile for a campfire.

“How much longer do we give him?” Mildred asked, brushing back her tangled mass of beaded locks.

Rubbing his chin to the sound of sandpaper, J.B. scowled. “Long as it takes. We don’t have a way to go down there and check on him.”

“Good thing there is no sign of those accursed PT boats,” Doc rumbled, looking out over the sea. “At present, we are prepared neither to wage war nor to retreat.”

“Got that right.” Mildred sighed. “I’m down to ten rounds.”

Feeling uneasy, J.B. unfolded the wire stock on the Uzi. “What had Jones called the baron again?”

“Kinnison,” Jak answered, whittling on a piece of wood with a knife. The pile of tinder grew steadily under his adroit ministrations. “Called him Lord Bastard, too.”

Suddenly, a sharp whistle sounded twice from the weeds and stunted brush growing inland, and the companions dropped into combat positions, taking cover behind the bricks. Working the bolt on his machine pistol, J.B. replied to the call with one long whistle. It was answered by the same, and everybody relaxed as Ryan and Krysty rose into view, holstering their blasters.

“You’re hurt,” Mildred said, rushing forward and kneeling to probe Ryan’s wounded leg.

The Deathlands warrior inhaled sharply at the contact of her fingers. “Just a scratch,” he grunted. “I got the poison out and cauterized the hole.”

“Maybe. Better let me be the judge of that,” the physician said, untying the torn pieces of cloth. Closely, she looked over the puckered scar, shiny and new among many older ones.

“Well?” he said in controlled impatience.

“It’s clean enough,” Mildred reported, tying the strips of cloth closed again. “And thankfully not infected. But it must hurt like hell.”

“Pain means you’re still alive,” Ryan muttered, then glanced around. “Where’s Dean, on patrol?”

“Down chimney,” Jak replied, jerking a thumb. “Finding door for lighthouse.”

His face a stone mask, Ryan limped to the pile of bricks and looked down the hole. He whistled sharply and waited, but there was no response.

“Any other way inside?” Ryan asked.

J.B. snorted. “Not that we could find. Lighthouse has got solid granite walls. Need a C-4 satchel charge to even dent the place.”

As Ryan limped over to the lighthouse, Doc started to offer the man his ebony stick, then thought better of the gesture. Ryan would never take it. Not from foolish macho pride, but with one of them possibly in danger the man wouldn’t have the time to spare thinking about his own pain. In the New York Herald of his day, Doc sometimes read of officers whose troopers claimed they would charge with them straight into hell. The scholar had never met such a person until Ryan freed him from a slave pit so very long ago.

Another crab scuttled by, and Jak caught the mutie in his hand, keeping well clear of the scorpion tails. “Wonder if good eat?” the teenager asked. The eye stalks of the creature extended fully, and it stared at the albino as if in open hatred. It unnerved him slightly how much intelligence there seemed to be in its steady expression.