Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

Nicholas Brody sat behind his desk, staring across his steepled fingers at Jake. "You're sure someone was murdered?"

 

The sec man occupied one of the chairs in front of the desk, his hat in his hands. "Yes, sir. That much blood, had to be someone killed there."

 

"And what makes you so certain? That blood you found up in those hills could have been where someone shot an animal, hopeful to provision their larder."

 

Jake shook his head. "No." He opened a fist and displayed several bits of black fabric spotted with rust-colored blood. "That's from clothing, Mr. Brody. Shotgun pattern killed whoever was up on that ridge and tore bits of cloth from whatever he or she was wearing. We found pellets in the trees."

 

Brody glanced out the window at the school grounds. He couldn't believe something like this had happened. Never in all the years that his institution had been established had something so untoward occurred. "Was it school clothing? From one of the missing boys?"

 

"Hard to say."

 

Brody returned his gaze to the man. Jake had been out searching since that morning's roster showed the ten missing boys. "Your best guess, then."

 

"Sir, with all respect intended, ain't no way I can tell you that. What I can tell you is thisthe wag tracks on top of that ridgeline are fresh. Still got green plants crushed up in the clods they turned out of the earth. I'm guessing, but mebbe there were as many as six or seven wags."

 

"That sounds like more than someone would need to spirit away those boys," Brody said.

 

"Yes, sir. I'm thinking so, too. Got a feeling we don't know the half of it. All them wags, they got themselves a regular convoy."

 

"Do you think the boys went with them willingly?" Brody hated asking the question. It made him sound uncertain of himself.

 

Jake passed over a small object.

 

Brody took it, examining it carefully, noting its needle-shaped end and the feathers that were obviously there for guidance. "A dart?" He adjusted his glasses, looking toward the sec man for elucidation.

 

"Trank. Shoot someone with it, knocks them out for a while. Mebbe minutes, mebbe hours, depending on what it's carrying. Found that one in a tree around the blood site."

 

"You're suggesting the boys were abducted."

 

"Yes, sir. Come to find out that Mr. Solomon is missing from the ranks, as well."

 

Brody didn't keep tabs on the staff as tightly as he did the students. If an instructor became remiss in his or her duties, that was duly noted and addressed. He referred to the list of the missing boys. "All of these boys were a part of Mr. Solomon's pet group, were they not?"

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"Except for Mr. Cawdor."

 

"Only kitten in a litter of skunks," Jake agreed.

 

"Have you talked to Mr. Conover? I believe he was hurt yesterday morning."

 

"Talked to him. Told me Mr. Solomon was running some special maneuvers last night with his group."

 

"Without my authorization?"

 

"If you didn't authorize it, he did it without your authorization."

 

Brody placed his hands flat on the desk. "I didn't authorize it. Could you attempt to track these people down, Jake, and would you be willing?"

 

"Yes, sir," the sec man answered. "On both counts. But it's going to take considerable from the sec crew here, and I'll probably have to hire in some help from Leadville. Got some hardcases there do odd jobs when the jack's right."

 

Brody didn't like the idea of dealing with fiddle-footed ruffians, but circumstances had left him lacking in choices. "I'll defer to your esteemed judgment in that matter, Jake, and I'll place whatever amount of jack you need at your disposal whenever you say. As far as the sec around this institution, we'll limp along without you for the time it takes. Just bring those boys back safe and sound."

 

The sec man nodded and clapped on his hat. "I'll see it done, sir."

 

Brody watched the man go and tried not to think of what might be happening to the missing boys. God forbid that he should have to tell any of their parents that he'd failed to protect them as he'd promised. Especially Dean Cawdor's father. He'd heard numerous stories about the way the man had left Leadville after dropping off his son.

 

The man wasn't forgiving, Brody knew. Rather, Ryan Cawdor was the epitome of a mythological Greek warrior camouflaged in flesh and blood.

 

 

 

SUNDOWN HAD BEGUN in earnest as Ryan reached the foothills of the low mountains surrounding Honey Lake. The dry heat of the Smoke Creek Desert had sapped him all day long, drawing the moisture from his body. Now, with the long shadows of night coming on, the wind blew cold, erasing the desert's heat.

 

The sound of chanting off to his left, brought to his ears by the wind, sent him diving for cover. He waved the rest of the companions to cover behind rocks and boulders.

 

The chanting grew steadily louder, filled with ululating wails that seemed a cross between agony and ecstasy. Dozens of voices, male and female, young and old, took up the hue and cry.

 

Ryan took out his night glasses and trained them in the direction of the chanting. The land fell away from his position, settling into a bowl-shaped depression where a handful of camp fires burned embers against the night. Tens of dimly lit figures surrounded the fires, chanting, none of them really hitting a harmony or a tempo. All of them were gazing up at the starry sky.

 

"Muties, lover," Krysty said, crawling up on her elbows next to him.

 

Ryan nodded, trailing his night glasses over the rad-blasted stick figures clad in tatters of human clothing and animal pelts. Many of them were nearly bald or were patchy from the radiated lands they'd spent years in. None of them had any weapons beyond a club or a knife, though some wore cow and buffalo skulls on their heads as armor. A few others had worked rib bones into decorative chest protectors.

 

All of them were misshapen from leftover nuclear bombardment, covered with scabs and weeping, open sores that leaked vile green pus. Most of them looked to be scabbies, but there were a few stickies among them.

 

"Odd to see so many different kinds of muties gathered together in the middle of nowhere," Krysty whispered.

 

"Yeah," Ryan replied quietly. "And causing all this noise seems out of place, too. Draw down the bigger predators on them in no time." He glanced back toward the others and waved them forward, signaling to Jak and J.B. that they were to come quietly.

 

In seconds the companions and the Heimdall Foundation members were hiding behind the ridge overlooking the depression filled with muties. All of them kept their weapons at the ready, and the two prisoners took time to pick up stones to defend themselves.

 

"By the Three Kennedys!" Doc exclaimed in a hush. "They look like they are in the throes of some mystical epiphany!"

 

"What's set them off like that?" Ryan asked, his curiosity aroused. There'd been no sign of pursuit by LeMarck's group of raiders all during the day. With the muties gathered as they were in the area, that could work to their advantage, as well. Where he and his group might hope to slip through and escape notice, the wags would definitely draw attention.

 

"I do not know, Ryan." The old man pointed. "As you can plainly see for yourself, they are not spending any time communicating with one another. Rather, they seem to be attempting to placate or seek acknowledgment from a being higher than themselves."

 

"Muties with religion?" Jak shook his head. "No such thing, Doc."

 

"That we have seen thus far, dear boy," the old man corrected. "And might I remind you that we have seen many strange and wondrous things on our journeys."

 

"Not religion," Krysty said, "fear. They're afraid of something, and they came here because they thought they might be protected."

 

"From what?" J.B. asked.

 

Krysty shook her head. "It's all mixed up. I don't have an image. I'm not sure that they know what's driven them here."

 

"The space station?" Ryan asked. It was the only thing they knew that was going to make this night different from any others that had taken place in Smoke Creek Desert.

 

"I don't know, lover. Mebbe."

 

"Primitive instinct," Mildred said.

 

"What do you mean?" J.B. asked.

 

"Those muties live on an intellectual edge barely higher than most animals," the woman stated. "I think we can all agree on that." The declaration passed without objection. "Back in the twentieth century, before California was nuked and collapsed off the face of the planet, scientists had already been studying the effects of natural phenomena on animals."

 

"Don't understand," Jak said.

 

Mildred turned to him slightly, but included all the companions in her conversation. "Earthquakes. Flood. Storms. Extrahard winters. The lack of game. All things that take place in Nature that humans have a hard time detecting, animals seem to know about ahead of time. Like they have an extra sense that humans forgot about or never developed."

 

"This is true," Doc said. "Even after the invention of the seismograph, an observation of animals, especially their migratory habits, was maintained. Often the animals reacted to unknown stimuli that warned them sometimes as much as days before data-gathering devices would report activity."

 

"You think those muties can sense the space station coming down out of the sky?" Bernsen asked. He barked a short laugh. "That's preposterous. It took the teams at the Heimdall Foundation months to track Shostakovich's Anvil ."

 

"And you people got it wrong once already," Mildred said in a hard voice. "Or else you wouldn't have been up around the seven villes. I see these muties sitting here now, waiting for what you say is going to happen."

 

The fat scientist's face colored slightly.

 

"Would you then," Doc asked, "care to venture a hypothesis concerning the presence of the muties at this particular location at this precise time?"

 

"No," Bernsen admitted after a moment.

 

"How far are we from the area where it's supposed to come down?" Ryan asked.

 

J.B. took out his minisextant and did his calculations.

 

While the Armorer was busy, Ryan kept watch over the muties. They were growing more agitated, shifting individually and in small groups, not really noticing now when others encroached on their space. Some of them added more wood to their fires. Ryan knew that wood was scarce in the area. The companions had experienced some difficulty themselves in obtaining it in hopes of having a camp fire to warm themselves at some point in the night. The muties had come prepared with bundles of sticks, branches and driftwood tied by strings.

 

"About three hundred yards north and west of our position," the Armorer announced.

 

Ryan turned his night glasses away from the muties and looked toward Honey Lake. The body of water was much larger than indicated on the map they'd been working from. It glistened, dark and oily, in the distance, acting like a mirror for the stars and moon above. The reflection resembled a piece of sky that had fallen and taken root in the desert rock and sand.

 

Then a flare ignited, reflected on the lake's surface as it skipped between the stars like a rock skimming waves.

 

Ryan glanced back up, knowing what he was actually seeing was in the sky.

 

"There," Krysty said, taking him by the arm and pointing to the east.

 

Ryan stared at the orange-white burn streaking across the sky. It looked only inches long, but he knew what he was looking at was actually several miles in length.

 

"It's reentering the atmosphere," Bernsen said in a reverent voice.

 

"On fire?" Jak asked. "Be burned time gets here. Waste to come if does."

 

"Dear boy," Doc said, "the space station itself might not be burning up. What you're seeing is the friction of the station battering against the air."

 

"It could still burn up before it reaches the ground," Mildred stated. "Space stations weren't designed as reentry vehicles."

 

"No, not as a general rule," Bernsen said, his eyes glued to the action in the heavens, "but this one was built to withstand a hell of a beatingmeteors, satellites and space weapons if it was ever under attack. There was so much the Russians hoped to gain from the recording equipment aboard it. They built it to last."

 

Below their position the muties were all pointing skyward. Their chanting and ululation had increased to almost deafening proportions even over the distance separating them from the companions. More wood dropped onto the camp fires, making the flames reach even higher.

 

Ryan watched, a thrill going through him. Looking at something no one had ever seen before was always exhilarating.

 

The space station, if that was what it truly was, fell quickly. The orange faded to yellow as the heat increased, then turned white. Streaking earthward, the space station's trajectory abruptly changed.

 

"It's breaking apart," Ryan said.

 

"No!" Bernsen screamed, almost starting over the ridge. J.B. grabbed the man by the shirt collar and hauled him back. "It can't break apart! It's not supposed to do that!"

 

"Stay put," the Armorer warned, "or you'll never get the chance to tell anyone you saw this. I'd sooner kill you than let the muties have a chance, because they'd take us right along with you."

 

Bernsen stuffed his fists against his mouth, shaking his head from side to side.

 

Ryan watched as the space station broke up into at least four pieces. He thought he might have seen a fifth go spinning away to the south, but whatever trail it might have made disappeared quickly against the harsh light of the reentry burn.

 

The light was so bright it reduced the night's shadows to pinpricks against the uneven ground, almost blinding in its intensity. The largest piece continued along its trajectory toward Honey Lake. The lake's surface blazed with white fire, shimmering across the surface, only a few pockets of darkness left where debris shoved up through the water.

 

"Dark night!" J.B. exclaimed as it got closer, approaching with increasing speed as bits and pieces of the space station were torn off or burned off and streamlined the craft. "Damn thing's so big it's going to fall on top of us!"

 

"Stand your ground," Ryan advised. "If we start moving, we could end up right under it, or the muties will see us."

 

The companions all dug into the ground, watching the falling space station's final approach. It slammed into the ground 150 yards from the mutie campsite, sundering the rock and scattering sand before it like an ocean wave. Tremors shook the earth.

 

The chanting broke as the sand washed over the muties, knocking dozens of them to the ground. A moment later the space-station wreckage rolled over them, pulping them against the desert floor. The closer ranks of muties broke and ran, coming up the grade toward the companions.

 

Behind them, red-hot and throwing off heat waves that could be felt even along the ridgeline, the chunk of space station skidded toward Honey Lake. In seconds it shot out over the black depths and sank, glowing eerily until it disappeared.

 

The screaming muties didn't stop their flight, moving on a direct course to overrun the companions' position.

 

"Move back!" Ryan roared, bringing the Steyr to his shoulder. He fired in quick succession, a rolling thunder of five shots that mowed down five muties, bullets driving deep through their chests and faces.

 

Corpses dropped in front of the charging crowd, but the other muties gave them little attention, trampling over them. The line broke only for a moment, the momentum unstoppable. Recognizing a threat they could deal with, the muties raised clubs and axs, bared blades and spears and continued to run.

 

J.B.'s Uzi snarled into angry life. The rounds cut a swath in the ranks of the muties. He ducked behind a boulder to change clips. "Ryan, we aren't going to be able to hold them back."

 

The one-eyed man silently agreed. The muties were a stampede of frightened flesh. Whatever had drawn them there, they'd been betrayed.

 

Sparing a glance over his shoulder, Ryan watched as Krysty guided Doc farther back into the broken landscape, Bernsen at their heels. Jak was covering their backs, the .357 Magnum pistol in his fist banging out death.

 

Hoyle was cut down in midstride less than fifteen yards away. A hard-thrown spear took him in the back, sliding into his heart, then burst through his chest. The Heimdall Foundation guide halted his run, crumpling to his knees. He grabbed the spearhead protruding from his chest in disbelief, then toppled forward.

 

His rifle reloaded, Ryan exchanged looks with J.B. "Time to go."

 

"Ready," the Armorer replied as he pulled the shotgun around. "Follow my lead?"

 

"Do it," Ryan said. He was no more than ten feet behind J.B. when they broke into a run. The muties were almost within clawing distance, and a spear sailed over Ryan's shoulder, dropping point first into the inclined terrain ahead of him.

 

Krysty was over the top of the next ridge, coming around with her .38 in both hands as she took advantage of the cover offered. She opened her mouth, screaming a warning.

 

Ryan couldn't read the words, but he knew the intent. He cut hard left, his hearing only now starting to return from the concussive force of the space station's impact. A grinding groan echoed around him.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan cursed as he saw the rectangular shape of the wag crest the ridgeline to the left of Krysty's position. He had no doubt to whom it belonged. "J.B.!"

 

"I see it!" the Armorer shouted back.

 

Heavy machine guns mounted on the wag started blasting away. Tracer rounds flared purple against the velvet night. Fifty-caliber death drummed into the muties, spinning them, dumping them from their feet, knocking them onto their backs. Then the withering fire whipped on, turning toward Ryan and J.B., smacking into the earth only inches behind them.