The room erupted in cheers once more, and now an army of slaves arrived to serve predark wine in crystal goblets. One by one, the barons lucky enough to be present for the wonderful event filed by the infant to pay their respects.

 

 "Magnificent!" an old baron said, nodding at the tiny pink face. "A perfectly healthy norm. Congratulations."

 

 "Thank you," Kinnison said, reaching out a hand toward the babe, then forcing himself to withdraw it. There was no way he would chance spoiling everything now by giving the little one the Red Death.

 

 "And how is the mother?" Griffin asked, his hands tucked into the loose sleeves of his jacket.

 

 The guards in the corners raised their blaster at the movement, and the chancellor quickly withdrew his hands and kept them in plain sight.

 

 "Lady Susan died giving birth, noble sir," the midwife answered sadly, giving a slight curtsy. "The delivery was long and difficult."

 

 "I see, what a tragedy," Griffin said, stroking his beard. "I will attend to her burial needs personally. Such a glorious day to be marked by tragedy."

 

 "That is life," the old baron said.

 

 Kinnison agreed, and carefully watched the chancellor disappear into the crowd. There was something in the way the man had spoken that greatly disturbed the baron. He debated having the man chilled on general principle. His father had always told him that only the dead couldn't hurt you.

 

 "Looks exactly like you, my lord," a baron from the western islands said in a measured tone.

 

 The lord baron narrowed his cold eyes and started to draw a blaster. "And what does that mean, shit-eater?" he growled in an icy voice.

 

 The visiting baron went pale and began to sputter apologies, when a bedraggled sec man stumbled into the throne room pushing his way past the armed guards and guests.

 

 "Who dares!" Kinnison began, then saw it was Lieutenant Brandon. The baron scowled at the man's appearance, clothes torn and bloody, his face slashed with a dozen half-healed scars, some of his black hair burned away, and an expression that announced serious trouble.

 

 "My lord, we need to speak in private," Brandon said quickly, giving the most cursory of salutes. His hand was bandaged, and it was obvious two of his fingers had been broken.

 

 Kinnison felt a blind rage build at the implied discourtesy, especially on such a day as this! Then he saw the grim determination in the sec chiefs face and forced down his fury.

 

 "My private chambers," he directed, and rose to his feet. "The audience is over for today. Come back tomorrow."

 

 As the fat man waddled for the door, the slaves and bodyguards hurried to follow, but not getting close enough to chance touching their master and catching his dread sickness.

 

 "What the fuck was that about?" a baron muttered softly.

 

 Another sipped his wine before speaking. "Perhaps," he said in a hushed tone, "those clones that don't exist have come to call upon our lord and master."

 

 "Wouldn't that be a shame," another added, failing to hide his smile.

 

 "Yes, wouldn't it just be—" he paused to find the correct word "—a total disaster."

 

 "Poor man would never be able to fight the muties and defend this island, would he?"

 

 "That's not for me to say," the first baron replied. "At this time."

 

 Slaves opened the door to the room before the baron, and quickly closed it behind Brandon. The brick walls were lined with longblasters, handcannons and even rapidfires. Covering an entire wall was a detailed painting of the Marshall Islands, every known landmass, island and atoll clearly in beautiful detail. Some sections of the wall map were raised higher than others, layers upon layers of corrections lifting the features until it was almost a contoured relief map.

 

 "Well?" Kinnison demanded, the second the door closed.

 

 "I lost the fleet," Brandon reported, taking a chair. Damn, he was tired.

 

 "Ten ships? How is that possible?"

 

 "And Cold Harbor ville was on fire the last time I saw it," Brandon added wearily. "Probably burned to the ground by now."

 

 "Tell me everything," Kinnison demanded, and the sec men explained in detail—the fight, the pirates, the outlanders, the mesa with the predark machinery.

 

 "So you chilled the outlanders and smashed the device," Kinnison said. It wasn't a question.

 

 "The machine for sure, my lord," Brandon answered truthfully. "If we don't control it, no science must be allowed in the islands."

 

 "Correct."

 

 "However, I didn't see the dead bodies of those outlanders. It's possible they survived the fall. I doubt it highly, but you never know."

 

 Going behind his desk, Kinnison slumped in a massive chair built just for his bulk. "At least that machine is gone," he grunted, running his hands along the smooth polished top of the desk. "Unfortunately, we have also lost our main source of flash."

 

 The baron rubbed the corner of his mouth, his hand coming away stained with red. "Were there any young girls with forked tongues involved in this?"

 

 The lieutenant managed to keep a neutral face. How the hell did the fat bastard know about her?

 

 "No, my lord," Brandon lied, "there weren't."

 

 "Good," Kinnison said, grimacing. "If you run across any, chill them on sight. No rape, no torture, just a round in the head. Understood?"

 

 "Yes, my lord. It shall be done."

 

 "I have a son," Kinnison said from out of nowhere.

 

 The comment startled Brandon, but he smiled broadly. "My congratulations, my lord. What's his name?"

 

 "Corbet."

 

 "Good name. May he rule for a hundred years!"

 

 "Of course," Kinnison said, waving that away. "With the loss of the flash, this places me in an awkward situation with the western islands. The villes are fighting each other again, and if I refuse them both black powder, I could appear weak. It is possible the fools might join forces to attack us."

 

 "The fact you have an heir now will slow them down some," Brandon replied, leaning forward in his chair.

 

 "Not by much," Kinnison shot back, then slammed his bloody hand onto the desk. "Shitfire, I have no choice. Go the quartermaster and have him fill a hundred barrels with our best black powder, the stuff reserved for the castle defense."

 

 "Yes, sir!"

 

 "Then fill another hundred with charcoal dust mixed with some fireplace ashes. That should look enough like black powder to pass a brief inspection."

 

 Brandon raised an eyebrow. "Sir? We're going to sell each ville a combination of good and bad?"

 

 "No. We're selling the weakest villes the good powder, and that bastard O'Keefe the crap. The little villes will slaughter O'Keefe, removing a possible danger to the security of my son. Leaving only the small villes without the resources or sec men to ever challenge Maturo Island. Two problems solved, and we reap double the profit from one sale."

 

 "It will be done," Brandon stated firmly. "I can refit my boat in a week and will personally escort the cargo to its destinations."

 

 "I can send some other PT captain to handle that," the baron growled, glancing out the window at the bright sunny day. Lighting flashed in the clouds too far away to hear the rumble of its thunder. "Its more important to know if Cold Harbor ville is still standing. If it is gone, I'll take it over. If it stands, then my Firebirds will level the ville, and again I take it over as abandoned."

 

 "And what about those outlanders?"

 

 "I want them brought before me, dead or alive," he growled. "And I prefer alive. The dead can't be forced to talk. How did they get here from the mainland? Where did they find those rapidfire weapons? There is much I need to know."

 

 Brandon saluted. "I shall take care of it myself, my lord."

 

 "No need for that," Kinnison said smoothly as he drew a pistol from under the desk. "Somebody else will handle the task, not you, fool. The last time we talked, I said that failure to secure the flash meant your death. Did you doubt my word?"

 

 "B-but my lord!" Brandon managed to stammer, rising from his chair. "I have faithfully served you for fifteen seasons! And I brought you the news of the pirate fleet and the outlanders! Surely, that is much more important than one small mistake. I can reclaim Cold Harbor ville and bring you the bodies of the outlanders. Give me a chance! Just one chance, is all I ask!"

 

 "No more chances," the baron said, and fired twice. The man toppled over clutching his belly, the bones of a shattered knee showing white through the tattered flesh of his leg. Blood pumped freely from an open artery, and Brandon did what he could to hold the flow back with his bare hands.

 

 A heartbeat later, the door was slammed aside and sec men rushed into the room with their blasters drawn. But they paused, uncertain what to do next at the scene of their baron with a blaster and their commander lying in a pool of his own blood.

 

 "Baron, are you okay?" a corporal asked.

 

 "Take that prick to the playroom," Kinnison commanded, rubbing the sores on his hand. They were stinging badly from the discharge of the weapon. "And keep him alive while you peel off his skin. Let's see if it fits me better than him."

 

 The leader of the man paled, but saluted. "At once, my lord!"

 

 "No, please!" Brandon wailed, terror distorting his features. "Baron, don't do this!"

 

 Kinnison made no reply, his blaster held steady on the crippled man.

 

 As the advancing guards converged, Brandon tried to draw his blaster, and a corporal slammed the wooden stock of his longblaster into the officer's hand, shattering the bones. The weapon dropped from limp fingers, and Brandon made a mad dash for the window. But the troopers tackled him to the floor before he got ten paces, and ruthlessly beat the officer until he stopped resisting. Bloody and battered, the weeping lieutenant was hauled away, leaving a trail of blood on the freshly scrubbed floor.

 

 As the door closed, cutting off the former sec man's anguished cries, Kinnison tucked away his blaster and reclined in the cushioned chair to debate whom he should send to find the nameless outlanders and bring them in for questioning.

 

  

 

 Chapter Five

 

  

 

 A week later, Ryan and the others stood on the balcony of the predark lighthouse. Their clothes were freshly washed and boots polished. Their backpacks bulged with MRE packs and their pouches were jammed with ammo. The past few days had been mostly spent sleeping, and rubbing lotion into wounds. There had been no sign of the lord baron's PT boats, and while the crabs rallied several times to try to gain entrance through the fireplace, they never made it in alive.

 

 It was a clear, crisp day, the heat of the sun perfectly balancing the coolness of the water. A breeze carried a faint smell of living plants and flowers. Down on the beach, the crabs moved about on the shattered remains of their fallen dead, the broken shells picked clean of anything edible with ruthless efficiency. The wind moaned through the rustling weeds, and the waves gently crashed on the rocky shore. Ryan felt this had to have been what it was like before humanity was born and the world was clean and untouched. Raw. But everything changed, and humanity was now here to stay. If they could survive skydark, then nothing could get rid of Man. The world belonged to them, not the muties.

 

 "Time," Krysty asked, hunching her shoulders. The straps of her pack would have cut into her shoulders if not for the thick bearskin coat.

 

 "Pretty soon," Ryan announced, checking his wrist chron.

 

 The plan was simple, as all good plans were. Create a diversion, then wade across the bay to the next island during low tide.

 

 "Good," Mildred said, her wild hair tied back with a strip of cloth. "I hate long waits."

 

 "That's not what you said last night," J.B. whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

 

 Mildred hushed the man with a glance, then smiled and bumped him with her hip.

 

 Ignoring the lovers, Ryan watched the waves on the beach, carefully noting they were cresting lower each time. Soon the tide would be going out, and that was when they would make their move.

 

 "Now," he announced, clicking off the safety on the handle of the M-16, ready to cut loose on full-auto.

 

 The seven chattering assault rifles sprayed a hell-storm of 5.56 mm death, and the crabs died in droves, chewed to pieces by the streams of lead. Finishing a clip, Ryan dropped it from the breech and slammed in a fresh magazine. They each had one spare, all of the live ammo they could salvage from the stacks and crates. A lot of the M-16 rounds had been bad, not corroded, but simply weak from the long decades. But J.B. had been able to cook up some guncotton and mixed it with the old cordite to get the blasters working with half charges. The rounds had just barely enough recoil to operate the feeder mechanism of the weapons, and misfires were happening constantly.

 

 Soon they had a clear zone at the base of the tower, and J.B. rappelled down first to tether the rope and to stand guard. His M-16 sputtered flame at anything that moved, more than once chewing up weeds, but catching several blues trying to sneak closer under cover of the foliage. In a matter of minutes, the companions were on the ground, spraying lead in every direction. Crabs exploded constantly, their green blood splattering over the rocks and sand dunes.

 

 "Shit," Jak cursed, working the bolt to free another jam. "Ammo stinks!"

 

 "Better than throwing rocks," Dean retorted, burping the rapidfire at the thickest cluster of the muties. Seeking protection, the crabs frantically scuttled for the shoreline, and the companions concentrated their weapons in that direction to drive the muties inland and away from the water.

 

 "I'm out," Krysty reported, dropping the rapid-fire and drawing her S&W revolver.

 

 "Same here," Doc rumbled.

 

 "I hope this works," Mildred muttered, firing her rapidfire in a long burst only to have to abruptly stop. She cast away the dead blaster and pulled her ZKR in a smooth draw.

 

 "Damn well better," Ryan growled. "Light the fuse."

 

 Grabbing a thin string dangling among the climbing ropes, J.B. shielded the end with his body and used a butane cig lighter to start it burning. The long fuse sputtered and popped for a while, started to hiss steadily and climb toward the balcony, then out of sight.

 

 "Thirty seconds!" Ryan shouted, and splashed into the shoals, heading for the next island.

 

 In ragged formation, the rest of the companions followed the man, wading into the shallow water. Walking was tricky with the outgoing tide pulling at their legs, the sand underfoot shifting as it followed the flow. They stayed to the right to avoid a deep ravine spotted days ago by Krysty while she mapped the crossing, then they jogged to the left to bypass another.

 

 But the moment they went into the shoals, the crabs rushed for the beach. The companions started to fire their blasters, while Dean and Jak maintained cover fire with the M-16s until the clips became exhausted. The rapidfires went into the drink, and their regular blasters were hauled into view.

 

 Suddenly, the big blue appeared and started clicking its pincers, directing the other muties. Jak fired his Magnum pistol, the blast rolling over the waves, and the slug scored a glancing blow off the shell of the huge mutie.

 

 "Fucking windage," the teen cursed, turning to try to catch the others. They were halfway across the bay by now, and had to watch their footing to avoid another ravine full of coral.

 

 "Any second now," Ryan warned, dropping the exhausted M-16 and pulling out the SIG-Sauer. The blaster glistened with oil, the trigger and most of the internal springs brand-new, taken from another handcannon of similar design.

 

 "Make sure to cover your ears and keep your mouths open," Mildred warned, kneeling in the damp sand. "That way the concussion won't make you deaf."

 

 The ground shook, and the glass Fresnel lens shattered into a million pieces as flames shot out of the lighthouse. The whole peninsula seemed to shake as the base of the tower broke apart from the titanic explosion. The structure lifted into the air on a fireball, then came crashing down, catching most of the advancing crabs under its descending tonnage of granite blocks. The muties were obliterated, the big blue screaming for only a moment before it was gone, smashed flat by the crumbling building.

 

 Then the secondary charges went off. The concussion hit the companions, slamming them into the water as the ground under the lighthouse formed a geyser of boiling flame that licked high into the sky, the six thousand gallons of jellied diesel fuel igniting into a fireball of ungodly proportions. The chimney bricks shot into the sky, and started to fall back to earth randomly.

 

 Soaked to the skin once more, the companions tried to dodge the falling bricks and not fall into one of the coral beds, when suddenly a group of the large blue crabs crawled menacingly into view from over the sand dune. The creatures flicked their eye stalks around the scene of destruction, stared hatefully at the two-legs, then started forward at a remarkable pace.

 

 Ryan raised his longblaster and fired a fast four times. One stopped dead, but the others only flinched as the 7.62 mm rounds glanced off their hard shells. Fireblast! This wasn't part of the plan.

 

 "On your ten!" the Deathlands warrior shouted, working the bolt and firing again.

 

 The companions cut loose with their assorted collection of blasters, and two more of the giant crabs fell dead before reaching the beach. But the remaining three made it safely into the shallow waters and disappeared from sight.

 

 Ryan fired rapidly into the water, but the rounds were visibly deflected. He would have to get a lot closer before the bullets could cause any damage. Fuck that.

 

 "Run for it," J.B. ordered, pulling out a gren and flipping away the handle. He pulled the pin and cast the charge between them and the oncoming crabs. While the gren was still in the air, he turned and waded after the others at his best speed.

 

 Glancing over a shoulder, Mildred saw the gren splash into the bay, closely followed by a thunderous explosion of fire, water and coral. As the noise and smoke drifted away, she saw no taint of green in the area to mark a kill.

 

 "No blood!" Mildred warned, and fired a few rounds into the sea before turning and running for the next island with the others. Only a few more yards to go until she was safe on the beach.

 

 The water level dropped from her waist to her knees, the rocky sea bottom changing to sand, and the physician struggled through the loose material, every step more difficult than the previous one. Several of the others had reached the shore and were watching the sea. Suddenly, J.B. gasped and fired the shotgun from the hip.

 

 No! The woman braced herself to be torn apart by the barrage of flechettes. There was a sharp crack to her left and something screamed loudly. She turned with her blaster in hand, and saw one of the giant blues only a yard away. It was missing a pincer, a torrent of green blood pumping from the shattered end of its limb.

 

 Burbling and hissing, the mutie turned on her and raised both scorpion tails high for a strike. Mildred leveled her weapon and fired once directly into its segmented mouth. The crab jerked back and trembled all over, then collapsed into the water and went still.

 

 "Good shot," J.B. said, offering a hand and pulling her to dry land.

 

 "Can't have an armored throat," she panted, giving a weak smile. "The .38 probably rattled around inside its thick shell, chewing up organs and doing ten times the damage of a gren."

 

 "I'll remember that," Jak snorted, thumbing fresh rounds into his .357 Magnum pistol. These were also partial loads with only half of the usual power. The lower recoil was throwing off his aim.

 

 The strident boom of the LeMat shook the beach as Doc triggered a round at a huge crab rushing out of the water. Five feet wide, the mutie stood over three-feet tall, its scorpion tails lashing wildly about as it headed for the companions, then moved around as if trying to dodged their bullets.

 

 Bizarre. Sensing a trap, Ryan spun with his long-blaster spitting fire. Caught by surprise, the crab right behind him recoiled from the attack. Ryan blew off an eye stalk, then blocked a crushing blow from a pincer as large as a shovel.

 

 J.B. stroked his shotgun's trigger, and the flechettes removed the mutie's face. Unexpectedly blind, the creature went mad, lashing about with its good pincer and both tails in any direction. Stepping into range, Ryan aimed the Steyr and fired into its pulped mouth. The beast reared on its hind legs and stayed that way, frozen in death.

 

 Caught alone, the remaining crab started for the safety of the ocean and was easily chilled by the combined firepower of the companions' blasters.

 

 "Anybody hurt?" Ryan demanded, shaking his blaster to get rid of the excess water. Droplets flew from the weapon as he jacked the slide to keep the breech clean. Good thing it had been freshly oiled.

 

 "No blood showing," Mildred announced in relief.

 

 "Good," he said. "Let's get moving. We've got six more of these to cross before reaching the main island."

 

 IT WAS LATE in the afternoon by the time the companions reached their goal, the big island with the ville. By now the tide was coming in again, and forced them away during the last crossing. The group was barely able to wade to shore before missing the island entirely and getting swept out to sea. On the secluded beach, the companions poured salt water from their boots and pulled on dry clothes from their backpacks. There were no footprints on the beach nor any other sign of the place being inhabited, but then, they were a good distance from the ville.

 

 Leaving the beach, Ryan led the group into the jungle and headed westward. It was cool in the lush greenery, but the heavy tangle of vines made for slow travel. Monkeys scampered in the treetops, screaming at the presence of the humans, which sent off the flocks of birds, and soon the jungle was filled with the cacophony of animal screams. Hacking through a cluster of vines with his panga, Ryan fought the urge to chill the noisy bastards. So much for sneaking in close on the quiet. Anybody not deaf knew that strangers were nearby.

 

 "Should we hit the beach?" Dean asked. "Easier walking."

 

 Jak answered, "They know coming. But not which way."

 

 "Gotcha."

 

 Tall palm trees laden with green coconuts festooned the sky, and the lower trees were heavy with breadfruit. No starvation here. The greenery stopped abruptly and Ryan found himself standing on the edge of a twenty-foot drop. At the bottom was a flat plain that stretched into the distance only to rise into jungle again after fifty or so yards. A thin creek flowed down the middle, some small birds drinking from the stream. Just around the bend on the other side, they could see the top of the wall around the ville. J.B. unfolded his telescope and gave it a once over. Odd, no sign of guards.

 

 "Riverbed," Jak identified.

 

 Doc beamed a smile, flashing his perfect teeth. "Ah, a most excellent location for a ville. The sea for fish, and the river brings freshwater to your door."

 

 "Dumb," the teen corrected. "Coldhearts attack, only escape has no cover. Easy chilling."

 

 "Dark night," J.B. muttered. "From the lighthouse, I thought the wall had iron plate bolted to the outside, but that's wrong. It's made of cargo containers stacked on top each other."

 

 Pushing some leaves aside, Ryan took a look through the scope. Damn, the man was right. A wall of cargo containers. The Deathlands warrior had encountered them before in the ruins of dockyards, just never this many of them all at once. There had to be a hundred of them in the wall.

 

 The containers were always exactly the same, ten feet high, twenty feet wide, thirty feet long. According to Mildred, folks would pack them with whatever, and then load the containers on ships. That kept things fast and easy, with no juggling around in the hold of the vessel to try to fit one more item. Modular—that was the word she used. Like bullets in a blaster.

 

 "Damn good wall," Krysty said, passing the longeyes to somebody else. "Just stack two of the containers on top of each other and repeat. Could fill them with sand if you wanted, and no pirate cannon ever made would breach that wall."

 

 "You wouldn't have to fill them," Mildred said slowly, "if they were already packed. These boxes are air- and watertight. Sometimes they were welded shut if the cargo was valuable. If they haven't been opened, the wealth of the old world is sitting right there, ready to be found."

 

 "Could be filled with anything," J.B. said, compacting the longeyes and tucking the device away in his pack. He glanced at the others. "Wonder if the local baron knows this?"

 

 "Let's find out," Ryan said, and started forward along the edge of the riverbank.

 

 Reaching the beach once more, they headed for the ville, walking in the open with hands on their blasters, but no weapons drawn. They didn't want to appear hostile and start a fight, or walk naked into a slaver camp. If possible, they would trade the two M-16 rapidfires they had with them for that purpose, or the secret of the cargo containers, for a ship, and leave without incident. Spilled blood would only make cutting a deal with the sec men that much tougher.

 

 As Ryan rounded the bend and the ville came full into view, the first thing he noticed was the ruined dockyard. The smashed hulls of burned ships and rowboats lined the crude wooden docks, tiny birds pecking at the bodies sprawled everywhere. Not a soul could be seen moving about in the dock, or on the top of the wall. No guards were in sight, and no alarm bells rang at the approach of outlanders.

 

 "I don't like this," Mildred said, drawing her piece and thumbing back the hammer. A wave crashed on the rock formations along the beach, spraying the woman with salt water, and she moved away from the shore.

 

 "This could be Spider Island all over again," Krysty said, her hair flaring outward.

 

 Jacking the slide on his semiautomatic pistol, Dean concentrated on the ocean. No ships of any kind were in sight at the moment. But that didn't mean a pirate ship, or one of those damn steam-powered PT boats wouldn't appear at any moment with blasters blazing.

 

 There was a gap in the steel box wall surrounding the ville, a section where only one of the shipping containers sat on the ground instead of two. Sandbags lined the top of the container, the cloth sacks bristling with deadly pungi sticks made from sharpened bamboo. A formidable barrier to cross.

 

 "There's the gate," Ryan said, sliding the Steyr off his shoulder. "Let's see if there's anybody inside. I'm on point. J.B. cover the rear. Five-yard spread."

 

 "Got you covered," J.B. said, working the bolt on the Uzi machine pistol.

 

 Spreading out so as to not offer a group target to any snipers, the companions slowly walked toward the gate, the sand crunching under their new boots. In the jungle, monkeys ran amuck in the treetops screeching at the top of their lungs.

 

 "Something has them spooked," Krysty observed.

 

 "Cannon fire?" Dean asked.

 

 She shook her head. "Something a lot worse than pirates."

 

 The boy didn't reply, but loosened the bowie knife in the sheath at the small of his back.

 

 As Ryan got closer, he saw the gate box was shoved back a few feet, leaving a gap in the defenses. Raising a hand to call for a halt, he jerked his head in both directions and the companions split apart, half going to either side of the opening. Then Ryan charged forward and threw his back to the steel box, blaster at the ready. After a few moments, he eased to the corner of the container, then proceeded down the dark ten-foot passageway between the gate and the wall. His nerves were taut. This was the perfect spot for an ambush. Nearing the end of gate, he listened closely and heard birds, lots of them. Not good. Wriggling closer, the man chanced a quick peek inside.

 

 "Fireblast," he snapped, easing his stance and lowering the blaster. "Mildred, check this out."

 

 Quickly, the puzzled physician came down the pass and stopped dead in her tracks. A hundred different types of birds covered the ground, steadily pecking at something lying on the ground. Aiming at the scavengers, Mildred fired a shot and the creatures took flight, their beating wings sounding as loud as thunder until they were gone into the blue sky.

 

 "Yeah, just what I thought," Ryan said. Decomposing corpses lay everywhere in the ville, sprawled on the ground, some halfway through windows as if trying to escape, while others were locked together with knives drawn. The dead were dressed in rags, many wearing loose garments made of woven grass. All of them were barefoot. The ripe smell of rotting flesh was thick in the air.

 

 "Plague," Doc said, a quaver of fear in his voice. "We should not go any closer."

 

 "What? Oh, horse shit," Mildred countered, and kicked over a desiccated corpse lying sprawled in the sand. The birds and insects had done a good job of stripping away the flesh on most of the dead, but this one was fresh, no more than a day or two old. Rigor had come and gone. There was very little meat on the dead man, which told her a lot.

 

 "See? There are no pustules or skin eruptions," Mildred said, drawing a knife to slit open the men's chest. Some insects scampered from his lungs, carrying away tiny morsels of food.

 

 She pointed with the blade. "Hmm, yes, look at the kidney, and the belly. This man died ofVibrio cholerae …he died of cholera, I mean. Not the bubonic plague."

 

 "What is?" Jak asked, holding a handkerchief in front of his face. "Like brain rot or bloodfire?"

 

 "An enterotoxin. It comes from bad water," Mildred said, cleaning her blade on the rags of the corpse, then stabbing it into the ground before playing the flame of her lighter along the steel. Alcohol would have been better, but she had none. This would have to do for sterilization. "I'd bet live rounds we'll find their latrine right next to the drinking well. Damn fools did it to themselves."

 

 "Masks," Ryan commanded in a no-nonsense voice, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. All of the companions tied some sort of cloth across their faces to cover nose and mouth.

 

 "Not necessary," Mildred said. "It's spread by oral consumption, not breathing."

 

 "Can we stay?" Ryan asked bluntly. In battle, or cutting a deal with a baron, he knew what to do. But sickness like this was more Mildred's specialty, and only a triple stupe would make a guess when he had an expert standing three feet away.

 

 "Keep the handkerchiefs over your faces," she directed. "Don't touch anything with your bare hands, and for God's sake don't eat or drink anything unless it's in a sealed can. We'll be okay."

 

 "Must have hit like lightning," Krysty muttered, looking away from tiny corpses, still clutched in their mother's arms.

 

 "Goddamn it!" Mildred raged, clenching her fists. "I could have saved this whole ville with a pocketful of rehydration salt and some tetracycline. Or even old furazolidone!"

 

 Jak stared at the physician, wondering if she was making up those words.

 

 "Got any of the chems?" Krysty asked bluntly. "Do they exist anymore, even in the redoubts?" The physician sometimes got this way over her inability to cure diseases that were such simple matters in her day, and now were the unstoppable plagues of the reality that was Deathlands.

 

 "Can't even remember what penicillin tastes like anymore," Mildred admitted gloomily. Her med kit hung heavy at her side. She had the skill to cure the people, but not the tools. Sometimes the physician got so frustrated she thought she'd go as mad as Doc.

 

 Going to the other side of the gate, J.B. found that a bulldozer was attached with lots of heavy chains to pull the gate open, its shovel flat against the container to keep it closed again. It was one hell of an impressive gate. Going to the driver's seat, the Armorer found a corpse sprawled in the chair, skinny arms still on the controls.

 

 "Aced trying to get out," J.B. said, climbing into the dozer and checking the gauges.

 

 "Nuke batteries have plenty of power," he reported, thumping a control board. Rust fell from under the dashboard like dried blood. "But it's out of fuel."

 

 "Let it stay there," Ryan decided. He had no intention of wasting any of their precious fuel on operating the big wag. They would need every drop for the gateway to get them out of here. He only hoped it was still intact. People often destroyed pre-dark technology simply out of fear. If that had happened to the gateway, well, he had another plan to get them out of the Cific, but it was a hell of a lot more risky than using the gateway.

 

 "Wonder how they moved the boxes," Doc rumbled, leaning on his stick, hands clasped on the silver lion's-head handle.

 

 "No biggie," Dean said, pointing. "See? They're empty."

 

 Ryan looked closer and noted that all of the containers had holes cut in the side to serve as doorways and windows. But there was no glass, and the doors were only hanging sheets of canvas.

 

 "They lived inside the wall," Ryan said, rubbing his chin. "Smart. Anybody tried to get in, and you'd hear them on the metal roof."

 

 "Must have been a bitch cutting the doors," J.B. stated, tilting back his hat. "Those aren't plas-ex holes. Mebbe they used chisels and hacksaws."

 

 "Take weeks," Jak said grimly. "Months."

 

 "Mebbe the locals needed the steel boxes to keep out something no sandbag-and-wood barricade could," Krysty said, her hair stirring to unfelt breezes. The sense of death in the ville was strong, but somewhere life was stirring weakly. It was like a tickle with a feather, almost too soft to feel. Then as quickly as it came, the sensation was gone.

 

 "Triple red," Ryan whispered softly. The hairs rising on the back of his neck, he raised the Steyr and scanned the area quickly.

 

 "So you felt it, too?" Krysty said, clicking back the hammer on her S&W .38 revolver.

 

 "We're being watched," Mildred agreed. "Don't know from where." The hundred holes in the encircling wall each seemed to stare blankly at the companions below. But from one of those dark holes, living eyes watched their every move.

 

 "Could be the birds. Got to clear this place out," J.B. said. Sliding the shotgun off his shoulder, he jacked the action and fired a 12-gauge round into the birds. The flock erupted in bloody feathers, the rest lifted into the air, only to settle down again and begin to feed once more.

 

 Doc tried this time, the LeMat roaring louder than a cannon. Some birds rose into the sky, but most roosted on the top of the wall, settling in to simply wait until it was safe to return.

 

 "Never leave," Jak stated, leaning forward slightly so that his white hair cascaded down to cover his face. "Too much food, not enough us." The position was a combat stance, something he did unconsciously to hide his eyes and thus mask what direction he would attack.

 

 "When the belly speaks," Mildred growled, "the ears become deaf."

 

 "Indeed, madam." Doc arched an eyebrow. "Buddha?"

 

 "Who else?"

 

 Looking over the aced ville, Ryan scowled deeply. This was no place to make camp. The smell of the dead was attracting swarms of dragonflies, which had discovered the companions as a new source of nourishment. J.B. hauled a Molotov cocktail from his munitions bag, and the group passed around the bottle of fuel, rubbing small amounts on their exposed skin. The flies departed immediately, but they knew the bugs would return once the gas vapors had dissipated.

 

 "Okay, we do a fast recce," Ryan stated, hoisting his longblaster. "In pairs only. Stay alert, watch for traps. Check for any boats, or even canoes we might use. Krysty, with me. J.B. stay with Mildred. Dean with Jak. Doc, you're the anchor."

 

 "Once more, I am Balador at the gate, my dear Ryan," the old man said, thrusting his stick into the ground and drawing the monstrous LeMat. "None shall pass without a greeting from my trusty Mjolnir!"

 

 "Crazy old coot," Mildred grumbled. "Everybody in your time period talk like that?"

 

 Doc smiled. "Only the educated, madam."

 

 As the others spread out to follow the wall, Krysty and Ryan cut directly through the middle of the settlement. The corpses carpeted the ground, and more than once they were forced to tread on the dead to keep going straight.

 

 In the center of the ville, they found a huge cooking pit, now converted into a pyre. Bodies and cords of wood were mixed together, waiting for a lit match. The stench was unimaginable.

 

 "Gaia! They tossed the poor bastards in, dead or alive," Krysty said.

 

 The man merely grunted in reply. He'd seen folks do a lot worse than that to stay alive. Ryan was no stranger to the savagery of man.

 

 "Let's try over there," he said, indicating a box with iron bars over the windows. It was the only such cargo container with anything added to the Spartan exterior.

 

 "Must be the baron's home," she guessed.

 

 "Makes sense," he agreed.

 

 But as they started to leave, a whispery voice spoke from out of nowhere. "H-help…me…"

 

 The man and woman swung about in a crouch, their blasters sweeping the nearby corpses for any hostile signs. But nothing was stirring, except the swarms of fat flies feeding on the festering dead. Then the voice came again.

 

 "Ryan…" the voice called from the depths of the reeking pit. "For God's sake, Ryan. It's…me…"

 

  

 

 Chapter Six

 

  

 

 With white-knuckled hands, Henry Glassman grimly held on to the control board of the pitching PT boat. The spray whipped back his hair and stung his eyes as it came howling over the cracked windshield of the open cabin at the front of the craft. Its speed was phenomenal, and the huge steam engine aft of the vessel thumped louder than a cannon. The crew said that was normal, and he wondered if it was true.

 

 Glassman still couldn't believe this PT boat and its sec men were his to command. The healer had played for as much time as possible with Kinnison, praying his family would escape the clutches of the lord baron. But Kinnison had outmaneuvered him once more, and with his family under guard back on Maturo Island, Glassman had no choice but to do the baron's dirty work yet again.

 

 He had no idea why he was chosen for this task. The healer knew next to nothing about the sea, and even less about the steam-powered boats called peteys by the sec men who rode them, and PT boats by everybody else. Rebuilt from the wreckage of some predark navy, the craft moved faster than arrows and carried enough weaponry and blasters to level a small ville. No pirate ship would dare to approach one of the deadly boats, even the huge four-masted windjammers that carried dozens of black powder cannons.

 

 The sec men who served as crew on the vessels were fiercely proud of their status, and wore facial tattoos to show their rank and boat. Once you were made crew, you were crew for life. And the sailors feared nothing but the wrath of their master and the deepers, the terrible muties that lived in the cold depths of the limitless ocean and rose only after the worst storms to devour anything they could find. The sea muties were the main reason nobody tried to sail out of the archipelago and reach the mainland anymore. As soon as any vessel sailed past the last island of the Cine chain, the currents forced it back, and then the deepers attacked, dragging the vessels down whole into the sea. Volcanoes, hurricanes, pirates, slavers and Kinnison, this hellish prison was the extent of their world, as sure as if there were solid granite walls sealing the people inside.

 

 Dripping with spray, Glassman ran a finger around the stiff collar of his new uniform, trying to get more comfortable. As befitting his rank of captain, Glassman wore loose gray clothing, and woven sandals that were easy to kick off if a man went overboard. Heavy boots could drag a sailor into the cold embrace of Davey faster than a knife to the neck. Around his waist was a wide leather belt with a flintlock sitting in a holster smack in the middle of his stomach, and a machete slung just below his armpit. The rest of the crew was dressed the same, except for the pilot, Sergeant Campbell. He alone carried a predark revolver. It was blatantly obvious he was the jailer assigned to watch over the healer, and to assure his obedience.

 

 "How far to the next island?" Glassman shouted over the crash of the waves and the roar of the steam engine.

 

 The man at the wheel started to reply when the aft engine cut loose with a long, loud blast of its steam whistle to equalize pressure. Some of the oldsters said that back in the predark days, there was something called a relief switch that could keep a boiler from exploding from too much pressure. But that tech was lost, and the whistle was sounded regularly to keep the machine functioning.

 

 "About fifty miles," Campbell replied. "Say, another hour, sir."

 

 "Thank you, Sergeant," Glassman replied, suddenly reaching out to grab hold of the dashboard as the boat lurched. Alongside the pilot was an empty chair, bolted to the deck and his to use whenever he wished. But it seemed using it was something only a landlubber would do and would greatly decrease his authority over the crew. Swallowing hard, the man fought the roiling sensation in his gut and tried to rock to the motion of the vessel as it skimmed rapidly over the choppy waters. He had to be the baron's sec man in every possible way if his wife and children were to stay this side of the soil.

 

 So far, the crew of PT 312 had visited a dozen islands, leaving messages with the local barons about the reward for the capture of the outlander Ryan and his crew of murdering coldhearts. A dozen out of a thousand. This journey to all of the major islands was going to take weeks, if not months to complete. Some of the larger islands like Namorik and Alinglapala supported numerous villes. Most were on the beach, and each of the barons agreed to send runners to the inland villes with the news. On the crescent-moon-shaped Oma atoll, Glassman had found two villes on opposite points of the landmass at war with each other. The healer had his crew use the big .50-caliber machine gun to chill a score of people fighting on the beach. The combat paused, and he relayed the message to the barons and departed, leaving them to their battle. Lord Baron Kinnison didn't give a spent brass if the villes fought with each other, or much of anything else—as long as they obeyed.

 

 Unfortunately, the last baron visited had slyly suggested cleaning up some slaves and pretending they were the strangers to turn them in for the reward. Glassman agreed to the plan, sailed away from the docks and had the crew blow the entire ville apart with a barrage of Firebirds from the main missile pod. Dozens, maybe hundreds were aced on his command. The healer felt the deaths inside his guts like hot stones. But there had been no choice. It was either chill strangers or be dragged back to the dungeon of the baron to watch his family skinned alive.

 

 "Captain!" a sec man called out from the port cannon. "The waves are cresting white!"

 

 "Is that important?" Glassman responded.

 

 The sailor stole a glance at the others on the deck of PT 312 before answering. "Ah, yes, sir," he replied, trying to mask a surly smile. "Means a storm is coming! Maybe we should find a cove to anchor in, just in case."

 

 A storm? Glassman glanced at the sky. The heavy clouds rumbled with sheet lightning as always. He recalled less than a week of clear blue in his whole life. Some of the oldsters said the clear days were coming less often, as if the atmosphere was becoming more polluted with toxic chems and rads. But that was impossible. Sheer nonsense.

 

 "What's your opinion, Sarge?" Glassman asked the pilot.

 

 Campbell looked out of the corner of his eyes. "I know of a small atoll only a few miles to the nor-west, Cap'n," the pilot replied, trimming their speed. "Good harbor, no villes, though."

 

 Which meant no more blood to be spilled, for a while at least.

 

 "Take us there," Glassman ordered. "Best speed." Then releasing the stanchion, he climbed into the empty chair. Ah, better. He was tired of standing, and if he was supposed to be the goddamn captain then he could do whatever he wanted. Including sitting down.

 

 "Aye, sir," Campbell replied, then leaned sideways to shout down a bamboo tube sticking out of the deck. "Engine room! Skipper wants all she's got! We're racing a storm!"

 

 "Aye, aye, sir!" a muffled voice replied, and the speed of the boat increased noticeably.

 

 The healer looked hard at the sergeant. That was the first time he had been called the skipper of the vessel. Briefly, he wondered if by taking the chair he had just passed some sort of test.

 

 "Okay, swabs, batten down the hatches!" a bosun called out from amidships, his wet shirt clinging to his muscular chest. "Or do ya wanna swim home!"

 

 Glassman watched as the crew hustled into action, lashing down loose items of equipment, tightening ropes and covering the machine guns and torpedoes with old plastic sheeting that was heavily patched.

 

 Just then, the speeding craft gently rose and fell as something colossal disturbed the water directly under the petey and continued onward, heading directly for the brewing storm on the horizon. The pilot went pale, the crew whispered curses and Glassman felt clammy, his heart pounding in his chest. They had just sailed past death itself, a sea mutie.

 

 With an effort of will, the captain put the event out of his mind and concentrated on the work at hand. There was nothing to be afraid of; death was just part of life in the Cific. And often a welcome release.

 

 PAUSING, Krysty pointed with the barrel of her weapon. Only a few yards away, the form of a woman was sprawled on the filthy soil. Feebly, she raised a hand, struggling to accomplish the action as if her limb weighed a million pounds.

 

 "Here…" the ghostly voice whispered once more. "R-Ryan."

 

 It was a woman, dressed in rags, her body covered with dark discolored bruises. Her arms were skeleton thin, her cheeks sunken and sallow. On her arm was the brand of a slave.

 

 "Who the hell are you?" Ryan asked, scowling, his blaster pointing directly at her heart.

 

 "I w-was on…" she gasped, "S-Spider Island."

 

 Ryan's scowl deepened, but he moved aside the blaster. There was no way a local slave could know that. Quickly, he dragged the dead man off her legs as Krysty knelt on the ground and opened her canteen to trickle some of the tepid water into the woman's mouth. She drank it greedily and sighed in relief.

 

 "Been so long…" she croaked, then broke into a ragged cough. "You're really here. Not another dream…"

 

 "We're real," Krysty said softly, trying to brush aside the tangles of hair covering the woman's face. But the hair was stuck to her skin in spots from the dried residue of sickness.

 

 "You were on theConstellation , right?" Krysty asked, drawing a blade. Cutting a relatively clean shirt off a dead man, she splashed some more water from her canteen onto the rag and mopped the woman's face clean. The smell from the dead around them was terrible. Most were lying in dried pools of their own vomit and feces.

 

 Blinking to focus her eyes, the woman nodded. "I was…one of the slaves who refused to join the crew."

 

 When her face was clear of filth, Krysty could see the woman was actually a girl about Dean's age. Once she might have been pretty, but the enduring scars of privation had shrunk her features into a gnarled visage. She looked a hundred seasons old, Gaia help her. Food and rest might make her strong again, but nothing would remove these scars of hunger.

 

 "Part of the crew, eh?" Ryan demanded, glancing around them. There was no other movement in sight, nor anybody else who looked familiar. But then, the corpses were all so thin and emaciated, the Trader himself could be ten feet away and Ryan would never know it.

 

 "What was wrong? Didn't like the deal I offered, eh?" Ryan said smoothly, studying her reaction.

 

 Licking cracked lips, the girl frowned. "Wasn't you. Old man, silver hair…"

 

 Good enough. Kneeling in the muck, Ryan slid his powerful arms under her frail body and lifted the girl. She weighed next to nothing. His ammo pouch felt heavier.

 

 "What are you doing?" she demanded, her eyes unnaturally large in her sunken face.

 

 "Taking you with us," he said. "Gave you my word back on that island, and it's still good."

 

 "Thank you…"

 

 "Shut up," Ryan said with surprising gentleness. "Go to sleep."

 

 "Ann," she croaked, closing her eyes. "My name is Ann."

 

 "Go to sleep, Ann," he repeated. "You're safe now. My word."

 

 "Safe," she said, the word becoming a whimper, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Then she touched his face with a trembling hand. "I know where it is, the machine you want."

 

 Startled, Ryan stared at the women hard and started to speak, but she went limp, fallen unconscious. The strain of talking had to have been too much for her in that weakened condition.

 

 Inhaling deeply, Ryan sharply whistled three long times. Three short whistles replied, and soon the rest of the companions came running up, weapons out, looking for trouble.

 

 "By the Three Kennedys, what a stench in this area," Doc rumbled, holding his embroidered swallow-eyed handkerchief to his nose. Not even the pig pit of his slave days smelled as bad as this ville. Never before had he prayed for acid rain before, but it was just what this hellhole needed to wash it clean.

 

 "Good Lord, is she alive?" Mildred asked, and went straight to the girl in Ryan's arms. She felt for a pulse in the wrist, then tried again on the neck.

 

 "Aced?" Jak asked, looking over her shoulder.

 

 "Alive," the physician stated. "But just barely. Let's get her out of here."

 

 "Located the baron's box at the other end of the ville," J.B. said, wrinkling his nose. "Or mebbe it'd be better if we got her out of here, get some fresh air."

 

 "We can make camp outside the wall," Dean suggested. "Digging a fire pit is easy in sand."

 

 "Too cold on the beach with the wind," Mildred said. "Warmth is the important thing right now."

 

 "This way," J.B. said, starting across the compound.

 

 "Hate to leave the gate unguarded," Doc rumbled, glancing that way. "Visigoths and rapscallions abound in these islands."

 

 "You mean coldhearts?" Dean asked.

 

 Doc smiled. "Indeed, my young friend. That is exactly what I mean. Men with cold hearts."

 

 "Leave it," Ryan said, shaking his head to dispel the returning clouds of flies. "There's nothing here anybody would want."

 

 "'Cept us," Jak stated.

 

 After J.B. passed around some more fuel, the flies departed again. Crossing the open center of the ville, the companions found the baron's box at the opposite end of the ville away from the gate. Iron bars covered the windows, and a crude wooden door leaned against the open doorway. Bamboo racks of crude spears stood in place, ready to repel invaders. A rusty bed frame stood upright in the ground, a damaged fishing net spread over it for repairs. Only a few yards away was a brick well, standing right next to a bamboo hut that clearly was a public latrine.

 

 "Idiots," Mildred muttered under her breath.

 

 Watching the empty windows lining the two layers of steel boxes, Krysty felt her hair fan outward when a cough sounded from somewhere, echoes disguising the distance and direction.

 

 "More folks dying," Ryan said, scanning his good eye over the curved wall of identical containers.

 

 "Poor bastards," Doc said, but he kept a hand resting on the grip of the LeMat in its holster.

 

 Going to a window, Jak waited for J.B. to cover the door with his Uzi, then he tossed a stone into the box. It hit something wooden, then rattled around on the metal floor. After waiting a moment, the teenager chanced a look inside.

 

 "Clear," he reported.

 

 Doc and Dean pulled the heavy door aside, and Ryan walked into the box, careful not to hit Ann's head on the badly cut doorway. Inside, there were tables made from wooden spools for holding coils of cables, and chairs of bamboo tied together with vines. Most of the knots were already frayed and unraveling. A ratty bed with rags sticking out of the mattress stood in a corner, and there was a stone fireplace with stacks of seasoned wood. Inside was an empty aluminum pot sitting on a triangle of bricks. One of the tables was stacked with pieces of blasters, flintlocks and predark revolvers, mixed together. Lying in alabaster clamshells was a collection of tools—worn hammers, blunt chisels, twisted screwdrivers and the like. Everything was smeared with fatty grease to keep away rust, and bunches of dried herbs hung from the metal wall to keep flies off the protective lard.

 

 There was no sign of the baron, or any sec men.

 

 "Set her here," Mildred directed, going to the only bed.

 

 Ryan placed the girl on the dirty mattress and looked around for a blanket of some kind to cover her. Nothing was in sight. Without comment, Doc slid off his frock coat and placed it over the still girl.

 

 "Would have thought steel boxes would make for a good home," J.B. said, pushing back his hat. "Obviously not." There was no second floor, or another door to use for escape. Probably too tough to cut the plate steel.

 

 Dean took a seat on one of the tables, the old wood creaking under his weight. "Think that dozer moved the boxes to make the wall?" he asked.

 

 "No, they used slaves," his father replied bluntly, lifting a set of shackles from the tool bench. "I'll bet there's a lot of flesh and blood crushed between these layers of steel."

 

 "Get a fire going," Mildred ordered, pulling a chair close to the bed. "We need more heat in here, and make some bouillon. No coffee or tea. She needs salt."

 

 Jak went to the fireplace and got busy. Doc dropped his backpack and began to rummage around for MRE packs.

 

 "Can you save her?" Ryan asked, leaning against the wall. "She knows something about the gateway."

 

 Mildred shrugged. In a proper hospital with a full medical staff, there would be no problem. Ann was warm, and cleaner. She had received clean water, and broth was coming. Antibiotics was what she needed now. Spreading the canvas flap of her med kit, Mildred took out a plastic sandwich box, popped the top and removed a plastic film canister, the kind photographers kept undeveloped rolls of film in. Burping the top, Mildred opened the canister and removed a folded foil board. Military antibiotics, the good stuff. She hadn't seen better in years. However, even under ideal conditions the medicine would stay potent for ten years. Mildred could only hope there was a little life left after a full century.

 

 Using a thumb, she pressed five of the tablets out of their bubbles and tucked the rest away. Knowing the stuff would taste as bitter as hell, Mildred crashed the tablets and mixed them with a full pack of sugar from a MRE pack. Adding some water, she swirled the mixture around and poured it down the throat of her patient. Ann murmured in response and made a face.

 

 "Sour," Ann said, smacking her lips.

 

 "Okay, what happened on Spider Island?" Ryan asked, kneeling so they were face to face.

 

 "Lieutenant Brandon had his sec men raid our ville," Ann whispered, new strength in her voice. "He was looking for you." She broke into a ragged cough.

 

 Ryan frowned. Fireblast! He hadn't considered that possibility. After blowing the bridge, the sec men did a recce on both islands and tortured the escaped slaves for any info they had on the companions. The women knew nothing, but that wouldn't have stopped Brandon.

 

 "Brandon. This was a big man, dark hair, lots of scars," Ryan asked.

 

 She nodded. "Th-that's him. W-wanted you bad."

 

 "We aced a lot of his troops," Ryan explained briefly.

 

 Ann almost smiled. "Good."

 

 The water in the pot was boiling now, and Jak added a couple of envelopes of brown powder. Soon the tantalizing aroma of beef soup filled the cramped quarters. A cup was brought over, and Mildred spoon-fed the girl tiny sips. The broth seemed to bring her back to life, and soon she was gulping down the brew.

 

 "Not too much," Mildred warned, taking away the cup. "Your stomach isn't used to anything yet. Give it a while."

 

 Ann nodded obediently, but constantly gazed at the tin cup with open avarice.

 

 "How did you get away from Brandon?" Krysty asked.

 

 Feebly, the girl showed her scarred wrists. "Bit through my ropes, jumped into the ocean and swam away. They fired a few shots, but I kept swimming. Anything was better than being tortured by them. Half the other girls were already aced. Some ocean current caught me, and I was dragged here."

 

 "Just like it did us," Dean commented.

 

 A great rustling noise sounded from outside the box, and J.B. went to the window for a look. All of the birds were taking wing, swarming into the sky and flying away. Bad.

 

 "Be right back," he said, and slipped out the doorway.

 

 Doc and Jak placed the wooden board back over the entrance, and Ryan gestured for the girl to continue.

 

 "The ville was mostly dead when I washed ashore. Bodies everywhere. I tried to help and got…taken by some of the men. Thought it would cure them." Ann shifted the frock coat to hide the bruises on her thighs.' "Then I got sick, too, and they tossed me in the hole."

 

 "Bastards," Mildred growled. "Hope they died hard."

 

 "What about the machine they found," Ryan said, returning to the original topic. "Did they take it with them?"

 

 "He, Brandon, suspected you wanted it for something," Ann replied slowly, as if afraid to speak. "So he had the sec men smash it to pieces."

 

 "Fuck!" Ryan cursed, rocking back on his heels. The gateway was destroyed.

 

 "We're trapped," Krysty said in a hollow voice.

 

 "No, we're not," Ryan said, worrying a fist into the palm of his other hand. "Remember that map in the lighthouse."

 

 "Those weird symbols?" Mildred scoffed. "Could mean anything."

 

 "Mebbe so. But it's our best chance for leaving," Ryan shot back. "Our destination may have changed, but the plan is the same. We find a ville, buy a ride on a ship and leave. Only now we're going to Forbidden Island."

 

 "Well, our rad counters will help us avoid the blast craters there," Doc mused aloud, pursing his lips. "But we shall need to locate another ville. There are no vessels for hire here."

 

 "Not even a canoe," Dean said in a serious tone.

 

 "I know where there is a ship," Ann said, levering herself upward on an elbow. "And I'll show you, but only if you take me with you. Please…"

 

 J.B. appeared at the doorway. "Company coming," he reported. "Lots of them."

 

 "Brandon?"

 

 "Don't think so."

 

 "Triple red," the Deathlands warrior barked, sliding the Steyr off his shoulder and working the bolt.

 

 Going to the window, Ryan watched as whistling objects arced over the wall to land among the dead and bounce along the ground, spewing forth thick streams of black fumes. A bird caught in the gas gave no reaction and continued feasting. Not poison gas, then, which was good. Spreading across the compound, thick tendrils of dark smoke crept along the ground, hiding the dead. Then dim figures on horseback appeared in the smoke, stopping occasionally to stab at the corpses with long spears. Testing to see if any were still alive. Had to be slavers come for fresh muscle.

 

 "Dig in here?" Dean asked, jacking the slide on his Browning semiautomatic pistol.

 

 "Fish in a barrel," his father answered curtly. "We'll have to snipe these bastards to pieces. Dean, stay with Mildred and the girl. Everybody else, spread out. Now move!"

 

 Going to the bed, Jak gestured and a knife was in his hand. Kneeling, he pressed it into the palm of the girl. "Any probs, whisper about blasters," he said fast. "They lean close to hear, stab in throat."

 

 She silently thanked him with her eyes, and Jak moved off at a run.

 

 Dashing outside, the companions separated into the thickening smoke, not daring to fire their blasters yet and draw unwanted attention to the baron's home. As soon as the companions were gone, Mildred and Dean manhandled the door into position and dropped down the wooden arms on each side. The slats held the door in place, but Mildred highly doubted its ability to withstand any kind of an attack.

 

 "Best we got," Mildred said, wiping her hands.

 

 "Watch the windows," Dean replied grimly.

 

 Hoofbeats pounded in the smoky compound. So they had horses. Good. Keeping his back toward the wall, Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and waited until a dimly seen figure came closer. He fired, there was a muffled cry and the rider tumbled to the ground. Small as the sound of the silenced pistol had been, it drew a barrage of return fire, tongues of flame stabbing into the smoke from a dozen flintlocks, the telltale thud-clack sounding before the powder ignited. Lead balls slammed into the steel wall around him, one plowing into the dirt between his boots. Diving out of the line of fire, Ryan rolled to get some distance. Rising, he fired again, another rider dropped and again the flintlocks delivered a brutal retaliation.

 

 Dark swirling clouds filled the ville, the galloping of horse hooves thudding onto the soil forming a low rumble like an approaching storm. It was difficult to know which direction the riders were coming from, but Ryan realized the smoke worked both ways. The companions couldn't see the invaders very well, and the coldhearts would have no idea how many defenders there were. Might be able to use that in their favor.

 

 Somewhere close by, a revolver snapped off rounds, followed by the thundering roar of the LeMat. Flintlocks responded, accompanied by several thrown spears. Then Jak's Magnum pistol boomed, and a horse screamed in pain. More flintlocks spoke, lead balls ricocheting off the wall and rebounding back into the compound. Ryan felt the hot passage of a near miss and started zigzagging across the ground.

 

 Leaping over a corpse, he stopped just in time before tumbling into the firepit full of decomposing bodies. A sputtering smoke bomb lay on top of a dead man, charring the flesh and clothes. Odd place for it to land. Damn thing should have rolled right off. On impulse, Ryan kicked the charge into the firepit. Almost instantly, a spear jabbed from the billowing clouds and he fired from the hip, the cough of the SIG-Sauer heralding the wet smack of lead hitting flesh. The figure staggered and dropped its weapon to grab an arm, but the coldheart didn't cry out in pain. Swiftly, he retreated into the smoke and disappeared. But now Ryan knew why they were so hard to spot. The enemy was wrapped in gray cloth the same color as the smoke. Camou clothing. Clever.

 

 From the distance came the stutter of a rapidfire, the fiery flower of the discharges brightening the clouds in a brief strobe effect. J.B. was in action. But the sound stopped almost as quickly as it had started, and Ryan feared the worst.

 

 Moving sideways, the man headed in that direction and after only a few yards discovered that the body of the man he had aced was gone. The cold-hearts took their dead? Suddenly, Ryan wasn't sure they were facing just slavers anymore, but something infinitely worse.

 

 More gunfire and flintlocks spoke as the one-eyed man reached into a pocket and pulled out a rebuilt gren from the lighthouse. Ryan couldn't use the explosive in the smoky field; that would be a sure way to chill his own people. But he could toss it into the firepit. That would contain the deadly shrapnel and hopefully the noise of the detonation would rattle the unseen enemy. Slim chance, but worth a try. This whole fight could turn against them with lightning speed.

 

 Something long went by the man, as silent as a dream, but he saw what it was and drew the panga with his free hand. Then another lasso snaked out of the clouds and Ryan caught it on the blade, slicing the loop apart, and firing back along the rope. A man cried out and the rope went slack.

 

 As if in response, Krysty's voice cried out, her blaster blazing steadily. More voices were raised, the smoke and steel walls distorting their origins. A riderless horse galloped past Ryan, almost knocking him down. The LeMat discharged five, six, seven times in a row, the last answered by an anguished scream. Slapping in a fresh clip, Ryan grunted in approval.

 

 Suddenly, he heard the sound of splintering wood, followed by the sound of two blasters firing together. Then it abruptly stopped. Pocketing the gren, Ryan headed for the baron's home. As he went past the well, a spear stabbed out of the swirling fumes, the shaft coming so close it passed through his black hair, ripping some out by the roots. Ignoring the minor pain, Ryan spun and fired from the hip. There was the meaty thump of a slug hitting flesh, but again no cry of pain. The invaders seemed to make noise only when they died; wounds meant nothing to them.

 

 Huffing horses were running everywhere in the compound, the bones of the dead audibly cracking under their hooves. A flintlock discharged, a revolver answered, and then there was silence. No sound or movement for several minutes.

 

 Barely breathing, Ryan stood stock-still, straining to hear anything. But the eerie quiet continued. Even the scavenger birds were gone, and the complete lack of noise seemed thicker than the roiling clouds of gray smoke.

 

  

 

 Chapter Seven

 

  

 

 Chaos and pain filled J.B.'s world as he sluggishly came awake.

 

 He was tied wrist to ankle, bouncing on something hard that kept slamming into his stomach, knocking the breath out of his lungs, and he was facedown with the ground moving past his face at great speed. Dark night! He was tied over the back of a galloping horse. A big one, white with black stripes on its rump.

 

 There were a lot of horses, fifteen, maybe twenty, and he caught jumping glimpses of the riders. Gray camou! So that's how they did it. Clever bastards. The group was racing along the dried riverbed, the hard-packed earth cracked in a mosaic pattern. The stink of sour horse sweat and badly cured leather nearly made him vomit, but he fought it. With his mouth gagged, he could easily drown if his stomach rebelled. Out of the hundreds of ways to die, that was suddenly the worst he could think of.

 

 Struggling against his bonds, he tried to see the rider on his horse, but there was a bundle in the way. In horror he realized it was three of the gray men roped together and stacked across the back of the beast. J.B. was near the rump, which explained the severe jostling. They took their dead? Oh, no.

 

 Then a familiar sight swung into view, bouncing off the chest of the huge animal. His munitions bag was hanging from the bone pommel of the saddle, the wire stock of the Uzi sticking out the top flap. Now he had a goal. J.B. tightened his stomach muscles to handle the pounding, and worked out a couple of plans in his mind. He knew that time was against him; moments, not minutes counted here. Two plans came to mind, each seeming more dangerous than the other as he mentally reviewed them. But the man couldn't think of a third, so he had to use one of these.

 

 Decision made, J.B. pulled on his bonds as hard as he could, the ropes tightening painfully on his wrists and ankles, but that gave him some slack. Bracing himself, the Armorer dived forward to slide around the beast and was suddenly looking at its stomach. The hind legs started banging into his side like sledgehammers, and the ground slammed into his back so hard he feared bones would break. Breathing was impossible in this position, and J.B. fought to suck in enough air through his nostrils to stay alive. His arms felt as if they were coming out their sockets, and he squinted as hard as possible to keep his glasses from flying off.

 

 Dark night, this was the worst idea he had ever come up with, but it was too late now to stop. They'd chill him, or blind him once they discovered he was trying to escape. This was his only chance.

 

 Swinging back and forth to the rhythm of the hind legs, J.B. got the timing down and jabbed out with his elbow to stab the horse directly in the testes. The stallion screamed and kicked backward. Caught by surprise, the rider tumbled over the animal and hit the ground hard, rolling wildly with his arms and legs failing like a broken puppet.

 

 Guttural laughter sounded from the riders of other horses, and the mount he was on abruptly slowed to a canter, the beast turned to snap at the man dangling under its vulnerable stomach, bringing the munitions bag close enough for J.B. to snatch the wire stock and haul the Uzi free. Timing pencils and coils of fuse came with the blaster and tumbled away, but the Armorer paid them no attention.

 

 Several horses came to a stop, and men began to dismount when a woman screamed, and the startled riders turned their attention to her for a moment.

 

 But that split second was all that J.B. needed. Flipping the weapon over, he worked the bolt with his jaw and clumsily placed the barrel of the blaster to the knotted ropes and fired a short burst. The horse bucked wildly at the blaster fire from underneath, making him drop the weapon, but the rope was torn to pieces and he fell to the ground.

 

 Heavy hooves stomped all around J.B., sinking inches into the soil, and he frantically rolled clear. Then he threw himself back under the beast to reclaim his blaster. Angry voices sounded from the advancing gray men, and several drew big flintlock pistols. Another uncoiled a lasso from his belt.

 

 "Fuck you!" J.B. shouted through his mouthful of rag and started firing on full-auto, spraying the coldhearts with half a clip, turning quickly in a full circle. Those closest to him fell over riddled with copper-jacketed lead. Startled by the noise, the horses bucked, and the riders cried out, clutching the reins with both hands, unable to attack for the moment. Then the Uzi jammed, and J.B. feverishly worked the bolt to clear the malfunctioning cartridge. Not now.

 

 Horses circled him, kicking up clouds of dust. A blaster fired in a thunderous boom, the black powder blowing an acrid cloud of smoke over the area, and his fedora was yanked off his head by the near miss. Shitfire, too close! Cold adrenaline filled his body and, slamming his fist onto the breech, J.B. got the round loose and started to fire 9 mm rounds at the masked riders. He jerked the barrel of the Uzi away from a horse with a woman bound across its back exactly as he had been. Then he recognized, the ragged clothing. It was Ann!

 

 Just then a lasso snaked out of nowhere to land around the man's shoulders. As J.B. jerked away, the rope drew tight and he was yanked off his feet, but he kept hold of the Uzi. This was how the bastards got him in the ville. It wasn't going to work twice.

 

 Another landed on his boots, and he managed to slip out of the closing loop. Running toward the rider holding the rope loosened the lasso, and J.B. shrugged his way out. A third flew toward him, and the Armorer blew it out of the air with a hip shot. Going to single rounds, he fired again and again, constantly moving to avoid any more of the those freakishly accurate lassos.

 

 A riderless horse slammed into his side, knocking J.B. to the ground. Hooves pounded everywhere, one coming so close it grazed his cheek. Hugging the Uzi, he rolled away to avoid the smashing hooves. He fired twice more and the blaster clicked empty.

 

 Throwing the weapon at a gray man, J.B. took off at a run, pelting down the riverbed with all of his strength. The banks were too high to climb easily. He had to find another section where he could get into the jungle. The horses and lassos would be useless there. He'd have a fighting chance to live.

 

 Flintlocks fired from behind, and the ground puffed as the miniballs plowed into the hard soil. That only spurred him on to greater speed. Then he heard galloping hooves, and he knew they were after him again. No way could he outrun a horse, even with the load of dead bodies each was carrying.

 

 Turning in midstep, J.B. dashed for the nearest embankment and started to scramble up the side of the riverbed. The soil broke loose under his hands, and he kept sliding back down. But he was still making headway. Less than a yard to go, then he slid back two feet. Throwing himself for the edge so tantalizingly close, J.B. grabbed hold of the grassy top when a flurry of blasterfire rang out, and he braced for the arrival of the hot pain.

 

 Then the blasters roared again, and he realized those weren't flintlocks shooting. Glancing over a shoulder, J.B. saw the rest of the companions charging up the riverbed in the old bulldozer, Ryan in the shovel and steadily triggering the Steyr. Another gray rider fell, and the last one turned to flee when Doc unleashed the LeMat. The handcannon boomed like doomsday in the confines of the riverbed, and the rider flew out of the saddle to land on the ground in a crumpled heap with most of his skull blown away.

 

 "Get those horses!" J.B. shouted, then released his grip and slid down the embankment on the seat of his pants.

 

 As Ryan turned off the dozer, several of the companions started to walk toward the horses, talking softly and making clucking noises with their tongues. The beasts were skittish, but obviously well-trained as they didn't bolt. Soon the five horses were gathered by the reins and brought back to the dozer.

 

 "Whoa, there. Easy does it," Krysty said in a soothing voice, tethering the reins to one of the hydraulic lifters of the dozer. The animals sniffed curiously at the huge machine, but didn't shy away. Then she noticed the heavy scarring on their flanks, not from spurs, but whips. The horses had been beaten into submission like any human slave, the will to rebel crushed completely. They wouldn't have dared to run away. Fear ruled their hearts.

 

 "We're going to need those animals to get Ann," J.B. said, limping over to the dozer. His clothes were torn and bloody in spots, his hands turning purple from the tight ropes cutting off the circulation.

 

 "We know," Jak said, producing a blade. Carefully, he cut away the remnants of rope from the man's wrists.

 

 "Thanks," J.B. said, rubbing his sore wrists. There were chafe marks on top of his old scars. It wasn't the first time he'd been bound by rope.

 

 "They came in through the windows. Almost got me and Mildred, too," Dean stated. "I think they knew it was the baron's home."

 

 "Want a drink?" Krysty offered.

 

 "Dark night, yes!"

 

 The canteen was passed over and the Armorer drank greedily, the excess running down his cheeks. Then he poured some into his palms and washed the dirt off his face.

 

 "Better," he said, returning the canteen. Then he hawked and spit, and bloody saliva hit the ground. Damn, busted a tooth. "Got my hat?"

 

 "In the dozer. What happened?" Mildred asked, checking his face and ribs. There didn't seem to be any serious damage, just a lot of fresh bruises forming. The wiry little man was as tough as old boot leather.

 

 Briefly, J.B. explained while reclaiming his dropped blaster. The Uzi was dusty and dirty, but undamaged. Ryan passed over a box of 9 mm rounds, and the man reloaded the 30-round clip. All of the Armorer's spare clips and ammo were now with the gray men. Plus his munitions bag.

 

 A few yards away, Doc went to one of the corpses and pulled off a gray mask. The face underneath seemed perfectly normal, no obvious mutations or differences. How odd. One at a time, he went through their clothing and found several flintlocks, plus several pounds of black powder and lead shot. He filled his ammo pouch and left the rest. As far as the old man was concerned, the abundance of black powder for his Civil War blaster was the only good thing about these wretched islands.

 

 "Five horses, seven people," Ryan said, checking the cinches on the saddles. "Going to be slow traveling. But we've got no choice. Ann helped me escape. We have to at least try to get her free."

 

 "Agreed."

 

 Stroking the neck of a horse, Krysty looked up the riverbed. "They'll know we're coming."

 

 "But not when," Ryan said. "We'll use that."

 

 "We had best tend our mounts before departing," Doc rumbled in his deep voice. "They have been used most strenuously for quite a while."

 

 While Dean climbed the bank and got some green grass for the animals, the companions let the horses drink from cupped hands, but not too much. They didn't want to slow them down. When the grass arrived, the poor things ate as if ravenous. Afterward, Mildred went to the clear stream, intending to refill the canteens, but upon testing the water she found it was heavily polluted. Totally undrinkable.

 

 "You okay to ride?" Krysty asked in concern. "Took quite a beating."

 

 J.B. slapped the clip into the rapidfire and worked the bolt, chambering a round. "Try and stop me."

 

 "The dozer works," Dean offered, "and we have juice. Found a cache in one of the cargo containers."

 

 "Too slow, and they'd hear us coming for miles," Ryan stated. "Besides, we used most of the juice getting here. Had it in high gear all the way. Damn near blew the engine."

 

 "Correction," Mildred replied, looking at the growing puddle of fluids on the ground. "We did blow the engine. Looks like a cracked block."

 

 "Aced," Jak agreed.

 

 "Then we ride," Ryan said, stepping into the stirrup of a big stallion and hoisting himself into the saddle. The animal was larger than a normal horse, like those back at Front Royal. Its rib cage was noticeably wider, its legs longer. It probably could run forever without getting tired. With practiced hands, he patted its muscular neck and scratched behind the ears. The horse snuffled with pleasure in response. Even as a kid, Ryan had always liked horses, and any animal worth its brass responded to kindness better than the whip. The gray men were triple stupe.

 

 "Just like the Carolinas," Dean said, climbing into the saddle behind Jak.

 

 "Wish we had the Leviathan," Mildred said, as J.B. offered her a hand, and she awkwardly climbed onto the beast right behind him.

 

 "When find, what do with girl?" Jak asked, adjusting the reins. He was pleasantly surprised to find the horse was bridle wise and well tempered. "Could make litter and drag behind."

 

 "Ann will ride on her own horse," Ryan said, gently kicking his heels into the stallion's flank. "There'll be plenty of extra mounts by then."

 

 The companions started off in single file, staying very close to the left bank to hide their approach from any scouts in the northern trees. The majority of the island stretched to the north, so that would be the logical place for the gray men to go. The plan made sense, but it was only a guess. They could have a ship moored in the southern harbor.

 

 Keeping the animals at a leisurely trot, the companions watched the embankments for any sign that the riders had climbed out of the natural passageway. The miles passed and the sides slowly lowered in height until only a few feet tall, easy passage for the long-legged horses.

 

 "Over there," Doc whispered, gesturing with his stick at the embankment. Dark earth showed where the ground had been churned from the passage of hooves.

 

 Shaking the reins, Jak rode over to that section and studied the pattern of the scuff marks in the dirt.

 

 "Bullshit," he announced. "Fake trail."

 

 Walking his mount to the other side of the riverbed, he slid off and looked over the ground. Not a mark showed in the soil, and not a leaf was out of place in the grass.

 

 "This way," Jak stated without hesitation. Drawing his blaster, the teen stepped out of the riverbed and started through the field of green grass.

 

 Dean took the reins and led the way, the rest of the companions following close behind. Nobody questioned the Cajun. Jak was the best tracker among them.

 

 Ryan moved to the left, the Steyr resting across the saddle, and J.B. took the right side, the Uzi tight in his fist. Both men scrutinized the trees ahead of them, while Doc and Mildred kept a watch behind.

 

 The field stretched for more than a mile, trees growing in scattered stands, which grew closer and closer together until the companions were proceeding through a lush grove. The trees gave off the rich aroma of eucalyptus, and Mildred pulled off several handfuls to stuff into her med kit.

 

 Several times, Jak altered course for no discernible reason, and the others followed, even though there was no indication of anything having passed that way.

 

 "Damn, they're good," Krysty said softly, in annoyance.

 

 "We're better," Ryan answered, tracking a motion in the trees. Then a monkey with four arms scampered out of the greenery, pursued by a gang of norm chimps, who snarled and slavered in blind fury, the bull males culling the troop of a mutie.

 

 The sky was darkening when they arrived at a large vista of black stone. The irregular plan of congealed lava extended for hundreds of yards. Jak didn't even pause as he changed direction and headed for a low rise, a momentary swell in the lava flow that had become trapped forever in time. Cresting the rise, he easily walked down a gentle slope into a deep ravine. At the bottom was a pre-dark road, the pavement stained and cracked, weeds growing tall through every crevice.

 

 Even in the early-evening light, Ryan could see that several of the stalks were bending back into shape from something recent pushing them aside.

 

 "Here less than an hour ago," he said softly.

 

 Jak nodded his agreement.

 

 The ancient road meandered through the dense weeds as if based upon the path of a snake. The cracks became wider and more pronounced until the slabs of pavement were islands in the soggy earth. Soon they were riding through a marsh, the muddy water almost a foot deep. Clumps of decaying trees dotted the surface, and occasionally the bloated body of a drowned animal floated by.

 

 "Watch for pools of still water," Ryan warned, slowing his horse. "Could be a sinkhole. Break a leg stepping into one of those."

 

 "Or quicksand," Dean added, frowning.

 

 Following the wash of the stagnant water, the companions walked their mounts through the sodden landscape until the mud turned to grass, and they were back on dry ground again. Another forest of tropical trees grew to the east, stretching to the mountains, tall peaks of brown stone that reached for the clouds. To the west and north was the start of the jungle, the array of bushes, bamboo and vines seeming impassable without machinery.

 

 "Gate," Jak said, pointing.

 

 Moving incredibly fast, Ryan fired the SIG-Sauer twice, the silenced weapon coughing gently. There was a stirring in the bushes, and two men dressed in mottled green dropped their flintlock longblasters and fell to the ground, both of them bleeding from the throat.

 

 Spreading out, the companions did a quick recce of the area and found no more hidden guards. Dismounting, they checked the fallen guards and found one of them still breathing, the blood bubbling from the ghastly wound in his neck. Ryan cut the man's throat with a smooth stroke of the panga, the blade curving along the neck as if designed specifically for that function.

 

 On closer inspection, the wall of bamboo was false, the tubular plants resting on some old splintery wood with a central pivot buried in the soil. Ryan pushed on one side, and the other swung outward. Ryan took the point and went inside first. To the left was a corral of horses, to the right a bubbling spring of naturally carbonated water. He whistled like a mountain lark, and the others came through the gate, weapons in hand.

 

 Tethering their mounts on the outside of the corral in case they needed to leave quickly, they fell into line, Ryan on point, Doc in the middle, J.B. at the rear. A wide path led through the bamboo grove, and Ryan found two more hidden guards. The first was a massive hound. It wasted its only chance to give a warning by growling at the companions. Ryan aced the dog nice and quiet, the SIG-Sauer delivering a 9 mm round directly into its left eye. The other guard was a man who burst from cover to throw a spear. Ryan dodged the spear, but his slug only grazed the man's neck, a geyser of blood spurting from the nicked artery. Grabbing the wound, the man opened his mouth to scream and a knife slammed into his temple. With a sigh, the guard collapsed to the ground and died. Jak reclaimed his blade and wiped it clean on the corpse's shirt.

 

 There was a clearing in the bamboo forest, and the land started to slope toward an imposing barrier of pungi sticks and thorny vines. A click sounded from the companions, and Ryan and J.B. quickly looked at the rad counters on their lapels. The background count had increased, but not significantly.

 

 "They live in a rad pit," Ryan muttered in disgust.

 

 An inclined earthen ramp offered direct access through the pungi sticks and into the pit. Sounds could be heard coming from below now, laughter, a steady thumping, the murmur of voices. As quietly as possible, the companions crept along the outer perimeter of the hole until locating a vantage point in a pool of shadows cast by the setting sun.

 

 Distant thunder rumbled, warning of an approaching storm as J.B. swept the ville below with his longeyes. About a dozen huts stood at the bottom of the blast crater, simple arrangements of tanned skin over a hinged skeleton of aged wood, similar to the yurts of the Mongol hordes. There were several work areas with oldsters busy making things with their bare hands. An old man sat on a rock carving a comb from bone, and a young woman with full breasts was using a scrap piece of rock to scrape a stretched piece of hide as a preparation for curing.

 

 A stream trickled out of the bamboo forest, going down the sloped side of the crater and through the pungi-stick wall and forming a pool at one end of the ville. In the center was a banked pile of glowing red coals ready to cook dinner. About forty people, adults and children, were walking about in loincloths and crude sandals. Here in the safety of their home, the gray men had removed their camou.

 

 They were covered with tattoos, but appeared to be norms.

 

 Near the center of the ville was a pit in the ground covered with a lid of stout logs and guarded by several of the women, each armed with a long spear. As the companions watched, an arm clawed through the wooden grating and the women stabbed it back down into the pit, the tips of their spears becoming dabbed with crimson in the process.

 

 The lid was removed and the gray men jabbed at the trapped people until one was forced to exit the prison. Instantly, he was swarmed upon and ropes tied to his arms and legs. With five or six tattooed people on each rope, the chosen prisoner was hauled to a tree and held there helpless while old women jabbed out his eyes with sharp sticks, and then cut the tendons in his legs. Even if set free, the man would never walk again.

 

 Now his clothes were cut away with great care not to damage the skin. Naked, he was bound tight and the ropes looped over a tree branch, then he was hauled off his feet to dangle upside down. Next, a barrel was shoved underneath. Doc and Jak muttered curses. Born and raised on farms, they knew what was coming next.

 

 Without a qualm, the prisoner's throat was slit and his blood flowed into the barrel. When the corpse was completely drained, the stomach was slit apart and the intestines slithered free to be saved in a woven basket. Evidently, all body parts were consumed.

 

 The sun was nearing the horizon, and the rad pit was illuminated by the banked coals, giving the ville a reddish tone like a nightmare, but it was all terribly real.

 

 Now the head was sawed off and given to an old man who peeled off the scalp as an aid to plucking out the hairs, probably to make ropes. Another oldster broke off the jaw and removed the teeth, for saws and arrowheads. Meanwhile, young woman neatly removed the skin from the corpse, and the raw carcass had a wooden pole shoved down the neck stump until it exited the anus. The limply dangling arms and legs were cut away and put into a tent filled with smoke, curing the meat to make it last.

 

 Sprinkled with herbs, the skinless torso was placed on a spit above the coals, and old women started turning the food slowly, chatting among themselves as dinner began to cook. Sticks with rags tied to the ends caught the melting fat and were used to baste the meat in its own juices. Soon the smell reached the companions, and they fought the urge to retch.

 

 "Cannies," Doc muttered, looking away. He had encountered man-eaters before, but this methodical processing of the aced man was demonic. It demeaned humans to no more than cattle.

 

 "Any sign of Ann?" Ryan asked, squinting into the crimson pit.

 

 "Not yet," J.B. answered, moving the brass scope around the camp. "Got a live round says she's in that hole, though."

 

 "Need diversion," Jak stated forcibly. "Stampede horses, set fire bamboo?"

 

 "We could use several diversions, my friend," Doc stated. "There are a lot more cannies than there are us."

 

 Ryan rubbed his jaw. If they knew which tent contained the stores of black powder for the blasters, they could toss in some firebombs and rock the whole ville. The stampede wasn't a bad idea, except that the horses were as passive as an old eunuch. And most of their explosives were in the lost munitions bag. This was going to require some thought.

 

 "Whatever we're going to do had better be soon," Krysty warned, pointing below. "They're getting the tree ready for another prisoner."

 

 Unslinging his longblaster, Ryan handed it to Mildred, along with most of his spare ammo mags. Then he pulled out the panga and started drawing in the dirt.

 

 "Okay," he said, "here's the plan."

 

  

 

 Chapter Eight

 

  

 

 Searching around, Krysty found a flat rock and slid it carefully to the very edge of the crater, then wiggled it snugly into the dirt to make sure it wouldn't move. Setting the Steyr SSG-70 on the rock, the woman placed a handkerchief on the ground nearby and laid out a neat row of the extra mags for the longblaster. Taking a look through the scope, she could see the cannies in wire-sharp detail, and practiced moving the crosshairs from one to another. Very soon now.

 

 TAKING POSITION inside a clump of young bamboo, Mildred used a knife to gently saw through some of the jointed tubes until she had a good view of the secret ville below. Taking a tiny piece of a bandage from her med kit, the physician rubbed it in the dirt until it was no longer white, but a dull brown. Tying it to the end of a bamboo stick, Mildred eased it into the open where a breeze stirred the strip of cloth. Thrusting the other end of the stick into the ground, the physician watched the fluttering rag and tried to gauge the wind shear. She had never attempted this great a distance with her ZKR target pistol, not even back when she went for the gold medal in the Olympics. But lives were riding on her accuracy today, not just a medal.

 

 If they wanted to live the night, there was blood to be spilled. Somehow, the physician didn't think the Olympic committee would have approved.

 

 FORCING HIS WAY into the stands of tough bamboo, Dean got his blaster ready for a fight. If the advance party was found, Krysty and Mildred would give them cover to reach the top, then he was to give everybody cover to reach the horses. Then they would cover his own escape. It was a good plan, but something deep inside the boy, honed from surviving a hundred fights, warned that this wasn't how it was going to happen this night.

 

 CIRCLING THE RIM of the crater, Ryan crawled on his belly until he was at the top of the ramp going down into the ville. Staying low, he continued onward until reaching the flow of carbonated water from the spring. Easing gently into the water, the man felt his clothes soak through in an instant, and a chill swept over his body. Damn stuff was cold. Sliding along the muddy creek, Ryan paused every couple of feet to listen for any reactions to his presence, then moved on.

 

 Getting through the wall of pungi sticks was a lot easier than he had thought. The flowing water had undercut many of the sticks, making them very loose. Very gently, Ryan pulled them out of the sucking mud, placed them aside and moved forward a little. A cannie guard would have to be watching very carefully to detect his passage.

 

 Past the defensive wall, the creek ended a few feet off the ground above a stagnant pool thick with green scum. Sliding into the filthy water, Ryan crouched low so that only his face was in the air. The banks were lined with reeds and cattail punks, fat and brown, waving gently in the breeze. Murmurs of conversation could be heard from the campsite, the thud of a heavy cleaver, a whimper of pain, low laughter.

 

 Peering through the weeds, he saw the cannies haul somebody from the pit,but the shadows hid the face. Then the men began to laugh and ran their hands over the straggling captive, and Ryan knew it was a woman. Whether it was Ann or not, he still couldn't tell. He'd have to find out before they could start shooting.

 

 A disturbance in the water made Ryan turn with a knife in hand. But it was just the others arriving in his wake. As silent as ghosts, Jak, J.B. and Doc eased through the muck. Each man carried his blaster just above the water level, then Doc gave a gasp as he sank out of sight, sending out ripples and waves that shook the reeds. The scholar was completely submerged, except for the hand holding his blaster aloft, a scant inch above the surface of the pond. A moment later, he emerged from the reeking pond, snorting green water from his nose and mouth, and wiping his face clean as best he could with a dripping hand.

 

 "Okay?" Ryan asked, raising the SIG-Sauer higher to protect it from the waves.

 

 "My weapon is still dry," Doc whispered, spitting the filth from his mouth.

 

 If there had been time, Ryan would have made some catapults from the more sturdy stands of bamboo and propelled flaming arrows to set the whole ville on fire. But he had to settle for something more wasteful. Each of the M-16 rifles they were saving for trade had three full clips of ammo. Ryan took one clip from each to throw into the campfire. When the ball ammo cooked off, that would give them the edge needed to get Ann. Unfortunately, the ammo clips didn't skim well, and the companions would have to be close to get them into the fire. Very close.

 

 Doc also had the military blasters with him, wrapped in several layers of plastic to keep them dry. That was their key out of the crater in case everything went to hell. Hopefully, they wouldn't have to be used. Ryan would prefer to buy the use of a ship, rather than just steal one.

 

 Just then a fat woman in mismatched clothing waddled to the pond and threw in a bucket of wastewater. Ryan tracked her approached and departure with the bulbous end of the SIG-Sauer, two pounds of pressure on the six-pound trigger. A breath on his part and the big cannie would be blown away. Squatting, she lifted her skirts and sent a yellow stream into the scum. The men flinched, realizing that this was the latrine for the ville. No wonder it was so far away from the rest of the camp. By sheer effort of will, they didn't move or speak. When finally finished, the woman stood, smoothed out her patched skirt and waddled away.

 

 As the obese woman went around a tent and ducked out of sight, she started to scream in an unknown language. Across the ville, the cannies dropped whatever they were doing and dived for weapons, coming up with spears, knives and more than a few flintlock handcannons.

 

 Moving through the reeds, Ryan fired a fast three times directly into the animal-skin tent, and the fat cannie stumbled into view, blood covering her back. Wailing in agony, she fell to the ground, trying to staunch the loss of blood with her pudgy fingers. There was no hope of success.

 

 Stepping onto dry land, J.B. burped the Uzi at the nearest group of armed cannies, sending them to hell, but he refrained from spraying the entire ville. The unknown female, possibly Ann, was somewhere loose among the deviant flesh-eaters, and he could easily ace her going for the big chill. He had to do this the hard way.

 

 A beautiful woman carrying a spear charged at the companions, then jumped forward, throwing away her weapon. She hit the ground hard just as the boom of the Steyr rolled down from above. A sharp crack followed, and a man loading a flintlock spun like a top, a hole in his face where a nose used to exist. Krysty and Mildred were on the job.

 

 Darting from the reeds to behind a stack of firewood, Ryan chose his targets and aced everybody who wasn't screaming in panic. The more disorganized the bastards were, the better. Just then a pounding hail of miniballs hit the cord of wood, slamming it apart and almost trapping Ryan under the falling logs. A roll of thunder shattered the night as Doc triggered the LeMat, the deafening report illuminating the battle scene in brutal clarity, and three cannies flipped sideways.

 

 Small children were running everywhere, and a pregnant cannie shuffled for safety behind a tree. Ryan's blaster tracked their movements, but he didn't pull the trigger. They were no danger. No sense wasting ammo.

 

 Withering cross fire filled the air, chips of bark flying off the trees, and the cooking torso jerking in a ghastly pantomime of trying to escape from the spit. Just then, a woman dressed in dirty rags staggered from behind the killing tree and headed for the inclined ramp out of the crater. Ryan bolted across the open ground to catch her in his arms. Blood was pumping freely from a terrible wound on her chest; most of one breast had been torn away by a miniball. She tried to fight off Ryan as he carried her into the weeds. A chest wound. No way could he get a tourniquet around that, and he had nothing to use as a pressure bandage.

 

 "Sorry," he said, dropping a clip and reloading to fire into the thinning mob of cannies.

 

 Clutching a ruined hand, one man just stood there, howling at the stars until Ryan shot him again and the noise ceased.

 

 Several men dressed in gray charged from a tent into view, large clay pots with dangling fuses in their hands. J.B. swung the Uzi in their direction. No way he was going to let them do that smoke trick again. The Uzi spoke, and the gray men fell, the smoke bombs rolling away. Then there came a fast series of sharp bangs from above and each one burst apart, totally destroyed. J.B. nodded at the unseen women and moved on, firing single rounds to conserve ammo.

 

 Dropping his spent brass, Jak reloaded and sent three booming messengers toward two cannies trying to sneak behind Doc. Both men fell as if hit with sledgehammers, the hollowpoint rounds tearing holes in their bellies the size of a fist. As the flintlocks hit the soil, the blasters discharged, sending the .75 miniball rounds randomly into the ville.

 

 A gang of old women carrying axes came after them now, and J.B. used the rest of the clip to blow them away. The survivors ran for the ramp to reach the safety of the bamboo forest. But as they reached the top, Krysty and Mildred mowed them down in ruthless efficiency.

 

 A spear sailed by overhead, forcing Ryan to duck. Then a trembling hand touched him, and Ryan briefly glanced at the dying woman. Her mouth filled with blood, she burbled something impossible to hear and went still. Then Doc fired again, and in the flash Ryan got a good look at her face. She was beautiful and badly scarred, but this woman was much too old, an adult, deeply tanned with pirate-style earrings.

 

 "She's still in the pit!" Ryan shouted through cupped hands.

 

 That was all the others needed. J.B. stood and cut loose with the Uzi, mowing down the cannies with a deadly storm of the copper-jacketed 9 mm rounds. Darting out of the shadows, Jak flipped both of the 30-round mags into the campfire and dived for cover. In less than a heartbeat, the ammo started cooking off, the irregular series of detonations throwing hot coals and deformed lead everywhere. Clay pots shattered, a man fell, clutching his ankle, two more fell over lifeless, a tent hit with coals burst into flames and another cannie insanely rushed the campfire and struck at the exploding magazines with a war club. That close, he caught all of the next rounds and was torn apart. The corpse fell forward into the campfire, and the reek of burning hair soon mingled with the wretched aroma of roasting human flesh from the torso on the spit.

 

 In raw terror, the last few cannie warriors broke ranks and dashed for a tent set off by itself in the ville. Going inside, a grisly cannie came back out with a flintlock rifle and a pouch of ammo. Jak shifted his position to get closer. That longblaster was trouble. As the warrior started to load the weapon, Jak aimed carefully and shot him with the Magnum pistol. His face gone, the hideous corpse fell backward into the tent, and the other men started firing their weapons from within the flimsy structure.

 

 Whistling sharply, Ryan gestured at the tent, and J.B. rolled their only gren through the opening. The companions took cover and the whole crater shook with the strident blast, a roiling fireball spreading out to engulf a dozen other tents. In moments, the whole ville was in flames.

 

 Suddenly, a young boy charged out of a burning hut, brandishing a bone dagger. Most of his body was covered with burn marks, the skin cracked and covered with large blisters. Shouting more in pain than anger, the child charged straight at Ryan and he aced the boy with one careful shot to the heart. Death was instantaneous.

 

 When the campfire stopped spitting lead, Ryan headed for the holding pit to check on the prisoners. But as he passed the smoking ruins of the exploded tent, Ryan saw no bodies strewed around in the wreckage. Only a neat square hole in the ground, a sturdy bamboo ladder going down into the darkness. Ryan set his mouth in a thin line. Tricked again!

 

 Whistling sharply, he signaled the others over and they cautiously gathered around the hole. Doc dropped down a torch, and a group of cannies standing at the bottom of the ladder started firing flintlocks in reply. Moving out of the way, Ryan fired blindly over the edge until the others stopped.

 

 "Son of a bitch, this is just the top!" J.B. raged, shouldering the exhausted Uzi. "The rest of the ville is underground!"

 

 "Seal it," Jak said, passing over the munitions bag. "Found this in other tent." The bag was splashed with fresh blood, none of it from the Cajun.

 

 Making the catch with one hand, J.B. dug into his bag and pulled out a block of C-4 salvaged from the lighthouse. Actually, it was the C-4 taken from forty grens whose firing mechanisms had been rusted useless. He removed the small pats of plas and molded them into a block. Safe inside the airtight gren, the high-explosive plastique was as good as ever.

 

 "Half block," Ryan said, estimating the size of the tunnel. He wanted it sealed tight, with no chance of their digging their way out again.

 

 "Hell with that," J.B. retorted, the raw marks of his wrists aching as he stabbed a timing pencil into the full block. Snapping off the length of the pencil at thirty seconds, he tossed the whole primed charge down the hole.

 

 Wasting no time, the companions raced away from the area and were almost to the filthy pool when there was a tremendous detonation and the entire valley shook. The torso fell off the spit, large sections of the pungi-stick wall collapsed and the horses in the corral screamed in fear.

 

 Checking the results, the men saw the ground had fallen into a deep depression about twenty feet wide and just as deep. There was no way the cannies were going to dig their way out of that avalanche, if anybody survived the blast.

 

 "Let's find Ann," Ryan said, heading across the ville.

 

 Going over to the holding pen, Ryan passed a moaning cannie twitching on the ground, a piece of tent stake protruding through his side. Holstering his piece, the Deathlands warrior drew his panga and silenced the noise with one quick stroke.

 

 Reaching the pen, Ryan called out for the woman, but there was no reply. He tried again, but still nothing. Fireblast, she might have been knocked unconscious. Taking a torch from a bucket of tree resin, Jak lit it with his butane lighter and looked inside. The crackling torchlight brightly illuminated the small cramped hole. There was nobody in sight, and an open door led deeper underground. Soft light came through the opening from somewhere on the other side.

 

 "They took them with them," Ryan growled, drawing his blaster. "Stand back."

 

 Firing the SIG-Sauer twice, he blew off the lock and, kicking aside the wooden grating, Ryan jumped into the damp pit. He landed in a crouch and stayed that way, waiting for his eye to become adjusted to the darkness. Without warning, a screaming cannie rushed in through the doorway, brandishing a wooden club studded with human teeth. Ryan shot him in the belly, and the man doubled over, dropping the club and howling with pain, clutching his middle with both arms. Kicking the club out of reach, Ryan saved ammo and used the panga once more.

 

 There was a shadow cast from overhead and Doc landed in the prison cell, an M-16 cradled in his arms. "Prudence dictates decorum," the scholar said, working the bolt on the rapidfire.

 

 "Sweep it," Ryan ordered, jerking a thumb at the door.

 

 Doc stuck the fluted barrel of the M-16 out of the doorway and fired a burst in both directions. Screams announced hits, and the two men charged out of the cell, blasters firing. Already wounded, the cannies waiting in ambush were aced in seconds, their flintlocks remaining unfired. Stooping, Ryan picked up two of the weapons and fired one, then screamed as if in pain and fired the other.

 

 "That'll make them think we're wounded," he said, casting the spent blasters away. "They'll get brave, easier to chill."

 

 "Exemplary, my dear Mr. Cawdor," Doc rumbled, tucking one of the ammo pouches from the dead into a pocket of his frock coat.

 

 With catlike speed, Jak appeared from the cell with the second M-16. J.B. was right behind, the Uzi sweeping for targets. A spare ammo clip from the recovered munitions bag was tucked into his belt for fast access.

 

 "What this?" Jak demanded, squinting in the dim light.

 

 "Some sort of underground lair," Doc said. "Highly appropriate for eaters of the dead. Almost ironic."

 

 The corridor walls were stacked rows of bamboo tucked into place behind thick wooden beams that supported a jigsaw of wooden pieces: roofing shingles, tabletops, decorative louvered doors, plywood, ship planks, anything that would serve as roofing. Every few yards, there was a niche in the wall with a clay bowl full of some greasy substance, a burning piece of cloth serving as a crude wick. The passageway extended to the left for only a short distance before ending at a mound of fresh-turned earth—the cave-in from the C-4 blast. The right ended at a sharp left turn. There was no noise or voices discernible, only the slow echoing drip of water striking stone from somewhere distant.

 

 "Smells odd," Jak stated, crinkling his nose.

 

 "They're burning human fat in the lamps," Ryan said grimly.

 

 "Devs."

 

 "Agreed."

 

 "Well, leaving won't be a problem," Ryan stated, looking over the collapsed tunnel. "We can climb the cave-in and reach the ground easy."

 

 "Indeed. As long as the folks on the other side don't dig their way out," Doc reminded him curtly. "Perhaps I should stay as rear guard, to prevent such an occurrence."

 

 "Good idea," Ryan said. "Anybody with us when we came back, and I'll use code."

 

 Hesitating for a moment, Doc offered the man the M-16, but he pushed it back. "You may need it," Ryan said, glancing at the ton of collapsed soil.

 

 The scholar nodded. "Understood."

 

 "Hey, what that?" Jak asked, retrieving a small piece of dirty cloth from the floor. It wasn't a wick for one of the candle bowls, or a used snot rag. On a hunch, he held it to the clothing of the dead men and it was completely different.

 

 "This Ann?" the teenager asked, showing it to the others.

 

 Ryan took the rag and looked it over closely. "Same color," he said thoughtfully. "And it has been ripped loose, not cut. Mebbe she's laying a trail for us to follow."

 

 "Or a trap for us to walk blindly into," J.B. stated, straightening his glasses.

 

 "Come on," Ryan said, advancing, "Let's find her and get out of here."

 

 He took the point and crouched to sneak a peek around the corner of the tunnel. There was a long passageway beyond that stretched for yards before ending at another intersection. Rising, he led the way down the corridor, pausing at a dark section of earth that rose ever so slightly above the rest of the floor. Ryan scuffed his combat boot on the ground and detected a subtle movement under the newly turned soil. He fired twice into the ground. There was a muffled cry and blood began to ooze from the earth.

 

 "Triple stupe," he stated coldly. "Old trick. Trader taught it to us over beers at Charlie's bar."

 

 "Called it a Hanoi Handjob," J.B. added.

 

 "No shit?" Jak asked nervously, brushing back his snowy hair. The cannies buried a man to wait like a land mine for one of them to step on, and then he'd attack. It was brilliant. The teenager now scrutinized the dirt floor and the jigsaw-puzzle ceiling much more closely for any additional living traps.

 

 Reaching the intersection, the companions found the tunnel went in both directions for a good distance, the walls lined with doors. Most were unlocked and led to sleeping quarters for families, empty now. A few were locked, and contained clothing from the prisoners, one room packed to the ceiling with assorted boots. But no weapons.

 

 Every corridor ended in another intersection, each branching out into more corridors and side passages. Closed doors lined the bamboo walls, and they had to check each one before risking to leave it behind them. It was slow going, and they worried about the cannies preparing another trap. The gray men were smart and ruthless, a dangerous combination.

 

 "Place is a bastard maze," Ryan growled, using a pencil stub to draw a map of the tunnel on a piece of the lighthouse journal. He had kept the page because it showed the strange symbol from the gateway. He had hoped to ask some of the locals to see if they knew what it was. Now he simply needed it as paper. No way he was going to let them get lost down here for the cannies to trap and slowly starve them into submission. He'd rather take a round than go into a stew pot.

 

 Another bit of rag led them to the left of an intersection. This corridor was dark, all of the wall lamps extinguished. Ryan nudged J.B. and motioned behind them. The Armorer nodded and passed the warning onto Jak. He silently agreed, then started down the darkened corridor as if unaware they were walking directly into a trap.

 

 Almost at once, there came the slamming of a door, followed by the barks and howls of dogs. In unison, the three men turned and opened fire at the floor, the fusillade of rounds tearing the hounds to pieces, blowing away ears, legs and eyes. Only a large bitch managed to reach the men, bleeding but still alive. J.B. kicked its head into the wall, Jak used the butt of the M-16 to smash its jaw and Ryan buried a blade into its spine. Still snarling, the beast dropped and lay there heaving for breath, crippled but not dead.