Ice and Fire

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Layton Brennan flew so low over their heads that they could see his amiable face, grinning at them over the edge of the cockpit of the Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter, his goggles glinting in the dawn sunlight. He waved a cheery hand, then angled the plane away, heading across the dusty desert toward Death Valley.

The search was on for the stickies.

The inbred muties didn't have anything that resembled an organized camp. They burrowed into the sides of hills, or took over old, abandoned houses and buildings, staying sometimes for only a few days. Sometimes for months. It all depended on how long it would take for them to strip the region around their nests of anything edible or useful. Then they would move on.

Ryan had been pressed by Zombie and by Norman Mote about how many stickies he thought might be in the area. In the panic during the feeding ceremony only three of the muties had been chilled.

"I've seen them alone, and often seen them hunting in packs around ten to a dozen. Biggest nest I saw was probably forty or fifty. Trader once told me of a kind of ville of stickies he'd come across. Said there could easily have been two hundred or more. If I was a guessing man I'd say that we'd probably find us around fifty. Good-size pack."

As the airplane shrank to a tiny dot in the pink, cloud-dappled sky, Norman Mote called his hunting posse to order.

"Quiet, brothers. You all know why we're here. You've seen the sad corpses lying there in the temple. We don't want any stickies left alive. Not a single one."

Ryan made a quick count: eight of the Last Heroes; himself, with J.B., Jak and Doc; Edgar Brennan with his brother and his nephew, off in his plane; and twenty-seven other men from the ville. The only one Ryan recognized was the gun dealer, John Dern.

Everyone was armed, many carrying a variety of patched and repaired scatterguns. Ryan's warning that the only way to be sure of downing a stickie was to blow its head apart had been passed all around the group.

Ryan had faced a bitter argument from Krysty during the night and on into the early hours of the morning.

"Why?"

"You know."

"Tell me, lover. Tell me why you four get to go and I'm left here holding the baby. No. Check that. Holding both the babies. Lori and the freezie. Why is it me?"

"Because there's no women going on the cull. That's why."

"Gaia! It makes me sick, Ryan. I tell you that for jack in the dirt."

"I know. But I wouldn't want to leave Rick on his own. His health's worse again today."

"If he was a man he'd have picked a blaster and be out on the hunt."

"Not fair, lover. You know the poor bastard's gut-sick."

In the end Krysty had reluctantly agreed to drop the quarrel.

They traveled in a fleet of battered wags, mostly open-bed market wags. Norman Mote and his son rode in the half-armored wag that had brought them to the feeding. Edgar Brennan and his brother had chosen to ride with Ryan and his three friends.

"For safety," Rufus had whispered.

J.B. had taken off his fedora to avoid losing it in the wind. As he rubbed his fingers through the cropped stubble of his hair he heard the baron saying to Ryan, "Carla said to watch out for a back-chilling out on the hunt."

"Least we can do is watch for it," Ryan agreed. He turned to J.B. "Pass the message to Jak and Doc."

Doc Tanner was enjoying the ride. The wag bumped over the rutted highway, enveloped in a cloud of gray dust. "On the road," he shouted to Ryan, baring his perfect teeth in a wide smile. "I was a great reader, you know. During the days after they trawled me I read all of Jack's books. The best romances. Traveling and searching for... what was it they called it? Satori. That was it. I searched for it, but never found it."

Most of the time that the old man began to ramble, he left Ryan way behind. Or way ahead. It was never clear which.

They were only a few miles out of the ville when they heard the crackling sound of the airplane returning.

"Flywag!" shouted the lookout man who was on the front of their truck.

Trader had once explained to Ryan that the quality of fuel needed for jet-powered air wags was beyond anything that the Deathlands could produce. He'd found a cache of it north of where Boston had been, but they didn't have a plane to use it. Nor anyone living who had the least idea of how to pilot one of the fighter jets. But the old biplane flown by Layton Brennan used a much more basic type of fuel. The engine sounded rough, but it worked.

"Get yourself six of those and some good machine guns and you could take damned near any ville you wanted," J.B. said.

"Yeah, but you and me found us some missiles around the redoubts that could pluck that out the sky. Easy as spitting."

"This MP-7 could do the job," the Armorer replied, patting the H&K blaster on his lap. "But air wags got so much surprise. Look at the way he's gotten back here so quick."

The Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter lurched and the engine faltered as it came swooping low over the convoy. Zombie, leading the way on his Electra Glide, held up his fist and stopped the wags. As the dust cleared, everyone could see the hand over the edge of the plane, dropping something near them, something with a hank of rag attached to it so they could find it easily.

Ryan swung over the bed of the truck and walked to the rounded stone, three or four of the Last Heroes following him. He bent and picked it up, peeling away the sheet of handmade paper from around the small rock, flattening it out.

The writing was crude and childish, the letters of uneven shapes and sizes.

Fifteen miles. Northeast. Leave road at old school. Dirt — the next word was illegible — over hill. Caves. Counted thirty. They saw me and gotten jumping good around.

"What's it say?" Riddler asked. Ryan handed him the note, but the fat biker passed it to Kruger.

"Don't read good, Ryan. Frankie here got the spelling and figuring."

Kruger was old with a badly scarred face, as if he'd been in a devastating fire some years earlier. He followed the lines with a painful concentration, tracing them with the knife blades he'd sewn into the fingers of an ancient pair of gauntlets.

"Take us a half hour," he said, looking across at Zombie.

"Read it again," Zombie ordered, listening while Kruger stumbled through it. "Yeah. They could be ready for an attack. Best we leave the wags by the old school. Go for 'em on foot. You reckon, Ryan?"

"Yeah. I reckon."

The school was an adobe building that looked as if it had been abandoned long before dark day. The windows were gaping sockets and there was no trace of a door. The structure stood at the junction of the highway and a dirt track that wound away into some low hills.

The leadership of the group was peculiar. Norman Mote proclaimed himself in charge, yet he left all the major decisions up to Zombie, who, in his turn, deferred to Ryan. Baron Edgar, who should have been at their head, waited patiently with the rest of the men.

Ryan agreed that it would make sense to split into two groups, to circle around the nest of the stickies and attack from the rear, making sure that none of the creatures escaped the trap.

But the division of the two sections led to querulous squabbling.

Ryan didn't want to split his own group, nor did Zombie want to split up the Heroes. The Brennans insisted that they should go with Ryan's group. Norman Mote pressed that the baron ought to be with them "for his own safety."

In the end everyone settled on a reluctant compromise. Ryan and Jak were grouped with four of the bikers, including Riddler, as well as Joshua Mote, Edgar Brennan and a dozen of the men of the ville, including John Dern, who was carrying a customized M-16 carbine.

Zombie and Norman Mote led the other group, with J.B. and Doc there to keep an eye on Edgar's brother, the partially blind Rufus.

"We go left," Ryan said. "You got a chron?"

Riddler shook his head and grinned, showing a mouthful of broken and stained teeth. "Told yer. Don't go for all that figuring shit."

"My timepiece will suffice, will it not, Ryan?" Doc asked, displaying the trim silver watch on his left wrist.

"Sure. Say forty-five minutes from... now. Unless you get attacked. Find a way, close as you can and get ready. I'll lead our squad in. You come in straight after, Zombie."

"Sure. Be there, Ryan."

Ryan glanced around his group, seeing the nerves and ragged tension.

"Most muties run from blaster fire. Stickies run, but they run straight at you. Explosions and fires bring them. We all know that. Just keep in mind that they're triple-stupes. Body wounds hardly slow them at all. Lot of you got pump actions. Best thing for a stickie. Wait for them to get close, then take their heads off. Any questions?"

A skinny, middle-aged man raised a tentative hand.

"Yeah?"

"I have a question, Mr. Cawdor."

"Fire it."

"What do we do if we get grabbed by one of them stickies?"

"Pray. No more questions? Then let's go and do it."

"Ten minutes to go. Could do with Layton and his plane, Baron."

"Might it not warn them?"

Ryan nodded. "Could be. From the note, we should be virtually on top of them by now."

Edgar Brennan looked exhausted. He wasn't dressed for a cross-country trek. His shoes had lost their polish and his pants their crease. The laundered shirt was stained around the back and chest, the collar ragged and limp. He'd torn off the paisley cravat and held it in his hand, using it to mop at his brow.

"Want me to go ahead and scout with one of the brothers?" Riddler asked eagerly.

"Word is there's a lot of stickies there. Couple of scouts'd whet their appetite for the rest of us. No."

The Last Hero didn't argue, grinning cheerfully at Ryan.

John Dern sidled up to the front, clutching his carbine. "Could find a good spot and pick off the evil devils from safety with this?" he suggested. "Be happy to do it."

"Good combat blaster. Not the best for wiping out a triple-dozen stickies. They'd walk over you. We go in together, fast and blasting."

"Looks like it. Sounds like it."

Ryan held up his hand to stop the straggling file of men. He'd heard the familiar, guttural grunting noise that the suckered muties usually made, coming from just over the next ridge. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled swiftly forward, followed by Jak.

Cautiously Ryan eased himself to the crest of the hill. Squinting over the top, he saw a steep-sided valley that was honeycombed with shallow caves. Gathered together in the middle were a group of stickies. It looked as though Layton Brennan's rough count had been about right.

"Thirty-five or so," he whispered.

The boy was licking his pale lips, his scarlet eyes glittering with the anticipation of the firefight to come. "How long?" he asked.

Ryan glanced at his chron. "Three minutes. Wonder if the others got here yet. Can't see any sign of them on the far... Yeah. There."

He spotted the flash of sunlight off metal. A line of heads appeared on the far ridge, all looking down at the stickies. Ryan knew that J.B. wasn't in command of the other raiding party. The Armorer would never have been stupid enough to risk being spotted before the attack began.

"Fireblast! Best go now, or they'll see us and we'll lose the surprise."

He turned and beckoned to Riddler. The fat biker crouched and waddled to join them. "What the fuck's up?"

"We gotta go now. Stupes there are going to blow the whole attack."

He suddenly heard an outburst of shrill squealing from the far side of the ridge.

"Too late." Ryan shouted the command. "Come on! Now! Let's go!"