Neutron Solstice

Chapter Six

After some discussion they agreed that the safest bet was to leave the buggy behind, hidden under cover, ready in case they needed a fast-footed run from danger.

J.B. suggested that they split into groups, circle around and then meet back at the swampwag, but Ryan insisted they stay together.

"No. With Henn gone we're low on blaster power. You, me an' Finn. Doesn't mean Doc and the girls don't pull their weight, but we're the professionals. Best we stick close."

The promise of a good day was vanishing fast. The sky was chameleonic, shifting from a pale blue streaked with pink to a deep purple with black clouds slashed across it.

Ryan, as usual, took the point position, keeping as far as he could to the side of the blacktop, in among the shadows, blaster at the ready, finger close on the trigger. Krysty came second, twenty paces back, on the opposite side of the road. Then Doc and Lori, who were becoming increasingly difficult to separate, with Finn a farther twenty yards behind them. J.B. brought up the rear, keeping a good hundred paces off, on the same side of the road as Ryan.

The temperature was already rising, humidity making the going tough. Ryan estimated that it was already close to the hundred mark. He was glad that he'd left his beloved fur-trimmed coat behind in the gateway.

A large mosquito, wings shimmeringly iridescent in the hazy light, settled on Ryan's left wrist, readying itself to feed. "Bastard!" Slapping at it, he crushed it in a smear of blood.

There weren't many signs that the blacktop was actually used very much. Oases of vegetation sprouted from cracks in its surface. A sharp curve to the left was followed by one to the right. At each turning Ryan held up a hand, slowing the others until he checked out what was around the bend.

Moving back, he called the rest to him, using the prearranged signal of touching the top of his head with his left hand. One by one they came up, J.B. at the rear.

"Road goes straight, but we're close to a ville of some kind. And there's a guard box over on the left, near a side trail."

As they neared it, moving closer together, Ryan was first to see that the small building wasn't a guard box at all.

"It's a phone booth," said Doc wonderingly. "I vow that it has been..." He seemed awestruck. "...many a long year since I have seen such an artifact."

The box, with some of its glass still intact, leaned to one side. The letters 'AT&T' were still visible on it. The group stopped to gawk at it.

Above them the sky had darkened as it had the previous afternoon, with a jagged spear of silver lightning occasionally crackling down. To one side there was a large pool, reflecting the sullen clouds. Beyond the water several buildings were silhouetted in the distance, seemingly fairly undamaged.

If a whole large city had really escaped the nuking of 2001, it would be an astounding thing to see. Certainly Ryan Cawdor had never seen anything like it before.

Finnegan stepped closer, stopping about a dozen paces from the booth.

"Some fucker's in there. I can hear it moving."

"Get back, Finn," ordered Ryan. "Don't take any chance with..."

The words died in his throat when he saw, as they all did, the creature that Finnegan had disturbed.

"A fucking rat," said Lori. It was the first time any of them had heard her swear.

In the Deathlands there were all kinds of mutie creatures. But none of them had ever seen a rat like this one. It was much larger than usual, hanging on the plastic receiver cord, gnawing at it, while its fiery red eyes stared at the invading humans. Its coat was white as driven snow.

"Albino," said Krysty. "I had a pet mouse back home called Blanche. She was like that. Pink eyes and white coat. No pigment."

Almost contemptuously the rat scurried down the cable, pausing in the open door to pick its way delicately over splinters of broken glass, then running across the road and stopping on the edge of the bushes. Finnegan drew his Beretta 9 mm pistol, steadying his right hand with his left.

"No," snapped Ryan. "Don't be a stupe, Finn."

"Why not? We can waste any local double-poor swamp muties."

"Just like Henn did? Come on, Finn."

During the brief conversation the rat made a leisurely escape.

There were further columns of smoke, and soon they could actually taste the flavor of roasting meat. Finnegan was all for pushing on at best speed, going in with blasters spitting, taking what they wanted and icing anyone who stood in their way,

He was overruled by the others.

"Slow and easy, Finn, Usual way. Let's go and do it."

Spreading across half the roadway was a tumbling mass of brilliant azaleas, a rainbow of brightness, dazzling in the dullness of the morning. Away beyond were the buildings of the town, but the smoke from cooking fires was closer. It emanated from a dip in the land in which lay a maze of shallow swamps.

"Flowers pretty," said Lori, staring open-mouthed at the display.

"Road sign, yonder," said Krysty, pointing to a small rectangle of dark green, well over a mile beyond the flowers.

"It name the ville?"

She stood on tiptoe, straining, her face wrinkled with concentration. "La something. Yeah. Layayette. Lafayette, and it says West... Can't... West Lowellton. Nearest place looks like it's called West Lowellton. Maybe Lafayette's farther."

Doc looked across at her. "I believe that Lafayette was a city, Miss Wroth. Perchance West Lowellton is a suburb of it."

A dozen muties appeared from behind the azaleas. Suddenly and silently. One second the road was clear; the next second the creatures were there.

"Fireblast!" breathed Ryan, dropping into a blaster's crouch, gun braced against his hip, checking to make sure the others had fanned out.

About forty paces ahead, the swampies stood in a frozen group, staring at the invaders as if they were men from deep space.

Ryan checked them out, trying to guess precisely what their mutation was, wondering if it might be safest to simply chill the whole lot of them in a raking burst of lead. But there might be three hundred of them around the next bend.

The first thing that struck Ryan was their stocky build. Not one was taller than about five-two, and not one, including the single woman, weighed less than about two-twenty. Most of them had negroid features, with flattened noses and thick lips. Their hair was short and curly, and came in all shades from black to white, through red and yellow. Ryan noticed that their eyes protruded slightly, surrounded by nests of scars, like old tattoos.

None of them had fingernails.

As they glared at Ryan and his companions, their mouths sagged open as though their noses were blocked. There was not a blaster among them, though several had peculiar small crossbows strapped to their forearms. Each one, including the woman, wore long pangalike knives at the hip.

They were dressed in cotton shirts and patched short trousers, with flapping sandals on their feet, hacked from chunks of old tires.

For several heartbeats nobody moved on either side.

Then Finn opened fire.

Immediately all the others started shooting. After all, who was going to stand there shrugging his shoulders and complaining he hadn't been involved in a tactical planning discussion?

Two utilities raised their feeble little crossbows as if to retaliate, but the wave of fire sent them crashing down in a tangled heap of thrashing arms and legs.

Ryan saw his triple bursts wipe three of them away. First the woman, two 4.7 mm rounds smashing into her neck, nearly severing the head from the torso.

"High," muttered Ryan, automatically adjusting his aim. Finn's actions hadn't entirely taken him by surprise. The chubby blaster had never been known for his patience. And after Henn's murder...

The swampy beside the stricken woman was on a crutch, half his left leg missing. Ryan shot him through the stomach, spilling his tripes in the dirt.

Ryan's third victim had already been knocked off balance by one of his falling comrades, and Ryan's bullets hit him through the upper chest, on the left side. A clear heart shot, fatal within thirty seconds or so.

Perhaps fifty rounds were fired by Ryan's party, laying them all down. Peculiarly, none of the muties screamed or cried. Just a faint mewing from the dying.

In the loud silence, Ryan turned to face Finnegan, who was clearing the Heckler & Koch, reaching for spare ammunition.

"Open fire like that again, Finn, and I'll ice you myself."

It was said very calmly, with no obvious anger. But the blaster flinched and looked down at his boots. "Sorry, Ryan. You know how..."

"Yeah, I know how. But not again. Now let's get the fuck outta here before..."

There was a stifled scream from Lori. Everyone else was sufficiently experienced to know that all of the muties were down and done. Finished. But the tall blonde had been staring at the twitching corpses with a morbid fascination. Now she stood, pointing with her dainty blaster, her eyes wide with terror.

Three of the corpses had risen and were walking unsteadily toward them.

"By the three Kennedys," exclaimed Doc, taking a shaky step backward, away from the horrific apparitions.

Ryan knew that stickies were notoriously difficult to kill, but this was something else. The three... another one was struggling to rise...fourmuties had all taken terminal wounds. One had half his intestines hanging out, looping around his feet so he stumbled and nearly fell; bending to pick them up, he draped them over his arm, looking like an old picture Ryan had seen of an elegant Roman senator in his toga.

A second had an arm hanging by a thread of gristle with tattered rags of muscle bloodily weeping from the stump. Ryan had shot that one. A third had been shot in the face, the bullet dislodging an eyeball so it dangled prettily on the scarred cheek. The fourth had two massive bullet wounds in its chest and upper abdomen.

"They can't," said J.B. in disbelief. "They're dead."

"Then why aren't they fucking lying down?" asked Finnegan.

One of the swampies had managed to fire its crossbow, the bolt flying short and burying itself in the earth near Krysty's feet. She stooped and plucked it from the ground, looking at the sticky patch of brown oil smeared around its point.

"It's poisoned," she warned.

The four staggering muties were only fifteen paces away, lurching like drunken customers leaving a gaudy house at midnight. Ryan noticed that their wounds, appalling though they were, didn't seem to be bleeding as much as they should be.

"Again," he said, opening up atpoint-blank range with the G-12 automatic rifle, the burst of the caseless ammunition sending all four figures dancing and toppling. He raked the four bodies repeatedly, using thirty rounds to make sure they wouldn't rise a second time. Blood spurted, and chunks of flesh splattered into the air, with gouts of crimson, carrying splinters of bone.

After the racket of the guns, the silence was intense. The bodies lay still, torn apart by the ferocity of the shooting.

"If there's more of them, they'll be on top of us any time now," warned Ryan.

"How could they?" asked Doc Tanner, moving and staring down at the mutilated corpses. "Such wounds, and they rose and walked." He squatted down, oblivious of the blood soaking, around his cracked boots.

"Where?" asked the Armorer.

"Away," replied Ryan. "Must be more where that smoke was. I don't want to face more if they're that bastard-tough to put the stopper on."

"Sure. Back to the swampwag? Or into the brush?"

Standing up, his hands slobbered with dripping blood from probing at the carcasses of the muties, Doc interrupted, "Amazing. My dear Mr. Cawdor, it is truly amazing."

"What?"

"These poor creatures, genetically mutated as a result of the neutron bombing, have developed a dual circulatory system. Two hearts, two sets of lungs, two sets of arteries. That is why they are difficult to slay."

"Zombies," breathed Krysty. "By Gaia! They are truly the living dead."

"Nukeshit!" Ryan looked at her in surprise. "You don't believe that stuff. They're muties. Just muties. All muties are different, Krysty, but they're still muties. Right?"

The moment his words were out, he wished he could suck them back and swallow them. The girl glared at him for a long-held moment.

"I know about muties, Ryan. So do you."

"Hey, I'm... I'm sorry, only..."

She nodded her understanding. "I know why. Doesn't make it right."

"I hear them," said Finnegan, hastily reloading his blaster.

They all heard it. A distant ululating cry, rising and falling like the howls of hunting wolves. It sounded like an awful lot of swampies were heading their way.

"Let's move," said Ryan, turning away from the water and running unhesitatingly into the heavy undergrowth alongside the track.

A desperate chase it was, and lasted all morning, and well into late afternoon. At one point there was another torrential downpour but they didn't dare stop for shelter, in case the muties just kept coming after them.

Ryan, Krysty, J.B. and Finn were able to keep going with no great strain. Battle-honed and fit, they could have run for a day. Lori, despite the handicap of her high-heeled boots, did well enough. But for Doc Tanner it was a torturous pursuit.

At first they more than held their own, ducking and weaving along paths that danced and twisted like a breakback rattler. Ryan led the way, his steel panga drawn, slashing the branches that blocked their progress. Every few minutes he'd hold up his right hand for a brief rest, while all of them fought to control their breathing so they could listen for the sound of the muties.

The banshee wail seemed closer for the first couple of stops, then it faded away until it was no louder than the humming of bees. But by the fifth check, Doc was in a perilous state, dropping to hands and knees, his chest heaving, sweat dripping from beneath the high hat.

"I beg you, gentlemen and ladies, to go on and leave me behind. I have my trusty cannon," he said, half drawing the ancient, ponderous Le Mat percussion pistol. "I assure youthat I shall give a good accounting of myself, and I shall take some of the monsters with me."

"Save a round for yourself, Doc," urged Finnegan, readying himself to move on deeper among the trees.

"No. Finn. You keep on this path with the women. I insist that..." Doc tried, but Ryan turned on him with a ferocious anger.

"Shut that fucking mouth, Doc, or I'll bust it. This isn't some old-fashioned fucking game of heroics. If you were gut-shot, I'd be first to leave you. But you aren't. J.B. and me'll stop and slow 'em some."

"Usual on the paths?" asked Finn.

"Yeah. Straight when there's no doubt. Any choice, take alternate right and left. Dagger slash on the nearest bush or tree."

Finn nodded and began to move, while Ryan and the Armorer readied an ambush for the swampies who were following. Lori helped Doc up on his feet, but still he hesitated,

"Come on, Doc," called Finnegan. "Have no fear."

The old man came close to a smile; it trembled uncertainly on the edge of the white lips. "You say to have no fear, my plump companion." An ironic laugh. "My own words to myself, a hundred times a day."

"Come on, Doc," urged Krysty. "Uncle Tyas McNann used to quote something 'bout being of good cheer and playing the man."

This time the smile was broad and genuine. "I know the saying, lady. But the man who said it died moments later."

"Get the fuck out of here," said J.B., leaning against a tall sycamore, his gun a comfortable extension of his right hand.

The four of them melted into the undergrowth; the only sounds were the sucking of the increasingly muddy earth at their boots. Ryan and J.B. waited, as they had waited in a dozen different places and times, for the enemy to come to them.

It worked.

They didn't need a signal. Ryan was the leader, so when he squeezed the trigger, the Armorer was a split second behind him. In such thick cover it was difficult to count the enemy. And with the muties' talent for recovering from mortal wounds, Ryan wasn't about to go and check them out. But at least eight went down, hit hard, and the others fled into the bayous, splashing and crying out to each other in odd, bubbling cries.

It was necessary to try the same trick again around four in the afternoon.

Doc has passed out, his breathing shallow, heart racing like a pump engine. Normally, if they'd been out from War Wag One, there'd have been a medic among them with drugs. But out there in what had once been called Louisiana, they had nothing.

"Take five rest," said Ryan. "Me and J.B. will go do it to 'em again."

The swampies had learned their lesson and were approaching more cautiously. But four or five of them went down under the combined fire of the Armorer's Mini-Uzi and Ryan's caseless G-12.

"Take five," ordered Ryan, once they had all caught up with each other.

"I regret," panted Doc, "that I truly can no longer even walk, let alone..."

"We'll hold up here," Ryan interrupted. "Either those zombie bastards leave us be, or we stand and fight 'em. No other way."

The ground had been getting wetter and wetter, until at every step their boots sank inches deep into slimy muck. The sky had cleared and now had only a scattering of light orange clouds, floating high and untroubled, intermittently visible through breaks in the green curtain that was draped overhead.

While they waited, Krysty stood a little apart from the others, her head to one side, listening hard. The long red hair rolled over her shoulders, bright in the half light.

Ryan came and stood by her, putting a hand on her wrist. She smiled at him.

"I'm sorry 'bout the cracks on muties!" he said.

"It's fine, lover. I know how it is."

He kissed her gently on the cheek, tasting the faintest hint of gasoline from the dirt and mud. "You hear them, love?"

"No. They backed off at the last firefight. But I can hear..." She shook her head.

"What?"

"I heard a dog barking. Then it sounded like a pig snuffling. Not far ahead, but the wind's against me for good hearing. I thought I heard a woman's voice. Singing. Mebbe another swampie village ahead of us."

They'd been running more or less blindly, picking anything that looked remotely like a trail, even, narrow animal tracks: Now they were in a small clearing with some exceptionally tall elms around them, covered with the white Spanish moss, so that they resembled a mute assortment of frozen brides draped in stained wedding lace.

Ryan hesitated. If they turned back for the swampwag, they might encounter the muties. They couldn't go right or left either. The deep waters of the salt swamps had been closing on them on both sides. That left only straight ahead, where Krysty Wroth had heard sounds of active life.

The sound of a gas engine came to them from behind; deep and throaty it was, exactly like the noise of the buggy's engine.

"Swampies?" said Finn.

It didn't seem likely that any community as brutish as the dirties who'd attacked them could drive a swampwag. But whoever it was, there was a better than even chance that they weren't going to be friendly. Anywhere in Deathlands the odds were never better than even.

"On," pointed Ryan.

The swamp closed in even more, leaving only a path less than six feet wide that wound among the high-rooted mangroves. Several times the mud and water mingled, and they waded through slime that reached above their knees. Remembering the giant alligator, everyone was edgy, concentrating on the slick surface of the mud as they progressed.

Several of them, not just Krysty, heard the dog bark again. And, drawing closer, they also heard the sounds of a small rural ville. Ryan advanced cautiously forward, and the others followed in single file, moving from quivering tussock to mud thick as molasses, stopping at the sudden apparition that seemed to spring from the very swamp itself.

A skinny white man, in a red shirt and white cotton breeches. He had long white hair and a neat beard. He held out both arms to show that he was weaponless.

"You are fatigued, mes enfants. Welcome to the humble ville of Moudongue. Here you may rest, and here you will be safe."

He turned on his heels and after a brief pause, Ryan Cawdor and his party followed the old man. There really wasn't anything else to do.