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Leaning forward, Ryan scowled from his horse. “He died fighting,” he said slowly. “Must have been an animal, something too big to reach him behind the cactus needles.”
“Why an animal and not a person?” Mildred asked, then she answered herself. “Of course. Because a man would have taken the rounds afterward. Check.”
“Doesn’t really matter, chilled is chilled,” Ryan stated pragmatically. “More importantly, those rounds look intact to me. Might be live.”
“Any chance they’re .44 calibers?” Doc asked hopefully. He was well stocked with black powder and miniballs for the LeMat, but he was dangerously low on bullets for the Webley.
J.B. adjusted his glasses. “I’d say those were .45. Sorry, Doc.”
The old man shrugged in resignation.
As J.B. started divesting himself of bags and weapons, Mildred walked over to the plants.
“Don’t bother, John,” Mildred said, starting to reach between the cactus, “I’ll get them.”
But as she knelt in the sand, there was a whispery sound and the companions turned to see an incredibly thin figure rise from the desert sand and lurch forward to hurl a spear directly at Mildred!
Caught by surprise, the woman didn’t react in time and the metal rod went straight past her, coming so close she could feel the wind of its passage. Then she dived aside and rolled over, drawing her .38 ZKR when there came a high-pitched keen and the cactus burst apart, writhing green tendrils streaming into view from inside the plant. Moving like uncoiling snakes, the tendrils stabbed for Mildred, and she cut loose with her blaster just as the rest of the companions did the same.
The Devil’s Fork screamed even louder as the hail of lead punched a dozen holes through its stalks and branches, one of the tendrils getting blown off the main trunk. Thin pink “blood” gushed from the wounds, and the mutie went wild, every tendril thrashing about and grabbing for the nearby norms.
A horse was caught in the throat by a tendril, its barbed needles embedding deep in the flesh like fish-hooks and dragging the screaming animal closer. Doc slashed out with his sword and cut through the ropy tendril, a well of pink ichor gushing from the wound. Another grabbed Jak around the neck, but as it tightened its grip, the tendril fell apart, severed by the razor blades hidden in the camou covering of the teenager’s jacket.
J.B. aimed and fired his shotgun as the companions moved away from the bizarre killer, the keening plant jerking as it was hit by another barrage of lead. Then a deafening report split the day and the main trunk erupted at ground level, the booming echo of the explosion rolling along the dunes like imprisoned thunder.
Lowering the smoking barrel of the Holland & Holland Nitro .475 Express, Krysty broke the breech, the two spent shells popping out to fall away as she thumbed in two more.
Revealed amid the smashed skeleton and torn pieces of the cactus was a pulsating wound of exposed organs, ligaments and tendons. Ryan fired two more rounds from his SIG-Sauer directly down the gullet of the creature and it went still, the pumping ichor slowing to a mere trickle and then stopping completely.
“Another mutie plant.” Dean scowled, dropping the spent clip from his blaster and slipping in a fresh one.
“Animal, not plant!” Jak cursed, using a knife to pry away the needle covered bits of the creature still clinging to his jacket. Oddly, it reminded him of the hellish ivy-covered town in Ohio where they nearly lost Krysty.
“Damn good camouflage,” Mildred said, shakily reloading her blaster and pocketing the empty brass for later reloading. “Certainly fooled me into thinking it was merely a plant.”
“But he knew,” Ryan said, the barrel of his blaster now aimed rock steady at the stranger wrapped in rags.
Doc swung the LeMat’s barrel in the same direction. The skinny person said nothing at those actions, simply standing there in silence, the dry wind tugging at the tattered ends of its wrappings.
“He saved Millie’s life with that spear,” J.B. said, racking the pump on his shotgun to chamber a fresh round.
“Unless he meant to ace her and that was a miss,” Ryan pointed out.
“Until proved otherwise,” Doc pronounced, “the enemy of my enemy is still my goddamn enemy.”
Thumbing back the hammer on her .38 ZKR target pistol, Mildred briefly gave the old man a puzzled look, then returned to the matter at hand. This wasn’t the time and place to find out where that paranoid quote had come from.
Just then the horse attacked by the underground mutie fell to its knees and started to shake. Ryan never took his eye off the stranger, but since it was his horse Doc rushed over to see what was the problem. As he got close, the scholar could see that the needles of the mutie were still sunk deep into the throat of the horse, red blood flowing from the severed end of the tendril. By the Three Kennedys, he thought, the piece of the dead mutie was acting like a tap and draining all of the blood from the horse!
Whipping out his eating knife, Doc tried to figure out where to begin trying to remove the needles in the horse’s throat when the animal gently lowered its head to the sandy ground as if it were going to sleep, then simply stopped breathing. Almost immediately, the blood ceased to flow on to the salty ground.
Standing helpless near the dead beast, Doc blinked moist eyes at the sight for a moment, then drew in a sharp breath and turned away.
“I am impressed. Drinkers are very hard to kill,” the stranger spoke unexpectedly, his words dry and raspy as if spoken through a long tunnel. “If I had known your iron weapons worked, I would not have revealed myself.”
“So it could drag us all down for dinner?” Ryan growled in a voice like granite. “It lived underground, and so do you. This seems pretty straightforward to me. So what was the deal? It hauls us down and you share in the food?”
The being tilted his head. “You walk the surface,” he said. “Does that make you friends of the rattler and the stickie?”
“Fair enough,” Ryan said, easing his stance but not turning away the blaster. “So who are you?”
As if in reply, a thrilling whistle came from the stranger, and the sand behind him shifted as more of the beings rose into view from belowground. Even as the companions aimed their collection of blasters at the newcomers, dozens more of the wrapped people came from the sand, then even more on both sides. Turning about slowly, Ryan and the others saw they were now surrounded by an army of the beings, every one of them armed with a needle-tipped metal spear or sicklelike longknifes. The ebony blades were worn from constant use, the handles stained with dried blood.
The figures stood at average height, sporting two legs, two arms and head, but each was so heavily wrapped in strips of loose cloth it was impossible to tell if they were men or women, even if they were norms or muties.
“I am Alar,” the first stranger said, “the leader of the Core.”
Even through the thick wrappings, Ryan could hear the capital letter being used. The Core, eh? That could mean anything. But there was something oddly familiar about how the being held the short spears in his bandaged hands, and Ryan grunted softly as he recognized the military postures from the guards at the Anthill. These were the descendants of army troops, copying the port arms and such of drilling troops. Only they were armed with spears instead of longblasters. The Core as in U.S. Marine Corps, or a nuclear core? Could be either way, and there was no way of telling.
“I’m Ryan,” he said gruffly, then introduced the rest of the companions.
Alar bowed to each, the rest of the Core copying the gesture. At the end, the masked people put away their weapons, and the companions hesitantly did the same. Since they were outnumbered by a fifty-to-one ratio, it seemed prudent to stay on smooth terms with these…people?
“Here you go,” Dean said, walking up with the spear from the Drinker and offering it to the Core leader.
Nodding his head, Alar took the weapon and stabbed it twice into the ground to clean the tip of the sticky pink blood.
“Thank you, small one. A weapon returned is a bond of peace with my people. I grant you free passage through our desert until the next moon.”
“The blessings of Gaia upon you, great leader,” Krysty said, making a gesture in the air too quick to be described.
With a scowl, Ryan asked, “And what happens if we’re still here by the next moon?”
Alar shrugged. “Then you must leave or join the Core forever.”
“Yeah? Nothing more?”
A warm breeze tasting of salt blew over the crowd, making the horses shift about to hide their faces.
“No, Ryan of the horse riders,” Alar said calmly, the sand dancing at his feet. “We are a peaceful people with only one enemy. We welcome all to join the Core.”
Or else you prefer to strike from behind, Ryan thought to himself.
“Sounds good,” J.B. admitted, rubbing his mouth on the back of a hand. “How about we go to your ville and talk. Any chance you got water to trade? We have a few spare blasters that are better for acing a Drinker than those pig-stickers you’re carrying.”
“Ville?” Alar muttered, crouching so that he rested on his heels. “We have no stone place. The desert itself is our home. We live in the sand, on the sand. We are of the sand!”
The entire crowd of masked people shouted a word in an unknown language.
Doc, Mildred and Krysty exchanged glances. They didn’t know the language, but the tone was familiar. The Core was chanting like a choir in a church. This Alar was more than their leader; he was probably also the local high priest.
“However, we can offer you drink and food,” Alar said, gesturing at the crowd.
Scurrying to obey, another being stepped forward to hand Ryan a clear plastic jug. The fluid inside was blue in color, almost a topaz.
“Doesn’t look like water,” Ryan said suspiciously.
“There is no water here,” a tall member of the Core announced sternly, thumping his spear twice on the ground at the word. “We drink jinkaja.”
“Drink,” Alar said in a friendly tone. “Drink and live forever!”
That stopped Ryan cold. “What do you mean, forever?” he demanded hostilely.
Still holding the spear, Alar spread his bandaged hands wide. “We do not die with the passing of the decades like you norms. The members of the Core are as ageless as the sands!”
“Right,” Mildred said slowly, taking the container from Ryan. The physician didn’t know whether that was a sales pitch, but either way she wanted no part of this jinkaja stuff.
While the others waited, Mildred inspected the blue fluid carefully. It was thick with a high viscosity, almost like a British beer. Removing the cap, she took a careful sniff. The smell was very pleasant, slightly citrus in nature.
“How is it made?” Dean asked, copying the squatting position of the Core leader.
“From the essence of the Holy Ones,” Alar said, bowing his head. “Once consumed you can take no other nourishment, not animal flesh or water. But you live forever!”
“As long as we keep drinking it,” Ryan said, feeling his temper rise like a red madness. With a major effort of will, he forced it under control for the moment.
Since Alar was covered in the cloth rags, it was impossible to read his facial expressions, but his body language was that of a parent explaining something very basic to a child. “Of course. To live forever you must drink forever. It is the way of the Core.”
Pale red ants had discovered the dead mutie and were now covering its remains, carrying away tiny pieces of its flesh. Then a scorpion appeared and began to feast upon the ants using both pincers. In a flash of movement, a Core member thrust out a spear and impaled the scorpion, lifting it high for the others to see until the mortally wounded creature went limp. Now he lowered the spear and shook off the tiny corpse so that it fell amid the ants. Without hesitation, the bugs swarmed over their dead enemy and began tearing it apart along with the mutie.
“Made from Drinker?” Jak asked scowling. “That Holy One?”
Throwing back his head, Alar actually laughed. “No, top-walker, it is made from the essence of the night-walkers, whose numbers are greater than their legs. Greater than the grains of sand!”
So the Holy Ones had a lot of legs, eh? Suddenly, Krysty recalled where she had seen blood almost the exact same color as this jinkaja.
“Millipedes,” she said in disgust. “It’s made from triple-cursed millipede blood.”
The crowd of masked people began to mutter at that, and more than one shifted their grip on a weapon.
“How dare the filthy top-walkers to defile the Holy Ones!” the tall Core member shouted. “Punishment!”
For a moment the world seemed to spin, and Ryan felt nauseous as if he had just emerged from a bad jump. As his vision cleared, he could see the others were also reeling slightly, Dean and Doc having both dropped their blasters onto the burning-hot salt. Only Krysty seemed unaffected, but her hair was writhing like he had never seen before.
“Stop!” Alar shouted, and the word seemed to resonate in both mind and ears.
Instantly, the queasy feelings were gone as if they had never existed and Ryan pulled out the SIG-Sauer again, the handle slick with the sweat from his shaking hand. The damn Core was ruled by doomies of some sort! Muties with mental powers. Mildred sometimes argued that they weren’t actually muties, but the next step in evolution unlocked by the cataclysm of skydark.
“Silence, Kalr,” the leader demanded. “It is not for you to decide.”
“It is the law!” Kalr shouted. “All drink or they must die!”
Doc and Dean bent to recover their weapons, but the rest of the Core seemed to be paying no attention to the outlanders. The group was splitting apart into two groups of about the same size.
“The law says they must drink or leave,” Alar corrected sternly as he pressed the shaft of his spear. With a metallic sound, razor-sharp blades snapped out along the entire length. The mirror-bright steel reflected the harsh sunlight like tortured rainbows. “And I have given my personal word they have until the next moon!”
“Useless! Pointless!” Kalr shot back, his own staff blossoming with similar razors. “They drink or die!”
“That is not what the law says.”
“Then the law is wrong!”
“You challenge the law!” Alar said in a flat tone, the crowd of beings behind the leader muttering angrily as more shafts snapped out blades.
Moving as carefully as if in a mine field, the companions were edging closer to their horses. This had every mark of a civil war, and those staffs could tear a norm apart with their razor teeth. On top of which a fight of doomies was something nobody wanted to be near.
“I challenge you!” Kalr shouted, throwing his staff into the ground.
A dry breeze blew over the rocks as Alar stared at the younger being, then with slow calculated care, the leader raised his staff high and also plunged it deep into the ground.
“Accepted!” he roared.
Now the rest of the Core moved away from the combatants, and the horses started nickering in fear. Without comment, the companions retreated from the two beings only seconds before the whole world seem to whirl once more, and the companions fell helpless to the ground, their minds exploding with visions of violent death and chaotic madness.
Chapter Four
Rockpoint was melting.
Holding a large duffel bag in both arms, Alexander Hawk struggled through the waist-deep water. The man was wide with muscle, not fat, his features oddly flat as if there were a lot of Oriental or American Indian blood in his heritage, or just a touch of mutie. His long black hair was held back in a ponytail with a ornately tied length of rawhide, his boots were some kind of lizard skin and a brace of pistols rode protectively behind the buckle of his gun belt, the handles turned out for a fast draw. The blue head of a scorpion tattoo peeked from under his shirt, and the scars marring his body were too numerous to count.
Towering high above the ville was the water spout rising from the destroyed temple of the Scorpion God. Scowling at the sight, Hawk sloshed around a corner of a sagging building as he headed for the front gate. As the chief sec man of the ville, Hawk had known the water shortage was a lie concocted by Baron Gaza to control the ville’s population. They had to obey his every command, or else he cut off their water ration. The plan was brilliant, simple and brutal. It had worked for years and would have for a lot more.
Then those damn outlanders came riding into town and blew the temple, cracking open some sort of a preDark pip large enough to drive a truck into! Now the entire ville was flooded, the houses and buildings and barracks made of sun-dried adobe brick were literally dissolving under the never-ending rain from the gushing water column in the center of the ville. Most of the people had already fled into the desert, but the ocean of water was right behind them, pouring like a river through the gaping hole in the ville wall, and spreading out across the Great Salt in every direction. Rivulets of trickling water were becoming shallow creeks, and several nearby depressions had filled into small ponds. Hawk had no idea when the torrent rising from the temple would stop, mebbe never. Mebbe the preDark river was connected to some freshwater sea and would continue pouring into the Great Salt until it was an inland ocean again the way the wrinkles said it had once been in ancient times, millions of years before skydark.
Tripping over something unseen below the muddy surface, Hawk almost dropped his bundle and tightened his hold on the heavy bag. The clouded water was filled with loose floating items from the disintegrating ville—straw, wooden spoons, some bits and pieces of preDark plastic and a lot of drowned scorpions. The little bodies bobbed about like veggies in a soup, and it broke the man’s heart to see so many of his beloved servants lifeless in the swirling muck.
Then he saw a large black scorpion perched precariously on a dead child. With a shout of delight, he scooped up the tiny desert dweller and it instantly stung him, the barbed tail struck deep into his hand. Hawk grunted at the pain and put the creature on a shoulder for safekeeping. The scorpion dug in its legs and grabbed his shirt collar in self-preservation.
Ever since he was a child, Hawk knew he was different from most folks, maybe a mutie of some kind, because he was completely immune to most poisons. He used this ability to make others fear him by always carrying around a lethal black scorpion, the giants of the desert who were five times bigger than their little red cousins. More than once that had saved his life, and it was how he became the sec boss in Rockpoint. People were terrified of a man who got stung a dozen times and it didn’t even faze him. As always, fear meant power, and now that the baron had fled, he had been their first choice to be the new baron.
It was a bitter victory, though, since soon there would be nothing to rule. Not here anyway, but he would find another ville, and with the bundle in his arms and his few remaining sec men, Hawk would rule as baron yet! Then someday he would find former Baron Gaza and chill the man with a knife, twisting it slowly in his guts until he begged for death, then twist some more.
With a groan, another building tilted sideways, and Hawk splashed hurriedly out of the way as the gaudy house fell apart, the crashing wall forming a wave that pushed the sec boss helplessly along until he slammed into the base of the keep. The impact knocked the breath from the man, and a sharp stabbing pain pierced through his shoulder, the bandaged wound in his chest suddenly leaking red blood.
Struggling to stay erect, Hawk lurched away from the keep, still holding on to the heavy bag. Made of preDark brick and cinder blocks, not dried mud, the keep was the only structure still standing undamaged. It also used to be the home of the baron and was armed with a 25 mm cannon in perfect working condition. Not even the Trader in his armored war wags wanted to face the Scorpion’s Sting, as Hawk liked to call the gun. It tracked fast and could chew through any mobile armor, treads or tires. Once a war wag was motionless, it could be easily covered with loose tree branches, or anything else that burned, and set on fire. The crew would cook alive if they stayed, or be shot the moment they crawled outside. Either way meant death.
Recalling the last time he had been inside the keep, hot rage flared in Hawk. Gaza had betrayed him, gunning down his sec boss because Hawk discovered that the baron was really a coward. Unfortunately for Hawk, he was a coward with a very fast gun and got the drop on the sec boss, but failed to finish the job properly. Now Hawk was back and hungry for revenge.
Reaching the area near the front gates, Hawk found the rest of his sec men sitting on their horses and kicking away the occasional person who begged for a ride, or for food. One man tried to take a longblaster from the boot alongside a saddle of a riderless horse, but another sec man caught the motion and fired from the hip. The would-be thief staggered backward to flop limply into the dark waters, and his companions descended upon the dying man to yank off his boots, knife and other possessions.
