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Child Of Slaughter
Child Of Slaughter
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Child Of Slaughter

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Ryan did the same for Krysty. “Can you keep going?” he asked as they ran.

“Yes.” Whenever Krysty tapped Gaia’s power, she always went through a slump afterward, as if the superhuman exertion had unnaturally exhausted her. But perhaps because of the continued danger, she hadn’t gotten to that point yet.

She and Ryan ran onward after J.B. and Mildred, trying to get past the limits of the sinkhole’s expansion…if there were any. Up ahead, Jak and Ricky had stopped running and were waving their arms, urging them on.

Suddenly, a fresh bolt of pain shot through Krysty’s skull, and she stumbled. She tried to keep running at full tilt, but another bolt caught her, and she stumbled again, heading for a fall.

Ryan’s arms stopped her from hitting the ground. In one smooth movement, he scooped her off her feet and kept going, carrying her away from the sinkhole.

Just then, a shock wave plowed into both of them, nearly bowling them over. Krysty saw the ground around them flow like liquid, and she knew what was coming next.

A blinding flash lit the landscape. Ryan reeled with Krysty in his arms, teetering in the light, and then the flare was suddenly snuffed out.

Instantly, Krysty could feel that the air was different. Everything was quieter and more still than before, with good reason.

The constant rushing of the collapsing ground had ended.

“It stopped.” Looking back, she saw that the sinkhole had finally stopped expanding, leaving the farthest reach of the rim at about thirty feet from them.

“Best news we’ve had all day,” Ryan said. “But why the hell did it start?”

Krysty concentrated, trying to probe their surroundings for a clue, but then the post-Gaia weakness finally struck. Her thoughts scattered like ripples from a pebble tossed into a pond, and she slumped in Ryan’s arms.

Mildred was at her side in a heartbeat. “Are you all right?”

Krysty nodded weakly. “Just worn-out.”

“You just let me know if you need anything.” Mildred patted her cheek lightly.

“What about you?” J.B. put a hand on Mildred’s shoulder, gazing at her with deep concern. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Mildred said. “Not a big fan of this place, but I’m fine.”

“It hellhole,” Jak stated. “We stay longer, it take us like took Doc.”

“Mebbe we should split up,” J.B. suggested. “One group could get Krysty out of here before the next disruption while the other group stays here and keeps looking for Doc.”

“Or,” shouted Ricky, who was standing on the rim of the crater, pointing into the distance, “we could all follow that.”

Ryan carried Krysty to the rim, and the others joined them. As Krysty looked where Ricky was pointing, she saw what he was talking about.

J.B. blew his breath out in a low whistle. “Dark night!”

“Maybe one good thing came out of that crap storm,” Mildred said.

In the distance beyond the giant sinkhole, Krysty saw that a channel now ran through the surface of the earth—a rough-hewn canal filled with a glowing red liquid. The red substance churned and bubbled, shedding plumes of rippling gray steam that revealed, at a distance, just how hot the channel’s contents had to be. Meaning the red liquid could most likely be only one thing.

“Lava,” Krysty said.

“Magically appearing in the middle of the Sandhills, where there’s zero volcanic activity,” J.B. commented.

“That we know of,” Ryan corrected. But how the lava had gotten there wasn’t the important part, and they all knew it. More important by far was what it might do for them.

And whom it might lead them to.

“Don’t you think it could be a trail?” Ricky asked. “Mebbe it’s pointing at the middle of all this.”

J.B. nodded. “The epicenter of the effect.”

“And that might be where they’re taking Doc,” Ricky added.

Ryan nodded. “Might be, at that.”

“Seem like long shot to me,” Jak said. “How know that where taken?”

“We don’t,” J.B. replied. “But we don’t have any better ideas, do we?”

“I think it’s worth a try.” Ryan looked down at Krysty, still resting in his arms. “But mebbe we should still get you out of here.”

Krysty shook her head. “I don’t want us to split up.” She shifted in his grip, signaling that she wanted him to let her down, which he did. “I can handle whatever comes our way. Don’t worry.”

Ryan held her gaze for a long moment, reading all that remained unsaid between them. Krysty knew he was aware she was making a sacrifice, and that it would cost her, but she would gladly do it if it meant finding Doc.

And she knew he was well aware of one other fact as well: once she decided to do something, there could be no stopping her.

“All right, then.” Ryan nodded. “Let’s gather up what’s left of our gear and get moving. The longer Doc’s out there on his own, the less likely it is that we’ll ever see him again.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_9834b014-df06-54bf-b480-17bd8220f13b)

Doc blinked furiously as he was dragged from the pitch-blackness and dumped in a space awash in bright white light. For a long moment, he couldn’t see a thing beyond a few dim outlines in the flaring brilliance.

Then, as his eyes adjusted, things slowly took shape around him. He saw that he was in a round, stone-walled chamber, open to the sunlight overhead. He lay on a dirt floor at the feet of a group of muties, unarmed and at their mercy.

The question was, what did they want with him? And why had they brought him here, wherever here was?

“Oh, dear.” As Doc looked around, the muties stared back at him with great interest. They couldn’t take their eyes off him; even as they giggled and tittered in childlike voices, their stares never left him for an instant.

At least they didn’t seem to be exuding hostility. Doc smiled as he sat there, and many of them smiled back at him. The crimson skin of their faces crinkled around their mouths and the corners of their eyes, suggesting a response that was the polar opposite of hostile.

“Well, then.” Doc slowly got to his feet. “Perhaps I have made some new friends after all. Perhaps this has all been an unfortunate mistake.”

Just then, a familiar high-pitched voice piped up over the noise from the crowd. “Not a mistake at all. And we are old friends, not new ones.”

Instantly, Doc recognized the voice as that of the first being who had grabbed him in the lightless stone cell. Turning to look at him, Doc saw a mutie with skin as red as a burning ember. He stood taller than the other muties by at least a head, and wore different clothing, as well. The muties in the crowd were dressed in scavenged predark clothes, while this one wore a gray uniform and boots that were practically in mint condition. Was he a leader, perhaps?

“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” Doc bowed quickly at the waist. “Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, at your service.” Straightening, he raised his eyebrows at the apparent leader of the muties. “And what shall I call you, pray tell?”

The leader sighed and shook his head. “What have they done to you?”

“They? They, who?”

“Your captors, of course. The ones who took you from us.” The leader spread his arms wide. He held Doc’s silver lion’s-head swordstick in his left hand. Doc’s LeMat revolver was holstered at his hip. “We took you back, but they must have done something to you first. Taken your memories or senses. I only hope they didn’t ruin you for your holy work.”

“What sort of holy work is that?” Doc asked, marveling at his command of the English language.

The leader just stared at him with apparent pity and worry. “Have no fear,” he said coolly. “We will heal you, my friend.”

Doc cleared his throat, uncertain of what to say or do next. The only thing he knew for sure what that he’d never seen these particular muties before in his life. “If, as you say, we are friends, perhaps you could humor me. Perhaps you could tell me your name.”

“Though it hurts me to have to tell you, I’ll do it,” the mutie said. “My name is Exo. And yours is Dr. William Hammersmith.”

“I suppose it is.” Doc shrugged. “What else can you tell me about myself, friend Exo?”

“You have been a naughty boy, Dr. Hammersmith.” Exo ticked Doc’s ebony swordstick back and forth. “It’s a good thing you’re so important and such a good friend.”

“Naughty?” Doc straightened. Without the swordstick and LeMat revolver, he felt utterly naked. “In what way was I naughty?”

Exo pulled a stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy out of the vest pocket of his uniform. “You ran away. If you hadn’t done that, the interlopers never would have taken you.”

“I see.” Doc nodded, thinking how appropriate it was that his doppelganger had a penchant for escape. Doc himself, after being snatched through time from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, had tried numerous times to get away from his whitecoat captors. “And you say these interlopers seized me against my will?”

Exo peeled back the plastic wrapper and slid the candy stick between his lips. “Why else would you have stayed away so long, leaving your critical work unfinished?”

“Hmm.” Doc frowned and rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “And what is this work to which you refer, precisely?”

“Perfecting the Shift, of course.”

“Ah, the Shift.” Doc nodded, then tipped his head to one side and squinted. “Which is, of course…?”

Exo took the candy stick out of his mouth and swept it in a semicircle. “All around us! The deadliest place in the Deathlands!” Stomping forward, he jabbed the swordstick at Doc’s chest. “And you are making it even deadlier.”

The mutie’s breath was rancid enough to choke a horse, but Doc stood his ground. “Is that so?”

Exo narrowed his gaze. “I can see by the look on your face that you still don’t remember it all. But no matter.” The mutie reached over and cupped the right side of Doc’s face in his hand. “You still have time for it to come back to you. The journey to the core will take days, and we have other business to conduct on the way.”

Doc couldn’t help leaning his head away from Exo’s hand. “What business is that?”

Exo laughed that high giggle of his, the one that so belied his threatening personality. “Teaching your kidnappers a lesson, dear Doctor. Teaching them the price of intruding in the Shift, where they are not welcome and never will be.”

He was talking about Ryan and the others, and Doc knew it. “What price is that?”

Exo paused a moment, his face completely unreadable. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and shouted in Doc’s face, “Death! Torture, mutilation and death at the hands of the shifters!”

Doc cleared his throat and took a step back. “I do not suppose you would consider letting bygones be bygones?”

Exo giggled and tossed away his candy stick. This time, when he lunged, he threw Doc down on the ground and pummeled him with his fist and the head of the swordstick until Doc started fading again.

“The Children of the Shift never forgive!” As Exo said it, the other muties roared in agreement. “We understand only one thing! Swift and brutal retribution without hesitation or mercy!”

It was then that Doc lost consciousness. His last thought before he went under was if this was how Exo treated his friends, then Ryan and the others were really in for it.

Chapter Six (#ulink_df5d2270-0816-5d58-b500-a630016d469b)

Ricky tossed a rock into the bubbling lava and watched it melt in an instant, casting up a plume of steam.

“That’s some hot stuff, man.” He elbowed Jak, who walked beside him at the front of the group. “Get too close, and it’ll give you a sunburn.”

“No want get close.” Jak was a good thirty paces from the lava channel, where he’d stayed since the team had started hiking. He was only too happy to let Ricky stay between him and the superheated flow. “Enemy not come that direction.”

Ricky raised an index finger. “Unless things change again, that is. It happened before.”

Jak snorted. “We ready. Learned lesson.” He smiled grimly. “Expect unexpected.”

Just then, Ryan trotted forward from the middle ranks. “Guys.” They parted, and he formed up between them. “What’s the good word?”

“All quiet for now,” Ricky said.

“All hot,” Jak added.

“What about back there?” Ricky bobbed his head toward the rest of the column. “Anything we should know about?”

Ryan shook his head. “Krysty hasn’t gotten a signal since we set out. No seizures, no funny feelings, nothing.”

“That good,” Jak said, “for her.”

“Not so good if we want to find Doc, though,” Ricky stated. “If we run out of lava channel, we’ll need to find another way to pick up the trail.”

“My gut tells me something will turn up.” Ryan narrowed his eyes and scanned the scenery—clusters of sandy humps rolling in all directions, split up ahead by the arrow-straight river of lava. “As crazy as this place is, I’ll be more surprised if something doesn’t turn up soon.”

Ricky kicked up a spray of sand with the toe of his boot. “Why do you think it’s like that? This place? Why do you think it’s so crazy?”

“If Doc was here, he’d have some kind of scientific explanation. As it is…” Ryan sighed. “Krysty says something awful happened to the earth around here, but, you know, the same could be said for much of the Deathlands.”

“Skydark cause somehow?” Jak asked. “War aftereffect?”

“Or something since then?” Ricky queried. “Some kind of science project gone wrong, mebbe?”

“Any of the above.” Ryan shrugged. “Right now, I guess it doesn’t much matter. We just need to find Doc and get the hell out of here before the phenomenon kills Krysty.”

“Survive first.” Jak nodded in agreement. “Explain later.”

“Hmm.” Ricky stared at the lava-filled channel as he kept marching along. “What if it’s all in our minds? Some kind of mass hallucination?”

“Someone mess with heads? Not first time.” Jak thought about it for a moment, then pointed at the channel with the barrel of his Colt Python. “How about dip toe in there and tell if illusion?”

“You first.” Ricky laughed. “But what if it is an illusion? We wouldn’t know it, would we?”

The one-eyed man blinked at him. “Krysty might.” He frowned. “Which might be the reason she keeps getting pounded by these psychic attacks, come to think of it.”