скачать книгу бесплатно
As the sun rose the next morning, the companions were out of sorts and tired. Not one of them had had a good night’s rest.
“Gaia, but I hope this changes soon,” Krysty said as she stretched, looking up to the green-purple sky and making the most of that brief period between the chill of night and the heat of day.
“It can’t stretch like this for much farther. We should hit the coast soon,” J.B. stated.
“Trouble is, what kind of condition are we going to be in when we do?” Mildred commented. “The salt tablets won’t last forever and neither will the water.”
“We press on. Can’t turn back,” Ryan said simply.
Doc fixed Ryan with a stare. His blue eyes, sometimes clouded with troubled visions that only he could see, were today startlingly clear. He could almost see into Ryan’s heart, see the pain. But at what cost to the rest of them? He chose to say nothing—this wasn’t the time—and handed out self-heats to the other companions, leaving Ryan to last. The one-eyed man gestured that he wasn’t hungry.
“My dear boy, I do not care whether you are or not. You have to eat, keep up your strength. We are relying on you, do not forget,” he added with emphasis. “You are of little use to us if you do not have the energy reserves to march or to fight…and of little use to yourself in such a case, I should not wonder.”
Ryan frowned and studied the old man intently. He was right, of course, he was. The one-eyed man took the food. It was bland and chemical-tasting, as self-heats usually were, but it was energy. That was all that mattered.
“J.B., you reckon we’re still headed in the right direction?” he asked. The Armorer checked his minisextant with the sun and confirmed that they were still on south-southwest. “Then I figure we keep going. We’ve come too far to turn back. It has to get better…”
“More out there,” Jak commented. “Smell it, hear it. Mebbe not much, but something survives on more than this.” He bent and took a handful of the dry soil, letting it run through his fingers.
“Then let’s go,” Ryan decided. “Sooner we move, sooner we get the hell out of this.”
They broke camp and set off once more. Mildred wondered if she was the only one to detect the double entendre in Ryan’s choice of words. From the way that Krysty was looking at the one-eyed man, she suspected not.
Jak had been correct. It was a subtle change, and it took some while for them to notice, but the Gila monster that sprung across the line as they marched brought it home. The conditions were improving. The air was still stifling and the heat from the sun was still intense, but there was a lessening in the humidity. Looking up, they could see that the cloud cover was spare, the chem clouds allowing more of the sky to show through untainted. The soil around was still dry, but there were signs of lichen and fern. The grasses looked less stark. They were softer clumps, thicker and more lush. The trees appeared to twist less, the root systems seemingly able to burrow a little deeper into the earth.
Stopping to take note, Jak could tell that there was more wildlife. He could hear birds, see a few in the distance. Obviously poor, scrawny creatures, they were there, nonetheless. As were the reptiles and insects—more than that Gila monster or the dung beetle that now crawled across his combat boot. Even the presence of a dung beetle suggested mammals from which it could scavenge. Small one, mebbe, no more. The albino could sense no danger in the shape of larger predators.
Jak allowed himself a small smile. “More life—mebbe food and water and not so much heat,” he said to the others.
“Mebbe. Press on some more before we rest, see if we can find out what,” Ryan replied. For the first time in days, a smile creased his seemingly ever-grim visage.
They moved forward with a renewed sense of purpose and a pace quickened by expectation. And as they moved, so the landscape around them seemed to improve with every half mile they traversed. The dusty top layer of soil gave way to hard-packed ground beneath, which became that much softer beneath the trampling of their feet. The patches of grass and lichen spread out so that the exposed soil became an exception rather than the rule. And the musk of animal life grew stronger around them, becoming almost tangible.
Which should have been a warning.
The farther from the redoubt, the more the landscape began to resemble something that could feasibly support life. It was almost as if the redoubt itself had somehow acted as the epicenter for the desert area. Perhaps it had. Although the toxicity would have abated within the area itself, it was possible that the military activity in the redoubt had concentrated on chemical warfare, which was reflected in the desolation. The thought crossed Mildred’s mind and she made a note to check herself and the others for any signs of contamination that may occur in the next few days. Assuming that the next few days would be quiet enough to allow for such a check.
It seemed as though quiet might be the case as the day slowly faded into twilight and they put distance between themselves and the barren land. It was still stiflingly hot, but even so the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the lusher vegetation allowed for more shelter from the direct heat of the sun.
It also provided hiding places for the wildlife that became more prevalent.
Jak slowed and focused his attention on a clump of turquoise-berried shrubbery wild with red and yellow leaves among the green.
“What?” Ryan questioned briefly, stopping as he noticed the albino hunter slow down.
Jak answered him with an almost imperceptible nod, not bothering to shift the glare of his red eyes from his target. In a smooth, fluid motion he palmed a leaf-bladed throwing knife from within his patched camou jacket. The knife left his hand with minimal effort, flashing through the air and into the clump of vegetation.
There was a squeal—fear and pain mixed on a screeching note—and the bush seemed to take on a life of its own, exploding as two creatures shot outward in a blur of motion. They were moving away from the companions, fleeing in fear, but the death rattle from the shrub suggested that there had been a third creature and that Jak’s aim had been true.
Ryan moved toward the vegetation, the SIG-Sauer in his hand, ready to blast anything that may present the merest hint of a threat. He used his heavy combat boot, raised tentatively, to open up the dense foliage. It would take an incredibly strong bite or claw to go through the toughened leather, and he was unwilling to risk a more vulnerable hand or arm to the task.
“Fireblast! That’s not a pretty sight,” he breathed as the creature in the shrubbery became visible.
The others joined him.
The creature was some kind of mutie raccoon, larger than any they’d seen before, with a heavily developed back and hindquarter musculature that made it look like some sort of hybrid raccoon-badger. Its snout had been cleaved by the knife, the razor-honed point making short work of the bone and flesh, Jak’s unerring arm driving it up and into the frontal lobes of the creature’s brain. The mutie lay in the last twitches of death, staring up at them with eyes that could no longer see.
“Shit, that’s a mean-looking bastard,” Mildred whistled.
“Yeah, and his little friends are going to be pretty pissed at what we’ve done when they get over the urge to run,” Krysty added thoughtfully. “They’ve been tailing us, right?”
Jak nodded. “Smelled them couple a miles back. Part of pack, getting closer, bolder when they think we don’t know.”
“They’re pretty quiet for something so big,” Krysty stated. “I thought I could feel something, but I didn’t hear them.”
“Guess we’d better be triple-red, then,” Ryan said decisively. “If we’re their game, they’ll be back. Figure we’re probably the biggest, tastiest-looking prey they’ve seen for a while.”
The companions set off once more, keeping closer and staying on the alert. Blasters were drawn in anticipation of an attack. As they became aware, it seemed that there was more noise, more movement. Was it because they had been slack before the chilling or had the scent of blood stirred up the creatures of the woods?
Small rodents scuttled into the undergrowth as they approached, causing J.B. and Ryan to draw beads, fingers tightening on triggers before relaxing as they realized there was no threat.
Doc and Mildred directed their attention to the skies. They were entering an area where there was a denser canopy of leaf and branch cover than before. What kind of birds were sheltering in the cover provided? And not just wildfowl. There was also the possibility of snakes dropping onto them from above.
“Over there,” Jak snapped suddenly, gesturing them to halt. He slipped out of line and into the cover of a grassy knoll. He emerged, dragging the corpse of what looked like some kind of wild dog. It had been gnawed at the hindquarters, the stomach and ribs stripped bare. The head and forequarters had been barely touched. The animal almost had a look of surprise on its muzzle, its glassy eyes seemingly shocked even in the moment of chilling.
“Fresh, mebbe less than day. No flies, maggots, no rotten meat smell. Must be close. Mebbe we stray onto their hunting ground.”
He didn’t add that the dog looked powerful and that the mutie raccoons were either powerful in a pack or were even more formidable than they had guessed individually.
“Need to stay triple alert now,” Ryan said quietly. “They could be close.”
“Not all that close, dear boy,” Doc said, suddenly sinking to his knees and examining the still intact forequarter of the beast. “I suspect we may be in spitting distance of something approaching a ville.”
“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked, puzzled.
Doc smiled grimly and traced a scar line on the joint of the dog’s foreleg. “This is no mere scar, and I suspect that this creature may not have been as wild as it was once. Dr. Wyeth, would you confirm my suspicions?”
Mildred came over and hunkered down beside Doc. “This had better be good,” she muttered. “It’s not my idea of a good time to kneel down and look at a hunk of rotting carcass.”
But her imprecations went no further. She squinted, taking a closer look at the scar. Dammit, but the old fool was right.
“Shit, that’s been stitched. This is a domestic canine, which means we must be near some kind of settlement. There’s no way it would wander far if it was used to living with people, and it doesn’t look like it’s been dragged that far.”
Ryan’s face split with a crooked grin. “Signs of life. That’s something, right? We’ll move on out, keep heading seaward. Who knows how far we are from the coast, but at least we know that there’s someone between us and the water.”
Spirits lightened by this revelation, the group picked up the pace. If they could find some kind of settlement before darkness fell, it would be safer than making camp out here.
But, as they moved on, Krysty frowned. The strands of Titian hair around her neck and shoulders started to curl, wrapping themselves close to her nape. She shot a glance at Jak and could see that he, too, was in a heightened state of awareness.
“Yeah, approaching from there—” he nodded as his gleaming red eyes caught hers “—and plenty of them.”
Even as he spoke, the others became aware of a crashing in the undergrowth that was growing nearer with every second. A pack of the mutie animals was approaching at speed.
Ryan unslung the Steyr, and slammed the bolt. “Triple-red. Fire as soon as you sight,” he yelled. Even as he spoke, he was aware that the gloom of twilight under the cover of the trees would make for great pools of shadow that would disguise the movement of the creatures. Hoping the light would hold out long enough, he knew there would be places where he would have to shoot on sound alone, which would be difficult once the firing started, obliterating all else.
The first of the mutie creatures, driven by a lust for blood and, perhaps, some primeval desire for revenge, appeared from the undergrowth only a few yards from where they stood. It leaped across the intervening space, its powerful haunches propelling it through the air. Ryan raised his rifle and fired a solitary round. The creature’s flight was checked, the force of the shell almost changing the mutie’s trajectory as it spun sideways, falling to the ground with a hideous cry of pain. A second shell finished it off. The one-eyed man was taking no chances that the wounded animal might fight back.
Rather than retreat, the chilling of the lead creature just made the muties more ferocious. They began to pour out of the undergrowth, reaching double figures with a frightening speed. Mildred, Krysty and Jak, armed with their handblasters, picked off the animals singly, aiming—like Ryan—for accuracy. But there were too many animals and not enough space and time in which to maneuver.
“Doc, take the left hand with shot. I’ll deal with the right,” J.B. yelled over the bedlam of squealing muties and blasterfire. As he yelled, he unslung his Smith & Wesson M-4000.
“Understood,” Doc shouted, for once not wasting words. The Armorer’s intention was clear: they were the only two of the companions with the firepower to put a serious dent in the marauding forces. While the others picked off the animals in front of them, it would be up to Doc and J.B. to try to stem the flow from the darkness beyond.
It was no time for subtlety.
Doc used the shotgun chamber of the LeMat, firing into the darkness, the percussion pistol roaring as the shot emerged from the barrel of the old blaster, moving at high velocity into the darkness, spreading out to put deadly pellets through anything that got in its way. The squeals and cries from the darkness suggested it was an effective tactic.
Likewise, J.B. fired off a blast from the M-4000. The normal shot charge from such a blaster would be effective, but the Armorer had loaded barbed-metal fléchette rounds that, when propelled at immense velocity, would turn and twist in the air, ripping chunks out of whatever they came into contact with, causing irreversible internal damage on any carcass they entered.
The twin-pronged attack had the desired effect. The numbers of attacking creatures were immediately lessened; many turned and fled in fear or injury. The rest of the companions had the precious seconds they needed to pick off whatever attackers remained.
In the aftermath, the air stank of blood and cordite, the carnage obvious, even in the encroaching darkness of the night.
“Shit, too late to find a ville now,” Ryan murmured. “We need to move on a little, pitch a camp, before the stragglers return to attack again.”
“We should be okay,” J.B. commented. “There’s enough chilled meat here to keep most of the predators for miles around busy until sunrise.”
Krysty allowed herself to shiver. “Let’s get moving, then, before any of them come out of cover.”
Doc smiled. “That would be wise. And, of course, the smell will be awful here.”
Jak snorted. “Yeah. Sooner pitch camp better—downwind, right?”
Chapter Two
Jak stayed on watch through the night. Their camp was another five hundred yards from the scene of the slaughter, but even so the albino youth felt a nagging sense that there was still danger in the air. When Ryan asked him, he shrugged. He couldn’t say what it was, but that he just had a sense of it. The woods were too alive for the night; something was making the wildlife restless.
Krysty had been unable to shed any light on Jak’s unease. She was still running on adrenaline from the battle against the mutie raccoons and couldn’t sense anything.
Jak stayed silent, as still as a rock, looking back into the darkness. His red eyes were like coals in the night, burning bright toward the scene of carnage. He refused attempts to relieve him, telling Ryan he wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway. He could smell the blood and the hunger as the smaller scavengers came out of hiding to pick clean the carcasses the companions had left behind. He could hear the sounds of the feeding frenzy, of the crunch of bone and rending of flesh mixed with the squabbles as predators competed for the choicest pieces.
But he could hear more than that. Beyond, and almost hidden beneath the surrounding sounds, he could hear a migration. Smaller animals, birds—these were the vanguard. They were moving toward the area where the raccoon fight had taken place; but they weren’t motivated by the need to feed. It was more than that. They weren’t carnivorous creatures, and would, in truth, be at risk from the scavengers around the carcasses.
So what was scaring them so much that they were blindly running into trouble? It had to be something big, which was why he felt the need to stay awake, to listen and to try to read the sounds of the night. The sounds were too far off to be an immediate threat, but the group was moving fast enough—if the flight of the creatures he could detect was an indication—to trouble them the following day.
By the time dawn had broken, the companions were all awake. At first light, they struck camp. By this time, the flight of the smaller creatures was obvious to all, so close had it become. Yet what lay behind it…
“It’s trouble, no doubt about that,” Krysty said softly, her tone betraying the worry that she felt. Her hair was nestled close to her scalp, her doomie sense working overtime now that she had rested.
“Yeah, but what?” J.B. queried. “Is it the kind of trouble where we try and move out of the way, or is it the kind where that’ll just get us blasted in the back?”
“A dilemma, my dear John Barrymore, a dichotomy that we must solve if we are to save our skins,” Doc whispered.
“Any idea what it is, Jak?” Ryan asked. “It doesn’t sound like a sec party of any kind…” The one-eyed man had been speculating to himself that, if they were near a ville, the noise of the previous night’s firefight with the mutie raccoons may have carried. And it would be understandable if the ville baron’s response to unexpected blasterfire was to send out a party to hunt down the possible threat. But the disturbance seemed to be natural. He couldn’t hear men, horses, wags. And there had been no other blasterfire.
Jak didn’t answer him at first. His attention was still so focused on the source of the flight that it took a while for him to snap into the space occupied by his companions.
“Not men,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Not just animal.”
“What does that mean?” Mildred asked, voicing the confusion they all felt.
“Means not know, not get it,” Jak replied. “Ryan, let me recce. Stay here, give half hour,” he said, tapping his wrist chron.
Around them, the birds chattered and swooped in and out of the foliage and the grasses rustled as small mammals and reptiles moved past them, taking care only to avoid the companions.
Ryan assented after some thought. “Triple-red, okay?”
Jak flashed Ryan a grin—as if he was ever anything else—and moved off into the jungle, running against the flow of the wildlife.
“Okay, people, get hard,” Ryan said to the others, indicating the cover of nearby trees. “Safe to assume we can’t outrun it. We need to know what it is. Let’s hope Jak finds out.”
JAK MOVED THROUGH the woodland like quicksilver, using the clumps of trees as cover, swift and surefooted. This was his natural environment, giving himself over to his finely honed hunting instincts and not thinking consciously, letting his senses tell him what to do. Even through the heavy combat boots his feet seemed as tactile as his hands, searching out the uneven sections of the woodland floor, groping for and avoiding treacherous roots and divots.
He was soon past the mass migration of wildlife, and skirted the clearing where they had defended themselves against the mutie raccoon pack, pausing briefly to note that the scavengers who had followed in their wake had made short work of clearing the carcasses. Few scraps of flesh remained, and there weren’t even that many bones left to mark the battle. Only fresh stains where the blood-soaked earth hadn’t yet been fully absorbed into the woodland floor.
In the eerily empty zone past the migrating creatures, there was a cone of silence, one that was soon broken by a noise that he recognized immediately. One that had been hidden enough by the other sounds to disguise it sufficiently until now. And the scent, sickly sweet, that was also too familiar.
Stickies…
Jak slowed and moved with more caution. The stench of them filled his nostrils and he could hear their movements—fast, slithering, almost reptilian—as well as the hissing breathing and the wordless mewling of the pack.
Stickies tended to move in packs, like herds of cattle, but not normally this fast. And he had never known a pack to cause such a panic among the wildlife of an area. Something out of the ordinary was occurring here and he needed to find out just exactly what it may be.
His senses told him that the pack was at least thirty strong—he couldn’t keep track after counting that many different noises—and moving with speed. They would be on him in a few minutes. He knew he could outrun them once he’d completed the recce, but he needed to get closer, undetected. He jumped for a handhold on a tree limb that was just a foot above his head. He tested its strength, knowing it should hold him easily enough.
Jak pulled himself up into the tree, using the leaf cover to hide himself. He took a good look around. There were enough trees to provide cover for him to circle the pack, always assuming the branches were strong enough to take his weight. Or else he could stay here and wait for the pack to come into view. Unfortunately, from his present position, the trees that provided him with cover also prevented him from getting a good look at the pack.
Jak was patient. He could wait all day and all night for his prey, immobile and focused. But that was when time wasn’t such a pressing issue. Right now, he couldn’t afford to wait.
Testing each limb as he moved, Jak clambered from tree to tree. He was high enough for any noise to be put down to birds fluttering in the branches. Besides, stickies weren’t climbers. As long as he could stay high, he could evade them if he was spotted.
It took only a few trees before he was upon them. He stopped and looked down. The noise they were making had covered any of his own and he felt certain that his presence had not been detected.
They were a heaving mass of mutie flesh, moving almost as one. The black, shining eyes, bereft of intelligence; the fleshless lips over jagged, razor-sharp and yet rotten teeth; the papery, pale skins and the hands with the suckerlike pads on the ends of the fingers. Their very presence seemed to emit an aura of decay. And they were agitated in a way that he had never before seen. As the stickies moved, they tore up anything in their path. The foliage, vegetation and shrubbery that littered the woodlands, even the grasses, were torn from the ground, leaving a churned-up trail in their wake.
Most stickies were mindlessly destructive at the best of times, but this was more than that. It was no wonder that the animals, reptiles and birds had wanted to flee. Anything in their way would be ripped to shreds. Not even for food, but just because it was there.
And the companions were right in their path. Waiting.
