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HAIR TIGHTLY COILED AT HER nape, Krysty Wroth moved through the twilight like a panther tracking its prey—swift, intelligent, remorseless. They were out here somewhere, and she was going to find them and put them on the ground before they did the same to her and her friends. The titian-haired beauty’s S&W blaster was at her side, held low but ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Her hand-tooled blue cowboy boots clicked on debris as she picked her way through what had been an abandoned store, the once spotless and level tile floor now buckled and slanting, covered with dust, dirt and fragments of glass from its shattered windows.
She knew Jak was advancing parallel with her a few paces to her right, his snow-white hair only somewhat muted in the night. She’d suggested that he cover it more than once, but the albino teen had refused, saying he didn’t like wearing anything on his head, even though she had seen him wear an old army cap on at least one occasion. She didn’t argue, however—if it made him a more likely target to their enemies, so be it. Besides, she knew he could take care of himself, with or without a blaster.
J.B.’s instructions had been clear—advance under cover and find a place to ambush attackers—and she intended to follow them to the letter. She knew it was risky, but she trusted the small man almost as much as she trusted Ryan, and knew he wouldn’t have placed them here if there was no chance of getting the job done.
A long counter that ran across the room was also warped and collapsing. Behind it was a space where someone had waited on customers long ago, selling whatever goods they had, and another set of counters that lined the back wall. They looked sturdy enough, however, and Krysty would be able to crouch under the window set several feet up on the wall, even using it as a blaster port if necessary.
She hissed at Jak, who had prowled to the gaping back door, making not a whisper of noise as he’d crept through the room. At her signal, he squatted in the shadow next to the opening, his big .357 Magnum Colt Python almost dwarfing his hands. Krysty held up her closed fist, the signal to stay where he was, then pointed to the window. Jak shrugged, watching her lithe form as she climbed up on the shelf, which creaked a bit under her weight, but held. Standing next to the opening, she cautiously leaned out far enough to get a view of the shattered street outside. Nothing seemed to be moving. Where the hell are they? she wondered.
“Bored. Let’s go.” Jak’s whisper made her start, since it came from only a few feet away. She turned just far enough to see his pale face gleam in the rising moon. He was trying very hard not to stare at her ass, currently uncovered by her shaggy bearskin coat, which she had left near the fire.
She shook her head. “We let them come to us, remember?”
The albino teen shook his head. “Too long. Die waitin’ fuckers to come.”
Krysty took one last look outside—still no one there. She knew they couldn’t have passed the pair—there was no way they wouldn’t have seen the coldhearts. “All right. Get back to the door, and we’ll go to the next building. Wait for me there.”
“Sure, sure.” He was already at the doorway by the time she got to the floor, and before she could join him, he had peeked out. “Hey, see one!” Without waiting for an answer, he darted outside.
“Jak, get back here!” Krysty stepped forward just as she felt the unmistakable pressure of a blaster barrel pressed to the back of her head.
“Don’t move, girlie, or you won’t have that pretty head no more.”
Chapter Two
“Come on, J.B., what’s taking so long down there?” Mildred Wyeth muttered under her breath as she waited in the second story darkness, her ZKR 551 target pistol poised to aim and fire as soon as the Armorer sprung his trap. Except something was delaying the whole plan.
Having been placed into cryogenic suspension after an adverse reaction to anesthetic during what was supposed to have been a routine operation in the year 2000, the last thing Mildred expected to wake to was the devastated remains of America in a blighted world. But when she had opened her eyes in the cryo chamber, the appearance of the motley assortment of men and the woman who surrounded her had immediately let her know that wherever she was, it definitely wasn’t Kansas anymore.
Since then, she had undergone a crash course on life in the Deathlands, adapting to survive in this untamed world, with the pockets of civilization they encountered raw and rough around the edges. She had seen and done things that would have made the old Mildred curse or sob or scream, but now they were taken as a matter of survival, if not of everyday life. In addition, she had been a doctor in her old life, working on the very cryogenic machinery that had saved her life, only to deposit her a century in the future into a hellish land. The irony was all too easy to grasp.
In the beginning, there had been times when she had wondered if this was all a long nightmare or some cruel joke that someone was playing on her. She’d never mentioned it to anyone in the rest of the group, not even J.B., but simply soldiered on, hoping the next place they might find would be some kind of refuge against the insanity that had claimed the world she’d known long ago. But as she had become more acclimatized to her surroundings, she’d been able to hone the necessary survival skills. Sometimes, that thought made her proud of how she had adapted.
Sometimes, it scared the hell out of her.
Now, however, wasn’t one of those times. From the moment the first bullet had hit the dirt, there was no time for introspection, only the instinct to stay alive. To kill before being killed.
In that, Mildred had been both lucky and unlucky. She’d been foraging for firewood several yards away from the campfire when the shooting had started. The nearest cover had been the half-collapsed building a few steps away—in the opposite direction from the group. J.B., however, had turned that liability into an opportunity, as she was now hidden in an elevated position, ready to drop any enemy who came into her sights.
Normally the target pistol she carried would also have been a detriment in her situation, but Mildred knew it like she knew herself, and what she could do with it. It also helped that she had been an Olympic-medalist target shooter back in the twentieth century. That was how she had gotten through the killing in the early days. She pretended their savage, slavering enemies had big, black targets on them—aim, shoot and knock ’em down.
She hadn’t needed to pretend in a long time.
“Come on, come on, J.B.” Two shots from his Uzi rang out, then the clack of the pin falling on an empty chamber. Risking exposing her position, Mildred peeked out over the edge in hopes of spotting one of the lurking bastards creeping in. Instead, what she saw made her heart lurch into her throat.
Below her, three men in identical faded olive-drab fatigue shirts with a patch on the right shoulder trained weapons on a scarecrow-limbed figure in an old, stained frock coat, black pants and battered knee boots. The white-haired old man was currently staring at the armed trio with his arms thrust above his head.
Even as she aimed at the nearest man over the sights of her pistol, the words rose unbidden in her throat.
“Goddammit, Doc!”
ALTHOUGH HE KNEW THE REST of the group sometimes differed in their opinion as to whether Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner was a help or a hindrance to them, often depending on the day, the old man with the oddly perfect white teeth, known as Doc to his companions, had a surprisingly accurate gauge of his strengths and weaknesses.
When he was lucid, which was more often than not, he was a definite strength, able to recall esoteric bits of arcane lore that could mean the difference between life and death for Ryan and the rest of the group—much like when he had first met them, as the performing prisoner of Baron Jordan Teague in the ville of Mocsin, long, long ago. When they had all ended up trapped in the mountains while searching for the legendary Project Cerberus, surrounded by a tribe of hostile Indians, who had saved all of them?
Why, Doc Tanner, that’s who.
He’d stepped up to that seamless wall of solid steel and punched in the numbers that had allowed access to that very first redoubt. Saved them all, he had. Not that he expected anyone to remember in the incredible onslaught of adventures they had lived through since. But ever since that day, he’d held tight to that memory.
For that had been the day Ryan Cawdor had given him back his life, such as it was.
By far, Doc would have preferred to have his old, original life back. Like Mildred, he was a man from another time. But where she had Rip Van Winkled her way into the future, he had, in the paraphrased words of the great bard himself, from his own existence been untimely ripped.
He’d had a wonderful life as a doctor of science in Vermont, back before skydark, way back in the late nineteenth century. He’d been married, with two beautiful children. The bright smiles of his wife, Emily, and his children, Rachel and Jolyon, still haunted him in his dreams—close enough to touch, to hold, to kiss—then disappearing when he opened his eyes, never to be seen in this world or any other again.
Doc had been trawled—brought forward in time—to around 1998, one of the only successful test subjects of Operation Chronos, a division of the Totality Concept, which had explored every strange way of bending the known laws of science to man’s will. The whitecoats had studied him eight ways from Sunday, performed every test known to man on him, trying to find out how he had survived the mind-warping, body-wrenching trip, where others hadn’t.
In the beginning, Doc had been patient and cooperative, sure that once they had finished their work, they would send him back. It was the first of several miscalculations on his part. When they kept him there longer than he desired, he tried to send himself back. That was his second mistake. The greedy, black-hearted barons of the Deathlands had much in common with the pitiless, cold-eyed scientists Doc had met in the late twentieth century—in particular, they both knew when a person had outlived his usefulness.
Nowadays, that person would usually meet either a quick or slow death, depending on the perversity of the baron. The scientists of the Totality Concept were infinitely more heartless. Figuring Doc had survived being plucked from his time, they had trawled the now difficult subject again—into the future, and the Deathlands. His mind scrambled from the jumps, Doc had wandered the hell-blasted lands until falling in with Strasser and his ilk, and had been tormented further—he still couldn’t hear a pig squeal without his bowels tightening—until being rescued by Ryan and his friends.
Since then he had accompanied his companions around the country and beyond, helping as they moved from place to place, never staying long, but doing what they could to make wherever they visited better however they could. That was one of the things Doc clung to in this sanity-threatening world—that there were still good people in it who could be counted on to do the right thing when it mattered. Ryan Cawdor and his companions were definitely those good people.
To that end, Doc would do whatever he could for them, including risking his life to serve as a distraction for the three ruffians who currently had him in their sights. At the moment, his mind was perfectly sane, and more than aware that he was a finger twitch away from being blasted into oblivion. And yet…they hadn’t shot him yet, not even the sniper, to whom he had to have presented a perfect target, outlined in the fire as he was. Why was that?
Doc had no time to ponder that particular mystery. If he didn’t keep up his pretense, he’d be lying on the cold ground in an instant, dead as a doornail. His rich baritone voice reverberating in his throat, Doc played the part of a senile old codger as only he could, doffing an imaginary hat and sweeping out his arm in a wide bow.
“I beg your pardon, good sirs, but I seem to have mislaid my companions somewhere around here. If you would kindly assist me in ascertaining their whereabouts, I would be most grateful.” His gaze flicked to J.B., who was still lying prone on the ground behind the wall, mostly obscured from the three coldhearts’ sight, the long barrel of the autoshotgun he carried clenched in both hands. Any time now, John Barrymore, Doc thought.
The three men looked to be just a few more of the ever-present two-legged predators that scourged the Deathlands, looking for anything they could get their hands on—food, weapons, women, wags. Each was unshaved and rank, dressed in a variety of tattered clothes—except for the similar green shirts worn by each one—the man on the far left without boots on his feet, just blackened, tattered rags wrapped halfway up his legs. Their weapons, however, two remade AK-47s and a battered ArmaLite AR-18, appeared to be in fine working order.
“Nuking hell! Gotta be more than just you making all the racket, white-hair,” the furthest one drawled. “Know we saw least three figures here.”
Doc spread his arms wide. “As I mentioned, they seem to have up and left me. I would call them back, but the sight of your armament would no doubt cause a veritable state of panic, for they are indeed peace-loving folks.” As he spoke, Doc stared daggers at J.B., who had remained motionless during his entire speech. Then, the old man realized exactly why that was.
In his eagerness to serve as the decoy, he had inadvertently advanced too far ahead, and now stood between the weapons master and his targets. Doc was pretty sure that Mildred was in the mostly ruined building on the other side of the ruffians, which meant that he was in her line of sight, as well. To shoot one of them meant risking the bullet passing through her target and perforating him—a fate he wished to avoid at all costs, especially having seen how accurate she was with her target pistol.
No, if anyone was going to get him out of this predicament, it would have to be Doc himself. Ah, well, it wasn’t the first time.
The pair serving as the vanguard of the squad cast uneasy looks into the darkness around them, expecting—as was wise—that a bullet might scream out of the night at them at any moment. One of them glanced back at their apparent leader. “What do ya wanna do?”
“Take ’em for interrogation. The boss’ll wanna have a chat.”
The third man motioned Doc forward with the barrel of his longblaster. “Come on, old man, and keep those arms up.”
Hands groping the sky, Doc searched the ground for a suitable depression or obstacle that would lend his second distraction an ounce of credibility. He found it in a large stone right in front of him. Stepping forward, he let his foot land squarely on top of it, and immediately slip off, pitching him heavily to the ground.
As flashes of pain jolted up his knee and elbow, Doc saw all hell erupt around him.
AS HE BURST OUT INTO THE DARK night, Jak shook his head at Krysty’s whispered admonishment. Out here, stalking and hunting men, there wasn’t no one better, hands down.
For a moment, he was taken back to the steaming, fetid jungles of his birthplace, Louisiana. Trained to chill from the moment he could crawl, he’d grown up fighting Baron Tourment all his life, until Ryan and his companions had appeared and helped him put an end to the man’s sick reign of terror. After that, he’d joined Ryan and the others. With the exception of a brief period when he had tried to build a different life, he’d been with them ever since.
When it came to chilling, maybe a fingerwidth separated Jak and Ryan. J.B. and Krysty were both real good in a fight, and Mildred did things with that small pistol that Jak could only dream about, but when it came to straight up, hand-to-hand chilling, Jak and Ryan were tops. Jak sometimes wondered, if it came down to it, whether he could take Ryan in a no weapons fight. He knew he was good, damn good. But Ryan, he was something else. A rough fighter, but with a strength of will that couldn’t be believed. He’d seen Ryan survive things that would have reduced a lesser man to shattered pulp. So no, Jak didn’t believe he could take the one-eyed man.
But when it came to human vermin like this, there was no contest.
He had taken off after the glimpse of movement before Krysty could stop him, primarily because he didn’t want her help. Oh, she could be impressive in a fight as well, but with those damn boots on, she’d signal their approach like a war wag at full throttle. No, this sort of chilling was best done quick and quiet, and no one was better at both than Jak.
The man he was trailing ducked around another shattered building, disappearing from sight for a few moments. Jak trotted to the corner of the wall, every sense alert, his strange, ruby-red eyes seeing his surroundings like it was almost noon. He peeked around the corner, just a fast glance, to make sure the bastard wasn’t setting up to coldcock him.
Nothing moved in the gloom. Jak settled himself and listened to the night, his heightened senses straining for the slightest noise.
There. It was the softest of sounds, maybe cloth brushing against cloth, but it was enough. And just in time, too, as the flat cracks of a blaster from behind him shattered the silence. Jak didn’t look back, knowing wiry J.B. was doing his part.
And so was he.
Keeping his .357 at his side, the albino teen tiptoed toward his prey as silent as stalking death. The shots died away, and there was only Jak and his soon-to-be victims.
Edging to the next corner of the former building, he listened again and heard more this time—whispers and the soft clicks of blasters being readied. Jak took a deep breath in through his nose, let it pass out through his mouth. He hauled back on the hammer of his blaster with the thumb of his hand, brought the weapon around to grasp it in both his hands and rounded the corner, ready to blast them into hell—
As expected, when they looked up and saw his face, there was a moment of shock at his stark-white hair, pale skin and burning red eyes. He’d surprised a pair of the intruders, both dressed in green, long-sleeved shirts. The one on the left was older, taller, with salt-and-pepper hair and a grizzled look, as if he had seen his share of hard living. A lot of people looked like that in the Deathlands, however. This guy was simply another one who’d chosen the way of the coldheart instead of some other way to live.
His partner was younger, maybe only a few years older than Jak, with a dirty yet unlined face. His movements were unsure as he fumbled with his longblaster, a hunting model with the stock sawed off and black electrical tape wrapped around the foregrip. He looked up at Jak, his mouth hanging open.
The way was as clear as glass—put a bullet into the old man, then follow through on the younger while he was still gaping at the albino apparition that had just appeared. Jak started to squeeze the trigger of his Colt Python when his attention was caught by something else shambling out of the darkness behind the two men.
As soon as he saw it, Jak moved his blaster a fraction to point between the two. Pulling the trigger, he had just enough time to shout, “Stickie!” before the weapon’s roar drowned out all other noises. The snap-aimed shot only grazed the mutie’s arm as it headed for the taller man.
The two men started at the bullet passing between them, then whirled. Each reacted differently upon seeing the naked, pasty, flabby mutie with its narrow, bulging eyes, vestigial nose, lipless mouth and fleshy hands, each finger tipped with a sucker that could literally tear a man’s face off.
The older man pointed his sawed off, double-barreled shotgun at the new threat, following the unwritten law of the land that stickies were to be chilled on sight. The blaster boomed, a cloud of pellets ripping into the mutie’s side, but not stopping its advance for an instant.
The second man’s reflexes were a bit slower, as he was still bringing his rifle into play, when the stickie barreled into him. One second, the albino teen was staring at his own death, the next the man was on his knees, a guttural scream bursting from his lips as the mutie behind him slapped its hand over his face and brutally yanked his head back, hard enough for the vertebrae in his spine to crack at the impossible angle forced upon them. It was just as well, too, since what happened next would have also put the man on the last train to the coast, just more agonizingly slowly.
The stickie pulled its hand away from the man’s face, the skin and flesh on his forehead and cheekbones peeling away from his skull with wet, tearing sounds, as if the creature was removing a mask to see who was underneath. Blood sprayed from his ruined head as the stickie twisted the bloody skull ninety degrees to the left, then let the twitching body drop, raising its head to snarl at the other two men.
But Jak had corrected his aim by then, lining up the Python’s sights on that hideous face and squeezing off another round. The slug hit the stickie right in the nose, obliterating it as the hollowpoint round mushroomed inside the skull, plowing through and punching out the back, spraying blood, bone and brains everywhere. Still, the stickie took a step toward the pair of men, its shattered mouth opening and closing in its ruined face before the grizzled coldheart let fly with his second barrel, pulverizing the rest of the mutie’s face and sending it toppling over, dead.
His chest heaving, the older man turned back—to find himself staring down the barrel of Jak’s blaster. The empty shotgun less than useless in his hands, the man raised his arms, letting the weapon clatter to the ground at his feet. “C’mon, kid, you can’t chill me after we both faced that.”
“Shut mouth.” Jak had used the distraction of the stickie to move inside the half room, and now had his back against the wall.
“Please, I don’t have another blaster—just let me go, and I’ll git back where I came from.”
“Said shut mouth, fucker.” Jak hesitated for a second, considering whether he should take the man prisoner so they could find out what was going on around here. He made up his mind, the muzzle centering on the man’s forehead. “Get on knees.”
The man collapsed to the ground. “Black dust, no.”
“Shut fuck up.” Jak stepped out from the wall, then caught a flicker of movement to his left as a shadow dropped over him. Whirling, he was bringing the .357 around when he saw a strange pattern appear in his vision, an oval of fine crosshatching right in front of him.
The rifle butt smacked into his forehead above the right eye, laying the skinny albino out full-length on the ground, the pistol flying from his grasp.
He heard snatches of conversation between the grizzled man and someone else. “Runty little fucker, ain’t he?”
“Son of a bitch got the drop on Larssen and me ’fore a stickie jumped us, tore his face off. Larssen told me there’s another one thataway, a woman. Let’s grab her, too. Now that we got her kin, she’ll deal.”
The last thing Jak saw was the grizzled man standing over him, holding his Colt Python in his hand, before the world swirled and faded around him.
Chapter Three
Where did he come from? Krysty wondered as she slowly raised her hands, the S&W revolver dangling on her index finger by the trigger guard. Beneath the counter—stupe not to check there first, was her conclusion.
She felt the pressure of the blaster barrel lessen as her captor stepped away. “Set the blaster down, then turn around slowly. Try anythin’ dumb, and all you’ll get’s a third eye in your forehead.”
She complied with the orders, turning on her heel, and she heard a small gasp as the man took in her features.
With her long dark crimson hair framing a gorgeous face featuring high cheekbones, a sleek, straight nose, full lips and deep green eyes that glinted in the sunlight like cut emeralds, Krysty had a good idea of what the typical man’s thoughts turned to when he first saw her. And that was before they got a look at her body, with its full breasts, narrow waist, long, lithe legs and strong arms. She was any man’s wet dream, and she was well aware of it.
While growing up in Harmony, her mother, Sonja, had drilled it into her that her looks would draw attention, most of it unwanted. The elder Wroth had summed it up this way: “Give any man long enough, my child, and he will begin thinking about you with his smaller head rather than his larger one.” Mother Sonja had taught her how to read a man’s intentions through body language—the majority of them were absurdly easy—and how to turn just about any situation to her advantage. It was the job of her other closest living relative, Uncle Tyas McCann, to teach her how to protect herself from these unwanted advances, and he had taught her very well indeed.
Krysty faced her captor with her head held high and her back straight, which, of course, just happened to show off her high, firm breasts to great effect underneath her dark blue jumpsuit, the zipper lowered down the middle just enough to give a tantalizing glimpse of the creamy-skinned wonders underneath. She watched the expression change on his face, saw his lust war with whatever orders he had been given, and simply bided her time.
“Oh, girlie, the boss will certainly want to see ya, I garan’tee. But first—” his mouth curved open in a knowing leer, revealing several missing teeth, and the remaining ones spotted with yellow and brown “—I best make sure ya ain’t hidin’ any other weapons. Don’t try nothin’ stupe, and ya might even enjoy it.”
Krysty’s face might have been carved from white marble for all the reaction she showed. The man placed his blaster at her stomach, promising a horrible, gut-shot passing if she tried anything. He ran his dirty hands over her lower legs, up her shapely thighs and between the vee of her sex, lingering there much longer than necessary, his callused fingers pinching hard. Krysty’s lips tightened, but she made no sound at all.
“Strong, silent type, huh? The boss likes ’em to scream—I’m sure he’ll enjoy breakin’ you in, bitch.”
Krysty didn’t deign to make eye contact, but she did speak. “Just get it over with.”
“Go fast as I please, girlie. No fire-haired whore tells me what ta do.” His hands spidered upward, across her muscular midriff, heading for her breasts. “Almost there, sweetheart.”
Krysty’s eyes flicked downward just as he grabbed the tab of her jumpsuit zipper and pulled it down, the material parting to reveal more of her breasts, supported by a simple white bra. His eyes were solely on those round globes, and she felt the pressure on her abdomen lessen a bit as he licked his lips, his free hand just inches away. “Course, mebbe you and I could cut a deal right here—”
The moment his hand touched her skin, Krysty moved. Her left hand swept down and across, catching the man’s blaster hand and shoving it aside. At the same time, her right leg shot up, the chiseled metal point of silver-toed cowboy boot sinking deep into the man’s genitals. The man’s grin was replaced by a wide-open O of shock as the brutal assault on his privates short-circuited his brain. His trigger finger spasmed, sending a bullet into the floor as his other hand moved to cup his injured parts. He sank to his knees, retching once, a globule of vomit spraying from his lips to splatter on the floor.
With her right hand, Krysty had snatched her blaster off the counter and brought the butt down on the back of the man’s neck, laying him out with one ferocious blow.
Zipping up her jumpsuit, she turned to the doorway just as a shadow fell across it. She saw a flash of white hair and relaxed for a moment, thinking it was just Jak returning, except he was moving oddly, his feet dragging, almost as if—
“Don’t move, or he gets a bullet in the head,” a voice said from behind her and to the left. Startled, Krysty half turned, watching both the speaker and the man who had one arm curled around Jak’s throat, holding him up, the teen’s.357 Magnum blaster pressed to his temple.
Gaia, give me strength, she thought, raising her hands for the second time in as many minutes, just as a profusion of blaster shots erupted in the distance.
DOC HADN’T EVEN FINISHED bouncing in the dirt before J.B. leveled the M-4000 autoshotgun and let loose a hailstorm of death. The razor-sharp steel fléchettes passed over Doc’s outstretched body, arrowing through the knees of both coldhearts and sending them crashing to the ground, tormented screams bursting from their throats as they clutched their bloody, crippled legs.
The old man hadn’t been idle, either, hauling his massive LeMat single-action blaster out from under his coat and pointing it at the third man, who was standing stock-still on the other side of the wall, staring at the bloody tableau that had unfolded before him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was a huge gout of blood. Eyes rolling back in his head, he collapsed onto the wall, a smaller trickle of blood leaking from the round hole in the top of his skull.
