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“Armorer. He can fix any blaster you got.”
“Excellent.” Toulalan looked at Mildred. “And her?”
“She’s a healer, and you tell Six ‘hands off.’”
“Understood.” Toulalan ran an appreciative eye over Krysty. “And her.”
Ryan smiled. “She’s mine.”
“Ah.”
“She’s a crack shot,” Ryan said.
“Better and better.”
Toulalan looked askance at Doc. “And him?”
Doc was well into his wine and speaking French to a good-looking young woman wearing a coverall and a tool belt. Ryan had to admit the old man was something of a sight wherever they showed up.
The one-eyed man smiled. “Doc’s our…resident scholar.”
“Ah!” Toulalan laughed. “Very good!”
Ryan watched Six walk by. He never stopped walking the perimeter, but each time he passed the feast he cast long looks at Mildred.
“Your man Six doesn’t like muties.”
Toulalan made noise. “Who does?”
Krysty’s body went rigid against Ryan. He kept his tone neutral. “You don’t tolerate them?”
“In the Deathlands, do you?” the man countered.
“Some villes do. Some don’t.”
“Ah. Well, in Val-d’Or those born mutant are culled.” Toulalan shrugged again. He seemed to consider the matter to be of little consequence. “Life is hard enough without nurturing horrors.”
Krysty’s hand clenched Ryan’s knee.
Ryan kept his voice neutral. “What’re you proposing?”
“Accompany us west. As far as you like. My convoy will be far stronger with you among us. As for you, there’s safety in numbers. Alone, even a wag as powerful as a LAV is vulnerable.”
Everything Toulalan said was true. Ryan took another beer. “Authority?”
Toulalan shrugged again. “I’m the leader of this convoy. You’re the leader of your people. If I wish something of any of your people, I’ll ask you. You’ll accept my authority over the convoy and obey my orders until the day you find you can’t. On that day you and I’ll shake hands and part as friends.” Toulalan held up his glass again. “If you join us, the only thing I’ll promise you is food like you have never known until that food runs out. That will be your—how do you say it in Deathlands, jack? And when the bounty of the Diefenbunker runs out…” Toulalan shrugged again. “Well, you have tasted Six’s pig.”
It was a damn tempting offer. “I’ll have to talk with my people.”
“But of course. Take your time. You may give me your answer in the morning, and whatever that answer should be, I insist you and your friends stay for breakfast.”
“Mighty kind, and I’ll think on your offer.” Ryan rose and took Krysty’s hand. He looked over at the mandolin player and the flautist. A young man playing a hand drum had joined them. “Right now I’m gonna dance with Krysty.” The redheaded beauty grinned in delight and stood to join him.
RYAN SIGHED as Krysty collapsed forward onto his chest. He pulled the top blanket back over them both. He handed her the canteen without being asked, and Krysty gulped water thirstily. She gasped and tilted the spout to Ryan’s lips. He drank deeply and relaxed back, staring up into the Northern Lights. “What do you think?”
Krysty sighed. “It’s greener here. The air is cleaner. Open country. Just lying here I can feel Gaia more strongly.”
“Toulalan said the good times don’t last long.”
“Neither does a man’s orgasm, but I don’t hear you complaining much.”
Ryan snorted and got back on topic. “And?”
“Lot of good food. Mildred isn’t going to want to leave until every last crumb is gone.”
Ryan couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Mildred so happy. “The sec man, Six, he’s eyeballing her long and hard.”
Krysty chuckled. “Mildred said ‘brother-man’ probably hasn’t seen any chocolate good thing in a long time.”
Ryan got the gist of it. “And?”
“And Doc could use a rest from jumping. Gaia knows so could the rest of us. Besides, Toulalan said we can leave whenever we like, and I think I believe him. He seems like a decent man.”
Ryan knew Krysty’s moods all too well. Despite the wine, the dancing and the lovemaking, he knew she had been simmering since supper. “You aren’t happy.”
“No.” Krysty’s voice grew cold. “I’m not.”
Ryan had a real strong suspicion about what was bothering her. “And?”
“You heard him.” Krysty clutched Ryan tightly. “He kills muties. And I’m one.”
Bigotry was all too alive and well in the Deathlands, only now most often it was directed at the integrity of someone’s DNA rather than any race, creed or color.
“If you want to go, we’re gone. Right now.”
Krysty rolled off Ryan and stared up into the night. “I didn’t say that.”
They were quiet for long moments as they stared into the shimmering veils of the light show above. Krysty was a mutie. It didn’t show outwardly, unless her hair flexed around her head when she was in distress. Most places in the Deathlands tolerated muties if they weren’t too deformed, or if their mutation proved useful somehow. A lot of places drove them out. All too many summarily executed muties upon discovery. It made Krysty sick to have to hide her own leap in evolution; but Ryan knew she would hide it, and take it, for the sake of the man she loved, and her friends.
“We’re in this together, lover,” Ryan told her. “I’ll defend you to the death.”
Krysty snuggled closer. “I know.”
Chapter Four
Ryan awoke to the smell of real coffee. The Northern Lights shimmered in shifting golden sheets in the morning light. Mildred stood over Ryan and Krysty’s bedroll grinning from ear to ear. She held two steaming sierra cups. “Wakey, wakey eggs and bakey!” Ryan sat up sniffing. The majority of the coffee he had drunk in his life was instant from one-hundred-year-old redoubt MRE packs, or old cans of coffee on redoubt shelves. Most people in the Deathlands drank chicory or a brew of herbs called coffee sub, and even that traded at a premium. The smell of what Mildred held set Ryan’s mouth to salivating. He took the cup and drank deeply.
“French roast.” Mildred sighed. “Who would have guessed?”
Ryan drained the mug and was grateful that Krysty had agreed that they stay with the convoy for another day or two and see how it went. Ryan rolled out of the blankets and shucked into his pants, drawn immediately to the smell coming from the mess wag. “Pancakes?”
“Oh yeah,” Mildred enthused. “With syrup, sausages and mimosas.”
“What’s mimosa?”
“Champagne and orange juice.”
Ryan’s face showed that he thought that sounded like an excellent waste of two rather rare commodities. Mildred took a patient breath. “You’ll like it. I promise you.”
Ryan and Krysty sauntered over to the mess wag for breakfast. He found that he did like mimosas. Krysty loved them. The friends sat at a table being waited on hand and foot. The redheaded beauty gave Ryan’s leg a squeeze and whispered, “If we stay here much longer, Doc might just put on a pound or two.”
Doc normally ate with relish, but maintained his spare frame. This morning he was enjoying a hearty breakfast, but he was smiling as he engaged one of the drivers in conversation. Canada was agreeing with him. It was agreeing with them all. If the pastoral beauty of the place was only going to last a few more weeks, then Ryan was tempted to wring every last second out of it. According to the map and Toulalan there were other Diefenbunkers ahead, and the one they’d exited contained one of the biggest stockpiles Ryan had ever encountered. He wanted to be there when Toulalan unlocked the next one.
Toulalan came over, smiling amiably. Six followed him, and with obvious effort managed an attitude short of open hostility. Toulalan gestured at the spread. “Breakfast agrees with you?”
“Yeah.” Ryan nodded. “Thanks again.”
“May I?”
Jak moved over and Toulalan took a seat. Six stood while Toulalan unfolded a map. Ryan raised an eyebrow at it. He had seen a fair chunk of what remained of Deathlands’ West Coast. It didn’t look anything like the map in front of him anymore. “That’s an old map.”
“The thing to notice is this.” Toulalan ran his finger along a pair of red intersecting lines stretching from east to west. “The convoy follows the Trans-Canada Highway.”
Ryan looked at the route dubiously. “It’s still up?”
“I will admit time hasn’t been kind to it. Many sections are out. But unlike much of your Deathlands, the basic path is still there. We have extensive maps of all the provinces. Each time we’ve found an impassible stretch we have found smaller routes around it, and once more returned to the path. River traders tell us vast sections in the great central plains are whole. There we will make good time.”
“River traders.” Ryan poured more Diefenbunker syrup on his pancakes. “Why aren’t they using it?”
“It is rumored there are dangers, plus fuel is scarce. A cross-continental trip?” Toulalan made a noise. “Few have the resources to attempt it. Besides, since time immemorial rivers have been the roads of Canada.”
“But you have a map of the Diefenbunkers. Assuming they haven’t been cracked, you got resupply depots in every province with all the fuel, food and supplies you can carry.”
Toulalan nodded.
“You give away too much!” Six snarled.
Toulalan gave Ryan a poker player’s smile. “I’m not telling our guests anything they haven’t already surmised.”
Six could no longer contain himself. “You’ll give them a place among us?”
Toulalan sighed. “Vincent, my friend, you know I respect you. But you were here yesterday, no? Around sunset? During the battle?”
Six looked away. “I’ll admit they were helpful.”
Mildred mumbled into a mouthful of pancake and sausage. “Saved your Canadian bacon is what we did.”
Six flinched.
Jak’s fork froze midbite, and he snapped his head around. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward the thickets between the hills just a few hundred yards to the west. Ryan set down his mimosa and scooped up the Scout longblaster. He had seen that look on Jak’s face before. “Something coming?”
The albino teen stepped away from the table and put hand to the ground. He crouched that way for long moments. “Herd.”
“Oh?” Six frowned at the hills. “It’s early for the caribou. They usually run south before the hard freeze, and that’s weeks away.” The big man’s stainless-steel longblaster flashed like a drum major’s baton as he twirled it through the rifleman’s spin to cock the weapon and pushed on the safety to lock it. “Perhaps they migrate earlier here in Ontario.”
Ryan, Jak and J.B. followed Six outside the perimeter. The Armorer began rapidly ejecting fléchette rounds out of his scattergun and swapping them for rifled slugs.
“Hunters!” Six called. “Go!”
A handful of Six’s sec men gulped the last of their coffee and grabbed their blasters. The convoy was bristling with Diefenbunker assault rifles. These men came forward with predark bolt-action hunting weapons of .30-caliber or larger.
Ryan checked the loads in his Scout. “You say it’s early for caribou?”
Six shrugged. The one-eyed man was starting to believe that everyone in the convoy’s shoulders, hands and eyebrows were attached to their vocal cords. “I’ve never been this far west, though I’ve heard traders say the St. Lawrence lowlands have sizable herds of wild mustangs. Either way, meat is meat, no?”
Doc strode up to the hunting party. “A morning shoot?”
Ryan frowned at the tangled, impenetrable acres of scrub thorn between the hills. The sound was getting louder. “Thick cover for a migrating herd.”
Six’s brow furrowed. He was thinking the same thing. The thicket rippled with the passage of large animals and the sound of brush snapping sounded like the distant gunshots of an army starting a skirmish. Six pushed off his longblaster’s safety. “In moments we’ll know.”
It didn’t take moments. It took a heartbeat. The edge of the thicket exploded as the herd burst forth. They weren’t caribou or wild mustangs. They were hogs. Boars, bigger than Ryan had ever seen. They came out of the thicket between the hills in a wedge. He made the lead boar to be over nine feet long and four feet tall at the shoulder.
Its companions weren’t much smaller.
“Good heavens,” Doc opined.
Ryan didn’t like what he was seeing. Wild boars were solitary animals. When you saw them in groups, it was usually a sounder consisting of a few sows and their offspring. Over half of the herd were adult males the size of wags. There were no piglets in sight. The fifty-strong herd arrowed straight for the convoy in a rumbling wave. Ryan dropped to a knee and shouldered the Scout. It was time to see what the new weapon could do.
Ryan wound his arm through the Scout’s sling and dropped his elbow to his knee to form a solid firing platform. The scope was mounted well forward, and he could see the entire oncoming herd around it. At the same time the crosshairs of the heavy reticule were crystal clear as Ryan held them low beneath the gargantuan lead boar’s shoulder. His finger slowly began putting pressure on the trigger as he watched the herd rumble into range.
Six watched Ryan with a dubious air. “Long range for a carbine. I would—”
The Scout bucked against Ryan’s shoulder. It was a light rifle firing a high-power bullet. The muzzle-flash and report were impressive; the recoil was surprisingly mild. The huge hog’s snout dug into the turf, and the momentum of its half-ton frame nearly made it summersault.
“Mon Dieu!” Six exclaimed.
The herd continued forward undeterred.
Ryan flicked the bolt on the Scout and trained the scope on his next target. The longblaster kicked and a supersize sow spun out as Ryan’s bullet shattered its skull.
“Come here!” Six roared. “Come to papa!” Six’s .45-70 sounded like a cannon going off. A boar dropped like it had been poleaxed. Longblasters began cracking and popping along the informal firing line. The shooters made hog calls and called out porcine insults in English and French as they shot. A slow smile crept across Ryan’s face as he took his fifth pig. J.B. had been right. The Scout was like lightning. It qualified for the highest praise the Armorer could give a weapon. The Scout was as accurate as the man firing it.
Ryan was deadly accurate.
He took three more pigs with four more shots and quickly slapped in a fresh magazine. “They aren’t stopping.”
“No,” Six agreed. He had stopped his hog calling. The giant beasts didn’t seem to need much encouragement. Insults toward the oncoming pork and one another ceased among the sec men as they grimly fired as fast as they could work the actions of their longblasters. What was left of the herd was starting to get uncomfortably close. Members of the convoy came out and joined the firing line. Their assault rifles were too light for animals this big and only seemed to make them angry. Squealing screams rent the air as the wounded hogs bore down on the convoy in red-eyed, froth-spewing rage. At one hundred yards J.B.’s shotgun began slamming slugs. Jak carefully began pulling the trigger on .357 Colt Python in slow deliberate fire, and Mildred joined him. It was like some terrible shooting game where the prize was not to end up in a wild boar’s belly. The boars didn’t seem to care who won as long as they died going forward. Ryan’s skin crawled as he aimed, shot and shot again.
The last half-ton hog fell to Ryan’s longblaster only twenty yards from the firing line.
The entire convoy watched the plain shake with the convulsions and screams of the wounded and dying monster hogs in a picture of porcine hell. Ryan rose and drew his SIG-Sauer. He went forward to finish off the crippled and dying animals. Six drew his handblaster and nodded at two of his rattled sec men. “Sylvan, Alain with me.” Six and his men joined Ryan in the mercy killings. There was plenty of ammo available, so why leave the animals to suffer?
Toulalan walked up beside Ryan as he put a bullet-riddled, trembling sow down. “I saw you shoot. You are incredible.”
Ryan ignored the compliment. “Pigs like this normal up here?”
“I don’t know about Ontario.” Toulalan shrugged. “But in Quebec we don’t allow our pigs the luxury of this kind of behavior.”
Ryan had to admit Toulalan and his people had a certain sense of style. Right now Ryan wasn’t laughing.
Doc pursed his lips at a specimen that had taken one of Ryan’s bullets through the heart. “I am reminded of the wild boar of Argentine Andes. They were known for their size and aggression, and as famous for a carnivorous bent in their diet. Large males were known to break into chicken coups and sheep enclosures and wreak great slaughter. It was endlessly argued whether the boar were so large and aggressive because they ate meat, or they were naturally large and aggressive and it led to carnivorous behaviors. Nearly every village had a legend about someone’s friend’s, third uncle’s grandmother who everyone knew had been eaten by one.”
Six pushed fresh shells into his rifle. “Perhaps they were attracted by the smell of the pancakes, no?”
“No.” Ryan knew that wasn’t true. “They came for us.”
Mildred’s stomach got the better of her and she smiled at Six. “Pork chops for dinner?”
Six unveiled a mouthful of gold and silver teeth. “But of course. Whatever the lady wishes, the lady gets.”
J.B. glowered.
Ryan shook his head at the slaughter. There was no way a herd of beasts behaving like that could be allowed to reach the convoy, but he hated wasting meat. Something between forty and fifty thousand pounds of pork was steaming in the morning light.
Six shrugged out of his sheepskins. Beneath them he wore a tomahawk and an enormous bowie knife. He drew his blade and cut into a boar’s belly. The boar’s flesh parted like butter beneath the razor-sharp steel. Six leaped back as squirming black horror spilled forth. “Merde!”
Mildred threw up.
Ryan raised his SIG-Sauer.
Doc peered at the ropey, viscous, black masses of foot-long worms as they tried to crawl back into the boar’s carcass. “Surpassingly peculiar.”
Mildred staggered away. “I’m never eating pork again.”
Doc cocked his head as he watched the flesh of the dead boar ripple in waves. “Monsieur Six, with utmost caution, a few more cuts, if you do not mind?”
Six scowled but he stepped around the boar, his knife slashing a leg, making a cut along the spine and opening the head from jowl to ear. Ryan took note of his artistry with the blade. Six stepped away from the pulsating carcass and spit in disgust. “Parasites! Vileness! Val-d’Or is clean! We should never have left!” The sec man gave Ryan an accusing scowl. “You see! We’re too close to the river! This is Deathlands filth!”
Ryan put a fresh clip into the Scout and reserved comment.
Doc leaned into the mess a little too closely for everyone’s comfort. “No, Monsieur Six. These are not parasites. Parasites feed off their host, and to their host’s detriment. When the host is dead, parasites flee if they are able, they do not crawl back within.” Doc scratched his chin in thought. “Can they be commensals? Commensals receive benefit from their host but do no harm, and yet…”
Ryan gazed at the slices Six had inflicted in the pork. The writhing black worms squirmed through the dead boar’s muscles and squeezed around its bones and spine. Ryan had seen plenty of rotting corpses. Whatever was going on, the worms didn’t appear to be feeding. There was almost some other kind of…
Ryan’s single eyes narrowed.
Intention.
“Doc,” Ryan warned, “step away.”
“What? Oh, yes. Unknown infection, of course.” Doc took several prudent steps back but continued his scientific musings. He pointed his swordstick at the writhing masses within the mutated hog. “Observe! No living creature could survive such a cataclysmic infestation, unless somehow it derived some sort of benefit from it in return. This is neither parasitism nor commensalism. This must be symbiosis of some sort. I believe it must somehow work to— Oh dear!” Doc leaped back adroitly as every visible worm in the dead boar’s wounds contracted in unison.
The swine corpse rolled over and lurched to its feet.
The boar’s eyes burst as horror pushed through its pupils. The thumb-thick worms in its eye sockets waved like feelers and stiffened like pointers at Doc. The boar’s head swiveled in response, its tusks rasping against each other as its mouth fell open and its tongue lolled out, accompanied by an orgy of wriggling filth.
“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed.
“Mon Dieu!” Toulalan cried out.
“Merde!” Six reiterated.
Mildred screamed.
Ryan fired three 9 mm hollowpoint rounds through the dead boar’s head.
The boar’s skull broke apart, spewing broken lengths of black worm. The porcine behemoth staggered but didn’t fall. Fresh worms waved forth from the shattered cranium and snout as if tasting the air. The boar corpse tottered toward the humans. Ryan holstered his SIG-Sauer and spun the Scout off of his shoulder. He flicked the bolt as he backed up. “Fireblast…”
The entire fifty-strong herd of giant, newly dead, mutie wild boars began rolling over and rising up.
“J.B....” Ryan kept backing up. “Get to the LAV. Load HE. Jak, get behind the wheel.”
It took a lot to shake up J.B. The Armorer’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates behind his glasses as he backed up alongside Ryan. “Right.”
“Run!” Ryan roared.
J.B. ran. Jak was already gone.
Six’s guide gun thundered as he put a .45-70 shell into the hog’s sagging skull. The pig kept coming. Ryan raised his rifle. “Forget the head!” The Scout bucked against the one-eyed man’s shoulder, and the pig formed a porcine tripod as the bullet shattered its shoulder blade. He flicked the bolt and his next bullet crushed the hog’s opposite collarbone. The undead pig went snout-first into the dirt. “Take their wheels!”
“Oui, Ryan!” Six flicked the lever of his rifle and blasted apart a corpulent, pulsating sow’s femur. “Everyone! Back to the convoy! Allez! Allez!”
Humans ran.
The pigs shambled forward. There was no squealing. The only noise the dead animals made was the thud of their huge hooves in the soft soil and the sickening crackle of their muscles, joints and fascia as their corpses were manipulated from within. Mildred and Doc began shooting pig knees. Ryan flicked his bolt and fired with mechanical precision. “Yoann! Get your people in the wags! Button up!”
Toulalan shouted to his people in French and they scattered. Six and his men kept shooting. Ryan fired his clip dry and clawed for a fresh one. “J.B.!” A thousand-pound pig tottered toward Ryan, worms waving out of its eyes like flesh-detecting divining rods. “J.B.!”
The closest hog burst like a balloon as it took J.B.’s 25 mm high-explosive shell broadside. “Everyone! Up on wags! Go! Go! Go!” The firing line ran for the convoy as J.B. cut loose. The LAV’s automatic cannon slammed in slow, aimed fire. Hogs exploded in sprays of blood, bone and black worms. Ryan leaped up into the bed of an ancient Toyota Tacoma jacked up on off-road wheels. He pulled Krysty up after him. The pickup had a MAG machine gun mounted on a post. Ryan got behind it and racked a round into the chamber.
Doc stood in front of the march of the monster hogs with his LeMat forgotten in his fist. He stared at the oncoming creatures quizzically and discoursed to no one in particular. “I have never seen nor heard of such coordinated effort among an invertebrate species. Well, bees, ants and some other social species, yes, but among annelids imbedded in a host animal? Truly this species is—”
“Doc, get out of there!” Ryan roared.
Doc suddenly seemed to notice a pair of pigs lurching toward him for the first time. “Ah! Yes! Right! Very good!” Doc turned as Ryan began putting bursts into the offending animals. Doc pulled up short as another pig tottered between him and Ryan. “Oh bother.”