“Ryan!”

Heedless of his own injuries, J.B. bolted to his side, firing his Uzi through the veil of smoke. Grabbing Ryan by the legs, he dragged him back to the wall. “How bad is it?”

“Not…good. I know that much,” Ryan gritted. He brought his trembling neck muscles under control to look down at his shoulders, seeing a lot of blood and the jagged end of a bone poking up through the skin.

J.B. gingerly explored the wound. “This is going to hurt a lot.” The Armorer eased himself under his old friend’s right arm, eliciting a groan of pain from him as he gripped his hand tight to keep him in place.

When J.B. stood, Ryan nearly passed out from the agony shooting through his shoulders. The Armorer half dragged the one-eyed man forward, intent on getting clear of the underground pit and getting help for Ryan….

Perception Fault

Death Lands®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the “dragon,” in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.

—D. H. Lawrence

1885–1930

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Chapter One

Crouched behind a half-ruined wall, Ryan Cawdor wiped gritty concrete dust from his tanned face, black eye patch and curly black hair. He peeked around the left side of the barrier, searching for the person with the longblaster who’d come within a couple inches of sending him on the last train west.

The day had started well enough. He and his companions had come out of a mat-trans near what they thought were the ruins of what used to be Denver, Colorado. It was an area they were fairly familiar with, since two of their group had grown up around these parts. Traveling north to check out the ville, they had reached the outskirts without incident. The quiet should have been a warning. They had just set up a campsite with an outdoor fire they’d thought was sheltered from passing eyes, and were roasting their freshly killed dinner. But as Krysty Wroth was turning the giant, heronlike bird on their makeshift spit, she had looked up with that shocked expression everyone knew all too well, sending each of the other five diving for weapons, cover or both. The first shot had cracked out a second later, and now the group was pinned down and facing an unknown force.

The ambush had been well planned and executed. But the targets the raiders had chosen weren’t farmers or traders traveling the Deathlands hawking their wares. They weren’t even a ragtag band of mercies looking for work, their blasters available for hire to anyone who had the jack.

Ryan and his five companions had spent years roaming the length and breadth of the radiation and chem-ravaged land that had been called America long ago. They had encountered much during their journeys, from mutant animals and humanoids of every shape and size to power-hungry barons carving out their empires from the postholocaust savagery, offering refuge—of a sort—to anyone who could pay or barter for the price of admission.

The companions had met just about every variety of man, mutant or monster inhabiting this world—and had left many of them on their back, staring sightlessly at the sky while their lifeblood leaked into the dirt. Each member of the group was a master of chilling in just about every way, shape and form possible, with Ryan perhaps the best of them all—a fact these coldhearts were about to find out the hard way.

He glanced over at his old friend, J. B. Dix, who held his mini-Uzi tucked into his shoulder. The sallow-faced man was hunched down behind the same wall as Ryan, but his expression was as calm as if he were strolling through a mountain meadow in spring.

Ryan risked another peek out only to draw another bullet for his trouble, the lead slug ricocheting off the side of the wall. “See anything?”

“Not yet. They picked a good time to spring this surprise. Dusk means better cover, and they used the fire as their targeting point, neatly pinning us near it.”

“What I really want to know is how we’re going to get the drop on them.”

The short, bespectacled man adjusted the battered fedora on his head and half turned to Ryan. “Working on it. You got a line on anyone else?”

“Krysty and Jak took cover to my right, about ten yards out. Don’t know where Mildred and Doc.”

“Mildred ended up on the other side of the street, in that falling-down house with half a second floor. That could be useful. Probably better that Doc’s taken cover. He can man the fort with me.”

Ryan wrinkled his nose as he smelled burning meat. Their untended dinner was going up in flames. “Fireblast and fuck! There goes the turkey.” Adding insult to injury, another large-caliber round cracked out, and the carcass burst apart in an explosion of half-raw meat, bone fragments and watery liquid. Ryan snarled, his growling stomach adding its own comment on the travesty that had just happened in front of him. “Now they’ve really pissed me off.”

“Sure would help if you could get a bead on where that longblaster is.”

“Dammit, I—” Ryan paused, replaying the exploding meal in his mind’s eye, particularly where the bullet had come from. The coldheart had gotten cocky—he’d started playing with them and given Ryan valuable information about his position with that last shot. “About twenty-five feet off the ground, probably third-story window or roof, mebbe one hundred yards straight ahead on the other side of this wall.”

“All right, then. They’ll be running at least two teams of two, mebbe three out to flank us while that longblaster keeps our heads down. Means some of us go hunting.”

Ryan’s lips peeled back in a wolfish grin. “I’m game. Care to fill me in on your plan?”

J.B. grinned. “We’ll outflank the flankers, you go up the middle and take out the longblaster. Isn’t that what we’ve been discussing?”

Ryan slapped his oldest friend on the shoulder. “Trader always said never to split up your group. Half your force is—”

“Half your firepower, I know, I know. He also said, ‘Find yourself ambushed and your best chance of not buying the farm is to go forward like goose shit off a shovel. They won’t be expecting that.’”

Ryan nodded. “Just wanna make sure we don’t make the wrong choice, that’s all.”

“Since when have you ever been worried about that? Just make sure you don’t get your ticket punched today.” J.B. whistled, low yet loud. The couple on Ryan’s right, the beautiful, flame-haired Krysty and a skinny, albino teenager, Jak Lauren, glanced over. With a series of hand signals, he instructed them what to do. A pair of nods, and they disappeared around the far corner of the crumbling shop, the glass in its large windows long gone.

J.B. turned to the black woman peeking out from a gaping doorway in a building that still had its walls. He pointed up, held up two fingers, then pantomimed shooting a pistol. With a curt nod, she disappeared into the darkness.

J.B. raised his subgun so the barrel just poked over the top of the wall. “I’ll find Doc later. Get ready to move.”

Ryan had already done so, securing his Steyr SSG-70 longblaster across his back and checking the broad-bladed eighteen-inch panga sheathed on his left hip and the narrow-bladed flensing knife at his belt before crouch-walking to the far end of the wall, poised for flight. His right hand was filled with his Sig Sauer P-226 pistol with its integral silencer, the perfect weapon for close-quarter urban hunting—if the sound suppressor worked—which it often didn’t. “Ready when you are.”

J.B. squeezed his mini-Uzi’s trigger three times, sending short bursts in the direction of the sniper. Ryan would have bet that the man known as the Armorer had come close to hitting the building the sniper was holed up in, just by using the brief description of where the last shot had come from.

However, that was of little consequence, since the moment J.B. fired, Ryan had burst from cover to reach the nearest building. Even as he ran, he heard the louder boom of the longblaster in the distance and felt something pluck at his sleeve as he ran to a large pile of debris topped with a still-intact roof.

Taking a moment to get his breath and bearings, the one-eyed man peeked underneath the roof to find a narrow passageway running down its entire length—the perfect hidey-hole for what he needed to do. Dropping to his knees, he peered inside. The tunnel appeared empty in the dim light. Nevertheless, he drew his thin-bladed flensing knife and placed it between his teeth before crawling into the hole, not wanting to be surprised by any occupants that might be resting inside.

AS A CHILD, J.B. HAD ONCE SEEN a working targeting comp that an outlander tinker had managed to get working. Attached to a car battery, it had been able to calculate the trajectory, azimuth and range of something called an M110 self-propelled howitzer to hit targets up to four miles away.

J.B. had been fascinated by the blinking display, ignoring the adults’ pointed questions about where the man had gotten the device and how he’d managed to figure out how it worked. He was simply captivated by the complete and utter accuracy of the machine, no emotion, just simple math and logic used in its calculations to place the bomb where it was supposed to go.

Now, some thirty-odd years later, if anyone had said his own mind worked much like that targeting comp, he would have regarded them with a long, flat stare.

The Armorer had already narrowed down what kind of longblaster they were facing—hunting gun, perhaps Remington bolt-action, .308 caliber—and taken his measure of the person behind the sights. The coldheart was calm, picked his shots well. From Ryan’s estimates, he’d triangulated where the coldheart was, and had aimed high to allow the bursts from his mini-Uzi a chance to arc into the building. A long shot, to be sure, but he had faced death so many times he’d lost count of how often he thought he might have glimpsed the shadow of the conductor waiting to take him aboard the last train to the coast. He fully expected this to be one of those times, as well.

A muffled knock on the wall let him know Mildred was in position. Thinking about the stocky, opinionated predark black woman and the relationship they shared caused the corners of his mouth to twitch up in what might have been a smile, flicking across his face before it vanished again as he turned to the task at hand—providing a very noticeable target without actually getting himself shot.

Readying the mini-Uzi again, he fired two single shots, hoping to make the approaching coldhearts think he was running low on ammo. That was only one of the surprises he had in store for any attackers who had the misfortune to stumble across him in the gathering darkness.

He gripped the mini-Uzi tightly and squeezed off two more shots. Knowing exactly how many shots were left in the magazine, J.B. pressed the trigger once, then again, hearing the loud click as the firing pin fell on an empty chamber, and pulled the trigger twice more, wincing at the potential damage the pin might be suffering as he did so. He heard the crackle of the fire and the oily hiss of the shattered bird carcass as it crisped in the flames, but J.B.’s ears were focused on the sounds coming from outside the firelight—the scrape of a boot on concrete, the clink of metal on metal as the leftmost team snuck closer to try to get the drop on their targets. With him on one side and Mildred on the other, it was a perfect situation to take them out in a lethal cross fire.

The soft snick of a full magazine slotting into the mini-Uzi’s handle made J.B. look down. Almost of their own accord, his hands had removed the subgun’s empty stick mag and replaced it with a full one from the pocket of his jacket while he’d been listening to their enemies approach. Slowly drawing the cocking handle back, he set the weapon beside him and picked up the second surprise he was going to spring on the raiders. They just had to come a few steps closer….

He was just about to roll out and spray lethal lead when a loud stage whisper carried across the campsite to his ears. “John Barrymore, is that you?”

Dark night! he thought as the movement on the other side of the wall stopped. Doc, you triple-stupe, sometimes you’re more trouble than you’re worth.

Before he could alter his plan, J.B. heard running footsteps from behind him, and then a gruff voice calling out, “Move an’ yer dead, old man!”

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.

“Upon my word.” Doc kept his blaster pointed at the two wounded men as he started to clamber to his feet. In seconds, J.B. was at his side, hauling him back down behind the wall while keeping his M-4000 aimed at the pair, both of whom had stopped rolling on the ground and stared back at the companions with hate-filled eyes.

The Armorer waved at the building across the street even as he shook his head. “Dark night, Doc, you trying to get yourself killed?”

Doc grinned, showing his peculiarly even, white teeth. “While I will admit that my diversion may not have been well planned, it did do the trick, did it not?”

“These triple-stupe bastards aren’t what I’m talking about.” J.B. jabbed a thumb at the other side of the wall. “Remember the longblaster out there? Next time, think of something better than playing the hero—sure way to get a bullet through the brainpan.”

“Perhaps, but I got the distinct impression that these brigands were not coming to kill us, but to capture as many alive as they could.”

“Black dust, Doc, I swear that third guy came within an ass-hair of hitting you with his blaster.”

Mildred had come down from the building and run across the street in a crouch to join them, looking at their two prisoners with distaste. “What were you thinking, showing yourself like that?”

Doc shrugged. “I saw a course of action and took it. In hindsight, I concur that may not have been the most prudent avenue to pursue, but it got the job done, so to speak.”

The black woman shook her head, her beaded plaits swaying back and forth. “I swear, Doc, you take more words to say ‘I fucked up’ than anyone I know. What about these two?” She indicated the pair with the barrel of her blaster.

“See if you can patch them up long enough to— Look out!” J.B. shoved Mildred aside and brought up his shotgun even as Doc’s LeMat boomed. The slug smashed through the first prisoner’s breastbone, sending splinters of bone along with the slug crashing into his heart, stopping it instantly. The crude blaster, tape wrapped around its handle, fell from his hand.

The other coldheart had launched his own diversion by trying to grab Mildred. J.B. didn’t waste a shot on him, but instead brought the M-4000’s stock around in a short arc, cracking the man in the side of the head. He fell over as if someone had cut his spinal cord, collapsing in a sprawled heap on the ground.

“Damn, J.B.” Her blaster out, she checked the man for weapons, then checked his neck for a pulse. “You killed him. Must have crushed his temple with that little love tap of yours.”

The Armorer grimaced as he bent over to examine the corpse. “Didn’t think I hit him that hard.”

“You don’t know your own strength, John Barrymore.” For some reason Doc found that statement absurdly funny, slapping his knee as he laughed so hard he nearly choked, coughing and spluttering. J.B. glanced at Mildred in puzzlement, but she returned his look with a shrug before craning her neck a bit to peer cautiously over the wall.

“Shouldn’t we be finding the others?”

J.B. checked his chron. “Haven’t heard any signals—no gunshots or other signal calls yet—but it’s only been about three minutes since they left. Let’s give them two more, then poke around for them. Ryan’s still out there after the sniper. We better leave him a chance to take the coldheart out before we risk our necks going anywhere.”

The boom of the sniper rifle echoed all around them, making heads turn toward the no-man’s land on the other side of the wall. J.B. frowned. “Or we might have to go a bit sooner than planned.”

AS HE RETURNED to consciousness, Jak had the strange sense he was floating over the ground. Then there were the noises—voices nearby—a man, no, two men talking, and a woman whose voice sounded familiar.

The rest of his awareness came back between flashes of pain. First was his swollen head, with a large lump on his forehead that he couldn’t touch for some reason. His cheek was wet, too, although he didn’t know if that was his blood or someone else’s. Also, there was a band of unyielding pressure around his throat, constrictive enough to allow just a bit of air to get through. Lastly, he felt a warm circle of metal pressed against his temple, and the distinct odor of cordite every time he inhaled. His eyes fluttered, but he had the sense to remain as still as possible, trying to pick out what was being said around him.

“Blind norad, we got a live one here!”

“Good-lookin’, too. All right, step away from Henney there, and don’t do anything stupe, or your kid gets it.”

There was a startled cough of surprise, and Jak’s mouth twitched as the thought of what the expression on Krysty’s face had to look like right now. When she spoke, her voice was lower and rough.

“My kid? You got a funny sense of humor if you think I’d lay claim to that puling whelp. Little bastard’s been nothing but trouble since I found him six weeks ago. Now the son of a bitch’s got me trapped and cornered, so you can have him for all I care. I just want to get out of this in one piece.”

“I think that’s something we can talk about later, but just in case, I’ll gonna keep your little buddy here. Koons, get in here and see if you can rouse Johnny.”

Jak heard footsteps approaching from outside, and another person entered the room, crossing in front of him to behind the counter.

“Ah-ah—don’t even twitch toward that blaster. See where this is pointed?” Jak felt his head being wrenched back and quickly closed his eyes in case the other man was looking at him. The circle of metal pressed hard into the skin over his temple, but Jak hadn’t heard the hammer being cocked—yet. “I’ll vent his head if you move the wrong way. Come out from over there and stand right here. Dammit, Koons, you almost let her get the drop on us.”

“Thought you had her under control, ya stupe. I got my own problems right now. Johnny ain’t looking too good—breathin’ shallow and fast. Got a lump on his head the size of my fist, seems like.”

“Shit.” The man hawked up a wad of phlegm and spit. “You lay Johnny out, bitch?”

“He didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.”

Jak felt the man behind him shift his weight. “Nukeshit, I knew this was gonna be more trouble than it was worth.” Cracking open one eye, he peeked out through his lashes to see Krysty with her hands up, standing in the middle of the room. Sounds of movement came from behind the counter as the second man tended to the third one.

“If we don’t get him back pronto, he’s gonna die. Might not make it anyway.”

Jak opened his eye farther, willing Krysty to look at his face, to know he was conscious. At last she did, but betrayed no reaction upon seeing his intense stare.

“All right, let’s bind these two and take them both back. If there’s more, the other team should take care of them. We got enough.”

“Look, can’t you just let me go?” Krysty stepped forward, her hands held out beseechingly.

“Nukin’ hell, bitch, stay right where you are, or I’ll pull this trigger and spray his brains all over the room!”

While she moved closer, Krysty arched one eyebrow at Jak in an unspoken question. Jak rolled his eyes, indicating what he thought of her query.

Krysty shrugged at the threat. “All right. It’s your funeral.”

“What—” was all the coldheart got out before Jak’s right hand shot up and grabbed his captor’s hand, levering the large blaster away from his temple before he could shoot. At the same time, the albino lowered his head against the man’s forearm, gagging for a moment as his air was cut off, then powered it backward with all his strength, slamming the back of his skull into the man’s nose. His right leg shot straight out ahead of him, then snapped backward, smashing his heel into the man’s knee. Lastly, a twitch of his left wrist had dropped a narrow, leaf-bladed throwing blade into his hand, the tip of which adroitly found its way into the man’s abdomen, under his rib cage, penetrating deep into his stomach.

Separately, any of the attacks would have been disorienting or crippling at the least. Together, they were an onslaught that spelled the man’s doom. Too stunned from his crushed nose to squeeze the Python’s trigger, he let his hostage go as he found himself falling to the right, his crippled knee unable to support his weight. The heavy blaster was plucked from his hand as he toppled over, suddenly aware of the sharp flash of pain blooming in his side, draining all his strength away as if it was leaking out along with his blood. The last thing he saw was the weird albino kid leaning over him, a thin, dripping blade in his pale hand, and those eyes, those slitted, red eyes, underneath that shock of white hair gleaming like some kind of demon….

Jak opened his throat with a slash, and the man’s eyes dulled, glazing into the sightlessness of death. Blaster in hand, he turned to see that Krysty hadn’t been idle while he was freeing himself. In one graceful bound, she had leaped on top of the crooked counter just as the third man’s head had popped back up at the commotion.

“Trey—” he began before Krysty’s muscled leg lashed out in a devastating front kick, the silver point of her boot catching him right in the lower jaw. The crack was loud in the silence as the bone shattered under the impact. The man spun and fell to the ground, clasping his hands to his ruined face as he rolled around, grunting and whuffling in pain. Without pausing, Krysty jumped down behind the counter, there was another crack, and then silence. She came out from behind it with her blaster in hand.

“Let’s go.”

“Works for me.” His voice was hoarse, and Jak stepped carefully as a brief wave of nausea hit him, making him see stars and blackness for a moment.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, let’s get back camp. Seen men and stickies. Warn others.”

“Stickies? Where?”

“Pulled guy’s face off next building. Blew its head off ’fore his buddies got drop on me and brought here.”

“Shit, we better get back double-quick. Come on.” The tall redhead and the lean, white-haired teen slipped out of the room and back toward the campsite, leaving only the dead and dying behind.

Chapter Four

Knife gripped between his teeth, Ryan squirmed into the small tunnel, which seemed solid, if tight enough that his shoulders brushed the walls on both sides. He wouldn’t shoot from here—the position was too confining—but it would give him enough cover to scan the area ahead and try to spot the sniper.

Levering himself forward on his elbows, he powered up the slight slope, staying low to the ground so the Steyr longblaster wouldn’t get caught on the makeshift roof above his head. When he reached the top, the one-eyed man made sure he wasn’t visible by anyone outside, sheathed his knife again and took out his new toy, which he’d found in the redoubt. He carefully unwrapped the bundle to reveal a black plastic and metal tube a bit over a foot long and four inches in diameter. Ryan took off the soft rubber cap at one end and hit a small button covered by a protective rubber cap. He heard the high-pitched whine of the rechargeable battery coming to life, then placed the device to his eye and gazed out on a transformed world.

The moonless night had been replaced by an eerie, lambent green as the night-vision scope amplified the invisible infrared light it was projecting more than twenty thousand times, turning the darkness into neon-green day. Ryan scanned the high points first, adjusting the 4x zoom to try to pick out any sign of movement.

At first, he didn’t see anything. The guy might have left when night fell, he thought, but kept looking anyway, staring at the ruined hulks of buildings as if he could bring out anyone inside by sheer force of will. Long minutes passed without any sign of life. About to give up, Ryan decided to give it thirty more seconds before turning off the device to preserve the battery. He kept as still as possible, examining every aspect of the building he had chosen, from its empty windows, which looked like gaping, glowing eyesockets in the night-vision scope’s lens, to the pole sticking off the roof, attached to the side of the building by a length of wood.

Ryan blinked and refocused on the “pole,” pushing the magnifier to its maximum limit. He took one last long look. The man with the longblaster had camouflaged his position to look like part of the building, indistinguishable from the rest of the crumbling rubble. Ryan frowned. Whoever these guys were, they were well-trained, much better than the everyday, ragged bands of coldhearts.

He was still peering at the sniper’s position when a dark shadow obscured the scope’s vision. Thinking the unit had malfunctioned, he started to remove it from his eye, only to have it torn out of his hand to crash into the floor beneath him, the tinkle of broken glass telling him it was now just another piece of junk like everything else around him.

Instinctively, Ryan scooted down, hunching back into the tunnel. The action saved his life. A dirty, greasy hand slapped down on the tunnel floor right in front of him. The fingers wriggled on the dusty surface, then pulled free with a wet, sucking sound.

Stickie! Ryan looked up in time to see a hulking form block out the dim starlight. Hoarse breathing echoed in the small corridor, and Ryan caught the fetid scent of rotting meat wafting from the mutie’s gaping maw. With a bestial grunt, the mutie grabbed both sides of the tunnel and began crawling inside, intent on destroying its prey.

Ryan was about to shove himself down to the other end when the entire tunnel rocked at the bottom. With a sinking feeling, the one-eyed man knew what was at the other end.

Forcing his right hand down to his hip, Ryan drew the P-226 Sig Sauer and aimed between his spread legs, all too aware of the slavering death only a yard or two away from his head. He fired blindly five times, the muzzle-flash illuminating the face of the stickie at the bottom of the tunnel, each burst of light revealing the destruction wrought upon its face as the 9 mm hollowpoint bullets slammed into it. Only when the last one punched through its eye did it whine shrilly and, expelling a fist-size wad of blood and phlegm, crumple to the floor, effectively blocking his retreat.

Ryan tried to bring the blaster back up, but found himself wedged in the tunnel, and couldn’t straighten before the top stickie was almost upon him, its gluey hand slapping at his shirt and starting to pull him toward it. Above the pressure of being dragged to his death, the Deathlands warrior felt the sheath of the thin-bladed knife pressing against his neck.

He pushed at the stickie’s rubbery arm with his left arm as hard as he could, trying to pin it against the tunnel wall, while he dropped his blaster and went for the blade at his neck with his right. As he brought his free hand around, the one-eyed smacked into something wet and slobbering, and he didn’t hesitate. He curled his fingers into a fist and smashed them three times into what could only be the mutie’s face, causing a howl of pain to reverberate through the passageway.

The mutie pulled back enough for Ryan to free his blade from its sheath and slash up with it. He met resistance and struck again and again, not giving the stickie a chance to recover or launch its own offensive. At one point, he felt the tip of the blade scrape bone, and felt warm, thin fluid run down his hand. The stickie screamed in pain and thrashed around in the passageway, bucking back and forth against the walls. Squealing in pain and surprise, the mutie retreated back up the tunnel.

When it was halfway out, it jerked in surprise, then slumped limply in the opening as the boom of the sniper’s longblaster echoed off the walls. The stickie flailed feebly, then stiffened as its head seemed to explode, showering Ryan with gore from its shattered skull. The mutie’s corpse sagged toward the floor of the tunnel, held up by the sucker pads of one of its fingers, still adhered to the wall.

Ryan wiped foul-smelling gore from his face and eyes and considered his current predicament. The big question now was, why didn’t the sniper shoot the stickie when it was trying to climb in and tear Ryan’s face off? But there was no time to ponder an answer. The stench of dead mutie, combined with burned cordite, was overpowering, and Ryan began to cough and choke as he slid to the bottom of the tunnel to retrieve his blaster—after first making sure the bottom stickie was dead by kicking it in the head several times. Only when he was sure did he crouch to feel for his Sig Sauer, finally retrieving it from the mush that had been the mutie’s head and wiping off the gunk as best as he could. Then he tried shifting the body out of the tunnel, but even heaving at it with all his strength didn’t budge it—the corpse was wedged fast.

Breathing through his mouth, Ryan knew there was only one way out. Panting with each movement, he began the laborious climb back up, the tunnel floor now slick with the stinking liquid dripping on him from the corpse above. At last he reached the sodden form and wedged his legs up into the tunnel to give himself a bit of a rest while he figured out the best way to escape the trap he found himself in.

Over, under, around or through, he thought, remembering one of the Trader’s favorite axioms. With the other three options unavailable to him, there was only straight through, up and out, hoping the distraction of the stickie’s suddenly animated body would be enough to cover his scramble to shelter.

The preparation for his escape attempt was almost overwhelming by itself. Ryan forced himself to get as close to the dead body as he could stand, after first confirming its deceased state by the simple expedient of putting a bullet in its brain. While there, he noticed something that made him pause. Stickies usually didn’t wear much clothing, maybe a tattered pair of pants, if anything, but this one had a black nylon collar with a small box around its neck. He reminded himself to check it out if possible once he was out of this stifling, would-be tomb.

When he was wedged uncomfortably close, he heaved at the sticky, flabby body with all his strength, shoving it up and back until gravity took over, and the dead stickie slithered out of the opening to the ground below. Gagging on the stink, Ryan scrambled out as quickly as he could, diving to the ground and landing on the corpse, which expelled a loud, rank blast of stale air. He heard a crack over his head, followed immediately by the sting of concrete chips flying at his head, then the boom of the longblaster’s report all around him.

Ryan was already moving, crawling over the debris to the nearest cover, a pile of concrete pieces that might have been a sidewalk a century ago. He’d just reached cover when the ground near his left arm puffed up dust, and the crack of the large-bore rifle exploded in the distance again.

“This is gettin’ bastard old,” Ryan muttered. Going back wasn’t an option. As long that that keen-eyed coldheart held the high ground, they couldn’t leave the area without someone taking a bullet or two.

The nearest cover was a copse of stunted trees, their thin trunks intertwined into a gnarled knot of wood that sprouted sickly branches reaching up to the sky. It was only a couple of feet wide, but it had to serve as shelter until Ryan could get to the half-standing house on the other side of it. Selecting a suitably large chunk of concrete, he tossed it to the left, then rolled right as fast as he could.

The shooter was no slouch. Ryan had just stopped behind the tree when he felt something tug at his boot, and heard the thunder of the longblaster’s report again. Unslinging his own weapon, he felt the bottom of his combat boot and discovered the heel had been shot away.

“Bastard.” Ryan slowly rose to a crouch, about to experiment with pushing the barrel through the tangled tree to see if he could draw a bead on his opponent, but a sudden explosion of wood above his head made him hit the dirt again. Looking up, he saw a fist-size hole in the profusion of tree trunks and immediately took off again, crawling like a snake through the rough terrain to the wall of the house.

Steyr clutched to his chest, Ryan circled around the house’s right side, senses alert for signs of men, stickies or anything else that might try to kill him. The decaying landscape around him was eerily silent, considering all the recent activity, and the one-eyed man’s shoulder blades itched, as if in anticipation of a bullet drilling between them. Shaking off the ominous feeling, he kept moving, drawing closer to the building where the sniper was holed up.

Stalking closer, he rounded a corner and ran smack into a pair of men coming the other way. The surprise was equal on both sides, but Ryan reacted faster, swinging his SSG’s stock into the first man’s jaw, slamming him into the wall and then to the ground, out cold. The second man was just bringing his rusty revolver up when Ryan jabbed the butt of the longblaster into the man’s forehead, breaking the skin and sending him staggering backward, the blaster flying from his hand. Ryan followed right after him, but he didn’t need to hit him again. When the man landed on the rocky ground, the snap of his broken neck was plainly audible to the one-eyed man. Nudging the now-limp body aside with his boot, he saw the sharp edge of the rock the guy had landed on.

Straightening, he scanned the shadows, looking for a scout or flanking team creeping up on him. A quick peek around the corner revealed the three-story building about twenty yards away. The long way to it meant going twice that distance, but it also kept him under cover almost the entire way. Slinging his Steyr, Ryan drew his Sig Sauer and replaced the half-full magazine with a full one from his pocket. Checking his back one last time, he scanned the windows of the building for movement, then hunched over and ran the last few yards to the wall, putting his back to it and hiding in the shadows as he listened for any kind of alarm. After several quiet seconds, he worked his way to the entrance, where a battered metal door hung on one hinge. Ryan listened to the pitch-blackness inside and, hearing nothing, edged into the room, leading with his blaster, careful not to touch or move the door.

He waited just inside until his eye adjusted to the gloom. When he could discern the walls instead of simply blank blackness, he began to advance cautiously, heading for the staircase he spotted on the back wall. The ground floor was completely bare of any furnishings or debris, just empty floor and support pillars throughout. He stepped quietly and listened for anyone coming after him, but heard nothing.

Reaching the stairs, Ryan began to climb, staying near the wall so the steps wouldn’t give his position away with a telltale creak. Once he reached the top, Ryan was pleased to see the starlight streaming weakly in through the glassless windows. The next staircase was right above him, its entrance at the far end of the room. He had just taken his second step when a section of the floor gave way under his foot with a snap, the weak boards crashing to the ground. Cat-quick, he wrenched himself back before his leg fell through.

Ryan froze, hearing the rapid clomp of quick footfalls. This floor was empty, as well, with nowhere and nothing to hide him. The steps grew louder, and Ryan knew the coldhearts were seconds away from flushing him. A glance at the ceiling revealed a latticework of metal bars under tangles of metal pipes and ducts. He had no idea if it was strong enough to hold his weight, but it was the only option available. Shoving his blaster into his belt, he sprang up with all his strength, grabbing the thin metal and hoisting himself up as quickly as he dared. He had managed to pull his chin up when he heard the sound of boots on the stairs. The bar settled for a moment, and he feared it would pull loose, but it held, and he kept climbing, swinging his leg up and over and pulling himself onto the bar, balancing there just as the advance team hit the floor.

Like the others, they were swift and silent, quartering the room and sweeping and clearing each section with rapid movements. The pair moved well, always covering one another’s back, and each man never out of sight of the other. They were completely covered from head to toe, one with a scarf wrapped around his head, and the other wearing what looked like an old gas mask, which gave Ryan an uncomfortable feeling. If they had gas weapons, he could be in for a world of hurt. Then he noticed there was no filtering canister on the end, and realized the hunter was wearing it as some kind of decoration or trophy.

So far, Ryan had been lucky. From what he could see, they hadn’t looked up once. Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t at any moment, but he couldn’t move. If he tried for his blaster, he’d probably make enough noise to alert them, and that’d be all she wrote. So he waited and watched them come closer, trying to figure out some kind of plan.

At the far end, one of the coldhearts looked out the window and drew back in alarm, signaling to his partner about the lack of guards, apparently. There was a brief, signaled argument, then they headed back toward the stairway leading to the first floor, their weapons—two well-maintained short-barreled machine guns—held at their waist, muzzles pointing in front of them.

They were a few steps away when the glimmerings of a plan formed in Ryan’s mind. It would require split-second timing, but if he could pull it off… He watched as they came closer…three steps…two steps…one step away…

When the coldhearts were right below him, about to take their first step onto the staircase, he let his feet swing free and dropped to the floor, barely making a sound as he landed right behind them, drawing his Sig Sauer as he landed.

There was a moment’s surprise as both whirled to see their deaths in the single, icy-cold blue eye of the tall, black-haired man less than an arm’s length away. Still, they tried to bring their blasters to bear on him before he put a bullet into their heads, knowing it was hopeless, but trying anyway.

And it was. Even before the man on the right could finish turning, a 9 mm slug had entered his eye socket, drilling straight back into his brain and out the back of his skull, splattering the wall with red-gray gore as he slumped against the wall, his feet trembling and kicking as his limbs slowly registered his death.

Ryan switched his aim to Gas Mask and triggered two shots, knowing that the plastic lens of its eyepieces could sometimes deflect a bullet enough to prevent a kill shot. One or the other had to have done the job, since his attacker froze, standing stock-still at the top of the stairs, blaster clenched in his hands. Ryan kept his weapon aimed at the bandit, just in case he was faking, but it seemed the coldheart was on the last train west, even if his body hadn’t quite registered the fact yet.

From inside the gas mask came a small sigh, as if the coldheart had exhaled his last breath, and he started to fall backward, down the stairs. Ryan was aware that something was wrong; then he noticed it, and threw himself to the side, just as the corpse’s finger spasmed on the trigger of his blaster, emptying the entire magazine into the back of the staircase. The body disappeared, thumping its way down the stairs to land with a crash at the bottom as the roar from the blaster died away.

Sig Sauer covering the staircase, Ryan opened his eye to see the slumped body of the first raider, and dust and plaster trickling down from the blaster. The scarf, now askew over the head of the corpse, gave him another idea, and he got up and went over to the body, unwrapping the sodden garment and wrapping it around his head so that the gore-soaked section was over his face. He stripped the corpse of its drab-green shirt and slipped it on, finding the sleeves a couple inches too short, but figuring no one would notice. The smell of the scarf was overpowering, but he breathed through his mouth and walked to the stairs leading to the third floor, listening for anyone coming to investigate.

Only silence greeted him. Steeling himself, Ryan bent over and staggered up the stairs, breathing loudly with each step. At the top, he crawled out onto the landing, wheezing as if severely injured while looking around at the room.

The sniper’s position was ahead and to the right, a form still bent over the longblaster, scanning outside. Another figure was in the window next to him, next to a small scope mounted on a tripod, but looking back at the staircase, a weapon pointed at the crawling form that had just appeared.

“Hey, stop right— Jeez, Carly, is that you? What happened?” The voice turned from commanding to concerned, and Ryan felt a small hand on his arm, trying to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get you over— Hey, you’re not—”

The mistake was realized too late, as Ryan had already grabbed the spotter’s arm in a steely grip while he shoved his Sig Sauer into the man’s chest and pulled the trigger twice, shattering ribs and holing vital organs. The coldheart let out a startled grunt and collapsed to the floor. Ryan kicked the blaster out of his hand and aimed at the sniper, who had heard the commotion and was drawing a small blaster of his own. Their weapons went off almost simultaneously, and Ryan felt a small puff of air against the side of his head from the bullet’s passage as his own shot hit his target in the upper chest. The shooter fell back against his blind and tried to lift his blaster again, but his second shot went wild into the darkness. Panting with the effort, he stared at the weapon in his hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds, then lifted his gaze back to Ryan.

“Bastard….” was his last, high-pitched word, then his head lolled, and the blaster slipped from his lifeless fingers. Ryan had been covering him while scanning the rest of the room, but finding no one else here, went over to the sniper’s body. Something about him had caught his attention, and Ryan removed the drab-green cap from the body’s head to find a surprise underneath.

A woman. Not even a woman, a girl, maybe in her late teens at most. Ryan didn’t feel that much of a twang of conscience. Women were just as lethal in the Deathlands as men, more so a lot of times. And there was the fact that she had been trying to kill him just a few minutes ago. No, what he was more concerned about was who was training what should have been a ragtag group of bandits to have this much skill and precision.

Something had definitely changed in Denver, and Ryan was suddenly very curious to find out what.

Chapter Five

J.B. poked at the charred remains of what had been their dinner with the blade of his knife, shaking his head. “Damn shame.”

“Got that right.” Ryan had made his way back to the rest of the group to find them all puzzling over the unusual fight.

Mildred arched an eyebrow at both of them. “You talking about the turkey or that paramilitary force we just encountered?”

“Bit of both.” Ryan exchanged a glance with J.B., who nodded. “Someone’s got a base of operations here, and is supplying people with quality weapons—” he indicated the pile of blasters and magazines he’d taken from the bodies on his way out of the sniper’s building “—and the training to use them well.”

“Too well.” J.B. was methodically sorting the pile of weapons into types, then calibers. “Wide range, from an AK-47 to a Webley revolver—wonder where that came from?—but all are well-tended, oiled and everything.” He hefted the longblaster Ryan had brought back. “Remington 700, composite stock, 10x sight, very clean. Good trading value.”

Mildred grimaced. “Whoever sent those people out here probably has a difference of opinion on that.”

“Mebbe, but we’re holding them now. Possession’s a hundred percent of the law out here, you know that.”

“Speaking of, what about the coldhearts themselves?” Krysty waved at the three corpses that had died trying to capture J.B., Mildred and Doc. “Some are in ragged uniforms, and others—like the ones you ran into—well dressed, and all with matching shirts. What about that?”

Ryan took off the shirt he’d worn back to his friends and examined the embroidered insignia on the right sleeve. Not a patch, the symbol—a lightning bolt diagonally bisecting a field that was red, with a small sword on the upper left, and blue with what looked like an unrolled scroll of paper on the lower right—was stitched directly into the cloth. He had no idea what it meant. Wealthy barons with delusions of grandeur often outfitted their sec men in matching uniforms, thinking it gave their ville an appearance of respectability and power. Ryan often thought it simply made the hired thugs easier to identify and kill.

Doc rubbed his temples with his long fingers. “And, except for the ones that our good man Ryan took out, they did not seem all that interested in chilling us, but rather were looking for captives. Standard operating procedure, if they were out to collect slaves, but that was not the impression I got. It is all most peculiar.”

“Don’t forget stickies,” Jak piped up from the other side of the fire as he cast long looks into the darkness.

“And those collars they were wearing. What’s that about? Is someone controlling them? We have a whole lot of questions, and no answers.” Ryan shoved the weapons into a large backpack he had liberated from the sniper’s building. “We’ll move to the high building and hole up there for the night. Between the bastard stickies and what looks like the vanguard of an army, there’s too much trouble around to be staying out in the open. Let’s strip the rest of the bodies along the way. No sense letting anyone else find these blasters. Once we’re secure, we’ll rig a few alarms, and take turns watching throughout the night. In the morning, we’ll head farther into the city—carefully—and see if we can get some idea of what’s going on here.”

“What we eat?” Jak asked.

Ryan jerked his thumb behind him. “Rations back at the sniper position.”

“Great.”

There were no further objections, and they all packed up, doused the fire and headed for cover.

GUNFIRE AWOKE RYAN the next morning, jolting him out of bed with his Sig Sauer in his hand before he realized it was off in the distance. Looking around, he saw most of the others were also awake, from a sleepy-eyed Mildred to a yawning Jak, who had taken the most recent watch. Only Doc’s stentorian snoring continued unabated.

After a quick sweep of the building to ensure no one had entered during the night, the other five broke their fast over a small fire built in a section of aluminum vent that Ryan and J.B. had taken apart and reshaped to form a rough chimney. After choking down the vacuum-packed, nearly indestructible rations that tasted bland whether they were hot or cold, spiced or plain, the five ascended to the roof to see if they could spot where the shots were coming from.

The remains of the former neighborhood around them were flanked by hills to the north and west. Now that day had broken, columns of smoke to the north were easily visible as black plumes dotting the horizon. The blasterfire continued, single shots echoing over the foothills of the Rockies, interspersed with bursts of automatic weapons fire here and there, interspersed with the sustained roar of a light machine gun, followed by the heavier boom of another automatic weapon.

J.B. identified the various sounds as if he was listening to bird calls. “M-60 belt-fed dueling with a .50-caliber heavy. Someone’s got a bit of firepower on their side. The pops we’re hearing are AK-47s, and I also caught a few M-16s and some lighter caliber weapons, .38s, .45s.”

Krysty stood at the edge of the rooftop, the cool morning breeze blowing her hair away from her face. “Doesn’t sound like anything we want to get mixed up in, lover.”

“Mebbe, mebbe not. Been thinking about it since last night. It looks like someone’s raising an army, or trying to, and every time that happens, it leads to all kinds of trouble.”

“Trouble to whom?” Mildred asked, shading her eyes with her hand as she gazed north. “We slip out now, head back to the redoubt, jump somewhere else, and leave whoever’s out there to kill each other however they want. So far I’m siding with Krysty on this one, boys. I’m all for fighting the good fight, doing what we can when we can, but that doesn’t involve marching into what sounds like a war zone up there.”

Ryan eyed the black woman for a moment. “You’re right, it may not be our kind of trouble, but there’s plenty of places around here where it could be their kind—and Krysty and J.B. know of two of them.”

“Not fair, Ryan.” Krysty hadn’t taken her eyes from the horizon, but her tone carried unmistakable reproach.

“Neither is the world.” Ryan didn’t have to look at J.B. to know he’d already come to a similar conclusion. He didn’t know how the Armorer felt about Cripple Creek, the town he grew up in, but he doubted the man would simply walk away from a potential threat to it. And he was sure that Krysty wouldn’t put up with invaders swooping down on the ville of Harmony, where she grew up, to steal conscripts and turn them into trained killers, if there was anything she could do to stop it.

“I’m about as keen as you all are to go walking into what might be our deaths, but I think we need to check out what’s going on up there. Besides, someone came after us last night, and I want to find out who’s holding the other end of that leash.”

“And take them out?” J.B. stared at him speculatively. “If we head up there, it won’t be a pleasure trip. Don’t want to get caught between two barons feuding. We’d be like a bug between two rocks—squashed.”

Ryan digested his friend’s take on the situation and nodded. “If we didn’t like what we saw once there, we either head out or do what we can. Lots of times we don’t really have a choice, but here we do. What about you, Jak? You been quiet ever since we came up here.”

The albino youth was also shading his eyes against the morning light, the rising wind from the mountains to the west ruffling his white hair. “My people not been free if you not come stop Baron Tourment and men. We fight, we move, we survive all time. Not think much ’bout tomorrow. Comes if when comes. Got chance help people, mebbe we should. But only if good fight. One we got chance winnin’.”

“Amen to that, my snowy-haired young friend.” Everyone turned to see Doc, dressed for travel, ascend the last of the stairs to the roof. “My apologies for tarrying in bed so long. Methinks the porter had not received my wake-up call last night. But it is a glorious morning, and after we enjoy a fine repast, I, for one, am looking forward to seeing more of this ‘Wild West’ as they refer to it in the newspapers back east.”

“Doc?” Krysty approached him warily, aware of how fragile he could be when he regressed to this past state. “You’re not back in the nineteenth century anymore, you’re here, with us, remember?”

For a moment, the old man stared at Krysty as if she was the one who had lost all reason, not him. Then his mouth split into a wide grin, revealing his peculiar set of teeth, and he laughed, long and loud, the joyous sound echoing off the deserted ruins of the buildings around them.

Along with everyone else, Ryan was surprised by Doc’s reaction. Normally he responded to being wrenched back into the present with depression, and usually denial, rambling and tears. This sort of reaction made him fear the white-haired old man had finally slipped over the edge of sanity once and for all. He caught J.B.’s eye, who nodded and casually took three steps to the left to stand on Doc’s flank, ready to tackle him if needed.

And indeed, Doc was trying to speak, but wheezing and gasping as he was, he couldn’t get any words out. He held up one hand while resting the other on his knee as he whooped and coughed. “Just a…just a minute…dear friends…oh, the looks on your faces…” At that he broke into a fresh gale of hilarity, nearly falling over in his mirth.

Ryan gave J.B. a hand signal to stand down. Crossing his arms over his chest, he waited for the latest jocularity to subside.

“Upon my soul…that is as good a jape as I have had in many a long year…”

Mildred caught it first. “Jape? That was a joke, old man?”

“Indeed it was, my ebony-skinned companion. I am aware that I trip the time fantastic now and again, and I thought it might be good for a chuckle if I only pretended to have gamboled down memory lane once more.” The stony looks on the faces of his companions made him sober up quickly. “Er, perhaps it was not quite as amusing to you all as it was to me.”

“Oh, yeah, it was amusing all right—about as funny as a dead baby on a pitchfork.” Brushing roughly by the old man, Mildred stomped down the stairs to the floor of their camp.

Krysty simply sighed and followed the other woman down, while Jak muttered something about, “fuckin’ senile white-haired bastards,” and followed. J.B., phlegmatic as usual, patted the scholar on the shoulder. “Good one, Doc.”

That left him and Ryan alone on the rooftop. Ryan stared at Doc, nonplussed. He thought he’d seen every kind of quirk from the old man in their travels together, but once again, Doc had pulled the rug out from under him. He didn’t know whether to be angry, disappointed, stoic or what, so he settled for asking the obvious question. “What the fuck was that all about, Doc?”

And the old man’s lined countenance, which had maintained its composure in the face of the mixed emotions of the other group, finally broke, collapsing into an expression of profound sadness. He walked over to Ryan, his hand reaching out to the other man’s shoulder, his fingers curved to grip his flesh like the talons of a hawk. But when his rheumy-eyed gaze bored into Ryan’s lone good eye, it had the unsettling clarity of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

“Don’t you see, my dear Ryan? Do you truly not see the irony of it all? It is either make jokes when I can, even when the subjects are my trusted friends, or one day I shall truly go insane in this place.”

He relaxed his hand and headed to the stairs, singing some sort of ballad under his breath in a language Ryan didn’t understand, and leaving the even more confused man alone on the rooftop. With a shrug, he took one last look at the pillars of smoke to the north before heading down to help pack up.

Chapter Six

Between the various weapons they’d found, everyone had gotten the chance to top off their ammo. They decided to cache the weapons in the ductwork of the building, figuring they’d come back for them later.

Ryan also suggested they each take one of the shirts—not to wear right away, but to use as camouflage in case they ran into more of the green militia first. Everyone had one hidden on their person, ready to pull on if necessary.

The one-eyed man took the lead as they headed out, holding J.B.’s M-4000, the Steyr slung. If he surprised anyone, he wanted the shotgun’s overwhelming firepower to be available at a moment’s notice. Krysty followed, her crimson hair tucked away, then Doc, then Mildred, with J.B. and Jak bringing up the rear.

His plan was simple—head north until they reached the top of the hills, which should give them a better view of what was going on below. Once they had accomplished that, then what came next all depended on who was doing what to whom.

Ryan took a moment to lay down the ground rules. “Everyone keep your eyes wide-open, and remember, it’s not just coldhearts we’re watching out for. Those stickies may be running around, too, so anyone sees anything out of the ordinary, pass the word triple-quick. If we encounter overwhelming force or get split up, circle around to the cache building to regroup. Give any stragglers twelve hours, then head for the redoubt.”

He saw the dark looks that came his way upon hearing the last words, but pretended not to. What they were heading into was too dangerous for a divided group to try to take on. It was better to run away and live to fight another day. Besides, even as he gave the orders, he was pretty sure none of the others would follow them if anyone did get caught.

The first hour was slow going. Ryan had removed the scope from the Remington and used it to scout the terrain ahead—block after block of dilapidated suburbs consisting of crumbling, falling-down houses that could hide a veritable army of coldhearts. He made sure to scan each building along the path they took, watching for any sign of movement. Only when he was sure it was safe did he give the signal to move out, and even then they took it one house at a time, leapfrogging in rotation and covering one another.

The sounds of fighting grew louder as the morning sun ascended into the light purple sky. By the time it was overhead, they’d left the housing neighborhood behind and were climbing up their target hill, which was larger than it had first looked, when they heard the rough roar of ill-maintained engines coming their way. Ryan gave the signal to seek cover wherever they could, but the group was caught in the worst position possible, on an upslope, with the nearest cover at least one hundred yards away. Everyone scattered, hitting the ground and trying to camouflage themselves as best as they could in the knee-high grass covering the hill. Ryan dived to the dirt and rolled left, shotgun out and aimed at where he thought the wag might come over the hill.

But instead of a wag cresting the top, the first thing they saw was a running human, sobbing with fear and exhaustion as he fairly flew over the top and began leaping down the other side of the hill—right toward Ryan. The approaching person wasn’t wearing the green shirt of the force that had ambushed them the previous night, which meant they were probably part of the opposing side.

Only one way to find out, Ryan thought. The runner was now only a few steps away and moving so fast he was one misstep from tripping and falling the rest of the way down the hill. Ryan let him take two more huge leaps, then rose and put out his arm to clothesline the fleeing man, careful to catch him across the chest instead of the neck.

Although he was at least six inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier, the runner hit Ryan with enough force to nearly bowl him over. They collapsed in a pile, with the one-eyed man scrambling on top of his captive and clamping a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.

“Stop fighting! We’re not your enemy!” He grunted as the person writhed and bucked underneath him. Sky-blue eyes glared at him from under a mottled green-and-brown cap that fell off as they struggled, revealing long blond hair framing what was undeniably a woman’s face.

“Wait—” was all Ryan got out before feeling her leg tense, and turned his thigh just in time to block a shot to his groin from her knee. “Stop it. We’re not with the green shirts!”

“Then who the fuck are you?”

Ryan didn’t have time to answer, as the racket from the pursuing wag was now ear-shattering as the first of them roared over the hill, sailing through the air to land with a crash on the downslope. The battered Hummer’s paint was faded to a light tan, but what caught Ryan’s eye was the open weapon mount on top, which contained a .50-caliber heavy machine gun, and even worse, a man behind it.

“Fireblast! Get down!” Ryan crushed the woman to the ground as he brought up the M-4000, aiming at the windshield and letting the weapon’s recoil ride the barrel up over the roof to the gunner’s position. The weapon turret began swiveling toward him, but Ryan also heard the stutter of J.B.’s mini-Uzi on his left, and the man behind the big Fifty suddenly slumped over his weapon.

Unfortunately, Ryan’s bold attack had attracted the driver’s attention. He swung the wheel of the armored wag over, sending the heavy vehicle barreling at him and the woman.

“Run!” Ryan rose and triggered the M-4000 again, trying to draw the driver off and give the woman a chance to get away. The fléchettes ricocheted off the windshield as Ryan ran the magazine dry, but as the woman got up and scrambled away across the hill, the mil wag altered course to pursue her instead.

“Fire blast!” Ryan turned to pursue both of them, but saw Jak standing on the hill about twenty yards away, his legs apart, his left hand bracing his right, which held the .357 Colt Python at arm’s length. The wag raced toward the woman, the driver seemingly oblivious to the albino teen with the blaster. The passenger, however, leaned out and aimed an automatic rifle at him just in time to take the first shot from Jak’s blaster in the face, making him drop his weapon and slump over, dangling out the passenger door. The albino youth kept firing, the heavy slugs fragmenting the windshield, then punching through.

The Hummer suddenly slowed and turned down the hill. “Shit! Get it, get it!” Jak shouted as he ran toward the driverless wag. Ryan slung the shotgun and followed, drawing his Sig Sauer on the move. Krysty and Mildred were also pursuing, but Ryan and Jak were the closest.

The mil wag gathered speed as it rolled toward the bottom of the hill, then hit the flat plain and tried to climb up a small hillock, the engine spluttering in protest at not having enough power to finish the job. Jak reached the stopped wag a few steps ahead of Ryan, and paused at the back of the off-roader, waiting for the older man to catch up. The moment Ryan got there, Jak bent over and crept to the driver’s door, slipping around to the other side and grabbing the handle. At Ryan’s nod, he popped the door open, allowing the one-eyed man to cover the driver with his blaster.

Ryan saw a flash of black metal and fired three times, the trio of bullets slamming into the wounded driver’s bloody side, breaking his arm and burrowing into his chest, one lodging in his heart. The black Beretta blaster fell from his grasp into the dust as Ryan grabbed the body and threw it out, then unslung the Steyr and set it behind the driver’s seat.

“Come on!” Ryan jumped into the front seat while Jak clambered onto the hood and headed for the turret, only to be met by J.B., who had climbed up the back and was already hauling the dead man out.

“Not today, Jak. Take the passenger seat.”

“Hey, was—”

“Jak, sit your ass down now!” Ryan’s tone brooked no argument, and the albino teen ripped the dead body out of the passenger window and slid in, fuming silently. Ryan shoved the M-4000 shotgun and a full mag at him. “Reload, and keep your eyes peeled.”

Jak’s red eyes widened at receiving the weapon, then he yanked out the magazine, inserted another one and pulled back the cocking lever. “What waiting for?”

Shaking his head, Ryan was about to head out when J.B. slapped the roof. “Hold on, the others are coming!” His words were immediately followed by the deafening roar of the .50-caliber machine gun, its recoil shaking the wag’s entire cab, and Jak, who’d been watching out the passenger window, whooped in glee.

“Got him!”

“Course.”

Ryan stole a look out the passenger side to see another mil wag on the ridge, stopped and aflame. The rear passenger door opened, and a figure wreathed in orange flame fell out, rolling on the ground to try to extinguish the fire crisping his body. Bullets started cooking off in the heat with dull pops, and one of them had to have struck the flamer, as he suddenly jerked and lay still on the ground.

The back doors of Ryan’s transport popped open, and Krysty, Mildred and Doc squeezed into the cramped compartment. The women went in back, leaving Doc to try to crowd into the front. “Nukeshit, Doc, put stork legs somewhere not crotch!” Jak shouted as the lanky-legged timer traveler tried to arrange himself in the passenger seat. Ryan didn’t wait, but had popped the clutch and was moving the wag forward, his eyes on the fleeing figure pulling away from them with every step.

“I say, Jak, if you would just place that shotgun elsewhere—”

“Not happen—hold still!” Jak had squirmed out from under Doc, and was now sitting on his lap, a position neither one was enjoying. He stuck the barrel out the passenger window as the wag began to accelerate and fired five quick blasts into a group of running men, downing two and making the rest scatter for cover. J.B.’s fifty had also joined the fray, the weapon’s deeper roar overwhelming the S&W’s reports.

“Come on! Could get out run faster!” Jak egged Ryan on as he scanned for another target.

Ryan gritted his teeth as he forced the gearshift into Second. “Overloaded as we are, I might just take you up on that.” The Hummer was finally starting to catch up with their target when J.B. called out from the turret. “Wags at three o’clock!”

The one-eyed man glanced right to see two more mil wags crest the hill and speed toward them, one peeling off to chase the running woman, the other on a course to intercept Ryan’s hijacked wag. “Get them off us, J.B.!”

“No prob—” The Armorer depressed the trigger of the Fifty, which spit a short burst before going silent. He cleared the action and tried again, with similar results. “Black dust! Blaster’s jammed!”

“Marvelous.” Doc was pressed back into the passenger seat, fending off Jak’s elbow in his face as the teenager tried to get a better angle on the approaching wag. “Nothing like riding in style.”

“Better than hoofing it like she is, Doc.” Ryan struggled to shift into third, the engine whining with the effort. Krysty was already shooting at the enemy wag, but a burst from their turret, manned with a green shirt toting an automatic rifle, quickly made her duck back inside.

“If you’re going to fire that thing, Jak, any time now would be great!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He stuck the shotgun out again and let fly, the fléchettes sparking off the hood and roof of the other mil wag. Just as quickly, Jak jerked the blaster back inside as bullets hit all around the window, one even penetrating to lodge in the dashboard next to him.

“How close, J.B.?” Ryan shouted.

“Ten yards and coming up fast—they’re gonna ram us!”

“Not if I can help it.” Ryan waited one more moment, then jammed on the brakes with both feet as he down-shifted, decelerating so fast Jak and Doc were thrown against the windshield. Caught by surprise, the other driver tried to compensate, but couldn’t slow down in time. The rear quarter panel of the other mil wag smacked against the right front fender of Ryan’s, but didn’t do any serious damage. “Chill that bastard!” Ryan snapped as he wrestled the obstinate vehicle back into motion.

Jak recovered faster than the turret gunner, poking his head out with the M-4000 tucked into his shoulder. The man’s eyes widened when he saw the shotgun’s maw pointed at him, but he still tried to bring the AK-47 to bear on his opponent.

He failed.

The albino teen squeezed the trigger, sending dozens of razor-sharp steel darts flying into the man’s chest, piercing his lungs and slicing between his ribs, shredding his stomach, liver and kidneys into pulp. The man fell forward, and was immediately pushed out of the turret by someone else inside, the body rolling off the sloped back to land in front of Ryan’s wag. Bracing himself, the one-eyed man didn’t stop, feeling the heavy thump as the wheels rolled over the body, finishing him off if he hadn’t been dead already.

“Where’s that big blaster, J.B.?” Ryan shouted, seeing the other mil wag begin to pull away from them. His question was answered a moment later by a long burst of bullets from up top that chewed into the back of the Hummer in front of them, blowing off the spare tire and punching large holes into the armored top. The squat wag slewed from side-to-side, but kept going, so J.B. aimed another two-second burst at the left rear corner. The cluster of shells disintegrated the armored fender and continued into the tire, blowing it apart in a cloud of flying rubber. The driver lost control of his vehicle, which swerved around in a 180-degree turn and stalled.

Suddenly face-to-face with the coldheart through his side door window, Ryan scrambled to draw his Sig Sauer and aim it at the wheelman, who was just as frantically lining up his own blaster. A single shot cracked out, and the enemy driver’s head snapped back, a small hole appearing in his forehead. If anyone else was inside the wag, they were staying put behind the armored doors.

Ryan reholstered his blaster and hit the gas. “Thanks, Mildred.”

“No problem. Now let’s get that woman.”

Squinting through the dust-covered windshield, Ryan spotted the second mil wag pulling alongside the woman, who tried to dodge away, but was grabbed by a man in the rear passenger seat who drew the kicking, screaming woman into the back. “Nuking hell, they got her!”

“Well, then, my dear Ryan, I suggest that we get her back.” With a feral grin, Doc had his LeMat drawn and ready, and seemed to be fully in the moment. “Tallyho!”

“Tallyho indeed, whatever the fuck that means.” Ryan goosed the accelerator, and the ancient mil wag, as if sensing his urgency, now leaped forward, straining to catch up to the vehicle ahead of them.

“J.B., can you take them out without hitting anyone in the rear?” Ryan shouted.

“Ask me to shoot off their hats without mussin’ their hair, why don’t ya!” J.B. yelled back. “This is a machine gun, not a bastard scalpel!”

“All right, all right, we’ll do it the hard way.” Ryan heard sniggering from the passenger seat and glanced over to find both Jak and Doc apparently sharing a private joke. “Want to tell me what’s so bastard funny?”

“You said…hit anyone…in rear,” Jak got out between chortles. Doc’s laugh grated on Ryan’s nerves, as well, but he ignored it and concentrated on getting closer to the wag ahead of them.

“Shut your mouths and look sharp—mebbe snipers above.”

His words sobered the two up, and they returned to watching the surrounding countryside as it blurred past. They’d left the long hillside behind now, and were jouncing through a series of smaller foothills, the wag’s engine growling as it powered up one side and down another. Ryan followed them into a narrow valley, where there was barely enough room for both vehicles to drive side-by-side.

“Watch it, Ryan, could be a trap,” J.B. called down from the top.

“Better keep that longblaster ready then, shouldn’t you?” he yelled back.

“Hope your plan to get her out of there is better than the one that got us into this,” the Armorer shouted, holding on to his beloved fedora with one hand.

“Better, no, crazy, yeah!”

A few hundred yards ahead, Ryan spotted what he was looking for. “J.B., keep a lookout behind us! Jak, give Doc the shotgun!”

The albino teen frowned at the order. “What, why?”

“’Cause you’re going to take the wheel in a few seconds. Now hand it over!”

Dumping the blaster into Doc’s lap, Jak prepared to move over and take command.

“Doc, just point and shoot to keep that turret gunner’s head down. And for fuck’s sake, don’t drop it!” For once Ryan was pleased that fléchette rounds were in the shotgun, as they wouldn’t penetrate the armor. “Now!”

The old man stuck his face and upper body out of the window, his long hair swirling around his face like a demented, blaster-toting prophet. He unloaded on the back of the mil wag as Ryan mashed the pedal to the floor, drawing a burst of speed from the ancient machine he would have thought impossible a few moments ago.

The two mil wags hit the widened plain at the same time, Ryan having pulled them abreast of the other Hummer. “Take it, Jak!” Ryan said, waiting until he felt the teen’s foot stomp down on the gas pedal before releasing it and handing over the wheel, as well. There was a slight sway as Jak maneuvered himself into the driver’s seat, but the 4x4 steadied soon enough, and Ryan pushed the driver’s door open, pulling himself up and out using the hinges of the door as steps.

Krysty leaned forward. “Lover, what the hell are you doing?”

Ryan glanced back at her, but didn’t stop. “Back in a sec.”

Before she could protest further, he stepped out onto the roof and let the door slam shut under him. J.B. had his back turned, sniping with the .50-caliber blaster as best he could at the far-off mob of green shirts streaming down the hill like rows of ants. Ryan didn’t spare him a second glance, as his attention was focused on the dull brown mil wag slowly pulling away from his own vehicle. The hot, dry wind whipped at his face, making him squint as he watched the other wag come closer.

Only a couple yards separated them, and as Ryan gauged his timing, Jak drifted slowly right, bringing the back of the mil wag to within a yard of their front bumper. Doc let loose one more blast from the autoshotgun at the turret, ruffling the hair of the man inside, who had just started to poke his head back up.

It was now or never.

Ryan took two large steps across the hood of the Hummer and leaped into space.

Chapter Seven

The trip across seemed to be over in a second and stretch on forever at the same time. Ryan felt the brief, strange sensation of weightlessness for a moment, and didn’t dare look down at the ground blurring underneath him, but kept his eye on the prize—the rim of the turret atop the mil wag he was sailing toward.

He hit the slanted back of the Hummer feet-first and threw himself forward, straining to reach the metal lip before he slid off. His fingers locked onto the raised edge just as the gunner inside poked his head up to see what had landed on the back of his ride. Eyes widening in surprise, he yanked a knife from an upside-down sheath on his web gear and thrust it at Ryan’s face.

Jerking his head aside, Ryan grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled it toward him, twisting at the same time until the man’s fingers popped open, and the blade clattered free, skittering away to fall to the ground. He turned back to the coldheart in time to take a blow to the side of his head from the man’s wild swing. The green shirt cocked his free hand back for another punch, but as he brought his fist forward, Ryan blocked it with his left hand, then pulled the guy forward, head-butting him in the face. Drawing back his head, Ryan drove it forward again, cracking his adversary in the mouth this time, and drawing blood from his mashed lips.

His lower face crushed into a red smear, the man sagged from the blows, giving Ryan time to pull his own blade and drive it into the man’s heart, stilling him for good. Removing the blade and pulling his feet up under him, Ryan dragged the body from the turret and tossed him over the side, then drew his Sig Sauer and paused for a moment. As he expected, a shadow appeared in the turret as another man poked his head up, blaster in hand, to see what was going on. The moment Ryan saw him, he jumped feet-first into the open space.

Seeing the combat boots aimed straight at his face, the coldheart tried to pull back into the recesses of the passenger compartment while aiming his blaster at the intruder. He accomplished neither, and his gun hand was caught underneath the heavy rubber soles, which crushed it to the deck with the snap of several broken wrist bones. The man howled in pain, giving Ryan a perfect target—his wide-open mouth. One bullet later, brains splashed against the rear door, and the coldheart stopped screaming permanently.

Ryan was trusting that the blonde woman was behind him—and that she wouldn’t try to backstab him as he whirled to take on the front seat pair. The passenger seat was empty, but the driver was half turned in his seat, the revolver in his hand swinging toward Ryan’s head. Close enough to touch, he grabbed the blaster’s cylinder, preventing it from firing, and aimed the muzzle of his own weapon between the wheelman’s eyes before pulling the trigger.

“Are you crazy!” He heard before the mil wag surged ahead as the spasming driver’s foot floored the gas pedal while the steering wheel turned hard left—aiming the vehicle straight toward the steep hillside. Ryan shoved the driver’s body down as he lunged over the seat for the wheel, but he was too late. With a roar, the off-roader tried to drive up the slope, making it a few yards before gravity took over and brought it tipping over on its side. The wag hung there for a moment before slowly falling over on its roof, the engine stalling as it crashed to a stop.

Ryan ended up on the ceiling with the driver’s leaking body on top of him. Hearing scrabbling sounds nearby, he shoved off the corpse and rose to find the woman pushing at the passenger door, which wasn’t budging, with all her strength.

“Come on!” she panted in the heat. Glancing back at Ryan, she whirled to face him while putting her back against the door and shoving. “Come any closer and you’ll regret it!”

Ryan sat back on his haunches and showed his blaster, careful not to point it directly at her. “Strange way to thank the man who just saved your life.”

“Are you shittin’ me? Have you seen the army running around these fuckin’ hills? You haven’t saved me at all, stupe! By getting’ in the way, you’re just in for a world of trouble.” She didn’t let up on the door at all, but kept straining at it, jerking at the handle. “Why won’t this fuckin’ thing move?”

“If you give my friends a minute, they’ll get us both out.”

“Sure, and you’ll end up ransoming me to my father instead of them—don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

Ryan frowned. “Girl, I don’t even know who you are.”

That stopped her, just in time for Ryan to hear J.B.’s voice outside. “Ryan, you alive in there?”

“Yeah, but the doors are jammed. Can you bust them?”

“Sure thing.”

Ryan heard fading footsteps, then a strange whine, like metal rasping on metal, then a clink on the other side of the door. “So, who are you?”

Puzzlement clouded her features. “You really don’t know?”

Ryan poked the body of the driver next to him. “I know you’re important to these green shirts, since they went to a lot of trouble to capture you alive, but other than that, you’re just another outland woman to me.”

“Just another— I’m Rachel Carrington, the daughter of Josiah Carrington, the leader of Free Denver.”

Ryan nodded. “And the green shirts are fighting against your father, right?”

“Yeah, lousy traitors. They want what my father’s spent his whole life building. They just think they can come in and take over. Not if I can help it.”

J.B.’s voice sounded from outside. “Keep away from the door.” The engine of the other mil wag revved outside, followed by a sudden jerk on the frame of the upside-down 4x4. The engine revved again, and with another lurch, the door tore away from its hinges, letting in bright sunlight.

Ryan motioned toward the door. “There you go.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“I don’t kidnap people for ransom. It looked like you were in trouble back there, and I thought you could use some help.”

She stared at him for long seconds. “Who are you?”

Ryan grinned. “No one of consequence.”

Her expression changed from exasperated to puzzled. “I very much doubt that.”

J.B.’s voice sounded from outside. “Company’s almost here, Ryan. You coming out, or fixing to stay in there for the rest of your bastard short life?”

“You can go with us, or take your chances with the green shirts outside. It’s up to you.”

“Choice like that isn’t any choice at all.” She scooted to the opening, scooping up the dead gunner’s blaster as she did so. But instead of pointing it at him, she extended a tanned hand, still oozing blood from a scraped knuckle. “Let’s go.”

Taking it, Ryan was surprised by the strength in her wiry form. “Thanks.” He got up and glanced at J.B., who was regarding the woman with his habitual expressionless face. “J. B. Dix, Rachel Carrington, Rachel, J.B.”

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