Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter (32 page)

Carefully, Union padded away from Exo as she played.
It wasn’t hard to put some space between them, as he was entranced by the creature looming above him.

All she had to do was play the final notes for her pet to complete the demonstration. But first, she lowered the device once more to speak.

“By the way, I know you were the one,” she said.

Exo frowned as if he’d only just remembered she was there. “The one what? What are you talking about?”

“The one who turned the shifters against my sisters years ago,” Union said. “The one who put the wheels in motion that got them killed.”

Suddenly, she was no longer a distraction to Exo. He locked eyes with her, giving her his full attention, and opened his mouth to speak.

But before a single word could emerge, she played the controller again. The silent signal went out, and the creature roared its rage.

Then it raised one mighty foot and brought it down suddenly. Exo didn’t even try to get out from under it.

He just screamed as the leviathan’s weight came down on top of him, the mass of mutie flesh crushing the life out of him.

Union lowered the device. Walking over to that enormous crushing foot, she patted it and smiled.

“Good boy,” she said. “Such a good boy.”

When the foot finally lifted to take a step, she could see Exo’s flesh had been absorbed into it. His flattened face gaped out from the bottom of the foot, his eyes blinking in mindless terror.

* * *

D
OC COULDN’T RUN
fast enough to catch up to Jak. He stopped to recover, even as Jak kept charging toward the woman and her monster.

It was then, as Doc bent over and panted for breath, that he saw the creature trample Exo. Just like that, the shifter
who’d abducted him, put him through all kinds of craziness and beaten him repeatedly was gone.

Doc even felt a brief stab of regret that he hadn’t followed through with slashing Exo’s throat when he’d had the chance.

But the regret was quickly replaced by a different feeling altogether. This one didn’t have anything to do with Exo’s death, in fact.

It started with a fizzing in the back of his head, a familiar sensation he identified immediately. It meant the transformational power of the Shift was building again, about to unleash another change in the landscape.

And Doc, once again, would have a front-row seat for whatever was coming.

* * *

R
YAN POPPED OUT
of the chute and quickly hopped to his feet, making way for the others who were close behind him.

Heartbeats later, the rest of his companions zoomed out in short order. Each one got out of the way fast, so only a minor pileup happened between the last two.

Even as J.B. and Mildred untangled themselves, Ryan took in the bizarre scene in front of him: the giant creature roaring to the heavens; Union playing her device like a musical instrument; Jak running across the sand toward them both.

“Gaia.” Krysty was standing beside him now, sharing the view. Her voice was strained—she was clearly still in great pain, but she was forcing herself through it. “What is that abomination?”

“What’s it made of?” Ricky asked, taking up position on Ryan’s opposite side. Leaning forward, he squinted at the great beast, then whistled softly. “Holy crap, are those people?”

“Some kind of amalgamation.” Mildred finally joined
them, dusting herself off. “A colony creature? Or maybe it just uses discarded organic matter to create a kind of shell, like a hermit crab.”

“The real question,” J.B. said, “is how do we stop it?”

“Jak has the right idea.” Ryan unslung the Steyr Scout and made sure it was ready for action. “We go after the bitch who’s calling its tune.”

* * *

A
S THE MONSTER
roared, Jak kept his eyes and mind fixed on a single target: Union. It was either that or take on the creature single-handedly, and Union was probably the key to stopping it anyway.

Now, if he could just avoid getting stepped on by the monster like the shifter who’d just gotten crushed…

In spite of all the noise from the beast and the earthquakes, Union still heard Jak approaching. She spun to face him, holding a blaster—Doc’s LeMat .44, which the shifter had to have dropped when he got stomped.

Without a word, she cracked off a shot. Jak instantly judged the trajectory and leaped upward, spinning above the path of the bullet.

The second his feet touched the ground again, he hurled one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives with his usual deadly accuracy. Union bobbed fast to one side, firing another round—but the knife still caught her under the collarbone, and her round went wide.

Jak’s second blade went in just as smoothly, flashing into the middle of her abdomen. Anticipating another round from the .44, Jak dived and rolled after making that second tag. Sure enough, Union unloaded three rounds in his direction…but he rolled so fast that none of them even nicked him.

Springing up out of his roll, he saw her use the controller even as she pulled the trigger on the .44 again. No rounds fired, as the blaster was empty, but the controller
delivered. The creature swung around and dropped a three-fingered fist as if it was a giant sledgehammer, aiming directly at Jak.

As fast as he could, Jak sprinted away from that dropping fist. When it came down, it barely missed him, and the impact threw him off his feet. He heard a chorus of screams and groans as it lifted away, and he had a terrible realization: the bodies making up the creature’s enormous frame were alive. The beings that had been absorbed into that monster were aware of everything, and they were suffering.

Even as Jak vaulted to his feet, he knew those terrible cries would stay with him long after that day. He also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had to find a way to take that thing down and give those poor people some measure of peace.

“Jak, wait!” Union said it in Carrie’s voice, skittish and full of sincerity. “Stop running! That thing only reacts to movement! You’ll be safe if you stand in one place!”

But Jak never stopped moving, which was a good thing. No sooner had the words left Union’s lips than the creature swung its fist back after Jak like a gigantic pendulum. It would have smashed Jak to a pulp if he’d done what she’d told him to do.

Then the creature surprised him, sweeping its fist around in an unexpected loop that intersected his zigzag path. The side of the fist only brushed him, but that was enough to pitch him several yards. Jak came down hard, feeling the jarring impact in every bone. His head swam, and he barely managed to stay conscious.

But he found himself wishing he’d blacked out after all. He was still on his back, staring upward, expecting to see the creature’s fist or foot plummet toward him…when, instead, he saw Union step into his field of vision.

“Poor Jak.” She had Doc’s sword, which had to also
have fallen free when the shifter was crushed—and was waving it over her head. “We had a real thing together, didn’t we? A real connection.”

Teeth clenched, Jak struggled to slip a blade from one of his sleeves, but the spring-loaded scabbards were jammed from the fall. He was going to have to pull from one of his pockets, meaning he’d have to move faster to beat her to the draw.

“Don’t worry, I’ll always remember you fondly.” She said it in Carrie’s voice, then switched to Dulcet’s. “That kiss will always leave us wanting more.”

Jak tensed, ready to grab for a knife, hoping he could outrace the sword in her hand.

Her next words were Rhonda’s. “Say good-night, dumbass.” Then Taryn’s. “For a man, you weren’t a complete waste of flesh.”

She shook the sword overhead. Jak knew she was ready to strike.

This time, when she spoke, it was as Sasha. “
Da svidaniya
, comrade shithead.”

Then, finally, she used the voice from the mat-trans chamber, that of the “true” Union personality that had overridden all the rest. “Notice, I didn’t whistle for Fido to take care of this. Some things a girl just has to do for herself.”

She stopped shaking the sword and grinned down at him. “Consider this a breakup, Jak.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Just as Union was about to slash Jak with Doc’s sword and Jak was about to hurl a knife at her neck, a blastershot rang out over the earthquake’s rumble and the creature’s roar.

Suddenly, a bullet punched through Union’s forehead, leaving a perfect red hole. The back of her head wasn’t quite so neat; it exploded, blowing out a shower of blood and bone and brain.

The sword fell from her hand, but she somehow managed to stay on her feet. She teetered there a moment more, until Jak swung around on the ground and kicked her legs out from under her.

Then she collapsed in a heap like the dead meat she was.

Jak knew who’d fired the shot before he looked behind him. Even amid the cacophony in progress, he’d recognized the distinctive sound of Ryan’s Steyr Scout letting one fly.

“You okay, Jak?” Ryan asked as he and the rest of the crew ran toward him.

“Not need help.” Jak shot to his feet and waved dismissively.

“Whatever,” Ryan said as he charged up beside him. “You’re welcome.”

“So what now?” Ricky yelled, bounding over with the others. “How do we stop that thing?” He pointed up at the creature.

“Who says we have to?” J.B. asked. “Mebbe it’s somebody else’s problem.”

Jak narrowed his eyes. “I say have to.” He kept thinking about the poor people screaming and moaning on the monster’s body. “Put them out of misery.” He jabbed a finger in the creature’s direction.

“He’s right,” said Krysty, who was still grimacing from whatever the core was doing to her. “Plus, who knows how much death and destruction that beast will cause if allowed to roam free?”

“So where’s that control device of hers?” Ryan bent over Union’s body, poking at her jumpsuit with the barrel of his longblaster.

Jak hunkered down and dug into Union’s hip pocket, where she’d kept it before. “Here.” He pulled out the silver cone and held it up. “But what do with it?”

Ryan took it and turned it over in his hands. “It looked as if she was blowing into it. Playing it like an instrument.”

Mildred reached for the device and examined it closely. “So how do we figure out how to operate it? Trial and error?”

“What other way is there?” J.B. asked.

“Apparently, he’s come up with one.” Ryan gestured at a distant figure running over the sand toward the creature.

Everyone in the group turned and looked at the same time. All eyes and mouths fell wide-open at once as they realized what they were seeing. Whom they were seeing.

“Dark night! Is that—?”

“It is.” Mildred nodded fiercely. “It sure as shit is.”

“Doc!” Ricky grinned. “It’s Doc!”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And he’s going to get himself killed!”

* * *

D
OC WAS FILLED
with blazing white light as he ran toward the roaring behemoth.

The fizzing in the back of his head had gone through the usual stages, moving into his eyes and out through his
body, making everything he saw turn yellow, then becoming a loud crackling, followed by waves of warmth…and finally the white light, pointing the way to the next transformation of the Shift.

With the certainty of a shifter mutie, he knew exactly where the next major change was going to strike. When he looked there, at that piece of ground some fifty yards due south, he knew exactly what it was going to become. He saw a map, a cross-section in his mind, and he knew without a doubt that it was accurate.

He also knew it would be the perfect answer to the problem of the rampaging creature. He just had to get it to go there without getting stomped to death in the process.

When Doc got to within twenty yards of the monster, he stopped and called out to it, “Hey! Hey, you, big fellow!” He jumped up and down, waving his arms and trying to attract its attention.

Even as he did it, going against his nature in courting danger, he couldn’t help marveling in the back of his mind. If someone had told him, back before the abduction, that he would someday be doing what he was doing, he probably would have laughed at them.

But now there he was, alone and unarmed, facing off against a monster many times his own size.

“Hey! Look here! I am down here!” When the creature completely ignored him, Doc ran in circles in front of it, shouting louder. “Hey, you!”

The creature raised one mammoth foot and brought it down. Doc scrambled out of the way, and the creature took another step forward without looking down at him.

“Hey!” Doc darted back out in front of the monster, still waving and calling to no avail. The behemoth was still ignoring him.

Then, suddenly, it wasn’t so oblivious anymore. Blasterfire
erupted from nearby, and the monster roared in outrage as a wave of bullets pelted it.

Looking in the direction of the shooting, Doc felt a burst of relief and hope. Running toward him with guns blazing were the friends he hadn’t seen in days, his traveling companions in the Deathlands.

They were racing to help him. Their timing couldn’t have been any better.

But there still wasn’t any time to waste. He knew from the way the white light was surging that the transformation he expected was about to occur. “Come on!” he shouted, waving for them to follow him. “Drive it this way! This way!”

He didn’t have to tell them twice. The team peppered the creature with rounds, blowing apart a host of the mutie bodies bound to its enormous form. But instead of moving away from the blasterfire, the monstrosity lumbered toward it.

“Around the other side!” Doc shouted, though he didn’t need to say it. His teammates already had the right idea.

Splitting up, they sprinted around the creature, ducking and weaving to avoid its stomping feet and swinging fists. Doc went with them, staying focused on the goal.

Once the team had circled to the other side of the beast, Ryan gave the order to fire, and they all cut loose. Instantly, the creature swung around, enraged by the weapons fire, and unleashed its loudest roar yet. Then it thundered toward them, punishing the ground with its gargantuan footsteps.