Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter (8 page)

“Treat crazy woman like family.” Jak grinned. “Not problem. Fit in this group.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” J.B. told him.

“Less talking, more walking,” Ryan said, and then he set out after Union at a rapid clip. He didn’t have to look back even once to know his companions were following close behind him.

Chapter Thirteen

That evening, Union and the companions set up camp at the base of a tall, sandy hill sheltered by an array of smaller hills.

Was it a safe location for the night? Union had no guidance to offer, but she didn’t seem worried about it. At least Krysty wasn’t convulsing on the ground from Shift-induced headaches, which was a positive sign.

The general conditions seemed positive, in fact. The night was warm but not stiflingly hot. The moon was full and shining down from a cloudless sky with abundant radiance.

Everything was quiet, calm and blissfully normal. The lava channel they’d been following had ended a few miles back, and there wasn’t a spike to be seen in any direction. If Jak hadn’t known any better, he might have believed they weren’t in the Shift at all.

As he ate a hunk of deer jerky from his pack, he felt relaxed for the first time since entering the Shift. The rest of the group seemed to be on the same wavelength—except for Ryan, who patrolled the perimeter relentlessly, and Krysty, who looked as if she expected another head blast at any moment.

Then there was Union, who seemed to be out of step with all of them. Where some people might have settled in the middle of the group, getting to know everybody, Union stood thirty yards from the farthest edge of camp, looking up at the night sky.

She didn’t look or act as if she wanted to be bothered, but Jak decided to bother her anyway. She was beautiful, and tough, and mysterious, with moods that seemed to change with the wind, and he wanted to get to know her.

Besides, he knew she had a friendly side; he’d seen it in action before. With any luck, maybe that side would come out to play, and they would have a nice talk.

Or not. When Jak sidled up to her, she looked at him for all of one second with the usual frigid disdain, then returned her gaze to the sky. She even folded her arms across her chest and turned her back to him, leaving no room for misinterpretation of her rejection of him.

That was not going to keep Jak from pressing his luck. “Stars not change in Shift.” He sank one hand into a pocket, keeping the other wrapped around the grip of his Colt Python, and stepped up beside her. “That one good thing anyway.”

Union sniffed but didn’t answer. She didn’t turn her back to him again, though.

Jak figured that was some kind of progress, so he might as well keep talking. “Where from originally?”

“Not here” was all she said.

“Better place?” Jak asked. “Or worse?”

For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer, but she finally did. “Just different.”

“Right.” Jak nodded and shifted his gaze to another quadrant of the sky. The stars were unusually bright that night, glittering like diamond dust scattered over black velvet. “Ever been New Mexico?”

She looked at him for a moment with a quizzical expression, then looked back up at the sky. “Have you ever been to Corpus Christi?”

“Texas?” Jak frowned. “Why? That where you from?”

“Does it matter?” Union shook her head as if she thought he was an idiot. “What do you care?”

Jak refused to let her annoy him. “It called curiosity. They not have in Corpus Christi?”

Suddenly, Union whirled to face him, and she looked upset. “I’m not from there. Will you just stop?”

Jak was taken aback by her change in attitude. “Okay.” He scratched his pale chin. “Stop what?”

“Antagonizing her!” Union snapped.

“Her?”

“Her!” Union’s eyes widened. “She doesn’t care about you. About any of you.”

Jak nodded as if he had the faintest clue what she was talking about. “What she care about, then?”

“Us.” She touched her fingers to her chest. “Just us.”

“What you mean, ‘us’?” Jak pulled his hand from his pocket and pointed a finger at her. “Only see one.”

Union took her face in her hands. As she shook her head, Jak stared at her single braid, the one that hung from her left temple. He wasn’t sure, but it looked bright white by the light of the moon, not the usual black.

“Now, wait.” Jak started to reach over to comfort her. “Not want you get upset.”

Before he could touch her shoulder, she suddenly yanked her hands from her face and lunged at him. The next thing Jak knew, Union had one hand on his .357 and the other wrapped around his throat.

“No touching!” she gritted.

Jak winced a little as she tightened her grip on his throat—not that he was in any danger whatsoever. She’d caught him off guard, and she was strong, but no match for his battle-honed fighting skills.

“Same go for you.” His voice was strained as her grip tightened again. “Stop touching or I
make
stop.”

She squeezed a moment more, then released him and let go of the .357. “Consider that your one and only warning! Hands off!”

“Works both ways,” Jak told her.

As Union glared, she looked to him like a changed woman. Her body language was very different—twitchy, clenched, confrontational—and her features were gnarled like a knot on an oak tree. Whatever he’d done to piss her off, he had to have hit a hot button, indeed.

“So.” Jak shrugged. “What do next?”

“Next?” Union’s glare deepened.

“Not want fight.” Jak reached out as if to shake hands, then jerked his hand away. “Whoops, forgot! No touching!”

Union’s eyes twitched as she stared at his hand. “I just… I don’t…”

“Not worry about it. Just want be friend.”

Union shook her head as if to shake away a fly that was buzzing around it. Her braid flicked, and Jak noticed it had changed from white to auburn. “Which one?” she said, rattling the words off quickly.

“What that supposed mean?” Jak asked.

This time, she spoke just as fast but a little louder. “Which one do you want to be friends with?”

Jak still wasn’t tracking. “Which one what?”

“Of us,” Union snapped. “Which one of us do you want to be friends with?”

“Only see one.”

“Then, you’re blind. Or just plain stupe.” Raising her left hand, she held up four fingers. “This is how many of us there are in here.”

“Four.” Jak was only a little surprised. The way she acted, changing gears so dramatically, had already primed him for the truth. “Four women, one body.”

“Now you’re in the ballpark, son.” Union grinned and
nodded. “Still want to be friends, now that you know my secret?”

Jak stuck out his hand again. “Hell yes. More interesting this way.”

Union laughed. This time, she took his hand and shook it.

Chapter Fourteen

Doc no longer wondered if the muties were crazy. He knew it to be true without a doubt.

The entire group of them—fifty strong and then some—sat cross-legged on the sand between two tall hills. They’d been there for hours now, or at least it seemed that way, sitting quietly in the light of the full moon and flickering stars.

Doc sat in the middle of the crowd, seething with a mix of utter boredom and strong curiosity. The muties seemed to be waiting for something, but he couldn’t guess what, and no one would tell him. Even his babysitter, Ankh, wouldn’t explain the scene; he just sat beside Doc with the Winchester aimed at the old man’s belly, finger curled around the trigger.

Was it some kind of ceremony? The muties all sat in a cluster, facing the same direction, and remained silent in a way that might be considered reverent. But how could it be a ceremony without some kind of rites?

Maybe, Doc thought, they were just praying or communing with whatever gods or forces they worshipped. Or perhaps it was simple meditation or some form of regenerative rest they’d evolved since the nuclear scrambling of their DNA during skydark.

Whatever it was, he wished they’d leave him out of it. He’d just as soon catch forty winks in the lee of a dune or gaze up at the starry sky and remember simpler times. Things had been so much sweeter back then, with his family
around him, the apocalypse nowhere in sight and no crazy muties to kidnap him from the handful of friends who barely made his life worth living in the Deathlands.

Doc sighed, losing patience, and immediately felt the muzzle of the Winchester poke his ribs. Glancing over, he saw Ankh’s steady gaze boring into him, pitiless and unyielding…yet still the closest he had among the muties to an expression that was friendly on any level.

Ankh was Doc’s only hope, at least for now. Somewhere out there in the Sandhills country, Ryan and the others had to be searching for him, but they were nowhere in sight at the moment. He couldn’t depend on them to rescue him anytime soon; it was up to Doc to keep himself alive and well until that could happen.

Now, if he could just survive this exercise in tedious nonsense, he might have a chance.

Just then, he got a kink in his lower back from sitting cross-legged for too long. Grunting, he twisted and stretched, trying to work out the kink, but it only got worse.

Leaning forward, he reached back under his frock coat to knead the sore spot. But the act of reaching set off a chain of pressure points that led to a sudden spasm in the middle region of his back.

Doc cried out. He couldn’t help himself. When he sat up straight, the spasm only worsened, and he cried out again.

Ankh rammed the Winchester barrel into his side, but it didn’t make any difference. Doc could no more control his response to the pain than he could single-handedly defeat the mutie band in unarmed combat.

“Stop it!” Ankh hissed. “If we miss it, you’re a dead man!”

Doc scowled and braced a hand on the ground. “I can’t help it! I’m having a back spasm.” Pushing up, he got to his knees. Getting up and stretching might break the cycle of pain, if he didn’t get shot first.

“Get down!” Ankh snapped. “Get down now!”

Doc ignored him and got to his feet. Towering over the seated muties—many of whom were gaping up at him with expressions of great irritation—he straightened his back and spread his arms. The vertebrae in his spine cracked as he rolled his head from side to side, limbering up his neck. Then he leaned back slowly, extending the lower vertebrae, working to loosen up the cramp.

Gradually, he felt the spasm in his middle back let up. Leaning farther still, he heard—and felt—a midback vertebra crack into place.

Just like that, the spasm stopped. The pressure lessened, and Doc could think clearly once more.

Just in time to see the landscape before him dance with shimmering, shivering light.

“By the Three Kennedys!” he said softly, gazing raptly at the sight.

As one, the muties rolled over and lay flat on their backs in the sand—all except Ankh, who was on his feet, jamming the Winchester into Doc’s gut.

“Down!” the mutie snapped. “Do as you’re told!”

But Doc was lost in the vision of dancing, multicolored light. It was like an aurora of the northlands, curtains of radiance flowing and glowing hypnotically in the night. He tipped his head to one side, entranced by the beauty of it, unable to look away.

That was when Ankh finally realized the blaster wasn’t going to bring him down. Swinging it over his back by its strap, he launched himself at Doc like a cougar, throwing all his weight against the taller man.

And it worked. Doc went over backward, plunging toward the sand, with Ankh coming down on top of him.

“No!” As Doc toppled, he pinwheeled his arms, instinctively trying to halt his fall. He’d just stopped the
back spasm, but if he came down hard, he’d likely get it all over again.

Just as he was about to hit, however, there was a feeling of suction and repulsion all at once, and a flash of light.

Blinded, Doc did not at first realize that something had changed. But it didn’t take long to sink in.

It didn’t take long to realize that he should have hit the ground already, but instead was sinking gently. Something was pulling him in, dragging him inexorably downward.

Quicksand.

Tossing his head and blinking his eyes hard to clear the spots from the blinding flash, Doc saw that the muties were sinking as he was. Most of them were covered almost completely, leaving just their noses and toes exposed.

And none of them seemed to be worried. None of them were fighting the force that was drawing them down.

“Relax.” Ankh, who’d rolled off Doc and now lay beside him, was only halfway covered. “You’ll be fine.”

But Doc didn’t believe him. Frantically, he thrashed and floundered, which only made him sink faster. He grabbed for Ankh, as if holding on to the mutie might keep him aboveground, but that just pushed Ankh deeper, out of reach.

Doc yelped and thrashed some more, and then the quicksand took him down. He sucked in his last breaths with heaving desperation, watching the flickering stars through eyelashes caked with sand.

And then he was gone. The ground was empty, as if Doc and the muties had never been there at all.

Chapter Fifteen

Doc hit the icy water with a hypothermic shock and barely managed to stay afloat.

Seconds after sinking through the sand alongside the muties, he’d fallen through some kind of open space, then suddenly splashed down in water. He paddled madly now, struggling instinctively to keep from going under, though the truth was, he couldn’t breathe above the surface, either. He’d inhaled enough quicksand on the way down to clog his nose and throat and lungs with smothering muck.

His eyes were wide as he thrashed and suffocated, but there was only pitch-darkness all around. If the muties were there with him, he couldn’t see a trace of them.

He started to feel light-headed and heavy at the same time. One last frenzy of kicking and gyrating, and his movements began to slow; he pulled his hands in to clutch his throat, and his body drifted downward.

All sense left his oxygen-starved brain as the water rose to cover him. His vision danced with sparks, and then mysteriously cleared and brightened. He saw the faces of his wife and children from his life in the nineteenth century, beaming and waving for him to come closer.