Moon Fate Page 21

  The teenager didn't want to use his .357 Magnum, which would bring every mutie for ten miles around.

  Just for a moment he hesitated. A year earlier his automatic reflex would have taken over and carried him through. He would have taken the step in and crushed the barrel of the weighty blaster against the side of the stickie's skull and put him down, stooped and opened up his throat with a single slicing cut from one of his many knives.

  But Jak Lauren had been a married man for many months now. Running a homestead in the wilderness of New Mexico wasn't an easy ride.

  Nor was it quite the same as roaming through Deathlands at the shoulder of Ryan Cawdor.

  The stickie was so startled at the sudden appear­ance of the supernatural demon, with the hair of white fire and the eyes like living flames, that he gobbed out the mouthful of liquor, which sprayed into Jak's face.

  The alcohol was home-distilled, close to one hun­dred proof, and it blinded the albino teenager.

  "You triple-stupe fucker!" he staggered back­ward, pulling the pistol's trigger three times, totally unable to see where the bullets had gone.

  One went into the side of a dirt wall three hundred paces away to the south. A second one was still rising when it disappeared into the dark forest, well over a quarter mile away, having missed the drunken stickie by less than three feet. The third full-metal jacket struck the chubby mutie high on the inside of the left thigh, neatly opening up the femoral artery on the way in and removing much of the quadriceps muscle and the hamstring on the way out.

  Blood began to pour from the gaping wound, jet­ting into the sand near Jak's face. The stickie was blown backward onto the ground and immediately became preoccupied with the puzzling affair of his own death.

  The teenager heard the unmistakable wet, solid noise of a heavy caliber bullet striking flesh. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, blinking through a sea of tears, and saw the dying man writhing on the floor.

  Jak turned and was immediately knifed in the chest by Charlie's third scout.

  DOWN THE STEEP TRAIL, on the farther side of the plateau, everyone heard the echoing sound of the three shots.

  Dean hesitated and stumbled, nearly falling. He re­covered his balance and carried on.

  Charlie had dropped behind his raggle-taggle army of stickies, urging them on. The disorderly gang was whooping as they saw the slim figure of the boy so close ahead of them. But Charlie had also heard and recognized the sound of the shooting. He knew that none of the three men he'd secretly left behind carried large-caliber blasters, which meant they'd flushed at least one of their prey out of hiding.

  Amid the cheering, the rest of the stickies hardly noticed the distant peal of thunder. They charged on down the straight section of the track.

  Charlie stopped, considering calling them back. He saw the boy turn around and peer over his shoulder. As though he was looking for…

  "What?" Charlie said.

  Realization came moments too late.

  J.B. had also heard the noise of Jak's big blaster and, like Ryan, knew that it might mean some seri­ously bad news. But for the present, the Armorer had to concentrate his attention on the ambush.

  The time was now.

  "Stop!" Charlie screamed, his voice cracking into the darkness.

  "Now!" J.B. yelled, spraying the muties with a sustained burst from the Uzi.

  The night exploded into a bedlam of shooting and tumbled death.

  THE MOON HUNG in a cloudless sky. There was a hint of frost in the air, and the mountains around were sharp and clear.

  Ryan's combat boots rang on the blacktop as he sprinted toward the sound of the shots. It was so calm and still that he caught the sharp odor of gunsmoke before he reached the scene.

  He came in from the other side, seeing the dead stickie and a great lake of blood seeping black and glossy around the corpse's shattered leg.

  "Fireblast!" Ryan put his head slowly around the corner, seeing the second sprawled body lying still in another patch of leaking blood, this time from what looked like a stab wound in the chest.

  "Oh, Christ, Jak," he said. "No!"

  Chapter Forty-Five

  J.B. HAD GONE around with the hot blaster, putting a single 9 mm bullet into the forehead of each of the stickies that had survived the swath of cutting fire. Every one of them had gone down without being able to return a solitary shot against their unseen attack­ers.

  The bodies lay wherever the dance master of death had discarded them, tangled and sprawled, totally without dignity.

  "Got 'em all," J.B. said, reloading the Uzi.

  Krysty shook her head. "No, we didn't."

  "Dark night! Course. That yellowhead you talked about isn't here. Must have been him screamed a warning, just too late. He's gone free."

  "Which way?" Christina asked.

  "Think he's gone up the trail after Dad?" Dean was out of breath, trembling, standing with Mildred's arm around him.

  J.B. looked at him. "Mebbe, boy." He paused. "We'll go up right now."

  "Sure."

  "And Dean?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You did really good. Ryan'll be proud of you when we tell him all about it."

  Christina was deathly pale. "That was Jak's blaster that we heard, wasn't it?"

  J.B. nodded. "Yeah. Means there were stickies back up at the ridge."

  "I'll never ever forgive that one-eyed bastard if anything's happened to Jak! I swear it."

  "He'll be fine," Krysty said reassuringly. But her heart felt as though it had suddenly been injected with a lethal surge of Sierra meltwater.

  THE KNOWLEDGE that Jak's attacker was still close by filled Ryan with a more violent chilling lust than he'd felt in many years.

  As he knelt by the still figure, brushing a streak of matted white hair off the hooded eyes, Ryan was closer to the berserk killing madness than he'd ever been.

  During the time that they'd ridden together, he'd come to love Jak, seeing him as the son that he thought he'd never had. The unexpected arrival of Dean hadn't really done anything to change his feel­ings for the albino boy at all.

  Glancing around for a sight of the stickie, or stick­ies, that had done for Jak, Ryan peered at the wound, placed the index finger of his left hand on the side of the teenager's throat and felt for a pulse.

  It was there, faint and fluttering.

  The wound was obviously made by a knife, with a reasonably narrow blade, driven straight in and out at speed. At a first glance, in the cold moonlight, it looked to Ryan as though it hadn't been done by an expert. There was no sign of the jagged tear that a savage twist of the wrist would have given to the dag­ger, causing infinitely greater harm to living tissue.

  But an amateur could stab you to death just as well as a professional.

  The blood was still seeping out, and Ryan carefully opened up the boy's jacket, easing away the sodden shirt from the wound.

  It was a clean cut, barely an inch wide, black-lipped, that had penetrated from the front, slightly upward, to the right side of the sternum, sliding between the ribs. It obviously hadn't touched the heart, but there was a faint frothing of the blood as it oozed slowly from Jak's chest.

  "Lung," Ryan said.

  Critical and often fatal. But not always.

  Ryan draped his coat over the wounded boy, trying to keep him as warm as possible. As he was tucking it around Jak's throat, the ruby eyes blinked open, staring blankly up at the star-sprinkled heavens above him. They didn't seem to focus, then became aware of Ryan's presence.

  "Stupe," he whispered, his voice barely disturbing the cold air.

  "How many?" Getting no reply, Ryan held up one finger and the boy nodded. "Just one?" Jak man­aged a feeble movement of the head.

  Ryan straightened, looking around the deserted ville, wondering if the stickie would have tried to hide or run.

  "Ryan."

  He bent again, hand on the boy's shoulder. "What is it, Jak? Don't talk. Keep quiet and we can
get help. Mildred's not that far away."

  "Got him."

  "What?"

  "Knife. Me down. Threw. Hit. Not chill but won't get…" Then the dark wave swept up the silent beach of the boy's consciousness, and he passed out again.

  THEY'D AGREED immediately that they wouldn't stick together. The main thing was for some of them to get back up to Bear Claw Ridge as fast as possible. It was Christina, slowest of them, who'd insisted that every­one should make their own best speed.

  J.B. had set off at a steady jog, leaning forward, arms pumping to carry him back up the jagged trail. Dean was at his shoulder, occasionally spurting ahead, his power-weight ratio helping him on the grinding ascent. But the Armorer ordered him to slow down and keep with him.

  Krysty was a close third with Mildred fourth. Har­old and Dorina started together, with Doc and Chris­tina sharing last spot.

  "I vow that climbing a mountain at full speed is very far from my idea of excellent sport," the old man panted.

  Harold also began to labor, Dorina letting go of his hand to run easily ahead. She quickly passed Mildred and Krysty, then overtook both Dean and J.B., van­ishing into the shimmering moonlight way out in front of everyone.

  "Hey, wait up!" the Armorer called, but the slim figure was gone.

  RYAN TRACKED DOWN the last of the stickies in the abandoned ville, finding small spots of blood that glistened on the side of the blacktop.

  Jak had been right.

  His thrown knife had done damage.

  The trail led Ryan on, stalking through the shad­ows of Bear Claw Ridge, back toward the multiplex movie house.

  Near the rusted stump of a Parking sign, Ryan saw the silver gleam of the leaf-bladed knife, the steel smeared with fresh blood. The stickie had obviously managed to pluck it from his body.

  "Oh, too shit hurts!"

  The voice was so close that Ryan stopped in his tracks, leveling the blaster into the shadows at the corner of the Sky Hi Mall.

  "Come on out, with your hands up and showing," he called.

  "Fuck off, norm."

  There was movement in the darkness. Ryan edged to one side, trying to avoid turning himself into an easy target.

  "One chance, then I hand you the ticket to stickie paradise."

  "What?"

  "Come out now or I chill you!"

  "Me got I a blaster."

  "So, use it."

  Time was passing. Ryan wanted to get back to Jak and carry the boy into shelter and check on how Abe was doing, not stand in the freezing street and argue with a wounded stickie.

  "Not chill I?"

  "Throw out your gun, stupe. And come after it. I won't chill you. I swear it on Charlie's life."

  "Charlie's here?"

  "No. Now, move."

  There was a rattle as a musket came wheeling out of the shadows, landing on the highway, the stock split­ting like a piece of dry kindling.

  "Here I am."

  The stickie stepped out slowly, both hands up, the moonlight showing the murderous suckers on the palms and along to the tips of the fingers. It also showed a dark stain near the shoulder of the torn coat that must have been the result of Jak's uncanny ac­curacy with a knife.

  "Hurt I am," he repeated, face crumpling into an almost believable replica of normal grief.

  "Chilled you are," Ryan said, pressing the trigger of the SIG-Sauer.

  The bullet hit the stickie precisely where it had been aimed, plumb through the center of the right knee. It pulped the delicate joint so that it instantly disinte­grated into bone, tendon, muscle and flesh. And blood.

  Before the stickie could even manage to topple over, Ryan shot him again, this time through the left knee.

  Two more carefully placed rounds pulverized the joints at both elbows, leaving the arms to flap help­lessly.

  The stickie didn't have time to start screaming. His mouth opened and closed like a gaffed salmon, eyes protruding so far that Ryan wondered for a passing moment whether they might burst messily from their sockets.

  "You murderous freak bastard!" Ryan snarled, his fiery rage now cooled to an icy calm.

  "Noooo...." The word stretched until it was sim­ply a meaningless noise.

  He pumped four more rounds into the writhing creature's belly, seeing the body jerk at the impact of each 9 mm bullet.

  The stickie was the embodiment of pure agony, rolling from side to side, the smashed limbs flopping behind him. Blood poured from elbows and knees, flooding from the exit holes that had been ripped out close to the spine.

  Ryan smiled and slowly reloaded the blaster, turned on his heel and walked away from the dying stickie. He stopped and hesitated.

  The noise Jak's assailant was making might bring Charlie and some of its fellows, and it might just live long enough to tell them that Ryan was effectively alone.

  He walked back and stared at the dying mutie, spit into his upturned face and put a final bullet between his goggling eyes.

  The skull bounced once and the screaming stopped, letting the silence return.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  RYAN CAREFULLY CARRIED Jak, wrapped in the long coat with the fur collar, along the deserted street and into the lobby of the cinema. He placed the deeply unconcious teenager on the floor, close to the motionless figure of Abe.

  He put his hand onto the man's forehead, feeling that it was burning hot. Abe's eyes opened for a mo­ment, and when he spoke he sounded amazingly lu­cid, though his voice was weak and hoarse.

  "What gives, Ryan? Been ill, haven't I? Looks like J.B.'s dark night out there."

  "Been some fighting. Jak's been stabbed in the chest. Cut his lung. The breathing's bad. How do you feel, Abe?"

  "Been better. Been worse." He coughed. "Cold in here."

  "Sure is."

  "I can feel my legs. Times I couldn't. Think I could manage to stand awhile."

  Ryan shook his head. "Don't try it."

  "If there's fighting-"

  "Most done. Charlie left three stickies here to try and sneak on us. It was one of them that took out Jak."

  Abe started a slow, wheezing breath. "Any still talkie-walking around the ville?"

  "All crow meat."

  "That's good. Still think I'd like to stand up. Where's everyone else? Do I know that and I've gone and forgot it? Or don't I know it? Fucked if I know which."

  "They're away safe. Probably be five or six miles off the top of the ridge by now, heading back down toward the open desert and the site of the old home­stead. Unless…"

  "What, Ryan?"

  "Jak fired off three rounds."

  "From that big Magnum? Must've brought folks running."

  "Don't know. I don't know how far off the rest of the stickies were. Or J.B. and the others. If any of them heard shooting, they might try to get back here. Depends on the wind. I thought I heard a lot of shooting a few minutes back, but I was kind of busy at the time."

  Abe sighed. "Want to go out and look around, Ryan? Give me a blaster and I'll watch over the kid."

  "Don't call him 'kid.' Not unless you want to be walking on stumps. Jak really doesn't care for that name."

  Abe grinned, looking for a moment more like his old self. "Sure." He started to wriggle out from the cover of the leaning countertop, stopping as he en­countered the long splinters of broken glass that cov­ered the floor.

  "Watch yourself," Ryan warned.

  "Now you tell me. Some of these could take your fuckin'head off."

  "Stay there, Abe. I'm going to look if anyone's moving out there."

  "Who?"

  "Friend. Or not."

  A FLURRY OF WIND picked up a handful of dried leaves and hustled them along the deserted blacktop, past the blank-eyed ruins of the SkyHi Mall.

  The sound was like the skeletal feet of the long-dead as they rise from the graves and sepulchres on the Eve of Allhallows.

  Or it might not have been the rustling leaves. It might have been someone running as fast and as si­lently
as he could toward the low buildings of the small ville.

  It was so soft and so distant that Ryan didn't hear it.

  He pushed open the inner doors, looking out across the moonlit ville. It was stark and still, with no sight or sound of life.

  Outside, his breath gathered in the air in front of his mouth, hanging like ectoplasm seeping from the lips of a medium.

  If someone came up off the northern trail, it was just possible that he might try to circle around the rim of the plateau and creep up behind the multiplex, use another entrance to sneak in and try to coldcock him.

  Ryan walked to his left, past some faded graffiti boasting that rock and roll would never die.

  He eased up to the corner, squinting around it.

  All he could see was the dark, swaying curtain of the forest. It might have been hiding ten thousand stickies for all he knew.

  Keeping his left hand against the tomb-cold wall of the old movie house, Ryan picked his way carefully along the overgrown path.

  When he reached the next corner he stopped, looked around it and saw the rusting remains of the fire es­cape that gave dangerous access to the flat roof.

  Nobody.

  Ryan suddenly straightened, feeling the short hairs at his nape beginning to prickle.

  Someone was close somewhere behind him, in the darkness of the night.

  He spun around, finger only a bare ounce of pres­sure from firing the blaster. The feeling of menace was as strong and imminent as anything he'd ever known.

  "Charlie," he whispered, not even aware that his lips had formed the name.

  J.B. HAD FINALLY REACHED the brim of the trail, fighting against a painful muscle cramp in his stom­ach. He was deeply out of breath, bending over, hands on knees as he fought for control. Behind him he was aware of Krysty closing with him.

  Ahead he thought he had caught a glimpse of a tiny, elfin figure, darting from silver light to velvet shadow, but he couldn't be certain. What he was certain of, with a gut-wrenching knowledge, was that he was go­ing to be too late to help out in whatever was going down.