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  More of the creatures arrived from belowground, as their leader, who carried a long spear, bowed once to the sun, then gestured violently at the dead horse. Now the others pulled curved daggers from within their rags and began to dissect the corpse, the tainted blood flowing in rivulets down the slopes of the dune.

  Chapter Three

  Fleeting visions of a bad mat-trans jump boiled in Ryan’s dreams, constantly punctuated by distant blasterfire. Or great preDark war machines charging after the man with their cannons clicking on shells no longer there. Or sec hunter droids snapping deadly scissors, or…

  With a start, Ryan awoke to find both hands tied to the pommel of the saddle. For a split second, he thought they had been captured and his blood surged with adrenaline, his wrists breaking apart the twine as he clawed for the blaster on his hip. But surprisingly, it was there and as the mists of sleep faded away, Ryan saw the other companions leading their horses along the brightly lit desert. Fireblast, just a bad dream.

  “Good afternoon, lover,” Krysty said, glancing sideways. “Nice to have you back.”

  Afternoon? Had he really slept that long? The dull ache in his back from sleeping in the saddle seemed to confirm that, and the sun was high overhead, the air stifling with heat.

  Licking his dry lips, Ryan started to reply when a faint clicking sound reached his ears. When he realized Bloodfire that his usually silent rad counter was the source, he flipped his lapel and took a look, recoiling in shock when the counter revealed they were in a lethal zone. They were walking directly into a nuke crater!

  “Everybody freeze!” Ryan roared, grabbing the reins and bringing the horse to an abrupt halt. “We’re hot!”

  “What?” J.B. replied gruffly, turning. Placing a thumb behind his lapel, he flipped the cloth. “See that? Mine is—Dark night! I put it in my backpack at the ville for safekeeping!”

  J.B. hurriedly snatched the pack from the saddle pommel, rummaged inside for a moment and removed a small lacquered box. Inside lay the precious rad counter. “Hard at the edge of the danger zone,” J.B. announced, his voice strained.

  Suddenly, the companions went pale, each person straining to sense the invisible death pouring from the featureless ground around them.

  “Which way?” Krysty asked, climbing onto her horse.

  Taking the rad counter in hand, Ryan turned about in every direction until pointing due west.

  “That way!” he said, kicking his horse into a trot.

  Scrambling onto their mounts, the rest of the companions moved with a purpose and galloped after the man as if their lives depended on it. Nothing was said for almost an hour as they raced for safety away from the lethal rads, the featureless landscape flying beneath the pounding hooves of the animals. No predator was visible to the horses, but they seemed to be able to sense the terror of their riders, and were putting their hearts into a desperate race for life.

  Reaching an embankment, the companions slowed their mounts to hurriedly walk down to the lower desert floor. Now patches of rock could be seen amid the salty sand of the desert, and Ryan called a halt to check his rad counter.

  “This is far enough,” Ryan said in relief. “We’re clear.”

  Exhaling in relief, the companions brought the horses to a ragged stop, then walked them about until facing one another.

  “Out rads?” Jak demanded, slipping to the ground from behind Dean. During the long morning walk, Mildred had taken the opportunity to clean and bandage his bad arm. It was sore, but he could use it again to fire a blaster if necessary.

  “Seems so. I’m reading only normal background count,” Ryan said, aiming the rad counter around just to double-check.

  When satisfied, he attached it to his collar again.

  Gazing back the way they had just come from, J.B. removed his hat to fan himself. “Damn good thing you woke up when you did. I was strolling us smack into a rad pit hot enough to chill us all.”

  “Radiation,” Dean growled. “Hot pipe, I’d rather fight stickies.”

  Stickies were the curse of the Deathlands. The size of a norm, stickies had sucker pads on their fingers and feet, and could walk walls and ceilings like insects. They attached their suckers to a person’s flesh and ripped off pieces until the screaming victim was only a mass of still beating organs. Ryan had once seen a sec men attacked by a swarm of stickies take a blaster and put a round into his own heart rather than be savagely torn apart by the muties.

  “Gotta go,” Jak said, hitching up his belt. “Give bag.”

  Krysty passed it to him and the teenager went behind a dune to answer the call of nature. A few minutes later he returned and passed her back the sloshing container.

  “Here,” Dean said, offering his canteen.

  Jak nodded in thanks and took only a sip, then passed the canteen back and placed a smooth pebble in his mouth. It helped a person to lose less moisture by keeping his or her mouth shut, and the salvia generated eased the pangs of thirst.

  “Which way now, my dear Ryan?” Doc asked, shifting in the saddle.

  His long hair ruffling in the dry wind, Ryan checked the rad counter carefully.

  “West and southwest are clear,” he said in a measured tone. “I’d say south by west as that heads us closer to the Grandee.”

  “River means fishing and means villes,” J.B. agreed, pulling out his minisextant from under his shirt to shoot the sun and check their position.

  “Okay, we’re about four hundred miles from the redoubt on the Grandee,” he said, tucking the priceless tool away. “Might as well make that our goal, and we can expand our search for the Trader from there.”

  “Hell, he might be there,” Ryan growled, chucking the reins to start his horse trotting.

  As the companions rode their mounts at an easy pace, the sun reached azimuth directly overhead and started to turn the world into a searing crucible. The sparkling sand reflected the heat until it was difficult to see from the reflections, and the salt infused the atmosphere, making it difficult to breathe as every breath tasted of salt and leached moisture from their flesh. Knives were used on spare clothing to form masks, and the companions regularly wet a rag and wiped down the faces of their horses. The animals were starting to heave deeply, near total exhaustion, but until shade was found, there could be no respite.

  As they walked the horses, Mildred reached into her satchel and pulled out a small leather-bound notebook to jot down the location of the radiation field. The notebook was a recent acquisition, and she often wrote her thoughts into the journal. Someday when she had the chance, Mildred planned to organize the material to leave behind a sort of legacy for others: medical knowledge, a true history of the Deathlands and its people, danger zones, etc. Perhaps nobody would ever read her words, but she felt compelled to record her observations.

  The hours passed under the baking sun, and then cool relief came as a swirl of storm clouds expanded across the sky, blotting out the sun with unnatural speed. Now lightning crashed amid the purple-and-orange hellstorm above the world, and the companions paused for a terrifying minute as there came the strong smell of sulfur on the wind. Quickly pulling out the heavy plastic shower curtains taken from the redoubt a few days earlier, the companions braced themselves for an acid rain storm, but the reek faded away with the dry desert breeze and they relaxed. Muties and sec men could be fought, rad pits avoided, but when the acid rain came only stone, steel or heavy plastic could save a person from burns. And if the acid was strong enough, the plastic would be useless.

  Doc suddenly gasped in delight as he spied a touch of green on the side of a small dune almost hidden from sight behind a much larger mound.

  “Eureka,” Doc cried, and started to gallop in that direction.

  With only his eyes showing through his makeshift mask, Dean scowled. “Trouble?” he demanded, the words muffled by the cloth.

  “Good news,” Mildred translated.

  Gesturing grandly, Doc cried out in delight. “Behold, ambrosia!”


  Slowing his horse, Ryan looked over the area then checked his rad counter just to be sure. In the lee of the rocky dune was a small stand of cactus—Devil Fork, they were called because they resembled a fork with its handle stabbed into the ground. Some barrel cactus were mixed in, but mostly it was all Devil Fork. The husk of the desert plants was as hard as boot leather and covered with needles that could stab through a canvas glove. Dangerous stuff, but their roots went down for hundreds of feet into the sand, and the delicious pulp inside was a sponge filled with sweet water.

  “We’re saved. That’s more than enough to replace the poisoned water,” Mildred said in relief, and climbed from her horse to walk to the cactus stand.

  Pulling out a knife, she debated where would be the best place to start to cut when a breeze shifted the sand in a small whirlwind and the glint of steel reflected from amid the lush greenery. Now Mildred found herself staring at the bleached white bones of a human skeleton. Only a few tatters of clothing covered the body, and a scattering of brass cartridges and a homemade blaster made of bound iron pipe and wooden blocks lay near the hand.

  Leaning forward, Ryan scowled from his horse. “He died fighting,” he said slowly. “Must have been an animal, something too big to reach him behind the cactus needles.”

  “Why an animal and not a person?” Mildred asked, then she answered herself. “Of course. Because a man would have taken the rounds afterward. Check.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, chilled is chilled,” Ryan stated pragmatically. “More importantly, those rounds look intact to me. Might be live.”

  “Any chance they’re .44 calibers?” Doc asked hopefully. He was well stocked with black powder and miniballs for the LeMat, but he was dangerously low on bullets for the Webley.

  J.B. adjusted his glasses. “I’d say those were .45. Sorry, Doc.”

  The old man shrugged in resignation.

  As J.B. started divesting himself of bags and weapons, Mildred walked over to the plants.

  “Don’t bother, John,” Mildred said, starting to reach between the cactus, “I’ll get them.”

  But as she knelt in the sand, there was a whispery sound and the companions turned to see an incredibly thin figure rise from the desert sand and lurch forward to hurl a spear directly at Mildred!

  Caught by surprise, the woman didn’t react in time and the metal rod went straight past her, coming so close she could feel the wind of its passage. Then she dived aside and rolled over, drawing her .38 ZKR when there came a high-pitched keen and the cactus burst apart, writhing green tendrils streaming into view from inside the plant. Moving like uncoiling snakes, the tendrils stabbed for Mildred, and she cut loose with her blaster just as the rest of the companions did the same.

  The Devil’s Fork screamed even louder as the hail of lead punched a dozen holes through its stalks and branches, one of the tendrils getting blown off the main trunk. Thin pink “blood” gushed from the wounds, and the mutie went wild, every tendril thrashing about and grabbing for the nearby norms.

  A horse was caught in the throat by a tendril, its barbed needles embedding deep in the flesh like fish-hooks and dragging the screaming animal closer. Doc slashed out with his sword and cut through the ropy tendril, a well of pink ichor gushing from the wound. Another grabbed Jak around the neck, but as it tightened its grip, the tendril fell apart, severed by the razor blades hidden in the camou covering of the teenager’s jacket.

  J.B. aimed and fired his shotgun as the companions moved away from the bizarre killer, the keening plant jerking as it was hit by another barrage of lead. Then a deafening report split the day and the main trunk erupted at ground level, the booming echo of the explosion rolling along the dunes like imprisoned thunder.

  Lowering the smoking barrel of the Holland & Holland Nitro .475 Express, Krysty broke the breech, the two spent shells popping out to fall away as she thumbed in two more.

  Revealed amid the smashed skeleton and torn pieces of the cactus was a pulsating wound of exposed organs, ligaments and tendons. Ryan fired two more rounds from his SIG-Sauer directly down the gullet of the creature and it went still, the pumping ichor slowing to a mere trickle and then stopping completely.

  “Another mutie plant.” Dean scowled, dropping the spent clip from his blaster and slipping in a fresh one.

  “Animal, not plant!” Jak cursed, using a knife to pry away the needle covered bits of the creature still clinging to his jacket. Oddly, it reminded him of the hellish ivy-covered town in Ohio where they nearly lost Krysty.

  “Damn good camouflage,” Mildred said, shakily reloading her blaster and pocketing the empty brass for later reloading. “Certainly fooled me into thinking it was merely a plant.”

  “But he knew,” Ryan said, the barrel of his blaster now aimed rock steady at the stranger wrapped in rags.

  Doc swung the LeMat’s barrel in the same direction. The skinny person said nothing at those actions, simply standing there in silence, the dry wind tugging at the tattered ends of its wrappings.

  “He saved Millie’s life with that spear,” J.B. said, racking the pump on his shotgun to chamber a fresh round.

  “Unless he meant to ace her and that was a miss,” Ryan pointed out.

  “Until proved otherwise,” Doc pronounced, “the enemy of my enemy is still my goddamn enemy.”

  Thumbing back the hammer on her .38 ZKR target pistol, Mildred briefly gave the old man a puzzled look, then returned to the matter at hand. This wasn’t the time and place to find out where that paranoid quote had come from.

  Just then the horse attacked by the underground mutie fell to its knees and started to shake. Ryan never took his eye off the stranger, but since it was his horse Doc rushed over to see what was the problem. As he got close, the scholar could see that the needles of the mutie were still sunk deep into the throat of the horse, red blood flowing from the severed end of the tendril. By the Three Kennedys, he thought, the piece of the dead mutie was acting like a tap and draining all of the blood from the horse!

  Whipping out his eating knife, Doc tried to figure out where to begin trying to remove the needles in the horse’s throat when the animal gently lowered its head to the sandy ground as if it were going to sleep, then simply stopped breathing. Almost immediately, the blood ceased to flow on to the salty ground.

  Standing helpless near the dead beast, Doc blinked moist eyes at the sight for a moment, then drew in a sharp breath and turned away.

  “I am impressed. Drinkers are very hard to kill,” the stranger spoke unexpectedly, his words dry and raspy as if spoken through a long tunnel. “If I had known your iron weapons worked, I would not have revealed myself.”

  “So it could drag us all down for dinner?” Ryan growled in a voice like granite. “It lived underground, and so do you. This seems pretty straightforward to me. So what was the deal? It hauls us down and you share in the food?”

  The being tilted his head. “You walk the surface,” he said. “Does that make you friends of the rattler and the stickie?”

  “Fair enough,” Ryan said, easing his stance but not turning away the blaster. “So who are you?”

  As if in reply, a thrilling whistle came from the stranger, and the sand behind him shifted as more of the beings rose into view from belowground. Even as the companions aimed their collection of blasters at the newcomers, dozens more of the wrapped people came from the sand, then even more on both sides. Turning about slowly, Ryan and the others saw they were now surrounded by an army of the beings, every one of them armed with a needle-tipped metal spear or sicklelike longknifes. The ebony blades were worn from constant use, the handles stained with dried blood.

  The figures stood at average height, sporting two legs, two arms and head, but each was so heavily wrapped in strips of loose cloth it was impossible to tell if they were men or women, even if they were norms or muties.

  “I am Alar,” the first stranger said, “the leader of the Core.”

  Even through the thic
k wrappings, Ryan could hear the capital letter being used. The Core, eh? That could mean anything. But there was something oddly familiar about how the being held the short spears in his bandaged hands, and Ryan grunted softly as he recognized the military postures from the guards at the Anthill. These were the descendants of army troops, copying the port arms and such of drilling troops. Only they were armed with spears instead of longblasters. The Core as in U.S. Marine Corps, or a nuclear core? Could be either way, and there was no way of telling.

  “I’m Ryan,” he said gruffly, then introduced the rest of the companions.

  Alar bowed to each, the rest of the Core copying the gesture. At the end, the masked people put away their weapons, and the companions hesitantly did the same. Since they were outnumbered by a fifty-to-one ratio, it seemed prudent to stay on smooth terms with these…people?

  “Here you go,” Dean said, walking up with the spear from the Drinker and offering it to the Core leader.

  Nodding his head, Alar took the weapon and stabbed it twice into the ground to clean the tip of the sticky pink blood.

  “Thank you, small one. A weapon returned is a bond of peace with my people. I grant you free passage through our desert until the next moon.”

  “The blessings of Gaia upon you, great leader,” Krysty said, making a gesture in the air too quick to be described.

  With a scowl, Ryan asked, “And what happens if we’re still here by the next moon?”

  Alar shrugged. “Then you must leave or join the Core forever.”

  “Yeah? Nothing more?”

  A warm breeze tasting of salt blew over the crowd, making the horses shift about to hide their faces.

  “No, Ryan of the horse riders,” Alar said calmly, the sand dancing at his feet. “We are a peaceful people with only one enemy. We welcome all to join the Core.”