Mildred closed her eyes again.
Chapter Seven
The stickie erupted out of the duct in slow motion, like toothpaste out of a tube. J.B.’s shotgun blast had smeared away a great deal of its face and head. As the stickie was pushed outward, it dripped congealed goo from its cratered skull into the control room. Its narrow, dislocated shoulders crackled and popped as it was squeezed forth like sausage. J.B. slung the M-4000 and hefted his Uzi, pushing the selector lever to semiauto and dropped to one knee as he waited for the dead stickie to finish extruding.
The stickie’s corpse popped like a cork.
J.B. got off one shot and then the mutie’s cadaver flew into him like they were lovers who’d been separated for years. J.B. saw stars as they went skull-to-skull. Jellied blood and brain filled his eyes and mouth as he fell backward, gagging as he tried to disentangle himself. There was nothing left of the stickie below its rib cage. J.B. shouted as something grabbed his ankle.
Krysty snapped awake at the sound of the blaster shot and scooped up her weapon.
“J.B.!” The Armorer was flat on his back and covered with gore as he wrestled with approximately half of a dead stickie. Spindly arms dragged him by the ankle toward the duct. Krysty leaped forward and grabbed a rubbery wrist. She leaned in to get off a head shot down the duct. The stickie let go of J.B. with one hand and grabbed Krysty. She screamed as suckers bit into her flesh, and the stickie yanked her to her knees. She could see the mutie’s head impossibly hunched between its arms in the duct. Krysty arm-wrestled with the creature and quickly began to lose. The rubbery, boa-constrictor-like strength of the stickie was sickening. Her blaster fell with a clatter as her hand went numb. Any progress she made helped pull the stickie out of the duct. Krysty spun in the mutie’s suckered grip. She braced one boot against the wall and then drove the heel of the other again and again into the stickie’s face. It hissed and cooed and bit at the stacked heel.
J.B. rolled the corpse away and did a sit-up. “Move!”
Krysty yanked her foot back and J.B. shoved the barrel of his Uzi down the duct and into the stickie’s mouth. He pulled the trigger once and the stickie’s arms went limp. J.B. ripped his boot out of its dead grip. He pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and began wiping the gore from his face.
“Gaia!” Krysty snarled as she pulled her wrist free. The stickie’s hand suckers popped and made wet kissing noises as they very reluctantly loosened their hold on her flesh. Krysty flexed her hand as circulation returned and grimaced. Her forearm was a mass of circular lamprey-like wounds. There was hardly anything in the Deathlands more septic than any orifice in a stickie’s body. J.B.’s eyes would bear washing out if they could spare the water.
Krysty jumped as the stickie twitched.
J.B. shook his head as he heaved himself to his feet. “It’s just the one behind.”
“J.B., we need to…” Krysty’s shoulders sagged in exhaustion. She shook her head at the other duct. “J.B.!”
The Armorer looked across the room and saw a pale head bulging against the opening. Whatever body sub-luxation the stickies were capable of in life was being forced upon this dead one by the weight of numbers behind it. Its skull and shoulder filled every available bit of space. The jammed skull strained with the pressure being exerted behind it.
J.B. finished wiping down his weapon and tossed away his soiled bandanna.
“J.B., they’re stuck in there. Worming around in pipes. Can’t you just blow them up or something?”
“I blow the ducts then they really are in the ceilings and the walls.” J.B. gave the light fixture panel above them another unhappy look. “Then they’re in here.” He had been considering some kind of shaped charge to go burning down the ducts but they were sheet metal and he couldn’t risk weakening any section, much less ripping them open. J.B. walked over to the duct and this time stood back a prudent distance as the mutie corpse slowly squeezed through.
“So what do we do?” Krysty asked.
“Dunno.” The Armorer took a deep breath and checked his chron. It had nothing good to tell him. He looked back and forth between the two ducts and out toward the hall where the assault on the door continued. The enemy had three access points, and it was only a matter of time before all that squeezing and squirming finally popped a duct. “But we can’t afford to sleep anymore.”
THE LONG BLACK WAG pulled to a halt. Doc peered out the tinted windows at the manse. The stone wall surrounding it was tall and topped with a wrought-iron fence with sharpened spikes. Night had fallen, and the driver and the two sec men had removed their glasses, hats and gloves. Doc noted the same long-toothed mouths, purplish gums and lavender tint beneath the fingernails. However, the men all had either black or brown eyes. The manse was well lit, just as the inside of the sec station had been. The inhabitants of the large isle weren’t sensitive to light. They were very sensitive to the rays of the sun. Doc was starting to come to some conclusions.
The wag had come at sundown and despite Doc’s protestations they had forced him to leave Ryan behind in the holding cell, naked and raving in fevered dreams. On the drive into the hillsides Doc saw farms and vineyards. He found that nearly every home and building was of fortlike construction, and he was interested to find that he saw nothing in the way of horses, oxen or farm animals.
Doc also found the wrinklies who had been conspicuously absent on the smaller isle.
They all wore the same simple homespun. However, unlike their young brethren on the smaller isle who glowed with health, these men and women were stooped from hard labor, and all over the age of twenty-five. Many were moving wagons and toting bales. All of them without exception walked with a very suspicious limp. Many bore signs of the lash. Others had fresh bandages covering their inner arms.
All of them moved swiftly and fearfully as the sun set.
Doc began coming to other unsavory conclusions, as well.
The sec man beside the old man motioned with a huge, double-barreled blaster that looked suitable for elephant hunting. “Out.”
Doc exited the wag and was escorted into the manse. The interior was opulent by Deathlands standards and furnished in a hodge-podge of ancient, predark and cruder new manufactured items. Baron Barat stood in the foyer. He wore an elegant red-and-gold brocade robe for the occasion. A semiauto blaster was tucked into the belt for the occasion, as well. “Ah, good evening, Dr. Tanner, thank you for coming.”
“Doctor? I am Baron Theophilus Algernon…” Doc trailed off under Barat’s bemused gaze. Doc sighed defeatedly. When the drug had violated Ryan, he had called out to him, and called him Doc.
The baron smiled in satisfaction. The admission of the first lie was the key point in any interrogation. “Come, Doctor, will you join me in my study? Nero, you may accompany us.” The baron turned without waiting for an answer. Doc considered the blade hidden within his cane but decided he wished to learn more. Nero prodded him with his blaster and Doc followed the baron into his parlor. The room was wall-to-wall books of every description and age. A cheery fire burned in the little fireplace.
Doc decided on flattery as his own opening gambit. “I see you and many of your citizens speak excellent English.”
“Ah, well.” The baron smiled and gestured at the chair in front of his desk. “We have maintained a tutorial-based education system here as best we can, though I must admit it trickles down somewhat slowly from the high to the low. In many ways it is the second language of our island.”
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