Blood Harvest (15 page)

Horror surpassed itself.

The third abomination was eight feet tall if it was an inch. Like a giant scarecrow, its arms stretched out in
an all-encompassing wingspan nearly as wide. Its knees came up to its chest as it folded like a spider to fill the bunkhouse from floor to ceiling. Renan charged it with his stone in both hands. The nightwalker slapped the stone away with ease. Renan's head disappeared as a giant hand closed around it. Women screamed as the nightwalker ripped Renan's head from his body. Blood geysered across the bunkhouse. The nightwalker upended the youth's corpse like a goblet and gulped blood and fluids from the neck.

Ryan shot it in the chest.

The mutant's head snapped around and it gave Ryan its undivided attention. He shot it twice more center-mass. Pinholes of purple blood appeared but without effect. Ryan raised his aim for the head shot, and the nightwalker flung Renan's body at Ryan in response. The one-eyed man dodged most of it but Renan's leg still clubbed him brutally across the chest. Stones pelted the creature and two more slaves attacked with clubs. The nightwalker closed a hand the size of a bunch of bananas into a fist. It hit the leading man like a battering ram and crushed the cage of his chest. The second man swung his club. The nightwalker caught the club and the hand holding it. The mutie ripped off the man's hand at the wrist. The attacker staggered back, screaming. The nightwalker took the commandeered club and crushed the mutilated man's skull.

Ryan raised his blaster and fired his final round.

Blood blossomed on the nightwalker's forehead. It dropped the club and clapped a hand to its skull as it reeled back a step. Ryan lowered the empty weapon. The nightwalker lowered its hand. Bulging eyes regarded Ryan out of a purple mask of blood. The soft
lead .38 bullet had caromed off a brow ridge of bone thicker than a thumb and filleted away flesh along the side of the nightwalker's skull.

The Deathland's warrior dropped the smoking, empty blaster and ripped his sword from the flesh of the fallen fat one at his feet. His eardrums tried to meet in the middle of his head as the nightwalker loosed its hunting scream in the closed confines of the bunkhouse. The caterwauling was cut short as Cafu flung a stool into the screaming mutie's teeth. Cafu picked up the dead nightwalker's war club in both hands and looked to Ryan desperately. “Ryan!” The women had retreated to the back of the bunkhouse. The two remaining men hung back, to guard them and out of sheer terror.

Ryan shambled forward.

Cafu cried out, “Ryan!” and followed. The two men behind joined the attack. “Ryan! Ryan!” The giant nightwalker's hands shot forth to rend Ryan limb from limb. The one-eyed man dived beneath them and rolled up in a crouch. He slashed his blade beneath the knob of one giant, misshapen knee. The mutie screamed as tendons parted and it tilted back off balance. Cafu took the cue and swung his club like an ax. The tooth-studded weapon shattered the mutie's patella. The nightwalker collapsed backward, kneecapped, and its screams registered fear. It raised a warding hand and Ryan slashed off the offered fingers. The mutie screamed again as Ryan's backslash opened its elbow to the bone. Cafu pounded its other hand to pulp with his club. Fingers and bones broke under his assault. The other two men dodged the mutie's flailing legs and landed blows wherever they could.

Ryan lunged hard and low.

The diamond point of his blade rammed underneath the nightwalker's jaw, piercing the soft flesh beneath and crunching through the hard palate into the brain. The giant went limp. The bunkhouse was suddenly silent except for the ragged breathing of the victors. Cartilage cracked as Ryan ripped his sword free. He tottered toward the door. Cafu leaned on his club, gasping. Ryan stepped out into the rain. The she-creature had not gotten far. It crawled on three limbs through the mud of a garden plot, mewling and cradling its jellied lower jaw. The hag wasn't even aware of Ryan until he yanked her head back by the hair and cut her throat. The female fell unmoving into the mud. Ryan returned to the bunkhouse. He felt like he'd been pounded like a nail, but there were no injured to attend to. There were only the living and the dead.

Ryan gestured at the clutch of sobbing women. “Moni?”

Moni got the four women moving and they gathered their few possessions. They pulled their rough cloaks around themselves. Moni got it across in pantomime that they would go to another farm. They said their goodbyes to the men and scurried into the night. Cafu and the surviving two men gathered around Ryan. Cafu made introductions. “Leto, Luis.” Leto wasn't much younger than Cafu. Luis was about Ryan's age and a head shorter. Ryan retrieved his panga, then reloaded the starter blasters. He kept one for himself and gave one to Cafu and one to Leto. Luis would have to make do with lumber until they could find him something better. Ryan examined the three men. They all looked angry. They all looked ready. Ryan now had local guides. He had the start of an army. The revolution had begun.

Ryan also had a wag that seated four. “Hey, you guys wanna go for a ride?”

The three men nodded grimly with no idea what was being proposed.

Ryan took a ragged breath. “Good.”

Jak made landfall just as the storm really started to kick in. He figured no one would be stupe enough to take a boat out in a gale like this besides himself, so the Sister Isle, as Father Joao termed it, was the safest place to be. It took some persuasion to convince Father Joao to make himself useful, but they made it across the strait and got the boat up on the sand and tied off to a boulder. Father Joao peered up into the lashing rain. “Do you wish to take shelter or shall we just stand here until dawn?”

Jak was tempted to slash him again, but they needed to get out of the storm. “Where?”

Joao shrugged. “My church?”

Jak's eyes slitted. He smelled a trap, but he was pretty sure he had Father Joao under control, and Ryan had said there was food, wine and supplies there. Jak shoved him. “Go.”

They slogged up a muddy path through the fields. Occasional lightning flashes lit the pounding darkness. Several times they wandered off the path and had to correct as they trod down millet grain. Father Joao mostly knew the way by heart. A pair of lamps hung high above the highest hill. Lightning showed Jak the church in stark relief. “Why lit?”

“It is always lit at night. It can be seen from most of the villages. It is a symbol. The light in the darkness.”
They trudged through the muck and Joao opened the door. “Sacrilege!” Father Joao shook with rage as he took in the chopped-up pews. Portuguese profanity spewed from his lips in a torrent. “Nini!” He stamped his foot. “Nini!”

A frightened girl came out of one of the cells in the back. She was hardly any older than Jak and had a bruised look about her. Joao grabbed the girl, shaking her while screaming questions. Jak ended the interrogation by slashing the barrel of his blaster across Father Joao's kidney. He gasped and buckled to one knee. The girl stared wide-eyed at Jak and ran across the church. Jak let her run. “Who she?”

“Nini, a servant,” Joao gasped. “She lights the lamps at night. When I am here she…” Joao trailed off uncomfortably.

“Bed warmer,” Jak finished. “You—”

The clang of the steeple bell rang off the walls deafeningly. Jak gave Father Joao another clip across the kidneys to keep him honest. He turned and pointed the weapon down the church at Nini, who paled and dropped the bell rope. Jak twitched the muzzle of his blaster and Nini very reluctantly approached. Jak gave the priest his attention. “You order that?”

Father Joao pressed a hand to his back. “You attacked her priest, did you not?”

The priest had a point, but Jak still wasn't buying. “Who coming?”

“Probably most of the population.”

Jak stuck his head out the door. He squinted into the wind and rain and saw torches by the dozens moving in the little valleys. They were all winding up toward the church like fiery snakes in the darkness. Jak knew he
didn't have much time. He also knew he couldn't fight the entire island. He would have to talk his way out.

“Nini.” Jak pointed at the lamps and candles within the church. She looked at Father Joao. He nodded and the girl began lighting up the church.

The islanders began arriving and several stuck their heads in warily. They looked like hedgehogs in the bushy grass capes and crude straw hats they wore against the rain. They had arrived at the sound of the late-night alarm bearing clubs and stones. Jak motioned them inside. The islanders saw Father Joao and another pale main islander they didn't recognize. They began filing inside out of the rains in ones and twos. Jak spoke quietly to Joao. “Tell I not like you.”

Joao sighed resignedly. “Take off your hat.”

Jak took off his hat. Several islanders gasped. Joao pointed at Jak and spoke a few words. A ripple of fear went through the throng and out the door. Clubs and stones were raised. Jak wasn't getting the reaction he wanted. They had been friendly with Ryan and Doc. Jak suspected the color of his skin had something to do with it, and Father Joao wasn't helping matters. The priest gasped as Jak snaked his arm under his chin into a choke and screwed the muzzle of his blaster into his temple. “You said?”

Father Joao's voice came out in a hiss. “I told them to look at your white hair and demonic eyes, and know that the change was upon you.”

Jak pressed the blaster harder against Joao's head. “Change?”

“You haven't yet made the acquaintance of our night-dwelling brethren. There has been an unpleasant strain of mutation on the main island. It manifests itself in
young adulthood, and encourages some very aggressive behaviors and habits. You are a bit old, but they do not know that. All they know is that several times one of the nightwalkers managed to make it onto their island and reeked great devastation before they were brought down.”

Jak kept the muzzle of his blaster screwed to Father Joao's temple. “Big island's supposed to be heaven.”

“It was easy enough to incorporate some devils into the mythology. Heaven must have its hell. It helps them to see us as protectors, and dissuades them from attempting to visit the main isle without sanction. They see you, a young man with red eyes and white hair, threatening their savior.”

“Tell I not.”

Father Joao winced at the pressure of the blaster against his head. “They might suspect my change of story was…coerced.”

The islanders eyed Jak's blaster fearfully but they slowly kept filing in. Jak wished he had his back against a wall, but he wasn't about to back up, and if it came to a brawl he wanted room to move. Father Joao got some sneer back in his voice. “Go ahead, start shooting, see how well it serves you.”

“Shoot you first,” Jak promised.

“And you will be torn apart. They are a docile people, but they think you are a nightwalker, and must be stopped at any cost. Come now, let me go and we will negotiate your surrender.”

The congregation was thirty and growing, and Jak could see a forest of torches outside. Jak raised his voice. “Ryan! Doc!” The islanders inside froze. Jak took a chance. “Ago!”

A big man with a big piece of wood jumped at the sound of his name.

Joao started to hiss something, but Jak choked it off. Jak kept his eyes on Ago. “Vava, Galina, Feydor.” Ago nodded with each name. “Boo,” Jak said.

Ago's jaw dropped.

Jak shoved Father Joao to the ground and flung off his cloak with a flourish. The assembled islanders gasped at his field jacket, canvas pants and combat boots. He was wearing the clothes of a stranger. Jak thumped his chest with his fist. “Ryan, Doc.” He flexed his limited Mex.
“Amigos.”

The effect was galvanizing.

“Amigos?”
Ago asked.

Jak nodded. He took a huge chance and uncocked his blaster, spun it like a gunfighter and thrust it through his belt. He stuck out his hand.
“Amigos?”

Jak had to restrain every fighting instinct he had as the big man stepped forward grinning like an idiot and heaved Jak up in the air in a rib-crushing bear hug.
“Amigo!”

Jak allowed himself a small smile as Father Joao muttered imprecations from the floor. The priest was a bargaining chip, but he bore watching.

 

M
ILDRED WANDERED
blindly through the womb of the earth. It was cold, hard, wet, inhospitable and as black as ink. Rage fought with terror in her breast as she slammed her head into the ceiling for the tenth time and a sob almost escaped her. Raul had abandoned her. She had awoken alone with a splitting headache and her throat a bruised pipe that had difficulty drawing air. She hated the cream-colored son of a bitch for leaving her alone in the cold, but she feared his return even more. He was probably hoping she would cringe whimpering
in the darkness and stay put like a good girl while he went off and hunted Ryan. Part of Mildred hoped Raul found Ryan. If anyone was going to chill Captain Blubberknife, Ryan was the man.

Mildred clutched her throbbing head. She still had her clothes on and, other than her morale, she was un-violated. That was about the only good news. Her pack was gone, everything had been taken from her and she couldn't see jack shit. Mildred abandoned dignity and began crawling and crab-walking like a blind, four-legged and very fearful spider over the wet expanses of rock. Her fingers fluttered ahead of her like antennae. The going was interminable. She was pretty sure she had been moving for about half an hour, but—Mildred snarled as her foot slid down through a crack in the rocks and punched through, snapping driftwood that tore at her leg. She shuddered as she reached down and her hand brushed over the smooth dome of a human skull and a sprung rib cage. Claustrophobia began pulling at her. She could feel the cave walls closing in like the cold earth of the grave. She realized she was hyperventilating. Mildred fought the urge to curl up and start sobbing hysterically. The past twenty-four hours had been pretty rough even by Deathlands standards.

She took a shuddering breath and centered herself.

The rock she was sitting on was wet and cold. She ran her hand across it and licked her fingers. Cave water usually had a bitter mineral or acrid alkali tang. Mildred allowed her herself a small congratulatory smile in the dark. She wasn't a veteran rock-licker but this one definitely tasted like sea salt. Mildred gave the rock a little more love. In her experience caves were some of the sharpest, lumpiest, jagged places on Earth. The rock
here was worn smooth. The only thing that was likely to have done that was tidal action. Mildred spider-walked on and nodded to herself as she clicked past panic and into survival mode. She was definitely going downhill.

Mildred stopped again and took a breather. She was sweating with exertion, but the moment she stopped and wasn't panicked she could feel the cold draft blowing in her face. She crawled on, grinning savagely as the hoped-for sound of the surf stopped being an ambient hallucination and became clearly audible over the sound of her breathing. Mildred moved forward into the breeze that got stronger and stronger and the pounding surf and the moaning of the wind blocked out all other noise. She knew she'd hit pay dirt when her hand suddenly clawed into wet sand. She was close. Mildred stood cautiously. She rose on tiptoe and stretched up her hand but still couldn't touch the cave ceiling. Mildred moved sideways until she found the cave wall. It was smooth and rounded and carved by millennia of tides coming in and out. She marched out toward freedom.

The physician yipped as she stepped into a hole and plunged waist-deep into seawater. “Bastard!” she snarled. She slogged forward through the sizable puddle and a dozen yards farther was on relatively dry sand again. The rainstorm was still in full force outside. Mildred gasped as a lightning stroke flash-framed the entrance to the cave in front of her. It disappeared in the split-second strobe but salvation lay one hundred feet ahead.

Mildred whirled, her fists blindly cocked at the sound behind her.

She tried not to breathe. She couldn't be quite sure
what it had been. A splash? A crunch of sand? It didn't matter. Mildred knew with absolute certainty that there was someone or something behind her. Her heart hammered in her chest as she stood frozen, listening. The wind howled on and the waves crashed in a world just a short distance away from this brutal burial chamber.

Mildred whirled and ran for it.

Sand flew beneath Mildred's feet in the darkness. A lucky second lightning flash showed her the cave mouth again, and she corrected her headlong flight for it. Mildred plunged out into the rain and wind. It was raining and overcast, but it was a definite improvement over the stygian darkness of the caves. Mildred didn't stop running until the surf splashed around her boots. She turned to face her pursuer. The wind blew her plaits and she was soaked again in moments, but no pale hands reached for her. There was no flensing knife in the dark. The next bolt of lightning revealed a narrow strip of beach and the stark cliffs and the mouth of the cavern she had left. Mildred noted a pile of driftwood in the flash and fumbled up the beach toward it. She selected a slimy hunk of wood by feel and heft.

Mildred stood shivering and waiting with her bludgeon.

Nothing happened.

She looked left and made out the glow of the ville and its harbor lights to the south. Mildred did some math and she shivered as she realized she had just been a guest in the cave of the chiller that Ryan had talked about. Mildred gazed north into the dark. If she followed the beach about four miles, she would hit the rendezvous point, and if Jak had gotten his milk-white ass in gear and stolen a boat, he should already be there pa
trolling off shore. Failing that, she might try the raft and take a chance on paddling to the island of dumb healthy people who by reputation lived in a land of barbecued goat and warm huts. Mildred leaned into the wind and splashed north along the tidal line. When she was well past the cave she moved inland until her fingers found the cliff face and she hugged rock wall for what little protection from the elements it offered.

Mildred lost track of time as she trudged miserably. The rain slowly ebbed and died. The moaning wind kept up but at least it tattered the emptied clouds to reveal patches of cold starlight. She marched on, hugging herself and her length of wood. She looked upward and sighed. Since waking up in the Deathlands, she had learned to read the sun but navigating and telling time by the stars were still out of her skill set. She thought maybe the sky was a little more purple than black.

Mildred stopped and adopted a batter's stance as she perceived a strange lump in front of her. It was strangely square and—Mildred ran forward. She plunged her hand through the curtain of seaweed and felt spars and wooden barrels. Mildred pumped her fist skyward. “Yes!”

She had found the raft. She was at the rendezvous point. Score one for Mrs. Wyeth's child prodigy. Through caverns and storms she had tracked…

Mildred spun around with her club on high again.

Her tracks. Mildred's stomach clenched in dread. She had left a mile of tracks from the cave mouth in the wet sand. Mildred fell to her knees in exhaustion and shame. The party had split up. The enemy knew they were split up and the paper-faced bastards had known in their chilly little hearts there had to be a rendezvous point. Raul had let her escape. Mildred's cheekbones
burned in shame despite the cold. Raul had listened in amusement to her whimpering, crying, worm-blind trek through the caverns he knew by heart and laughed at her triumph at finding the raft. Jak would be bringing the boat at dawn, and they would be waiting. Ryan would be coming island-side and they would be waiting. She had nowhere to go where there would not be a welcoming committee.