Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter (25 page)

As Ryan rolled one way, she rolled the other, coming up facing him with the H&K pointing in his direction. Ryan kept rolling, making it down into a dip in the sand just as she squeezed off a shot that narrowly missed.

Breathing deeply, Ryan waited until just after her second shot, then launched himself to his feet and sprinted for the closest hill. Legs pumping, he barely outran her next shot, diving behind the hill as if he was slicing into deep water there.

“Hey, One-Eye!” she shouted in a taunting voice with a heavy foreign accent. “You forgot your longblaster, big fella! What’re you going to do without that?”

She was right; he’d dropped the Scout in the ambush. But it made no difference to him. He still had the 9 mm SIG-Sauer and all the deadly odds and ends he needed, including his fists and feet. And now that he recognized that accent and realized what her nationality was, he was more motivated than ever to hammer her down hard. Because not only had she betrayed his team from within, but she was part of the nation that had brought the Deathlands into being in the first place.

“I am coming for you, One-Eye.” Her accent was Russian. “When I am done, I will wear your balls around my neck, on either side of that one eye you have left.”

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, checked the magazine, flicked off the safety and started around the hill, then doubled back when he heard her footfalls coming around the same side. He darted halfway back to the spot where she’d originally surprised him, wondering if she was coming up behind him or doubling back herself.

Then, following his gut instinct, he sprang up the hillside instead of staying at ground level. He quickly climbed twelve feet up the base and flung himself on his belly with the SIG pointing downward.

Seconds later, he saw Union creeping along below,
crouching and peering ahead for some trace of him. She would be an easy shot, though he wasn’t going for the kill; he still needed answers regarding her betrayal, her true motivation and whomever else she might be working with.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, though, she saw something on the ground—a footprint?—and swung up the H&K and blasted a round up the hillside. Fortunately, she wasn’t as quick a shot as she needed to be, and the round went wide by a foot.

Ryan responded by putting a 9 mm slug square in her left shoulder. The impact spun her back, and she followed it around the curve of the hillside. Looking down, he saw her blood trail speckled in the sand, but she was otherwise out of sight.

He wasted no time leaping to his feet after that. Now that she knew where he was, altitude was no longer his friend.

He skirted the brim of the hill, following the blood trail below until he ran out of trail. Somehow, she’d stanched the bleeding enough to take it out of the equation, at least long enough to confuse him.

Then, where the hell was she?

Ryan continued to ease along the brim, keeping the SIG up and ready for quick action. A little farther, and he started to wonder if she was nearby at all, if perhaps she’d given up the hunt and gone in search of a medic.

Just then, something caught his eye: a single red spot on the sandy hillside up ahead. Blood.

Somehow, she’d gotten the higher ground.

Turning to look up the hill, he saw her sprawled six feet above him, grinning behind the sights of the H&K. The barrel of the longblaster was pointing right at him, and she started to squeeze the trigger.

Chapter Forty

Doc and Fixie huddled together at the end of the ventilation shaft, watching the shifters at work on the other side of the grate in front of them.

“Ready, Theo?” Fixie whispered.

“Yes.” The two of them had followed a convoluted path through the duct work of the redoubt, staying well hidden all the way from the mat-trans chamber to their destination: what Fixie said was the transmitter vault. Now they faced the prospect of taking on the three shifters who were working there—none of them visibly armed, but potentially dangerous nonetheless.

“Okay, then.” Fixie squirmed around so that he was sitting back with his feet against the grate. He kept his weapon—a red-handled fire ax—beside him on the sheet-metal floor of the duct. “Once this opens, we need to move fast. We need to take them out of action—boom, boom, boom.”

“Right.” Doc shivered nervously and battled the butterflies in his stomach.

“Here goes.” Fixie drew back his knees, getting ready to kick out the grate.

Doc gripped the monkey wrench he’d brought with sweaty hands. Was he ready to use it on the shifters? His freedom, and the future of the entire Shift, depended on it, yet he still had his doubts. It wasn’t so easy, attacking
someone who was simply doing a job, who hadn’t acted with malice directly against him.

But the result of their actions was the same, he reminded himself. Malice committed under orders from another was still malice, wasn’t it?

“On three. One.” Fixie pulled his knees back farther. “Two.” A little farther. “Three!” Suddenly, he thrust his feet forward, kicking the grate free of the surrounding duct.

The metal grate clanged to the concrete floor, and Fixie scrambled out after it. Behind him, Doc took a deep breath and followed, clutching the handle of the monkey wrench.

The three shifter workers instantly abandoned what they were doing and looked toward the duct. One ran toward the new arrivals without hesitation; another tossed aside the clipboard he was holding and ran to grab a length of metal pipe from the floor. The third shifter turned tail and sprinted for the door, which evened the odds.

Except for one problem. If he ran to get help, Doc and Fixie would be in trouble.

Doc did the math for a split second, then abandoned Fixie to the two fighters and went after the runner.

Instantly, Doc regretted not having a gun. The vault was huge, and the runner had a big lead on him; Doc sprinted as fast as he could, but he still couldn’t catch up. Any second now, the shifter would be out the nearest door, and Doc might lose him.

Though perhaps the weapon at hand might be sufficient. Closing to within twenty feet of the runner, Doc hauled back the monkey wrench as if it was a medieval war hammer. Then he swung it forward with all his might and released it, aiming at the runner’s back.

The big wrench soared forward and came in lower than Doc had expected, but it still hit the target. The makeshift weapon crashed into the backs of the runner’s knees, colliding
just hard enough to jolt his stride out of sync. He tripped over his own feet and flew forward, floundering as the floor raced toward him.

Doc retrieved the monkey wrench from the floor and charged up to stand over the shifter. But when he got to that position, he found himself at a loss as to what to do next. The little mutie cowered with his hands over his head; he didn’t seem to possess a single drop of military-style aggression.

Doc’s first thought had been to knock him unconscious with the wrench, but he couldn’t get himself to do it. It would be too easy to injure the mutie fatally with the big, heavy wrench.

Hearing a cry from across the vault, he turned and saw Fixie facing off with the other two shifters, swinging the fire ax at one and missing by inches. The shifters kept circling at a safe distance, armed only with metal pipes but looking as if they had the upper hand.

Doc needed to join that fight, though he still had the runner to contend with. Thinking fast, he ran and grabbed a spool of cable from nearby, then brought it back to bind the shifter’s hands and feet.

When he had the shifter secured, Doc retrieved the wrench and bolted over to help Fixie. He had to hope the runner wouldn’t break free, though he hadn’t had time to test his bonds properly.

As Doc ran up on the standoff in progress, one of the shifters immediately broke away to attack him. The shifter wielded a three-foot length of iron pipe over his head like a Cro-Magnon with a club, ready to cave in his enemy’s skull.

But when he heaved the pipe down, Doc checked the swing with the monkey wrench. The two bludgeons crashed together with a loud clank, stopping inches from Doc’s forehead.

Grunting, Doc struggled to push off the pipe with the length of the wrench. He clenched his teeth and strained every muscle in his arms and shoulders, causing a chain reaction of pain to light up his back.

Hand-to-hand combat was not his strong suit, and the mutie was much younger than he, but Doc held his own. He couldn’t quite drive back the pipe, but he kept it from pushing in closer.

Remembering a move that Ricky had tried to teach him, he slid the pipe over, away from his head, then suddenly released the pressure and sidestepped. The shifter dropped hard, all the way to the floor, as Doc yanked the wrench out of his path.

As the shifter went down, Doc hurried out of his reach. At that exact moment, Fixie bolted past him with the fire ax clutched in both hands.

As Doc watched, Fixie swung the ax back from his side. For an instant, Doc feared his ally might have a fatal blow in mind for the shifter.

But Fixie used only the flat of the blade, not the sharp edge, smacking the shifter hard in the chest as he tried to crawl to his feet. The blow knocked the mutie down on his back, where he thrashed like a beetle trying to flip itself onto its legs.

Then Fixie followed up with a glancing kick to the side of the shifter’s head. After that, the shifter went limp on the floor.

“Thanks for the assist.” Fixie grinned. “You handle yourself pretty good in a fight.”

I do? Doc caught himself before he said it. “Same to you,” he said instead.

“Let’s get these guys tied up.” Fixie looked over his shoulder at the third shifter, who lay unconscious on the floor some thirty feet away. “Then we’ll do the work we came here to do.”

“Is that the transmitter?” Doc pointed at a huge apparatus in the middle of the room—what looked like a giant cannon swaddled in cables and studded with nodes and antennae. It was not at all what he’d expected.

“The one and only.” Fixie headed for a reel of cable on the floor by the wall. “It fires the modified mat-trans beams that reshape the terrain of the Shift.”

“I see.” Doc frowned at the apparatus, which was mounted on a swivel base and pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle. “So if we blew up this one device, it would instantly stabilize the Shift?”

Fixie scowled at him. “I guess it would, but we won’t. We’re here to restore Dr. Hammersmith’s vision, remember?”

“Of course.” Even as Doc said it, he wondered how he might best destroy the transmitter. Ending the transformations and associated side effects might be the best thing he could possibly do for the people of the Shift and his own friends.

And now might be the only chance he would have to do it.

“Help me tie up these two.” Fixie rushed past him with a reel of cable in each hand.

Doc took one more look at the transmitter apparatus. The tip of the device glowed with a pulsing blue light that struck one ring of polished glass lenses mounted in the ceiling. Doc guessed the lens had to focus the beam through channels of some kind, leading it to the surface and angling it toward its targets.

“Come on,” Fixie snapped as he wrapped cable around the ankles of one of the unconscious shifters. “I need help here.”

“All right, yes.” Doc nodded and walked over to assist him. “Let us get this done.”

Chapter Forty-One

Ryan was dead meat and he knew it.

Then, suddenly, there was a thunderous boom and a powerful shock wave ripped through the hill, jarring Union just as she pulled the trigger.

Her shot went wide in a big way. Ryan, who’d managed to stay on his feet through the blast, charged up the hillside before she could fire again.

He grabbed the H&K by the barrel and tore it away from her, hurling it off into space. But the lack of a weapon didn’t keep Union from fighting back. She lunged at him like a panther, catching him at the knees and sweeping his legs out from under him.

Ryan came down on top of her, and she flung herself backward so he was pinned beneath her weight. He used the position to his advantage, snaking an arm around her neck and clamping it tight.

Teeth clenched, he cinched the choke hold tighter. Union strained to roll to one side to break the pressure, but Ryan used his own weight to hold her in place.

She tried to maneuver a booted foot to kick him in his crotch, but the move was impossible. Union pushed up and slammed herself down on him, trying to hurt something, but then the choke hold finally took effect. The pressure of his arm cut off the blood flow to her brain, and her thrashing struggles diminished.

Union went limp. Ryan waited a moment afterward to
make sure she was out before letting go of her and rolling her body aside.

Then he got to his feet and jogged around the hill to see where the artillery had hit this time. It didn’t take long; there was now a smoking crater midway between his hill and Jak’s.

As Ryan took in the damage, he heard a loud whoosh from the opposite side of his hill and scrambled to get there. He arrived just in time to see a small guided missile race from below and soar out over the battlefield, leaving a trail of curdled gray smoke.

In a heartbeat, the missile flashed over the heads of the approaching muties, zooming unerringly toward a single huge target behind enemy lines.

As Ryan watched, the missile hit, and the big blaster exploded. Even before the smoke cleared, he could see that the barrel of the weapon had been destroyed.

As the army of attackers turned to see what had happened to their biggest asset, Ryan ran a little farther and saw the source of the missile. Below, between his hill and the next one over, stood a man with a portable rocket launcher braced on his left shoulder.

Instantly, Ryan recognized him. Dr. Hammersmith was front and center, and he was loaded for bear.

Ryan grinned and shook his head. Thanks to the pot-smoking whitecoat, the biggest threat on the field was out of action. The sniper nests were secure for the moment and still running hot; he could hear the crackle of shots being fired up and down the line by his companions.