Playfair's Axiom (26 page)

“There they are,” Ryan said, pressing his eye to the small glass window set in the very last door at the top of the endless stairs. The screamwings roosted or sat everywhere: on the girders, atop structures, on the floor, hundreds of them, as if the tower’s roof was hell’s chicken coop.

He stepped back to let the others peer out, despite almost exploding with impatience to get out and learn Jak’s fate for sure, even though at his core he knew Brother Joseph had to be right.

“That’s one ugly bastard,” Mildred said, peering up at the immense creature that sat amid a great tangle. It could only be a nest, built upon a tracery of girders a good twenty feet above the housing that held the heads of elevators and stairwell, and perhaps thirty below what remained of the high peaked roof of the gable.

“Indeed it is,” Doc said, leaning in sideways to peek. “And—My word, that nest! Is it built of bones?”

“Looks like,” Mildred said grimly, stepping back. “Human bones, some of them. Like that big huge pile below.”

“Plus some brush and branches to hold it together, it looks like,” Krysty said, stepping up to take her turn.

She looked back over her shoulder. “Wait, if it’s got a nest, should we mebbe be calling it Queen Screamwing?”

Everybody looked at Bro Joe, who stood back watching with ill-concealed amusement on his bearded face. While
the others took their turns looking at the screamwing eyrie, Ryan had kept his eye on their captive.

The guru shrugged. “The late Baron Savij was, like his illustrious predecessors, a great believer in the patriarchal principle. He was far more willing to accept a screamwing king. As for the beast’s actual sex, I’m as much in the dark as you.”

“What’s that other stuff, everywhere?” J.B. asked. “I mean, aside from the big pile of bones and skulls in the middle of the floor.”

Ryan glanced back through. “More shit.”

It was true. Whatever the floor inside the gable roof had once consisted of, it was now carpeted inches deep in the same stuff they’d seen spattered all over the office below. There was more splashed across the top of the housing to the north, down its side, down the sides of the other small structures Ryan could see, whose function he could only guess at. And couldn’t be bothered to.

Even through the door the ammoniacal stink made Ryan’s nose burn. “The little guys don’t seem to mind sitting in the crap of ages,” Mildred said.

“All right,” Ryan said. “Showtime. Doc, guard the door. Brother Joseph, how do you work this gizmo of yours? How do I set it to ‘repel’ and turn it on?”

Brother Joseph reached over Ryan’s shoulder and turned what appeared to be a sunburst medallion counterclockwise to the left. “There,” he said. “Shall I turn it on for you as well?”

“Not yet,” Ryan said. “We’ll use when we need it. Right now these bastards seem to be asleep. No need fixin’ what isn’t broken.”

He favored the fallen holy man with a one-eyed squint. “You know that no matter what goes down, you try shit, we
will
drop you.”

“No need to belabor the painfully obvious, Ryan,” Joseph said bitterly. “I take your martial competence for granted. And that notwithstanding, please believe me when say I fear the screamwings far more than I do you. I still don’t see why I have to come along on this stage of this fool’s errand.”

“Because you need to help make right what you did wrong,” Mildred said in a voice that didn’t invite debate.

“Ready?” Ryan asked. The others murmured assent. He turned the knob, pushed open the door and stepped through.

If he thought it stank up here before, he realized at once he’d had no idea. The reek hit him in the face like a club. His eyes watered, and his nose and throat threatened to pinch shut in rebellion. It wasn’t nauseating as much as a lot like getting a shot of tear gas.

He persevered, holding his SIG-Sauer P-226 in his right hand and the preacher’s magic jim-jam in his left. Like the rest, he’d left his backpack on the level below. He carried his slung Steyr, though, both because he was loath to leave it unguarded and because a person just never knew.

To his surprised relief the turd carpet was neither slippery nor ankle-deep ooze. It was mostly dry, forming a spongy mat. He could see occasional wet gleams in the light of the moon that now shone in the huge gap above.

“Watch your footing,” he said quietly. “Step in a wet patch, you’re triple-screwed.”

The pitched gable roof had been blasted or melted back from the west side for a good quarter of its length. Bare support beams made a shadow network over the nearer part; the end was simply gone. Likewise the window that had formed its western end: it was a
U
of starry blackness.

Aside from the great gable, the roof level was sur
rounded on three sides by inward-slanting metal-clad sheets that suggested solidity from below, but in fact left most of the building’s summit open to the sky. Whatever had made up the gable’s vertical walls had collapsed at floor level, leaving upright structural beams. The outer roof’s northwest corner, though surviving the nuke’s thermal pulse, had been buckled inward by the blast so that some of it actually was molded over the tall oblong concrete structure that occupied much of the north section.

The dried-shit flooring muffled sound. Ryan’s flesh crawled at being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of the seagull-size, flesh-craving mutants, not to mention the monster in its house-size nest looming over everything, with its crested head tucked under one wing.

Ryan glanced back. J.B. backed him tight, shotgun ready. His hat was tipped up, and his head and his face looked pinched and pallid beneath a gloss of sweat. Next came Krysty, her normally full lips almost vanished in a resolute line. She carried her Smith & Wesson 640 in her right hand and a cleaver from her backpack in her left. Behind walked the unarmed Brother Joseph, trying to look nonchalant, and as ever, close after him stalked Mildred.

Ryan wasn’t really sure where they were going. He steered left, around the house-high pile of bones beneath the monster’s macabre nest. Something about the shadows of that crumpled-in roof corner drew his eye.

From the left came a peculiar chirp. “Ryan,” J.B. muttered through clenched teeth, “I think we’ve been noticed.”

Ryan looked left. A small screamwing sitting on the guano mat just eight or nine feet away had taken its head out from under its wing. It shook it, triple-fast, like a wet dog. Then as if accidentally it turned to look up at Ryan.

Its eyes, half-lidded with sleep, shot wide. It opened its beak and squawked.

Ryan hit the on switch of Brother Joseph’s device.

“Damn!” Mildred whispered. “Bro Joe just broke away! He ran right around the elevator bank to the south side before I could stop him. Freaking screamwings distracted me. Sorry.”

And hundreds and hundreds of screamwings raised their sleepy heads, turned and stared at the intruders. Then with a booming of many wings they took flight. Almost directly overhead, the king—Ryan still thought of the monster that way; how the hell did he know what sex it really was?—unfurled its own wings with a sound like a cannon going off.

The lesser screamwings flew up about ten feet in the air and began swooping toward the companions. They seemed chiefly curious as to what these strange intruders were. What they didn’t seem was repelled at all.

From the black shadow pocket beneath the crumpled-down roof corner a figure emerged, with ghost-white face and hair and wearing a camo jacket and ragged jeans.

“Ryan, no!” Jak yelled, waving his arms. “That brings ’em!”

But Ryan had already switched the sunburst counterclockwise until it hit a detent.

The diving seagull-size screamwings braked as if they hit an invisible wall. The device, which had been vibrating so fast in Ryan’s hand it stung his skin, now rumbled at a low frequency that rattled in his bones.

With a skull-shattering shriek, King Screamwing took off straight up, fleeing the hated low tone. The downblast of his wings almost battered Ryan to his knees.

“Jak!” Krysty shouted through the diminishing thunder
of the giant flyer’s wings as it flapped away from its lair. “You’re alive!”

Instead of answering he dived back into the shelter of the shoved-in roof. A whole cloud of lesser screamwings hit it like a sudden hailstorm. Ryan heard multiple thumps as a number of them bounced off the roof.

The muties raised a terrific screeching clamor. Ryan saw a wild churning of wings and toothed beaks, and a flash of steel in moonlight. A screamwing fell, its finger-wing sheered through. Others swarmed over its thrashing body. Its cries rose higher as its fellows devoured it alive.

Jak’s fighting knife slashed patterns of dazzle in the air right outside his shelter. Blood and body parts flew. Some of the screamwings settled down to cannibalistic feasts. Others retreated in squawking haste.

One bold mutie ventured close, managing somehow to evade the fast-moving blade. A white hand grabbed it by its skinny throat. It vanished into shadow. A beat later it was flung out again. It was limp, and its head dangled loose at the end of a wrung neck.

“Stick tight!” Ryan shouted. He sprinted toward Jak, holding the screamwing repeller high. He had no idea if it helped; he did it anyway.

“What about Brother Joseph?” Krysty yelled. He didn’t look back. By her voice he could tell she was right behind him, which was all he needed to know.

“Nuke him!”

The screamwings had started circling like a noisy living dust devil in front of Jak’s shelter. Now they broke apart and shot off in all directions, like drops of water from a big rock hitting a pond. They triple-hated that low-freq hum.

The companions reached Jak’s shelter. “Come on,” Ryan
shouted. “We don’t know how long this noisemaker’ll hold them off. We’re in their damn house!”

Jak popped out like a prairie dog, his knife and knife hand dripping blood. His face was streaked with gore the color of the eyes that glared wildly from it.

Why
all
come?” he demanded. “All gone droolie suddenly?”

Knowing how risky it was to hug the albino teen with his shard-encrusted jacket, Krysty squeezed his upper arm.

“Strength in numbers,” Ryan said. “You walk?”

“Can run!”

“Don’t,” Mildred said. “Footing’s pretty slippery in places. You go down in this shit, you won’t get up before these things’re all over you.”

Ryan gestured with the repeller and his P-226, herding his crew back toward the stairs. They started back past the big rectangular concrete structure that formed one wall of Jak’s hideout.

A cry loud as an air horn made them look up. The giant screamwing settled onto the girders next to its nest, waving its enormous wings in agitation. Another echoing call, and the cloud of little screamwings, which had begun orbiting above the gable roof, arrowed back down through the open west end.

Right toward the companions.

Most of them sheered off again, screeching dismay at the subsonic hum. But one blasted right through. It struck Ryan’s left shoulder, flapping its furry left wing in his face. Its toothed beak sliced into his cheek below the eye patch. He shouted, in angry surprise far more than pain.

A flash. A wash of heat. Ryan heard nothing, merely felt an impact like a huge hand slapping the left side of his face, hard enough to sting.

The screamwing exploded into blood and bone shrapnel.

“Glowing night shit!” Ryan yelled. He could only hear in his right ear. The whole left side of his head felt numb. “What the fuck happened?”

“Sorry, Ryan!” He barely heard J.B. He realized he wasn’t hearing triple-good with his right ear, either, at the moment. He also realized the Armorer had stuck the muzzle of his shotgun close to the furry little horror and blasted it at near contact range, which meant he’d lit off the 12-gauge blaster right next to Ryan’s left ear.

By reflex Ryan clapped a hand to that ear. There was no blood on his palm when he took it away.
Mebbe I didn’t lose the drum,
he thought.

In screaming fury Mildred stamped a fallen screamwing with her combat boots. Krysty slashed another’s furry belly open. It fluttered brokenly a few paces and fell thrashing to the floor, kicking at its own spilled guts.

The companions had halted when the first screamwing broke through their repeller tone. The giant screamwing tipped its crest back and vented another sky-ripping screech. A squadron of the lesser horrors dived on them again. As before, they turned away as they got close to the source of the painful vibration.

Most of them. Ryan whacked one out of midair with his SIG. Another descended claws-first toward his face. He slashed at it with the repeller. The mutie backed air and he shot it with a 9 mm slug. The muzzle-flash set its fur smoldering as it fell flapping in frantic agony.

“Run!” Ryan shouted, stomping the fallen flier with his bootheel and breaking its back.

“But the king!” Krysty shouted, slashing the furred wing membrane of another that had broken into the repeller field.

To get back to the stairs they’d have to pass directly above the crested monster. The giant also seemed to be egging its juniors on to the attack, whether by design or accident literally blowing them toward the intruders with beats of its huge wings when they held back. It didn’t seem to like the repeller tone any better than the little ones did. But between their overlord’s urging and their fury to defend their nest, the lesser screamwings by ones and twos overcame their distaste of the throbbing hum to attack the invaders.

Sooner or later they’d get in close enough to do real damage. His friends’ faces already bled from cuts and nips. They were losing this game fast.

Ryan pointed his blaster at the king and emptied the magazine into it.

The monster’s blood rained down on them. As the SIG’s slide locked back, the king took off again, screeching its titan fury. Ryan doubted he’d done it any real damage—he wasn’t that lucky. But like anything the creature didn’t like getting shot.

“Haul ass!” he yelled. The companions lit out for the stairwell at as brisk a pace as the yielding floor would allow.