Prodigal's Return
For the moment, Dean did nothing.
“Don’t get too much blood on his boots!” a laughing coldheart added, cradling a lever-action Winchester. “They look just my size!”
“I want that knife,” the ugly coldheart added, sucking on his oversize teeth.
Roaring in victory, Bert closed on Dean, but at the very last second, the young Cawdor ducked out of the way and savagely drove the toe of his combat boot into the groin of his attacker. Gasping in pain, Bert staggered, then unexpectedly pulled a machete from behind his back.
Startled, Dean threw himself backward. Bert almost gutted him anyway, the blade slicing open his damp shirt and leaving a bloody gouge across his chest. Ignoring the minor pain, Dean tried to rush the man and grab his arm, but Bert fended him off, delivering two more slashes across the youth’s chest.
“Thought this…was supposed…to be a fair fight,” Dean panted, frantically dodging to the left, then the right.
“That wouldn’t tell me anything about how good you are, now, would it?” Camarillo replied, tracking the combatants with the fluted barrel of the deadly Kalasnikov.
Constantly shifting about, Bert was swinging the machete as if swatting flies, wild and unpredictable. Ducking out of the way again, Dean bent low, then grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the fat man, but deliberately missing. As Bert easily dodged the clumsy attempt to blind him, Dean dived into the cloud and came out with the bowie knife. Spinning, he thrust the point of the blade forward, and Bert backed off with blood on his dirty cheek.
“That be cheating!” the bucktoothed man cried, hefting the throwing hatchet.
“Cheating would have been going for the blaster,” Camarillo said, resting the AK-47 rapidfire on his shoulder. “Blade against blade is a fair fight.” Then he added, “If that hatchet grows wings, Hannigan, you’ll be the first one chilled.”
Scowling darkly, Hannigan gave no reply, but his hate-filled gaze never left the frantically moving youth.
Thrusting and lounging, Dean tried to slash the fat man in the belly, or the armpit. Steel slammed into steel with an audible clang as the big knife met the predark machete. The two combatants stood locked together for a long moment, then Bert spit into Dean’s face, and the youth brutally swung the knife downward, the razor-sharp blade slicing off several pudgy fingers. Shrieking in pain, Bert dropped the machete and backed away, trying to staunch the geyser of life with his other hand.
Flipping the bowie into the air, Dean caught the blood-streaked blade and threw it. Turning over once, the knife slammed into the fat man’s chest, going all the way into the guard. Staggering, Bert gasped and wheezed, crimson spurting from his ruined hand.
“End it,” a short coldheart commanded, working the lever action of his Winchester longblaster.
Saying nothing, Dean looked at Camarillo.
“Do as you’re told, boot,” the chief coldheart ordered.
Dean grunted at the term. Boot as in boot camp. Military slang for a new recruit. He was in. Retrieving the Browning, he inspected the blaster to make sure it was undamaged. Then, from fifty feet, he aimed and fired, putting a single round into the left temple of the floundering Bert. The fat man jerked from the impact of the 9 mm Parabellum round, then dropped onto the churned grass, trembled and went still forever.
Dean was shaken at the coldblooded chilling, but it was survival, plain and simple.
Holstering his blaster, he then retrieved the bowie knife and wisely cleaned it on the grass, instead of using the shirt of the corpse as he usually would have done. A wise man only insulted people he planned on chilling, and he needed the cooperation of these coldhearts for a little while to help him stay alive.
At least until I can get someplace where I can try to build a life, Dean added privately.
“Bert was a friend of mine,” Hannigan said through gritted teeth, his fist clenched on the shaft of the hatchet.
“Get better friends,” Dean growled, sheathing the bowie. “Anybody want his stuff, help yourself, blaster included. The clothes are too big, and I have a better knife.”
Greedily, a couple of the coldhearts glanced at their chief. Camarillo gave a nod, and they slid off their horses to start eagerly looting the warm corpse.
Going over to the riderless horse, Dean briefly inspected the mare and found her to be in decent shape, just desperately in need of a good curry.
“Easy, girl, easy,” he whispered, patting the muscular neck of the animal to try to calm her. Horses didn’t like the smell of blood, and he needed the goodwill of the animal even more than he did that of the coldhearts. Still recovering from his ordeal in the river, he was exhausted from the short fight, and way too close to falling over. But he had to appear strong in front of the others. Any weakness now would result in an endless series of challenges, and eventually he would tangle with somebody faster. Or get a knife in the back, which he considered to be far more likely.
Finished with their grisly task, the two coldhearts returned to their horses carrying various personal items from the dead Bert, including the horrid necklace of dried ears.
Dean noticed that a lot of the coldhearts wore similar decorations—ears, tongues, fingers.
“I owe ya one, boot,” a scraggly coldheart gushed, tucking away his new possessions. “The name’s Natters.”
“No prob,” Dean replied casually.
The other coldheart said nothing, then gave an open-mouthed grin showing that he lacked a tongue.
“He’s McGinty,” Natters said with a jerk of his thumb. “Lost his tongue in a bar fight. Nobody seems to know why or how.”
“And he ain’t talking,” Dean finished, climbing into the saddle. He tried not to flinch, feeling the residual warmth of the prior owner. Bert may have been a fat bastard, but he had come closer to acing him than anybody else before.
“What are your orders, sir?” Dean asked, checking the longblaster tucked into the gun boot. Incredibly, it proved to be a remade BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle. Suspiciously, he dropped the magazine. As expected, it was empty. No wonder Bert had used a machete.
“Stay close, boot, and follow us back to camp,” Camarillo stated, shaking the reins of his horse. “You fall behind, and I’ll personally put lead in your head!”
“Then I get what’s left.” Hannigan chuckled, patting the edged weapon at his hip.
“Bring a blaster, gleeb,” Dean growled in return, kicking his horse into a gallop. “Better yet, bring a dozen to make it a fair fight.”
Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan frowned at that, then slowly smiled, displaying his oversize, crooked teeth. “Deal,” he whispered, the word barely discernable over the pounding hooves.
As the Stone Angels moved across the wide grassy field, Dean settled into the steady rocking motion of a seasoned rider, and began to wonder exactly how long he might have to stay before he would finally be able to slip away from these people.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Chapter One
Scrambling over the bank of a dried river, six people hastily pelted across the uneven ground, their hands frantically reloading blasters. Their clothing was torn and dirty, their faces gaunt from hunger and exhaustion.
Suddenly, a weird sound came from the riverbed, the noise making them spin fast just as a glowing green mist appeared along the bank.
“Fireblast, here it comes again!” Ryan Cawdor shouted, triggering his longblaster a fast three times.
Instantly, his companions cut loose with a thundering cacophony of weapons. Gray and black smoke billowed from the blazing gun barrels, spent brass flying in every direction.
Rising over the earthen bank, the green mist flowed along the loose sand and rocks, leaving behind a glassy streak of fused ground. Deep within the incandescent fog, something unseen gave voice once more to a high-pitched howl full of rage, pain and unbridled hate.
“What in nuking hell does it take to stop that thing?” J. B. Dix snarled, yanking out the spent magazine from his Uzi machine pistol and shoving in a fresh one. Jerking the arming bolt, he sent another long burst of 9 mm rounds into the cloud. Most of the steel-jacketed lead simply flew out the other side to pepper a low sand dune.
“Hard stop what not see,” Jak Lauren muttered, sending off three booming rounds from a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python.
“Not sure we want to see it!” Dr. Mildred Weyth countered, squeezing off a single .38 round from her Czech ZKR target pistol.
“Stinking howler,” Jak growled, firing again.
Instantly, the howler inside the billowing cloud doubled the volume of its inhuman keen, and the companions painfully winced at the sonic assault.
“Don’t know if that hurt it or just made the mutie angry,” Krysty Worth said, dumping out the spent brass from her hammerless Smith & Wesson Model 640 revolver. Pocketing the casings, she dug into another pocket of her bearskin coat and started thumbing in fresh cartridges.
As the creature inside the green cloud flowed by a stand of cacti, the plants began to visibly wither, and by the time the howler was past, they were only shriveled lumps on the fused sand, thin tendrils of smoke rising from the scorched remains.
“Egad, the accursed abomination is like some Dantean monster from the very depths of inferno!” Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner announced in a stentorian bass. Thumbing back the hammer on a massive single-action LeMat revolver, the tall man aimed carefully, then stroked the trigger. The huge Civil War-era weapon boomed louder than field artillery, black smoke vomited from the pitted muzzle and a lance of flame extended for almost a foot.
As the colossal miniball hummed through the air to vanish into the cloud, the howler actually moaned even louder, but whether in pain from a hit or pleasure from a miss, there was no way of knowing.
“Shoot it again, Doc,” Ryan commanded, shoving another magazine of 7.62 mm rounds into the open breech of the Steyr SSG longblaster. “At the very least, your handblaster slows the bastard thing down!”
“That was my last load, my dear Ryan,” Doc replied, his hands already moving in the complex procedure of purging the chambers of the revolver clean as a prelude to packing in fresh black powder, lead and wadding.
“Then we better start using boot leather!” J.B. shouted, grabbing his fedora and turning tail to start a hasty retreat.
After reloading their own weapons, the companions followed suit, running a hundred feet, only to turn and fire, then run again. For the past day they had been fleeing from the unstoppable mutie. They were low on brass and close to exhaustion, but with their wag destroyed there was no other choice. Run, fight, and run again, to survive for a couple more minutes, another precious few yards. But they could do that for only so long. Soon the companions would fall, and be aced. It was just a matter of time.
Ever since the howler had erupted from a predark iron mine to set their wag on fire with a single touch, the companions had been fighting a losing battle, trying desperately to find some way to trap the thing, block its advance or divert it by sending it after slower prey. There should have been a lot of stickies in this region of the Deathlands, and the humanoid muties were oddly attracted to explosions, especially the sounds of blasters firing. The fight should have summoned an army of the things. But so far there had been no sign of stickies, only the endless desert sands.
Charging between two large dunes, Ryan saw the wreckage of some ancient machinery partially buried in the loose sand. Car, truck, helicopter, submarine, he didn’t care. It was made of metal, and the location was perfect, which gave them a fighting chance at life.
“Rig it!” he commanded, dropping to a knee to steady his shaking hands.
“Last one!” J.B. countered, pulling a half stick of dynamite from the munitions bag slung at his side.
“No choice!” Ryan yelled, as he looked through the low-power telescopic sights of the Steyr sniper rifle. The howler was tight on their path, never wavering or detouring. That almost made the one-eyed man smile. Stupidity was its own reward.
While the rest of the companions sagged against the shifting sands for a blessed moment of rest, J.B. wearily got to work planting the explosive charge inside the rusted remains of the machine. Unfortunately, his hands shook with fatigue, and he kept dropping loose items. With a snarl, he slapped himself hard across the face, the smacks almost sounding like blasterfire. The pain banished the fog from his mind, and he quickly went back to work. But even as he did, tendrils of sleep began to creep once more through his brain, leeching away his thoughts and offering the sweet release of slumber.
Holding his breath to help steady his aim, Ryan peered through the telescopic sight, adjusted for the wind, then put three rounds smack through the middle of the cloud. There were no visible results. The howler didn’t move faster or slower.
However, as Ryan forced himself to stand, he was more than satisfied. The expenditure of brass had been expensive, but worthwhile if it kept the bastard thing coming this way. One of the very first lessons he had ever learned from his old teacher, the Trader, was to never be predictable in a fight. That was the path to oblivion.
“Done,” J.B. stated, smoothing out the sand over the trap. He tried to get back up, but stumbled, his strength failing.
Without comment, Mildred grabbed him by an arm, and Krysty took the other to lend some assistance. He nodded in thanks and started shuffling away, searching through the pockets of his battered jacket for anything edible.
Stepping close, Doc offered a piece of smoked fish. J.B. took it with a grunt and shoved the morsel into his mouth. The previous day the delicious smoked salmon had been a very special treat, a gift from the grateful baron who had traded them a functioning wag for the life of his youngest wife, rescued from a band of cannies. Now it was only food, consumed in a swallow and forgotten.
As the companions hurried away from the sand dunes, Jak glanced behind and saw the howler pause before entering the narrow passage. Had it seen J.B. lay the trap? Okay then, time to up the ante. Jerking his hand, the young man caught a leaf-bladed throwing knife as it slipped out of the sleeve of his camou jacket. With an underhand gesture, he sent the blade flying, and heard a solid thump as it hit something inside the swirling cloud.
Instantly, the mutie moved forward once more, and there came the soft snap of breaking string.
“Now!” J.B. yelled, throwing himself to the ground.
A split second later, a bright flash of light washed over the area, and a deafening thunderclap shook the desert. Already in motion, the companions hit the ground half a heartbeat before a hissing barrage of shrapnel passed over their heads. Giving a low grunt of pain, Doc slapped a hand to his shoulder, where the fabric of his coat was soon stained red.
“Please, oh dear God…” Mildred whispered, almost afraid to look backward. Then she cursed bitterly as a greenish light pulsed through the swirling smoke and sand, still moving onward.
“Begone, foul Visigoth!” Doc bellowed, awkwardly firing the LeMat twice with his left hand, his right clenching the wound.
The first miniball hit sand, but the second ricocheted off something metallic, making the howler expand the cloud in a protective gesture.
Startled, Ryan narrowed his eyes in amazement. The cloud could change size? That was a protective gesture, which meant there was something in the world that the nuking thing feared. He had no idea what that might be, but the simple fact that the mutie had any kind of a mortal weakness gave him new hope.
“How far go?” Jak muttered, wiping the sleeve of his jacket across his sweaty forehead. A true albino, the youth was normally pale as new snow, but now he was nearly pink, flushed from the sheer effort of endlessly putting one boot in front of the other.
“Half mile mebbe,” J.B. replied in a throaty growl, rising stiffly from the ground.
“W-we’re n-not gonna make it…?.” Mildred sighed, her shoulders sagging.
Grabbing the physician by the arm, Ryan spun her and slapped her across the face. Mildred jerked back from the stinging blow, and placed a hand on her cheek.
“We’re gonna make it if I gotta kick your ass all the way!” Ryan snarled, his chest heaving. “Now move!”
Common sense overwhelmed her feelings of rage, and Mildred mutely obeyed, shuffling away from the man as if he had began to issue a green cloud himself.
“Tough love,” J.B. said, bumping her with a hip. “Next time, I’ll slap you. Then you can do me.”
“D-deal,” Mildred said with a weak laugh, a touch of hysteria creeping into her raspy voice.
Back in her own time period, the physician would have had access to dozens of chemicals that could have kept the companions mentally alert and physically strong for days. But these blighted days, her medical kit consisted of only what she could find in the ruins of decaying hospitals and veterinary clinics, along with whatever she could cobble together: upholstery needles to sew wounds shut, nylon fishing line as sutures, raw alcohol to clean wounds, razor blades instead of scalpels, and leather straps for tourniquets. There were a few precious drugs hidden among her meager supplies, but they were all soporifics, designed to put patients to sleep so that they could stand the terrible pain of meatball surgery, nothing that would keep the companions awake.
Heat lightning crackled across the stormy sky as they forced themselves to keep moving. The sand was starting to become mixed with dark earth and rocks, clearly indicating that they were coming out of the desert. That was a good sign, and it put some much needed strength into their heavy legs, their shuffle becoming a brisk walk. But the surge quickly faded, and they returned to a slow stagger, pausing only to fire the occasional round at the howler.
“Any more plas-ex?” Ryan asked hopefully, levering a fresh round into the Steyr. Five more rounds, and he would have to start using his 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol, which had much less range.
“All gone. Used most of it getting us away from this thing in that box canyon,” J.B. answered grimly, his canvas munition bag hanging unnaturally flat at his side. “I’m down to two homie pipe bombs, some firecrackers, a couple of road flares and one, count it, one Molotov that I’m saving for an emergency.”
“And this does not qualify, sir?” Doc demanded, askance.
“Not yet,” Jak snorted, unscrewing the cap on a canteen to take a fast drink. He offered it to the others, but there were no takers.
Pausing at the top of the dune, Ryan saw that it abruptly ended at a rocky cliff that overhung a large pool of water. Lush green bushes grew in abundance along its mossy banks, along with a couple of juniper trees, and schools of rainbow-colored fish were darting about in the clear shallows. Suspiciously, Ryan checked the rad counter on his shirt, but it remained silent. Fireblast! He had hoped it might be a nuke crater and the rads might be enough to fry the howler. Then he grinned. However, mebbe he still could turn the water to their advantage.
“My dear Ryan, I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking,” Doc rumbled, sending two more booming miniballs into the misty howler.
“It’s only fifty feet or so,” Ryan guessed, moving closer to the edge of the cliff.
“That should be enough!” Krysty said unconvincingly, thumbing her last three rounds into the revolver. The cylinder closed with a hollow click.
“Okay, I’ll give us some cover,” J.B. said, pulling out the Molotov and a butane lighter. “Everybody, get ready to move!”
As the howler started up the dune, the companions cut loose with their blasters, the sheer barrage of hot lead holding the indomitable creature at bay for a few precious moments.
Quickly setting fire to the oily rag tied around the neck of the whiskey bottle, J.B. then dashed it on the rocky soil directly in front of the mutie. As the fireball whoofed into existence, the companions turned and jumped.
The fall was short and they hit the water hard, their shoes and boots actually bumping the bottom of the pond. Bitter cold engulfed them, returning a semblance of clarity to their minds even as it stole some of the strength from their bodies.
Kicking hard, Ryan swam back to the surface and stroked for the nearby shore. Dripping wet, he and his companions moved quickly into the bushes and ducked. A few seconds later, a green cloud appeared atop the cliff. The howler moaned even louder than before, and incredibly, moved away, heading back down the dune.
“Thank Gaia, it worked,” Krysty whispered, allowing herself to relax for the first time in a day.
“And we sure needed the bath.” Mildred chuckled briefly.
“Hey, where blaster?” Jak asked, checking his empty holster, then looking about on the spongy moss.
“Over there in the shallows, near the lily pads,” Ryan said, pointing.
Frowning, the young man dropped to his stomach and began to crawl to the pond, trying to stay as concealed as possible.
“Speaking of which, it seems that I am unarmed once more,” Doc muttered, drawing the LeMat, only to slam it back into the holster at his side. Wet black powder was dribbling out of the weapon like ebony blood. The antique blaster would be completely useless until it was thoroughly dried and painstakingly reloaded.
“Here ya go,” J.B. said, sliding a scattergun off his back and tossing it over.
Making the catch, Doc checked to make sure the pump-action 12-gauge was fully loaded. At close range the S&W M-4000 could open a person like a tin can. Although what, if anything, the barrage of lead pellets would do to a howler was anybody’s guess. However, the scattergun had a much greater range than the sword hidden inside his ebony walking stick.
Just then, the green cloud returned to the little cliff and went straight over the edge to plummet into the pool. It hit with a large splash, and the plants along the bottom of the cliff began to wither and die.
“Run, Jak, it’s back!” Mildred yelled, through cupped hands.
Swinging up the longblaster, Ryan started putting 7.62 mm rounds into the cloud until he ran out. Slinging the Steyr, he drew his SIG-Sauer and began hammering the howler just above the surface of the pond. Under the water, some sort of a physical form was visible, more insectlike than norm, along with several mismatched legs, as if the creature had been built from a dozen different bodies.
At the first shot, Jak rose from the water with the Magnum in his grip and fired twice at the mutie, before turning to wade toward shore.
Heading for the pale norm, the howler moved through the pool, the water becoming dull and murky as hundreds of fish rose lifeless to the surface, pale blood oozing from their gills.
“Move fast, my friend!” Doc bellowed, charging out of the bushes to trigger the scattergun at the cloud.
As Jak reached the shore, he slipped in the mud. Reaching out, Doc started to grab the young man by the collar of his leather jacket, then withdrew his hand, unsure what to do for a moment, especially as the collar was lined with razor blades.
“Get him out of the bastard water!” Ryan bellowed, over the gentle coughs of the silenced blaster in his fist.
Firing the scattergun with one hand, Doc thrust out his wounded arm. Floundering in the slippery mud, Jak grabbed the man’s hand and just managed to make it onto the shore before an expanding ring of greenish water reached the bank. Instantly, the lily pads began to turn brown and the frogs went silent.