Apocalypse Unborn (23 page)

“Precisely,” Doc said. “Rumor has it that Magus time travels.”

“No, that’s bullshit. He can’t be jumping back and forth in time. S-t/s says reality would fall to pieces.”

“Time is a dimension, correct?”

“Of course, the fourth dimension.”

“What if some other kind of dimensional travel is involved? Beyond the fourth, I mean. If there are four, might not there be ten or a hundred?”

“Or a million.”

“If the travel in this case was between parallel universes, would there be catastrophic disruption to the current existence?”

“There’s no way to tell. Our experience with consequences of temporal transfer is limited to what happened to you. A single case. Certainly parallel universes have been predicted, theoretically.”

Doc could verify those theories, but chose not to.

“Is it conceivable that he could be looting parallel worlds and returning to this one?”

“No. The kind of dimensional travel you are talking about is impossible. No such technology existed prior to the Apocalypse, and I seriously doubt it could have been developed since. There are fundamental insurmountable problems. Even if Magus could move between universes, how would he ever find his way back? How would he know where he would end up when he stepped across? There is no up or down in what you are describing. Just a vast otherscape. We’re not talking about a map of Georgia here. It’s a random number crapshoot. One universe is just as likely to be next door at one moment as any another. And the consequences of travel would be just as destructive. Bringing things into a time line from elsewhere…”

“Else
when
…”

“Sure, whatever. It would have the same destabilizing effect.”

“So, where did the trainers come from?”

“They could have come from outer space,” Kirby said. “That’s an easier sell than parallel worlds. But it doesn’t still speak to a larger issue.”

“Which is?”

“If Magus could go anywhere in a million universes, why would he come back to this hellhole? Even for a visit?”

Doc sipped at his Scotch whiskey. It was very, very smooth. “Touché, Dr. Kirby,” he said. “Why indeed.”

“It’s time to get back to the control room,” the black man said. “Under the circumstances, I think we’ll leave the dishes.”

Doc pushed up from his chair and fell in behind.

Clearly there were some things that Kirby wasn’t taking into account. Doc had seen matériel from another world, seen beings from that world arrive here not once, but twice, with his own eyes. And despite that double intrusion, the fabric of existence seemed as whole as it ever had. None of Kirby’s supposed, disastrous effects had taken place.

Perhaps it was a problem of specialization, he thought. When Doc had gone to university it hadn’t been an issue, but in the last part of the twentieth century whitecoats only worked in limited fields. They didn’t know the rules or operating procedures of other disciplines. And moreover, they didn’t give a damn. Perhaps if Colonel Bell had survived, he might have gotten a more satisfactory answer to his question about the trainers. Physicists in his experience were voluble and interesting conversationalists, less grounded in the purely rational than other whitecoats. Freer, more liberal thinkers. Not that Kirby wasn’t personable enough, but he was a mathematician by training and inclination.

Somewhat tipsy from the whiskey, and sleepy from all the food, Doc felt a sudden rush of sentimentality. He was about to say goodbye to Deathlands after all these years. The actuality of his leaving had finally begun to sink in. It was no longer an abstract desire, a wistful longing. He was really going, forever.

He thought about the memories he would be taking back to Nebraska. Of the battles. Of the dangers. Of the triumphs. Of Lori Quint. Truly he was not the same man who was stolen away. He had changed into a hardbitten warrior.

Could he actually return to his own peaceful time, to domesticity, to academia?

Could he live as he should have lived?

Could he slip into the ease and safety of Victorian America as if none of this had ever happened?

To have seen so much death and suffering. To have caused death and suffering in order to survive, answering bullet for bullet, blade thrust for blade thrust. What kind of a father would such a man be in a world where violence was not a virtue, but the act of a psychopath, a serial criminal. Would he be the kind of father children would run from screaming?

Doc slumped into a control room chair, feeling the full weight and sum of his years.

Kirby tinkered with the computers and gradually the room started to get very warm. The generators’ hum had become a shrill whine. They were nearly at peak power.

“It won’t be long now,” the mathematician assured him. “The grid is just coming online.”

Doc let his gaze turn inward. Instead of joy, he felt excruciating pain over what he was about to give up. It was something he hadn’t expected to feel at this moment, something he had to put aside.

What I have prayed for so long, he told himself, I will humbly accept as God’s true gift. The path that lies straight ahead is the path I will not waver from.

Ryan had already made his decision before the grating music paused and the doors banged back for the fourth time. It was a decision forced upon him by circumstances, a decision of last resort. The army of freebooters that had sailed south from Morro Bay had dwindled to thirteen souls.

Eight islanders. Five companions.

If the survivors of the
Taniwha tea
remained where they were, in the middle of the islet, the combined attacks of large and small foes were going to grind them into stew meat.

Ryan smacked an oncoming scagworm in the side of its domed head with the flat of the panga. It made a clanking sound, like he’d swatted a steel ingot. He’d already learned that striking these muties with the sharp edge did nothing but dull the blade. The panga blow knocked the scagworm off course, and diverted its attention long enough for it to acquire another target. Instead of rejoining the attack on him, it slithered off to assault an islander who was stomping a rat devil to pulp while two more chewed the backs of his calves.

“Back to the beach!” he told the companions. He repeated himself to Eng, shouting, “Into the water! We’ve got to get into the water.”

The captain waved his men after them.

They formed another flying wedge of sword and knife and tomahawk, and ducking under the swoops of the Wazls, fought their way through the stickies and swampies. There were fewer to deal with now, and the ones that remained seemed warier, a tad less suicidal.

As they broke through the thin mutie ranks and charged for the shore, the uniforms in the boats stood and shouldered their autorifles, but in a very relaxed, lackadaisical sort of way. Their expressions said, “This is going to be good.”

“Ryan, what the rad blazes are you doing?” J.B. asked.

“Just leveling the playing field.”

“But the fuckers in the rowboats—”

“If they shoot, they shoot,” Ryan said as the companions joined them, splashing into the warm water. “Would you rather check out from a bullet, or die with a stickie peeling off your face?”

“A bullet, most definitely.”

“Deeper!” Ryan shouted to the others. “Wade out deeper!”

The thirteen survivors trudged out until the water came up to their hips, then they turned toward shore to face the coming onslaught.

“Yes!” Ryan exclaimed as the fastest and most agile of their pursuers jumped into the water after them. The rat devils could swim, all right. They dogpaddled, their heads held above water, little legs kicking. But they swam in straight lines at a tenth of their speed on land. And they couldn’t jump around to evade the falling blades.

No one needed instructions on what to do next.

Cursing and snarling, the survivors hacked and whacked the surface-swimming rat devils. The glancing blows stunned them; the well-aimed swings bisected them. Their toy-poodle-size bodies drifted by, leaking red. Some of the stunned muties came to between the shore and the boats, struggling with broken legs and broken backs to stay afloat, to keep their heads above the water. Their frantic efforts created bubbles and splash, ripples and wavelets on the smooth gray sea.

Sensing that dinner might soon be out of reach, the two Wazls grew more frantic in their attacks. The down drafts of their swoops and dives buffeted the companions’ faces, and the gusts of wind propelled the floating rat devils even farther off shore.

The scagworms reached the finish line next. A half-dozen of them snaked right up to the waterline, but stopped short of getting their thousand or so feet wet. They either could no longer sense the presence of their prey, or they refused to enter the water to chase it.

Swampies had a problem with the water, too. They were smart enough to see that if they waded out far enough to reach the norms, they would be submerged to their armpits, which meant they couldn’t swing their clubs and swords with any power. Not being able to finish the job they started made the ankle-biters furious. They smashed their weapons into the shallows, pounding the water to a froth.

The stickies were the immediate concern. Water didn’t bother them, and once they had regrouped and gotten their numbers up, they seemed to have rediscovered their zeal for the hunt.

As with the others, the stickies were dealt with more easily in the water than on land. Again, because it limited their jumping and maneuvering ability. The stickies had to come to the norms, and when they did they were met with sharp steel. The islanders slaughtered them like pigs, with sword sweeps that practically cut them in two. Everyone got their licks in. J.B. with his tomahawk; Jak, Mildred and Krysty with their blades. Again and again, Ryan’s panga cleaved soft skulls down the nose holes. Mutie gore spread in a thin greasy film on the water’s surface. Stickies and parts of stickies drifted away in a swathe of blood.

Seeing the futility of attack, a few of the bald muties actually managed to hold themselves back, although with great difficulty. They blew kisses, hopping around wildly behind the irate swampies on the shore.

From over the top of the low rise came a buzzing sound, then bleating squeals. Three scalies, their heads shrouded in clouds of stinging black flies, blundered blindly toward the water, their flabby arms outstretched. The other muties stepped aside and let the behemoths pass. The scalies threw themselves into the water, submerging in an attempt to drive off their tiny but lethal attackers. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it had come to them a little late. The waves they created were still lashing the shore when they popped up like dead whales, facedown, spread-eagled.

The recruits were clearly winning and yet the uniforms in the boats still held their fire. When Ryan glanced back at them, he saw they had actually lowered their weapons. A couple of men in each boat had slipped oars in the water and were rowing off shore a bit. The splash of the blades stirred up the floating blood and rat devil bodies. The rowers couldn’t seem to get out of the spreading slick, or maybe they weren’t trying. The uniforms and the trainers stared fixedly at the cone and the steel doors. What were the bastards waiting for? Ryan wondered.

On the far side of the boats, Ryan saw boils in the water, huge boils from red-orange shapes rolling just under the surface. They were big shapes with big mouths, moving up the chum slick of dead and dying muties, lazily gulping. Every time a struggling rat devil was sucked down it sounded like a toilet flushing. The boils got closer and closer.

With a grating, scraping noise one of the boats suddenly moved six feet sideways, nearly pitching out the occupants.

The other boats were likewise jolted, uniforms and trainers clinging to gunwhales for dear life.

Behind him, the Wazls let out a piercing shriek. Not of fury or bloodlust this time.

Of pain.

K
RYSTY DUCKED HER HEAD
as the lizard bird’s shadow swept over her. After the close call she’d had a few minutes ago, it was impossible not to flinch. The Wazl reversed course and joined its sole surviving partner above the middle of the islet. The pair began to fly in tight spirals, trying desperately to gain altitude. With their torn wings, they could only climb to sixty or seventy feet.

Krysty didn’t see the five blond girls as they stepped out of the doorway. She was looking at the birds. When she glanced down, the wraiths were already descending into the amphitheater. Krysty would have laughed at the sight of them, but she knew the kind of jokes Magus played weren’t funny to anyone but him. They looked like sisters. Quintuplets. Identical heights. Tall and willowy, with perfect snow-white faces.

The young girls glided over the littered battlefield, the long hems of their white gowns dragging through the carnage, their thin arms folded under their breasts, like they were crossing a ballroom at a baron’s wedding feast. To Krysty, there was something odd about the way they moved and held themselves so erect, something unnatural.

They walked directly under the desperately flapping birds and raised their heads. When the wraiths opened their mouths, Krysty saw they were black inside, like they’d been eating licorice. The teeth and tongues were black, too.

It looked like they were yelling at the birds, but no sound came from their throats.

Unable to escape, the Wazls swooped down on the newcomers. It was a big mistake. The huge birds dropped out of the sky as if hit by cannonshot, one instant flying, the next falling in a heap. The lizard birds died thrashing on the rocks while the Nordic quintet sang its silent song. The odor of cooked lizard meat wafted across the islet.

The wraiths moved on deliberately, but without haste, as if they had all the time in the world, as if they were in total command.

A few of the scalies still hunkered over their human victims. They saw the girls coming out of the corners of their eyes, but waited too long to get their feet. After they had risen from their haunches, they realized they couldn’t move fast enough to escape.

Black mouths opened in unison.

The scalies held their hands over their ears, but it didn’t do any good. They clustered together, dropping to their knees, moaning, bobbing their heads. Krysty saw their eyes burst, then what had to be liquid brains started running out their noses. The blond teenagers weren’t done yet, though. They glided closer, sucked down a breath and opened their mouths again. Shortly thereafter, the scalies’ skins began to delaminate. Between the layers of tissue on their sagging chests and backs, air pockets formed, then expanded as intense heat turned trapped juices to steam. As on a well-roasted turkey, great voids appeared under the skin, translucent bubbles glistening with fat.

It was clear to Krysty that whatever blundered into the girls’ range died. Pretty heads turned, mouths opened and eyeballs exploded.

“What the hell are they?” Mildred said.

“A mutie clean-up squad,” Krysty told her. “They’re coming for us, and taking out everything in between.”

The swampies saw what they were up against, and took off running around the islet’s perimeter.

The stickies on the beach appeared confused, unable or unwilling to leave. Still hopping around, they started bleeding from ears and nostrils as the wraiths glided closer.

“They’re doing everything in unison,” Krysty said. “They turn at the same time, they even blink at the same time. I don’t think they have the power to chill one-on-one. I think it has to be five to one.”

“I can’t throw a knife that far and hit anything,” Mildred said. “But Jak can.”

“Chill them, Jak,” Krysty said.

The albino shook his sleeve and a pair of leaf-bladed throwing knives dropped into his hand. “Two left,” he said.

“Just do it. Don’t let them get any closer.”

They were already too close. Krysty could see their blue eyes, their pale cheeks touched with roses, their nubile bodies under the gauzy gowns. Their unnatural, black-lined mouths turned toward her.

The spearing pain up through her palate was accompanied by the taste of copper and a sensation of extreme heat, as every nerve in her face, chest and arms fired at once.

“Throw it!” she cried.

With a snap of his arm, Jak fired off a knife. It sizzled through the air, arcing the last four feet, curving and diving into the front of the long white throat.

Whatever the hell it was, it shut its mouth and staggered backward into its mirror images. Thick blood dripped onto the wraith’s bodice. She opened her mouth, and it was no longer black. It was red, and more red poured forth. She staggered out of formation, clutching her neck.

The other four continued to silently scream. Two of the islanders standing closer to the shore sprang tremendous nose bleeds. They ducked under the water to block out the pain.

Jak threw his last knife. Again, he aimed for the windpipe, and he hit what he aimed at. The impact knocked the mutie down. It did not get up. Its airway blocked by cold steel, it slowly suffocated.

At once the mutie attack lost its force.

Krysty and Mildred charged out of the shallows and launched themselves onto one of the wraiths. Dodging her sharp nails and teeth, Krysty grabbed her by the braid and Mildred caught hold of the backs of her arms. Together they shoved her head under water. They held it there until she stopped struggling and stopped blowing bubbles. When they let go, the limp body rose to the surface and floated slowly away.

The other two wraiths met less peaceful ends at the hands of Captain Eng and his crew. In ankle-deep water, the islanders surrounded the pair. Behind the wall of wide, brown bodies, sabers rose and fell, rose and fell. If the muties cried out in pain, the sound was drowned out by the grunts of their down-swinging executioners.

Screams, then a flurry of staccato blasterfire came from the water behind them. Krysty looked over her shoulder and saw six of the rowboats had overturned and men were splashing around in panic.

J.B.
SENSED THE TIDE OF BATTLE
was turning when Jak took out the first wraith with a knife. When the second wraith met the same fate, the pain in his skull diminished substantially. The field of combat was heaped with dead. Most of the other muties—Wazls, scalies, stickies, rat devils—were out of the game and the rest had scattered to escape the silent chilling. The scagworms had taken cover by burrowing deep into the piles of bodies. The main obstacle to the companions’ survival was the uniforms, and it was a big one.