The carny master yanked Jackson to its feet and led his men down the hill, stepping over bodies of their fallen comrades. The man wounded in the leg had already bled to death. For the first time, Crecca really took in the run-down shanty ville below the lake. It looked deserted, and he wondered why Cawdor and the others hadn’t tried to make it down there. They could have at least made a fight of it then. As Crecca neared the lake, he warned his men to keep their blasters ready and the targets in their sights, in case it was some kind of trap.
Thunder rolled from the clouds over the lake. Crecca ignored it. Jackson, on the other hand, became highly agitated at the noise, more agitated than Crecca had ever seen it. The stickie started hopping about nervously, from one foot to the other, and it strained at the limit of the chain, digging furrows in the mud as it tried to get closer to the water’s edge. It sputtered and coughed on its own outpouring of saliva.
Crecca gave the little stickie a hard, snapping jerk on the choke collar to bring it back in line. By way of answer, Jackson turned and bit him, a single savage, needle-toothed chomp and release.
“Bastard!” the carny master cried, wrenching back his torn and bleeding left hand and dropping the end of the leash. He managed to keep hold of his M-16, but no way could he shoulder it and take aim at the fast-moving little mutie. Jackson made a beeline for the lake, dragging the length of chain behind it. Without a pause, it jumped in, feet first, and then started to run, thrashing into deeper water, toward the minisquall that was forming.
Crecca had never seen the stickie swim before.
And it turned out it couldn’t.
After Jackson had battled its way to neck height in the water, its hairless head slipped under, popped up and went under again, ever farther from shore, as if the stupe creature were trying to continue to walk along the bottom. It was then that big swirls appeared all around it. Brown back and tail fins knifed up through the surface. The smallest of the fish circling Jackson looked to be about six feet long. As Crecca watched, the little stickie was buffeted and knocked about by lunging fish. Jackson surged backward, its head throwing a bow wave, as it was half lifted into the air by something huge beneath the surface that had hold of it.
“They’re eatin’ the ugly little fuck!” one of the chillers exclaimed. “Tearing the living shit out of him!”
Crecca cradled his injured hand. The needle teeth had punctured the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. It looked as if it had been caught in the gears of a machine. He was lucky not to have lost a few fingers. On the other hand, his investment in Jackson was a total write-off. Only a triple-stupe droolie, or someone contemplating, suicide, turned his back on a stickie that had tasted human blood.
“They can have him,” Crecca said. “It’ll save me the cost of a bullet.”
The carny master walked away, leaving Jackson to its fate. As he moved closer to Ryan and the companions, he waved with his assault rifle for the chillers to follow.
“Are they dead, or playing dead, or what?” said the man beside him.
The carny master didn’t answer. His quarry seemed to be frozen in position, but he could see the slight rise and fall of their chests. They were breathing, and they were making little movements of the face: their closed eyelids twitched, as if they were asleep on their feet and dreaming.
“Not dead,” Crecca announced.
He moved in for a closer look at Cawdor.
“What are you and your pals playing at, One-Eye?” the carny master asked.
There was no response.
Crecca jammed the muzzle of the M-16 against Ryan’s cheek.
No response.
“They sick?” a chiller asked. “If not, I’ll make ’em sick.” With that, he slammed J.B. in the lower back with the sole of his boot. The Armorer grunted at the impact, which knocked him off his feet. He fell into the mud near the waterline, but didn’t move.