Dark Reckoning by James Axler

Sheffield took another sip of the whiskey, marveling over its smoothness and savoring the rich flavor on his tongue. The ancient stuff tasted nothing like homemade shine.

The next day, his small army of blue shirts would leave this rad-blasted hellhole and seize their new home at Green Cove. He would immediately send out a scout to talk peace with Nathan Cawdor of Front Royal to buy them the week necessary to get the new dish functioning properly. Then he would blind Front Royal, chill Cawdor, take his bitch as his personal slut, loot everything there was, especially any puppies of those mutant dogs so he could raise them as his own guards, and then melt the place to the ground. It made no sense to leave a stronghold like that so close to his new ville where enemies could hide and prepare to launch an attack. The world was full of fools, but the thinking man ruled them all.

Setting down the glass, Sheffield rose from his chair and began to strip for sleep. With the destruction of the gateway, Ryan had been neutralized, Silas was dead and he had a new ville and dish. A new era would soon begin in Deathlands, making the current days of bloody chaos seem like a pleasant afternoon. The whole world was in the palm of his hand, and soon he would start to squeeze.

KALASHNIKOV IN A STEADY grip, a sec man walked among the brick buildings of the Shiloh base, listening for any suspicious noises. The muties hadn’t attacked for a while, and he was part of the new increased patrol to make sure the creatures didn’t get inside the base again. And flying over the wall was just about the only way they could get inside. The hole was jam packed with barbed wire and miscellaneous junk. Nobody and nothing was getting through that crap pile of explosives and glass.

Watching the searchlight swing by overhead, the man glanced around and stepped into the shadows behind the Quonset hut. He lit a cig and drew in a lungful of smoke with a satisfied sigh. Then he went motionless.

Someone stepped in and gently lowered the corpse to the ground, removed the cig and crushed it under a boot.

In a faint sucking noise, Jak removed the knife from the sec man’s neck where he had expertly inserted it into the man’s brain. The blade was shiny clean now, so the teenager rubbed some dirt on the bloody blade to keep down the sheen, then moved on to the Quonset hut.

A light was on above the only door, and two sec men stood guard. But that wasn’t his goal. Spotting some crates and barrels that generated a tiny pool of darkness near the back of the hut, Jak crawled along the ground until he was safely within the shadowed area. Sliding the charge off his back, he placed it against the cool corrugated metal of the hut, the plas molding itself to the irregular surface and firmly adhering. Inserting a timing pencil into the bottom of the wad where it couldn’t be seen, he snapped it off at the correct length starting the silent chem fuse. Then he stabbed another timing pencil into the top of the wad where it couldn’t help but be seen, and set the timing pencil for two hours. If a sec man found the charge, he would remove the wrong pencil trying to defuse the bomb and think he was safe.

One of the guards coughed and the other softly made a rude comment of some kind that started both men laughing. Jak crawled backward from the ticking bomb, and the night swallowed him whole.

LUNGING INTO THE POOL of light, Doc skewered the sec man through the throat, removing any possibility of a cry of alarm. Startled, the dying man dropped his longblaster, and Krysty caught the weapon before it clattered onto the hard ground. Then she grabbed his booted feet while Doc got the shoulders, and they hauled the man where nobody could see and neatly finished the job.

Returning, Doc rubbed out the spilled blood with his boots, while Krysty studied the surrounding buildings to see if anybody noticed the absence of the guard. No one had.