“Certainly one, and I think two others.”
“Best take a look. Keep together.”
The three hunters had caught up with them, lumbering through the forest, staring down at the three corpses, one of them still twitching as the neural lines finally closed down.
“There more?” Harve asked, breathing hard.
“Three,” Doc said. “I most certainly sent one off to the vale of tears, and I believe I wounded the other two rather severely.”
There was a corpse, its guts spilled all around it. The one hit in the groin was close to death. Its feeble attempts to stem the arterial blood from the shotgun pellets weren’t enough. Its watery eyes turned up at the sight of the norms, and it clamped its teeth together.
“Don’t waste a bullet on it,” J.B. warned. “You said another one, Doc?”
“Yes. I believe I hit it in the legs.”
“Lotta blood this way,” Jak said, stooping over the muddied, trampled dirt to the east of the small clearing. “Dragged itself away.”
“Best chill it,” Krysty said. “Stop it reaching any camp, if there’s more of them around.”
The albino nodded and ran into the shadows, while the others waited in silence.
The shot came less than a minute later, a single booming round that echoed through the wood.
IN THE EXCITEMENT it was Mildred who noticed that all of the dead muties wore the remains of shackles and chains. Ankle locks had worn a deep weal in the stickies’ flesh, while two had rusting iron links hammered around their throats.
“Someone’s been working them,” Gus said. “Heard of slavers owning plantations farther west on the Sippi. All kindsa stories about it.”
“Like what?” J.B. asked curiously.
The hunter looked at his friends for confirmation. “Heard a coupla names. Been hearing them around Deathlands most of my life. Swift and evil.”
“Gert Wolfram and the Magus,” the Armorer guessed, firing the shot at random. He saw from the expressions on the faces of the three hunters that he’d hit the center of the target.
“Right,” Jake said. “You crossed their paths before, mister?”
“Some. Used to ride with a man called Trader. He knew them years ago. Gert Wolfram is supposed to be the fattest person in all Deathlands. Gross. He’s known as the person who first discovered stickies could be caught and slaved. Man he sold them to was called the Magus.”
“They call him the Warlock,” Gus said.
“And the Sorcerer,” Harve added. “They say he’s only part human.”
J.B. nodded. “I heard that also. Then again, I heard plenty of stories about them both. You reckon they might be involved with these stickies?”
“Too late to ask them now,” Mildred said.
“Couple got whip marks on their backs,” Jake told them, stooping over the stickie who’d been groin shot and had just died. “This one and the bastard the old man chilled.”
Doc had recovered his breath, looking at the two corpses. “Perhaps we should move on from this region, in case there are more of these inhuman fiends concealed among the trees.”
“Sounds good,” Krysty agreed. “Cut back to the river and keep moving and heading west.”
“End up at the Sippi,” Harve said. “Might hear news there of your compadre .” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Not far off for a chem storm. Time we was moving on. Get back and pick up the carcass of old boss pig.”
Farewells were brief, clasped hands and a nod and a word, and promises to look out for the others farther down the line.
Then J.B. led the five friends toward the west, cutting through the fringe of the trees, aiming for the slow-flowing river. Harve and his cousins went back east, toward where they’d left the hacked remnants of the wild boar.
THEY’D BEEN MOVING only about fifteen minutes when Krysty held up a hand. “Listen,” she said.
It was a thin, ragged sound, torn apart by the rising wind, like the dismal piping of a lone bird, far away across a bleak moorland.
They all stood still, listening, straining for the noise above the whispering of the swelling river on their right-hand side. The breeze through the high branches rose and fell, covering up the strange sound.