Sand crunched behind Ryan.
Reflexes honed by years of living in Deathlands, the one-eyed man spun to his right, crouching, both hands gripping the Steyr.
A trio of muties erupted from the sand, leaving the shallow troughs they’d evidently dug to spring their trap. Ryan had almost walked over them.
Like some kind of confectioner’s frosting, sand covered the creatures’ bodies, tracking into the crevices of the open sores that covered most of their skin.
To Ryan, they smelled like death, and the stink hovered over them as they ran at him, screaming in rage. “Fireblast!” he gritted, wondering how the hell he’d missed the smell. That alone should have given them away.
“Sacred grounds, outie!” one of the muties snarled. The effort was made wet and sibilant by the upper lip gone missing to the radiation burns. The few teeth that remained were black and filed to sharp edges, no longer seated securely in the diseased gums. The man carried a homemade knife, fashioned by tying a keen-edged wedge of nuked silicon to a long screwdriver. “Now you die!”
Ryan moved smoothly, bringing the Steyr’s butt up in a sharp arc. Firing the weapon would have alerted other muties in the area.
The rifle stock crunched against the creature’s face, the bone giving way instantly to the blow. The mutie’s skull exploded in a vivid spray of blood and brains.
As the corpse dropped to the ground, the other two muties threw themselves at Ryan. One held an ax, and a knife flashed in the other mutie’s hand as they drove him to the sand.
Ryan dodged a knife strike that missed his head by inches and drove the blade deep into the sand. His attacker howled in frustration and started to pull the blade back for another attempt as Ryan caught the second man’s wrist, preventing the ax he held from splitting open his skull.
The air over the shoulders of the two muties seemed to ripple, as though a mirage had considered forming there but had suddenly chosen not to. And the itch of warning that had been spreading across Ryan’s shoulders became a definite burn.
THE STINKING SMOKE given off by the oilcloth torch had triggered a headache that had been pounding at Krysty’s temples for almost an hour.
“Doc.”
“Yes, Krysty?” her companion replied from behind her. like her, he carried a torch, adding to the wreath of smoke that followed them as they worked their way through the underground corridors of the White Sands military installation.
“We check out this room, then we get out of here for a while.”
“As you wish, my dear,” Doc said in his deep, pleasant voice.
Krysty pressed on, senses alert, paying particular attention to the extra senses given her by the mutie strain that was linked with her own DNA. Her hair was coiled tight against her scalp, feeling like another layer of skin, only more sensitive to the shifting breezes inside the corridor. Of the group, only she and Doc hadn’t rotated out topside since entering the complex, and she was sick of dust and dark.
The woman lifted the torch higher until the apex of the yellow-and-white flame nearly kissed the metal ceiling. She was an inch short of six feet, and carried 150 pounds in whipcord curves. Her hair was flame red and sentient, responding to her emotions and mood swings, further evidence of her mutie heritage. Even by the light of the torches, her eyes were cut emeralds that gleamed liquidly.
Home for Krysty before she’d met Ryan Cawdor and started traveling with him across Deathlands had been a ville called Harmony. Her mother, Sonja, had taught her ways of calling upon and listening to the force of Gaia, the Earth Mother, making Krysty part of her family’s mystic heritage. For years Krysty had thought her mother dead, but lately there had been reports suggesting that wasn’t true.
Maybe. It was all confusing to Krysty and had raised some questions and anger she had no way of venting. She tightened the grip on her Smith amp; Wesson Model 640 .38 pistol when the corridor they were following abruptly ended.
“Door,” she told Doc, moving the torch forward to see it better. It was heavy steel, set flush with the frame, and it would take some real effort to pry it open if it was locked.