James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Mildred used an H&K MP-5 A she’d picked up in the armory. It was a brutal weapon at close range. And this was very close range. She fired on full-auto inches from the stickles’ chests, heads and bellies, blowing them back onto the linoleum. The backsplash of guts and brains alone would’ve caused a less hearty soul to faint dead away. Mildred dumped the empty mag, flipped it over and cracked in the full one she had joined to it with duct tape. She clacked the bolt and let the H&K rip some more, aiming up into the gaps in the ceiling where she could see movement

Bodies dropped through the ceiling’s metal framework, bodies already mortally wounded.

J.B. tromboned his 12-gauge and sent blast after blast of f!6chettes into the oncoming muties. Before the

second plastic hull had hit the floor, he had cycled through the mag. The stickies he hit with flechettes didn’t get up. At a range of four feet, all those little steel darts were still clustered in a supertight spread. It was like getting slammed by a howitzer round, and it made a big hole.

Finally the stickies stopped coming.

The rolling thunder of their blasterfire echoed deep in the building, then quickly faded. They could hear the chitter of the computer banks again.

“Watch out for the empties,” J.B. said, kicking aside a welter of brass hulls that littered the floor. “You could break your rad-blasted leg.”

They pushed the cart bearing the nuke over to the entrance to the gateway. It took all four of them to lift the weapon and its cart inside. They set it down on one of the hexagonal floor plates.

“Make sure your mags are full,” Ryan said. “There’s no way of telling what we’re jumping into.”

When the others had done that, he reached over and pulled the chamber door shut.

Static electricity crackled around and around the armaglass walls.

Ryan looked up and watched the fog begin to form just under the ceiling. He remembered his last jump and for a moment, just before he sat on die floor, he felt a twinge of nameless dread.

His jump dream started out better than most.

He appeared quite suddenly in the middle of a scene of domestic bliss in a Swiss-chalet-type farmhouse,

Ryan, the daddy dirt picker, and Krysty, the vastly pregnant dirt picker’s wife. Mildred was there, acting as midwife because an infant Cawdor was due to make its Death lands debut.

On a rustic, wood-framed bed, dressed in a long cotton nightshirt, Krysty lay back and prepared to give birth. Her face was flushed and beaded with sweat, her breathing hard and quick.

“That’s it,” Mildred said. “Push now. I can almost see the top of the head.”

Ryan could see nothing because. Mildred was in the way. He moved closer to her and looked over her shoulder. The woman was right There, peeking out between his lover’s splayed labia, was the crest of his child’s head. It appeared to have no hair.

“Push harder,” Mildred urged.

Krysty panted and pushed, gritting her teeth as she strained.

“It’s coming,” Ryan told her. “It’s coming.”

The head popped out into the light of day, face up. It had no nose to speak of, just a pair of holes in the middle of its face. Its eyes were black and dead, like a doll’s. And when it opened its mouth, it had rows of little needle teeth.

Ryan choked back a gasp. With his left hand he reached over Mildred’s shoulder and went for the hairless head; with his right, he grabbed the leather-wrapped handle of his eighteen-inch panga, which was sheathed to the back of his calf.

Before he could catch hold of it, the half-born stickie

sank its teeth into its own mother’s crotch. Krysty screamed and started pounding between her legs with her fists. Blood sprayed all over the bed.

“Back!” Ryan said, shoving Mildred aside.

Everything moved in slow motion, everything except the little stickie’$ jaws.

Ryan grabbed the thing by the head and jerked it out of Krysty’s body. Its neck was stronger than it looked and it didn’t break. He flipped the stickie around and held it by its ankles. Still connected to Krysty by the umbilical cord, it growled at him and snapped.