James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

“Gaia!” Krysty exclaimed. “What’s that?”

“Stickles making some kind noise,” Jak said. “All at once. Heard when snuck up before.”

“Let’s get closer,” Ryan said.

They trotted one hundred feet below the ridge line, working their way to a large patch of trees about six

hundred yards up from the overpass. The closer they got to the mass of stickles, the clearer the strange sound became. When they stopped at the cover of the thorn trees, they could make it out quite distinctly.

“Kaaa!” the stickies yelled with all their might. Then they paused for breath and shouted again.

“They’re shouting the same thing over and over,” J.B. said. “What’s it mean?”

“His name,” Mildred blurted out. “It’s his name.” Ryan stared at her in amazement. “Whose name?” “Their leader,” she said. “They’re calling for him to come forward. That’s what they’re doing.” “How the fireblast do you know that?” When she didn’t answer, J.B. nudged him with an elbow. “Have a look down there, Ryan,” he said, passing over the binocs.

The whitish mound they had seen in the distance was made of bodies, living bodies in constant motion. Stickies completely covered the overpass. They were heaped on top of the concrete bridge; they clung to the side railing, hanging off one another, spilling like a nubby carpet down over the roadway. The entire mass rippled and flexed as those on the tarmac climbed over their fellows, attempting to reach the top.

Then a lone figure appeared in the middle of the overpass.

He clambered on top of the piles of prostrated bodies and stood on their necks and heads. He was Ryan’s intended target; there was no doubt about that. And he was huge. Though the mud’e leader towered over the

stickies, a better gauge of scale for Ryan was the M-60 machine gun he held easily in one fist, like a handhlaster. The weapon had a strange paint job: blotches of hot pink, green, orange and red, a sort of anticamouflage, as if it were intended to draw notice and hostile fire. If the big man was saying anything to his troops, it was drowned out by their pulsing cry. Waving his arms, he ran back and forth over the backs of their piled bodies.

“He’s in range,” J.B. said. “Chill him.”

Ryan passed the binocs to Krysty. As he unslung the Steyr SSG-70 bolt-action sniper rifle and uncapped the six-power scope, she lowered the binocs and said, “They’re mating, Ryan. The stickies are mating down there, making more stickies.”

The one-eyed man looked at her doubtfully. He knew they were too far away to see that kind of detail. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“I’ve seen diem doing it before.”

“Seen stickies humping?” he asked. “When did you see them? Where?”

“In my jump dream.”

He shook his head. “Krysty, you’re making about as much sense as Mildred.”

“Dark night, Ryan,” J.B. said, “take the shot Or give me the gun and I will.”

“No, this one’s mine. I’ll do it”

He chose a shooting position at the far end of the line of cover, where the trees were thin enough for him to crawl between their trunks without risking a snapped

branch and sap poisoning, but where the leaves were thick enough to hide his scope and muzzle-flashes from die enemy. Poking the barrel through the foliage, he quickly acquired the target in the telescope’s view field. The SSG-70’s scope was a little less powerful than the binocs, but its optics were of better quality. Through the heat mirage, he could see the big bald mutic, his white skin blotched with patches of brown, or vice versa. Ryan couldn’t tell if the patches were painted on or a permanent feature.

The mutie wasn’t just tall, but had huge muscles and no body fat For his size, he was amazingly quick on his feet As he darted from side to side on the overpass, Ryan couldn’t hold the cross hairs on him for more than a couple of seconds. The one-eyed warrior knew that if he squeezed off a shot, chances were the big mutie would be a couple of feet one way or the other by the time the bullet reached the intended point of impact.