James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

harm. “He who wields this weapon,” the witch had promised, “shall not fall in battle.”

Kaa scooted back behind the crest of the hill, then started along the track that led to his main encampment. He was the only member of the recce party carrying a blaster or a slabber. Stickies as a rule weren’t fond of weapons, predark or otherwise. They found that tools interfered with their pleasure during slaughter. They preferred to use their sucker hands and needle teeth for chilling. Rogero refused to carry even so much as a club. Their other mutie kin, the scalies and scabbies, the swampies and cannies, had no such qualms about using blasters or blades or blunts in battle. If they weren’t as physically powerful as the stick-ies, the other muties’ blood lust was at least tempered by a healthy desire for self-preservation.

The stickies’ propensity to violence was such that nothing pleased them more than tearing apart a victim while they themselves were being ripped asunder. This perverted, Bushido-gone-amok was an integral, defining part of their nature as were their instinctive urges to hunt living prey, to nest in great masses and in great masses to breed in profusion. As with other hunter species, most of the space in their brains was devoted to fine control of their primary sensory apparatus. All their pink matter went to smell, taste and sight; there was no room for higher thought The stickies* mental shortcomings notwithstanding, Kaa had the greatest respect for their physical abilities. And their loyalty.

They killed for him, bred for him, died for him.

What more could any general ask of a foot soldier?

It took almost an hour for Kaa and his party to circle around to the back side of the hills and reach the base camp. He had located it well beyond the range of the baron’s daylight foot patrols, in a shallow bowl between a pair of rounded peaks. There were no structures of any kind in the camp. Stickies slept and ate rough. There were fires, though, and his army danced and cavorted around the scattered blazes.

Kaa was pleased to see how rapidly the young ones were maturing. It was already hard to tell the generations apart That was the other positive side to delaying the attack on Baron Elijah by twenty-four hours. Instead of fielding an extra thousand ankle-biters, Kaa would have that many three-quarters adults fighting at his side.

A cheer went up as his army sensed his presence. They shouted his name and jerked their arms overhead as they spun wildly through the clouds of wood smoke.

It was time to spill some blood, Kaa thought.

The throng parted before his advance, and stickies by die hundreds prostrated themselves, falling to earth in waves of supplicating flesh. Kaa walked upon their backs to the center of the camp, where a small knot of figures knelt on the ground. The baron’s couriers, sent to bring reinforcements from the bordering feudal lords, were bound hand and foot.

They knew what was coming; he could see it in their eyes.

Only one of them, a norm Kaa had known from the

old days in Wiltie ville, mustered the courage to speak. “Zit,” he said in a shaking, tearful voice, “whatever I did to you way back when, I’m sorry for. Honest, I am. I was only following orders. Same as you. If I hadn’t done what the baron told me to, he’d have put me on the wheel, you know that. It was nothing personal. It was never personal.”

“That’s funny,” Kaa said, “with me it’s always personal.”

He pointed his M-60 at the stars and cut loose a long burst of 7.62 mm tracer fire. When the arcs of light vanished from the sky, when the gunshot echoes faded, he peeled open his pineal eye.

“Don’t do this,” the sec man moaned.

It was too late.

It was already done.

Orders had been given, and orders had been accepted.

Movement stirred through the crowd. The young ones hurried forward, some carrying metal cans high over their heads. A dozen of them immediately jumped on one of the defenseless sec men and with suckered fingers pried open his jaws. They held his mouth wide while others ripped off the top of an olive green can.