James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

for the destruction of the norm mecca of Willie ville, it was the baron’s own zoo master. Years ago Knack-erman had been so bored that he had amused himself by sitting the future mutant lord on his lap and teaching him to read. He’d chosen Kaa because, unlike the other young muties in the zoo, he wasn’t physically repulsive-the scalies and scabbies had their skin problems, the constant oozing and the feral stink. Stickles were too dangerous to make pets of, as were cannies. Doom-ies made poor companions, as they were off in their own worlds most of the time or telling you things you didn’t want to hear.

Knackerman had let him follow along like a dog as he did his brutal chores: the forced matings, the cull-ings of live young that looked too normal to suit the baron’s breeding plan. In retrospect it seemed to Kaa that the zoo master had wanted him to be a naive witness, someone he knew he could impress with his power as a norm, with his supposed moral authority. The zoo master had made a big mistake by showing the boy so much. Without meaning to, Knackerman had taught Kaa that the baron’s zoo was an evil that had to be erased at any cost.

As the north tunnel broke through into the light of day, the piebald lord’s mind filled with bouncing images of earth and sky and the chem-scorched motor hotel. His stickies were pouring up through the narrow opening in the ground, racing for the cover of the side of the building and then moving quickly along it

From a trio of simultaneous viewpoints, he saw his

strategy unfold. The rear doors of each of the three semitrailers were open and unguarded. The sec men never expected an attack from the rear; all their weapons were aimed the other way. The squads of stickies dashed unchallenged across the open ground, then burst into the backs of the trailers, arms waving.

Kaa’s brain staggered under a jumble of superimposed images, different but similar. He saw a blur of norm faces full of shock, eyes wide with terror. The sec men tried to turn and get their weapons up, but there wasn’t time. The world rocked as heaps of wildly scuffling bodies crashed to the trailers’ steel floors.

Their cries muffled by stickie palms, their shoulders and heels pinned by stickie arms, the sec men came undone in long, raggedy strips.

A tremor rippled through the army that lay hidden in plain sight, a yearning that rattled their very bones.

They smelled blood.

Kaa strained to hold them back a few seconds more. If they waited, they would lose no soldiers to the berm’s blasterposts. They would enter Willie ville at full strength. He held them back because he didn’t want their beautiful lives wasted. He held them back because he loved them.

Like his hero Charlemagne, he was a king after God’s own heart.

J.B. CRAWLED FORWARD into the cramped darkness. By the time he’d advanced thirty feet, the light from the hole behind him had vanished. It was so black that he

couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or shut. He had to feel his way along, fumbling for the walls of the tunnel in front of him. When he stopped to make sure the others were close, the top of Mildred’s head rammed into his behind.

“Sorry, John,” she said, sounding nervous.

“Is Doc back there?” J.B. asked.

“I’m here, John Barrymore.”

“Keep tight to me,” the Armorer said, then started forward again. At least, he told himself, there wasn’t enough room in the tunnel to turn around, which meant that if he stumbled onto a stickle digging in the dark, he would most likely come on it from behind. Perhaps the kill-crazy mutant wouldn’t be able to get its sucker fingers on his face.

J.B. counted his crawling steps as he proceeded, trying to keep track of where he was in relation to the berm. After a few minutes of travel, he figured he had to be beyond it. But the tunnel showed no signs of ending. It seemed to be angling to the left, though he couldn’t be sure. Ahead was only more blackness. He decided to give up counting and concentrated instead on speed.