James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

Ryan moved in on them with his panga. He gripped

it like a baseball bat, hacking at the heads and necks of the flopping muties. The deaths he gave them were neither quick nor clean. Still infected by the dream, Ryan exorcised his loathing for the debased species, making these few pay dearly for his nightmare. The stickies shrieked under the rain of heavy but indifferently aimed blows.

While the one-eyed man worked off his fury, Jak ducked under the crazed rush of a trio of muties. The teenager spun and struck like a poison-spitting cobra, with perfect aim. Too fast for a human eye to follow, leaf-bladed throwing knives leaped from his hand to the unguarded necks of the stickies. The metal handles of his deadly blades appeared as if by magic in the sides of their throats, slicing through the clustered arteries and sending bright blood spurting. The sudden, complete loss of blood pressure to their brains dropped the stickies where they stood.

There was a loud hiss behind Ryan, and a blast of fresh, cool air hit his back. As he whirled, he saw the last surviving stickie. Screaming in rage, it clung to JJJ.’s back, riding him out of the open chamber doorway.

Fighting to keep his balance, the Armorer tripped over the portal and crashed to the floor of the brightly lit room outside. The stickie’s weight came down on top of him, but J.B. already had the slim, polished steel of his Tekna knife clutched in his fist. He thumbed the button in the butt of the knife’s handle, and the metal sheath flicked back, exposing a bright scalpel blade.

As the stickie ripped off his hat and glasses, J.B. reached back and slashed at the join of the mutie’s hip and thigh, deftly slitting the femoral artery. Though its blood pulsed out in great gouts, the stickie refused to die. It grabbed hold of its enemy with both hands and started tearing at his neck.

Ryan jumped from the gateway chamber and with a downward slash of his panga cleaved the creature’s right arm off at the shoulder. Before the massive wound could even begin to bleed, he brought the long knife swinging around in a tight horizontal arc. The stickie’s head fell from its neck and skittered across the floor, rolling under a gunmetal gray desk.

With Mildred’s help, Ryan managed to pry the dead but still-strangling fingers from their friend’s throat.

“Scab-ass bastard,” J.B. croaked, massaging his neck, “wanted to take me to hell with him.”

“Hey, somebody, need hand here,” Jak said from the mat-tram chamber’s entry. He held Krysty draped against his hip. Her head lolled loose on her shoulders, and her prehensile red hair hung in limp strands. Her long, slender legs wouldn’t support her weight.

“I got her, Jak,” Ryan said, scooping Krysty into his arms.

There had been a time in Ryan’s life when he would have thought twice about stepping forward. As a wild, young coldheart riding shotgun on the Trader’s War Wag One, under the same circumstances he might even have turned his back. Before he’d met Krysty, his only concern had been for his own survival, and for

improving the odds for the same. Now he couldn’t deny die powerful feelings he had for the red-haired beauty. As he carried her over to a desktop, he could feel the shallow and rapid rise and fall of her breathing, and he was grateful for it

Ryan gently laid her down on the desk, then stepped back so Mildred could give her an immediate examination. Standing idly by and watching the procedure served no purpose, except to make the one-eyed man feel helpless and impatient, so while the doctor worked he and Jak reentcred the chamber and retrieved the weapons and gear they had dropped during the close-quarters battle.

Doc leaned against the edge of a desktop, his brow furrowed, lost in a troubled reverie until Jak prodded him with the tip of his swordstick’s ebony sheath. The old man jerked violently at the unexpected touch. “By the Three Kennedys!” He pointed his rapier at the headless body on the floor. “Foul incubus! Phantasm of the dunghill! What cruel joke Morpheus has played and made me its clefted fundament!**