James Axler – Deathlands

Ryan grinned. “Helped having that thermite blazing behind him. Best silhouette I ever saw.”

“Think they’ll come after us, Dad? Still quite a lot of them unchilled.”

“Who knows?” He shrugged. “We took out most of their leaders. Put the fear of their gods in the rest of them.”

Doc sneezed. “Those pestilential feathers from the mask have brought on my hay fever,” he moaned.

“It was the smell of ancient blood that I found so sickening,” protested J.B.

“Who burned?” Jak was sitting down, relaxing, following Mildred’s orders. He took long slow breaths, resting as the drug abandoned his body.

“Burned?” Ryan said.

“Smelled it.”

Doc had holstered the Le Mat. “It was poor Itzcoatl, Jak. I couldn’t bring myself to dislike the old rogue. He was only following the traditions of his ancestors. Rather a case of a man having to do what a man had to do. And finding that it’s all fallen apart in his hand like wet rot in a buggy wheel. After Ryan shot him, the poor fellow fell smack into the heart of the thermite blaze.”

The Armorer clicked the Uzi’s safety on and off, head on one side, listening to the action, finally satisfied. “Yeah, not a pretty sight, friends. That thermite burned to the bone, right away. By the time we got young Jak off the top of the pyramid and down through the secret room, the old chief wasn’t much more than scorched ashes, top to toe.”

Krysty swung around, staring behind them into the blackness, as though she’d heard a twig snap.

“What?” Ryan said, blaster straight into his hand. “What is it, lover?”

“Felt someone out there in the jungle. Coming this way and getting closer.”

“The natives?”

She shook her head, the sentient hair seeming to spark like a myriad of tiny fires in the dark. “Can’t tell. But definitely coming nearer.”

“How far to the redoubt?”

Ryan looked at Mildred. “My guess puts it about another two hours.”

“Be close to dawn then.” J.B. glanced at the sky as though he were searching for the embryonic sun.

“Right.” Ryan checked his wrist chron, angling the face to catch the watery moonlight. “If it’s Itzcoatl’s brothers after revengeor after Jakthen they’ll know these trails a sight better than us. Let’s move it.”

KRYSTY AND DEAN had stolen a pile of tortillas from the kitchens before the ritual began, and the friends now shared them, washing them down with cool liquid from a nearby stream.

“Half an hour and we should be there,” Ryan said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Beat the dawn.”

“Beat the pursuit.” For the last half mile Krysty had been looking over her shoulder, prompting a sarcastic comment from Doc, who asked whether she thought that she had a frightful friend walking behind her.

“They close, lover?”

She had been sitting, snatching a few moments’ rest. Now she straightened. “Feel them all the time. Feel them on both sides now, sort of closing us in.”

“Try an ambush?” Jak suggested.

“No. Not in terrain like this, in this sort of bad light. They’d hold too many cards.” Ryan looked around again. “Just keep moving, is all.”

“THERE.”

To everyone’s great relief, the small gateway building finally appeared in front of them, set in the heart of the towering trees. The sec door was closed, and there was no sign of any life around it.

The dark clouds had moved on south, leaving watery moonlight dribbling over the forest.

The narrow path seemed to have closed on itself in the few days since they’d last walked that way.

“There was once a road through the woods,” Doc said quietly. “Now the heat and the rain have undone it again and now you would never know”

“Shut it, Doc,” Krysty snapped. “I can feel them closer.”

“Open the door, Dean, fast.”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Rest of us all keep a triple-red watch.”

The control lever shifted easily, and the massive vanadium-steel door began to move silently upward. The boy called out once it was high enough for them to get in.

“Ready, Dad.”

“Fine.”

Was there movement in the deep lake of shadows underneath the flowering shrubs?