James Axler – Freedom Lost

Ryan, in the lead of his own group of friends, saw the situation, took in the risks and made his choice, launching his lean body like a missile and hitting the big mutant at knee level. Knocked off balance, the already injured stickie buckled beneath Morgan’s weight, and both of them crashed to the floor as Ryan rolled frantically away to avoid joining the pile.

The one-eyed man whipped out his panga as he got back to his feet and buried it into the back of the stickie’s exposed head even as Morgan pressed the advantage Ryan had given him, managing to pull a .38-caliber pistol from an ankle holster. He squeezed the trigger once, then twice, sending a twin barrage of bullets at another stickie who had chosen that moment to also try to come over the barricade.

By this time, Jak, J.B., Mildred, Krysty, Doc and Dean had pulled their own various pieces of steel hardware and readied them for battle.

“Cawdor,” Morgan said. “See you fetched your boy.”

“No thanks to the lock on the cell door.”

“Never dreamed they’d launch this kind of assault so suddenly. One of the mutie bastards has some mercie training, that’s for damn sure,” Morgan said.

“We help wrap this up and get you out, we’re done, Morgan,” Ryan told him.

“Fine,” the mall leader replied.

Doc clawed out his massive Le Mat revolver, thumbing back on the hammer. Steadying the heavy blaster as best he could, he aimed the portable cannon at the midst of another advancing swarm of stickies and fired. The thunderous boom of the weapon came hurtling out with a sound that managed to still the battle cries of the living and the dying.

More slugs whizzed over the group’s heads, many of the lead-alloy-core bullets coming dangerous close to finding a target. One near-fatal bullet cut into the upper notch of J.B.’s battered fedora, pulling it back off his head where it landed softly on the ground. The Armorer reached down with a curse and snatched up the beloved hat, searching for the possible hole the weapon’s firing might have made.

“Clean,” he said after a brief perusal. “No holes.”

“Glad the lid meets your approval, J.B.,” Ryan said loudly over the tumult. “How about admiring it later when the chilling’s finished?”

“That you, One-eye?” The question came from the stickies’ side of battle.

“Who wants to know?”

Ryan’s query was ignored. “You and your group are dead, One-eye! Chilled and buried! We’ll put your head in the fire, let it cook for an hour or so, see if that mutie slut of yours wants to ride you then!” a disfigured man said in a near scream of a voice that came from the ruined slash of a mouth. It was a voice that Ryan had heard before, along with the name “One-eye,” a voice of a man he had to have met before to be aware that Krysty possessed mutant abilities.

“Another Freedom burned to the ground, One-eye! What do you think about that?” Norm jeered, and when the man with the half-melted visage said those words, Ryan knew who he was now facing.

“Lester?” Ryan asked in a disbelieving manner. “Lester, is that you?”

“Who?” Dean replied.

“Quiet,” Krysty whispered, cutting the boy off.

She didn’t want to think about Lester, or Baron Willie Elijah or, most of all, Lord Kaa, who had chosen her to be his bride and to mother his successor, his child and future mutant ruler of the Deathlands.

That had been months earlier.

“Can’t be,” J.B. said softly. “Can’t be. That elevator slaver wheel chilled everyone that was chained to it. No way our boy Lester could’ve survived.”

“Wrong, J.B.,” Mildred replied. “As you might recall, none of us bothered going back to sift through the ashes for a body count.”

“All your fault, One-eye!” Lester-Norm cried out. “Your fault I’m a freak! You brought death to Willie ville! Death and fire! Now I’ve brought it back to you!”

“Aw, come on, Lester,” Ryan replied. “You were a freak before I even met you.”

The infuriated man once known as Johnson Lester shrieked as he lunged for Ryan. The newly christened mutantthe former human beingboth combined in a single chilling package with one goal in mindthe death of Ryan Cawdor.