James Axler – Rat King

wounds they left were like needlepoint rather than large, jagged tears.

Consequently they were actually bleeding less than she had feared.

It wasn’t much, but at least it was something.

After binding the Armorer’s wound, Mildred gestured for the bottle of

antibiotics. Mac, who had managed to turn back now that the worst of the

operation was over, gave Mildred a canteen of water from his backpack, and she

forced J.B. to swallow a couple of the pills.

Semiconscious, he sunk back onto the earth.

“Let’s get moving,” Ryan said. “The sooner we reach this ville the better.”

He left unspoken that once there, they would work on figuring out a way of

escaping. It might seem like jumping from one danger to another, but if the talk

had been of a ritual chilling, then it wouldn’t be likely to happen straight

away…and that would give them the most precious of commodities—time.

Ryan took J.B. by the feet, and Jak moved to take him under the arms. It wasn’t

the best way to carry him, but it would have to do.

They walked in silence.

THE SUN HAD BEEN DOWN for nearly an hour by the time they reached the small

ville. If ever there had been a ville that deserved to be described as a

pesthole, then this was it. A few fires around the edges of the shacks and huts

that comprised the ville were all that protected it from the encroaching dangers

of nocturnal predators.

Ryan couldn’t see if there were any wags in the dim light, but somehow he

doubted it.

Mildred looked at J.B., strung out between Ryan, her heart sinking. She had been

hoping to pick up some sort of supplies from the ville to improve J.B.’s

condition, but from her first look, it seemed likely that she was better

equipped than they were.

They walked unchallenged into the heart of the ville, Mac leading the way. If

there were any guards around the outskirts of the ville, Ryan didn’t see them.

Mac answered his unspoken question. “No one moves out or across the valley after

sunfall. You’ve seen it in daylight. It’s far worse in the dark. Never know

where you are. The insiders are as wise to that as we are. They’ve never

attacked us by night, ’cause they wouldn’t want to risk crossing the valley.”

“What about people from outside the valley?”

Mac grinned with a return of the old sick humor, now that he felt safe on home

territory. “They get this far, then the storms eat ’em up anyway. They’re our

friend, as well as our enemy.”

They continued until they were in a rough earthen square that served as the

meeting point for the ville dwellers. In the dim light provided by the lamps and

fires, faces appeared from the doorways of huts, keeping their distance but

peering with interest at the newcomers.

Particularly at Dean.

“Why are they staring at me like that?” he whispered to Krysty.

Krysty looked in the darkness, and could see that there weren’t many children in

view, and those who were all seemed to have some kind of deformity springing

from either rad-blasted genes or inbreeding— faces with squat, snuffling noses

dripping with mucus; hare-lipped, gap-toothed grins; slack jaws that hung open

over black eyes.

“I think you’re probably the first child without a mutation or genetic problem

they’ve seen for some time,” she whispered. “This could be a good thing for us

if we play it right.”

Ryan was too close to Mac to acknowledge her verbally, but he heard…and agreed.

When they were all in the small square, there were muttering and rustling sounds

from the huts as a small crowd gathered on the fringes.

Ryan and Jak lowered J.B. gently to the ground. He was mumbling softly and

incoherently. Mildred bent over him and felt his skin and took his pulse. He was

too hot, and his pulse was racing. If they could have some water boiled, and a

dry, relatively clean place clear of the ground, she could clean the wounds and

redress them, maybe give him more of the antibiotics. She was uncertain how

stable or effective the pills would be after so long, but they were better than