James Axler – Shadow World

“The lot of them went due south,” the bartender stated hurriedly, “along the main road out of the ville. It leads straight to what’s left of old Highway 15. Once they get there, they’ve got to double back north on the highway for about a mile to get to Moonboy.”

“Is there a faster way to get there?” Ryan asked.

“Sure, if you don’t mind jumping some rock.”

“We don’t mind.”

“Go south toward the ridge, turn right and follow the base of the ridgeline for five, mebbe six miles. You can’t miss Moonboy.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s the only thing left standing for as far as you can see.”

THE RIGHT REVEREND Gore caressed the edge of his skinner knife with precise, circular motions of the whetstone. The back of the wide, crescent-shaped blade was deeply notched a half inch from its tip, and the notch formed a razor-sharp guthook that could zip open a body cavity faster than a man could hawk a spit. Gore put the ball of his thumb against the bright new edge, testing it. Plenty good enough, he decided.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Grub bawled at him.

Gore looked up from the boulder on which he sat. Across the small clearing, the naked slag-heap scrounger was strung up by his wrists in the branches of a dead willow. His ankles were likewise tied with leather thongs and his legs pulled out straight and spread-eagled.

“I gave you everything you wanted!” Grub cried.

“Not quite,” Gore replied, getting slowly to his feet.

“I don’t want no cut of the profit,” Grub swore to the four coldhearts who held him prisoner. Giggly Jane was using a yard-long willow branch to test the cutting power of her own blade. It was a predark, made-in-the-U.S.A. treasure a titanium-nitride black, Edge Tactical One-Hander.

“Don’t need none of her, neither,” Grub added bitterly. “Just let me loose from up here. I won’t tell nobody about Moonboy and spoil your raid.”

“You already told half of Perdition about Moon-boy,” Gore reminded him. “It’s time to face facts, little man. You were never gonna get a piece of the job’s profit, nor of our funky little gal Jane, neither. And we’re not gonna let you go. We’re taking you with us, in a manner of speaking.”

Gore shivered, despite the day’s oppressive heat. He could no longer ignore the gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach; he had to do something about it. No matter how much he ate, Gore was hungry all the time now. Trouble was, he couldn’t keep his meat down, he was always chucking it back up. And the weight was dropping off him so fast the others had started giving him sidelong, measuring looks. His ringers trembled violently on the stag-horn grip of the skinning knife, and for a second it damn near slipped away from him. Gore knew he had the oozies, and that he was on the steep downhill slide. Every time he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his duster, he expected to see the first smear of gray pus that signaled the beginning of the end.

When the leader of a cannie pack faltered, the pack picked his bones.

Gleefully.

There was no telling when he’d caught the sickness. Sometimes it took half a lifetime for the death signs to appear. For all he knew, it could have come from his first bite of manflesh, and that was better than a quarter century ago. Some claimed that cannibalism was an acquired taste, but as soon as Gore got that first lick, he was hooked solid. A young sprout back then, he’d joined up with a band of cannies that was passing through his ditchwater ville one summer night, picking off stragglers and half-wits. He loved the cannie life right off, too. It was like being a wolf cub. Hunting and chilling and eating.

Ultimate freedom, every minute of every day. But it wasn’t some hog-slop, romantic philosophy that held him captive; it was the flavor.

The fresher, the better.

At that very moment Gore was thinking about liver. Bloody, still-warm liver. It made his mouth water.

“You’re taking me with you?” Grub said hopefully. “Then you’re not gonna chill me!”