Extermination was standard operating procedure with cannies.
Because of the way they could blend in and mingle with unsuspecting folk, like wolves among the sheep, they were far more dangerous than stickies, scalies or scabbies. The gaudy house bartender had served this particular bunch of flesh eaters without batting so much as an eyelash. They had walked unnoticed through the ville of Perdition and, equally unnoticed, had carried off another victim.
Krysty recalled, word for word, what her uncle Tyas McCann had taught her about them when she was young. You can always tell a cannie if you get nose to nose with one,” he’d said. “Death hangs over them like stink gas in a bog. Trouble is, if you get close enough to whiff that brand of brimstone, it’s too late to back away. Smell that smell, girl, and make no mistake, you’ve got to fight for your life, tooth and claw.”
Tyas had passed on this information after a pair of suspected cannies had been caught red-handed at a slaughter scene in a cabin near their Harmony ville homestead. Subsequent events were forever burned into Krysty’s memory. After having been beaten and kicked around by the townsfolk, the two suspects were dragged into the ville’s square and staked out on the ground. The men had loudly protested then-innocence, and when it had come time for them to get fed they had refused the flatbread and water they were offered. Inside of three days, the pair had gone stark raving mad, eyes rolling, jaws snapping, foaming at the mouth, howling like dogs. Eventually, they swallowed their own tongues and their faces turned purple, then black. Choked to death by their chill frenzy.
To a cannie, Tyas had explained, the taste of human blood delivered a joltlike kick. If a cannie was without blood for too long, he or she went crazy. According to her uncle, that was the reason why, when they couldn’t find victims, they chilled and ate each other.
Krysty’s thoughts drifted back to the children. And as she remembered holding them in her arms, she felt a sudden, surprisingly painful pang of loss. Though her desire for babies of her own was strong, she had always suppressed the maternal urge. Unlike the world before skydark that Mildred and Doc had told her about, there was no way of increasing your odds in Deathlands. No amount of jack, or of blasterpower, could stack the deck in your favor. Even rich and powerful barons died prematurely and in the same wretched agonies as everybody else. Living a life on the edge of oblivion was a hard enough cross for an adult to bear, let alone a child.
In a flash of pure white light, an image formed in Krysty’s consciousness. She saw a snake’s flat, scaled head, twice as wide as the back of her hand, with eyes like bulging blood drops, and exposed fangs trailing thick strands of yellow poison. She immediately recognized the image for what it was, a premonition of impending danger. The gift of second sight was just part of the mutie inheritance handed down to her by her mother, Sonja, an inheritance that allowed her to tap into the all-powerful, feminine spiritual force of the planet. Shaking free of the startling vision, Krysty came to an abrupt stop.
Three yards from her right boot, it looked like just another flat rock.
Then the rock moved.
She let out a cry and took a giant step sideways, her hand automatically dropping to the butt of her revolver.
More than seven feet long, and at its widest point two feet around, there was nothing shy about this snake; it was both aggressive and predatory. It rapidly slithered closer to her, then coiled itself. A tail bigger around than her forearm reared up, amber-colored rattles shaking, as the mutie diamondback prepared to strike.
“Hold it!” Ryan shouted back to the others.
The column froze at his command.
“Oh my God!” Mildred exclaimed as she turned and saw, for thirty yards in all directions, the rocks beginning to uncoil. “They’re everywhere!”
As if responding to some silent, instinctive call to attack, dozens upons dozens of rattlers, some of them easily forty-pounders, their backs as big as fire hoses, moved in for the kill.