Wiggling and kicking furiously, Mildred tried to get loose from her captors, but the two cannies holding her only tightened their grips and gave a guttural laugh. This infuriated the woman, and she struggled even harder, but with the same lack of results.
A strip of cloth was tied around her eyes, and scratchy ropes bound her wrists and ankles. With surprising ease, the men were carrying her like a suitcase, her back constantly bumping into the ground. First sand, and now rock.
Mildred had nearly died when they went under water, and ever since they emerged, the wind and sand were gone, the air oddly cool and echoes came the distance. Obviously they were underground in some sort of a cave, or cavern. In cold logic, the physician knew that wasn’t good. John would never stop searching for her, but while Ryan and Jak were both superb trackers, she doubted if even they could find her now. That water entrance trick was sheer genius. Grimly, Mildred had to accept the fact that she was alone in this, unlike last time, and would need to free herself. Somehow.
The ground dipped slightly as the cannies hauled her through some sort of a doorway. In passing, Mildred got a gentle bump on the head, and realized this was her chance. Instantly the woman grunted as loud as she could and went completely limp.
The two cannies tightened their grips in response, then slowed their walking and shook her. It took everything Mildred had to stay slack, letting her head loll sideways, tongue extended. She was blindfolded, but they could see, so she had to make it good. Only had one chance at this.
Come on, boys, Mildred chided mentally. You only want live food. If I die on the way to the table, you’re both in dutch with the boss.
With a jarring thump, she landed on the hard ground and gave no response. Mildred heard the two men mumbling angrily in an unknown language. One offered a suggestion that the other shot down. Then he countered with an idea of his own that the first cannie didn’t seemed too pleased with. This went on for a few moments, then clearly some sort of decision was reached. The cannie holding her wrists knelt and started feeling her head to search for a wound among her beaded locks, while the one holding her bound ankles started pinching her calf.
Which meant that he had only one hand holding her ropes.
Moving fast, Mildred snapped her head around and buried her teeth into the cannie’s hand. He screamed and began slapping her face with his free hand. Mildred swung her bound wrists to find his leg, slid up his hairy thighs and grabbed his genitals to bury her fingernails deep into the soft tissues, then twisted and yanked with every ounce of strength she possessed.
The man shrieked in response. Shouting angrily, the other cannie released her ankles. Moving fast, Mildred brought up her knees and kicked out with both of her boots, heels first. There was a solid connection, the crack of bone and the man screamed in pain.
Releasing the first cannie, Mildred rolled away from the wounded men and clawed the blindfold off her face. She blinked for a few moments to clear her sight, then bitterly cursed as she realized that there was nothing wrong with her. The cavern was pitch-black.
Then, she heard lots of naked feet padding on the rock floor of the cave, and Mildred knew that reinforcements were arriving. Shit! Bound and blind as she was, there was nothing else for Mildred to try but one last desperate ploy. To attack and try to make them mad enough to kill her fast, instead of the slow torture of being cut apart alive for their hellish meals. Today a leg, tomorrow, an arm, or a breast…
Screaming obscenities, Mildred threw herself forward and lashed out with her two fists clenched tight. But she encountered only air in her effort, then something hard clunked against the back of her head and she abruptly lost consciousness.
RISING FROM the cool water, the companions slowly walked up the sloping concrete, dipping their weapons to make the water run out of the barrels. They had expected an underground cavern, but this was some sort of a huge predark tunnel. About a dozen yards wide, the floor was a mix of sand and rocks blending into the curved brick walls that topped with a ceiling alive with a softly glowing green moss.
Quickly, Ryan checked the rad counter on his shirt collar, but it read in the neutral. Yeah, that was expected. He had seen such fungus before. It wasn’t a mutie plant, just some kind of natural moss that Mildred said worked on photo-something or other, he forgot the word. That didn’t matter. The plant gave off a weak light and could be found almost everywhere under the Deathlands.
One heartbeat later, Jak appeared, his .357 Magnum in one hand and knife in the other. The teen looked like a drowned rat with his snowy hair plastered flat to his head, but his red eyes burned with cold hatred. They had all seen what cannies did to their food before finally eating it, and their experience in Louisiana was fresh in their minds. Sometimes the victims were still alive when the slicing commenced, their screams primitive music for the cannies as they feasted upon the flesh.
Krysty pointed at the sand along the shore, and Ryan grunted in reply. It was churned up with barefoot prints, boot prints and red blood.
Just then, an echoing scream came out of the dimly lit tunnel ahead of them, every blaster snapping up and ready.
“That was Millie,” J.B. whispered, then screamed, “Millie, we’re coming!” He triggered a blast of the shotgun, the flame lighting the tunnel for yards to show an intersection only a short distance away.
“Idiot!” Jak snapped. “All cannies come now!”
“Let ’em!” J.B. snarled, thumbing a fresh cartridge into the S&W M-4000 to replace the one just spent. “I’ll take ’em all on!”
Without speaking, Ryan grabbed his friend by the arm and gave a crushing squeeze. Arching an eyebrow, J.B. turned angrily. Then he met Ryan’s gaze and let out a breath.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m losing it here.”
“J.B. It’s horrible that Mildred has to go through this again,” Krysty said, starting forward. “We understand. Now let’s find our friend.”
They heard running footsteps, and Ryan raised the SiG-Sauer as the dark figure came into view. But he withheld firing until he saw it wasn’t Mildred. He triggered a 9 mm Parabellum round into the face of the cannie. The half-naked man jerked his head as the back of his skull blew out to hit the brick wall in a grisly froth of blood, bones and blood.
The body was still slowly crumpling to the ground when the companions swept past to the intersection.
As the cannie had come from the left, they looked to the right and, sure enough, there was another cannie waiting in hiding there. Armed with a spear, the man seemed startled that he had looked in his direction first, and that was the last thing he ever did before Jak sent him into the blackness of eternity.
Retrieving his knife, the teen saw that the passage behind the corpse was bricked solid. This was just a side passage used to ambush potential invaders.
Then Krysty inhaled sharply and pointed her blaster at a freshly severed human arm hanging from the wall.
“Gaia, is this their food locker?” Krysty demanded in disgust.
“No,” Ryan corrected, working the bolt on his rifle. “It’s the wall to their ville.”
“Good. If these cannies were strong, they would hide this and lure folks in deeper,” J.B. agreed in a tight voice.
“But they put this drek here to frighten off would-be rescuers,” Ryan continued, starting deeper into the tunnel. “Which means there aren’t a lot of them. They’re weak, and need tricks for protection.”
“Good,” Jak snorted, testing the balance of the leaf-bladed throwing knife in his palm.
Starting toward the other tunnel, Ryan stopped to dig a circle in the sand with the heel of his combat boot, then slashed across the sign with the steel-tipped toe. Hopefully, they wouldn’t need a marker to get out of the tunnels, but he had fought cannies before in Texas, and their warren had been a maze of passages that was almost impossible to exit.
The brick tunnel extended in a slow curve, only to stop as it opened into a large cave. The place was huge, the ceiling and opposite walls completely out of sight.
“This is concrete,” J.B. said, touching the floor. “Mebbe some kind of a predark water reservoir.”
“Good place to live in the middle of the desert,” Ryan muttered.
Waving a hand, Jak gave a sharp whistle and started across the predark material, bent low as if he were sniffing the trail like a hunting dog. The others stayed close, their sodden clothing making soft squishing noises, their weapons sweeping for viable targets.
Going to the heart of the darkness, Jak slowed at an opening in a concrete wall. As the teen slipped past, a drop of water fell from the blackness above to wetly impact the floor. Ryan and the others were right behind Jak. As they stepped into another tunnel illuminated by green moss, Jak eased the trembling body of a cannie guard to the floor and withdrew his bloody knife from the back of the man’s neck.
This tunnel was short and ended in another huge cavern.
“Struggle here,” Jak said, sweeping back his damp hair.
“Was it Millie?” J.B. asked, his whole life in the question.
Jak nodded. “Alive, kicking,” he replied.
“This way,” Ryan stated, studying the floor. Apparently, this deep in their home, the cannies weren’t even trying to hide their trail. And why should they? This was safe territory.
Just not this day, the Deathlands warrior added grimly.
The green-tinted darkness flared for a moment as the SiG-Sauer coughed once more, and a body dropped to the ground. Stepping over the trembling corpse, Ryan scowled at the sight of nets stretching between erected posts, dividing the huge cavern into smaller areas. Taking the first turn, Ryan soon saw it was a maze of turns. Fireblast! He had expected this.
Moving through the warren of nets, the companions marked their passage as best as possible until reaching another intersection.
Squinting hard against the dim light, Jak checked the ground but couldn’t find any sign of recent travel. He started to report that when a scream split the cavern, followed by callous laughter and the high-pitched wail of a man in mortal agony.
“Not Mildred,” Jak said bluntly as he stood. “But he might know where prisoners kept.”
“Let’s go,” the Armorer said calmly, breaking into a run.
Their boots made hard slapping sounds on the predark concrete, but nobody arrived to investigate as they pelted along the roped-off corridors.
Reddish light flared in the distance, and the companions braced themselves as they got close. The layers of netting blocked only pieces of the hellish scene, and none of the screaming. Keyed up for battle, this only spurred them on faster and soon the group dashed around the last net.
The area was a kitchen, with big stone tables lined with battered predark chairs made of rusty chrome and plastic fabric. A dank hole in the corner reeked of human waste, and on the opposite wall was a large man howling in pain, his arms and legs spread out on netting and tied securely in place. A group of laughing cannie women were running the tips of steel knives along his body, slowly cutting off the remains of his tattered clothing and leaving countless tiny cuts in his skin, rivulets of fresh blood trickling into bowls on the floor. Even as the man’s crimson-soaked shirt came off, he hawked and spit in the eye of the old woman. But the cannie only laughed harder and reached for his pants.
In a lightning-fast move, Jak flipped his hand and a cannie dropped her knife, gurgling horribly from the throwing blade buried into the back of her throat. As the others turned, Ryan fired twice and two more fell away, life spewing from their punctured hearts.
But the rest separated fast, and an older cannie snarled something in an unknown language. Instantly another reached into a pouch hanging low at her side and threw a hand of the contents upward. As if a switch had been thrown, the green light from the moss winked out, leaving the area in near total darkness.
Moving fast, the companions rushed away from the spot where they had just been so the cannies couldn’t find them. J.B. sent a burst from the Uzi into the darkness, the strobing muzzle-flash briefly illuminating the kitchen. A cannie cried out and fell, her sagging breasts pumping out blood from the line of holes across her tattoo-covered skin.
Now, shouts began to sound in the distance, and Ryan knew the hammer had fallen. The alarm was being sounded, and soon every cannie would be rallying to defend their ghoulish ville.
He felt the briefest urge to cut and run, but chilled it with a thought.
“Place your shots!” Ryan commanded, firing twice. “We’re not leaving without her!”
Spinning, Krysty fired and cut down a cannie who had been trying to sneak close from behind. The man clutched his belly and staggered away, mortally wounded, but not aced yet. Krysty forced herself to not finish him off. They were going to need every round. And the very last was reserved for herself.
“Flare!” Jak snapped, firing into the darkness. There was no answering cry of pain, and a few seconds later there came the sound of a ricochet off hard stone.
“Don’t have any,” J.B. said from nearby. “No, wait, I do!”
There was a rustle of cloth, a scraping sound, and light returned to the cavern in blue intensity. J.B. was holding what looked like a road flare, only the top was a dancing blue flame of unusual strength.
Caught in the light, a young female cannie snarled a war cry and charged, waving knives in both hands. With the pointed teeth and flashing blades, her charge should have paralyzed any person with fear, but Ryan stood his ground and cut the teenage girl down.
“Spear…” the man on the net gasped, his eyes darting to the right.
Her hair flexing madly, Krysty suddenly stepped to the left as a spear came out of the darkness. The shaft went by, just missing her, and Jak ducked under it. They both fired in response, but with no result. Then J.B. triggered a burst from the Uzi and a blood-curdling scream answered.
“Baron…Tregart…?” the prisoner whispered hoarsely.
“We’re not from your baron,” Ryan snapped, too busy to lie as he fanned the netting with blasterfire. He could only hope the wild shots didn’t ace Mildred. “We’re after a black woman, short, mil fatigues, beaded hair.”
“I…know where…”
Fully aware that the man could be lying just to try to save his own skin, Ryan took the chance and slashed out with the panga to cut away the netting.
Coming free, the big man fell to the floor, landing on top of a dead cannie. Then he rose to his knees with her knife in his hand and proceeded to stab her again and again in the chest.
“Yeah, you like that, slut!” he yelled insanely, fresh blood welling from his own minor wounds at the action. “You want more! Huh? I got ya more, bitch! Now you sing for me! Sing for me!”
Stepping close, Ryan slapped the man across the face, the impact sounding louder than the crack of a longblaster.
“Cut the shit,” Ryan snapped. “Take us to our friend, or we’ll leave you here alone. Got me?”
As Krysty and J.B. took out another charging group of cannies armed with spears, the big man stared at Ryan in wild fury, then slowly nodded and stumbled to his feet.
“This way,” he said, heading across the kitchen to step over another chilled cannie to go out the only opening in the wall-nets.
As the companions followed after the former prisoner, J.B. passed Ryan a half-used flare and started another. Ryan moved to the point position, and J.B. took the rear. They had fought in darkness before and knew the basic tactics. Spread out your lights, don’t give the enemy a group target, and keep moving at all costs!
Elsewhere, cannies were shouting orders in their unknown language, and a metal gong began to ring slow and steady.
In the passageway, the nameless man paused, then turned to the left, then quickly to the right again. Ryan had to move fast to keep abreast, but only went a few yards before the former prisoner darted into a side passage. The room inside was lined with dark cloth, rendering it nigh invisible in the dim green light from the ceiling moss. The posts were covered with rusty chains and shackles. There were two prisoners here, and one was Mildred.
Placing aside the flare, Ryan went to work on the lock. J.B. entered the room and gave a wordless cry of delight at the sight of Mildred.
“Kill her,” Mildred said in a hoarse voice, looking to her side. “Please…”
“Gaia,” Krysty whispered.
Even Jak inhaled sharply at the sight. The other prisoner was a stark-naked woman hanging from her arms, but both of her legs were gone, the horrible stumps scarred with burns obviously made to prevent death from blood loss.
The mindless person in the chains looked at the companions without comprehension, the sad eyes pools of madness, a string of drool dripping from her slack mouth.
“Hush, now, it’s all over,” Krysty said softly, aiming the hot barrel of her wheelgun to the prisoner’s temple. “You are free now.”
The woman began to whine in dim understanding and for a split second the madness lifted. “Thank you,” the woman said, moving her torn lips, bit no words came.
Without looking away, Krysty stroked the trigger and gave the woman the only freedom that was possible.
“Done,” Ryan said, as the last shackle dropped to the ground.
Lurching away from the post, Mildred half fell into J.B.’s arms and the couple embraced for a long moment before finally parting.
“God, I’m happy to see you all!” the physician said with a weary smile. “Now give me a motherfucking blaster! I’ve had it with cannies.”
“Got your six, Millie,” J.B. stated, giving her the shotgun. “Four up the pipe, and six on the strap.”
“Not nearly enough,” Mildred stormed, working the pump-action alleysweeper. “But it’ll have to do.” Then she registered the newcomer.
“And who the hell is this?” the woman demanded, swinging the scattergun his way.
“Karl,” the man replied, standing nervously near the opening in the net that served as a doorway. “Second sec boss for Lady Tregart of Thunder ville. Please, we must leave before—”
A howl cut the cavern, sounding vaguely canine, but with something more added.
“Not dog,” Jak stated flatly, furrowing his brow.
“Something mutie,” Karl answered, starting to leave. But then his knees buckled and the bloody man slid weakly to the floor.
Passing Krysty the sputtering flare, Ryan grabbed the man by the arm, draped it over his shoulder and stood, carrying most of the weight. Karl reeked of blood and sweat, but there was something else. Machine grease and shine. Was this one of the sec men sent to find the lost drone?
“Start walking,” Ryan ordered, moving forward. He’d ask later, if there was a later. This was not the place for a discussion.
Karl weakly grunted in acknowledgment, and did his best to keep pace as Ryan took the middle position in the group.
With Krysty in the lead now, the companions started for the exit, ruthlessly chilling anything they saw moving. Something vaguely animal-like charged at the group from the other side of a net, and J.B. riddled it with blasterfire. In the concrete cave, a cannie dropped from the ceiling and managed to land among them before Mildred blew off its head with the shotgun.
Reaching the brick-lined tunnel, the companions raced along the sandy floor using Ryan’s marks, while J.B. lit a fuse and dropped a homie pipe bomb in their wake. A few moments later, the bomb went off, and a chorus of screams announced that the deadly shrapnel charge of nails had caught several of the cannies. Then the tunnel violently shook, and bricks started raining from the ceiling. As the vibrations steadily increased, the ceiling moss began to fall still attached to chunks of brick and concrete.
Moving fast, the companions raced through the end of the collapsing tunnel and rushed into the water. But at the first contact, Karl gave a shudder and went limp. Muttering a curse, Ryan holstered his piece and slung the big man over a shoulder. Then he pinched Karl’s nose and mouth shut before diving into the pool and swimming for the glow of sunlight ahead.
He only hoped Doc was still there, and that they weren’t heading straight into another group of cannies.