Labyrinth

Because of the heat, it was hard to say how long. The torsos and limbs were swollen up like balloons with the gases of decay. Two of the bodies that lay on their backs had actually burst open, exposing sun-shriveled, sun-blackened guts. The buzzards had stripped the flesh from all four of the faces. Red, eyeless skulls poked out from fringes of hair and sagging skin. It was impossible to tell what they’d died from.

With no hint of breeze to shift the overpowering stench, it took a supreme effort of will not to turn away. That stink had ridden the canyon thermals, soaring high, spreading far and wide, attracting carrion feeders for hundreds of miles.

As Ryan and Jak moved to look at the fifth body, the big birds shifted their perches on the surrounding boulders. Brooding, watching, wary, waiting their chance to resume the feast.

“This one’s fresh,” Jak said.

The last dead man lay on his side in the dirt. So far he had been left alone by the vultures. They preferred their meat aged to the point of liquefaction.

It was the shooter, no doubt about it.

Ryan picked up the shotgun. It was a single shot, top break, 12-gauge with an exposed hammer. Cheap, long-barreled gun. Mass produced in the hundreds of thousands in the century before Armageddon. He tried the break lever; it moved, but the breech wouldn’t open because it had been crudely welded shut. Somebody had converted the weapon from centerfire to black-powder muzzleloader. Not an unusual modification in Deathlands, where black powder was easier to find than cased ammunition. Ryan sniffed the barrel. It had been recently fired.

With devastating effect.

The dead man had put muzzle under his chin and then depressed the trigger. There was a stick on the ground beside his hand. He might have used it to get the necessary extra reach. His head was a mass of powder-scorched ruination. The front of his face gone from chin to midcranium, his brain pan emptied. The hollow glistened.

Ryan and Jak did a quick survey of the gear that lay scattered around the site. They found a few meager valuables. Battered black-powder weapons, skinning knives sharpened down to slivers, cooking utensils, empty canvas packs. The bodies hadn’t been stripped of clothing and boots. There was the remains of a firepit, but no food scraps among the ashes. No food, period. Of course, they could’ve eaten it all before they got this far.

The one-eyed man scratched the black stubble on his chin. What’s missing? he asked himself. The answer came to him at once. Canteens. There were no containers, nothing to hold water.

“Something triple ugly happened here,” Ryan said. “No one tries to cross the desert without something to carry water in.”

“Footprints go that way,” Jak said, pointing in the direction of the dam. “One set. Big feet. Deep marks. Short steps. Heavy load.”

Ryan nodded. “Blackheart son of a bitch took all their water and ran. They chased him until they dropped.”

Jak knelt over the footprints in the powdery dust. The wind had eroded them. “Two, maybe three days old,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s got a full, three-day lead on us,” Ryan said. “The load he’s carrying had to have slowed him down. He probably stopped to rest, figuring these fools were done for.”

“Catch chiller, take water,” Jak said.

Ryan nodded.

The albino didn’t have to add, “Leave the thieving bastard to die.” That was a given. Rough justice was the only justice in Deathlands.

The dead men’s gear wasn’t worth the trouble to lug it away. Ryan and Jak took the time to drag the suicide over to a nearby undercut in the dry river bank. They rolled him into the shallow notch, then kicked the soil down on top of him. They didn’t try to move the other bodies. The corpses would have just fallen apart, and there was always the chance of contagion from rotting flesh.

As Ryan and Jak started back up the rock chimney, the shrieking and squabbling of the vultures resumed.

Chapter Four

The extinguished torch dropped from Ewald Starr’s shock-stiffened fingers. Pain squeezed him like a giant fist, making every muscle bulge, every sinew strain to the snapping point.

Unmasterable pain.

As he screamed and hopped in the dancing half light, a torrent of humid air poured from the gash, driven forth by whatever was coming. The scent that rode that evil wind triggered something deep in his brain, something primal. An unfamiliar taste, metallic and sour, flooded his mouth. The taste of panic. And of imminent, crushing defeat.

Worse suffering was on its way.

Much, much worse.

Ewald shoved Tolliver and his lit torch ahead of him. “Go!” he shrieked. “Go!!”

The direction didn’t matter. To stand still was to die.

The four of them raced away, running blindly into the black maw of the corridor. Dunbar couldn’t maintain the pace for more than a few yards before falling behind. Bringing up the rear, with nothing between him and whatever it was, his grunting turned frantic.

Ewald, Tolliver and Willjay didn’t look back.

When the clicking started again, rattling down the hallway after them, a distant, desperate Dunbar cried out, “Help me! Help me!”

They didn’t stop; in fact, they somehow found the strength to run faster. And Ewald wasn’t the only one praying for it to take Dunbar. To take him and choke.

A cowardly prayer, promptly answered.

Dunbar’s screech lasted only a second before it cut off. The clicking quadruple-timed, doubled that, doubled it again, climbing in volume and pitch, a triumphant roar that ended a horrible crescendo of wretching.

Ewald knew there was no guarantee that the thing would be satisfied with Dunbar, that it wouldn’t pursue and chill them one by one. Like the stairwell, the hallway was a kill zone; they had to get out of it, and quick. Over Tolliver’s right shoulder, Ewald saw a double doorway. “In there!” he cried.

They burst through the heavy metal doors and onto a short concrete landing that overlooked a room so broad and so cavernous they couldn’t see the far side of it. Overhead, the undersides of steel I-beam trusses and buttresses were dimly visible. The network of their upper surfaces and the ceiling were beyond the reach of torch light. Smell of death was like a sledgehammer pounding inside Ewald’s head.

“Man, look at your arm!” Tolliver said. “You’re hurt triple bad.”

Ewald’s right arm had ballooned up to nearly twice its normal size and turned black, but it no longer pained him. He couldn’t move his grossly swollen fingers, and he couldn’t bend or raise the arm. Hanging straight down from his shoulder, it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. When he tested his forearm with a fingertip there was no sensation, and the spongy flesh didn’t spring back. The pressure left a deep dent and split the skin, like it was already dead meat. For a second Ewald thought he was going to puke.

“You better give me that blaster,” Tolliver told him. “You’re in no shape to use it.”

Ewald grimaced at the graybeard’s shaking hands. No way could Tolliver aim the Uzi. He probably couldn’t even fire it. Not that the ex-mercie would have willingly surrendered his weapon, anyway.

“Don’t worry about me,” Ewald said. “I can shoot lefty just fine. We’ve got to keep moving. Got to find another way down.”

The landing’s short flight of steps led to a polished concrete floor. Beyond the hazy circle of light cast by the torches it was pitch black. At Ewald’s direction, they turned and speedwalked in a straight line until they reached a wall. From the floor to a height of about seven feet, it was lined with narrow, sheet metal enclosures, control panel after control panel with LCD readouts, gauges, warning lights, and thousands upon thousands of exposed switches and terminals. All dead.

As they followed the wall, to their right, out on the floor, a low, hulking cylindrical shape came into view. The twenty-foot-wide, machined steel housing sat in a matching circular depression in the concrete. Ahead, there were more of the dam’s generator turbines. One after another they squatted, stretching off into the darkness.

Around the silent machines were scattered bodies. A litter of corpses in random piles and puddles, in varying states of decomposition. The vast generator room was both slaughterhouse and dumping ground.

A kill zone even less defensible than the stairwell and hallway.

“Move it! Move it!” Ewald said, pushing the others to a trot.

They didn’t get far.

When the clicking began, it seemed to come from everywhere at once, from the gridwork of I-beams above and the far corners of the immense room. The hall’s infuriating echo made it impossible to tell how many there were, or which way to run.

“Shoot ’em!” Willjay cried. “Why don’t you shoot ’em?”