group.
The hellscape was full of mysteries. Explanations, when they came, were usually incomplete.
Jak somehow picked out Mildred’s trail in the weak light, leading the companions across the high desert valley on a near dead run. How the albino managed the feat was a puzzle to Ryan, especially after Mildred had explained her twentieth-century understanding of albinism to him. Before the Apocalypse it had been a well-documented genetic disorder, caused by a random mutation that stopped production of a chemical vital to normal development of skin pigmentation, eyes and brain. According to Mildred, predark albinos always had poor vision, were susceptible to sunburn and had blue-gray or brown eyes. Jak had exceptional eyesight. He never sunburned. And his eyes were ruby-red. The youth vehemently insisted that he wasn’t a mutie—those with mutie blood were Deathlands untouchables, often chilled on sight—but the evidence said otherwise. Whether he was seeing the bootprints in the sand, or smelling out the track, or using some other extra-norm sense that had no name, Jak was bird-dogging. The pace he set was grueling, but no one complained, and no one asked for a rest.
Ahead, the impenetrable black of the mountain crags loomed larger, the landscape tilted underfoot, and the companions began to climb the gradual incline of the valley side. As the physical effort increased, body heat built up. Sweat peeled from Ryan’s hairline, down his forehead, burning into his good eye. The other socket was an empty hole, covered by a black leather patch. A livid scar divided that eyebrow and split his cheek, a secondary wound from the knife slash that had half blinded him. Ryan ignored the growing ache in his thighs, pushing the pain aside as though it belonged to someone else.
Mildred Wyeth was more than a treasured friend, more than a trusted comrade in arms; she was a resource the companions couldn’t afford to lose. Mildred had been a physician; she understood the workings of predark science and technology. She had come from a time not only with different knowledge, but very different values.
Would any of the other companions have taken off on their own to rescue the children?
Mebbe.
Mebbe not.
When the five reached the base of the mountains, they paused for breath, faces upturned, searching the black vastness above.
“Where’d she go?” J.B. said softly.
Jak tugged on Ryan’s sleeve.
“There,” the albino teen said. “Cave mouth.”
Above them, weak firelight flared against bedrock, then it was gone. They all saw it.
“How can you be positive that’s where Dr. Wyeth has gone?” Doc asked.
“Can’t,” Jak said.
“That fire didn’t start itself,” Krysty said. “Got to be cannies hiding inside. Nobody else would be out in the bush around here.”
“Nobody in their right mind,” J.B. added.
“We need to have a look-see,” Ryan told the others. “Spread out, take it slow, make sure of your footing. We don’t want any rockslides on the approach.”
The companions climbed the mountain flank, closing in on the cave entrance with blasters raised, safeties off. They saw no movement and met no resistance. The cannies weren’t expecting company. Probably because they considered themselves well-hidden and figured no one would try to hunt them down before dawn.
As Ryan neared the cave mouth, he smelled wood smoke, charring meat and burning hair. His stomach twisted into a knot.
Not Mildred, he thought. For nuke’s sake, not Mildred…
He ducked under the low arch, entering the outer chamber, where the trapped smoke and stench hung like an evil fog.
When all companions were inside the arch, he led them through the smoke, toward the source of the flickering yellow light. Around the cave’s bend, they spread out on either side of the blanket that served as a door, weapons aimed, fingers resting lightly on triggers.
Holding the SIG-Sauer braced against his hip, Ryan leaned forward and peered through a rip in the fabric. He saw two men, one bald and the other with a badly scarred face, crouched on the far side of a roaring fire. There had to be a vent in the ceiling, he thought, a fissure in the rock drawing most of the smoke up and out. The cannies were eating with their bare hands, pulling greasy strips of charcoaled meat off the shoulders of a human corpse. They had removed the dead man’s clothing but hadn’t bothered to cut up his body. They had simply shoved it into the fire like an oversize log, burning it at one end, flame-roasting the head and upper torso.
A third cannie stood with his back turned to the entrance, urinating torrentially against the cave wall. When Ryan saw Mildred tied to the post, the weight on his shoulders lifted. She was still alive. The children were huddled in a corner. Still alive, too.
Ryan turned to the companions and held up three fingers. Three targets.
“Mildred?” J.B. whispered.
The one-eyed man gave the thumbs-up.
At his signal, Krysty ripped down the tattered blanket. Ryan and J.B. burst into the death chamber, shoulder to shoulder.
Before the bald cannie could stand, J.B. blasted him full in the face with a load of double-aught buckshot. The cannie jerked violently backward, a plume of skull and brains flying; J.B. cycled the M-4000’s action and fired again. The scar-faced cannie was already moving sideways, lunging for a nearby weapon. J.B.’s buckshot missed its intended target by a foot. Instead of taking off his head, the blast slammed the cannie in the left shoulder, bowling him over as a cloud of dirt and rock dust rained from the ceiling. The creature landed hard and stayed down.
The remaining flesheater lunged toward the children through the swirling dust, his knife blade drawn. Leading him, Ryan squeezed off two shots with the SIG-Sauer. And hit the ten-ring. A pair of tightly spaced, 9 mm rounds in the head blew the cannie off his feet before he could cut throats. He crashed into a pile of bones at the base of the wall, and lay there, twitching.
Doc rounded the firepit and covered the wounded cannie with his double-barreled LeMat. Krysty gathered up the children, who were bawling with relief.
Drawing his eighteen-inch panga from its leg sheath, Ryan stepped over to Mildred. There was blood on her chin. The glistening stripe ran down the front of her neck and onto her T-shirt, which was speckled with pink bits of bone. She reeked of vomit.
As Ryan cut her bonds he said, “Are you okay?” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Are you wounded?”
Mildred shook her head minutely, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Ryan had fought side by side with this woman in countless pitched battles. Under fire, Mildred was intense, determined, fearless. He had never seen her like this in the aftermath of combat. Numbed. Shellshocked. What had the bastards done to her?
He wasn’t the only one who noticed the change.
There was concern on J.B.’s face as he returned Mildred’s revolver to her. “You did good,” he assured her. “It all worked out.”
Mildred holstered her revolver. She let her arms drop to her sides. Then she slumped back against the wooden post, utterly deflated.
“Mildred?”
