The pair serving as the vanguard of the squad cast uneasy looks into the darkness around them, expecting—as was wise—that a bullet might scream out of the night at them at any moment. One of them glanced back at their apparent leader. “What do ya wanna do?”
“Take ’em for interrogation. The boss’ll wanna have a chat.”
The third man motioned Doc forward with the barrel of his longblaster. “Come on, old man, and keep those arms up.”
Hands groping the sky, Doc searched the ground for a suitable depression or obstacle that would lend his second distraction an ounce of credibility. He found it in a large stone right in front of him. Stepping forward, he let his foot land squarely on top of it, and immediately slip off, pitching him heavily to the ground.
As flashes of pain jolted up his knee and elbow, Doc saw all hell erupt around him.
AS HE BURST OUT INTO THE DARK night, Jak shook his head at Krysty’s whispered admonishment. Out here, stalking and hunting men, there wasn’t no one better, hands down.
For a moment, he was taken back to the steaming, fetid jungles of his birthplace, Louisiana. Trained to chill from the moment he could crawl, he’d grown up fighting Baron Tourment all his life, until Ryan and his companions had appeared and helped him put an end to the man’s sick reign of terror. After that, he’d joined Ryan and the others. With the exception of a brief period when he had tried to build a different life, he’d been with them ever since.
When it came to chilling, maybe a fingerwidth separated Jak and Ryan. J.B. and Krysty were both real good in a fight, and Mildred did things with that small pistol that Jak could only dream about, but when it came to straight up, hand-to-hand chilling, Jak and Ryan were tops. Jak sometimes wondered, if it came down to it, whether he could take Ryan in a no weapons fight. He knew he was good, damn good. But Ryan, he was something else. A rough fighter, but with a strength of will that couldn’t be believed. He’d seen Ryan survive things that would have reduced a lesser man to shattered pulp. So no, Jak didn’t believe he could take the one-eyed man.
But when it came to human vermin like this, there was no contest.
He had taken off after the glimpse of movement before Krysty could stop him, primarily because he didn’t want her help. Oh, she could be impressive in a fight as well, but with those damn boots on, she’d signal their approach like a war wag at full throttle. No, this sort of chilling was best done quick and quiet, and no one was better at both than Jak.
The man he was trailing ducked around another shattered building, disappearing from sight for a few moments. Jak trotted to the corner of the wall, every sense alert, his strange, ruby-red eyes seeing his surroundings like it was almost noon. He peeked around the corner, just a fast glance, to make sure the bastard wasn’t setting up to coldcock him.
Nothing moved in the gloom. Jak settled himself and listened to the night, his heightened senses straining for the slightest noise.
There. It was the softest of sounds, maybe cloth brushing against cloth, but it was enough. And just in time, too, as the flat cracks of a blaster from behind him shattered the silence. Jak didn’t look back, knowing wiry J.B. was doing his part.
And so was he.
Keeping his .357 at his side, the albino teen tiptoed toward his prey as silent as stalking death. The shots died away, and there was only Jak and his soon-to-be victims.
Edging to the next corner of the former building, he listened again and heard more this time—whispers and the soft clicks of blasters being readied. Jak took a deep breath in through his nose, let it pass out through his mouth. He hauled back on the hammer of his blaster with the thumb of his hand, brought the weapon around to grasp it in both his hands and rounded the corner, ready to blast them into hell—
As expected, when they looked up and saw his face, there was a moment of shock at his stark-white hair, pale skin and burning red eyes. He’d surprised a pair of the intruders, both dressed in green, long-sleeved shirts. The one on the left was older, taller, with salt-and-pepper hair and a grizzled look, as if he had seen his share of hard living. A lot of people looked like that in the Deathlands, however. This guy was simply another one who’d chosen the way of the coldheart instead of some other way to live.
His partner was younger, maybe only a few years older than Jak, with a dirty yet unlined face. His movements were unsure as he fumbled with his longblaster, a hunting model with the stock sawed off and black electrical tape wrapped around the foregrip. He looked up at Jak, his mouth hanging open.
The way was as clear as glass—put a bullet into the old man, then follow through on the younger while he was still gaping at the albino apparition that had just appeared. Jak started to squeeze the trigger of his Colt Python when his attention was caught by something else shambling out of the darkness behind the two men.
As soon as he saw it, Jak moved his blaster a fraction to point between the two. Pulling the trigger, he had just enough time to shout, “Stickie!” before the weapon’s roar drowned out all other noises. The snap-aimed shot only grazed the mutie’s arm as it headed for the taller man.
The two men started at the bullet passing between them, then whirled. Each reacted differently upon seeing the naked, pasty, flabby mutie with its narrow, bulging eyes, vestigial nose, lipless mouth and fleshy hands, each finger tipped with a sucker that could literally tear a man’s face off.
The older man pointed his sawed off, double-barreled shotgun at the new threat, following the unwritten law of the land that stickies were to be chilled on sight. The blaster boomed, a cloud of pellets ripping into the mutie’s side, but not stopping its advance for an instant.
The second man’s reflexes were a bit slower, as he was still bringing his rifle into play, when the stickie barreled into him. One second, the albino teen was staring at his own death, the next the man was on his knees, a guttural scream bursting from his lips as the mutie behind him slapped its hand over his face and brutally yanked his head back, hard enough for the vertebrae in his spine to crack at the impossible angle forced upon them. It was just as well, too, since what happened next would have also put the man on the last train to the coast, just more agonizingly slowly.
The stickie pulled its hand away from the man’s face, the skin and flesh on his forehead and cheekbones peeling away from his skull with wet, tearing sounds, as if the creature was removing a mask to see who was underneath. Blood sprayed from his ruined head as the stickie twisted the bloody skull ninety degrees to the left, then let the twitching body drop, raising its head to snarl at the other two men.
But Jak had corrected his aim by then, lining up the Python’s sights on that hideous face and squeezing off another round. The slug hit the stickie right in the nose, obliterating it as the hollowpoint round mushroomed inside the skull, plowing through and punching out the back, spraying blood, bone and brains everywhere. Still, the stickie took a step toward the pair of men, its shattered mouth opening and closing in its ruined face before the grizzled coldheart let fly with his second barrel, pulverizing the rest of the mutie’s face and sending it toppling over, dead.
His chest heaving, the older man turned back—to find himself staring down the barrel of Jak’s blaster. The empty shotgun less than useless in his hands, the man raised his arms, letting the weapon clatter to the ground at his feet. “C’mon, kid, you can’t chill me after we both faced that.”
“Shut mouth.” Jak had used the distraction of the stickie to move inside the half room, and now had his back against the wall.
“Please,
