Sandler’s viscera twisted in disgust at the sight of the girl, with her mud-colored hair and dust-colored skin. The feeling did not come from any superstition as vulgar and ignorant as racial prejudice, but from the clear evidence it gave of the unrestricted breeding, without regard for genetics, that prevailed in the Deathlands.
The groveling woman reared back on her knees. Her green eyes went wide, then she spread her arms wide.
“Mommy!” the girl cried. She ran to her mother and threw her arms around her.
“Thank you,” Susan Crain sobbed into the juncture of her daughter’s neck and shoulder. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Go now,” he said.
“We are finished with you,” Dr. Oates added.
“I’m free?”
“Yes,” Dr. Sandler said.
Hastily the woman detached herself from her offspring enough to stand. Taking the child by the hand, she hurried down the slope of the mesa on which she had met the doctors.
Waiting until she was thoroughly out of sight, and thus splatter range, Dr. Sandler made a certain gesture. Thus activated, the bomb that had been implanted in the child’s stomach while she was under sedation went off with sufficient force to blow her mother, as well as her to bits.
“Was that truly necessary, Dr. Sandler?”
“Sentiment, Dr. Oates?”
“Not at all. Rather, practicality. Might the shaman have been of further use to us?”
“No such prospect presented itself, Doctor. Her people belong to the past now. They are retrogressive. They will join the new order our subject will establish, under our guidance and control. Or it shall exterminate them.”
“I see.”
“And now we have further duties to attend to,” Dr. Sandler said and closed the portal that opened between worlds.
* * *
“I DON’T KNOW where I was born,” Mariah said as they trudged along what looked like some kind of game path trodden by the hooves of deer and elk. The sun had come out that day long enough to melt off much of the snow on the ground. “I don’t know who my mother and father were. I don’t remember anything but a life of wandering.”
Krysty walked beside the girl. Mildred trudged behind the pair. Flat prairie stretched to her left. About half a mile to the right the land rose into badlands, rocky heights, wind-carved and striated in shades of brown and yellow. Ahead of them the Black Hills were visible as dark serrations on the horizon.
“What did you do for the Baylahs?” Mildred asked.
The girl shrugged. “Chores around the ’stead. Chopping wood, cleaning, cooking. The same as I’ve done my whole life.”
“How did they treat you?” Krysty asked.
Another shrug. “Like I was disposable, mostly. Not bad. But mostly like they couldn’t be bothered to be mean to me. Also the same as my whole life, mostly.”
She seemed to think about it a moment. She was a mighty serious-seeming little girl, Mildred thought. Even though “little” mostly meant “skinny.” Mariah seemed maybe thirteen or fourteen and wasn’t more than an inch or two shorter than Mildred, who, granted, wasn’t a tall woman.
“Not that the Baylahs were mean,” Mariah said. “Not like some. I mean, they fed me all right and didn’t hit me too much. Didn’t...try other stuff.”
Mildred grunted, softly enough that the girl couldn’t hear. She hoped. Sexual abuse of minors wasn’t all that unusual in the here and now.
Not that the life Mariah described, of being a poorly regarded and poorly compensated servant, sounded a whole lot better. Then again, it beat being an outright slave. On the other hand, keeping an extra mouth to feed could only be justified if it freed up enough time and energy among the other members of the group to generate the wherewithal to keep feeding the extra person while feeding themselves just a little bit better.
They didn’t call the country Deathlands for nothing, Mildred thought.
The girl had made herself useful in camp the previous night, gathering relatively dry brush and even making a fire without being asked. She had taken over cooking the brace of rabbits Jak had hunted and chilled with his special leaf-shaped throwing knives. She’d done a pretty good job, too.
Enough that Ryan stopped grumbling about letting her tag along.
“So you don’t know how old you are?” Ricky asked from behind Mildred.
“Not really,” Mariah said. “Like I said, I don’t remember much. Wandering. Working.”
“Don’t you get lonely?” Krysty asked.
“Compared to what?”
Mildred laughed, but then she realized the girl had spoken in her usual flat-serious tone. Maybe she hadn’t intended a joke. Maybe she was asking seriously.
Mildred felt guilty.
“Know where those stickies came from?” J.B. called to her from the tail end of their procession.
“No. I heard rumors about them around the farm. Stories about people disappearing—travelers, folks out working alone late at night or hunting. Even once or twice about them attacking a few isolated places north of there. Everybody’s scared of them—”
“Highly sensible,” Doc said from his own position behind Ricky and Ryan in front of the girl. As usual Jak was scouting the terrain ahead.
“But nobody took them none too serious as a threat to them, you know?”
“I wonder why they chose to attack when they did,” Doc asked, “and in such force?”
“Who knows why stickies do what they do?” Mildred queried.
“Nevertheless,” he said, unfazed, “it might benefit the chances of our own survival if we could obtain some insight into the workings of their minds. Dark and twisted though they are.”
“I agree with you, Doc,” Ryan said. He was carrying his Steyr Scout cradled in arms crossed across his chest. “Knowing how your enemy thinks can be half the battle or more.”
“I wish I could help you.” Mariah almost mumbled the words. She seemed to be, on the one hand, desperate to justify her accompanying the others in any way she could and, on the other, terrified by Ryan.
“Don’t mind our esteemed leader, Mr. Gruff,” Mildred told the girl. “He’s always that way before he gets his morning coffee.”
That got Mildred a glance and a perplexed look over Mariah’s shoulder, which turned to a look of near panic when the others burst out laughing. Even Ryan mustered a brief chuckle.
“When’s the last time we had real coffee, do you reckon, Ryan?” J.B. asked.
