James Axler - Wretched Earth

A mob tottered in slow pursuit of the wag, black figures silhouetted against yellow flame. They faded rapidly as the school bus jounced off across the countryside.

Lying on his belly, Ryan used his belt to fasten himself to the steel rail of the roof rack. His companions chimed in with shouts as they finished making themselves fast.

“Weapons out!” he called when Doc called the last acknowledgment.

“The rotties can’t catch us on foot,” Mildred said.

“Do you know there’s not a hundred of ’em waiting out here?”

“Weapon out,” Mildred said.

* * *

THE GREAT PLAINS were never as flat as they appeared, Mildred thought. The dark land scrolling past them mostly looked like the top of a billiard table. Yet she ached in elbows and thighs and breasts from being slammed on the metal roof every time the bus bounced over an unseen obstacle or crashed down onto ground as hard as a baron’s heart, each time threatening destruction to its ancient suspension. Meanwhile the back of her was freezing through from the ice-blast wind of passage, especially her legs, covered only by the thin fabric of her camo pants.

Every bounce also reminded her that the dark country abounded with hiding places for lurking foes. Not just the changed, either. Lethal predators abounded in the Deathlands, animal, mutie and human.

Shadows seemed to flit across the shadowed land. A score of times Mildred opened her mouth to cry an alarm, or slipped her gloved finger into the trigger guard of her Czech-made .38-caliber target revolver. Each time she held herself back from screaming or shooting. And each time no attack came.

She was horribly aware that didn’t mean the threats she thought she saw in the shadows weren’t real.

The bus picked up speed, trading the occasional bone-slamming jolt for a constant rattle that felt as if it might detach Mildred’s retinas. But she gritted her teeth and hung on.

Because one thing she’d learned, more than a century before she’d ever opened her eyes to this terrible new world, was to endure.

* * *

AN HOUR LATER the bus rumbled to a stop in a sandy wash next to a slowly moving stream. Steam rolled from under the hood. The engine hissed and pinged as it cooled.

“What’s happening?” Ryan called.

“Driver says he thinks we’re far enough away to take a break.” Krysty called back. “He says we’ve come about thirty miles.”

“Great,” J.B. said. “I could stand to try to winch my bones straight again. The knots in my muscles’re getting knots in them.”

“All right,” Ryan said. “Everybody cut loose. Keep eyes skinned and blasters ready.”

“Really, friend Ryan,” Doc croaked, “sometimes you belabor the obvious.”

Ryan stood and stretched. He felt about the same way J.B. did—as if some triple-size mutie had grabbed his ankles and tried to bust boulders using Ryan as a hammer.

The door opened and passengers spilled out onto drifted sand. Some fell weakly to hands and knees. Somebody puked noisily.

A woman with a hood pulled up over her head scarf stopped after several paces and turned to look up at Ryan.

“Any of our brothers and sisters up there with you?”

“No,” he said.

She gazed up at him for a spell, then turned and walked off.

“What that about?” Jak asked, walking up to Ryan. He moved with his customary youthful-predator swagger. Ryan shrugged in response. He reckoned Jak didn’t feel much better than anybody else, but had enough resilience to hide it better.

The one-eyed man already knew none of his party was injured. It had been hard to make himself heard above the bus’s clatter, but he’d confirmed that nobody had caught any grief beyond scrapes and bruises.

And, most importantly, no bites.

The companions moved off to the side. The cultists and other refugees showed no interest in mingling with them, and they were just as glad not to have to answer any uncomfortable questions about the manner in which they’d hitched a ride. Not to mention the fates of the cultists who’d been atop the bus with them.

“A fire would be welcome,” Doc said, rubbing his hands together. “Restore warmth to chilled bones.”

In lieu of that they squatted in the lee of the bus. An east wind had risen during their uncomfortable ride. It came whistling beneath the wag’s swaybacked undercarriage, cutting through Ryan’s clothes and skin like a knife.

“What do you plan to burn for fuel, you old coot?” Mildred asked. “Your extra long johns from your pack?”

They had unloaded their backpacks from the luggage rack, just in case they needed to make their own way out of there in a hurry. Or in case some of the cultists unexpectedly drove off.

“What are those rad-blasted creatures?” Ryan said, ignoring the byplay. He stood with his back to the wag and his Steyr slung over his shoulder.

“Triple-pain in the hindquarters, is what,” J.B. said.

“They have me feeling the creepies all over,” Krysty said.

Ryan looked at her. “How come they don’t feel pain? How come a wound that would drop any normal man doesn’t slow them down? How can they even move? And why do they need to eat, anyway? Far as I can tell, they’re chills, or next thing to it. What do they need food for?”

“Why, my dear Ryan,” Doc said, “you seem to have taken an unusually empirical turn of mind.”

“Didn’t think you went in much for abstract curiosity,” Mildred said.

“Nothing abstract about it. ‘Know your enemy like you know yourself,’ Trader always said.”

“I don’t want to know these things,” Krysty said. “They’re not part of Gaia’s nature.”

“Worse than muties?” J.B. asked.

“Yes,” the redhead said emphatically. “There’s a wrongness about them I’ve never felt from the most horrible mutie. Ryan, they’re dead. They really are. Just like those hogs in Canada.”

Ryan nodded. “That’s why I want to know about them, Krysty. How do you fight what’s already dead?”

“Shoot head,” Jak said. “Works.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Why?”

“You really aren’t succumbing to curiosity for its own sake?” Doc asked.

“Fireblast, no. If I know why that chills them, I may be able to find something else that does it, too. At least waste less time and ammo doing stuff that doesn’t faze the bastards.”

“Chopping their heads off should work,” Krysty suggested.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I hacked one or two through the back of the neck, too. That seemed to drop them, and made them stay down.”

“Their central nervous system appears to retain some function,” Mildred said. She squatted with her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts. Her big chocolate eyes stared intently at nothing in particular as she wrestled with the questions.

“Or perhaps something else makes use of their nervous system,” Doc said.

“You talking crazy, Doc? Don’t need you losing it, just now,” Ryan said.

But Mildred had raised her head and was looking hard at her customary antagonist. “What are you getting at, old man?”

“Clearly, or at least so far as we can tell, life has fled these poor unfortunates that Ryan dubbed ‘rotties.’ Yet they move. And we saw none of those horrid worms from the north.”

“You channeling Galileo?” Mildred asked. “Eppur si muove.”

Doc laughed, a soundless, head-bobbing motion.

“What are you two rambling on about?” Ryan demanded.

“Ancient history,” Mildred said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Perhaps these unfortunates have been taken over by some kind of organism, not the worms of Canada, which we haven’t seen.”

“Well, we definitely know that’s a possibility,” Ryan said.