James Axler - Perception Fault

From inside the gas mask came a small sigh, as if the coldheart had exhaled his last breath, and he started to fall backward, down the stairs. Ryan was aware that something was wrong; then he noticed it, and threw himself to the side, just as the corpse’s finger spasmed on the trigger of his blaster, emptying the entire magazine into the back of the staircase. The body disappeared, thumping its way down the stairs to land with a crash at the bottom as the roar from the blaster died away.

Sig Sauer covering the staircase, Ryan opened his eye to see the slumped body of the first raider, and dust and plaster trickling down from the blaster. The scarf, now askew over the head of the corpse, gave him another idea, and he got up and went over to the body, unwrapping the sodden garment and wrapping it around his head so that the gore-soaked section was over his face. He stripped the corpse of its drab-green shirt and slipped it on, finding the sleeves a couple inches too short, but figuring no one would notice. The smell of the scarf was overpowering, but he breathed through his mouth and walked to the stairs leading to the third floor, listening for anyone coming to investigate.

Only silence greeted him. Steeling himself, Ryan bent over and staggered up the stairs, breathing loudly with each step. At the top, he crawled out onto the landing, wheezing as if severely injured while looking around at the room.

The sniper’s position was ahead and to the right, a form still bent over the longblaster, scanning outside. Another figure was in the window next to him, next to a small scope mounted on a tripod, but looking back at the staircase, a weapon pointed at the crawling form that had just appeared.

“Hey, stop right— Jeez, Carly, is that you? What happened?” The voice turned from commanding to concerned, and Ryan felt a small hand on his arm, trying to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get you over— Hey, you’re not—”

The mistake was realized too late, as Ryan had already grabbed the spotter’s arm in a steely grip while he shoved his Sig Sauer into the man’s chest and pulled the trigger twice, shattering ribs and holing vital organs. The coldheart let out a startled grunt and collapsed to the floor. Ryan kicked the blaster out of his hand and aimed at the sniper, who had heard the commotion and was drawing a small blaster of his own. Their weapons went off almost simultaneously, and Ryan felt a small puff of air against the side of his head from the bullet’s passage as his own shot hit his target in the upper chest. The shooter fell back against his blind and tried to lift his blaster again, but his second shot went wild into the darkness. Panting with the effort, he stared at the weapon in his hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds, then lifted his gaze back to Ryan.

“Bastard….” was his last, high-pitched word, then his head lolled, and the blaster slipped from his lifeless fingers. Ryan had been covering him while scanning the rest of the room, but finding no one else here, went over to the sniper’s body. Something about him had caught his attention, and Ryan removed the drab-green cap from the body’s head to find a surprise underneath.

A woman. Not even a woman, a girl, maybe in her late teens at most. Ryan didn’t feel that much of a twang of conscience. Women were just as lethal in the Deathlands as men, more so a lot of times. And there was the fact that she had been trying to kill him just a few minutes ago. No, what he was more concerned about was who was training what should have been a ragtag group of bandits to have this much skill and precision.

Something had definitely changed in Denver, and Ryan was suddenly very curious to find out what.

J.B. poked at the charred remains of what had been their dinner with the blade of his knife, shaking his head. “Damn shame.”

“Got that right.” Ryan had made his way back to the rest of the group to find them all puzzling over the unusual fight.

Mildred arched an eyebrow at both of them. “You talking about the turkey or that paramilitary force we just encountered?”

“Bit of both.” Ryan exchanged a glance with J.B., who nodded. “Someone’s got a base of operations here, and is supplying people with quality weapons—” he indicated the pile of blasters and magazines he’d taken from the bodies on his way out of the sniper’s building “—and the training to use them well.”

“Too well.” J.B. was methodically sorting the pile of weapons into types, then calibers. “Wide range, from an AK-47 to a Webley revolver—wonder where that came from?—but all are well-tended, oiled and everything.” He hefted the longblaster Ryan had brought back. “Remington 700, composite stock, 10x sight, very clean. Good trading value.”

Mildred grimaced. “Whoever sent those people out here probably has a difference of opinion on that.”

“Mebbe, but we’re holding them now. Possession’s a hundred percent of the law out here, you know that.”

“Speaking of, what about the coldhearts themselves?” Krysty waved at the three corpses that had died trying to capture J.B., Mildred and Doc. “Some are in ragged uniforms, and others—like the ones you ran into—well dressed, and all with matching shirts. What about that?”

Ryan took off the shirt he’d worn back to his friends and examined the embroidered insignia on the right sleeve. Not a patch, the symbol—a lightning bolt diagonally bisecting a field that was red, with a small sword on the upper left, and blue with what looked like an unrolled scroll of paper on the lower right—was stitched directly into the cloth. He had no idea what it meant. Wealthy barons with delusions of grandeur often outfitted their sec men in matching uniforms, thinking it gave their ville an appearance of respectability and power. Ryan often thought it simply made the hired thugs easier to identify and kill.

Doc rubbed his temples with his long fingers. “And, except for the ones that our good man Ryan took out, they did not seem all that interested in chilling us, but rather were looking for captives. Standard operating procedure, if they were out to collect slaves, but that was not the impression I got. It is all most peculiar.”

“Don’t forget stickies,” Jak piped up from the other side of the fire as he cast long looks into the darkness.

“And those collars they were wearing. What’s that about? Is someone controlling them? We have a whole lot of questions, and no answers.” Ryan shoved the weapons into a large backpack he had liberated from the sniper’s building. “We’ll move to the high building and hole up there for the night. Between the bastard stickies and what looks like the vanguard of an army, there’s too much trouble around to be staying out in the open. Let’s strip the rest of the bodies along the way. No sense letting anyone else find these blasters. Once we’re secure, we’ll rig a few alarms, and take turns watching throughout the night. In the morning, we’ll head farther into the city—carefully—and see if we can get some idea of what’s going on here.”

“What we eat?” Jak asked.

Ryan jerked his thumb behind him. “Rations back at the sniper position.”

“Great.”

There were no further objections, and they all packed up, doused the fire and headed for cover.

GUNFIRE AWOKE RYAN the next morning, jolting him out of bed with his Sig Sauer in his hand before he realized it was off in the distance. Looking around, he saw most of the others were also awake, from a sleepy-eyed Mildred to a yawning Jak, who had taken the most recent watch. Only Doc’s stentorian snoring continued unabated.

After a quick sweep of the building to ensure no one had entered during the night, the other five broke their fast over a small fire built in a section of aluminum vent that Ryan and J.B. had taken apart and reshaped to form a rough chimney. After choking down the vacuum-packed, nearly indestructible rations that tasted bland whether they were hot or cold, spiced or plain, the five ascended to the roof to see if they could spot where the shots were coming from.