James Axler - Perdition Valley

“Nuke-blasting hell, we lost them,” Stirling muttered angrily, massaging the back of his neck. “I thought you were supposed to be the best tracker in the whole ville.”

“I am, sir,” Alton answered, pouring some water from a canteen into his palm.

Holding the hand out to his horse, Alton let the animal slurp the water, being careful that his fingers didn’t get in the way. Many a green rider offered a carrot to their horse, only to start screaming as they drew back a bloody stump.

When the stallion was done, Alton poured in some more. The ride had been long and dusty, and the animal was thirsty. So was he, but a good rider took care of his mount first.

Inside the ville, it was blaster and brass, but outside the walls, a horse saved your ass, Alton mentally recited the ancient poem. Learning that had been his first lesson as a sec man and never forgotten. His second lesson had been to not turn his back on a wounded enemy, even if his guts were on the ground alongside him. Alton flinched from the memory. He still walked with a slight limp in the winter, caused by the lead miniball lodged near his hip, fired from the hidden blaster of a dying mercie.

The horse nickered, so Alton gave the animal one more palmful. A short, wiry man with thinning hair, Alton had a lopsided grin that never went away, even when he was chilling a coldheart, or slaver. A remade Remington 30.06 bolt-action rode in a leather holster along the side of the animal, and the saddlebags bulged with supplies, most of them being homie pipe bombs.

“Well, then, which way did they go?” Stirling demanded, scowling. His own horse was similarly equipped with blasters and bombs. The Zone was a dangerous place and with only four sec men; Stirling wanted all the edge he could get. The pipe bombs were a very recent addition to the Two-Son ville armory. J. B. Dix had taught them the secret of making something called guncotton, which turned out to be ten times more powerful than plas.

“There isn’t much that I can do on solid rock,” Alton replied, continuing to water his horse. “We lost Ryan back on that stony plain near the desert, and no amount of yelling is going to make their hoofprints appear.”

Distant thunder rumbled in the cloudy sky, and the sec men sniffed hard for any trace of chems in the air. But the wind remained clear and crisp, without any trace of acid rain.

“What do we try next, Chief?” Renée Machtig asked, tying back her long hair with a strip of rawhide. The sec woman was dressed in loose tan clothing suitable for travel in the desert. A bandolier of ammo pouches was draped across her chest, and a big-bore longblaster hung off a slim shoulder. A crossbow jutted from one of the saddlebags on her horse, along with tufts of straw used as cushioning to protect the delicate glass bottles of a half dozen Molotovs.

Stirling knew that Renée had only come along to stay with Alton, but that was okay with him. She was one of the best shots in Two-Son ville with the BAR longblaster, and this part of the Zone in New Mex had way too many muties in his opinion. Must have been hit double-hard during skydark to yield such a bumper crop of the cursed things, he added sourly. After all, it’s not like somebody is making more of them!

“We could go back and try to find their trail again,” Nathan Machtig offered from atop his horse. Tall and lean, the bearded teenager was carrying an old M-16 rapidfire equipped with a wooden handle to operate the bolt action. The black-powder brass didn’t have the power to operate the rapidfire, but the mil wep still served just fine as a single shot. Nathan was the son of Renée, and in spite of his parent, the teen was without a doubt the worst shot in the ville, including the blind man who carved wooden bowls for the baron. On the other hand, the kid could throw a pipe bomb farther and straighter than anybody Stirling had ever seen. A hell of an arm. The clumsy longblaster was there just to give the teenager some measure of protection in case something attacked closer than the bombs could be used.

“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” Gill McGillian replied, biting off a piece of jerky. He chewed the resilient material for a few minutes before adding, “But I suppose we gotta. So, what the frag, eh?”

Gill was the former driver of the Metro, the flame wag Two-Son ville used to burn the streets of the predark ruins around the ville clean of muties. But the sec man had relinquished that vaunted position of honor to come along with Stirling. Gill was carrying a double-barreled scattergun, his shirt lined with cloth loops stuffed with 12-gauge cartridges for the wep. They were reloads, packed with rocks, glass and nails, but still deadly.

Sitting slumped on his horse, Taw Porter didn’t join the conversation, but merely watched the others through half-closed eyes. The man looked like he was falling asleep, but that was just his way of keeping folks from seeing exactly what he was paying close attention to at any moment. During the fight with the stickies, Porter had been slow to respond. Baron O’Connor had publicly ridiculed Taw for the matter, but then incredibly offered the sec man a chance to clear his rep by going along on this journey. That seemed fair enough. But as a further punishment, the baron had decreed that Porter was to be armed with only a crossbow.

“Well, no sign of any campfires that I can see,” Stirling declared unhappily. “Sure would have been nice of Ryan to light us a beacon.”

“Mebbe there are too many muties around,” Alton suggested, taking a swig from his canteen. “Stickies love fire.”

“Ain’t that the nuking truth,” Stirling growled. “But, no, I think he’s far away from here. Hell, we could be out of the Zone for all I know!”

Fine by me, Porter thought petulantly, brushing a fly off his neck. Let’s go back home. How can anybody feel safe without a stone wall around their ass?

“Chief, if Ryan is a good day ahead of us,” Gill said slowly, “then we may never find them.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stirling admitted. “That just means we have to ride faster.”

“Ride faster in which direction?”

“Give me a second,” the sec chief muttered. “I’m working on it.”

“Does anybody else think that there is something wrong here,” Renée asked, squinting at the horizon. “I mean, this field. This place feels odd. I can sense something wrong with it in my bones.”

“Odd place, I have to agree,” Alton grunted in reply. “Although I can’t tell you why. Mebbe we’re just used to having sand under our boot.”

“Rather than grass under our ass?” Gill added.

The sec men all chuckled at that, but Stirling felt his frown deepen. He had been thinking the same thing about this grassy knoll. Something wrong here, something unnatural. Then it hit him. No insects. With all this green, there wasn’t a single insect making noise in the field. That wasn’t a good sign. Hurriedly glancing around, Stirling saw a clump of tall grass and headed that way. Please let it be empty…

Although it couldn’t be seen from the top of the hillock, there was a body hidden among the grass. Or rather, what was left of one. The skeleton had been picked clean, the white bones still covered with straps of tattered clothing. With a sense of growing unease, Stirling studied the cloth until spotting numerous tiny holes in the material. Glancing at the boots, he saw the same thing. Holes neatly punched through the leather, including the wooden soles. Aw, hell.

“Drinker!” Stirling shouted in warning, pulling his handblaster and firing randomly at the ground. There was no point in being quiet now. If this was a drinker territory, the underground mutie already knew they were there.

Rallying at the cry, the other sec men started peppering the soil with blasterfire, while Nathan pulled out a pipe bomb and a cherished butane lighter. Holding them tight, he nervously looked around, watching the soil for any suspicious movements.