Child Of Slaughter

Ankh rammed the Winchester barrel into his side, but it didn’t make any difference. Doc could no more control his response to the pain than he could single-handedly defeat the mutie band in unarmed combat.

“Stop it!” Ankh hissed. “If we miss it, you’re a dead man!”

Doc scowled and braced a hand on the ground. “I can’t help it! I’m having a back spasm.” Pushing up, he got to his knees. Getting up and stretching might break the cycle of pain, if he didn’t get shot first.

“Get down!” Ankh snapped. “Get down now!”

Doc ignored him and got to his feet. Towering over the seated muties—many of whom were gaping up at him with expressions of great irritation—he straightened his back and spread his arms. The vertebrae in his spine cracked as he rolled his head from side to side, limbering up his neck. Then he leaned back slowly, extending the lower vertebrae, working to loosen up the cramp.

Gradually, he felt the spasm in his middle back let up. Leaning farther still, he heard—and felt—a midback vertebra crack into place.

Just like that, the spasm stopped. The pressure lessened, and Doc could think clearly once more.

Just in time to see the landscape before him dance with shimmering, shivering light.

“By the Three Kennedys!” he said softly, gazing raptly at the sight.

As one, the muties rolled over and lay flat on their backs in the sand—all except Ankh, who was on his feet, jamming the Winchester into Doc’s gut.

“Down!” the mutie snapped. “Do as you’re told!”

But Doc was lost in the vision of dancing, multicolored light. It was like an aurora of the northlands, curtains of radiance flowing and glowing hypnotically in the night. He tipped his head to one side, entranced by the beauty of it, unable to look away.

That was when Ankh finally realized the blaster wasn’t going to bring him down. Swinging it over his back by its strap, he launched himself at Doc like a cougar, throwing all his weight against the taller man.

And it worked. Doc went over backward, plunging toward the sand, with Ankh coming down on top of him.

“No!” As Doc toppled, he pinwheeled his arms, instinctively trying to halt his fall. He’d just stopped the back spasm, but if he came down hard, he’d likely get it all over again.

Just as he was about to hit, however, there was a feeling of suction and repulsion all at once, and a flash of light.

Blinded, Doc did not at first realize that something had changed. But it didn’t take long to sink in.

It didn’t take long to realize that he should have hit the ground already, but instead was sinking gently. Something was pulling him in, dragging him inexorably downward.

Quicksand.

Tossing his head and blinking his eyes hard to clear the spots from the blinding flash, Doc saw that the muties were sinking as he was. Most of them were covered almost completely, leaving just their noses and toes exposed.

And none of them seemed to be worried. None of them were fighting the force that was drawing them down.

“Relax.” Ankh, who’d rolled off Doc and now lay beside him, was only halfway covered. “You’ll be fine.”

But Doc didn’t believe him. Frantically, he thrashed and floundered, which only made him sink faster. He grabbed for Ankh, as if holding on to the mutie might keep him aboveground, but that just pushed Ankh deeper, out of reach.

Doc yelped and thrashed some more, and then the quicksand took him down. He sucked in his last breaths with heaving desperation, watching the flickering stars through eyelashes caked with sand.

And then he was gone. The ground was empty, as if Doc and the muties had never been there at all.

Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_6f16ef50-a57c-5af1-9bea-9e508a2f31eb)

Doc hit the icy water with a hypothermic shock and barely managed to stay afloat.

Seconds after sinking through the sand alongside the muties, he’d fallen through some kind of open space, then suddenly splashed down in water. He paddled madly now, struggling instinctively to keep from going under, though the truth was, he couldn’t breathe above the surface, either. He’d inhaled enough quicksand on the way down to clog his nose and throat and lungs with smothering muck.

His eyes were wide as he thrashed and suffocated, but there was only pitch-darkness all around. If the muties were there with him, he couldn’t see a trace of them.