Perception Fault

Levering himself forward on his elbows, he powered up the slight slope, staying low to the ground so the Steyr longblaster wouldn’t get caught on the makeshift roof above his head. When he reached the top, the one-eyed man made sure he wasn’t visible by anyone outside, sheathed his knife again and took out his new toy, which he’d found in the redoubt. He carefully unwrapped the bundle to reveal a black plastic and metal tube a bit over a foot long and four inches in diameter. Ryan took off the soft rubber cap at one end and hit a small button covered by a protective rubber cap. He heard the high-pitched whine of the rechargeable battery coming to life, then placed the device to his eye and gazed out on a transformed world.

The moonless night had been replaced by an eerie, lambent green as the night-vision scope amplified the invisible infrared light it was projecting more than twenty thousand times, turning the darkness into neon-green day. Ryan scanned the high points first, adjusting the 4x zoom to try to pick out any sign of movement.

At first, he didn’t see anything. The guy might have left when night fell, he thought, but kept looking anyway, staring at the ruined hulks of buildings as if he could bring out anyone inside by sheer force of will. Long minutes passed without any sign of life. About to give up, Ryan decided to give it thirty more seconds before turning off the device to preserve the battery. He kept as still as possible, examining every aspect of the building he had chosen, from its empty windows, which looked like gaping, glowing eyesockets in the night-vision scope’s lens, to the pole sticking off the roof, attached to the side of the building by a length of wood.

Ryan blinked and refocused on the “pole,” pushing the magnifier to its maximum limit. He took one last long look. The man with the longblaster had camouflaged his position to look like part of the building, indistinguishable from the rest of the crumbling rubble. Ryan frowned. Whoever these guys were, they were well-trained, much better than the everyday, ragged bands of coldhearts.

He was still peering at the sniper’s position when a dark shadow obscured the scope’s vision. Thinking the unit had malfunctioned, he started to remove it from his eye, only to have it torn out of his hand to crash into the floor beneath him, the tinkle of broken glass telling him it was now just another piece of junk like everything else around him.

Instinctively, Ryan scooted down, hunching back into the tunnel. The action saved his life. A dirty, greasy hand slapped down on the tunnel floor right in front of him. The fingers wriggled on the dusty surface, then pulled free with a wet, sucking sound.

Stickie! Ryan looked up in time to see a hulking form block out the dim starlight. Hoarse breathing echoed in the small corridor, and Ryan caught the fetid scent of rotting meat wafting from the mutie’s gaping maw. With a bestial grunt, the mutie grabbed both sides of the tunnel and began crawling inside, intent on destroying its prey.

Ryan was about to shove himself down to the other end when the entire tunnel rocked at the bottom. With a sinking feeling, the one-eyed man knew what was at the other end.

Forcing his right hand down to his hip, Ryan drew the P-226 Sig Sauer and aimed between his spread legs, all too aware of the slavering death only a yard or two away from his head. He fired blindly five times, the muzzle-flash illuminating the face of the stickie at the bottom of the tunnel, each burst of light revealing the destruction wrought upon its face as the 9 mm hollowpoint bullets slammed into it. Only when the last one punched through its eye did it whine shrilly and, expelling a fist-size wad of blood and phlegm, crumple to the floor, effectively blocking his retreat.

Ryan tried to bring the blaster back up, but found himself wedged in the tunnel, and couldn’t straighten before the top stickie was almost upon him, its gluey hand slapping at his shirt and starting to pull him toward it. Above the pressure of being dragged to his death, the Deathlands warrior felt the sheath of the thin-bladed knife pressing against his neck.

He pushed at the stickie’s rubbery arm with his left arm as hard as he could, trying to pin it against the tunnel wall, while he dropped his blaster and went for the blade at his neck with his right. As he brought his free hand around, the one-eyed smacked into something wet and slobbering, and he didn’t hesitate. He curled his fingers into a fist and smashed them three times into what could only be the mutie’s face, causing a howl of pain to reverberate through the passageway.

The mutie pulled back enough for Ryan to free his blade from its sheath and slash up with it. He met resistance and struck again and again, not giving the stickie a chance to recover or launch its own offensive. At one point, he felt the tip of the blade scrape bone, and felt warm, thin fluid run down his hand. The stickie screamed in pain and thrashed around in the passageway, bucking back and forth against the walls. Squealing in pain and surprise, the mutie retreated back up the tunnel.

When it was halfway out, it jerked in surprise, then slumped limply in the opening as the boom of the sniper’s longblaster echoed off the walls. The stickie flailed feebly, then stiffened as its head seemed to explode, showering Ryan with gore from its shattered skull. The mutie’s corpse sagged toward the floor of the tunnel, held up by the sucker pads of one of its fingers, still adhered to the wall.

Ryan wiped foul-smelling gore from his face and eyes and considered his current predicament. The big question now was, why didn’t the sniper shoot the stickie when it was trying to climb in and tear Ryan’s face off? But there was no time to ponder an answer. The stench of dead mutie, combined with burned cordite, was overpowering, and Ryan began to cough and choke as he slid to the bottom of the tunnel to retrieve his blaster—after first making sure the bottom stickie was dead by kicking it in the head several times. Only when he was sure did he crouch to feel for his Sig Sauer, finally retrieving it from the mush that had been the mutie’s head and wiping off the gunk as best as he could. Then he tried shifting the body out of the tunnel, but even heaving at it with all his strength didn’t budge it—the corpse was wedged fast.

Breathing through his mouth, Ryan knew there was only one way out. Panting with each movement, he began the laborious climb back up, the tunnel floor now slick with the stinking liquid dripping on him from the corpse above. At last he reached the sodden form and wedged his legs up into the tunnel to give himself a bit of a rest while he figured out the best way to escape the trap he found himself in.

Over, under, around or through, he thought, remembering one of the Trader’s favorite axioms. With the other three options unavailable to him, there was only straight through, up and out, hoping the distraction of the stickie’s suddenly animated body would be enough to cover his scramble to shelter.

The preparation for his escape attempt was almost overwhelming by itself. Ryan forced himself to get as close to the dead body as he could stand, after first confirming its deceased state by the simple expedient of putting a bullet in its brain. While there, he noticed something that made him pause. Stickies usually didn’t wear much clothing, maybe a tattered pair of pants, if anything, but this one had a black nylon collar with a small box around its neck. He reminded himself to check it out if possible once he was out of this stifling, would-be tomb.

When he was wedged uncomfortably close, he heaved at the sticky, flabby body with all his strength, shoving it up and back until gravity took over, and the dead stickie slithered out of the opening to the ground below. Gagging on the stink, Ryan scrambled out as quickly as he could, diving to the ground and landing on the corpse, which expelled a loud, rank blast of stale air. He heard a crack over his head, followed immediately by the sting of concrete chips flying at his head, then the boom of the longblaster’s report all around him.

Ryan was already moving, crawling over the debris to the nearest cover, a pile of concrete pieces that might have been a sidewalk a century ago. He’d just reached cover when the ground near his left arm puffed up dust, and the crack of the large-bore rifle exploded in the distance again.

“This is gettin’ bastard old,” Ryan muttered. Going back wasn’t an option. As long that that keen-eyed coldheart held the high ground, they couldn’t leave the area without someone taking a bullet or two.

The nearest cover was a copse of stunted trees, their thin trunks intertwined into a gnarled knot of wood that sprouted sickly branches reaching up to the sky. It was only a couple of feet wide, but it had to serve as shelter until Ryan could get to the half-standing house on the other side of it. Selecting a suitably large chunk of concrete, he tossed it to the left, then rolled right as fast as he could.

The shooter was no slouch. Ryan had just stopped behind the tree when he felt something tug at his boot, and heard the thunder of the longblaster’s report again. Unslinging his own weapon, he felt the bottom of his combat boot and discovered the heel had been shot away.

“Bastard.” Ryan slowly rose to a crouch, about to experiment with pushing the barrel through the tangled tree to see if he could draw a bead on his opponent, but a sudden explosion of wood above his head made him hit the dirt again. Looking up, he saw a fist-size hole in the profusion of tree trunks and immediately took off again, crawling like a snake through the rough terrain to the wall of the house.

Steyr clutched to his chest, Ryan circled around the house’s right side, senses alert for signs of men, stickies or anything else that might try to kill him. The decaying landscape around him was eerily silent, considering all the recent activity, and the one-eyed man’s shoulder blades itched, as if in anticipation of a bullet drilling between them. Shaking off the ominous feeling, he kept moving, drawing closer to the building where the sniper was holed up.

Stalking closer, he rounded a corner and ran smack into a pair of men coming the other way. The surprise was equal on both sides, but Ryan reacted faster, swinging his SSG’s stock into the first man’s jaw, slamming him into the wall and then to the ground, out cold. The second man was just bringing his rusty revolver up when Ryan jabbed the butt of the longblaster into the man’s forehead, breaking the skin and sending him staggering backward, the blaster flying from his hand. Ryan followed right after him, but he didn’t need to hit him again. When the man landed on the rocky ground, the snap of his broken neck was plainly audible to the one-eyed man. Nudging the now-limp body aside with his boot, he saw the sharp edge of the rock the guy had landed on.

Straightening, he scanned the shadows, looking for a scout or flanking team creeping up on him. A quick peek around the corner revealed the three-story building about twenty yards away. The long way to it meant going twice that distance, but it also kept him under cover almost the entire way. Slinging his Steyr, Ryan drew his Sig Sauer and replaced the half-full magazine with a full one from his pocket. Checking his back one last time, he scanned the windows of the building for movement, then hunched over and ran the last few yards to the wall, putting his back to it and hiding in the shadows as he listened for any kind of alarm. After several quiet seconds, he worked his way to the entrance, where a battered metal door hung on one hinge. Ryan listened to the pitch-blackness inside and, hearing nothing, edged into the room, leading with his blaster, careful not to touch or move the door.

He waited just inside until his eye adjusted to the gloom. When he could discern the walls instead of simply blank blackness, he began to advance cautiously, heading for the staircase he spotted on the back wall. The ground floor was completely bare of any furnishings or debris, just empty floor and support pillars throughout. He stepped quietly and listened for anyone coming after him, but heard nothing.

Reaching the stairs, Ryan began to climb, staying near the wall so the steps wouldn’t give his position away with a telltale creak. Once he reached the top, Ryan was pleased to see the starlight streaming weakly in through the glassless windows. The next staircase was right above him, its entrance at the far end of the room. He had just taken his second step when a section of the floor gave way under his foot with a snap, the weak boards crashing to the ground. Cat-quick, he wrenched himself back before his leg fell through.

Ryan froze, hearing the rapid clomp of quick footfalls. This floor was empty, as well, with nowhere and nothing to hide him. The steps grew louder, and Ryan knew the coldhearts were seconds away from flushing him. A glance at the ceiling revealed a latticework of metal bars under tangles of metal pipes and ducts. He had no idea if it was strong enough to hold his weight, but it was the only option available. Shoving his blaster into his belt, he sprang up with all his strength, grabbing the thin metal and hoisting himself up as quickly as he dared. He had managed to pull his chin up when he heard the sound of boots on the stairs. The bar settled for a moment, and he feared it would pull loose, but it held, and he kept climbing, swinging his leg up and over and pulling himself onto the bar, balancing there just as the advance team hit the floor.

Like the others, they were swift and silent, quartering the room and sweeping and clearing each section with rapid movements. The pair moved well, always covering one another’s back, and each man never out of sight of the other. They were completely covered from head to toe, one with a scarf wrapped around his head, and the other wearing what looked like an old gas mask, which gave Ryan an uncomfortable feeling. If they had gas weapons, he could be in for a world of hurt. Then he noticed there was no filtering canister on the end, and realized the hunter was wearing it as some kind of decoration or trophy.

So far, Ryan had been lucky. From what he could see, they hadn’t looked up once. Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t at any moment, but he couldn’t move. If he tried for his blaster, he’d probably make enough noise to alert them, and that’d be all she wrote. So he waited and watched them come closer, trying to figure out some kind of plan.

At the far end, one of the coldhearts looked out the window and drew back in alarm, signaling to his partner about the lack of guards, apparently. There was a brief, signaled argument, then they headed back toward the stairway leading to the first floor, their weapons—two well-maintained short-barreled machine guns—held at their waist, muzzles pointing in front of them.

They were a few steps away when the glimmerings of a plan formed in Ryan’s mind. It would require split-second timing, but if he could pull it off… He watched as they came closer…three steps…two steps…one step away…

When the coldhearts were right below him, about to take their first step onto the staircase, he let his feet swing free and dropped to the floor, barely making a sound as he landed right behind them, drawing his Sig Sauer as he landed.

There was a moment’s surprise as both whirled to see their deaths in the single, icy-cold blue eye of the tall, black-haired man less than an arm’s length away. Still, they tried to bring their blasters to bear on him before he put a bullet into their heads, knowing it was hopeless, but trying anyway.

And it was. Even before the man on the right could finish turning, a 9 mm slug had entered his eye socket, drilling straight back into his brain and out the back of his skull, splattering the wall with red-gray gore as he slumped against the wall, his feet trembling and kicking as his limbs slowly registered his death.

Ryan switched his aim to Gas Mask and triggered two shots, knowing that the plastic lens of its eyepieces could sometimes deflect a bullet enough to prevent a kill shot. One or the other had to have done the job, since his attacker froze, standing stock-still at the top of the stairs, blaster clenched in his hands. Ryan kept his weapon aimed at the bandit, just in case he was faking, but it seemed the coldheart was on the last train west, even if his body hadn’t quite registered the fact yet.

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.

Chapter Five

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?”