Cannibal Moon. James Axler

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      Chapter Two

      Ryan Cawdor followed in Jak Lauren’s footsteps, trying hard to keep up, his SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster in hand. Behind Ryan in a tight single file was the remainder of the companions. Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s red-haired, emerald-eyed lover, was wrapped in a long, shaggy black coat, and carried a Model 640 .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. John Barrymore Dix, Ryan’s comrade since the days of riding with Trader’s convoy, had his trademark fedora screwed down on his head; his military-style, M-4000 shotgun swung on a shoulder sling. Theophilus Algernon “Doc” Tanner, Oxford scholar circa 1881 and reluctant time traveler, brought up the rear in his tattered frock coat and cracked riding boots. In one fist he held a massive Civil War relic black-powder handblaster; in the other an ebony walking stick that concealed a rapier blade.

      One of their number was missing.

      They wouldn’t rest until they recovered her.

      Krysty had watched Mildred vanish into the night, chasing a pair of cannies who carried off two young children each. Pinned belly-down by withering blasterfire, the tall redhead couldn’t go to her friend’s aid, and in the deafening clatter of the exchange couldn’t summon the others to help. It wasn’t until almost half an hour later, until after the attack had been beaten back and the cannies driven out of the ville’s berm, that Ryan and the companions had regrouped and begun the pursuit.

      They had covered less than a hundred yards when Jak called a halt to the advance. Kneeling, he holstered his .357 Magnum Colt Python and carefully examined the narrow strip of churned-up ground.

      “Cannies dropped kids,” the albino announced.

      “No bodies here,” Ryan said as he looked around. “They must have been alive. Looks like they got away.”

      Jak walked on a few more yards. “Cannie tracks both heavy on one leg,” he said.

      “They’re still carrying a kid each,” Krysty said. “I saw them take four from the ville.”

      “I wonder why our Mildred did not stop to round up the escapees?” Doc asked.

      “They probably hit the ground running,” Ryan answered. “Even if she saw them she couldn’t catch them in the dark.”

      “That way,” Jak said, pointing due east.

      The companions resumed the chase. They moved triple fast and triple quiet. There was only the soft hiss of their bootheels on sand as Jak led them across the valley, toward the dark screen of mountains.

      As Ryan ran, he thought about the ville they had just left, and the dozens of bodies strewed in its rutted dirt lanes. How many of its folk had died fighting? How many had been carried off to meet a worse fate than a bullet? How many women and children had either been suffocated by smoke or burned alive in their underground hiding holes? The exact cost of victory was impossible to count until after daybreak, which was still hours away. The shambling shacks could be rebuilt, of course. The stacked logs and heaped earth of the defensive berm could be repaired, and its design much improved. But Ryan knew it would take years to restore the human population to its former size.

      All the while with flesheaters hammering at the gates.

      Taking the battle to the cannies, finding their dens and chilling them one by one, was the only way to tip the balance. It was a daunting task, given the mountainous terrain and their apparent numbers. Even before the attack there hadn’t been enough ville folk to handle the job. Unlike Deathlands numerous mutated species, cannies were still essentially human beings. Humans gone psycho-renegade. They fought with blades and blasters instead of teeth and claws. This night they had been particularly well-armed with semiauto and full-auto centerfire weapons. Several of them weren’t remades.

      Over the years, after numerous skirmishes, Ryan had cannies pegged as cunning, cowardly adversaries. Their normal strategy was hit and git, like true pack-hunting predators. Cannies worked a vulnerable territory until it could no longer support them or until they were chilled or driven out.

      Because they looked human, cannies sometimes infiltrated villes and mingled with norms, then struck without warning. Children and the dimwitted simply disappeared overnight. Cannies were blood traitors to their own species, universally despised and feared. The happy downside to the cannie lifestyle was the oozies, a horrible, wasting disease that ultimately claimed them, one and all. It was widely assumed that they got it from eating the infected brains of their own packmates.

      No one knew their exact origins. From the time-honored campfire tales, it appeared cannies had been around since skydark, when nuke winter had forced the surviving humans to make awful choices about protein sources. Although the companions had come across isolated small bands that roamed Deathlands interior, Ryan had never seen or heard of cannies unleashing a coordinated, mass attack on a bermed ville. Their organization had always stopped at the pack level, the primary hunting group.

      The hellscape was full of mysteries. Explanations, when they came, were usually incomplete.

      Jak somehow picked out Mildred’s trail СКАЧАТЬ