Axler, James - Deathlands 34 - Stoneface

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Ryan felt Hellstrom's mind reach out to touch him.

The leader of Helskel leaned back in his chair, his eyes opened wide. "I underestimated

you," he said quietly. "Consider yourself lucky."

"You're the lucky one, Lars. Most people who have underestimated me are sitting on the

knee of Father Death."

Hellstrom eyed him for a long minute, then threw back his head and laughed. "You're a

treasure, Cawdor. Helskel needs a man like you."

"Rather have you replace the tires of my wag, and we'll be on our way."

"Ah, well, that's the rub, isn't it? We need you, and you need tires. Can't we help each

other?" Hellstrom grinned, his face taking on a cadaverous, skull-like aspect. "Because if

you won't help me, you and your people will die in a manner far less spectacular and far

more agonizing than the late Zadfrak."

Stoneface

#34 in the Deathlands series

James Axler

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY •

HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN MADRID • WARSAW •

BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen

property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the

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author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

For Melissa Ellis and Will Murray, and for all the mucksuckers they've helped me

to defeat.

First edition November 1996

ISBN 0-373-62534-0

STONEFACE

work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now

known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in

any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission

of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada

M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and

have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not

even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all

incidents are pure invention.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in

the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in

other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

America's like an ark, I always thought, different types and nations accounted for, to

safekeep from another disaster sure to afflict the rest of the world. But what if the plague,

the flood, the meteor, strikes our lands, too?

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We'll just have to keep looking for tomorrow, keep looking real hard, for as long as it

takes. And for now, don't forget Ozymandias.

—Star Gazing, by E. Edelon, published by Boston New Press, Boston, 1996

Prologue

Ryan opened his eye.

As usual he didn't know where he was after the mat-trans jump. But his mind was clear

enough, and he was thankful he had been spared the horrible nightmares that were the

frequent side effects of the gateway's quantum energy overflow.

With crystal clarity he remembered escaping Gert Wolfram's Tennessee fortress, leaving

it aflame and overrun with stickies, the flight by hot-air balloon to the subterranean

redoubt.

He remembered closing the door to the gateway chamber, and the disks in the floor and

ceiling beginning to glow as the matter-to-energy converter assembly automatically

powered up.

He remembered the spark-shot mist gathering overhead, seeping down, and the darkness

closing in.

And then there was light again and he opened his eye, expecting to be somewhere else.

Most of the time, a change in the color of the arma-glass walls of the chamber was the

only thing that told Ryan and his friends that a mat-trans jump had been successfully

completed.

In every redoubt, the octagonal design of the chamber remained the same, though each

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chamber was color-coded. The predark engineers had obviously decided color-coding

was the simplest method of differentiating the chambers, evidently so the original

gateway jumpers would know at a glance into which redoubt they had materialized. He'd

often wondered why they hadn't simply put up signs identifying the locations. He chalked

it up to yet another unfathomable mystery of predark scientific reasoning.

This gateway chamber had dingy white walls, and they weren't made of translucent

armaglass. Instead, they were heavy, mortared concrete blocks. The door was a slab of

steel set tightly in the wall, a wheel-lock jutting from the rivet-studded, cross-beamed

mass.

A thin thread of light shone from a single overhead fixture, the glare stabbing painfully at

his eye. There was a distant high-pitched whine he had never heard before, the sound of

an engine or generator. He felt its regular pulsation through the floor beneath his hands

and booted feet.

His five friends stirred. He heard a mutter from Jak, a grunt from J.B. and a groan from

Doc. Krysty sat up, brushing a wisp of crimson hair from her face. "Everybody feel all

right?"

As a matter a fact, everybody did, remarkably so. It had been one of the smoothest jumps

in recent memory. Not only had there been no hideous hallucinatory nightmares, no one

was complaining of nausea, dizziness, headaches or other symptoms of "jump sickness."

Jak and Mildred were the last to push themselves into sitting positions. The stocky black

woman looked around and said, "This isn't a gateway chamber. Not exactly."

J.B. removed his spectacles from a capacious pocket of his coat, settled them on his bony

nose and said, "Yeah. Never saw a unit like this before."

Doc climbed to his feet with the help of his sword-stick. The ceiling was low, and he

couldn't stand at his full height. "Unusually cramped quarters. Inasmuch as I have a touch

of claustrophobia, I would prefer less confined environs."

Ryan stood and went to the door. He had to stoop slightly, too. He put his hands on the

wheel-lock, giving it a counterclockwise twist. It didn't budge. The wheel obviously

hadn't been turned in a very long time. Taking and holding a deep breath, he threw all of

his weight and upper-body strength against the lock.

With a tortured screech of rusted gears tearing free from time-frozen stasis, the wheel

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turned. Slowly and resistantly at first, then Ryan was able to initiate handover-hand spin.

He threw his shoulder against the steel door and there was a sucking sound of rotten

rubber seals ripping. The hinges squealed and the door opened. He stepped out, blaster in

hand. Everyone followed him, alert and watchful. Then they stopped and stared.

"Dark night," J.B. breathed.

"Where this?" Jak demanded.

"This isn't a redoubt," Krysty said uneasily.

They were in a medium-size room with a dozen desks, most of them covered with

computer terminals. Sheets of crumbling, flaking paper lay in pieces beneath discolored

coffee cups and verdigris-eaten brass paperweights.

A control console ran the length of one wall, consisting primarily of glass-encased

readouts and gauges. A fine layer of dust clung to everything, coating the floor and

instrument panels with a powdery gray film. They could taste it on their tongues, and the

floating particles tickled nostril hairs.

On the other side of the wall, behind the console, the whining sound slowly faded.

Ryan silently agreed with Krysty. This place wasn't a redoubt. Almost all of the ones they

had visited in the past had standardized layouts, adhering to the same design specs. Here

there were no vanadium-steel sec doors, freestanding control consoles or flickering

display monitors.

The door at the far end of the room was wood-paneled and had a simple knob rather than

a lever or a sec-code keypad affixed to the frame. This place looked more like an office

or a classroom.

"The Air Force," Mildred suddenly said.

Ryan turned toward her. She held a scrap of paper gingerly between thumb and

forefinger. A small dark blue symbol was emblazoned near its top edge, a bird with

outspread, upcurving wings.

"This is United States Air Force letterhead," she said, "a memo regarding the quantum

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interphase transducer experiments."

The vibrations of her voice and the soft touch of her breath were enough to cause the

scrap of paper in her hand to crumble and float away in tiny fragments.

"I think we jumped into a military testing facility," she continued. "We jumped into a

prototype gateway chamber."

Krysty looked around. "It's so old, there's probably very little of use to us here."

"Its power source is still operational," Doc pointed out.

Ryan walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. Following a procedure that was

now ingrained habit, his five friends fanned out behind him, taking cover behind desks

and drawing their weapons. Looking over his shoulder, he began counting in a soft voice.

"One… two…"

On "three," he turned the knob, flung the door open and threw himself to one side. There

was no sound from anywhere except the creak of rust-eaten hinges.

Ryan peered carefully around the door frame, staring into semidarkness. He blinked. He

was looking down a long, smooth corridor, a dim glow of light filtering from its far end.

Cool air brushed his face, blown from a distant, unseen opening.

Gesturing behind him to the others, the one-eyed man stepped out cautiously, heel to toe.

His footfalls sent up flat, faint echoes. His companions joined him, pushing quietly

through the dimness. J.B. took the point, Uzi in hand.

The corridor turned to the left like an L. J.B. paused at the angle, gestured for the others

to wait and crept carefully out of sight. They could hear the muffled slapping sounds

made by J.B.'s boots on the dust-filmed concrete floor.

The footfalls ceased. A latch clicked and the glow of light widened, dissolving the

darkness. The air current increased in volume. They heard J.B.'s footsteps again, fast and

hard. He was running. Ryan's finger crooked tight on the trigger of his handblaster.

The Armorer sprinted around the corner. His normally sallow face was flushed with

excitement, his eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles wide.

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Panting, he called to them, "Come on! You won't believe what I found!"

Chapter One

Several days later

They heard the screamwings before they saw them.

Ryan Cawdor whirled, his hand making a reflexive move toward the butt of the SIG-

Sauer holstered at his hip.

Jak Lauren inclined his white-haired head to the west. "Swarm screamwings. Stirred by

vibrations wag's engine."

Ryan looked behind him at the flat curve of black roadway fifty yards away. The Hotspur

Hussar Armored Land Rover sat there, the powerful turbocharged V-8 engine idling with

a muted throb. On the far side of the road, Krysty Wroth's bright red hair shone through

the underbrush like a torch. She was examining the shrubs, searching for edible berries.

She hadn't heard the high-pitched whistling shrieks floating up from behind the western

hills.

The one-eyed man turned back to the wooded foothills, which were at least a quarter of a

mile away, dotted with large bushy growths. The shrieks were rising in volume.

At his and Jak's insistence, the wag had stopped so the companions could stretch their

legs and relieve themselves after a six-hour drive. Ryan assumed J. B. Dix was inside the

vehicle with Mildred Wyeth and Doc Tanner. At least he hoped so.

Jak jerked his thumb back toward the road. The scar-faced teenager's lips were set in a

grim line, his ruby eyes narrowed. "Better move. Screamwings on top us soon."

Ryan and Jak returned to the wag at a trot, casting glances behind them. They still saw

nothing, but the cacophony of eerie cries grew louder by the second.

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"Everybody back aboard!" Ryan shouted. "Screamwings!" Krysty ran back up the slope

to the roadbed. J.B. pushed open the side door panel. The wiry, bespectacled

weaponsmith climbed out, holding his Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun tightly. His Uzi

hung from a lanyard across his narrow chest.

"Where?" he demanded.

Jak gestured back toward the hills. "Hear?"

"Yeah. Getting close."

Poking his head into the wag, Ryan saw no sign of Mildred or Doc. He looked across the

roof of the vehicle, then cupped his hands and bellowed, "Mildred! Doc!"

From the tangled underbrush on the other side of the roadway, he heard a faint response

from Doc.

Krysty made a move in that direction. "I'll get them."

Ryan checked the move by grabbing her arm. "Stay put. Get inside and button up."

He turned to J.B. "Kill the engine."

The red-haired woman looked anxiously toward the foothills. Already the leathery

rustling of hundreds of wings was mixing with the weird shrieks. "Can't we outrun

them?"

Ryan shook his head. "Worst thing we can do. Screamwings can't see unless something's

moving. If we can't be on the move before the flock gets here, we've got to stay put.

Leastways, that's what I'm told."

He unleathered his pistol and ran across the shoulder of the road, down the gentle slope,

and blundered through the undergrowth. He glanced back once and glimpsed a dark,

twisting mass uncoiling from the far side of the hills, silhouetted by the sunset.

Screamwings were rare, even in this region of Deathlands. Ryan had never seen them, but

he had heard plenty of stories about isolated settlements being completely wiped out by

ravenous hordes of the winged predators.

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He ran through the undergrowth, waist-high weeds and tangled brush, heedless of the

thorns snagging his clothes and tearing his skin. He kept shouting Mildred's and Doc's

names. He reached a small clearing in the overgrown vegetation, just as the stocky

woman and the tall, skinny man appeared on the opposite side.

Relief welled up inside him. "You weren't supposed to wander far."

Mildred ran a hand through her beaded plaits of hair. "Sorry, Ryan."

"My fault," Doc said. Small twigs and leaves were snarled in his shaggy silvery white

hair. He gestured with his lion's-head ebony swordstick, which concealed a rapier of the

finest Toledo steel. "I'd hoped to find a blackberry patch in this morass. I fear my

enthusiasm for pies and muffins infected the lady."

"Let's hope our visitors don't have your sweet tooth," Ryan said.

Doc angled an eyebrow at him. "Pardon?"

"Screamwings. A swarm is on its way."

They heard the beat of wings, and their faces registered their fear.

"Don't move unless you have to," Ryan said. "Stand stock-still and hope the screamwings

will pass us and the wag by."

The three formed a rough circle, standing back to back. Ryan faced the way he had come,

the SIG-Sauer held in a two-handed grip, barrel pointed upward. He waited for the first

glimpse of the screamwings and didn't have to wait long.

Several black shapes held aloft by furiously fluttering wings darted above the

overgrowth, dipping and banking and diving. Ryan tried to keep them framed within his

limited field of vision, but it was nearly impossible. The speed and maneuverability of the

creatures was remarkable.

Ryan stopped trying to follow their blindingly fast movements and concentrated only on

staying as motionless as he could.

Suddenly a screamwing landed on the upraised barrel of the SIG-Sauer.

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The screamwing was barely six inches long, though its wingspread was over two feet. It

was scaled and clawed, with a wide mouth full of rows of serrated, pointed teeth.

Leathery, talon-tipped wings whipped the air. Longer, curving claws were on the hind

legs. A long tail lashed around the built-in baffle silencer as it sought to secure its perch.

Unblinking eyes, like chips of cold obsidian, glared around.

Ryan had seen any number of mutated animals in Deathlands, but he had never seen one

that looked like predatory death stripped down to its bare essentials. He couldn't even

guess at what predark life-form the screamwing had sprung from.

He remembered Mildred once commenting that most mutations were random, sometimes

not a case of evolution, but devolution. Perhaps the screamwings were some species of

hunting bird that had regressed to their reptilian roots. Like snakes, the screamwings had

no conventional organs of hearing, but relied on supersensitive nervous systems to detect

sound vibrations in the air and ground.

The creature crouched there, turning its head jerkily back and forth. Ryan saw its rear

claws tear small scratches in the steel of the SIG-Sauer. It took all of his willpower to

hold the blaster steady. He had no idea if a shriek from the thing would draw the flock to

the clearing, or if it would decide to take an experimental bite out of his hand.

The screamwing opened and shut its jaws with a clashing of teeth, looking almost evil.

Then it launched itself from the barrel of the blaster, the point of its tail brushing the

patch over Ryan's left eye, a puff of air fanning his right. It took all of the man's self-

control not to flinch. Not too long ago an accident had taken the sight from his good eye,

and he had been rendered completely blind. Though he had recovered his vision, he was

still overly cautious about risking it again. Fortunately the screamwing showed no further

interest in him. It flew in a rapid circle around the clearing, then flapped from sight.

Ryan lowered his arms, trying to steady his nerves and bring his breathing back to

normal. He heard the shrieking and leathery slap of wings from the road, and an

occasional muffled thud as if the little demons were trying to batter their way into the

wag.

Since the wag carried three-inch-thick armor plate, he doubted the screamwings could

inflict much damage, but the vehicle's six tires were another matter. If they found they

liked the taste of rubber, he and his friends would be stranded in the hills.

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file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/James%20Axler%20-%20D\eathlands%2034%20-%20Stoneface.htmlRyanfeltHellstrom'smindreachouttotouchhim.TheleaderofHelskelleanedbackinhischair,hiseyesopenedwide."I\underestimatedyou,"hesaidquietly."Consideryourselflucky.""You'retheluckyone,Lars.Mostpeopl...

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Axler, James - Deathlands 34 - Stoneface

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