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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_41_-_Freedom_Lost loss of his glasses and the blood
pouring down from the torn flesh of his forehead into his naked eyes. He kept
moving, to provide less of a target while keeping his immediate area clear of
attackers.
"Son of a bitch!" J.B. cried out, incensed by his handicap, swinging his knife
in a searching circle. "I'll gut all of you bastards!"
In the heat of the battle and confusion, no one even noticed when J.B.'s
booted foot came down hard on his dropped spectacles, shattering the already
cracked right lens and cracking the left lens.
Across the room, Ryan was involved in his own struggle. The distraction of the
pair of muties falling into the band's midst had given the other three
stickies time to advance. Having lost one eye, Ryan was well aware of the fear
men possessed when it came to preserving their vision. Taking his cue from
Doc's fancy work with the ebony swordstick, Ryan also went for his opponent's
eyes. Muties, at least stickies, shared this phobia, and the lead one
screeched out in terror as Ryan dug both of his thumbs into the freak's
ghastly pale eye sockets and pushed with as much force as he could muster.
Thin blood, sticky and pink, came squirting forth like tiny fountains from the
twin thumb gouge. It ran down the stickie's cheeks like tears and covered
Ryan's hands and upper arms.
The mutie's tongue came slithering out, long and lank, adorned with dozens of
tiny suckers mirroring the ones on the creature's hands. Ryan bit down hard on
the impulse to gag. His adversary's creature's breath was unbearable, and the
odor coming from the stickie's burst eyeballs was even worse.
The tip of the tongue brushed against Ryan's wrist, slithering like a snake
over the band of his wrist chron before touching flesh.
The thought of an oral caress from a stickie was too much, even for a hardened
warrior like Ryan Cawdor. He pulled his thumbs back and locked his hands and
fingers together, swinging them down, then up in a rapid, fluid motion. As he
brought the double handful up, he smashed a twin fist into the unfortunate
mutie's chin, slamming the already maimed creature's mouth shut with terrific
force,
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to bite off its own tongue.
The abnormally long tongue fell to the floor, and the dying stickie soon
joined it.
The remaining two were summarily dispatched with equal and deadly force. Shots
rang out from Krysty's .38-caliber Smith & Wesson and Dean Browning Hi-
Power. Unlike Mildred, Krysty was no former Olympic champion when it came to
target shooting, but she was a fine shot at such close range.
The volley from Dean's pistol also struck true, but the boy had gone for a
shot to the heart instead of the head, forgetting that stickies had internal
organs that were sometimes positioned differently than those belonging to an
ordinary man.
The shot was a killing wound, with an assist. On the fringes of the action,
peering in for where his talents might best be needed, was Jak. Spying Dean's
quandary, Jak calmly whipped out a throwing knife and sent it spiraling into
the neck of the stickie that Dean's bullet had previously entered. The
combination of critical injuries finished off the mutie.
And then all of the attackers had fallen, and the conflict was over.
"Everybody okay?" Ryan asked from behind clenched teeth, his injured shoulder
singing a lusty song of agony now that the adrenaline surge was fading away.
A chorus of replies came back affirmative.
"You don't look all right, J.B.," Ryan noted. "Mildred, see if you can get his
face to stop bleeding."
"On it," she replied, striding over with a clean cloth and a small bottle of
disinfectant she kept packed away in case of injuries such as these. "Need to
find a few bandages or some med tape. That should take care of you, John."
"You're the doctor, Millie," J.B. replied. "Don't think the bastard had a
chance to get too much of a grip. Feels like he just took off a top layer or
two."
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"Well, I'll be the judge of that. Ugly as you are, a few more scars won't
hurt," the woman teased.
"Thanks," he replied glumly. "Nice to be loved."
"Where are your glasses, John?" Mildred asked, noting their absence for the
first time since the struggle had ended.
"Damn stickie knocked them clean off. Must've landed on the floor somewhere."
"Shit," Jak said. His tone made them all look at him.
"There a problem?" Ryan asked.
"Found specs. What's left," Jak replied from a squatting position near a
bloody corpse. The albino held up the twisted frames. One of the lenses was
shattered, with bits of glass hanging in the frame and scattered like fine
grains of salt on the floor. The other lens was in better shape, but not by
much. A crack the size of a bolt of lightning stretched down the center.
"Aw, hell," the Armorer said as Jak walked over and handed him the remains of
his eyewear. "Don't think duct tape is going to help hold these together."
"How's your vision minus the specs, J.B.?" Ryan asked, concerned that his
friend might be crippled without the glasses.
"I can get around, if that's what you're getting at. Just don't expect any
precision shooting from me and I'll be okay."
"Soon as we get out of here, we'll try to find you a replacement pair. I can't
have my best shot stumbling around blind."
"I'm your best shot," Mildred protested. "And don't worry about John, I'll be
there to help keep him from stumbling."
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"Not ready for a damn white cane yet," J.B. said.
"Glad to hear it," Ryan replied.
"You think we're underground, lover?" Krysty asked Ryan as he turned to let
Mildred finish ministering to J.B.'s facial wounds.
He considered the question for a moment. "Probably. Least ways, I'm guessing
we're underground. Fits the usual pattern, even if this is the most fucked-up
redoubt I've ever encountered."
"Still say this isn't a redoubt," J.B. protested as Mildred dabbed some of the
antiseptic on his chin. "Son of a gun," J.B. hissed. "What's that, Millie?
Acid?"
"It's germ-free John. It's supposed to hurt. Kills the infection."
"Ever hear of the cure being worse than the disease?"
"If this isn't a redoubt, let's start exploring and see what it really is,"
Dean suggested, hopping down from an abandoned gurney and stepping over the
dead stickies to check out the end of the corridor.
"Wait, Dean. Don't go running off on your own," Ryan growled, but the
impetuous boy had already gone around the blind corner.
And come face-to-face with the haunted eyes of a new threat.
Chapter Six
Dean Cawdor was sometimes headstrong and impulsive and all of the other things
a boy his age could be called, but certainly he wasn't a coward. That much of
his
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