Where they'd always lived.

Where they had their twining caves of earth and stone, where they all existed together. Sometimes one would kill another. They were hunters. Stealthy, cunning in the arts of stalking and trapping.

They never came close to the tumbled buildings of Consequence, where their forefathers and mothers had lived an eternity ago. The buildings were linked with death in their memories, those who had any memories for anything but dung and death.

They coupled with any other of them who happened to be there. Many of them bore babies that never drew a breath.

But some of them lived.

Strangers never went to that area. Claggartville folk knew of the dark region and avoided it as though the plague dwelled there.

But now there were outlanders come to Consequence.

And they were in the big house.

It was the flavor of the smoke that brought them there.

RYAN CAWDOR WAS ON GUARD. He'd picked the duty from two till four in the morning, the time of the soul's dark night, when sleep is deepest, when sickly babies lose their frail hold on life and when the breathing of the elderly becomes slower and falters and fails.

When a sentry is at his most careless and nocturnal attacks can be most successful.

Ryan had the G-12 slung across his shoulders, the white silk scarf tucked down into the fur collar of his long coat, a barrier against the cold that filtered all through the old house. Only in what had once been the music room, where a merry fire blazed, was the chill held at bay. On the upper floors, with broken gla.s.s crunching under the soles of his combat boots, Ryan whistled beneath his teeth at the bitterness of the night.

The SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol was on his right hip, balanced by the weight of the panga with its eighteen-inch blade on the other hip. The salt on his skin had made the thong of the eye patch chafe his temple, and he eased a finger beneath it.

A pallid moon rode low on the horizon, smudged behind galloping banks of dark clouds. Once there was a fluttering of hail against the wooden walls of the house, but it pa.s.sed quickly off toward the south. All around the mansion were only darkness and the still night.

Ryan picked his way among the sleeping figures, his shadow dancing madly off the farthest wall, between the curtainless windows. Lori was cradled, inevitably, in Doc's arms. Jak was curled up like a young puppy, his damp jacket still steaming slightly from the heat of the fire. The wood in the empty house was so old and dry under its layers of varnish that it burned quickly with a ferocious heat. Donfil was stretched out straight near the bolted door, arms by his sides, mirrored gla.s.ses reflecting the yellow flames. Krysty was asleep near the wall, where Ryan had been lying. As he stooped to look at her, her long sentient hair curled protectively about her calm face.

Though Ryan moved like a ghost, he woke J.B. The fedora hat was pushed back off the sallow forehead and his eyes glittered like specks of onyx.

"Anything moving?" he whispered.

Ryan shook his head. "Just me," he replied, pitching his voice low.

"My turn?"

Ryan turned the left cuff of the coat to check his chron. "Nope. I'll wake you in another fifteen minutes."

The Armorer slipped easily back into sleep.

Ryan decided on one last slow turn around the creaking floors and stairs of the old house. There was the big main staircase, and the narrow back flights, which brought him through what must have been the kitchens to the unlocked door to the music room.

The cramped top floor with its attics for servants seemed even colder. He checked one of the turret rooms again.

And felt something burst toward his face, slashing and tearing, hot blood on his cheek, near his ear.

"Fireblast!" he cried, staggering back and nearly falling, his right hand punching up at his a.s.sailant, feeling the satisfying jar of an impact with flesh. There was a m.u.f.fled squawk of pain, then the flutterings of great wings.

He watched as the huge owl panicked its way through the empty frame of the window, flying off into the safety of the night.

"b.i.t.c.hing gaudy-wh.o.r.e b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he muttered, dabbing at his cut face with the back of his hand, feeling that the cut wasn't much more than a surface scratch.

But the shock had been real enough.

Ryan walked to the cas.e.m.e.nt and leaned on the frame, sucking in the cold air, steadying his breathing and his nerves. He stared down into what had once been the back garden of the house, past some overgrown apple trees and currant bushes.

He saw movement, a flicker among the deep pools of shadow that surrounded the mansion.

After the false alarm of the owl, Ryan wasn't about to open fire and find he'd smeared a rabbit all over the ground.

As light as a big cat, Ryan picked his way down the main stairs, arriving in the entrance hall on the first floor. The door had an old stained-gla.s.s pattern to it, acanthus leaves, twined with some unidentifiable purple flowers. The moonlight came and went as the wind drove clouds across it, and the colors flowed and merged on the dusty floor. The only sound was the bright crackling of the dry wood in the hearth, beyond the locked door to Ryan's left.

His pistol was in his hand, a round ready under the hammer.

There were heavy iron bolts at top and bottom and a rusting sec chain near the broken mortise. Ryan opened the top bolt first, wincing at the thin screech of corroded metal. He stooped to release the lower bolt, checking that the chain was still in place, hooked over the hasp.

He waited a moment for the return of moonlight. When it came he turned the ornate bra.s.s handle and put his good eye to the gap, squinting out into the garden.

But his view was blocked.

The cold moon was to his right, free from clouds, making the porch almost as bright as day.

They were out there, ringing the front of the house, standing quite still, like a scattering of obscenely grotesque statues, born from the crazed imagination of some long-dead, demented gardener.

The nearest of them was actually on the porch, less than a yard away from the front door.

It wasn't possible to tell either the age or the s.e.x of the mutie, who stood several shambling inches taller than seven feet, with shoulders broader than an M-16 rifle. Its hair straggled down either side of its face, lank and matted with glittering streaks of orange clay. One lidless eye, weeping a colorless liquid, was roughly in the middle of its left cheek. There was no nose, just a semicircular hole above the chin, fringed with tendrils of pale skin that trembled in time with the thing's breathing. Ryan saw that it didn't actually have a proper chin. The lower jaw was missing, and a row of jagged stumps protruded from the set-back upper jaw.

It wore a long, shapeless sack of filthy material that reached clear to the planks of the wooden porch. Where it had moved up from the garden, Ryan could make out a trail of thick, jellylike slime, like that left behind by a gigantic snail.

The mutie had two seemingly ordinary arms that ended in crooked fingers. The right hand gripped a gnarled club of wood, with several pieces of iron hammered into it. Beneath the normal arms Ryan saw that the mutie had several sets of paddlelike, residual arms, becoming progressively smaller.

During his travels in the Deathlands, Ryan had seen some appalling cases of genetic mutation, resulting initially from the nuking of 2001. But never anything quite as gross as this.

For several moments of stopped time, Ryan and the mutie looked at each other. In those steady, beating seconds, Ryan looked past it, running his eye over the remainder of the group, which numbered about twenty. The moon flickered and died, but Ryan had seen enough to know that whatever stood on the porch was a prince among its peers. Some of the others were unbelievably monstrous in their mutations. And all carried some sort of rudimentary weapon.

"Goodbye," Ryan said, slamming the door, immediately yelling out a warning to the others. "Muties! Up and at 'em! There's muties!"

The colored gla.s.s in the top half of the door imploded, splinters of crimson, deep blue, yellow and sea-green scattering over the hall floor. The tip of the great club appeared in the hole for a moment, disappeared, then came crashing down a second time, knocking the door clear off its frail old hinges. The mutie stood there, stooping to enter the house. Its face was in deep shadow.

The door to the music room swung open and Ryan saw J.B.'s face in the gap, peering out behind the stubby barrel of his mini-Uzi.

"Dark night!" he exclaimed, not really sounding that surprised.

"Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here," Ryan called, spinning around and putting a triple burst through the middle of where he a.s.sumed the mutie's heart might be. The giant staggered back onto the porch, giving a roar of pain and rage, tearing away half the frame of the door as it went. But it didn't fall.

A second burst from the G-12 put it down, the club dropping with a crash. Ryan could hear a dreadful sound from outside, a confused, wordless shriek that mixed anger and hatred.

"Through here and out the back door," the Armorer said.

Ryan glanced over his shoulder, but none of the muties had yet appeared. He darted into the music room, seeing that the fire had sunk low. The others were up and ready, blasters in hands.

"Bad?" Krysty asked.

He shook his head as Jak and Donfil bolted the heavy door behind him. "Muties like you've never seen," he panted. "Real... But I figure they don't have the brains of a self-heat can between them. Mebbe best we outrun them. No point wasting good lead."

Lori appeared from the far door, at the bottom of the rear stairs. "They're out there, through the old kitchens. Five or six. No blasters. Axes and some getting knifes."

"Knives," Doc corrected automatically.

"More than that out front. Jak, pile all the wood we've got on the fire and set the floor burning. Place'll go like a torched gas wag. Give the muties something to think about."

While the boy scampered to carry out the orders, Ryan cautiously led the other five into the rear hall. They could hear a rhythmic drumming and pounding on the music room door, as the muties closed in on their prey.

A face appeared from the blackness, pressed against the gla.s.s of a small window opening off the kitchen area. It took a second to see that the skull was totally bald, covered with what looked like small pinkish-white worms or maggots.

Krysty snapped off a shot from her Heckler & Koch silvered P7A-13. The 9 mm round smashed the gla.s.s, sending the mutie out of sight in a spray of blood that was almost black in the moonlight as it splattered over the white walls.

"Two down," Krysty said, calmly.

Jak joined them, silhouetted in the doorway against the dazzling light. "Fire burn all. Floor and walls all burn. House gone real soon, I guess."

"You got much ammo, Ryan?" J.B. asked, checking his own pockets.

"Not that much. Forty-four in the G-12 and a few singles."

"I got more. Best I go first and clear the path. You figure these sons of b.i.t.c.hes are slow on their feet?"

"From what I've seen, yeah, they are. Hey, that fire's going to catch us if we don't make a move now."

There was a gust of raw heat that scorched at the seven companions, huddled at the foot of the dark, spiraling staircase. For a moment Ryan considered trying to lure the muties into what would be an inferno in a handful of minutes, but the rule was always to get out when you could.

He motioned for the Armorer to go first. "I'll come last. Anyone falls, we stand and fight for time to get them up and away. Head out as far as you can. I'll hold off any pursuit. Right? Then let's do it, friends!"

The next sixty seconds were a blur of violence, noise and death.

There were seven of the creatures. One was probably female, as it was naked to the waist and had a cl.u.s.ter of dangling b.r.e.a.s.t.s across its chest. Another had arms so long that they sc.r.a.ped on the frost-rimed gra.s.s. A raking burst from the Uzi sent half of them spinning away in a tangle of normal and residual limbs. There was a harsh crying, choked with blood, as J.B. let loose at them, firing from the hip. The others were close behind him, picking their targets. But it was d.a.m.nably difficult to shoot on the run, and only one more of the inbred monsters was. .h.i.t.

Ryan hesitated a second, looking back into the burning room. Tongues of flame leaped eagerly at the old floorboards, climbing the paneled walls. Already a chunk of the ceiling was blazing. Through the other door Ryan glimpsed something, very low, near the floor, something pale and sluglike that moved on its belly in rippling movements. He aimed the G-12, then changed his mind, powering after the others into the cold night air.

The garden was filled with chaos. He hurdled a corpse and dodged a hissing blow from an enormous, scythelike blade. Another of the muties, who was gut shot, reached out and tried to grab Ryan as he darted by, but the man was too quick, dodging sideways and making for a break in the bushes where the others waited for him.

"We could chill them all," J.B. said, pointing to the rear of the house. It looked like most of the muties were there, watching them, fifty paces away, ignoring their own dead and wounded.

Even while the two sides stared at one another there was a great whooshing sound and a bursting sphere of flames shot out through the side of the mansion.

It wreathed around the heads of the muties, sending them into a gurgling, screeching, huddled group, several of them actually falling to the dirt.

"Time to move," Ryan said. "I don't figure we'll have any more trouble from them."

Nothing followed them as they circled back around the blazing house. Flames soared a hundred feet in the air, sending a fountain of golden sparks ten times as high. By the time they reached the blacktop that would take them away from Consequence, there was already the first gleaming of the false dawn showing low in the eastern sky.

JUST AS THE SMOKE had drawn them from their burrows among the trees, so the ferocity of the fire sent them crawling and stumbling back. Houses were bad. They should never have gone near them. That had been a bad thing to do.

At least some of them would have fresh meat for a few days.

The ashes of the old house smoldered quietly for three days and then died away. If anything ever walked there again, it walked alone.

Chapter Eleven.

FORTUNATELY DOC TANNER'S sometimes muddled memory was functioning well. He could recall the details of the sketch map that he'd seen in the leaflet advertising a new restaurant opening, back in Consequence.

"Inland a half mile or so. Then you reach a road... Old County Turnpike, I think. Head west and loop back again toward the coast. It looked as though it were a more sizeable community, set in a valley. Harbor. Said something there about how Claggartville was one of the centers of the New England whaling industry. That would be around... Goodness me! Around two hundred and fifty years ago. So many, many years, tears, fears and jeers, and tears and tears."

Lori stepped forward and put her arm around his shoulders, smiling up at him, lifting a finger and touching the old man on the lips, hushing the flow of words.

"I could use a shave," Ryan said, fingering the stubble that was beginning to thicken on his chin. J.B. never seemed to grow much of a beard on his pale skin. Jak sprouted an odd, long, embarra.s.sing snowy hair from his chin. Ryan knew it was rare for an Indian to grow any sort of beard. Doc, on the other hand, was already showing the beginnings of a fine set of grizzled whiskers.

"I could use some food, lover," Krysty replied, "and my hair needs tr.i.m.m.i.n.g."

The smile was a shared private joke. Because of the mutie genes that dwelt within Krysty Wroth, she possessed certain oddities. And the long mane of dazzling red hair, with a strange life of its own, was one of them. Cutting it at all was a difficult and often painful process for the girl. But she'd taught Ryan the best way of doing it, which involved her drinking plenty of alcohol or sniffing some lines of jolt. Anything to numb the sentience of her fiery locks.

"That'll have to wait. The haircutting, I mean. But my belly's been moaning since last night that it was feeling left out of things. Maybe there'll be something for us all in Claggartville. If we ever find it."

The rising sun didn't make their journey any easier. The road that Doc had seen on the old map didn't exist anymore. There'd been some kind of seismic shift, probably prompted by the deathly power of the hundreds of missiles that had ravaged the seaboard. But Doc was certain that Claggartville had been a ville on the coast, so they tried to turn their way southwest, back toward the taste of the ocean.

The woods grew thickly, making progress difficult. Just before noon, Krysty held up her hand.

"What is it, lover?" Ryan asked.

"Smoke. Wood fire. And meat cooking." She checked the direction of the light breeze. "Ahead a half mile or so."

"Spread out," Ryan called. "Forest like this we could walk right past a dozen ambushers. Around ten paces apart and keep your eyes open."

"And if we see your grandmother, lover, we'll make sure she knows how to suck eggs," Krysty teased.

"Venison," Donfil said quietly, when they'd gone a hundred paces or so. "If they don't take it off the fire real soon it'll be blacker than the heart of a pony soldier."

By now they could all catch the smell of meat roasting over a wood fire. Jak glimpsed smoke curling up among the trees, not far ahead of them.

And they could hear the noise of singing, sounding like two voices. One was thin and piping, the other an echoing ba.s.s.