"Right."

J.B. went back to his task, making another quick adjustment.

"Okay. Dean?"

"Yeah, J.B.?" the boy replied.

"Oh, never mind."

"What?"

"I was going to tell you to step back to the rear of the cell, but if this thing goes off, it's not going to matter where you're standing."

"Oh," Dean said, debating this. "Thanks for thinking of me."

"I've got one wire left to cut on this sec lock. Cutting it should short the current and allow the door to be slid open without activating the charge."

"Guess the key word here is 'should,' right?"

"Yeah."

"You think I should crawl under my bunk?"

"Only if it would make you feel better."

"Nah. Guess I'll stand here and face it with you."

J.B. reached out with the miniature pair of pliers. "There is one thing you could do for me, Dean."

"What?"

"Stick your fingers in your ears. That way, you won't have to hear the blast in case I did screw up."

Before the boy could offer a reply, J.B. squeezed the pliers shut and cut the connecting wire.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Beck Morgan, puppet master of Freedom, had chosen his stand near a former Royal Thomasville Furniture Store that had been remodeled into a tattoo parlor. The wooden chair hanging over the doorway and marking the store's entrance hadn't been removed when the new tenants came in. All they had done was add a posed mannequin covered in a patchwork of ornate body art showing off the proprietor's wares.

Morgan had gotten out his private a.r.s.enal and was battling a bottom-floor stickie horde almost single-handedly. The leader of Freedom Mall was bleeding from several superficial wounds, most of which appeared to have been caused by shrapnel from the blown wall or from the pieces of brick and concrete the stickies were lobbing at him instead of bullets.

The mastermind behind the stickies' attack on Freedom had chosen their lower point of entry and advancement well, blasting in through a former side entrance into the predark mall that had once been nothing but tinted gla.s.s and metal framing. The wall had been bricked shut and reinforced during the Freedom renovation to make the former retail pleasure palace a virtual fortress, but this was still a potential weak point that had been allowed to exist without worry or fear.

Until now.

"Come on, you stupe b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! I've got a lead tattoo for your sorry a.s.ses!" Morgan boomed before launching into another steel-jacketed salvo. He knew his supplies of ammo were running low, but he couldn't afford the luxury of taking the Uzi in his hands down to single shot.

A huge mutie came rushing around the temporary barricade of rubble and debris Morgan had chosen for his safe haven. The man-beast's arms were flailing, and its eyes rolled in their huge sockets like pinwheels as the creature ran, bare feet slapping hard on the tile floor. Before Morgan could squeeze off a round, the mutie had eagerly jumped the barricade.

"Budd will get you," the mutie proclaimed.

"Death at close range or far off, it doesn't matter much to me, a.s.shole!" Morgan cried as he snapped the clip of his blaster and fired at the stickie, causing the brute's wide torso to churn up in a frothy, b.l.o.o.d.y mess. The shots didn't even slow the big mutant as it continued to lumber forward, grabbing the shocked leader of Freedom by the shirt with both hands and boldly lifting him up into the air.

Blood continued to pour from the wide furrows Morgan's weapon had made into the stickie's chest, and still the creature lifted the man even higher. The mall administrator kicked his feet weakly as he struggled in the crushing grip, trying to shut out the unearthly shrieking the mutie was making in a language only others of its kind could hope to understand.

Ryan, in the lead of his own group of friends, saw the situation, took in the risks and made his choice, launching his lean body like a missile and hitting the big mutant at knee level. Knocked off balance, the already injured stickie buckled beneath Morgan's weight, and both of them crashed to the floor as Ryan rolled frantically away to avoid joining the pile.

The one-eyed man whipped out his panga as he got back to his feet and buried it into the back of the stickie's exposed head even as Morgan pressed the advantage Ryan had given him, managing to pull a .38-caliber pistol from an ankle holster. He squeezed the trigger once, then twice, sending a twin barrage of bullets at another stickie who had chosen that moment to also try to come over the barricade.

By this time, Jak, J.B., Mildred, Krysty, Doc and Dean had pulled their own various pieces of steel hardware and readied them for battle.

"Cawdor," Morgan said. "See you fetched your boy."

"No thanks to the lock on the cell door."

"Never dreamed they'd launch this kind of a.s.sault so suddenly. One of the mutie b.a.s.t.a.r.ds has some mercie training, that's for d.a.m.n sure," Morgan said.

"We help wrap this up and get you out, we're done, Morgan," Ryan told him.

"Fine," the mall leader replied.

Doc clawed out his ma.s.sive Le Mat revolver, thumbing back on the hammer. Steadying the heavy blaster as best he could, he aimed the portable cannon at the midst of another advancing swarm of stickies and fired. The thunderous boom of the weapon came hurtling out with a sound that managed to still the battle cries of the living and the dying.

More slugs whizzed over the group's heads, many of the lead-alloy-core bullets coming dangerous close to finding a target. One near-fatal bullet cut into the upper notch of J.B.'s battered fedora, pulling it back off his head where it landed softly on the ground. The Armorer reached down with a curse and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the beloved hat, searching for the possible hole the weapon's firing might have made.

"Clean," he said after a brief perusal. "No holes."

"Glad the lid meets your approval, J.B.," Ryan said loudly over the tumult. "How about admiring it later when the chilling's finished?"

"That you, One-eye?" The question came from the stickies' side of battle.

"Who wants to know?"

Ryan's query was ignored. "You and your group are dead, One-eye! Chilled and buried! We'll put your head in the fire, let it cook for an hour or so, see if that mutie s.l.u.t of yours wants to ride you then!" a disfigured man said in a near scream of a voice that came from the ruined slash of a mouth. It was a voice that Ryan had heard before, along with the name "One-eye," a voice of a man he had to have met before to be aware that Krysty possessed mutant abilities.

"Another Freedom burned to the ground, One-eye! What do you think about that?" Norm jeered, and when the man with the half-melted visage said those words, Ryan knew who he was now facing.

"Lester?" Ryan asked in a disbelieving manner. "Lester, is that you?"

"Who?" Dean replied.

"Quiet," Krysty whispered, cutting the boy off.

She didn't want to think about Lester, or Baron Willie Elijah or, most of all, Lord Kaa, who had chosen her to be his bride and to mother his successor, his child and future mutant ruler of the Deathlands.

That had been months earlier.

"Can't be," J.B. said softly. "Can't be. That elevator slaver wheel chilled everyone that was chained to it. No way our boy Lester could've survived."

"Wrong, J.B.," Mildred replied. "As you might recall, none of us bothered going back to sift through the ashes for a body count."

"All your fault, One-eye!" Lester-Norm cried out. "Your fault I'm a freak! You brought death to Willie ville! Death and fire! Now I've brought it back to you!"

"Aw, come on, Lester," Ryan replied. "You were a freak before I even met you."

The infuriated man once known as Johnson Lester shrieked as he lunged for Ryan. The newly christened mutantthe former human beingboth combined in a single chilling package with one goal in mindthe death of Ryan Cawdor.

Norm was on top of the one-eyed warrior before he even had time to pull up his SIG-Sauer and end the madness in human form, on him all hot and bothered and quick, faster than any mutie or man could be. The angry killer wrapped his arms around Ryan's lower body and legs and shoved forward, shoved as hard as he could.

Ryan's hand was slick with sweat and blood, and before he could bring his panga up for a killing blow, he lost his grip on the blade's handle, and the long knife went skittering away across the pebble-strewed tile of Freedom's flooring.

"f.u.c.k this. Time to end it," J.B. said, unlimbering his shotgun.

"Hold up. The way that freak is twisting around, you might hit Ryan," Krysty replied. "Especially with a scattergun."

"Give me your pistol, then." Krysty shook her head. "Just hold off, J.B. until they're farther apart. Stupe isn't even armed."

Ryan stumbled back, still trying to stay on his feet. He put his hands together, feeling the fingers interlace and lock together, then he brought them down hard as a unified whole on his adversary's back. He did this once, twice, breaking the man's grip on his legs. Ryan went back a step, waiting and watching intently as his foe reached down for one of his own pants-covered ankles.

Ryan guessed the scarred man was going for a hidden blade or small-caliber pistol, so he lashed out with a booted foot and caught Lester in the exposed side of the throat.

The force of the kick sent the air wheezing out of the smaller man, and Ryan could only guess at the sensation of multicolored explosion of agony, but he didn't know his enemy's ability to take pain. The disfigured man channeled the suffering, used it to make his perceptions bright and clear. For a man whose entire head was once ablaze, a kick to the throat was like a lover's kiss.

Ryan was ready for Lester as he came lunging back up, his shoulder slamming the one-eyed man in the chest, making his ribs throb and ache. Lester's arms were slithering around him, locking behind his back as the force of the charge sent the two of them falling backward.

The one-eyed man's first impulse was to slam his hands against the unprotected sides of Lester's scabbed head, boxing his ears, until it dawned on Ryan the man had no ears. Second choice in a close fight such as this was to go for the eyes.

Ryan locked his thumbs into the man's eye sockets and pressed. Ability to absorb pain or not, this move brought forth a keening wail of agony. Lester tried to bite off the sensations of having his already damaged eyes gouged out and instead sunk his teeth into his enemy's right wrist, breaking the skin and causing streamers of coppery-tasting blood to spurt out. However, fear of being blinded outweighed his ability to throw away the pain and caused him to release his grip on Ryan and go reeling backward.

Krysty's blaster fired four times, each bullet finding a secure home in Lester's chest cavity. The self-styled leader of the Winston stickies tumbled backward and moved no more.

"Nice shooting," Morgan remarked.

The other stickies, seeing their leader fall, eased up on their attack, choosing instead to follow their own whims.

"They're easing off," Morgan stated. "Time for us to ease off, too, I think."

"Where the h.e.l.l are you going?" Ryan asked.

Morgan shook his head in disbelief. "Freedom's lost, Cawdor, but I'm still in debt for your a.s.sist in saving my hide. Lay down some covering fire and tell your group to follow me. There's a way out that should lead you away from any stickies until you're safe on the other end of the back parking lot."

Ryan didn't argue. "Dean, follow Morgan! Rest of you pick up after Dean, one by one. Me and J.B. will lay down covering fire and bring up the rear."

Most of the remaining stickies weren't interested in fighting against Ryan and J.B.'s marksmanship, and chose either to stagger back outside or turn and go down the main aisle of the devastated mall interior.

"Come on," Ryan said to his friend as the two men raced hurriedly away. "I think we've done enough shopping on this trip."

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Morgan had taken the group back into the catacombs that lined the far interiors of Freedom Mall, bringing them past unfinished walls and ancient pipes kept behind heavy wire fencing. The padlock holding a chain around the front of a solid sec door was unlocked with a key on a ring hanging from the former mall leader's waist. He led the way down a flight of flimsy metal stairs, which vibrated from all of their combined weight.

At the bottom was a bank of equipment lockers with a padlock and chain identical to the one that had kept the door to the small chamber closed, a folding card table weighed down with a toolbox and some scattered papers and files, a relatively clean portable gasoline generator and a half-bubble-shaped hatch sticking up like a boil in the center of the floor.

"Open the floor hatch," Morgan said as he pulled on the cord and caused the gen to chug into a steady heartbeat of sounds. "Probably take two of you. d.a.m.n thing sticks."

Ryan and Jak turned the floor-level locking wheel, straining until it broke free with a wrenching of metal and allowed them to lift up the half-egg-shaped hatch. The second the seal between floor and hatch had been pried loose with a soft sucking sound, Jak went skittering back with a crazed look on his pale face.

"Gaia!" Krysty gasped, her green eyes popping open in shock.

"By the Three Kennedys!" Doc wheezed as he turned and staggered away from his earlier position of wanting to see what the opening of the hatch might unveil.

Mildred, who had autopsied the dead and cut into the living, involuntarily gagged.

Dean's chest heaved as he struggled not to vomit. The boy was afraid to even try to speak until he regained control of his senses.

Only J.B. appeared not to have been struck totally by surprise over the odor that had been unleashed, and that was because of his long-practiced poker face. Behind the lenses of his gla.s.ses however, even his pale eyes were involuntarily watering.

"Fireblast, Morgan, what the h.e.l.l is that smell?" Ryan asked, his own eye tearing as the ghastly odor wafted up.

"Human waste, I imagine," the former leader of Freedom Mall said succinctly as he searched his ring for yet another key to unlock the equipment lockers. "Stinks, doesn't it?"

"'Stink' is entirely too polite a word," Doc quipped.

"You mean the way out of here is through the b.a.s.t.a.r.d sewer?" Ryan demanded.

Morgan shrugged. "What better place to have a secret tunnel?"

"Only secret is how something can stink so bad."

Dean said, his voice pitched deeper since he was using a hand to pinch his nostrils closed.

"Waste has to go somewhere. We modified the original plumbing as best we could, but despite its immense size, Freedom was never designed for twenty-four-hour inhabitation," Morgan explained as he inserted yet another key in hopes it would be the right one for the lockers' padlock. "Bringing in fresh water and disposing of waste was starting to be a logistical nightmare for which I had no real solution. Guess I can thank the stickies for ridding me of the problem of having to deal with yet another crisis."

"Smells like s.h.i.t," Jak said bluntly.

"That's because it is s.h.i.t," Morgan said in reply as he finally found the right key, and the chain around the bank of lockers fell with a clank to the hard ground. "And p.i.s.s. And gallons upon gallons of shower water, sink water, tub water, any liquid that goes down a drain. Been a while since I made the trip. All I can say is hold your nose and walk fast. You'll get used to it."