                        ENDWORLD

                         #28

                         DARK DAYS

                         DAVID ROBBINS

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Robbins is the author of over 300 published

novels. He is perhaps best known for two long running

series Endworld and Wilderness. He has also written the

best selling novels Men of Honor, Hell-O-Ween and

Blood Feud.

Copyright © 2012 David Robbins

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means by any individual unless otherwise noted in any form including but not limited to; photocopying , recording, electronic or mechanical methods or any other means yet to be invented without the prior written consent of the publisher and or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by the applicable copyright law. Any such distributions and or reproductions of this publication will be punishable under the United States Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to the fullest extent including Profit Damages (Sec. 504 A1), Statutory Damages (SEC 504 2C) and Attorney Fees and Court Costs.

DISCLAIMER: This is a fictional work. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Mad Hornet Publishing

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9894713-1-2

www.davidrobbinsauthor.com

www.madhornetpublishing.com

Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane

SPECIAL NOTE TO ENDWORLD FANS

Also included is an ENDWORLD short story, BOYS NIGHT OUT, that has never been in print.

Plus an excerpt from A GIRL, THE END OF THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING, an extraordinary ENDWORLD prequel.

Armageddon was just the

beginning.

Nuclear, biological and chemical

weapons have ravaged the planet.

Toxic clouds devour all in their

path.

Pus-covered mutates crave flesh.

The dead rise.

Sanity hangs by a shred.

The Freedom Federation has been

decimated by the dark science of

the madman Thanatos.

And now, at the survivalist

compound called the Home,

the terror continues.

CHAPTER 1

The creature came out of the wasteland in the dark of a moonless night. It stopped at the edge of the clearing and reached out with its enhanced senses. A human was on the west rampart. Fainter, it registered two others. That fit the intel. The Warriors were divided into Triads.

It grinned in anticipation and bared its razor-edged teeth. Already it could taste the delicious flesh and the warm blood.

The creature reached out again, this time into the forest around it. It detected no mutates or zombies or death clouds. No threats of any kind were near. It would be safe for the few minutes it was vulnerable. Closing its eyes, it spread its long arms and willed its glands to release the chemicals that brought about the change. Pale fluid flowed from every port.

Its body seemed to fold in on itself, to shrink until it was barely a fourth of its original height. Blond curls sprouted from its scaly pate. Its slanted eyes became round and blue. Where before its naked form showed no evidence of gender , now it resembled a human female.

The clothes were always the hardest. Or, rather, the illusion of clothes. It molded its flesh with great mental care, its skin assuming the aspect of a dress. Its feet became shoes.

The change complete, the creature looked down at itself. Of all the shapes it was capable of assuming, it liked human guises the least. Humans were frail and pathetic and it was anything but.

The creature thought of its mission and moved toward the compound. It forced tears from its eyes and sniffled and whimpered.

On the west rampart the sentry stopped walking and peered down at the field. “Who’s there?”       The creature whimpered louder and went on sniffling and stopped when it was close enough for the Warrior to see it. “Mister,” it said, “can you help me?”

“May the Spirit preserve us!” the man blurted.

“I’m all alone,” the creature said , and dabbed at its eyes. “A green cloud killed my mommy and my daddy.”

“Stay right where you are, girl. Do you hear me? We’ll send someone out for you.”

“Thank you,” the creature said. “Thank you so very much.” The plan was working, as it knew it would. Soon every mammal in the Home would be dead, dead, dead.

CHAPTER 2

The giant was on his back with one arm behind his head and the other around his wife, his broad chest cushioning her soft cheek. Her light snores filled the bedroom in their cabin.

The window was open a hand’s -width to admit the night air, and through it came the pad of running feet. Instantly, the giant’s eyes snapped open. He slipped out of bed and was up and tugging his pants on before the first knock.

“Blade?” Jenny said, drowsily rising on an elbow. “Is everything all right?”

“Someone’s at the door,” Blade said, reaching for a leather belt draped over a chair. From it hung matching bowie knives in twin sheaths. “See to Gabe.”

Jenny rose and clutched her robe. “I hope it’s not serious.”

“Makes two of us.” Blade donned his vest and quickly pulled on his boots. The urgent knocks continued as he left the bedroom and crossed to the front door. He opened it as wide as the chain allowed and saw who it was. “Shane?”

“Spartacus sent me to fetch you,” the young Warrior said. He was dressed in black save for a splash of white at his hip where a pearl-handled Ruger Vaquero nestled in a holster. “There’s someone outside the compound.”

“This late at night?” As Blade was all too aware, the wastelands were barely survivable during the day. After the sun went down they were killing fields.

“It’s a little girl,” Shane said.

Blade snatched up the Commando Arms Carbine propped next to the door and worked the bolt. “Am I to take it she’s not one of our own?”

“No. Bertha wanted to lower the drawbridge but Spartacus wouldn’t let her.”

“He did right.” Blade had given a standing order that no one was to be admitted to the compound without his approval . Over his shoulder he said to his wife and son, “I’ll be back shortly. Bolt the door after me.” He hurried out.

“It’s just the girl and no one else,” Shane said, trying to match his stride to Blade’s.

“Hard to believe,” Blade said skeptically.

“You think she might be bait? That there are more out there waiting to attack?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. We never take chances.” If Blade had a cardinal rule, that was it.       

“Should I sound the alarm?”

Blade debated whether to have the eighteen Warriors who served as the Family’s defenders assemble at the drawbridge. Divided into six Triads, they trained hard to be

lethal masters of their craft. “We’ll hold off until I see what’s what.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve told you before. You don’t need to call me ‘sir’ all the time.”

“Sorry, sir.”

The thirty-acre compound lay dark and quiet under a canopy of stars. Lights at night were dangerous. They drew the undead, for one thing. And worse.

Blade climbed the stairs over the inner moat. He nodded at Spartacus and Spartacus pointed. A small figure stood pale and frail in the starlight, staring up at them. Blade noted the blonde curls, the dress. “It’s not a zombie?” From that high up he couldn’t be sure.

“Would I have sent Shane to wake you if it was?” Spartacus said. He always wore his hair cropped short, military fashion. The broadsword on his left hip seemed incongruous with the Desert Eagle on his right.

The muscular black woman in fatigues next to him fidgeted with impatience. “Call her she, not it,” Bertha said. “She talks, for God’s sake. When do zombies do that?”

Blade searched the forest beyond the clearing but saw no cause for alarm. “Speak to me, girl,” he called down.

“What do you want me to say, mister?” came the reply.

“How can this be?” Blade said.

“I told you she ain’t no walkin’ dead,” Bertha snapped.

“What’s your name?” Blade asked.

“Mary.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Wilson. But we never used it. My mom used to say that no one uses last names much anymore.”

“You’re all by yourself?”

“A green cloud killed my parents. Please let me in. I’m awful scared.”

“Come on, Blade,” Bertha urged. “Let me go get her.”

“When I say.” To the child Blade said, “Tell me a little about yourself. Where are you from?”

“We lived in the Twin Cities,” Mary said.

“Your parents were part of a gang?” Blade had been to Minneapolis and St. Paul. They were overrun with warring factions.

“No,” Mary said. “My dad didn’t want anything to do with them. We lived near Lyn Lake.”

“What are you doing here?”

“It wasn’t safe there anymore. The dead things came. They ate most everybody.”

Bertha smacked the top of the rampart. “Blade, dammit. Somethin’ nasty could happen by.”

“My dad heard of this place,” the girl went on. “He said we’d be safe here.”

“Stay there,” Blade said. “We’ll be right out.” He turned to the other Warriors. “Bertha and I will lower the drawbridge. Spartacus and Shane, stay up here and cover us.”

“About time,” Bertha said.

They quickly descended to the large metal control wheel. The chains clanked and rattled as they turned it.

Bertha muttered, “If a mutate or somethin’ else gets that child, I’ll never forgive you.”

“How has she managed to survive on her own?” Blade wondered. “With no weapons?”

“Sometimes a squirrel is just a squirrel and a little girl is just a little girl.”

The drawbridge thumped flat.

“Keep me covered,” Blade commanded. Unslinging the Commando Arms Carbine, he moved to the far end of the drawbridge. The unnatural stillness preyed on his nerves. “Come here where I can get a better look at you.”

The girl started toward him.

At that moment, from out of the pitch black woods, came an inhuman howl.

Chapter 3

Blade didn’t recognize what made the sound. It could be, literally, anything. The wilds swarmed with genetic deviates. There was no such thing as ‘normal’ anymore. Spawned by a mix of radiation , chemical weapons and bio-bombs, the sane world of over a century ago had been remade into a monstrous version of Wonderland. Humankind had fallen through the rabbit hole and there was no climbing out.

“What are you waitin’ for, damn it?” Bertha said, and came running across the drawbridge.

“Don’t,” Blade said.

Bertha didn’t listen. She ran a dozen steps past him and squatted and spread her arms. “Come here, child. I’ll protect you if no one else will.”

The girl smiled. “You seem like a nice lady.”

Blade hadn’t taken his eyes off the woods and saw something streak into the clearing. He raised the Commando Arms Carbine. “Bertha!” he called to her in warning.

A second something appeared.

“Look out!” Spartacus shouted.

The things weren’t especially fast but they didn’t have to be to reach Bertha and the girl before the Warrior could spirit the child into the compound.

A lantern flared on the rampart, spilling light halfway across the clearing.

Blade saw the creatures clearly, and even after all the other abominations he’d encountered over the years, his gut churned with revulsion.

What they once were was impossible to say. Now they were hideous monstrosities, nearly hairless and covered with oozing sores. Each had short, multiple legs and a thick, powerful body. Their heads were a lunatic’s caricature; their eyes were mismatched, with one inches above the other, their nostrils were small holes, their mouths rimmed with gleaming fangs.

Spartacus opened up with an M-16 and Shane with his Ruger but their shots had no more effect than a rain of peas.

The little girl turned toward the genetic deviates and put a hand to her throat.

Bertha rose to run to her.

“Both of you, down!” Blade yelled even as he moved to get a clear shot. He stroked the trigger and the Commando thundered. Green pus and blood that wasn’t red geysered from the first creature. It slowed but didn’t stop. The second nightmare caught up to it and both roared and came on.

Bertha reached the girl and scooped her into an arm and cut loose with her AK-47, firing one-handed.

It was incredible, the amount of lead the things could absorb.

Blade reached Bertha and the child. Grabbing Bertha’s shoulder, he shoved her toward the drawbridge. “Get the girl inside!”

The two horrors bore down on him, their stubby legs churning.

Planting himself, Blade ejected the spent magazine and slapped in another. He would buy Bertha and the little one the time they needed, whatever the cost. He was set to fire when two men rushed up, one on either side.

“You havin’ fun without us, pard?” asked a blond man in buckskins. Strapped around his waist were a matched pair of pearl-handled Colt Pythons.

“Shut up and shoot, you idiot,” said the other man, who wore military green and was raising a Marlin .45-70 to his shoulder.

Blade cut loose with the Commando. So did the Warrior in green, Geronimo. Their combined hailstorm caused a deviate to stumble but neither went down and now the aberrations were so close that when Blade’s magazine went empty again and Geronimo fired his last shot, they heard the gnashing of saber teeth.

“Can’t you two do anything right?” said the man in buckskins. A devil-may-care grin on his handsome face, he stepped in front of them.

The deviates were almost on them.

In an instant the blond man had a Python in each hand. He fired from the hip, one shot from each Python. Both cored an oversized eyeball. The deviate on the left pitched forward and slid. The deviate on the right kept coming and as quick as thought the blond man shot it in the other eye and the second brute imitated the first. Both came to a stop almost at the blond man’s feet.

“The chances you take, Hickok,” Blade said, and let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“Piece of cake,” Hickok said.

“If brains were gold your head would be an empty vault,” Geronimo declared.

“Speakin’ of which,” Hickok said, “how many times do I have to tell you? Always go for the head.” He scanned the clearing. “Are there any more of these critters or is playtime over?”

“Let’s not wait to find out,” Blade advised.

Bertha had crossed the drawbridge and set the girl down. “Thanks for the save,” she said as the three of them hastened across.

The girl stared at Hickok in awe. “That was awful brave of you, mister.”

“Shucks, child, they were wimps.”

“Did he just say ‘shucks’?” Geronimo said.

Hickok squatted and put a hand on the girl’s arm. “Welcome to our Home, youngun. Folks hereabouts call me Hickok the Magnificent.”

“Oh brother,” Geronimo said. “Modest much?”

The little girl laughed. “You two are funny. My name is Mary, by the way. I think I’m going to like it here.” She beamed. “I think I’ll like it very much.”

Chapter 4

Blade wanted to question her but he’d hardly started when Bertha took him aside.

“Will you listen to yourself? Interrogatin’ that poor girl after all she’s been through. Look at her. She’s worn out. Can’t it wait until mornin’?”

“I suppose,” Blade said reluctantly. “I’ll take her to my place.”

“Like Hades you will,” Bertha said. “She’s comin’ with me.”

Blade had the final say . He was the head Warrior. But he saw no reason not to let her, and Bertha and the girl walked off hand-in-hand, talking and smiling.

“I like how you handled that, pard,” Hickok cracked. “Forceful as always.”

“I’d like to see you tell Bertha she couldn’t do something,” Geronimo said.

“Not me,” Hickok said. “I’m partial to my teeth.”

They raised the drawbridge and Blade instructed Spartacus to keep a sharp lookout. Bidding his friends goodnight, he made his way to his cabin. He entered quietly, stripped to his waist, and slipped into bed beside his sleeping wife. Or so he thought.

“I heard shots,” Jenny said, sitting up.

Blade told her about the girl.

“A small child all by her lonesome?” Jenny said, aghast. “Thank the Spirit you got to her in time.” On that note they turned in.

Blade tried his best to get back to sleep but couldn’t. He was uneasy and couldn’t account for why. At the crack of dawn he was up and fixing breakfast when there was a light knock on the door. He opened it to find his fellow Warriors from Alpha Triad. “You two are up early.”

“Mr. Personality showed up on my doorstep ten minutes ago,” Geronimo said with a jab of his thumb at Hickok. “White dummy not let red man get his beauty sleep.”

“Lord knows, you need it,” Hickok retorted. His thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, he ambled to a chair at the table and sat. “How about whippin’ up a mess of eggs for us, big guy?”

“How many is a mess?” Blade asked.

“Oh, eight to ten ought to fill my gut,” Hickok said. “Are your missus and the sprout up yet?”

“No. So keep it down.” Blade cracked more eggs into the frying pan and added strips of bacon.

“Those vittles smell awful good,” Hickok said. “You ever get tired of Jenny, you can leave her and cook for me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell your wife you said that,” Geronimo said.

Blade took down three cups from the cupboard and brought the coffee pot over and filled one for each of them. As he was setting the pot back on the stove he asked, “What did you think of the girl?”

“Right pretty,” Hickok said.

“It’s a miracle she’s alive,” Geronimo said. “I heard her tell Bertha her parents were killed by a chemical cloud five days ago.”

“Wonder what she lived on?”

“Her guardian angel was lookin’ after her,” Hickok said. “Hey, maybe Bertha will want to take the kid in. She’d be a good ma. She’s tough as nails but a kitten on the inside.”

Geronimo laughed. “I wish you would say that to her face so I could watch her beat the snot out of you.”

“Are all you redskins so bloodthirsty?”

“Just once I’d like for you to talk like the rest of us,” Geronimo lamented, and turned to Blade. “But the knucklehead has a point. Bertha and Sundance have tried to have a kid and can’t. They might see the girl as a godsend.”

Blade turned a sizzling strip of bacon over. “I’ll go talk to Plato as soon as we’re done eating. He’ll call a meeting and the Family will formally welcome Mary to the Home.”

“Any excuse for a get-together is fine by me,” Hickok said. “I get a mite weary of all the grim and gritty.”

Geronimo arched an eyebrow. “You, of all people, are tired of killing?”

“It would be a fine world if we never had to. But it is what it is. And since I’m right fond of breathin’, and fond of a heap of folks I’d like to see go on breathin’, I have to stop the breathin’ of those who think they should stop us from doin’ so.”

“That almost made sense.”

“If it didn’t, you should hold a candle to your ear hole and have someone see if they can see clear out the other side.” Hickok sighed. “What I’m tired of are all the critters and muties and freaks out to do us in.”

“Thank the Spirit for our high walls,” Geronimo said in earnest.

“Thank Kurt Carpenter, the gent who built the compound,” Hickok amended.

“Our Home has stood for over a hundred years,” Blade reminded them. “And if we have our way it’ll stand for a hundred more.”

“I bet Mary is happy she found us,” Geronimo said. “For the first time in her life she can live without fear.”

“I hear that, pard,” Hickok said. “Can you imagine what it would be like if we couldn’t?”

Chapter 5

From journals written by the Founder and from books in the library, the Family knew that before World War Three the sky had been blue and wonderfully clear except when the weather turned temperamental . That was no longer true. The copious amounts of fallout and ash and pollutants propelled into the atmosphere during the war had plunged the world into a new and literal Dark Age. Only in the past decade had the sky become less constantly overcast.

On this particular morning shafts of sunlight filtered through.

Everyone gathered to greet the new arrival. With Bertha hovering over her, Mary smiled and shook hands and said how happy she was to meet all of them.

Blade introduced her to his wife, Jenny, and his son, Gabe.

For a fleeting moment, as Gabe and Mary stepped close and shook hands, a peculiar expression came over the girl. It was there and it was gone. Blade didn’t know what to make of it.

A man with long white hair and more wrinkles than Methuselah approached and offered his own hand.

“This is Plato,” Blade informed her. “Our Leader.”

“I’m honored, sir,” Mary said, and sweetly curtsied. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Have you now, child?” Plato said. “I hope they were good things.”

“Is it true that without you this whole compound would fall apart?”

“Hardly, child,” Plato said, grinning. “None of us are indispensable. Our Founder, a man by the name of Kurt Carpenter, planned well. Were I to perish, the Family would pick a new Leader from one of the other Elders.”

“You don’t say,” Mary said, as if it were the most interesting news in the world.

“You’ll learn all about the history of our Family after you’re formally approved and attend our school.”

Seemingly out of the blue, Mary mentioned, “My father told me that your Family belongs to something called the Freedom Federation. What is that?”

“Various survivors like us, who formed an alliance.” Plato’s features clouded. “We’ve lost contact with them. They’ve all gone strangely silent. We can’t raise them on our radios.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“We have no idea.”

Blade said, “If it keeps up, I’ll take Alpha Triad to Denver to find out what’s going on.”

“I hope you don’t have to,” Jenny said.

“The Warriors have made runs before.”

“Yes, Alpha more than any of the other Triads,” Jenny said. “But I’ll still worry.” She made as if to say more but glanced at their son and frowned.

“Now, now,” Plato said. “Our failure to communicate with our allies could be due to something as simple as atmospheric interference.”

“Or maybe someone isn’t letting you get in touch with them,” Mary said. “Blocking you, somehow.”

Plato regarded her with renewed interest. “It would require technology far beyond anything that now exists. It isn’t like before the Big Blast when there were scores of satellites in orbit around the planet and scientists were delving into unlocking the secrets of the basic matter of the universe.”

“You never know, though,” Mary said with her usual charming smile.

Blade thought her response strangely adult for someone so young.

“Enough of this serious stuff,” Bertha said, and patted Mary on the head. “How about I give you a tour so you’ll know what’s what?”

“I would like that very much.”

Plato idly stroked his beard as the pair walked off. “Interesting child.”

“She’s a pretty girl,” Gabe remarked.

Blade and Jenny looked at him.

“She is,” Gabe said.

Plato crooked a finger at Blade. “I’d like a word with you alone. If it’s all right with you, Jenny, of course.” When she nodded, the Family’s Leader led the way over to a maple tree.

Blade automatically checked the branches overhead for movement. He well remembered the time a mutated squirrel got into the Home.

“Have the Warriors noticed anything unusual lately?” Plato asked.

“If we did I would have reported it to you. Why?”

Plato motioned at a thin young woman in a cotton shift who apparently had been waiting for just this moment. She came over, looking worried. “Tell him what you told me this morning, Clarice.”

Blade was mildly startled . Every Family member had a title that reflected their status. He was a Warrior. His wife was a Healer. Others were Tillers and Hunters and whatnot. Clarice was an Empath. She and several others possessed a form of psychic cognizance he couldn’t begin to explain. An empathy with the underlying currents of reality, Plato once called it.

“I had a dream last night,” Clarice said. “It was most vivid.”

“Tell him the particulars,” Plato directed. “

In it, the Family was gathered here on the Commons, like we are now. Everyone was having a good time and everything was fine.” Clarice paused. “Then a giant cloud came over the wall and blotted out the light. It grew so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I heard screams and cries and wailing and then a great weight bore down on me as if I was being crushed. It was most vivid,” she said again.

“Dreams sometimes are,” Blade said.

“This wasn’t a normal dream,” Clarice insisted. “I feel in my bones that it’s a warning. A harbinger, if you will.”

“Of what, exactly?”

Clarice gazed at the sky and frowned. “I can’t be more specific. But I have this terrible feeling that dark days are ahead.”

Chapter 6

The creature couldn’t sustain a human form indefinitely. For a few hours out of every twenty-four it must assume its own shape. Otherwise its tissues and organs suffered lasting damage.

So it was that shortly before midnight it silently slipped out of Bertha and Sundance’s cabin . They were asleep in the bedroom, and it was using their couch.

Plato, the Family’s Leader, had offered to put the little girl up in the dormitory Block, but as it had done with Blade, the creature asked in its nicest manner that it be permitted to stay with Bertha.

Now, with the cool night breeze fanning its face, the creature sought a secluded spot to transform. The darkness was no hindrance. It could see almost as well as in broad daylight.

All was going well.

Its information had proven accurate. The compound did indeed cover about thirty acres. The Blocks were in the western section, the cabins in the middle, tilled and wooded areas to the east. The high walls were topped with barbed wire, the drawbridge solid enough to withstand a direct hit from a tank.

Their precious Founder had planned well.

This Family, as they styled themselves, fascinated the creature. For humans they were remarkably organized and disciplined. There was none of the chaos and decay it had witnessed in other human societies. Nor did any of the Family try to lord it over the others, as the elites in nearly every human culture did. Those who styled themselves smarter or better than the rest of their fellow humans invariably tried to rule them.

It smiled at the human conceit of manipulating other humans when in fact the infantile apes were ridiculously easy to manipulate themselves, as its kind had recently demonstrated in the Civilized Zone and the Free State of California. It was amusing that Plato and Blade were mystified by their inability to contact their former allies. If they only knew.

The shapeshifter was so deep in musing that it almost blundered. Just in time its senses warned it of others close by. Ducking around a pine, it crouched and peered out.

It recognized them right away. Two were hybrids created in test-tubes, the only ones of their kind at the compound. The third was—-it didn’t know what. An abomination, even by its standards.

Lynx, Ferret and Gremlin were their names , as it recalled. Lynx was part human, part feline. Ferret’s features and body resembled that of his namesake. Gremlin didn’t resemble anything. He was a genetic mongrel, a failed experiment. Grey of skin and hairless, he was the only one of his kind on the planet.

For a few moments it worried that they had been assigned to watch Bertha’s cabin and had seen it leave. But no, they were walking and talking with no regard for its presence. Why they were up so late, it had no idea. Then it remembered. They were Warriors. Bravo Triad. Since the time was near to midnight, it could be that they were to relieve whichever Triad was currently on wall duty.

In its mind the creature ticked the Triads off. Blade, Hickok and Geronimo were Alpha Triad. Spartacus, Bertha and Shane were Gamma . A man named Ares, Sundance, and a woman called Helen made up Omega Triad. Zulu Triad consisted of Samson, Sherry—-Hickok’s wife—-and Achilles. The last Triad, Beta, included Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, an archer called Teucer, and a Warrior who had taken the name Yama. That last one, it had been told, was special. How that could be when he was nothing but a human baffled it. Beta Triad wasn’t at the Home at the moment. Bertha had mentioned they were off in the Family’s special vehicle, the SEAL.

The hybrids were almost out of sight.

Rising, the creature crept to the north until it came to the inner moat. A trail led east into a strip of woodland bordering a corn field.

Closing its eyes, it willed its pores to release the chemicals that triggered the change . Delight spread through it as its body elongated and expanded and it became itself again. Languidly stretching, it smacked its lips and rimmed its teeth with the tip of its long tongue.

“Who’s down there?” The creature stiffened. It had been careless. Someone was up on the rampart.

“I know someone is there. Identify yourself.”

A Warrior. It had met him at the gathering to welcome Mary. Achilles, he called himself. He must have been on his way to be relieved and seen something.

“Answer me or I’m coming down there,” Achilles said.

It was puzzled as to how he could. The only stairs were near the drawbridge. It saw him bend and heard metal scrape, and suddenly he was descending a rope with remarkable agility. When he was a few feet above the water he put his feet against the wall, pushed off, and swung across.

“Who’s there ?” Achilles demanded again, his hand on the hilt of a short sword. He also had an auto pistol, a Bersa .380, and an SMG slung over his shoulder.

The creature flattened and dug its fingers into the ground for purchase. His scent filled its nostrils, and the craving caught hold. It was taking a pill daily to suppress its hunger but it couldn’t suppress the need indefinitely. Drawing back its lips, it bared its triple rows of teeth.

“Why are you hiding?” Achilles said. He was coming toward the waist-high grass in which it crouched.

Saliva dripped from the corners of its mouth as it coiled.

“You’re that new girl, aren’t you? I caught a glimpse of your hair. No one has hair as blonde as yours.”

Even if it could fight off the need, which it didn’t particularly want to do, the Warrior had doomed himself. He’d seen her and would tell others. It couldn’t have that.

“Come on out, girl. I won’t hurt you.”

The creature sprang, its arms wide, its mouth agape. Disbelief rooted Achilles for the heartbeats it took to reach him, and then it was too late. Its claws sheared into his torso.

His hand flashed, swinging the sword, and he backpedaled before it could get a solid grip. There was a sharp sting in its shoulder. It raked him but not fatally, and he dropped his hand to the Bersa.

To end it quickly the creature went for his throat. He got a hand up but it knocked his arm aside and fastened its fangs in his jugular. Blood spurted, the warm sweet essence of life, the true ambrosia. With a powerful wrench it ripped his flesh wide.

Achilles clutched at his neck, and died.

Bearing him to earth, the creature greedily sated its hunger. As it fed, it had a new thought. Why not have a little fun before it destroyed the Home? Amuse itself by killing the vaunted Warriors? One by one, it the hunter, they the prey.

Besides, this was also personal.

The creature liked the idea so much that before it was done gorging, it had decided which Warrior it would kill next.

Chapter 7

For the second night in a row Blade was roused out of sleep. He’d heard a rap on the cabin door. Jenny stirred but didn’t awaken. Quickly, he slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, and hurried from their bedroom. He cracked the door open and saw who it was. “Spartacus?”

The Gamma Triad leader came right to the point. “Achilles is missing.”

“Be right there.” Blade pulled on his black leather vest and his boots, strapped his bowies around his waist, and grabbed the Commando. “What’s going on?” Jenny sleepily asked from the bedroom doorway.

“Don’t know yet,” Blade said. “Keep the door bolted.”

Here and there a few stars were visible but low clouds covered much of the sky, grotesque lumps of cumulus that interlocked like airborne amoeba.

“Report,” Blade said as they made for the drawbridge.

“We were due to be relieved by Bravo,” Spartacus related. “Achilles was making a last sweep of the walls. He never came back.”

“You looked for him?”

“Bertha went along the south wall and I went along the north. We met on the east wall without seeing any sign.”

“No outcries? No shots?”

“Nothing.”

Blade slung the Commando over his shoulder and increased his pace. His first thought was that a mutate or something else had gotten over the wall or maybe a winged predator had swooped down out of the clouds. Then he remembered the time the Trolls invaded the Home, wreaking havoc and abducting some of the women. “Go wake Hickok and Geronimo.”

Spartacus started to turn aside. “Not all the Warriors?”

“We won’t sound an alarm until we have more to go on. Make it quick.” Blade broke into a jog.

Bertha and the hybrids were waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Shane was up on the west rampart, keeping watch.

“About time , bub,” Lynx said by way of a greeting. Only four feet tall, he was covered in thick fur. His eyes were a vivid green, his ears came to points. His only article of clothing was a loincloth. “We’ve been twiddlin’ our thumbs waitin’ for you to show.”

“Show respect, yes?” Gremlin said. He had red eyes and small circles of flesh where his ears had been. “Blade is head Warrior.”

Blade had always secretly felt sorry for Gremlin. The result of genetic tinkering by a deranged scientist, Gremlin had had part of his brain removed, resulting in his peculiar speech.

“Cut us loose, big man,” Ferret said. Slightly larger than Lynx, his fur was brown. “We’ll sniff out Achilles for you.”

“If we can’t find him, he ain’t here,” Lynx boasted.

“Make a sweep of the walls,” Blade said.

“You got it, big guy.”

The hybrids and their friend bounded up the stairs. “

All the years those three have been here,” Bertha quietly remarked, “and they still give me the willies.”

A number of Family members, Blade knew, shared her sentiment. Not him. He’d learned to look past their appearance. They were outstanding Warriors. Lynx and Ferret possessed reflexes second to none and Gremlin was endowed with prodigious strength. He was glad they’d chosen to live at the Home. He wished more like them did.

“Strange about Achilles,” Bertha was saying. “If he was attacked why didn’t he get off a shout or yell?”

Blade wondered the same thing. “Maybe he was taken by surprise.”

“That’d be hard to do,” Bertha said. “He’s awful quick with that sword of his.”

“Did I hear someone mention my middle name ?” Hickok asked, and arrived at a run with Geronimo. Spartacus was close behind.

“Your middle name is awful?” Bertha said.

“Funny gal,” Hickok retorted. “But you know what it really is.” To demonstrate, his right hand blurred and a Python was in it.

“Too bad your brain isn’t as quick as the rest of you,” Geronimo said.

Blade ended their banter with, “We’re going to help Bravo sweep the walls. Spartacus and Bertha, take the south wall. Geronimo and slow-as-molasses, you’re with me on the north wall.”       Geronimo laughed.

Blade wasted no more time. He climbed to the rampart and nodded at Shane. “How about you? Have you seen or heard anything?”

“No, sir,” the young Warrior responded.

Worry ate at Blade like acid. The Warriors were not only his responsibility, they were his friends. Whenever anything happened to any of them, he tended to take it personally.

“I’ve been thinkin’, pard,” Hickok said as they moved along the wall scanning both sides.

“Uh-oh,” Geronimo said.

“It’s been so long since a Warrior died, we don’t have any replacements lined up.”

Blade stopped so abruptly that his friends nearly ran into him. “Why jump to the worst possible conclusion? For all we know Achilles is very much alive.”

Just then Lynx came racing toward them, moving three times as fast as any human . “I heard that,” he said, “and no, he isn’t.”

Blade felt an invisible knife pierce his gut. “Achilles is dead? Show me.”

“What killed him?” Geronimo asked.

In the act of turning, Lynx said, “You tell me and we’ll both know.”

Chapter 8

The way the hybrids told it, Lynx caught Achilles’ scent first but it was Ferret who spotted the grappling hook attached to the rampart. Gremlin stayed on the wall while Lynx and Ferret went down the rope and swung over to the bank. Lynx found the remains.       

Now, standing over the grisly ruin of someone he’d known since childhood, Blade felt bile rise in his throat and grimaced at the bitter taste. He’d seen a lot of horrors in his time and this ranked up there with the worst of them.

“May the Spirit preserve us,” Geronimo exclaimed. “Something ate him.”

“But what?” Blade wondered.

“A critter that was really hungry,” Hickok said.

An understatement, Blade thought. Achilles’ stomach had been ripped open and most of his internal organs were gone, leaving a dark cavity rimmed by shredded flesh. His throat had been torn out, his right thigh eaten down to the bone. Other bites had been taken from his chest and arms. His clothes were in tatters.

Blade sank to a knee to examine the wounds more closely. “Look at the size of these bite marks.” Whatever the thing was that did this, he guessed that it had a mouth six inches across.

“And how deep they are,” Geronimo said.

Hickok grunted. “It’s big and it’s strong and it has to be fast or it couldn’t have killed him without him getting off a shot or shouting to warn the rest of us.” He patted his Colt Pythons. “Can’t wait to see if it’s faster than me.”

Blade stood . “Unless the thing has wings, it’s still in the Home. Spartacus, Bertha , wake the rest of the Warriors. Have the Triads assemble at the A Block Armory in twenty minutes. That includes Shane. Off you go, double-quick.” He turned to the mutations. “Lynx, Ferret, what can you tell me? What did this? Have either of you caught the thing’s scent?”

Lynx had been sniffing and casting about in small circles. “It’s here but it’s faint. The scent isn’t like anything I’ve ever come across.”

“Me either,” Ferret said.

“I can’t even tell if it’s a mammal, reptile, bird, or what,” Lynx said. “Usually I can.”

“Even more strange,” Ferret said, raising his long nose to the air, “it keeps fading in and out.”

“What could cause that?” Blade asked. “The wind?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Ferret replied. “It’s the scent itself. As if the thing doesn’t give off much of an odor or the odor changes. How that can be, I don’t know.”

“Whatever this thing is, it’s something new,” Lynx said, and nodded at what was left of Achilles. “Something vicious.”

Blade faced the north wall and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Gremlin, come on down.” To Lynx he said, “The three of you are to start searching. With your sense of smell, you’re our best hope of finding it before it kills anyone else.”

“And when we do,” Lynx said, clicking his claws, “we’ll gut the sucker.”

“What about us, pard?” Hickok asked.

“I want you to go to the cabins. Warn everyone to stay inside until we sound the all clear. Geronimo, you go to B Block and warn everyone in the dorm to do the same. We’re not going to lose anyone else if we can help it.”

The Warriors departed to their tasks, leaving Blade alone. He stared down at the remains for a minute, then squared his shoulders and turned. He took a couple of steps and drew up short. An uneasy feeling came over him, as if he were being watched by unseen eyes. Unslinging the Commando, he worked the bolt.

The woods were ominously silent. Not so much as a leaf stirred.

Blade probed the black patches, the trees limbs, the bank. Was it just a case of nerves? he wondered. Or was the thing lurking nearby? He sidled along the bank, intent on the vegetation, his back to the moat.

Behind him there was the slightest of sounds, as of something breaking the surface. Too late, it occurred to him that the thing might be in the water. Before he could react, a clammy hand that did not feel human wrapped around his right ankle and he was violently upended. He hit on his shoulder, glimpsed a bulk rising out of the water, and triggered a burst from the Commando. He scored, too. The thing uttered a sharp cry and submerged.

Heaving to his knees, Blade stitched the water with .45 slugs. In the abrupt silence after the thunder, his ears rang.

Bladed edged closer. The water was black as pitch. In vain he sought some sign of his attacker.

The undergrowth crackled and out of it came Lynx, Ferret and Gremlin.

“Are you all right?” Ferret asked.

“You saw the thing, yes?” Gremlin said.

“Yes,” Blade replied. Before he could say more, Hickok and Geronimo sprinted up.

“What was that shootin’, pard? We came back because we figured you were in trouble.”

“What about us, pard?” Hickok asked. “I want you to go to the cabins. Warn everyone to stay inside until we sound the all clear. Geronimo, you go to B Block and warn everyone in the dorm to do the same. We’re not going to lose anyone else if we can help it.” The Warriors departed to their tasks, leaving Blade alone. He stared down at the remains for a minute, then squared his shoulders and turned. He took a couple of steps and drew up short. An uneasy feeling came over him, as if he were being watched by unseen eyes. Unslinging the Commando, he worked the bolt. The woods were ominously silent. Not so much as a leaf stirred. Blade probed the black patches, the trees limbs, the bank. Was it just a case of nerves? he wondered. Or was the thing lurking nearby? He sidled along the bank, intent on the vegetation, his back to the moat. Behind him there was the slightest of sounds, as of something breaking the surface. Too late, it occurred to him that the thing might be in the water. Before he could react, a clammy hand that did not feel human wrapped around his right ankle and he was violently upended. He hit on his shoulder, glimpsed a bulk rising out of the water, and triggered a burst from the Commando. He scored, too. The thing uttered a sharp cry and submerged. Heaving to his knees, Blade stitched the water with .45 slugs. In the abrupt silence after the thunder, his ears rang. Bladed edged closer. The water was black as pitch. In vain he sought some sign of his attacker. The undergrowth crackled and out of it came Lynx, Ferret and Gremlin. “Are you all right?” Ferret asked. “You saw the thing, yes?” Gremlin said. “Yes,” Blade replied. Before he could say more, Hickok and Geronimo sprinted up. “What was that shootin’, pard? We came back because we figured you were in trouble.”

Blade wagged his Commando at the moat. "The thing is in the water. It must have swum off"

"Then let's get cracking. "Hickok said grimly. "We've got us a spooky critter to kill."

Chapter 9

While half the Warriors patrolled the moat, the other half searched the Home from from east to west and north to south, covering every square foot. They found nothing.

It was six in the morning when Blade called a council of Triad leaders and invited Plato to sit in.

Their Leader was showing his age of late. He had a weary aspect about him, and these days his shoulders were perpetually stooped. He was the last to arrive and greeted them with, “Sorry I’m late. These old bones aren’t as spry as they used to be.”

“Heck, old-timer,” Hickok said. “I hope I’m half as spry when I’m as ancient as you.”

“Was that your idea of a compliment?” Geronimo said.

Blade broke in with, “Let’s stay focused. Whatever killed Achilles is still on the loose and we have to find it before it claims another life.”

“It has to be hiding in the moat,” Ares remarked. Almost as tall as Blade but much thinner, he wore his hair in a Mohawk. “It’s the only place we haven’t searched.”

“But how did it get there?” Sherry asked.

Blade was wondering the same thing. The stream flowed into the Home through an iron grate at the northwest corner of the compound and out again through another grate to the southeast. Both grates had been inspected and were intact.

“We’ll have to close off the aqueduct,” Samson proposed. “Drain the moat completely dry.”       Blade agreed. It entailed closing the northwest grate. The few times they’d done that before, the stream backed up outside the compound, overspread its banks, and flooded around the west and north walls. But it would only be temporary.

“What about the rest of the Family?” Spartacus said. “Do we keep them in their cabins and the dorm?”

Plato cleared his throat. “In times of crisis I’m required to bow to the judgment of the head Warrior. But I respectfully suggest that isn’t necessary. They should be safe so long as they stay away from the moat.”

Although he didn’t entirely agree, Blade charged Omega Triad with spreading the word that everyone could venture outdoors. Then he assembled the rest of the Warriors across from the northwest grate.

Samson volunteered to dive in and close it. He was one of two Warriors who came close to Blade in size and muscle. The other was the absent Yama.

“I need two Warriors to go in with him and watch his back,” Blade said as Samson stripped to the waist.

Bertha and Sundance stepped forward. “We’ll do it,” she said.

“In and out as fast as you can,” Blade instructed them. “We’ll cover you from the bank.”

“Hey, if you two are here,” Hickok said, “who’s mindin’ that sprout you took in?”

Bertha smiled at Blade. “Jenny is. We dropped her off at your cabin. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Fine by me,” Blade said. His wife had a way with kids and would win the girl over in no time.

Samson flexed his huge arms and stepped to the bank.

“You’re not takin’ a weapon?” Hickok asked.

“I have these,” Samson said, and held up his enormous hands.

Blade peered down . The light of the risen sun did little to relieve the murk of the water. The thing could be lurking six inches under the surface and they wouldn’t know it. “Be careful.”

Samson nodded and dived. A second later Sundance, who had removed his gunbelt and hat and boots but left his shirt and pants on, joined him. Bertha went in fully clothed.

The other Warriors trained their weapons. The barest of ripples broke the water and Samson reappeared about halfway across. Sundance and Bertha rose in his wake.

Blade put his hands on his bowies. If the thing, attacked he would dive in to help.

Samson swam to the grate. The swivel bar that closed it was under water. Taking a deep breath, he submerged. Bertha and Sundance followed suit.

After more than a minute Hickok said, “It shouldn’t take them all that long.”

There was a commotion near the grate and the sheet of iron fell into place, closing off the flow. The three Warriors reappeared and swam back and were given a hand out.

“So far, so good,” Sherry remarked.

“Don’t jinx it,” Hickok said.

Blade had the Warriors take up positions at spaced intervals around the moat and told them to sound off if they saw the creature. The water level took a good half an hour to drop to the point where only a few inches of water covered the bottom.

“Has anyone seen it?” Blade called out, and his shout was passed along the line.

No one had.

Frustrated and baffled, Blade gathered the Warriors near the drawbridge. “We pull double duty until this thing is found,” he announced. “Two Triads at all times, one on the wall and the other patrolling the compound.”

“It must have gone over the wall,” Shane suggested.

Blade was inclined to agree. Unless it was hiding in one of the Blocks or a cabin, he couldn’t see how they could have missed it. But he said, “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

“We still don’t know how the beast got into the moat in the first place,” Geromino mentioned.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Blade said, “and we’d better find out before more people die.”

CHAPTER 10

The creature was tempted, so very tempted. Here it was , in its guise as a little girl, alone with Blade’s wife, Jenny, and their son, Gabe. It was like putting a cat in a canary cage. They would be ridiculously easy to slay and devour. But at the moment it was satiated.

Seated on a small sofa in their cabin, it listened to Jenny prattle on about how wonderful the Home was and how much it would enjoy living there.

“It’s one of the few safe places anywhere,” Jenny said with pride.

“But someone was killed last night,” the creature remarked with feigned innocence.

“It’s rare for that to happen,” Jenny said. “The Warriors do an outstanding job of protecting us.

“I’m going to be one when I grow up,” Gabe said. “Me and Ringo and Cochise.”

“Ringo and Cochise and I,” Jenny corrected him.

The creature was aware that the other two were Hickok’s and Geronimo’s sons, respectively.       “Only if the Home is still around,” it said in its sham sweet way.

“Why wouldn’t the Home be?” Gabe asked. “It’s been here for over a hundred years.”

“Nothing lasts forever.”

“I don’t think I like you,” Gabe declared.

“That was rude, son,” Jenny said, coming over from the kitchen counter. “Be nice.”

“All she says are mean things,” Gabe said.

“I’m sorry,” the creature feigned regret. “I guess…” It bowed its head and covered its fake face with a fake hand. “I guess I’m still upset over my mother and my father.”

Jenny put a hand on the its shoulder. “There, there.” She frowned at her son. “See what you’ve done?”

Gabe got up and went into his bedroom.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Jenny said. “He’s not normally so inconsiderate.”

“That’s all right,” the creature said, pretending it was choked with emotion. “I understand why he treats me this way. I’m an outsider.”

“That’s not it at all.”

The creature looked up. The woman’s throat was so close that the sight of the veins in her neck made its own throat constrict with craving. It yearned to sink its fangs into the woman’s soft flesh and rip her open as it had the Warrior’s. Its body grew warm as it always did when it was about to transform but it controlled the change through force of will.

“Are you all right?” Jenny asked. “You looked a little peaked there for a moment.”

“I’m sad, is all.”

The front door latch scraped and the door opened and in strode Blade. Jenny went to him and they embraced.

“How did it go?”

“No sign of whatever killed him,” Blade said, scowling. “We looked and looked.”

The creature was amused by his frustration. It couldn’t resist toying with him. “We were told you even drained the moat.”

“We drained it completely and not a trace of the thing,” Blade said bitterly.

“It must upset you not being able to find it,” the creature said with another of its charming smiles.

“You have no idea. The lives of everyone in the Home are my responsibility.”

“Whatever it is, it’s probably long gone by now,” Jenny said.

“So everyone keeps saying,” Blade said. “But if there’s another attack tonight we could have a panic on our hands.”

“Surely not.”

It amused the creature that the Family would fall to pieces over a couple of deaths. It debated whether to set the device that would signal the satellite and result in their destruction, and decided to hold off a while yet. It had promised itself to kill more Warriors first.

And as it must continually keep in mind— this was personal.

Blade unwrapped his arms from around his wife and turned . “I told Bertha and Sundance I’d take you to their cabin.”

“You’re going back out?” Jenny said. “You just got here.”

“I have a lot to do. I just wanted to see you.” Blade kissed her on the cheek.

Standing, the creature smoothed the flesh that resembled her dress. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

Blade opened the door. “After you, young lady.”

Performing a curtsey, the creature walked out and let him usher her along. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything you want.”

“Which Warrior are you closest to?”

“I know all of them really well,” Blade said.

“But which of them do you like the most?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Everyone has someone they like more than anyone else.”

“Jenny and Gabe are the two I care for most in this world. Plato comes a close second. As for the Warriors, Hickok and Geronimo have been my best friends since we were Gabe’s age. They’re like brothers.”

“So it would be one of them?”

“Both,” Blade said. “I don’t like one more than the other.”

A woman came toward them, a woman the creature had not talked to before.

Blade stopped. “Clarice? Is everything all right?”

“No,” the woman said. “I had another vivid dream last night. It was horrible. In it the Home was destroyed and all of the Family were slain.”

“How?”

“That’s what I don’t quite understand,” Clarice said. “In my dream the sky was filled with a white light that set the Home on fire.”

The creature suppressed its consternation. “How can a light cause fire?” it asked.

Clarice smiled. “Where are my manners. I’m Clarice, and I know who you are, Mary.” She added as she held out her hand, “I’m an Empath.”

The creature held out its own.

As Clarice shook, her smiled died and she looked at the creature’s hand with a puzzled expression.

“Have you told Plato?” Blade asked.

Clarice nodded. “He said I should come tell you. He’s extremely concerned.”

“So am I.”

“I’m sorry to add to your worries.” Clarice clasped her hands in front of her. “I have to get back. If I have another dream or pick up any impressions, I’ll be sure to let you know.” She smiled at the creature and headed for the Blocks, her brow knit in contemplation.

Blade continued on, saying, “So you were asking which Warrior I like the most?”

“That’s not important anymore,” the creature said, staring after Clarice.

CHAPTER 11

The creature lay on the couch in Bertha’s and Sundance’s cabin, a blanket pulled to its chin and its eyes shut, shamming sleep.

It was beginning to see why the Family had proven so troublesome to its masters.

Those it served had tried for some time to destroy the Freedom Federation and been thwarted time and again by the Family’s surprising resilience.

Now it had an Empath to deal with, of all things. Few humans recognized their empathic potential, let alone tapped into that part of their nature.

Its experience had been that humans were shallow little apes, so caught up in their petty desires that they seldom delved into the deeper realities of their existence. Clouds of delusion and illusion befogged their infantile minds.

Leave it to the Family to be different. Leave it to them to tap into the substance underlying the shadows.

This new threat could expose it. It must deal with the Empath without delay.

The creature reached out with all its senses. Bertha’s breathing assured it that Bertha was asleep. Sundance was on duty with his Triad.

Casting the blanket off, it rose and crept to the door. The latch scraped as the door opened but not loud enough to wake Bertha. Slipping outside, it quietly closed the door behind it.

Once more the creature strained its senses. Warriors were on the walls. Others roved the compound, seeking to prevent a recurrence of the night before.

Fools, the creature thought. As if they stood any chance of keeping it from having its revenge.

Closing its eyes, it willed the change to take place. It reveled in becoming itself again, in its size and its strength in its sinews.

Finished, it flowed toward the Blocks. At supper it had asked Bertha about Clarice, saying that it met her and how nice Clarice was. It had casually asked if Clarice was married and had a family and Bertha answered that no, Clarice was single and lived in what the Family called the dorm, or B Block.

A Warrior was on the north wall but he was too far away to spot movement. It could see him, though. Shane, the young Warrior who idolized Hickok and had taken the name of another gunfighter in a book by that name. It reminded the creature of Achilles, the Warrior it had eaten. His name came from a book, too: The Iliad.

As the creature understood it , every Family member underwent a special ceremony when they turned sixteen. The Naming, they called it. They were allowed to pick who they would be known by from that day on. Apparently they were encouraged to choose a name from human history, or, as in the case of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, human literature.

The practice had seemed silly until Bertha explained that it was the Family’s way of connecting to their roots. The creature could respect that. Its own kind revered their lineage.

Ahead reared the immense Blocks. They formed a giant triangle and were designated by letters of the alphabet, from A Block on around to F. B Block was nearest the drawbridge.

Suddenly it heard footsteps.

Going prone, the creature spied a Warrior in the open area between the Blocks. He was coming in its direction.

The creature couldn’t move without him spotting it. And if it stayed where it was, he’d practically step on it.

Rimming its razor teeth with the tip of its tongue, the creature tensed. It would have to be quick. And no feasting. Not if it was to do the Empath, too.

By human standards the Warrior was deadly. He was reputed to be uncommonly quick. He had a rifle in his left hand, an old Winchester, the barrel on his shoulder, and pistols in shoulder holsters under each arm.

The craving came over it but the creature willed the hunger away.

It missed having a feeding schedule. In Bangkok humans were served as food as regular as clockwork to help keep its hormones stable.

The Warrior pushed his hat back on his head, and yawned.

The creature willed a partial change, just its skin, transforming so it appeared to be part of the grass. As the humans liked to say, this Warrior would be candy.

When he was almost on top of it, the creature sprang . His hand flashed to a shoulder holster and he had a pistol out when the creature drove its claws into his chest, up under his sternum. Wrapping its fingers around his heart, it tore the still beating organ from his body.

The Warrior died on his feet wearing a look of disbelief and astonishment.

The creature raised the heart to its nostrils and inhaled. How it loved the smell. Unable to resist, it bit the heart in half and chewed, savoring the sweet taste. It quickly finished the rest, then seized the dead Warrior and raised him off the ground. It must hide the body.

Then it would deal with the Empath.

CHAPTER 12

Clarice tossed and turned on her small bed in the women’s quarters in B Block. A malevolent fog filled her mind and she couldn’t dispel it.

Throwing off her blanket, Clarice rose. By the wind-up clock on the table beside her cot, it was almost time. She pulled a robe on over the striped pajamas she liked to wear and put on her sandals. She had thought about keeping her clothes on but that might seem suspicious. Everything must appear to be natural or she might give it away.

Silently so as not to wake the others, Clarice went down the long aisle to the stairs and up them to the door. She quietly threw the bolts and had to use both hands to pull the heavy reinforced door open.

Cool night air washed over her. She smiled and gazed at the few stars. She would have loved to see the night sky before the Big Blast, when the Family records made it clear an untold number always sparkled overhead. Stars reminded her of the vastness of it all.

The fog in her head worsened.

Clarice experienced a wave of fear, fear so potent she tasted it. Steeling herself, she walked toward the moat. Fear was an emotion and emotions could be controlled. She’d spent her whole life honing her mind so that she controlled them and they didn’t control her. Emotions interfered with her gift. They distorted and warped her ability to perceive psychic impressions. For them to be vivid, she must empty herself of everything else.

But by the Spirit, she was afraid . She looked around and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. That should reassure her but it didn’t.

Clarice walked to the bank and stood where she was supposed to stand. Normally the watery whispers of the moat would have a soothing effect but the moat had yet to be refilled after being drained.

Clarice breathed deep to steady her nerves. She was the youngest of the Empaths and had a lot to learn yet. Foremost, she must trust in herself, in her ability. Doubt, too, clouded her inner sight.

The fog in her head was so strong, it threatened to engulf her. She forced her mouth to move, to say, “I know you’re here. I know you’ve come for me.”

Save for the whisper of the wind the night stayed silent.

“Afraid to speak?” Clarice asked. “It’s just you and me.” She realized that was a mistake and quickly added, “But then, given your craven attack on Achilles, I’d expect no less.”

Off to her left something rustled.

Clarice turned. A small blue spruce seemed to have detached itself from the ground, and reared. As she stared, it shifted and assumed what she took to be its true form. Over eight feet tall, it had a reptilian cast. “Ah,” she said. “A shapeshifter.”

“You say that as if you expected it,” the thing said in a low, sibilant voice.

“Not me ,” Clarice said. “I haven’t been out in the world as some of the others have.” That was a mistake, too, and she covered her blunder by saying, “I feel impressions, not specifics.”

“That you feel anything is remarkable,” the thing said. “Most of your kind are dullards.”

“What about your kind?” Clarice said. “May I ask what you call yourselves?”

“We are the Gualaon,” the thing said with pride.

“I’ve never heard of you.”

“Humans from many cultures have had many names for us,” the Gualaon said. “Were-this and were-that. Skin-walkers. Huli jing. Kitsune. Metamorphs. Mimics. Gualaon is our name for ourselves, not one of those bestowed on us by you primates.”

“A revealing term,” Clarice said, forcing herself to stay calm. “Is that all we are to you? Apes?”

“Humans are food. That’s all humans have ever been, all they will ever be.”

“Surely we can co-exist? Isn’t it better to be friends than enemies?”

The thing’s mouth curled in scorn. “If you only knew how pathetic you sound. To our kind you are no different than cattle were to yours before World War Three. Or poultry, for that matter.” The thing flexed its long fingers and clicked its claws.

“You intend to eat me?”

“Would that I could,” the thing said. “But no, I will slay you and be done with it. The only reason I haven’t already is that your ability intrigues me.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Of course.”

When the thing didn’t go on, Clarice said, “But you’re not going to tell me? Very well. Will you answer one last question before you do what you must and I do what I must?”

“What can you do?” the thing taunted. “But yes, ask your question.”

“Why are you here? You must have come far to reach us. Why the Home? Why the Family?”

“To paraphrase a trousered ape of some meager intellect, the world is our oyster and the Family is in our way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor will you live long enough to,” the thing said, and bared its teeth. “You can scream if you want. I like the sound of fear. It is music to me. It won’t matter if anyone hears. I’ll kill you and be gone before they come.

“No,” Clarice said, “you won’t.”

The thing tilted its head. “Clutching at straws, are we, as your kind would say?”

“Three straws,” Clarice said. “I don’t like to be a party to the taking of life but I knew you were going to try to kill me. I sensed it, and I told him.”

“Told who?”

“He suspected the truth. He’s encountered your kind before and he asked me to lure you here.”

“Who?” the thing demanded.

“He said that your kind can see and smell better than we can,” Clarice said, “but you can’t see or smell through dirt.”

The creature poised on the four long toes on each of its feet and sniffed loudly. “You’re bluffing, monkey girl.”

“I’m sorry.” Clarice stared at the earth and said as if addressing it, “You’ve heard enough, haven’t you? Is there anything more I need to do?”

“No,” someone answered.

In three separate spots the ground moved. The sod separated from the earth under it and three figures rose out of the shallow trenches that had concealed them.

The creature hissed.

Clarice smiled and said, “I believe you’ve met Blade, Hickok and Geronimo.”

CHAPTER 13

Blade leveled his Commando, his finger curled around the trigger. “Gualaon,” he said.

Hickok, his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, moved a few steps nearer to Clarice. “Butt ugly is more like it.”

“Are you sure you and this thing aren’t related?” Geronimo quipped.

The Gualaon reared and clacked its razor claws. “Clever,” it said to Blade. “You’ve outwitted me. It’s been ages since an ape did that.”

“I’ve met your kind before, in Los Angeles,” Blade said. “I killed it.”

“Him, not an ‘it’. We’re not like those off-worlders with no gender.”

“Like what?” Blade asked, but the Gualaon ignored his question.

“Zhongli Quan was his name. He was one of the best of us, and had lived more years than everyone in your Family combined. That he fell to a muscle-bound ape was an insult to my species.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately, gruesome?” Hickok said. “Your species is an insult to your species.”

The creature paid no attention to him. “Zhongli Quan wasn’t the only Gualaon you’ve killed. It was a slight not only to us but to our Masters.

“Who might they be?” Geronimo asked.

“The Lords of Kismet,” the creature replied. “For ages they waited, knowing you humans would eventually destroy yourselves. Now they have emerged to reclaim what was once theirs.”

“Kis-who?” Hickok said. “Didn’t I read about him in the Family library when I was a sprout? Wasn’t he a green frog in love with a pig?”

The creature fixed the eerie red pupils of its slanted eyes on the gunfighter. “You’re not nearly as humorous as you think you are.”

“I crack me up,” Hickok said. “That’s all that counts.”

Blade edged toward the intruder. “The Lords of Kismet sent you here, didn’t they? To what end?”

“I should think it would be obvious. To wipe your precious Family out, of course.”

“Just you by your lonesome?” Hickok said, and laughed. “It’ll take more than one chameleon to lick us.”

Snarling, the Gualaon pointed a claw at him. “I’m going to make a special project of you.”

“Be still, my quaking knees.”

“Before I destroy your Family,” the creature said to Blade , “I intend to bring all of them to their knees. Then, and only then, will I fulfill my mission and obliterate the Home.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Blade said. “Us.”

“I am Razhliq Nher of the Gualaon. I never forget anything. I have what you would call eidetic memory. I am as far above you in ability as the sun above the Earth. In all ways I am superior.”

“You’re sure superior at yakkin’ us to death,” Hickok said.

Geronimo laughed.

“When I kill you,” the Gualaon said to Hickok, “I will split your skull open to see if there is a brain between those ape ears.”

“I bet there isn’t,” Geronimo said.

Blade motioned at the shapeshifter. “I’ll give you one chance to surrender, Razhliq Nher.”

The creature grinned a hideous grin. “You think that you have the better of me because there are more of you? You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Hickok glanced at Blade. “How about if I put two in its brain pan, pard? I’m tired of listening to it prattle.”

“Tell me, blond one,” the creature said. “You seem to enjoy allusions to the prewar culture of your kind. I have one for you.” The thing paused. “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” It grinned, and attacked so incredibly swiftly that it struck Hickok on the temple, knocking him aside, and was on Clarice before Blade or Geronimo could fire.

The Empath raised her arms protectively over her face, only to have her neck gripped in both her attacker’s hands. With a powerful wrench, the creature ripped her head from her body.

“No!” Blade cried, and opened fire, stitching slugs into the creature from its knees to its shoulders.

Geronimo resorted to his .45-70, his rifle booming like a cannon. He scored, too, the heavy slugs causing blood that wasn’t blood to spray every which way.

Yowling, the creature threw Clarice’s head at Blade, leaped to the edge of the near-empty moat, and jumped down.

Blade and Geronimo darted over in time to glimpse a darkling silhouette flit around the northwest bend.

“That thing is fast,” Geronimo marveled. “I’m after it,” he said, and started to give chase.

“Not by yourself,” Blade said. He hurried to Hickok, who was slowly sitting up. “How bad?”

“It feels as if that critter about caved in my noggin.”

“It’s strong enough to,” Blade said. “Which makes me wonder why it didn’t.”

“Probably because Hickok’s head is made of the hardest substance known to man,” Geronimo said.

“And what substance might that be, you mangy redskin?” Hickok groggily grumbled, rising.

“Dumb.”

The three of them turned to the sprawled body of the Empath.

“Hellfire,” Hickok said sadly.

“I didn’t know her that well but she was always nice to me,” Geronimo said.

“This is my fault,” fault,” Blade declared. “I should have had more Warriors.”

Hickok gestured at the head with its fringe of jagged flesh, and the sprawled body. “We should cover those.”

“I’ll get a blanket,” Geronimo volunteered, and ran toward the nearest Block.

All across the compound shouts were being raised. The gunfire had brought the Family on the run. Men, women and children, some with blankets over their shoulders, many in a state of undress.

The first to arrive was Samson, the head of Zulu Triad. He was shirtless, his massive muscles rippling with every movement. He saw the body and drew up short. “Who is it?”

“Clarice,” Blade said.

Lynx came bounding down the stairs from the rampart above the drawbridge. “What’s goin’ on down here? I was on the north wall and heard shootin’.”

Light splashed over them. A Tiller by the name of Horace was carrying a lantern.

“Lynx, keep everyone back ,” Blade commanded. “Get other Warriors to help.” He removed his leather vest and placed it over the severed head.

Out of the growing crowd walked their Leader, his grey hair down to his shoulders. Plato had taken to using a staff in recent years because his legs were prone to bouts of weakness. Without saying a word he stepped to the vest, raised it, and peered under. “So your suspicion that it would go after her was correct.”

“A lot of good I did her,” Blade said bitterly.

“Were you also right about what it is?”

“A Gualaon. A shapeshifter. It posed as the little girl to gain entrance to the Home.”

“And we welcomed it with open arms,” Plato said. “It’s still alive, I take it?”

“It is,” Blade confirmed.

“I need an assessment,” Plato said. “You’re familiar with these creatures. I’m not. How great a threat is it?”

“Great,” Blade said. “It can assume any form. Any shape. It can even be one of us.”

Just then another Warrior came out of the darkness. “Sorry it took me so long. I’d just gotten to bed.”

“No problem, Sundance,” Blade said.

CHAPTER 14

Blade was in turmoil. Part of it was his deep sorrow over Clarice. The other part was his failure to find the shapeshifter.

At daybreak he’d had every square inch of the Home searched. Every adult Family member took part, as well as the older children . They didn’t find the Gualaon. There was no trace of the thing. He supposed it was possible that it had scaled the walls and fled but he very much doubted it.

The searchers did find something that compounded his unease, a patch of blood between the Blocks and the cabins. Enough blood that it suggested a serious wound. Yet no one reported being hurt.

He had a lot to ponder.

Toward noon he was walking near the tilled fields, his hands clasped behind his back, when his fellow Warriors in Alpha Triad came up.

“What the blazes are you doing way out here by yourself, pard?” Hickok asked.

“None of us are to go anywhere alone,” Geronimo reminded him.

“Some big dummy named Blade gave that order,” Hickok said. “You’d better follow it or he’s liable to stick a knife in you.”

“I’m not in the mood for frivolous,” Blade said.

“Frivolous? Me?” Hickok said.

“Do you even know what it means?” Geronimo asked.

“I savvy that you’re worried that lizard-breath isn’t through with us,” Hickok said to Blade. “Just remember you’re not in this alone. We’re right at your side the whole way.”

“It could be anyone in the Home,” Blade said. “Even one of us.”

“The question is,” Geronimo said, “how do we root out a shapeshifter?”

“What about the other Empaths?” Hickok suggested.

“I’ve already asked them and they’re trying but so far all they’ve picked up are vague impressions,” Blade said. “Apparently Clarice was the only one who had a strong sense of the thing. Without her, we’re blind, as it were.”

“The hybrids, then,” Hickok said. “Can’t kitty cat and the weasel smell it out?”

“They’ve tried,” Blade informed him. “But there’s something about its scent. It’s elusive. Almost as if it doesn’t have any. Or it can control how much it gives off.”

“So what do we do, pard? Twiddle our thumbs until it kills again?”

“If you have an inspiration I’m open to ideas.”

“At least there’s only one of them,” Geronimo said. “Imagine if there were five or six.”

“One is enough,” Blade said.

“What I don’t get,” Hickok said, “is where these things come from. From what it was saying, its kind were around long before World War Three. They weren’t spawned by the radiation and the chemicals.”

“They claim they came from the stars,” Blade remembered from his clash with the Gualaon in L.A.

“They’re aliens?” Geronimo said.

“One of them told me that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals painted them on cave walls.”

“If they’ve been here that long,” Geronimo said, “they’re not really aliens anymore. They’ve acclimated.”

“Another thing I don’t get,” Hickok said. “They’re smart. And they’re tough. Did you see how that thing soaked up lead in the fight at the moat? Yet it called the Lords of Kismet its masters. Now I ask you. Who or what are these Lords that they can control a thing like that?”

“All I know about the Lords,” Blade said, “is what it told us.”

“That they’re planning to take over the world?” Hickok chuckled. “They think big, I’ll say that for them.”

“It’s not funny.” Blade tiredly rubbed his eyes. “It could be why we can’t get in touch with the Civilized Zone or the California government.”

“You think the Lords of Kismet have already taken them over?” Geronimo asked.

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out once we’ve dealt with our situation here.”

“Oh goody,” Hickok said. “Another road trip in the SEAL . It shouldn’t take more than six months or so to get to California and back.”

Suddenly there was a blur of movement to the south of them.

Hickok whirled, his Pythons out and in his hands as if they materialized out of thin air. The twin clicks of the hammers brought the person running toward them to a stop.

“Hold on there, bub,” Lynx said. “It’s me.”

“Better watch who you sneak up on,” Hickok said. He let down the hammers and twirled the Pythons into their holsters.

Lynx turned his emerald cat’s eyes on Blade. “You need to come with me. You need to see.”

“You found something?”

“Ferret and me have been sniffing all over the place like you wanted. We caught the scent of blood near the south moat.”

“A body?” Blade said.

“You need to see,” Lynx said again. “It’s left a note.”

“A what?”

“Addressed to you,” Lynx said.

They hurried.

Ferret and Gremlin were waiting, the latter with tears glistening his cheeks.

"She was always so nice to me, yes? How could anything do this to her, no?"

“God Almighty,” Hickok breathed.

Her name was Bethany and she had only been eight years old. The shapeshifter had literally ripped her to pieces. Her arms and legs had been torn off and left lying near her shredded body. Her head sat on the stump of her neck, her face twisted in the terror she felt in her last moments.

Blade smothered a surge of fury and stepped to a split stick stuck in the ground. A piece of paper had been wedged in it. He yanked the stick out and removed the paper. The handwriting was in an exquisite cursive, every letter neat and precise.

“What does it say, pard?” Hickok asked.

“Blade,” Blade read, and he had to cough to keep going. “This makes three. It’s just the start. You’ll never know who or where. Feeling helpless yet?” His jaw muscles twitched. “P.S. I didn’t eat her because she wet herself.”

“That sick son of a bitch,” Hickok said. “I’m going to enjoy killing it.”

Blade crumpled the note and stared at the remains and placed his hands on his bowies. “You’ll have to get in line.”

“First we have to find it,” Geronimo said, “and how do we do that?”

No one had an answer.

CHAPTER 15

Several days went by. Several ordinary, uneventful days. The Family went about their usual routine. The Tillers worked in the fields. The Builders worked on a new cabin. The Weavers worked on new quilts. The Hunters ventured outside the walls after fresh meat.

It was the latter who reported sighting a swarm of zombies in the next valley over. That was what the Family had taken to calling large groups of the undead. And when a swarm was near, they were a danger to anyone who set foot out of the compound. Which was why Blade always dispatched Warriors to deal with them.

This time he decided to send Omega Triad, and walked with Ares, Sundance and Helen to the drawbridge.

“Listen up,” Blade said as the drawbridge was being lowered. “Get it done quickly and get back here. I don’t like being at less than full strength when the Gualaon can strike at any time.”

“Maybe it’s gone,” Helen said. “There haven’t been any new attacks.”

“You heard about the note we found near Bethany,” Blade reminded her. “The thing isn’t gone. It’s biding its time.”

“We’ll kill the zombies and get right back,” Ares said. “Count on it.”

Sundance nodded.

“I don’t need to warn you to be on the lookout for mutates and God knows what else,” Blade said. “There’s also another possible threat.”

The three Warriors waited.

“The Gualaon serves the Lords of Kismet. When I went up against other Gualaons in Los Angeles, they had helpers of their own. They dress in black and use martial arts weapons and call themselves Assassins.”

“And you think some of them might be lurking around here?” Ares asked.

Blade shrugged. “We haven’t seen any but you never know. I’m only saying so you can be on the lookout.”

“We’ll stay alert, like always,” Ares promised. “

Like always,” Helen echoed.

Sundance nodded.

“Off you go, then,” Blade said, and watched them cross the drawbridge. He glanced at the top of the wall, where Spartacus was on duty. “Keep your eyes and ears peeled.”

“When don’t I?” Spartacus said.

Blade turned to find the Family’s revered Leader approaching. He smiled warmly and said, “Morning, Plato.”

His frail frame bent, relying heavily on his staff, Plato returned the smile. “We’re overdue for a talk. Is now a good time?”

“I always have time for you.”

They strolled toward the Commons area between the Blocks.

Gesturing at breaks in the cloud cover, Plato said, “We see more blue these days.”

“You didn’t look me up to talk about the sky,” Blade replied.

“No,” Plato said. “I came about the Gualaon, and the fear it has instilled on our Family. They don’t show it but you don’t have to be an Empath to feel it.”

“I’ve taken every precaution.”

“I trust you have And I would imagine your every effort is geared towards killing it.”

“What else?” Blade rejoined.

“I’ve been thinking,” Plato said, “that it might be wiser to try and take it alive.”

Blade stopped. “I’d say you can’t be serious but I know you too well.”

“Hear me out,” Plato said. “We need to learn more about these creatures. We know next to nothing about them beyond their shapeshifting, and even there we don’t know the extent of their ability. For instance, can they only mimic people or can they become other living things? Can they mimic animals? Can they become a boulder?” “I don’t know the extent,” Blade admitted.

“If we took this one alive, we might be able to find out. Under proper restraint, perhaps we can put it to various tests.”

Blade didn’t respond.

“Then there are their masters, the Lords of Kismet. We know even less about them than we do about the Gualaon. In all your time away from the Home on missions for the allied factions, what did you learn about them?”

“Their name,” Blade said, “and the fact they apparently control part of Asia and want to control the rest of the world as well.”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many Lords are there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they human or otherwise?” Plato held up a hand, and grinned. “You don’t know. My point is that this Gaulaon must possess vital information about our enemies. Information crucial to preserving the Freedom Federation.”

“If it still exists.”

Plato grimly nodded. “That we haven’t been able to get in touch with them is deeply troubling. We’ve been conserving the few batteries we have left to power our radio, but even so, we try every night.” He paused. “What do you say? What are the chances of taking this creature alive?”

“Monster, you mean,” Blade said, and shook his head. “I’d say the chances are next to nil.”

“Explain.”

“The Gualaon have a fanatical drive to succeed at all costs.”

“And by succeed you mean to do as their masters bid them?”

Blade nodded. “Not only that, they’re just too damn formidable. They’re stronger than we are. They have teeth and claws sharpers than our knives, and they’re quick as anything.”

“As quick as Hickok, or, say, Yama or you?”

“It’s close,” Blade said. “Then’s there’s the fact that surrendering isn’t in their nature. They’d rather go down taking as many enemies with them as they can instead of giving up.”

“I see .” Plato rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “In that case, trying to take this being alive would be pointless. We’d lose too many of our own.” He sighed. “Very well. Carry on as you are. Don’t take any chances. Exterminate the creature without any qualms.”

“There’s nothing I’d like more,” Blade said. “But first we have to find it. It could be hiding anywhere in the Home or outside of it, or—-”

“Or,” Plato finished for him, “it could be any one of us, and we have no idea who.”

CHAPTER 16

The three Warriors of Omega Triad moved liked ghosts, gliding through the woods with no more noise than the sigh of the breeze. They had to. Their lives depended on their stealth.

Like all the Triads, Omega trained hard together. They practiced and practiced until they moved and acted as one. Usually. On this particular morning, Ares stopped and looked back and whispered, “Sundance, close up. No more than ten feet, remember?”

“I remember,” Sundance said.

The three Warriors were a mismatched set.

Ares was one of the tallest men in the Home. Topping out at six feet, three inches, he was lean and muscular. He wore a dark brown leather outfit patterned after the tunics worn by ancient Greeks. His red hair was cropped in a Mohawk similar to the crest on Greek helmets. A lot of Warriors liked bladed weapons as a backup, and his was a short sword, likewise patterned after the Greek style, which hung in a sheath at his hip. His primary weapon was a Colt AR-15.

Helen had auburn hair, now tied back, and green eyes. In the hundred-year-plus history of the Family there had been many female Warriors, and she was considered one of the best. She favored a black leather vest, like Blade, but hers was cut low and bulged in a way Blade’s couldn’t. Her pants were also black leather, her short boots the same color . A pair of Caspian .45-caliber automatics were strapped around her waist. Above her left shoulder jutted the hilt of a 24-inch machete.

Sundance wore his usual clothes, a grey shirt and grey pants. The shirt had wide lapels and black buttons. The pants flared at the bottom. In a shoulder holster under each arm was an L.A.R. Grizzly auto pistol chambered for the Winchester Magnum .45 cartridge, each with a seven-shot magazine. His black hair was trimmed neat around his ears, as was his mustache.

The forest was unnaturally still. A century of the combined effects of radiation and the chemical and biological weapons unleashed during the war had resulted in a grotesque transformation.

The plant life wasn’t as it had been before the Big Blast. Many of the trees, the bushes, even the grass, had mutated. There were oaks and maples and pine trees, as there had always been, but there were also trees of no known species , trees with bark that glowed and limbs that writhed like snakes, trees that exuded poisonous sap, trees that gave off an odor so foul, one whiff would make a person vomit. A new type of bush bristled with six-inch or longer thorns. And where before grass had been primarily green, now it was sometimes yellow and orange and red, and if you looked closely, you would see the blades move like so many small tentacles.

So it wasn’t just the mutates and wild beasts and monsters the Warriors had to watch out for. They had to be on their guard against the plant life, too.

The three Warriors came to the crest of the ridge that overlooked the next valley, and stopped.

“And there they are,” Ares said.

Helen put her hands on her hips and scowled. “I thought the Hunters said it was a small swarm?”

“There are four hundred and twenty-seven of them,” Sundance said.

“You counted that quick?” Helen knit her brow. “What are they doing? They’re just standing there.”

Ares grunted. “Strange. Usually zombies keep on the move.” He put a hand in one of the large pockets in his tunic and checked his magazines. “I have two hundred rounds. What about both of you?”

“I have two clips in my pistols and seven spares,” Helen said. “That makes one hundred and twenty-six.”

“Sundance?” Ares said when Sundance didn’t answer.

“I’m not sure.”

Ares turned. “Are you kidding me? You came out in the field without knowing how much ammo you have? You usually carry about seventy rounds.”

“I was kidding,” Sundance said. “That’s exactly how many I have.”

“You should pack more,” Helen said.

“He probably thinks he doesn’t need to,” Ares said. “Those Grizzlies of his were some of the most powerful handguns ever made.”

“That’s it exactly,” Sundance said.

“So adding it all up,” Ares said, “gives us a total of almost four hundred. Plus Helen and I have our blades.” He stared thoughtfully at the listless zombies. “Go for the head and make every shot count. We’re bound to miss a few but it can’t be helped.”

“It will be like killing chickens in a slaughter house,” Sundance said.

Helen snorted. “You mean like in the old days? How would you know?”

“There are chickens and then there are chickens,” Sundance replied.

“You sure are acting weird today,” Helen said.

“Enough about chickens,” Ares said. “We’re going to take these mothers down so they don’t pose a threat to anyone at the Home.”

“I hear that,” Helen said. “I’ve had nightmares where zombies kill my daughter. I can’t stand the suckers.”

“Let’s go,” Sundance said, and started down.

“Hold on,” Ares said. “What do you think you’re doing? I’m in charge. I say how we go about it.”

Sundance shrugged. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“We do this as a Triad, as we’ve been trained,” Ares told him. “We’ll slip down without them catching wind of us and take it from there.” He moved past Sundance and glided down the slope with supple ease.

Helen followed, saying as she went past Sundance, “What’s gotten into you today?”

“I’m the same me I’ve always been,” Sundance said, and trailed after them. At one point he raised his right hand with his forefinger straight out and his thumb up and mimicked shooting Ares and Helen in the back.

The zombies stayed in silent ranks, their arms limp, their eyes closed.

“That’s so weird,” Helen whispered when the three Warriors crouched near the valley floor.

“Ain’t it, though,” Ares said. “We’ll have to let Blade know when we get back. It could mean something.”

“It’s almost as if they’re sleeping,” Helen whispered.

“Why would the dead need to sleep? It has to be something else,” Ares said.

“They expend energy, the same as we do,” Sundance said. “When they run low on food and need to conserve, they go into a state of hibernation.”

Ares chuckled. “Figured that out on your own, did you? I never took you for the brainy type.”

“He’s full of surprises today,” Helen said.

“Whatever the reason for them standing there like that,” Ares said, raising his AR-15, “it makes it easier for us.” He slowly straightened. “Quietly now. You know the drill.”

“I can’t wait to start the killing,” Helen said.

Sundance glanced at her and then at Ares. “Me either,” he said.

CHAPTER 17

The firing range was situated in a remote part of the compound. Once a month the Warriors were required to practice, no exceptions.

On this particular morning Alpha Triad was taking its turn. Blade had just emptied half a magazine into stacked bales of straw on which the silhouette of a life-size human target had been painted. Since paper was at a premium, they improvised.

Geronimo was the spotter, and he confirmed that all of Blade’s slugs had penetrated the torso area. “A good kill,” he said. “Yo-yo is up next’.”

Hickok was leaning against a pine, his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt. “Keep those eagle eyes of yours peeled, redskin. Blink and you’ll miss poetry in motion.”

“I’ll miss you missing?” Geronimo said.

Blade moved aside and Hickok took his place.

“It’s a waste of ammo, pard,” Hickok said. “When do I ever miss?”

“Cocky much?” Blade said.

In answer, Hickok drew. His hands flashed so fast, his Pythons were out and level as if pulled from thin air. Both boomed simultaneously.

Geronimo held binoculars fixed on the bales of straw. “Smack in the head,” he called out.

Hickok grinned and twirled the Pythons in a dazzling display that ended with a grand flourish of spinning the revolvers into their holsters. Patting them, he said, “Piece of cake.”

“For you,” Blade said. “Not for the rest of the human race.”

“You know,” Geronimo said, “that’s a good point. It would explain a lot if he’s a mutant.”

“How’s that again?” Hickok said.

“Only a mutant could draw as fast as you do.”

“Did your momma know she gave birth to a boy without brains?” Hickok rejoined. “I’m as human as you are, I’ll have you know.”

“Me and the rest of the human race take exception to that remark.”

Blade laughed.

“Seriously,” Geronimo said. “The only one who comes close to you is Sundance, and even he’s not in your league.”

“Aren’t you a daisy,” Hickok said. “What are you up to? The last time you paid me a compliment was six years ago.”

“That recent?” Geronimo said.

At the edge of the woods someone coughed and said, “Did I just hear Sundance’s name?”

Lynx came out of the woods, followed by his fellow Bravo Triad members, Ferret and Gremlin.

“Your turn at the range isn’t until tomorrow,” Blade said, slinging the Commando over his shoulder.

“We’re not here for that,” Lynx said.

Hickok said, “You’re out of kitty litter and want us to refill the box?”

Lynx held up his right hand and one-by-one extended his fingers, each tipped by a lethal claw. “Have you ever been gutted, bub?”

“Not this week,” Hickok said. “And if you ask me, you’re a mite touchy.”

“Don’t pay him any mind, Lynx,” Geronimo said. “He doesn’t have one of his own.”

Lynx turned to Blade. “You’ve always told us that if we sniff something out that puzzles us, we’re supposed to let you know.”

“I’m to be informed of anything out of the ordinary,” Blade confirmed. “That applies to all the Warriors and everyone else in the Family.”

“Then this qualifies,” Ferret said.

Hickok walked over and draped an arm around his hairy shoulders. “Tell me something, weasel. Do you ever get fleas?”

Ferret bared his pointed teeth. “I give good hickeys.”

“Oh yuck,” Hickok said.

Blade placed his hands on his hips and looked from one to the other.

“What?” Hickok said.

“This is serious,” Lynx interrupted. “We need to show you guys something.” He motioned and Blade fell into step beside him.

The rest followed.

“What have you found?” Blade asked.

“Remember that night you three tangled with the shapeshifter?”

It was just last week,” Hickok said. “The big guy ain’t that senile.”

“We helped in the search but we never did get a lock on its scent,” Lynx reminded them.

“And?” Blade prompted when the cat-man didn’t go on.

“We just found out that the next day someone found blood they couldn’t account for.”

“A Healer came across it on her way to the Infirmary in C Block,” Blade said.

“You never thought to show it to us?”

“The blood had soaked into the ground,” Blade said. “And there weren’t any tracks for you to follow.”

“Ferret and me don’t need tracks.” Lynx tapped a finger to his nostrils. “We can track anyone, anywhere, with these.”

“Except the shapeshifter,” Hickok said. “You said yourself that your little nosey wasn’t up to it.”

Lynx looked back. “Ferret, any time you want to rip his throat out, be my guest.”

“No thanks,” Ferret said. “I’ve never been fond of the taste of ego.”

Geronimo chuckled. “Ferret, you’re my new best friend.”

“I suppose ,” Blade said loudly, and the others fell silent ,“ that in hindsight I should have asked for your help. But since you did lose the scent at the moat, and all there was was a red stain—-.” He shrugged.

“You’re making excuses?” Lynx said. “Hickok must be right. You are getting senile.”

They neared the area devoted to crops. Tillers were hard at work, hoeing and pulling weeds and checking plants for disease or signs of mutation. Near the cabins young children played; tag, hide and seek, several girls were involved in hopscotch. A woman was hanging wash out on a line, a man worked at caulking the chinks in a wall . In the commons area several Elders were seated in a circle, talking.

“Moments like this,” Geronimo remarked, “I can almost forget there was a war.”

Lynx led them to a spot about midway between the cabins and the Blocks and pointed at the ground. “This is where you found the blood?”

Blade only had to glance at the dark stain that was still visible, and nodded. “What about it?”

Lynx squatted. He placed his hands wide to either side, bent, and lowered his nose so it practically brushed the dirt. He sniffed several times, then straightened. “We need to be sure,” he said to Ferret. “Double-check me again.”

Ferret imitated him, sniffing even louder. “There’s no doubt in my mind. I’m surprised there’s any in yours.”

“Doubt about what?” Blade demanded.

“We were passing by this morning and we smelled the blood,” Lynx said. “We sniffed around and caught two scents.”

“Two?”

“One is the shapeshifter’s. It’s not strong. But then, it never is.”

“We suspect he can control it somehow,” Blade said.

“There’s a second scent,” Lynx said. “It took us a while to place it.”

Ferret nodded. “There are over two hundred humans in the Home, and it’s not as if we have all their scents memorized.”

“So we started sniffing everywhere,” Lynx went on, “trying to find that particular one again.”

“And we did,” Ferret said.

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Blade said.

Lynx straightened and beckoned and ushered them toward the cabins.

“Just tell us,” Blade said impatiently when over a minute went by and they hadn’t.

“We’re there,” Lynx said. Stopping, he pointed at a particular cabin. “That’s where the scent is strongest.”

“Oh God,” Hickok said. “Bertha?”

“No.” Lynx looked at Blade. “The other scent, the blood scent, belongs to Sundance.”

CHAPTER 18

Omega Triad had spent countless hours training in everything from hand-to-hand combat to small arms, from sniping to knife-fighting, from stealth to garrotting. They’d honed their lethal skills until they were the best they could be.

Now, with Ares slightly in front and Helen and Sundance to either side, the three Warriors advanced to within a stone’s throw of the swarm.

“Here will do,” Ares said. He stopped and raised the AR -15 to his shoulder and sighted. “Remember. Head shots until we’re out of ammo and then we finish them with our blades but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Helen grinned at Sundance. “That leaves you out. You’ve never carried one.”

“I’ll use my teeth,” Sundance said.

“Focus, people,” Ares commanded. “We start with the nearest and work our way through. Here we go.” He stroked the trigger. His AR-15 cracked and the center of a male zombie’s forehead dissolved. He fired again and a female zombie’s head snapped back, a similar hole in the middle of hers.

Helen cut loose, her Caspians booming. Every shot dropped an abomination.

Sundance glanced down at the auto pistols in his shoulder holsters. He smiled, and his hands flicked, and the Grizzlies thundered louder than the Caspians.

Over two dozen zombies littered the ground before the rest stirred. Their undead heads rose. Their undead eyes opened. Their undead mouths opened, too, and they hissed and growled. Almost as one, they moved toward the Warriors.

“Faster!” Ares cried, and picked up the pace, his AR-15 cracking in cadence.

Helen had been grinning but now her face acquired a sober cast. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became a slit and she fired, fired, fired.

One of Sundance’s Grizzlies belched lead and a zombie’s cheek exploded. The other Grizzly roared and the top of a zombie’s head burst. Sundance laughed and took a few steps past Ares, shooting.

“What the hell?” Ares said. He, too, took several steps , so that once again he was slightly in front of Sundance.

Helen instantly compensated by moving forward so she was again to Ares’ left.

Fully fifty of the zombies had fallen but that didn’t stop the rest. They converged on the Warriors in a mass of teeth and hooked nails and glazed eyes.

Sundance laughed and took another step and ejected a magazine and replaced it.

Ares took a step, too. Leaning toward the man in man in grey, he shouted to be heard above the din, “Don’t break formation again.”

Sundance glanced at him as if surprised and then nodded and yelled, “I got carried away.”

Helen didn’t say a word. But she, too, took a step without breaking the lethal tempo of her Caspians. She did glance sharply at Sundance and for a few seconds her face wore a troubled expression. Then she had to concentrate on the zombies.

Lumbering, lurching, shuffling, mouths agape to bite, stick arms waving and pumping, the swarm paid no more heed to the leaden firestorm than humans would to buzzing flies. The foremost ranks fell and those behind came on and then they were the foremost and they fell and those behind them came on and each step brought them closer, ever closer, to Omega Triad.

Ares slapped in a fresh magazine and worked the bolt. He cored an eye, he cored a nose, he cored a forehead. He cored a throat, he cored a cheek, he cored another eye.

Helen ejected a clip and jammed in another. She did it so smoothly and so quickly that there was hardly a break in her shooting.

Sundance laughed and went on laughing as if their fight were the funniest thing.

The closest zombies were ten feet away and they fell and the next rank came on and was only nine feet away and they fell and now only eight feet separated the snarling, groaning, drooling undead from their quarry.

“On me!” Ares hollered, and backed up several swift steps.

Helen instantly did the same.

Sundance stood rooted where he was, laughing, his Grizzlies bucking in each hand.

“Sundance!” Ares angrily shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sundance heard and looked and backed up so he was beside them.

The number of downed zombies was in the scores. Undead lay in heaps and piles. And still they came, scrambling and clawing and climbing over those in front. Ungainly, preposterously uncoordinated, yet still they attacked. Unwittingly they had spread to either side so that the Warriors were the thundering eye of an inhuman storm.

Helen swung to fire into those coming from the left and Sundance, seeing what she had done, turned to fire into those coming from the right. Ares continued to pour fire into those in front.

Over a hundred zombies littered the earth and only four feet of space separated the Warriors and their dead-but-not dead adversaries when Ares took a step back. Helen instantly did the same. Sundance, who constantly glanced at them now, followed their example.

Half the swarm had been thinned when Ares, still shooting, took another backward step. Helen mimicked him. Once again, a few seconds later, so did Sundance.

Reanimated corpses grasped and clawed and gnashed their teeth—-and were mowed down in droves.

More than two hundred and fifty of the ravenous living dead had returned to the grave state from which they spawned when the Warriors reached the tree line and stood firm and wouldn’t be moved.

They fired without cease. That their weapons hadn’t jammed was a tribute to the manufacturers of yesteryear.

“Two mags left!” Ares bellowed as he reached for the second to last.

“My last clip,” Helen let them know not seconds later.

Sundance didn’t chime in.

The zombies were far fewer but pressing forward to close and feed.

Then the Grizzlies stopped blasting and the Caspians stopped cracking and last of all the AR-15 went silent.

At least forty zombies were still standing.

“Oh hell,” Ares said.

CHAPTER 19

In a smooth motion Ares slung the AR-15 across his back and drew his short sword. Forged by the Family Blacksmiths, it was an exact replica of a type of sword wielded by the Greeks of long ago.

Helen shoved her Caspians into their holsters, reached up, and slid her machete from its sheath. She’d had it fitted with wooden grips that were longer than those found on most machetes so she could use it two-handed. Dropping into a stance, she held the blade in front of her.

Sundance stared at his empty Grizzlies, and laughed. He took hold of both by their barrels and swung each a few times as if they were short clubs. “This has actually been exciting.”

“You know the drill,” Ares said as the surviving zombies closed. “Back to back. If you get into trouble, yell.” He hefted his short sword. “Let’s do this.”

The three Warriors stood firm as the undead washed over them. Ares cut and slashed and stabbed. Helen went for their necks , a single blow enough to send a zombie head tumbling. Sundance bashed heads with gleeful delight, his blows so powerful that he caved in zombie skulls, splitting some like overripe melons.

Still, the zombies advanced. They clawed. They grasped. They tried to bite. One fastened its teeth on Ares’ tunic but couldn’t bite through the thick leather and the next moment Ares drove the point of his short sword into its eye socket.

Thirty zombies were left and the Warriors showed no signs of tiring. If anything, Sundance swung faster and with more strength than ever. He struck a forehead with so much force, he drove the Grizzly clear through the zombie’s skull.

Twenty were left, and the Warriors had scrapes and welts from being scratched and clawed. Helen was bleeding from a gash on her neck. They fought on, the fleshy thwick-thwick-thwick of whirling blades in counterpoint to the thud-thud-thud of the Grizzlies.

Then there were only ten zombies —-eight—— five. The last of them teetered at Ares and he cleaved it from the crown of its head to its nose.

In the sudden stillness, the Warriors stared at the heaps of walking dead and at one another. They were spattered with gore and bits of dead flesh.

“God, I stink,” Helen said. She turned so she had one eye toward Sundance.

“We’ll all need a bath,” Ares said. “But we’re alive.”

“I never doubted I would be,” Sundance said. His Grizzlies were covered inches thick with goo and brains.

“I had a few moments there when you forgot your training,” Ares said as he bent to wipe his short sword clean on a zombie’s shirt. “What was up with that?”

“I guess it was the heat of combat,” Sundance said.

“You guess?” Ares said. “Our training is supposed to prevent that. What’s one of the cardinal rules?”

Sundance looked at him.

“To always keep a level head,” Ares said. “And you didn’t.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“It damn well better not. I’ll let it slide this time. But if there’s another incident like today, I’m reporting you to Blade.”

“No harm was done,” Sundance said. “We wiped them out, didn’t we?”

“You’re missing the point,” Ares said. “It could have gone either way. All it would take was a mistake on your part.” He shook his head and gestured at Helen. “You talk to him.”

Helen squatted and ran her machete over the pant leg of one of the undead and turned the blade over and did the same with the other side. Only then did she look at Sundance and say, “You’ve been acting strangely all day.”

“If I have I didn’t notice,” Sundance said. “I’m just being me.”

“It’s like your mind is somewhere else,” Ares said. “Did Bertha and you have a fight or something?”

“What would that matter? I don’t let anything affect how I do my duty.”

“Let’s hope not.” Ares straightened. “All right. Enough about how you’ve acted. Let’s get back to the zombies. Go through their pockets if they have any.”

“What on earth for?” Sundance asked.

“It’s SOP and you know it,” Ares said. “Blade likes to keep track of where the zombies are from. Sometimes we find papers that give us a clue which towns and cities might be inhabited.”

“Oh, that,” Sundance said. He slid the gore-caked Grizzlies into their holsters and commenced turning zombies over and moving bodies.

“You know,” Helen said to him, “I’m surprised you haven’t teased me today like you usually do.”

“Tease you?” Sundance said while patting the pockets of a prone bundle of rotten flesh.

“About my name,” Helen said. “You always razz me about naming myself after Helen of Troy.”

Ares looked up sharply.

Helen put a finger to her lips and shook her head.

Still intent on the zombie, Sundance said, “I figured I’d go easy on you. But now that you bring it up, it’s a strange Naming for a Warrior.”

Ares gave a start and straightened. He had sheathed his short sword but now he drew it.

Helen sidled to one side and gripped her machete more firmly. “Nice try, but you’ve given yourself away.”

Sundance finally glanced up, and stiffened. “How’s that again?”

“We don’t always pick a new name,” Helen said. “Sometimes we keep the name we’re given at birth.”

Sundance folded his hands in front of him and smiled. “Well, what do you know.”

“My mother and father named me Helen when I was born, after my grandmother. Out of respect for them I never changed it.”

“My compliments, my dear. You’re somewhat clever for an ape.”

“Does this means what I think it means?” Ares said.

Sundance snickered. “Asks the dullard of this Triad. Yes, self-styled God of War.” He gave a slight bow. “I’m about to feast on your intestines.”

CHAPTER 20

Blade pounded loudly on the cabin door and when his knock wasn’t answered right away, he impatiently pounded again. There was still no response. He violated a Family rule by opening the door anyway. “Bertha?” he hollered.

The cabin was dark, the silence deafening.

“Hellfire,” Hickok said anxiously. “She’s not here, pard.

“Stay calm. I know she’s your friend.”

“She’s your friend too.”

“Where could she have got to?” Geronimo wondered.

Blade turned to Bravo Triad, to the two hybrids in particular. “Sniff her out as fast as you can.”

“We’re on it, bub,” Lynx said, and he and Ferret went inside. They weren’t in the cabin half a minute and they were back out again. Their heads low to the ground, they roved back and forth.

“She went this way,” Ferret exclaimed, and dashed off to the north.

“On me,” Blade said to Hickok and Geronimo, and broke into a run.

Ferret came to trees near the northern stretch of the moat, and stopped and pointed.

The grate in the aqueduct had been raised slightly so that a foot or so of water flowed, enough to meet the Family’s daily needs but not so deep that the creature could hide in it.

Bertha was seated on the bank, her hands on her knees, her expression pensive.

Blade didn’t bother with the amenities. Walking up to her, he said more gruffly than he intended, “On your feet.”

Startled, Bertha looked up, and rose. “Hey there. You look as if you’re about to bite my head off. What did I do?”

“I’m mad at myself, not at you,” Blade said. He took the liberty of placing his hand on her shoulder, “We need to talk about Sundance.”

“Oh God.”

“What?” Blade said.

“I was just thinking about him.”

“Was he hurt recently? Did he cut himself, maybe? Has he been to the Healers?”

Bertha put a hand to her throat.

“I need to know,” Blade said, and gave her a slight shake. “Snap out of it.”

“No, he hasn’t been hurt,” Bertha said, and she swayed. “But he’s been acting peculiar. He’s not been himself.

I mean, he looks like Sundance and he talks like Sundance. But there’s a lot of little things. I’ve been wondering—-.”

She stopped. “Oh, Blade, no.”

“You didn’t think to come to me? I gave orders that any Family member who behaved strangely was to be reported to me right away.”

“I was thinking of coming to you just now,” Bertha said softly. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “Please, not Sundance.”

Blade began snapping orders. “Gremlin?”

“Gremlin here, yes,” the genetically altered Warrior replied. “Yours to command.”

“Go to my cabin . My wife is there. Tell her to get Hickok’s and Geronimo’s wives and go to Bertha’s cabin and stay with her until the rest of us get back.”

“No,” Bertha said, and clutched his arm. “I’m going with you.”

“No,” Blade said. “You’re not.” He stared at Gremlin. “Why are you still standing there?”

Gremlin looked sheepish and raced off.

Blade turned to the hybrids. “Lynx, Ferret. I sent Omega Triad to the next valley to the north after those zombies the Hunters reported.”

“We know,” Lynx said.

“Go after them. You’re faster than we are. You can get there sooner. We’ll be close behind you.”

“On our way,” Lynx said, and went to run off.

“I’m not done,” Blade said. “It might already be too late but you’re not to stop, not to rest. You run like you’ve never run before. Anything gets in your way, anything at all, you rip it apart and keep going. Understood?”

“I love it when you’re manly,” Ferret said.

Hickok grinned.

“One last thing,” Blade said. “The Gualaon.”

Lynx bared his teeth and clicked his claws. “We’ll rip him apart, too.”

“Listen to me,” Blade said. “We’ve been in a lot of fights over the years, haven’t we?”

“Have we ever,” Lynx said, and smiled.

“This thing is worse than anything you’ve ever faced. Don’t give it a chance. Don’t hesitate. Take it down as fast as you can.”

“Fast and furious,” Ferret said. “Got it.”

“We know how to kill,” Lynx said.

The pair streaked off in blurs of fur.

Blade faced his friends. “Does each of you have plenty of ammo?”

“Do you even need to ask, pard ?” Hickok returned. “For me to go outside without ammo would be like going out without my fingers and tootsies.”

“Tootsies?” Geronimo said. “There’s a word I bet the real Hickok used a lot.”

“Enough,” Blade said. “Let’s go.” He unslung his Commando and jogged toward the drawbridge.

“I needed some exercise, anyway,” Hickok said.

“This isn’t the time,” Blade chided. “Or hasn’t it sunk in yet that we’ve lost Sundance?”

“You know better, pard.”

“That’s not fair, Blade,” Geronimo came to Hickok’s defense. “He’d joke about his own death as he was dying, and you know it. It’s just how he is.”

Blade knew he shouldn’t take his irritation at himself out on his friends. But Lynx had been right. He should have consulted with the hybrids about the blood. If he had, they might have cornered the shapeshifter by now and this would be over.

“I’m powerful sorry about Sundance,” Hickok was saying. “He was a good pard, and I’ll grieve for him. Later. Right now I’m worried about the other two. Ares and Helen are out there with that critter. And you know what it’s going to do to them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Blade said, and ran faster.

CHAPTER 21

The creature that was Sundance drew itself up to Sundance’s full height and kept on growing. It smiled, and Sundance’s teeth became long and pointed and his tongue flicked out and licked lips thinner than his. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Getting ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” Helen said as she balanced on the balls of her feet.

“We’re Warriors,” Ares said. “We don’t go down easy.”

“Oh, please,” the thing said, and pointed a claw at its own chest, which still resembled Sundance’s. “None have ever been easier than he was.”

“I bet you took him by surprise,” Helen remarked.

“So he didn’t have any chance to defend himself,” Ares said.

The creature looked at them in mild incredulity. “What age do you think you live in? The time of the Troy we were just talking about, when warriors challenged each other to open combat? I was there, and now is nothing like then. Now it is kill or be killed, however the killing needs to be done.”

“Wait,” Helen said in amazement. “You were there, where?” “At Troy, of course.”

“No way,” Ares said.

“You have no conception of how many centuries I’ve lived ,” the creature said. “The Lords of Kismet wanted the city to fall and I and others of my kind were there to ensure the Greeks won.”

“It’s just not possible,” Helen said.

“Foolish primate ,” the creature sneered. “What do you know of the infinite possibilities of existence?” It looked down on them in contempt. “Haven’t either of you read Homer? Read how the ‘gods’ kept appearing to the Greeks to inspire them on, and then disappeared? And how Hector’s own brother seemingly materialized at his side and offered to stand with him against Achilles, only when Hector confronted Achilles, his bother had vanished.”

“That was you?”

“It was one of us.”

Ares was so astounded he lowered his sword. “You knew the real Achilles? You saw him with your own eyes?”

“I spoke to him as I am speaking to you now,” the creature said. “I saw him fight. I saw him kill. There has never been a human slayer such as he. He was superb.” The thing paused. “Which makes it ironic, and fitting, that the first of your Family’s Warriors I killed had taken his name. Believe me when I say that your Achilles was a pale shadow of his namesake.”

“He was a good Warrior,” Helen said.

“You knew the real Achilles,” Ares said, and shook his head in amazement.

“Why are you so surprised?” the creature asked, and its arms grew longer and its legs extended and its clothes began to change before their eyes. “Hasn’t Blade told you? I am Razhliq Nher of the Gualaon. We were of this world before your kind were spawned. We will be of this world long after your kind have been exterminated.”

“What have we done that you hate us so?” Helen asked.

“Besides overrun the planet like a horde of locusts? Are you that stupid?” The shapeshifter gestured at the heaps of zombies . “Look around you. Look at what your kind has done to this world. You very nearly destroyed yourselves. You’ve wiped out countless species, polluted the environment, contaminated the earth for a thousand years to come. And you stand there and ask why do we despise you?”

“It wasn’t us. It was the people who lived more than a hundred years ago,” Ares said.

“And if you’re so high and mighty,” Helen said, “why didn’t your kind stop them?”

“Because we were few and the humans were many,” the Gualaon said. “And because our masters, the Lords of Kismet, had forsworn contact with humankind. But the war changed that.”

“How can you have lived so long and not be wiser than you are?” Helen asked.

“Our breadth of knowledge is beyond your pitiful comprehension.” The creature’s features no longer resembled Sundance’s . It was reptilian, and hideous. It fixed its red eyes on her. “We are wiser than your kind will ever be.”

“Then why can’t we live in peace?” Helen said. “Why can’t we work together to rebuild the world?”

“Humans had their moment in the sun, as you would say , and they blotted it out with their bombs and their missiles. But in a way you’ve done my masters a favor. There are far fewer of you now. My Lords can rise and reclaim this world for their own.”

“With your kind to do their dirty work,” Helen said.

“Nothing you can say or do will turn me against them,” the Gualaon declared. “I’ve served the Lords of Kismet for millennia with pride and distinction. It’s why they sent me to your Home. They knew I wouldn’t fail.”

Ares raised his short sword to chest height and crouched. “That’s what you think.”

The creature’s transformation was nearly complete.

“One last thing,” Helen said. “I take it these Lords of yours are out to destroy the Freedom Federation. Are you starting with the smallest factions and working your way to the larger ones?”

“Human logic never ceases to amuse me,” the Gualaon said. “You don’t start at the bottom and work your way up . You start at the top and work your way down. The Free State of California and the Civilized Zone have already fallen. You were next because of the influence your Family wields. It was felt you might rally the other surviving groups and pose an inconvenient if trifling nuisance. So here I am.”

“And here you die,” Ares said.

The creature showed its teeth in a vicious grin. “How’s that wife of yours?”

“What?”

“You heard me.” The creature looked at Helen. “And you. How is your daughter doing? Is she well and happy?”

“You bastard,” Helen said.

Razhliq Nher laughed an alien laugh. “After I’m done with you two, I’ll seek each of them out and feast on their soft flesh.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Helen said to Ares. “He’s trying to rattle us.”

“I know,” Ares said.

“Silly primates,” the Gualaon said. “Whether you are rattled or not makes no difference. I don’t need a psychological edge.” The creature raised its hands and flexed its claws. “You’re both as good as dead.”

CHAPTER 22

Without warning, Ares sprang and slashed at the shapeshifter’s neck but the creature leaped aside.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than that, monkey boy,” their adversary taunted.

“How about this?” Helen said, and went at the thing with her machete flashing. She was considered fast by her fellow Warriors but none of her swings connected. The thing ducked. The thing dodged. In frustration she swung at its legs and at its head and cut empty air.

With the creature focused on Helen, Ares darted around behind it. The moment its back was to him, he thrust his short sword. The double-edged blade sank in clear to the hilt.

Snarling in rage the Gualaon stiffened and whipped around, striking the Warrior across the head.

Ares went flying. He came down with bone-jarring force, swore, and scrambled erect.

By now any vestige of humankind was gone from the creature’s appearance. The Gualaon had assumed its natural reptilian aspect.

Helen glanced at Ares and said, “L and H.” In their training they learned to use hand signals and other cues. In this instance L and H was code for high and low. Since she said L first, it meant she was going low and he should go high.

Ares nodded.

Together, they struck. As one, their blades arced and scored. Ares tried for the neck and nicked the creature’s shoulder. Helen caught it across the thigh.

A fantastic bound carried the Gualaon out of their reach. It looked down at its leg and it touched the oozing cut on its shoulder. “No more holding back.”

“Show us what you’ve got,” Helen said.

The creature was on her so quickly she barely got her machete up. Its claws scraped steel even as its other hand raked her midriff.

Helen felt stinging pain and backpedaled. The thing had sheared through her leather vest, and she was bleeding.

“Not so much as a whimper?” the thing said. “Tough human momma, aren’t you?”

“You’ll find out how tough.”

“Do or die,” Ares said. “On my mark.”

“Do or die?” the creature said.

Helen understood. When an enemy was formidable, when there was a good chance it might prevail, the Warriors resorted to the penultimate tactic. They went all out, much like the ancient berserker Vikings. Either it carried the day or they joined the ranks of the Warrior fallen.

Helen thought it was too soon but Ares was the Triad leader and he had more experience than she did. She dipped into a crouch with her machete next to her ear.

The Gaulaon glanced from one to the other. “Have you a trick up your sleeves? I hope so. You’re boring me.”

Ares and Helen again attacked in concert. They stabbed. They sliced. Their weapons wove glittering figure-eights.

With unbelievable speed and dexterity the Gualaon avoided blow after blow. Then Ares cut its side and Helen opened its back, and with a roar of baffled rage, it leaped over twenty feet and spun to face them.

“You’ve hurt me,” the thing exclaimed, and touched a tapered claw to fluid bubbling from a wound.

“We’re going to do more than that, monster,” Ares said. “We’re going to take you down.”

“Monster? My kind is as superior to you as you are to the ant. Our culture was old when yours was in its infancy. We are more than you can ever be, more than you can imagine being.”

“Says the lap dog to the Lords of Kismet,” Helen said.

“I am proud to serve them.”

“Superior, my ass,” Ares said. “You lose your temper, the same as we do. You boast. You bluster and threaten. You’re no better then we are.”

“Can you do this?” the Gualon said, and its body rippled and swelled and reshaped itself with a swiftness they would not have believed possible had they not seen it with their own eyes.

“What is it becoming?” Helen said.

“I don’t—-,” Ares said, and stopped.

The Gualaon was no longer a Gualaon. It had blue skin and four arms instead of two and long black tresses that writhed like snakes. It had breasts, and eyes that glowed . “Behold my mistress, Kali,” it said in a voice even more inhuman than its normal voice. “Behold the Lord of Kismet I serve.”

There was something about those eyes, Helen realized. They fixed on her with hypnotic effect and she felt herself growing physically weak. “What—-?” she said.

“Don’t look!” Ares darted to her and swung her away.

For fleeting moments both their backs were to the shapeshifter, and the thing was on them.

Ares sensed that it was attacking and tried to turn. Helen saw a blue arm flail and then another and Ares was flung against her. They both went down. He was on top, and he wasn’t moving. She pushed out from under and got to a knee and saw what the creature had done.

Ares’s tunic was ripped from shoulder to hip. The thing’s claws had penetrated deep, and blood was welling. His eyelids fluttered and he got a hand under him, but collapsed.

“Your turn, ape-girl.”

Gripping her machete, Helen rose. She thought of her daughter, Mindy, and her fellow Warriors, and friends.

The thing became a whirlwind.

Helen countered, blocked, stabbed. Her right wrist was seized in two blue hands and her arm was torn from her body. Blood gushed, and the pain doubled her over.

“Oops,” the creature said.

Resisting a tide of dizziness, Helen staggered. She still had the machete in her left hand and she slashed at the creature’s neck but iron blue fingers gripped her left wrist and others closed on her throat.

“This was the only way it could end,” the Gualaon that was Kali said, and finished her off.

The creature discarded the husk with no shred of emotion . Turning to Ares, it smiled. “Your turn. I think I’ll pummel you to a pulp.”

In the shadows under the trees someone growled, “Like hell you will.”

CHAPTER 23

Lynx and Ferret bounded out of the woods and separated. Each bared his fangs and flexed his claws.

“I’ve been hoping for a crack at you,” Lynx said.

The blue creature with four arms regarded them without alarm. “Ah. The hybrids. Are you sure you want to pit your puny selves against me?”

“Keep talking, asshole,” Ferret said. “We’ll cram those words down your throat.”

The Gualaon’s face rippled and was no longer blue. It was assuming its true form. “I’m curious,” it said. “Indulge me, if you would.”

“What the hell?” Lynx said.

“Why do you ally yourself with them? The Family, I mean? You weren’t born at the Home. You’re not one of them.”

“We are now,” Ferret said. “They took us in when no one else would.”

“And they don’t consider us freaks,” Lynx said as he warily circled.

“The Lords of Kismet wouldn’t regard you as freaks, either,” the Gualaon said. “They have a fondness for your kind. Much as the humans have a fondness for their pets.”

“Why would that be?” Ferret asked, circling the other way.

“Didn’t you see me a minute ago? Humans regard my masters as freaks, just as most humans regard you.”

“Four arms and those weird eyes,” Lynx said. “Makes them freaks in my book.”

With remarkable rapidity the creature continued to change to its natural state. Its limbs were its own but its torso was slower to respond. “They are the Lords of Kismet.”

“Means squat to me,” Lynx said. He stared at what was left of Helen. “She was a nice lady, that gal you just killed.”

“She was a red-haired ape.”

Ferret stepped to Ares and bent and pressed a finger to his neck. “There’s a pulse but it’s weak. We need to get him to the Healers.”

“You’re not taking anyone anywhere,” the thing said. “In a very short while you’ll be as dead as he’ll soon be.”

“We won’t be easy,” Lynx declared.

“That’s what they said,” the creature replied. “But they were hardly any challenge at all.”

“Alpha Triad sent you running the other night,” Ferret reminded him.

“And you haven’t gone up against Beta Triad yet,” Lynx said. “They’ve been away on a mission. Tangle with Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and he’ll slice you into sushi with that katana of his.”

“And then there’s Yama,” Ferret said. “And then there’s Yama,” Lynx echoed.

The creature cocked its head. “That name again. If he only knew.”

“Knew what?” Ferret said.

“Tell me more,” the Gualaon said. “What makes this Yama of yours so special that my masters specifically mentioned him?”

“Yama’s not like most humans,” Lynx said.

“He’s not like any of them,” Ferret amended. “He’s devoted to death. To what he calls the discipline of oblivion.”

“Fascinating.”

“But you don’t have to worry about going up against him.” Lynx clacked his claws. “You won’t survive us.”

“You think you’re special but you’re not,” the creature said. “Just because modern man learned to recreate your kind in test tubes.”

“Recreate?” Ferret said.

“Haven’t you heard of the minotaur? The centaurs? And others of their ilk? Ancient humans knew the secret but it was lost over the ages only to be rediscovered shortly before the human species blew itself to hell.”

“Wait,” Ferret said. “You know this for a fact?”

“I am Razhliq Nher. I sat in the stone stands above the famous maze on Crete and watched the minotaur hunt its victims . I saw herds of centaurs and became one a few times for my own entertainment. Yes, I know all this for a fact.”

“No way,” Lynx said.

“Do you hear yourself? Your body is a step above the human form but your mind is as limited as theirs. The evidence was always there in the old writings but it was ascribed to myth and legend. All that is has been before. All that was will be again. All that is to come completes the cycle.”

“You’ve lost me,” Lynx said.

“He’s saying that nothing ever really changes,” Ferret said. “That there’s nothing new under the sun.”

“One of the few things the pathetic apes got right,” the Gualaon said.

Lynx looked at Ferret. “Are we done playing nice? This son of a bitch killed Helen—-.”

“And Sundance and Achilles and that little girl whose name eludes me,” the creature said. “Oh. Yes. Now I remember. Her name was Bethany.”

“We’re done,” Ferret said.

“About damn time.”

The Gualaon’s jaw muscles twitched and it glared from one to the other. A living flash of lightning, it launched itself at Lynx but the cat-man nimbly leaped out of reach.

“Is that the best you’ve got?”

“Nowhere near it,” the thing said, and came at Lynx again, even quicker.

Lynx jumped high into the air, clear over the Gualaon’s shoulder. Executing a flawless flip, he alighted as lightly as a feather, upright.

Ferret chuckled. “I wish I was part cat. You felines can do cool stuff.”

The creature hissed in anger. “You make a game of this. In doing so you treat me with disrespect.”

“Bub,” Lynx said, “We’re going to treat you with a lot more disrespect in about two seconds.” He snarled and growled, “Now!”

The hybrids rushed from both sides. Their speed was incredible . So was the terrible swiftness of their reptilian foe.

Lynx slashed and cleaved empty air.

The creature unleashed a terrific blow at Ferret, who slipped under it and raked the Gualaon’s leg. Instantly, the shapeshifter swung a backhand that might have caved in the side of Ferret’s head had it landed.

Lynx sprang at the creature’s back. His left arm went around its neck even as he clawed in a fury with his other hand and with his feet.

A cry of agony tore from the Gualaon. It reached up to seize Lynx but Lynx dropped down its back, digging furrows with his claws.

The next moment the two hybrids were on either side of the Gualaon, which glared in raw hate.

“It can be hurt,” Ferret said.

“It can be killed,” Lynx grinned, and became a storm of claws and teeth. He was far shorter than the creature but scored and scored again.

The Gualaon suddenly retreated out of their reach. “This can not be.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet, ugly,” Lynx said.

Ferret moved to his friend’s side and they looked at one another and grinned and nodded, and went at the creature shoulder-to-shoulder. Clawing , biting, rending, ripping, they inflicted wound after wound. So did the shapeshifter. Blood flowed in red torrents and so did the fluid that served the same purpose in the Gualaon’s veins. The three moved so fast, onlookers would have found it impossible to say who was doing what to whom.

For seconds that were eternities they fought with unbridled ferocity.

Then Ferret cried out and staggered, clutching his neck, scarlet spraying in a fine mist.

Lynx turned to him—-and was felled by a blow to the head.

Breathing heavily for the first time that day, the Gualaon loomed over them. “You were a challenge. I respect that. But you’ve chosen to side with the primates, and leave me no choice. In olden times I might have spared you. But not now.”

The shapeshifter raised its claws.

CHAPTER 24

The thwack of a slug striking the Gualaon’s shoulder was simultaneous with the crack of a distant shot. Jerking erect, the shapeshifter glanced up at the ridge and swore in a language alien to human tongues.

Another shot boomed.

The Gualaon was no longer there. Vaulting fallen zombies, it streaked for the far side of the valley, its reptilian hide glistening with the blood it was losing.

Silence descended save for the buzz of flies and the caws of crows gathering above the field of undead.

Then the undergrowth crackled and out of it burst Blade, followed by Hickok and Geronimo. They stopped short in shock and Geronimo numbly exclaimed, “By the Maker, no.”

Blade ran to the bodies. One look at Helen was enough. He checked Ares and announced, “He’s still alive. Find some tree branches. Long ones.”

The Warriors were so well trained that Hickok and Geronimo melted into the forest without a word.

Blade went to Lynx and rolled him over. Lynx groaned. After a quick examination, Blade moved to Ferret. Grimacing, he knelt and cradled the hybrid’s head.

Ferret opened his eyes.

“Don’t try to talk,” Blade said. “We’ll get you back.”

“Don’t kid a kidder,” Ferret said, blood bubbling from his throat with every syllable.

“I’m sorry,” Blade said, and had to swallow the lump in his own. “Rikki’s using the SEAL or we’d have been here sooner.”

“I know,” Ferret said. He smiled a scarlet smile and weakly gripped Blade’s wrist. “I’m glad you got here at all. I want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking me in. For treating me as one of you. For being a friend.”

“God,” Blade said.

“Lynx?”

“He’ll live, I think.”

Ferret’s scarlet smile widened. “Good. Look after him. He’ll be mad. It’ll make him careless.”

“Ferret, I—-,” Blade began, and couldn’t go on.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Ferret said. “I die true to my nature. Protecting those I care about. What more can we ask for?” His gaze shifted to the sky and his eyes drained of life.

Hickok and Geronimo barreled out of the woods, each with a limb.

“Aw, damn,” Hickok said.

Geronimo stared across the valley at the distant figure about to disappear into the woods. He dropped the limb and raised his Marlin 45-70. “If only I’d hit it in the head. Let me go after it.”

“No,” Blade said.

“It’s hurt. I can track it and finish this.”

“No,” Blade said again. “It took on four Warriors and killed two. We stay together. We get Ares and Lynx back so they can be treated.”

“I don’t need help,” Lynx said. He had pushed up onto his hands and was looking about. He set eyes on Ferret, and uttering a shriek of rage worthy of his namesake, he heaved unsteadily to his feet and stumbled to his friend’s side. “Ferret? Ferret?”

“He’s gone,” Blade said softly.

Tears brimmed the hybrid’s emerald eyes and he clenched his hairy hands. “Where is that son of a bitch? I’ll kill it if it’s the last thing I do.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Try and stop me,” Lynx said. He took a couple of tottering steps and his legs gave out and he pitched onto his side.

“You’re hurt,” Blade said. “Hurt bad. You need the Healers.”

“It has to die,” Lynx snarled.

“I agree. But I’m not letting you run off and get yourself killed. Ferret said to look after you.”

Lynx gazed at his friend and his feline form seemed to fold in on itself. He closed his eyes and groaned.

Blade began taking off his black leather vest. “Geronimo, we’ll need your fatigue jacket. Hickok, your buckskin shirt.”

They complied without comment.

Blade and Geronimo rigged a stretcher by tying the jacket and shirt to the two limbs and placing the vest over the middle for extra support. As carefully as possible, Blade and Hickok lifted Ares and placed him on his back on the makeshift stretcher.

“You two will have to carry him,” Blade said. “I’ll bring Lynx.”

“Like hell you will,” Lynx said without opening his eyes. “I’ll lie here a while and be good as a kitten.”

Blade moved to him, stooped over, and scooped the cat-man into his arms. He’d forgotten how light the hybrids were. But then, both were barely five feet tall and spare of frame.

“You don’t listen worth spit,” Lynx said.

“If it was me,” Hickok said, “I’d let you crawl all the way back. I’ve always held that folks should be allowed to be as stupid as they want to be.”

“Bite me, bub,” Lynx said.

They started out, Blade in the lead. “We’ll come back for the bodies.”

Lynx’s eyes were closed and he was breathing shallow. “Where’s Gremlin? Why didn’t he come?”

“He wanted to but I made him stay behind,” Blade informed him.

“What the hell for?”

“In case the Gualaon circles around and attacks the Family while we’re gone. Or an army of scavengers or some other threat shows up. Only six Warriors are there , counting him. Bertha is such a wreck over Sundance, she wouldn’t be of much use.”

“Achilles. Sundance. Helen. Ferret,” Geronimo said. “We haven’t lost this many in a long time.”

“Ares will be out of action for a spell,” Hickok commented. “Kitty-cat here, too.”

“I’ll be on my feet tomorrow,” Lynx growled.

“I hate to say it,” Hickok said, “but dream on, bub.”

“Let’s hope Beta Triad gets back soon,” Geronimo said. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Teucer and Yama can make all the difference.”

“Even when they do return,” Blade said, “we’ll be at a little more than two-thirds strength. We need to recruit new Warriors.”

“It’s not like they pop out of the womb ready to fight,” Hickok said. “They have to be trained, and you know how long that takes.”

“And the shapeshifter is still out there,” Geronimo said, gazing into the distance. “I wonder what it will try next?”

CHAPTER 25

Razhliq Nher hadn’t hurt so much in a long time. The pain was exquisite, to be savored as the human apes savored food. Razhliq reveled in it, in the feeling of being alive. Like many of its kind, it had lived for such a very long span that there were days when the sameness of much of life dulled its senses.

Leaning against a tall spruce, Razhliq went deep within and assumed conscious control of every gland. Once that was done, it was a simple matter to excrete the hormones that accelerated the healing process. The Gualaon healing factor put that of every other creature to shame.

As the healing continued, Razhliq contemplated. It was taking longer to fulfill the mission than the Lords of Kismet stipulated. Then again, Shiva had stressed that Razhliq had complete discretion.

Initially, Razhliq intended to get it over with within a few days. A week at the very most. Now it might take another week, at least.

Razhliq was going to kill the damnable Warriors one by one. Already four were dead. Lynx, too, might die. His wounds were severe.

Razhliq would work through them. Plan each one so there was time to not just kill them but to slaughter them. Rip and tear them to shreds. Make them suffer as Razhliq had suffered, thanks to that damnable Blade.

Of course, now that they had pierced Razhliq’s Sundance disguise, another form was called for.

Who should it be? Razhliq wondered, and grinned at the answer. It was obvious. There was one guise they would trust more than any other. Before long, they would be so confused and fearful, they’d be afraid of their own shadows, as the human saying went.

That left the question of which Warrior to kill next. Razhliq considered Sherry, Hickok’s wife. It would upset Hickok but Razhliq had met Sherry and while the woman was a competent Warrior, she wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

Razhliq preferred a more worthy foe, a Warrior who would test Gualaon mettle. Blade would, but Razhliq was saving him for last.

Samson, perhaps. He had plenty of muscles but muscles weren’t always proof of prowess in battle.

It was unfortunate, Razhliq reflected, that Beta Triad was away from the Home. From what the Family said, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was one of the more formidable ones.

And then there was Yama.

Was it a coincidence that he had chosen that name at his Naming, out of all the names there were? Razhliq imagined how the real Yama would react, and grinned.

Fresh skin was forming over Razhliq’s wounds. They itched terribly but scratching them would open them again and it would take three times as long to heal.

Razhliq would very much like to meet this human Yama . He couldn’t possibly be as lethal as the Lord of Kismet he was named after. Then again, Razhliq had been specifically instructed about him from none other than Kali.

That was strange. That was very strange.

Razhliq wondered if the Lords had a secret agenda at work. They did that a lot. Plotted and schemed and carried out mysterious plans without informing the Gualaons.

Razhliq secretly resented that. The Gualaons were willing to bend their knees and call the Lords their masters but they weren’t happy about being treated as lapdogs. Granted, it had been going on for so long that the Gualaons accepted it as a matter of course. Still, they had their dignity.

Razhliq closed both eyes and flashed back mentally in the stream of time to the era of the dinosaurs, which the stupid humans thought dominated the planet for millions upon millions of years. Little did they suspect that the dinosaurs were little more than cattle.

Dinosaur meat couldn’t compare with human flesh, though. Razhliq’s first taste had been a hairy brute crouched by a fire in a cave, part of a family of four. Their flesh was so soft and delicious, Razhliq came to prefer them above all other kinds.

Razhliq recalled the panorama of human cultures. The Atlanteans. The Sumerians. The Mayans. Now there was a culture the Gualaons liked, steeped in the spilling of blood. Razhliq particularly enjoyed how they ripped beating hearts from the bodies of their sacrifices.

The Greeks. The Romans. The wrongly called Middle Ages. Razhliq witnessed it all. The Lords of Kismet liked to keep track of human affairs, and from time to time the Gualaons were sent on reconnaissance and other missions.

Now this latest.

The elimination of the Family and the destruction of the Home.

Razhliq was aware that others had tried, and failed. The Doktor. Samuel II. Thanatos.

Razhliq wouldn’t fail. Razhliq had never failed.

The Lords of Kismet had decreed that the Family must die. And die they would.

In a century no one would remember they existed, while Razhliq would continue on as always, invincible, supreme, as long-lived as the sun.

That was as it should be.

Life was all about survival of the fittest, and in that regard, Gualaons were the fittest of all.

Get ready, Warriors, Razhliq thought, and grinned. I’m coming for you.

CHAPTER 26

A pall of gloom hung over the Home.

Blade saw it on every face. He couldn’t blame them. Four Warriors dead. Two others in the Infirmary. The Healers believed that Ares would recover but he would be laid up for weeks. Lynx was expected to be released in four to five days, depending.

The Family regarded the loss of even a single Warrior as serious. To lose so many was a calamity. The Warriors were their protectors, their first line of defense against any and all threats. The Warriors kept the nightmares that roamed the outside world at bay. They kept the Home safe and secure and peaceful.

“Great job we’re doing,” Blade said to the empty air as he stood on the west rampart overlooking the vista of tainted woodland and rolling hills.

“Talk to yourself much, pard?” asked a familiar voice, and Hickok sauntered up with his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt. “They say that’s the first sign you’re over the hill.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be patrolling the south wall?”

“Just got done a sweep,” Hickok said. “It’s as quiet as can be.”

“That thing is still around. I know it.”

“I hope the critter decides to come after me next.” Hickok patted his Pythons. “This will be over right quick.”

“Says Mr. Modest,” Geronimo said as he approached along the wall from the north. “It almost took your head off the first time we fought it, remember?”

“It was faster than I reckoned,” Hickok said. “Next time I’ll know what I’m up against.”

Blade turned and gazed out over the compound. Family members were going about their daily routines. But it was a lot quieter than usual. Fewer children were playing. Parents were keeping their offspring in, for fear the creature would do to them as it had done to little Bethany.

Plato and most of the other Elders were seated in the Commons. From their sharp gestures, they were having a heated talk.

Geronimo noticed them. “What do you think that’s all about?”

“They’re probably picking on poor Plato because of us,” Hickok said.

“How’s that again?” Blade said.

“Ain’t you heard, pard? Some folks are saying that we’re not doing our job. That they’re not safe. There’s been talk that we should open the Armory and pass out machine guns.”

“If it comes to that,” Blade said, “we will.” Not that it would make a difference, he reflected. Bullets didn’t stop the thing.

“We have other problems,” Geronimo said. “Bertha is a wreck. She won’t eat, won’t drink. She just sits and stares at the walls.”

“That’s not like her,” Hickok said. “She’s always been a feisty gal.”

“Then there’s Gremlin,” Geronimo said. “He took the news about Ferret hard. They were good friends. He ran off and no one has seen him.”

“I know,” Blade said. He had a sense that the fabric of the Home was unraveling. Unless he did something, and soon , things were going to go from very bad to the worst that they could be. “What we need is a miracle,” he mused out loud.

“Will that do?” Hickok asked, and pointed.

Far to the west a vehicle had appeared, its tinted glass gleaming in a stray shaft of sunlight.

“The SEAL!” Geronimo whooped. “And Beta Triad.”

Blade beamed. Three more Warriors to bolster their ranks. And two of the three were two of the deadliest.

The SEAL was another of the Founder’s brainchilds. Kurt Carpenter had two of the vehicles secretly built before the war. One the Family used for a number of years after the madness was unleashed. The other, Carpenter hid in a sealed vault under one of the Blocks until such time as the Family decided to venture out into the world once again.

SEAL was an acronym. It stood for Solar-Energized Amphibious or Land vehicle. Large solar panels on the roof fed into a bank of six high-tech batteries. Van-like, its body was constructed of a near-indestructible alloy, a synthetic compound much like plastic only a thousand times stronger. The engine was self-lubricating and air-cooled. A radio ran the gamut of all known bands. There were also various weapons systems.

In its comings and goings over the years, the SEAL had worn a winding track through the woods. As it neared the compound splashes of shadow dappled it.

“I bet Rikki had a hoot taking that thing out,” Hickok said. “He always gripes that he doesn’t get to drive it enough.”

“Had a hoot?” Geronimo repeated. “Did people really talk like that in the Old West?”

“Are you poking fun at my lingo again?”

“I don’t need to,” Geronimo said. “Every word out of your mouth does it for me.”

The SEAL rumbled out of the trees and crossed the open space to the west wall. It braked, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi poked his head out the driver’s window. “Hey, you three!” he greeted them warmly.

“I’m glad to see you made it back safe and sound,” Blade said.

“Howdy, pigsticker hombre,” Hickok called down.

“What did he just call me?” Rikki shouted.

“You don’t want to know,” Geronimo said.

In short order the drawbridge was lowered, the SEAL wheeled into the compound, and the Family converged with cries and smiles of delight . The three Warriors climbed out and shared embraces and kisses with their relieved wives and children.

Blade stood back, waiting for the right moment.

“That Lex sure is a shapely filly,” Hickok remarked.

“I’ll be sure and tell Rikki you’re lusting after his wife so he can pigstick you to death,” Geronimo said.

Plato came over and leaned on his staff. “I take it they are as yet unaware of our situation?”

“Haven’t had a chance to tell them,” Blade said.

“We need to formulate a plan,” Plato said. “It’s only a matter of time before that creature strikes again.” He paused. “If it hasn’t already.”

“How do you mean, old-timer?” Hickok asked.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you?” Plato asked, with a bob of his grey head at the smiling, happy Family, “that it could be any one of them?” He paused again. “Or any one of us?”

“Hell,” Geronimo said.

Blade had thought of that and taken steps. “The three of us haven’t left each other’s sight since we got back. We go everywhere together. Do everything together.”

“Well, not quite everything,” Hickok said. “Our potty breaks are private but we have to stay in earshot.”

“A prudent precaution,” Plato said to Blade. “But my warning holds true for the rest. I could be the thing and you wouldn’t know it. It could be any of your wives. Any of your children.”

Hickok placed his hands on his Pythons. “It messes with my family, it’ll wish it had never been born.”

“Maybe they hatch,” Geronimo said. “It’s a lizard and that’s what most lizards do.”

Blade realized he’d made another mistake. He should have had the Family divide into small groups and have them do as his Triad was doing. It would make it that much harder for the shapeshifter to become one of them.

The welcome was winding down. The three Warriors of Beta Triad gave their wives a last kiss and came toward Blade and Plato.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was the Triad leader. A small, wiry man, his hair and eyes were dark, his features Oriental. He was dressed entirely in black and in his right hand he clutched the scabbard to his prized katana.

On his right strode Teucer, the only Warrior who favored a bow. Usually he used a longbow but today he had a compound. A quiver was at his hip, another over his back. He liked to dress in green. He didn’t like that Hickok was forever calling him ‘Robin Hood’.

The last of their Triad was big. Not as huge as Blade or Samson, but close. His hair and his mustache were a striking shade of silver, his eyes the deepest, darkest blue. His one-piece garment, fashioned to his specifications by the Family Weavers, was also dark blue save for the large black silhouette of a skull on his back.

At his Naming he’d chosen to be called Yama. Unlike most of the Warriors, who specialized in one weapon or another, Yama was proficient with any and all. His skill with a knife was second only to Blade’s. His ability with a handgun lacked by a trifle Hickok’s. In hand-to-hand only Rikki was his better, and not by much. Simply put, he was the best all-round killer of all the Warriors, and that was saying a lot.

A Wilkinson Carbine fitted with a 50-shot magazine was slung over his shoulder. In a holster under one arm nestled a Smith and Wesson Model 586 Distinguished Combat Magnum. In a shoulder holster under the other arm was a Browning Hi-Power 9-millimeter autopistol. On his right hip was a 15-inch Razorback survival knife; on his left a specially forged extra-long and extra-thick scimitar.

“Hey, kiddies,” Hickok quipped. “Miss us?”

“No,” Teucer said.

“Beta Triad reporting,” Rikki said formally to Plato. “We found the old missile silos. They were right where you thought they would be.”

“That can wait,” Plato said. “We have a crisis on our hands that demands our immediate attention. I’ll let Blade fill you in.”

Blade did, about the child who had appeared in the dead of night, the Gualaon who served the Lords of Kismet, about four of their fellow Warriors, fallen, and two more severely wounded, about the death of the girl Bethany. He related it all.

“May the Spirit preserve us,” Rikki exclaimed in horror. “Not four?”

“We’ve haven’t lost so many at one time since Samuel the Second sent his army against the Home,” Teucer mentioned.

“Here are your orders,” Blade said. “Until the thing is dead, Alpha and Beta Triads stick together. We never let each other out of our sight—-.”

“Except to tinkle,” Hickok interrupted. “Me, I like to wee-wee in private.”

“Wee-wee?” Geronimo said. “Refresh my memory. How old are you supposed to be? Four?”

Blade glared at them, then said to the others, “By staying together, we know there are at least six of us we can trust to be who they should be.”

“Our wives?” Rikki said. “Our kids?”

“They’ll stay with the other wives.” Blade turned to Yama. “You’re awful quiet. Nothing to contribute?”

“I request permission to confront the creature alone.”

“The answer is no.” Blade titlted his head quizzically. “Did I miss something? We don’t know where it is. We don’t know who it is. How will you find it to confront it?”

“I’ll use myself as bait and draw it out.”

“Just like that?” Blade said, and snapped his fingers.

“You’ve been bouncing around in the SEAL too long, Big Boy Blue,” Hickok said. “It’s rattled your brain.”

“This creature is after Warriors,” Yama said. “The logical tactic is to use that against it.”

“The answer is still no,” Blade said.

“As you wish. You’re the head Warrior,,” Yama said. “But there is something you need to ask yourself.”

“Which is?”

“How many others are you willing to lose before you do what must be done?”

CHAPTER 27

Yama’s question stuck with Blade all the next day. He wasn’t willing to lose anyone. But he would be damned if he’d allow Yama to go up against the shapeshifter alone. Yama didn’t realize how deadly it was.

The atmosphere in the Home had improved since Beta’s return. The Family was more at ease with more Warriors there to protect them . But their smiles and amity hid a soul-numbing worry. They were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Pretty soon it did.

Blade was just emerging from C Block after having checked on Ares and Lynx when a breathless Tiller ran up. “You need to come,” he panted. “You need to see.”

Blade motioned to his friends and Beta Triad and the six of them matched the Tiller’s pace. “Tell me as we go,” he commanded.

“A body,” the man panted. “In the middle of the wheat field. My son Tom was checking for viruses and the like and found the remains.”

“Could you identify who it was?”

The Tiller nodded. “I’d rather you saw for yourself. It makes me sick to talk about it.”

The wheat field was toward the rear of the compound. Buffered by a corn field on one side and rye on the other, it was carefully tended. With good reason. The grain and food they stockpiled enabled the Family to last through the harsh winters.

Several Tillers were at the edge of the wheat field. A woman was in tears, sobbing. A man wrung his hands in distress.

“Show us where,” Blade said.

“I’d rather not look at it again,” the Tiller said. “Let Thomas show you.” He hollered, and presently a much younger man came out of the wheat. “Take Blade and these others.”

“It’s horrible,” Tom said. “You might throw up when you see it. I did.”

“Don’t fret over us, junior,” Hickok said grimly. “We’ve seen things that would curl your toes.”

A row of crushed wheat brought them to the spot. The body was female, or had been before her arms were ripped from their sockets and her throat ravaged. She was naked, and her stomach had been eaten. Her severed head was jammed onto a stake.

“It’s Alice,” Teucer said in shock. “A Weaver. She was about the sweetest person alive.”

“That miserable bastard,” Hickok said. “I bet he picked her on purpose.”

“To rub our noses in it,” Geronimo said.

Blade sank to a knee. He gently placed a thumb and finger on her open eyelids and closed them.

Yama came up to the body and studied it. “There will be more like her. This creature is sadistic. It enjoys playing with its prey.”

Blade carefully slid the head off the stake and placed it in the cavity where Alice’s insides had been.

“That it plays with its prey suggests it has an ego,” Yama continued. “That is its weakness. We exploit its ego and we kill it.”

“That last part won’t be easy,” Blade said as he sadly stood.

Yama wasn’t done. “I still say we should use me as bait. You said that Lynx told you it’s expressed some sort of interest in me.” He motioned at the body. “I don’t presume to be in your position. You have the welfare of everyone to consider. I’m focused solely on the death of this thing. But to me it seems the wisest course to take.”

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi had come up unnoticed. “I agree. The six of us will face it together. If we can’t kill it, then no one can.”

Hickok placed his hands on his Pythons. “We’ll kill that sucker as dead as dead ever was.”

Blade looked at Geronimo and Geronimo nodded. He looked at Teucer and the archer rested a hand on his hip quiver.

“I’m game if you guys are.”

“All right ,” Blade said. “I’ll call a meeting of the entire Family. It will be up to you, Yama. If the thing suspects, it won’t fall for it.”

“It will suspect anyway,” Yama said, “but its ego will compel it to accept the challenge.”

“Listen to you,” Hickok said. “When did you become so smart?”

“A warrior must not only assess a foe’s physical abilities but their psychological weaknesses, as well. Exploit them and they make mistakes. And mistakes invariably prove fatal.” Yama paused. “Your weakness is that you rely too much on your speed.”

“Quick is as quick does,” Hickok said. “And don’t forget your own weakness, while you’re at it.”

“I have a weakness?”

“The biggest of any of us.”

A rare smile curled Yama’s lips. “Enlighten me, gunfighter.”

“Sure, death dude,” Hickok shot back. “Your weakness is that you’re obsessed with death. To you, killin’ is more than your job. It’s part of your nature .”

“That’s quite astute of you.”

“Hickok? Astute?” Geronimo said. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Blade had listened to enough. “Let’s go.” He led the Warriors from the wheat field.

“Tend to the remains,” Blade directed the half-dozen waiting Tillers. “Make it quick. Everyone is to gather at the Commons in an hour.”

The two Triads walked on. Every Family member Blade saw, he instructed them to spread the word.

The Warriors were nearing the Blocks when Blade stopped and faced Yama. “I want one thing understood. You’re not to go up against this thing alone. We work together.”

“I always follow orders implicitly,” Yama rebutted. “Name once I haven’t.”

“Now’s not the time to start. But Hickok is right. You might see this as some sort of challenge. As a way to test yourself. I know how you think.”

“Do you?” Yama said.

“Since we were boys, you’ve applied yourself to death in all its forms.”

“Even so,” Yama said. “I am a Warrior.”

“So are we. But we don’t carry it to the extreme you do. So I repeat. It will be all six of us, plus more.”

“You aim to have all the Warriors in on it?” Hickok asked. “Where would they hide? In one of the Blocks?”

“Not all,” Blade said. “There will have to be a Triad on the walls as there always is to give the impression everything is normal.”

“None of the other Triads are at full strength,” Geronimo said. “With Bertha a wreck, Gamma Triad only has Spartacus and Shane. Omega doesn’t exist anymore unless Ares recovers. Zulu has lost Achilles so there’s only Samson and Sherry. Bravo has Gremlin since Lynx is still in the Infirmary, and we have no idea where Gremlin got to.”

“Samson will join Gamma for the time being,” Blade said. “We’re going to have all the women and children taken to A Block and I’m putting Sherry in charge of guarding them.”

“My missus isn’t going to like being left out of the action,” Hickok predicted.

“She’s a good Warrior,” Blade said. “She’ll do as she’s told.” He paused. “Once we have new Warriors trained, I’ll restructure the Triads.”

“Hold on,” Rikki said. “If Gamma and Samson will be on the walls and Sherry is protecting the women, who’s left? What was that about it not being just the six of us?”

Blade pointed at the SEAL.

“Ah,” Rikki said, and smiled. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Hickok chuckled. “Leave it to you, big guy.”

“Like Yama said,” Blade replied, “I have to think of everyone and everything.”

“You usually do,” Geronimo complimented him.

“Not always,” Blade said, and frowned.

“Let’s hope you have this time,” Teucer said, “or a month from now there won’t be any Warriors left.”

CHAPTER 28

The Gualaon stood under the trees on the south side of the verdant compound in its new human guise. It was considering who to kill next when it sensed someone behind it. The Gualaon slowly turned and put a smile on its human face. “Where have you been? Everyone has been wondering where you got to?”

“Hunting you, yes,” Gremlin said. He was in a crouch and his hands were splayed. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You killed my friend, yes. You almost killed my other friend.”

The shapeshifter laughed in human fashion. “Surely you’re not suggesting that I’m—.”

“No,” Gremlin said, and slashed the air with a hand. “Not take me for stupid, no? It ends here, yes. I will kill you for Ferret and Lynx.”

The Gualaon saw that further subterfuge would be pointless. “What did they do to your brain that you talk in that ridiculous manner, you pathetic creature?”

“No talk, yes? Just fight.”

“Are you that eager to die?” The Gualaon reached out with its senses and assured itself that they were alone. It began to change to its true form. “Only humans would be so vile as to conduct genetic experiments on their own kind. You were human once. Now look at you.”

“The Doktor did this,” Gremlin said.

“That suggests you were a guinea pig in his Genetic Research Division.”

“You know about that, yes?”

“My masters lent the good Doktor aid from time to time.”

“Why?”

“It suited their purpose. He craved power and wanted to control what was once the United States of America. If he’d succeeded, my masters would then have seized control from him.”

“They let him do their work for them, yes?”

“You’re not as stupid as you sound,” the shapeshifter said. By now it was half itself.

“The Doktor took part of my brain, yes? And did other things.”

“Enhanced strength? Augmented reflexes? What else?”

“You will soon find out.”

“You’re a fool to confront me alone, Gremlin. Not even you are a match for my kind.”

“Have it to do,” Gremlin said, “before the other Warriors kill you.”

“They stand no more chance than you do.”

“Big talk,” Gremlin said. “But Rikki is back. And more important, Yama is back.”

“There’s that name again,” the Gualaon said. “What makes him so special?”

“You haven’t talked to him, no? If you had, you would know, yes?

“He’s an ape like all the rest. Perhaps he has some small skill as a fighter but that’s all.”

“No, not all, yes? Yama thinks only of death. Of how to kill. By now he has thought of how to kill you.”

“Oh really?” the Gualaon scoffed. Its transformation was complete. “A pity you won’t be around to see how wrong you are. You’ll be dead like your little friend, Ferret.”

“One of us will be, yes?”

Gremlin sprang.

The Gualaon lashed out, raking with its claws, but Gremlin ducked and drove a bony fist into the shapeshifter’s midsection. Before the Gualaon could retaliate, Gremlin skipped out of reach.

The Gualaon staggered. It looked down at itself, its reptilian countenance reflecting amazement. “I’ll admit I’m impressed. That actually hurt. The Doktor did a good job on you. You’re stronger and faster than I expected.”

“Gremlin full of surprises, yes,” Gremlin said.

“What you are,” the shapeshifter said, “is a simpleton. I have claws and teeth. You have fists. And no matter how fast you are, sooner or later I’ll rip your head from your body.”

“Try your best, yes?” Gremlin said, and attacked.

The creature that had once been a man and the creature that wasn’t even remotely human fought with unrestrained ferocity. Gremlin was smaller but Gremlin was quicksilver and his fists could shatter bone. The Gualaon hissed and snarled and grew madder as it failed to connect with its darting, dodging, elusive opponent.

Their fight might have gone on interminably but in their whirling and spinning and twisting and turning, Gremlin failed to see an exposed tree root. His foot caught, and he tripped. He tried to right himself but a blow to the temple felled him. He got his hands under him and tried to push up but a blow to the back of his head rendered him insensate.

Wincing from its pain, the Gualaon straightened. “You were far more of a challenge than I would have thought. But now it ends.” Bending, the shapeshifter reached out to take hold of Gremlin’s neck.

Voices drifted through the trees.

The Gualaon looked up. Several Family members were coming in its direction. It quickly struck Gremlin several more times on the head, seeking to shatter his skull, but the abomination’s was much thicker than a human’s.

One of the Family members gave a shout and another pointed and screamed.

Melting into the vegetation, the Gualaon got out of there before other Warriors came. It would transform once it was safe. And make it a point to keep tabs on Gremlin. If he revived, he would tell them who it had become. It couldn’t have that. It wanted to continue its current illusion for a while longer.

Long enough to kill more Warriors.

CHAPTER 29

Blade stood in the quiet coolness of C Block and stared at the beds, and the figures on them. Ares was sedated and unconscious. Lynx was awake, and restless. Gremlin had a tube in his arm and half his head was swathed in bandages.

Lynx was looking at Gremlin, too. “Another thing I owe that sucker for. Let me out of here, damn it.”

Blade’s wife Jenny came down the aisle. A Healer, she was dressed all in white. “You’re not well enough to be released, Lynx.”

“I say I’m fine.”

“The answer is still no.” Jenny pecked Blade on the cheek, and smiled. “Talk about grumpy patients.”

“You want to keep me in this bed so I won’t go after it,” Lynx said. “That’s the real reason.”

“You’ll do as the Healers tell you,” Blade said.

“It killed the best friend I ever had, and hurt my other friend. If it had been Hickok the thing killed and if it was Geronimo lying there with a tube in him, you’d want to get up and go after it, too.”

“You’re not the only person who has lost people they cared for,” Blade reminded him.

Lynx tilted his head. “I thank you for that. I keep forgetting how you are.”

“How am I?” Blade said.

“You called me a ‘person’. Not a hybrid. Not a freak. You’re one of the few in this compound who looks at me and doesn’t see the fur and the claws.”

“And the ears,” said someone who entered at just that moment. “Don’t forget the cutesy little ears.”

“One of these days I’m going to take one of those pearl-handled Pythons of yours,” Lynx growled, “and shove it so far up your—-.”

“Now, now,” Hickok said. “There’s a lady present.”

“Thank you, Jenny said. “You’re always such a gentleman.”

“I know ,” Hickok said. “Maybe one day some of it will rub off on that big galoot you married.” He turned to Blade. “It’s time, pard. Everyone is at the Commons except for you two and your patients. Spartacus, Shane and Samson are on the walls.” He paused. “And Rikki did that other thing you wanted done.”

Blade nodded. “Be right there.” He waited until the gunfighter had left, then folded Jenny in his arms and said softly in her ear, “No matter what happens, I’ve loved you with all that I am.”

Jenny gave a mild start. “This thing is that deadly?”

“One of the deadliest we’ve faced.”

“Well then,” Jenny said, and kissed him, “you just be deadlier.”

“I think I’m going to puke,” Lynx said.

Blade touched Jenny’s chin, then wheeled and strode outside into the glare of partial sunlight. Hickok and Geronimo and Beta Triad fell into step as he walked to the open area between the concrete Blocks.

All talk ceased. Word had spread that he was to make an important announcement.

Plato was waiting for them, leaning on his staff. “You have us all curious about why you’ve called us together.”

“You can sit if you’d like,” Blade said.

“No, thank you. It hurts more to get up and down than to just stand.”

The other Warriors formed a ring facing the Family. Hickok winked at Sherry, his wife. She was seated with other wives, among them Bertha, who sat slumped in grief.

“I thank all of you for coming,” Blade began. “As you are aware, our Home is under siege. Not by an army this time but by a single foe, a creature out of our worst nightmares. A being that can assume any guise it wants.”

No one interrupted. They hung on his every word.

“It’s taken a severe toll on the Warriors. It’s killed women and a child. It will kill again and again unless it’s stopped.”

A ripple of unease passed through them.

“Our problem, of course, is that it could be any of us and we have no way of telling. It’s probably sitting among us at this very this moment, listening to me, and congratulating itself on how clever it’s been.”

Furtive worried glances were cast by everyone at everyone else.

“It counts on the paranoia it creates to confuse and weaken us. We don’t know who we can trust. Not when it can be our mother or our father or our sister or our brother or our best friend.”

There were more nervous looks.

“You must refuse to give in. Don’t let this creature have the satisfaction of turning us against one another. We must be united. We must be strong.” Blade stopped . Sparks of determination showed here and there, but not enough. “It goes without saying that the Warriors have resolved to end this threat. In that regard, one of us has asked permission to address the creature directly. I’ve agreed, only because we might end this ordeal that much sooner.”

Blade moved aside and Yama took his place.

The Warrior with the skull on his back looked at his wife , Melissa, and the small boy in her lap, Dharma, and squared his broad shoulders. “I’m here to address the creature , not the Family. I’ve been told that you have asked about me. I have no idea why , nor do I care. All that matters to me is the suffering you have brought to my Family and our Home.”

If a pin had dropped, it would have sounded like an explosion.

“Many of the people here now live in fear,” Yama continued . “They’re afraid of you. They live in dread of your next attack. They see you as a terrifying monster.” Yama paused. “I see you as a coward. Instead of facing an enemy in open combat, you take your victims by surprise. You assume the shape of someone they know. Someone they trust. This is craven. It’s unworthy of a true fighter. Of a true Warrior.”

“That’s telling the thing,” someone called out.

“You can prove me wrong, creature,” Yama said. “All you have to do is pit yourself against me.” He gazed about him at the anxious faces. “I challenge you to single combat. Just the two of us. Blade has given me his word that none of the other Warriors will interfere.”

Audible gasps broke out.

“I’ll be waiting over there,” Yama said, and pointed at a spot close to the drawbridge. “I’ll wait all night if need be. If you have a shred of honor, if you have a sliver of courage, you’ll show yourself. But I doubt you will . You’ll hide in a human guise until you can jump me when my back is turned. You’re a cur. A lap dog, I hear, who serves far away masters. I regard you with contempt.”

Yama turned to Blade and said so only he could hear, “Do you think that was insult enough?”

“We’ll soon find out,” Blade said.

CHAPTER 30

It was almost three in the morning.

Blade shifted his leg to relieve a cramp. From his position on top of A Block he could see Yama standing motionless in a circle of light cast by a lantern. Yama was about fifty feet to the south of the drawbridge.

Blade glanced to his right at Hickok and to his left at Geronimo. Neither said a word. They were to maintain strict silence until the Gualaon showed.

If it showed, Blade reflected. The shapeshifter wasn’t stupid. Yama had phrased his challenge artfully but the creature was bound to suspect it was a trap. If Yama was right about the thing’s ego, then it would take the bait , regardless.

From out of the darkness beyond the high walls wafted howls, shrieks, and roars. Night was when most of the radiation-and-chemically spawned horrors were abroad.

Blade had gotten so used to it over the years that it seldom bothered him. But it did tonight. It reminded him of the Family’s ceaseless struggle to survive in a world sent over the precipice of sanity by the insane actions of the people of long ago.

That they had plunged the Earth into environmental ruin and genetic chaos never ceased to shock him. By all accounts , the world before the Big Blast was as different from the world after it as the violent night on the other side of the walls was from the peaceful days inside them.

The people back then had it good. They’d enjoyed heaven on earth, as the adage went, and turned it into hell. They’d taken all that was good and beautiful and perverted it into a boiling soup of never-ending violence. They’d unleashed the ravening hounds of war, hounds that were still slavering to destroy humankind.

Blade understood the political and religious factors involved. But once all of the pretenses and excuses were stripped away, the real reason the world was devastated boiled down to one thing and one thing only. Hate. In the name of hate, country attacked country. In the name of hate, neighbor attacked neighbor. In the name of hate, brother killed brother. All that hatred, whipped into a frenzy of irrationality by powermongers, resulted in the end of life as the people back then had known it. The end of peace. The end of prosperity. The end of an illusion.

Blade’s arm was nudged. Hickok had poked him, and was pointing.

Yama had turned and faced the moat. They were still regulating the flow so the creature couldn’t conceal itself in the water but that didn’t mean it couldn’t travel along the bottom when the need suited it.

Blade strained his eyes to pierce the darkness. He couldn’t be sure but he thought something moved at the bank’s brink.

A lot depended on the next few moments. The plan was for Yama to keep the creature distracted. But the Gualaon might attack the moment it appeared. Then it would be up to Yama to stay alive long enough for them to put the second phase of his trap into effect.

Blade didn’t know if his plan would work. Gualaons were incredibly hard to kill. They could sustain wounds that would slay a human many times over, and their endurance was exceptional.

Blade thought about the thing’s masters, the so-called Lords of Kismet, and what this attack on the Family meant for him and his friends. They couldn’t just sit around and wait for the Lords of Kismet to strike again. They had to take the fight to the enemy. Even if that meant traveling all the way to the Asiatic continent.

Blade stiffened. His reflection came to an end.

A reptilian figure had risen out of the gloom.

CHAPTER 31

The Gualaon was wary but confident. In all its many years, it had yet to encounter the foe it couldn’t vanquish. Its speed, its strength, its special abilities, would see it through. It reared up over the bank in its natural form and clacked its long teeth. “Human,” it hissed in contempt.

“Shapeshifter,” Yama said.

The Gualaon’s sensitive nostrils detected no hint of fear, which was puzzling. “So much for your accusation of cowardice.”

“It brought you out in the open.”

“No, you brought me out in the open. The great and mysterious Yama. How ridiculous. You’re a shadow of the real one.”

“The real one?”

“Yes, fool. The Yama Dharma whose name you took. The Yama of myth that isn’t myth. The one real and true Yama, Lord of the Dead, Slayer of Souls. One of the first of the Lords of Kismet, and one of the mightiest.”

Yama took a step and the creature tensed but then it saw he wasn’t attacking. Its revelation had excited him.

“You’re not making that up?”

“What purpose would it serve? I’ve made no secret of the fact I serve the Lords of Kismet.”

“These Lords,” Yama said. “Who are they? What are they?”

“They existed long before your pathetic species saw the first feeble light of reason. For many ages your kind called the Lords their Masters, as we do. Now, like the fabled Phoenix, they have risen to reclaim their natural place in the order of things.”

“Yama Dharma is real?” Yama said, more to himself than to the Gualaon.

“I have just said so.”

“Does this mean the legends of the Lokapalas are true? That the mentions of him in the Upanishads are real descriptions?”

The creature cocked its head. “So that is how you come by his name. You’re familiar with the Eastern writings. I’m impressed. It’s unusual for a Westerner to show an interest.”

“I’ve studied all the death gods. He was always my favorite.”

“How morbid of you.”

“Spare me your baiting,” Yama said. “I am ready when you are.”

“One last thing. You say that your Lords have risen to reclaim what is theirs. Am I to infer that the ancient accounts of a great war in the Mahabharata and other sources are also true?”

“You have read those as well?”

“I know that in the years before the Big Blast, archeologists found the long buried ruins of ancient cities in India. They discovered razed buildings, and thousands of skeletons covered with radioactive ash.”

“The weapons used were similar to the nuclear variety your kind are so fond of,” the creature revealed. “It was a last resort.”

“The tales say that your Lords were fighting among themselves over who should rule.”

“So?”

“So,” Yama said, “these Lords of yours are no wiser, no better, than those they would lord it over.”

The shapeshifter extended its long fingers with their incredibly sharp nails. “What do you know of the High Lords, you with your pathetic ape intellect? They were as gods to early man, and they are as gods to you.”

“Yet they’ve been in hiding for how many centuries?”

“They have been waiting for the right moment, nothing more.”

“The right moment being World War Three.”

“More specifically, its aftermath. Most of the human race was obliterated outright or fell to chemical and biological weapons afterward.”

“In other words, they waited until humans were at their weakest.”

“What are you implying?”

“That your Lords have weaknesses of their own or they would have risen up long ago.”

“You think you know but you don’t.”

“I know that your kind serves them. That tells me a lot right there.”

“Explain your last assertion.”

“What sort of beings employ the services of those who butcher children and unarmed women?”

“The Lords of Kismet don’t live by the ridiculous rules of conduct that you primates do. Your kind have no conception of how different they are from you and even me.”

“Let me guess. They justify their actions by claiming they’re better than everyone else.”

“They are better. Physically they have more stamina and strength than you can imagine. Intellectually, the least intelligent of them is more intelligent than your geniuses.”

“The important thing is that they bleed,” Yama said. “And whatever bleeds can be killed.”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to. That they need you for their dirty work shows they’re afraid of doing it themselves.” “The Lords of Kismet do not feel fear.” The creature smirked. “I have heard the same said about you by other Warriors. An exaggeration, obviously.”

“No,” Yama said. “I haven’t felt fear since I came back from being dead.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“My kind call it a Near Death Experience. We die and we leave our bodies but sometimes we return to them and take up life again.”

The Gualaon studied Yama for all of half a minute, then said, “Interesting. This might explain their interest in you.”

“Whose interest?”

“The Lords of Kismet, obviously.”

“Speaking of which, why did your masters hide for so long?”

“I tire of your childish insults,” the creature said. “You’ve issued a challenge and I’ve accepted. Let’s get this over with.”

“Before we do,” Yama said, “where do we find these masters of yours? India? Pakistan? Somewhere else?”

“Not where you would think,” the Gualaon said. “And I’ll never tell, even if you had me on a rack and were torturing me.”

“The Family doesn’t believe in using torture, no matter what.”

“Then your precious Family are fools. In war there are no limits. And make no mistake. This is a war. A war of extermination.”

“Well then,” Yama said, and his scimitar rasped from its scabbard.

The shapeshifter looked around. “Where are they? What are they waiting for?”

“Who?”

“Stop treating me as if I’m an imbecile. Where are your fellow Warriors? I’m sure Blade thinks I’ve waltzed unsuspecting into his trap.”

“I’ve asked to have a chance at you first. Just the two of us.”

The Gualaon smiled. “I’ll say one thing for all of you Warriors. You have a flair for the dramatic.”

“I challenged you. I must honor that challenge.”

“Very well.” The Gualaon set itself and raised its claws. “As you so quaintly phrased it, let’s do this.”

CHAPTER 32

The Gualaon charged and was almost on the Warrior in blue when Yama swung his scimitar and leaped aside.

The shapeshifter stopped and looked at its arm. “You cut me.”

“Stick around and I’ll do worse than that.” Yama fell into a crouch with the scimitar in his right hand and drew his Razorback survival knife with his left.

“Interesting,” the creature said. “You might prove to be a challenge, after all.”

“So far you’re not.”

The Gualaon’s eyes blazed and it was on Yama in a flying bound. Its claws slashed at his face, only to be met by the scimitar.

It wheeled away and snarled and looked down at itself. The hilt of the Razorback survival knife was sticking from its side. “This can not be.”

“How were you able to kill Ferret and Helen and Achilles, as slow as you are?” Yama asked.

The thing gripped the hilt and jerked the knife out. It cast the knife to the ground, lashed its body, and went at the Warrior in earnest.

As the shapeshifter sprang, Yama resorted to his Browning. He drew and put three slugs into the thing’s chest before it was halfway to him . Side-slipping, he put three more rounds into its back as, unable to check its momentum, it hurtled past.

Rage seized the creature, and it was terrible to behold. With a snarl, it attacked anew.

Yama had already holstered the Browning and he swung the scimitar two-handed, going for the creature’s neck. The thing ducked but the blade scraped the crest of its skull. Whipping its arm back and around, it caught Yama across the face and sent him tottering on his heels . A lightning step brought it close enough to wrench the scimitar from his grasp.

Yama grabbed for the Wilkinson slung over his shoulder and almost had it level when the creature’s foot caught him in the gut and doubled him over.

“Death Warrior, indeed,” the Gualaon declared in contempt, and went to wrap its long fingers around his head.

There was the twang of a taut bow string, twice in swift succession.

Again the Gualaon looked down at itself. A pair of feathered shafts protruded from its flesh.

At the edge of the circle of light Teucer appeared, another arrow nocked.

On the opposite side Rikki-Tikki-Tavi glided into view, his katana gleaming.

“I knew it,” the creature said.

“We’re a Triad,” Rikki said. “We work as a team.”

“He told us not to, but hey,” Teucer said, and let his arrow fly.

This time the thing was ready. It caught the shaft, snatching it out of the air as easily as humans might a falling feather, and in the same motion threw it as if it were a spear.

Teucer cried out. The barbed tip had gone through his left shoulder with such force, it jutted out his back.

The shapeshifter took a step toward him but had to defend itself from a new onslaught.

It was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’s turn. His katana seemed to be everywhere; high, low, left, right.

The Gualaon countered with its claws but was forced to retreat. It blocked, it dodged. Its left thigh was opened and it snarled in fury. Ducking, it sank its claws into the diminutive Warrior’s leg, and in an astounding display of strength, sent him flying into the darkness.

Teucer was on his knees with his hand clutching the arrow in his shoulder but Yama had straightened and had the Wilkinson steady at his side.

The thing sprang, only to be met by a hail of lead that smashed it back.

Hickok and Geronimo charged out of the night. Geronimo’s .45-70 thundered and part of the creature’s arm exploded.

Hickok ran up practically under its fangs. His hands swept high. In each he held a pearl-handled Python, and at near point-blank range, he shot it in both eyes.

“Get back!” Geronimo yelled, dashing to Teucer. “You know what’s next.” Seizing the archer by his good arm, he hauled him away from their inhuman enemy.

Hickok and Yama were backing away, too.

There was the metallic rumble of an engine kicking over and twin beams of light speared the night, adding their glare to the lantern’s.

Bent double, its hands over its ruptured eyes, the creature was making sounds that no living thing should make.

Parked twenty feet away, the SEAL suddenly lurched into motion.

The driver’s window was down, and Blade was at the wheel. He brought it to within a couple of yards of the shapeshifter and braked and stuck his head out. “Can you hear me, Gualaon?”

The creature unfurled slightly and cocked its head from side to side.

“Guns can’t stop you and swords and knives can’t stop you and arrows can’t stop you. But are you fireproof?”

“Fireproof?” the thing said.

Blade pressed a toggle.

Sheets of red and orange flame spewed from the front of the SEAL and engulfed the shapeshifter. A howl ripped from its throat.

“Fry that sucker, pard!” Hickok hollered.

Its body ablaze , the Gualaon drooped onto its side and rolled toward the bank. It reached the brink and went on rolling and disappeared.

“No!” Blade was out of the SEAL and running, his Commando to his shoulder. He reached the spot and peered down and saw only darkness.

Hickok and Geronimo and Yama were only a few steps behind him.

“Where the blazes did it get to?” Hickok said.

“It was on fire,” Geronimo said. “The damn thing was on fire.”

Yama jumped down and landed in the shallow water with a splash. “I don’t see it anywhere.”

“It can’t have gotten far,” Geronimo said.

Blade leaped down beside Yama . “You go north. I’ll go south.” He started to move off but paused to shout up to their friends. “Sound the alarm. Warn everyone in the Home. I want all the Warriors and every adult male in on the search. It’s hurt. It’s weak. It’s blinded.”

“I bet it won’t stay blinded for long,” Hickok said. “It’s eyes will heal like everything else does.”

“That will take a while,” Blade guessed. “We’ll never have a better chance to end this once and for all.”

“Let’s hope,” Hickok said.

CHAPTER 33

The morning sun lent an illusion of serenity to the compound.

Blade was on the rampart above the drawbridge, his hands clasped behind his back, brooding, when Hickok and Geronimo climbed the stairs. “Report.”

“Rikki has a busted shoulder and two fractured ribs,” Hickok said. “The Healers say he has to stay in bed for a few days. Teucer has a hole in him and can’t use his bow for a week or so.”

“Yama?” Blade said.

“He refused to be checked. If he’s hurt, he’s not telling anyone. He’s off helping with the hunt.”

“So far there’s no sign of the creature,” Geronimo said.

“That blasted lizard has more lives than a cat,” Hickok muttered.

“We had it dead to rights,” Geronimo said.

“Don’t remind me.” Blade frowned. He’d been so sure his plan would work; Yama’s challenge, the other Warriors keeping it distracted long enough for him to reach the SEAL, and the flamethrower. Incinerating it had seemed their best bet.

“You’re blaming yourself again, aren’t you?” Hickok said. “I know how you are.”

“The thing was on fire,” Geronimo said. “How did it survive?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Blade said. “It can control its body, right? Control every pore? What if it can will itself to sweat buckets?”

“How’s that again, pard?”

“Sweat,” Blade said. “Plus the water that was still in the moat. That might have been enough to snuff the flames.”

“It’s as good an explanation as any,” Geronimo said. “But where does that leave us?”

“Up the creek without a canoe,” Hickok said.

Blade hated to admit it but the gunfighter was right. He’d exhausted his bag of tricks and they were no better off than before. Worse, in that two more Warriors were laid up. Now only seven were left to protect the Family from any and all threats. Eight, if he could get Bertha back on her emotional feet.

The thunk-thunk-thunk of wood on wood caused him to turn.

Plato was coming up the stairs, relying heavily on his staff. He smiled and greeted them with, “It’s a good day to be breathing.”

“How can you say that after our failure last night?” Blade responded.

“I was referring to me,” their Leader said. He came to the top and stopped to catch his breath. “As the saying goes, it’s a bear getting old.”

“I won’t have that problem,” Hickok said.

Plato arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I figure to kick the bucket before I hit fifty. I’ll go happy if I can go down with a Colt in each hand.”

“That’s childish,” Plato said.

“This is Hickok you’re talking to,” Geronimo said. “He’s got childish down to a fine art.”

“Ouch,” Hickok said.

Plato shook his head and turned to Blade. “I came to discuss the Gualaon. I wish you had let me in on your plan. I would have warned you that flame might not be enough to kill her.”

“I didn’t want word getting around,” Blade said.

Plato leaned on his staff. “I’m the soul of discretion. You know that.”

Blade shrugged. “My call. I’m sorry if it hurt your feelings.”

“I’m the Leader, after all.”

“Except when the Home is under attack,” Blade reminded him. “Then the head Warrior takes over.”

“True, true,” Plato said. “I only meant that it would be prudent to consult me.”

“What we should be yapping about,” Hickok said, “is how to bed that varmint down, permanent.”

“Varmint?” Plato said.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Blade admitted.

“I confess to being perplexed,” Plato told him. “We’ve never fought an enemy like this. And time is of the essence.”

“Why now more than before?” Blade asked.

“Think about it. You nearly destroyed the Gualaon last night. She’ll want revenge. It wouldn’t surprise me if she goes on a killing spree.”

Just then Shane came sprinting from the direction of the Blocks. The young Warrior ascended the stairs two-and-three at a time and on reaching the top he stopped and sucked in deep breaths. “Spartacus sent me. It’s the blacksmith, Hephaestus. We found him at his forge. His head has been crushed with an anvil.”

“Here we go again,” Hickok said.

CHAPTER 34

It came to him in the middle of the night.

Blade couldn’t sleep. He tried, but all he did was toss and turn. He’d drift off for a few minutes now and again, only to snap awake again.

His Family , his Home, was in dire peril. A single creature had decimated the Warriors and was picking other Family members off at whim.

Worry gnawed at him. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He lay there, his head on his pillow, staring at the ceiling, his wife asleep beside him, and mentally went over all that had happened since the Gualaon arrived.

There might be something he’d overlooked. Some clue that would enable him to bring the creature to bay. He remembered everything the shapeshifter had said, everything that had been said about it.

Along about four, when he was so exhausted he could hardly think straight, when his despair was greatest and he was wallowing on the cusp of helplessness, remarks that someone had made popped into his head and he sat bolt upright and blurted, “Dear God, no.”

Blade glanced at Jenny. She didn’t wake up. He eased back down and went over the incident again. A terrible certainty came over him, and he did something he hadn’t done in a good long while. His eyes moistened and tears trickled and he cried silently in the dark. He wept for his loss, the greatest he had known since the loss of his parents. He wept until he had no tears left to shed and then he fell into a deep sleep that lasted until the crow of a rooster at daybreak.

Blade opened his eyes but didn’t get out of bed. He felt drained, empty, bitter.

The implications of his revelation staggered him. So much so that he smothered his sorrow, for now, and focused on what he had to do.

Jenny got up and went to fix breakfast and soon he heard their son, Gabe, up and around.

Blade couldn’t put it off any longer. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Sadness sat on his shoulders with all the weight of the world. He pulled on his pants and his boots and donned his black leather vest. He strapped his twin bowies around his waist. He regarded the Commando, propped against the wall next to the bed , and left it there and went out.

Jenny and Gabe greeted him. He sat at the table, slumped in sorrow.

“Blade?” Jenny said. “What is it?”

He had to cough to clear his throat. “I know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“Who the creature is pretending to be.”

“Who is it?”

Blade told them, and Jenny gasped and swayed and almost fell against the stove. She, too, began to cry. Gabe was too stunned to do more than stare.

“You’re to stay inside, both of you,” Blade said. “If I’m not back in an hour, go to Hickok and Geronimo. Tell them what I’ve just told you. Tell them to take all the Warriors and destroy it by any means necessary.”

Jenny nodded and said, “You can count on—-.” She stopped. “Wait. What about you? Where will you be?”

“Alive, I hope.”

Jenny came to the table and stared fiercely into his eyes. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“It shouldn’t take more than half an hour,” Blade said. “One way or the other.”

“No,” Jenny said.

“What’s the matter, mom?” Gabe asked. “Why are you upset? What’s dad going to do?”

“He’s going after it alone.”

“What? Why? No, you’re not, are you, dad?”

Blade nodded.

“You’re not thinking straight,” Jenny said. “You’re letting emotion cloud your judgment.”

Blade didn’t say anything.

“Take Hickok and Geronimo and Yama and Samson. Take Lynx. He’s about healed.”

“No.”

Jenny placed her hand on his arm. “You can’t do this by yourself.”

“I won’t risk anyone else’s life.”

“But you’ll risk your own?”

“I’m the head Warrior,” Blade said. “Risking my life is what I do.”

“There are other Warriors, and they risk theirs, too. They will gladly go with you and back you, and you damn well know that.”

“No.”

Tears welled in Jenny’s eyes. “Why?” she said. “Help me to understand. Why in God’s name does it have to be just you?” “It’s how it should be.” “What does that even mean?” “Mom,” Gabe said. “Hush,” Jenny said. “Explain it more, Blade. Help me to understand. Why in God’s name does it have to be just you?”

“It’s how it should be.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Mom,” Gabe said.

“Hush,” Jenny said. “Explain it more, Blade. Help me here.”

Blade bowed his head. “As the thing once said to me, it’s personal now.”

“Are you suggesting it chose him out of all the Family on purpose?”

“Who do I love almost as much as Gabe and you?” Blade asked. He corrected himself, saying softly, “Who did I love?”

“It’s playing with your head? Is that how you read this?”

“That, and throwing down a gauntlet.”

“It wants you to come after it? You alone?”

Blade nodded. “I killed its kind in Los Angeles.”

“This isn’t just about you. The thing has vowed to destroy our Home.”

Blade stood. “Remember. Half an hour. No more. No less.” He went to go but she held onto his wrist. “Jenny, please. This doesn’t help.”

“I won’t let you throw your life away.”

“Dad?” Gabe said.

Blade looked at him. “Remember the talk we had a while back?”

“About growing up? About what it means to be a man?”

“Being a man means that sometimes we do what we have to and not what we want to.”

“Blade, please listen to—-,” Jenny began.

Blade held up a hand. “Let me finish. If I don’t do this, I’ll never be the same. Yes, I could ask the other Warriors for help. But then the thing has beaten me before I step out that door.” He embraced her and she trembled and uttered a low sob . “I’m sorry. It has to be this way.” He kissed her and held her at arm’s length, and nodded. He went around the table and Gabe stood and he hugged him and said, “Comfort your mother. She’ll need it.”

He got out of there. He stood in the chill morning air and breathed deep and steadied himself.

The Family was astir. Lights were on in many of the cabins. People were drifting toward the Blocks to start work for the day. Tillers were heading for the fields.

Blade moved as if in a daze. He saw Hickok come out of his cabin and yawn and stretch and look around. The gunfighter spotted him and grinned and waved and came over.

“You’re up and about early. Where are you off to?”

“I have something to do.”

“By your lonesome?” Hickok said. “That’s against your own rule.”

“I’m making an exception this once. It’s my right as head Warrior.”

“So where are you off to?”

Blade took a step but Hickok moved in front of him.

“You didn’t answer me, pard.”

“Out of the way.”

Hickok looked him up and down. “This isn’t like you . You’re acting so danged peculiar, you could be the shapeshifter.”

“Not hardly. The creature blends in by acting the part of whoever it becomes.”

"Even so. I'll ask one last time. Where the dickens are you off to?"

“To kill it.”

Hickok stared at Blade a good half a minute before he said, “You’ve figured out who it is now?”

Blade nodded.

“Then why in blazes aren’t Geronimo and I at your side. We’re a Triad, remember?”

“It has to be me.”

Hickok put his hands on his Pythons. “It’s not going to happen, pard.”

Blade sighed and tiredly rubbed his eyes. “How long have we known each other, Nathan?”

“Uh-oh,” Hickok said. “You haven’t called me by my real handle in a coon’s age. That shows it’s serious.”

“How long?”

“Since we were in diapers. Our moms used to put us in the same crib and you’d always beat me up and take my rattle.”

Blade stared.

“Okay. I might have made that last part up. But I’m still not moving. Not unless you can give me a damn good reason.”

Blade said a name.

Hickok blinked, and swayed, and said softly, “Tell me it ain’t so?”

“Now will you let me pass?”

“He was my friend, too. Hell, he was everybody’s friend.”

“He was like a father to me.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you still standing there?”

Hickok frowned. “You’re asking an awful lot. You die, Jenny will never forgive me.”

“She’ll never know.”

“Sure she will. She’s over by your cabin with Gabe, watching us.”

Blade looked over his shoulder. “Damn.”

“You can’t blame her for loving you.”

“Stay with them. Give me half an hour. That’s all I ask. If I’m not back—.”

“Consarn you, anyhow, Michael,” Hickok said, and moved aside. “Go on. And don’t get yourself killed.”

“I’ll try not to,” Blade said.

CHAPTER 35

The Family’s esteemed Leader came out of his cabin and hobbled toward the Blocks.

Blade waited until Plato was well away from anyone else and overtook him. “Morning.”

“Morning to you, as well,” Plato said with a smile. “Where are you off to so bright and early?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“To look in on the wounded,” Plato said. “Gremlin has yet to revive.”

“Does he know who you are?”

“I beg your pardon?” Plato said, and stopped.

“More to the point,” Blade said,“ I’d like to know if he suffered before he died.”

“Gremlin isn’t dead.”

“I don’t mean him and you know it,” Blade said. “I mean Plato. Did you torture him? Play with him like a cat with a mouse? That’s your nature, isn’t it?”

“Ah,” Plato said. He smiled and his mouth was suddenly full of fangs. “What gave me away?”

“Up on the wall yesterday,” Blade said. “You called it ‘she’ and ‘her’. None of us had any idea it was female. The only one who would know—-.”

“Was me,” the creature finished for him. “Well. This is embarrassing. I don’t often make mistakes like that.”

Blade placed his hands on his bowies. “Answer my question. Did Plato suffer?”

“That would anger you, wouldn’t it?” the Gualaon said. “But no. I’ll be honest. He was a feeble old ape. It took no effort. I crushed his skull and buried his body under the pines.”

“You didn’t eat him?”

“Please. His flesh was withered and stringy. There wasn’t enough meat to make it worth my while.”

“He was my friend,” Blade said. “More than that, actually.”

“Good. You should feel the same pain I did.”

“How so?” Blade asked.

“You killed my mate in Los Angeles.”

Blade didn’t try to hide his surprise. “One of those I killed was your husband?”

“It’s not like that with us,” Razhliq Nehr said. “We don’t ‘wed’. We’re not husband and wife, although he was your equivalent of male and I am your equivalent of female in that I can bear eggs and he could not.”

Blade didn’t say anything.

“My mate and I were a couple since before the fall of Sumer . Can you conceive of the depth of our bonding?

Physically, emotionally, intellectually, we were devoted to one another. Do you see now why I have taken such delight in slaying everyone you hold dear? Why, as your kind would say, I have wanted to get even.”

“We’ll be even,” Blade said, “when you’re dead.” And with that he whipped his bowies from their sheaths.

Springing back, Razhliq Nehr assumed her true aspect. It was her swiftest transformation yet, completed in a span of heartbeats. Her body rippled, her clothes became her scaly hide, and her red eyes blazed. She reared and spread her claws and snarled. “It’s you I want to suffer. I was going to save you for last but now—-.”

“Save this,” Blade said, and flew at her, his bowies flashing.

Razhliq Nehr didn’t retreat. She met him head-on, her steely claws pitted against his cold steel, her sinews matched against his muscles, her innate ferocity in opposition to his unbridled fury at the death of a man he loved. She opened his arm. He cut her leg. She raked his thigh. He slashed her chest.

Arms blurring, they circled, closed, circled again.

“Interesting,” the Gualaon said. “You are the most formidable of them all. Perhaps now I understand how you were able to slay my mate.”

The creature sprang and the Warrior met her and there was no holding back.

Blade’s vision became a red haze. He’d never wanted to kill anything as much he wanted to kill this Gualaon. He sliced her shoulder and she sidestepped and sank her claws into his side. He drove his right bowie at her throat only to have her slip under his swing and shred his flesh from his shoulder to his hip. Spining, he arced a bowie and rent her torso. She roared and seized his right wrist and tried to seize the other but Blade drove his second bowie up under her arm, burying it to the hilt. She screeched and jerked back. Spittle flecked her lips. Her eyes were infernos of hate . She kicked at his legs and Blade jumped above them even as he brought his left bowie slashing down at the arm that held his wrist.

Razhliq Nehr jerked her hand back, too late. Two of her fingers fell to the ground.

Blade stumbled as he came down and almost lost his balance. He felt searing pain in his shoulder, his thigh. Her other hand clamped onto his throat and her face lit with triumph. Another second and she would rip his jugular wide.

Blade chopped her hand off.

Razhliq Nehr staggered back, bewilderment replacing her rage.

Blade went after her. He cut her above her elbow, cut her belly, split an eye. He swung low and hacked off a foot. Somehow she stayed erect and clawed at his face . He buried his left bowie in the middle of her chest and whipped his right bowie up and around and caught her where her neck met her body.

Her head went flying.

Blade reached it as it rolled to a stop and poised with a bowie on high.

Razhliq Nehr’s eyes fixed on his. Incredibly, she tried to speak.

“For all those you’ve killed,” Blade said, and split her skull from crest to stump.

It wasn’t enough.

He cleaved her head again and again and again, until it was in bits and pieces at his feet. Even that didn’t suffice. He brought his boot down on the biggest pieces, pulping them.

“Are you sure the critter is dead, pard?”

Blade looked up.

Hickok was there, his Colts in his hands.

Geronimo, too, with his .45-70.

Further back stood Yama, his hand on his scimitar. “Nicely done,” the Warrior in blue said.

“Seemed kind of sloppy to me,” Hickok said. “Look at this mess.”

“Are you all right?” Geronimo asked.

Blade was covered in blood, his and the creature’s. His vest was in strips, his pants ripped beyond repair. His body bore a score of wounds and thorns of pain spiked through him when he moved.

“Blade?” Geronimo said.

Suddenly weary to his marrow, Blade smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not all right.”

And he collapsed.

EPILOGUE

A month went by, a time of great sorrow, a time of healing.

The Elders called a meeting. In the cool of an evening the Family gathered to discuss their future. The first order of business was to choose a new Leader, and the first name mentioned was Blade’s.

All eyes were on him as he rose from beside Jenny and Gabe. He had healed but he now had more scars than ever. He thanked the Elder who had proposed him and cleared his throat.

“I must respectfully decline. We killed the thing that invaded our Home but as the creature made clear, the Lords of Kismet won’t rest until they’ve crushed us. It would be remiss of me to step down in the midst of a crisis. I’ll continue to serve as head Warrior until these Lords have been dealt with.

” No one saw fit to argue the point, and Blade went on.

“You’ll be happy to hear that Alpha, Beta and Gamma Triads have recovered and are at full strength. Omega Triad is now made up of Ares, Lynx and Gremlin. Zulu Triad is short one Warrior and we need three more to fill Bravo Triad. To that end, we encourage any of you who might be interested in becoming Warriors to come see me.”

Blade paused.

“Restoring the Warriors, though, isn’t enough. We have to take the fight to our enemies. To that end, I propose forming a special strike team to hunt down the Lords of Kismet and eliminate them.

“Go all the way to Asia?” someone asked.

“Wherever and whatever it takes,” Blade said. “Otherwise, our Home and our Family may well cease to exist.” He gazed out over their anxious faces. “What do you say? Do I have your support? Are you with me? If so, let me hear it.” He raised a fist into the air and shouted,

“Live free or die!”

They looked at one another. First a few fists and then more were thrust at the sky and a great cry went up.

“Live free or die!”

FINI

FOR NOW

A SPECIAL TREAT FOR ENDWORLD FANS

The following is one of the few short stories David Robbins has written involving the ENDWORLD universe. It is published here in book form for the first time.

BOYS NIGHT OUT

It was one hundred and twelve years after the end of all things but not all things had ended.

In northern Minnesota an outpost of humanity was protected by high walls and an inner moat.

Heavily armed Warriors patrolled the ramparts.

On various occasions since the cataclysm, enemies had tried to stealthily enter the Home, as the compound was called, to take those who dwelled there unawares. Few succeeded.

On this particular night, with wind whipping the trees and the promise of a storm in the moisture-laden air, three members of the Family , as they referred to themselves, were about to attempt the unthinkable. They were going to try to sneak out.

Their plan was all the more remarkable because the world outside their high walls was rife with perils. Not even the Warriors ventured abroad at night without good reason. And these three weren’t Warriors. They were boys, not one of them in his teens.

The three had agreed to meet at midnight at the rear of C Block, one of six enormous concrete structures that functioned as everything from an armory to a carpenter shop.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” whispered one of the trio. His parents had named him Cochise in honor of a great leader who lived many centuries ago. He wore a green loincloth fashioned from canvas, and moccasins. Big for his age, he had black hair and dark eyes. The Mossberg 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun he held seemed like a cannon in his young hands. Wedged under his brown leather belt was a tomahawk. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Stay here if you’re afraid, redskin,” teased the golden haired stripling next to him. Lean and lanky, he wore a black jacket and black pants and boots, and a white shirt in a style not seen since the 1800' s. Strapped to his right hip, in a black leather holster, was a pearl-handled, nickel-plated Colt .45.

“Call me a wimp again, Ringo,” Cochise whispered, “and I’ll test how sharp my father’s tomahawk is on your toes.”

Ringo patted the big Colt. “I’d like to see you try. I can shoot faster than you can blink.”

“Listen to you, white bread. If you were any slower your nickname would be Turtle.”

The third boy, who was a full head taller and a third again as wide at the shoulders as either of them, gestured sharply. “Pipe down. I swear, you two sound more like your dads every day. Keep this up and I’ll go alone.”

“Shucks, pard,” Ringo said. “We’re just funnin’.”

“And talk normal, for God’s sake,” the huge boy snapped. “None of that stupid stuff your dad does.”

“I hear that,” Cochise said.

The huge boy had red hair and more muscles than most men. He wore a black leather vest. Slung across his back was an M16. But the weapon he favored above all others, the weapon he never went anywhere without, was a solid steel battleaxe. “Why I agreed to bring you two idiots, I’ll never know.”

“Because we’re your best friends, pard,” Ringo said with a grin. “You need us to watch your back.”

“I need you like I need a hole in the head,” Gabe said, not without affection.

“I’m the one with a hole in his head,” Cochise said.

Ringo’s eyebrows arched. “This is a first. You admit it?”

“Sure. I let you two talk me into an early grave, didn’t I?”

“If all Indians were like you, Custer would have won at the Little Big Horn.”

“I can’t believe it,” Cochise said in mock amazement. “You actually read the history assignment this week? Our Teacher will have a heart attack.”

“When I said to pipe down, I meant it,” Gabe gruffly broke in. “If we’re caught on account of you and anything happens to any of the others because of it, I’ll be ticked.”

“I found one of those tick critters on me last week,” Ringo said. “It was stuck to my armpit.”

“You’re so weird,” Gabe said, and sighed. “Just like your old man.”

“I don’t take after my father,” Cochise said.

“That’s true,” Ringo said. “He wears clothes.”

Cochise looked down at his loincloth. “I’ll have you know, white-eye, that a lot of warriors wore these at one time.”

“I read about them in a book,” Ringo said. “They were called harem girls.”

Cochise glanced at Gabe. “What did he mean by that?”

“Are you asking me to explain how Ringo’s mind works?” Gabe snorted. “Even he doesn’t know.”

Ringo put a finger to his lips . “Hush, you danged infant. Do you want one of the Warriors on guard duty to hear you?”

“I’m older than you are. Where do you get off calling me an infant’?”

“I heard my dad call Cochise’s dad that once, and Geronimo is really old.”

“Up yours,” Cochise said. “My dad is no older than yours. And neither of us is an infant.”

“Says the guy in a diaper.”

Gabe wagged his battleaxe in their faces. “Enough. From here on out, not a peep or we won’t make it over the walls.”

“We should let the Warriors take care of it,” Cochise suggested. “A zombie is nothing to sneeze at.”

“It’s already dead,” Ringo said. “How tough can it be?”

Gabe was growing exasperated . “We’ve been all through this. Susie says she saw one near the walls. The Warriors searched but couldn’t find it. No one believes her except me.”

“I’m plumb amazed,” Ringo said.

“Will you stop that Old West talk? And what has you amazed?”

“That you want to sneak out and hunt a zombie in the middle of the night just to impress some gal.”

“I’m not doing it just for Susie,” Gabe said.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Cochise shook his head. “Liar, liar? Where do you get this stuff?”

Gabe’s voice became hard as flint. “Not-one-more word.” Crouching, he stalked to the corner of C Block and gazed across benighted open space at the raised drawbridge. To reach the top of the wall they had to climb wooden stairs supported by massive beams.

“I don’t see any Warriors yonder,” Ringo whispered. “Do either of you?

“What does it take to get you to shut up?” Gabe said. But he didn’t see any Warriors either, which was strange. The Warriors were divided into Triads, and each took a turn at wall duty. One Warrior was always supposed to be on guard on the west wall above the drawbridge while the other two ceaselessly prowled the north, east and south walls.

“What are we waiting for?” Cochise whispered. “We’ve lucked out. We should do it before a Warrior comes.”

“Which Triad is on duty tonight?” Ringo asked.

“What difference does that make, doofus?” Gabe rose and hurried toward the stairs. “Come on. Move it.”

“You sure are a bossy cuss,” Ringo whispered.

The gurgle of the stream smothered the slight sounds they made.

Gabe took the wooden stairs two at a time. At the top he crouched and scanned the west rampart from end to end. “No Warriors yet.”

They peered over into the impenetrable darkness.

“I hope you don’t expect us to jump,” Ringo said. “I’m not part jackrabbit.”

“Don’t worry,” Cochise said. “Gabe brought a rope, I bet. He thinks of everything. Don’t you, Gabriel?”

Gabe kept peering down and didn’t say anything.

“You did think of a rope, right?”

“To tell the truth, I sort of forgot.”

“Unless you can sprout wings and carry us down, we’ll have to do it another night,” Ringo said.

“The zombie might be gone by then.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

Cochise came to Gabe’s defense. “You were the one who claimed killing it will be easy. My father says different. He says they die hard.”

“Don’t you mean die hard the second time?”

It was Gabe who answered. “They’re not really dead. Their hearts beat, their blood pumps, but slowly. Their brain works, but on an animal level. All they want is to eat. At least, that’s what my dad says.”

Suddenly, out of the blackness near them, came a sound, a sharp thwack.

All three boys spun. Gabe brought up his battleaxe. Cochise leveled his shotgun. Ringo drew the heavy Colt.

Nothing was there. The three boys stared, frozen in place, until Ringo whispered, “This is blamed peculiar. I know I heard something.”

“So did I,” Cochise said.

“It had to be a Warrior on guard duty,” Gabe said. “But where did he get to?” Gabe moved north along the wall. He had only taken about ten steps when his boot bumped something. Glancing down, he said, “What’s this?”

It was a coiled rope.

“Hey, it’s just what we need.” Gabe picked it up. “The Spirit is smiling on us.”

“If it was what we need, it’d be pants for Cochise,” Ringo said.

Cochise glowered. “I could kick you.”

“How did the rope get there?” Ringo wondered.

“The Warriors always keep one handy in case they have to go over the wall in a hurry,” Gabe said.

“I reckon we shouldn’t look a swift horse in the mouth, then,” Ringo remarked.

“That’s a gift horse, you moron,” Cochise said.

“I knew that. I was testing to see if you did.”

“White boy speak with forked tongue.”

“Says the guy in the diaper.”

“Why do you keep bringing that up?”

“Because you look so danged adorable.”

“That was another dig, wasn’t it? If you—.” Cochise abruptly stopped.

Gabe was staring at them as if he was keenly desirous of heaving them off the wall. “Are you two done? Or would you rather stand up here all night arguing?”

“That would be fun but what about the zombie?” Ringo asked. “You can’t impress your girlfriend unless we kick zombie butt.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Let’s get kicking,” Cochise said. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can be back in our cabins with our parents none the wiser.”

Gabe unwound the rope and tied one end to a metal hook imbedded in the wall for that very purpose. He tied the other end to the long handle on his battleaxe, then lowered the battleaxe to the ground. It came to rest edge-up. “I’ll go first.”

“Be careful you don’t slip, pard, or Susie and you won’t be havin’ kids,” Ringo warned.

“Want me to shoot him and put him out of our misery?” Cochise asked Gabe.

“It’s tempting, but the Warriors would hear.”

With the lithe agility of a cat, Gabe gripped the rope with both hands, turned so he could brace his feet against the outer wall, and started down.

“You go next,” Cochise whispered.

“Why not you?” Ringo asked.”

“I call dibs.”

“Hold on . You can call dibs on a slice of pie at a Family feed. You can call dibs on who gets the ball when we play basketball. You can’t call dibs on climbing down a rope.”

“Who says?”

“It’s a rule. I read it.”

“You are so making that up,” Cochise said.

“Ask the gal who runs the library tomorrow. She knows everything. She’ll vouch for me.”

“Isn’t she your aunt?”

“So?”

“You must think I was born yesterday.”

“With that diaper, you probably were.”

“If we live through this night I’m feeding you to the first mutate that wanders by,” Cochise vowed, and turned to the metal hook. “Hey. Why is the rope jiggling?”

They peered over the rampart and beheld Gabe angrily motioning for them to descend.

“You know, when he grows up I bet he’ll be a grump like his pa,” Ringo said.

“And when you grow up, you’ll go around talking people to death.” Cochise smirked and snapped his fingers. “Oh. Wait. You already do that.”

“Is it me or is steam coming out of Gabe’s ears?” Ringo said. “You’d better climb down. He’s too young to have a conniption.”

“A what?”

“I’m not rightly sure what it is,” Ringo admitted. “But my dad says Gabe’s dad had one every time they went on a run together.”

Cochise slung the Mossberg over his shoulder, gripped the rope, and went over. “No dropping anything on me, you simpleton.”

“Dang. Does that include spit?”

Gabe and Cochise were back to back, warily scanning the cleared field that separated the compound from the forest, when Ringo slid down beside them. He palmed his Colt and held it in a two-handed grip. “Ready when you are, pards.”

“I wish there was a moon,” Gabe said.

Clouds scuttled like giant crabs, blotting out all but a few stars. The wind had picked up, warning them the storm would soon break.

“Anyone else want to do this tomorrow night?” Ringo asked.

Gabe moved toward the woods. He held his battleaxe ready to swing. “Time to prove we can be Warriors one day.”

“There are other ways, to prove it” Ringo said. “We could stomp a rabid chipmunk.”

The wind struck full in their faces and buffeted their bodies. Cochise’s loincloth flapped like a flag, and Ringo snickered.

Suddenly Gabe stopped. “Do you smell that?” he whispered.

The stink was awful. A reek that made them want to gag. A stench so vile, no other stench compared.

“Only one thing smells that bad," Gabe said.

“Ringo’s breath?” Cochise said.

Ringo ignored the taunt and said, “Damn the Big Blast, anyhow.”

The Big Blast was the Family’s term for World War Three. Bio bombs used by the other side had spewed chemical clouds that transformed those who were caught in them from the living to the living dead. And once a person changed , all they had to do was bite someone else and have their saliva mix with the person’s blood to turn them into a zombie, too.

“I’m surprised none of the Warriors smelled it,” Cochise whispered.

“Maybe the wind wasn’t right until just now,” Gabe said. He assumed the lead, as he always did.

They tried to move silently but the brittle grass crunched and crackled.

The trees loomed higher, the undergrowth a seemingly solid tangle.

Gabe probed the vegetation for a telltale hint of movement . He wondered if the zombie had heard them and was standing still so they would come within reach. Zombies did that, sometimes. They were dead and dumb but now and then there was a smart one.

“I vote we stay put and make it come out of the woods to us,” Ringo whispered.

“For once I agree with him,” Cochise said.

Gabe was inclined to do as they wanted. But the longer they waited, the greater the risk. A chemical cloud might happen by. A mutate might catch their scent. The night swarmed with a legion of lethal menaces besides the lone zombie. “You two stay put. I’m going in after it.”

“Where you go, pard, I go,” Ringo said.

“Same here,” Cochise echoed.

The trees whipped in the wind and entire thickets shook as if to invisible hands. Somewhere a small animal squealed.

Gabe cautiously advanced. With all that wind, they wouldn’t be able to hear the zombie until it was right on top of them. One bite, and they’d become infected with necrosis, or whatever it was called. He suddenly halted, uncertain.

“Why did you stop?” Ringo whispered. “Did you see somethin’?”

Gabe started to turn and opened his mouth to say he’d changed his mind and Cochise was right and this was a bad idea . They were his best friends and he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to them. But before he could get the words out, the undergrowth erupted with shambling figures.

There was more than one zombie.

Gabe had barely an instant in which to react before a ghastly scarecrow lurched at him, a hideous figure whose lips were festering sores and whose yellow teeth were bared to rip and rend. But it was its eyes, those inhuman eyes, that unnerved him, that tore a cry from his throat and caused him to swing the battleaxe with all his might. He was only a boy but he was as strong as men twice his age. He cleaved the zombie’s head from crown to chin.

The head was a weak spot. You could slit a zombie’s throat and it would keep coming. You could stab it in the heart or drive a spear through its gut and it wouldn’t stop trying to bite you. But kill the brain and you killed it.

Gabe swung at the next one’s neck. His battleaxe sheared through skin and bone and the head plopped to earth, the mouth opening and closing spasmodically.

Gabe spun. Another zombie was almost on him. He thrust the battleaxe at its chest to keep it back and had the satisfaction of hearing bone crunch. For most adversaries that would be enough to take them down but the zombie wrenched free of the blade, and with its arms outstretched, lurched at Gabe anew.

Ringo’s six-shooter boomed. A hole appeared above the zombie’s nose and it teetered, let out a rasping moan, and collapsed.

“Wahoo!” Ringo whooped.

Cochise had held off using his shotgun for fear the Warriors would hear, but now that Ringo had gone and announced to the world where they were, he saw no reason to hold back. He blew off the head of a zombie on the left, racked a new shell into the chamber and blew off the head of a zombie on the right.

More appeared, with the suggestion of additional shapes in their wake.

“The woods are swarmin’ with these critters!” Ringo hollered.

“Shout a little louder, why don’t you?” Cochise yelled. “The zombies in St. Paul didn’t hear you.”

Then none of them had time for talk as zombies converged from all over. Gabe swung his battlaxe with fierce force. Ringo worked his Colt as fast as he could, which was nowhere near as fast as his father but faster than most . Cochise’s shotgun boomed nonstop.

Zombie after zombie fell. Yet more were always there to take their place. More slavering, shambling, horrors, their teeth gaping wide, their fingers hooked into claws. More and ever more, driven by their insatiable craving for raw flesh.

They weren’t silent, these zombies. They growled and grunted and hissed. They snarled and gurgled and spit. Gabe split them, Ringo cored their brains, Cochise blasted them apart. And still they came, until the slain were piled in a ring around the three youths.

“We can’t stop them!” Cochise cried. “There are too many!” His shotgun was hot and his hands hurt and he was running out of shells. Only half a dozen were left in his bandoleers and he would be at their mercy.

“Eat lead, you smelly varmints,” Ringo yipped, and shot another between the eyes.

Gabe was tiring. He had swung until his shoulders throbbed and his arms ached, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep swinging. Cochise was right. There were simply too many.

Suddenly a new element was interjected into the fray, a streak of gray-brown fur that flowed among the zombies with lightning speed. Each zombie it passed crumpled, a temple pierced by iron claws or its head dangling from a nearly severed neck. Within seconds the last of the walking dead were truly dead, and their destroyer came to a stop and turned to face Gabe, Ringo and Cochise.

“Well, what do we have here ? Three chips off the old blocks out for a secret stroll?” The creature had a high, mewing voice. Barely four feet tall, he was naked save for a leather loincloth. His eyes were a startling green, his ears pointed, his features that of his feline namesake.

“Lynx,” Gabe said in relief.

Ringo was reloading. “Now we know who was supposed to be standing guard.”

“Thank you for coming to help us,” Cochise said.

“I got tired of watching,” the hybrid said. “I couldn’t let you kids have all the fun.”

Gabe glanced at his friends and then at the cat-man. “You were watching over us the whole time?”

“Who do you think left that rope for you to find?”

“Wait a minute,” Gabe said. “You helped us sneak out of the Home? Why would you do that?”

“They wanted to teach you a lesson.”

“Who did?” Cochise asked.

Lynx turned and pointed at the west wall. Atop it stood Warriors bristling with weapons. Prominent among them was a giant in a black vest, bowie knives in sheaths at his hips. Next to him was a blond man in buckskins, his holsters sporting a pair of ivory-handled Pythons. Beside him was a muscular man dressed all in green, his black hair and features showing his Blackfoot heritage.

“Oh, Lordy,” Ringo said. “It’s our dads.”

“They knew what we were up to?” Gabe marveled.

Lynx nodded. “They were ready to lend a hand should it be needed. But I had you covered.” He gestured. “Come on. Time to take your medicine.”

“I’m to blame, not them,” Gabe said. “It was my idea. I wanted to prove there were zombies near the Home.”

Trudging gloomily along, Cochise remarked, “We’re in hot water up to our necks.”

“That you are,” Lynx said. “I hope your little adventure was worth it. Did you learn anything?”

Gabe held out his gore-spattered battleaxe and smiled. “I learned I want to be a Warrior more than ever.”

Cochise tapped his bandoleers. “I learned I need to carry more ammo.”

Ringo, sauntering as if he didn’t have a care in the world, chuckled and said, “Me, I learned killing zombies is a piece of cake.”

“Like I told you,” Lynx said, and laughed. “Three chips off the old blockheads.”

FINI

Table of Contents

Chapter1

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Chapter7

Chapter8

Chapter9

Chapter10

Chapter11

Chapter12

Chapter13

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16

Chapter17

Chapter18

Chapter19

Chapter20

Chapter21

Chapter22

Chapter23

Chapter24

Chapter25

Chapter26

Chapter27

Chapter28

Chapter29

Chapter30

Chapter31

Chapter32

Chapter33

Chapter34

Chapter35

Epilogue

A Special Treat For Endworld Fans

Boys Night Out

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