Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

soon.”
    Ricky kicked up a spray of sand with the toe of his boot. “Why do you think it’s like that? This place? Why do you think it’s so crazy?”
    “If Doc was here, he’d have some kind of scientific explanation. As it is…” Ryan sighed. “Krysty says something awful happened to the earth around here, but, you know, the same could be said for much of the Deathlands.”
    “Skydark cause somehow?” Jak asked. “War aftereffect?”
    “Or something since then?” Ricky queried. “Some kind of science project gone wrong, mebbe?”
    “Any of the above.” Ryan shrugged. “Right now, I guess it doesn’t much matter. We just need to find Doc and get the hell out of here before the phenomenon kills Krysty.”
    “Survive first.” Jak nodded in agreement. “Explain later.”
    “Hmm.” Ricky stared at the lava-filled channel as he kept marching along. “What if it’s all in our minds? Some kind of mass hallucination?”
    “Someone mess with heads? Not first time.” Jak thought about it for a moment, then pointed at the channel with the barrel of his Colt Python. “How about dip toe in there and tell if illusion?”
    “You first.” Ricky laughed. “But what if it is an illusion? We wouldn’t know it, would we?”
    The one-eyed man blinked at him. “Krysty might.” He frowned. “Which might be the reason she keeps getting pounded by these psychic attacks, come to think of it.”
    “We stop attacks sooner or later.” Jak popped one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives out of the spring-loaded scabbard in his right sleeve.
    “Let’s stay alert to all possibilities.” Ryan tightened his grip on his longblaster. “Until we learn otherwise.”
    “My possibilities always same.” Jak stabbed the air once more with a nasty flourish. “Cut and shoot till run out things to cut and shoot.”
    “I think I speak for all of us,” Ricky stated, “when I say that’s a plan we can all get behind.”
    Suddenly, a loud hissing noise in the distance caught everyone’s attention. They swung in the direction of the noise, and they all saw the source at the same instant.
    Ricky shook his head at the sight. “What the hell is that?”
    “Something I’m pretty sure shouldn’t be here,” Ryan told him.
    Some fifty yards in the distance, on the same side of the lava channel as Ricky and the others, a plume of steam shot straight up from the ground, climbing at least thirty feet into the sky.
    “First lava in Nebraska, now geysers,” Ryan said. “What next? A volcano?”
    “Careful what wish for,” Jak stated.
    Just then, a second geyser erupted from the ground on the opposite side of the channel, ten yards closer than the first.
    That was enough to drive Ryan into action. “Incoming!” He shouted the words over his shoulder, making sure everyone behind him could hear.
    But they didn’t really need to. Just as Ryan yelled his warning, Krysty let loose with her latest bloodcurdling scream.
    “Form up!” Ryan charged back to Krysty’s side, leaving Jak and Ricky to hold the point of the column.
    “Ready test theory?” Jak cocked the Python with one hand and balanced a throwing knife by the tip with the other. “Not fight back, mebbe hallucination not kill?”
    Ricky’s eyes danced over the landscape, watching for the first hostile movement. “Not a chance.”
    “Thought you say that,” Jak said. “Not believe own theory, huh?”
    “I didn’t say that,” Ricky told him. “But even if this is all a hallucination, there’s no way I’m going to let it kick my ass.”

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    Chapter Seven
    Ryan swept his longblaster left and right, waiting for whoever was coming—or whatever unnatural phenomenon was on the way, in which case, the blaster would be useless.
    Behind him, Mildred supported Krysty with her left arm while brandishing her .38 ZKR 551 revolver in her right hand. “Another geyser at two o’clock.”
    “I see it.” Ryan wondered if the geysers were a prelude to an attack or