Read Deathlands 124: Child of Slaughter for Free Online Page A

blazing midday sun.
    What had once been mostly open space with few places to hide was quickly turning into the perfect setting for a sneak attack by enemy forces.
    In which case, J.B. and his comrades wouldn’t be hard to find at all. Krysty couldn’t help herself; she kept screaming as her inner torment continued.
    “Anybody else get the feeling we’re sitting ducks?” J.B. shouted.
    Just then, Ryan opened up with his best take-charge voice. “Three groups! Krysty and Mildred in the middle! Jak and I at twelve o’clock, J.B. and Ricky at six o’clock!”
    “Seen anyone yet?” Ricky asked as he took up position by the nearest stalagmite.
    “Nope.” J.B. set up on the other side of the same pillar, facing in the opposite direction. They needed to catch whoever came at them from either side and be ready to pivot quickly to help the others. “You?”
    “Just the ones in my imagination.” Ricky braced his shoulder against the stone pillar and slowly combed the barrel of his De Lisle carbine from side to side. “But they have to be coming, don’t they?”
    “Indubitably, as Doc might say.” J.B. listened for approaching footsteps but just heard more of the distant creaking and whooshing. The stalagmite forest’s growth spurt seemed to be nowhere near an end.
    Then, suddenly, there was a loud creaking from just a few feet away. J.B. turned with weapon in hand, expecting another spike to erupt from the ground, but he got more than he counted on this time.
    A fresh spike did indeed launch skyward with a whooshing sound of displaced sand. It was well away from J.B. and Ricky, so neither of them was at risk of being speared, but they were both in very real danger nonetheless.
    For there was a crimson-skinned mutie rising up along with it, one arm wrapped around the pillar’s pale girth, the other arm bracing a slightly rusted AK-47 assault longblaster that was pointing at J.B.’s head.

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    Chapter Eight
    In predark days, Mildred had been an award-winning free shooter. Being cryogenically frozen for a century and thawed years later hadn’t diminished her marksmanship skills one bit.
    Which was why, when she saw her beloved J.B. in danger, she was able to move so decisively. Through a gap between stalagmites, she cranked off a fast, tricky shot with her target revolver that punched a hole dead center in the mutie’s forehead.
    As the mutie dropped from the stalagmite he’d been riding, J.B. whirled and waved at Mildred. Through their years of traversing the Deathlands, they’d both saved each other’s lives too many times to count. It was second nature these days, something you expected from friends and comrades.
    Or, in the case of Mildred and J.B., it was something you expected from lovers. Each new nightmare they faced brought them closer together and made them fight all the harder to keep what they’d found.
    Even in hell itself, it turned out, it was good to have something to fight for. Ryan and Krysty certainly felt the same way.
    Though at the rate Krysty was going, Mildred wondered if she would live out the day. As the predark doctor turned back to her after blowing away the mutie, she saw that Krysty had slid to the ground at the base of the closestspike. She was crouching there, screaming with eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping her temples with desperate ferocity.
    Unfortunately, Mildred had no time to tend to her. Before she could drop to Krysty’s side, she heard the telltale creaking and whoosh of another rising spike in her immediate vicinity.
    Spinning in its direction, she saw the latest pillar shooting high and fast with a pair of crimson arms looped around it, supporting a mutie who was clinging from the other side.
    As the pillar punched upward, the mutie swung around and released one hand to flash a .38 revolver from a holster on his hip. Almost instantly, he started firing, tracing a path that would soon cut a swath across Mildred’s torso.
    Springing into action, Mildred launched