The Singular Six E-Book

J. S. Volpe

• Herausgeber: J. S. Volpe
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

An action-packed story set in the world of Eridia!

Frankenstein’s Monster…Dr. Frankenstein’s courageous niece…a superhero with the power to turn to stone…a robot who performs psychoanalysis…a tweenage queen…a snarky Incan jaguar god…

These six disparate individuals must team together to hunt down and vanquish the Marauders, a horde of evil bandits who aim to conquer the land of Erizan. Each of the six has their own reasons for undertaking this dangerous mission. Only together do they have any hope of succeeding.

Their journey takes them across a bizarre patchwork landscape and pits them against strange and terrible foes—from an abandoned research lab overrun by a peculiar variety of zombie to an idyllic woodland populated by carnivorous stuffed animals, from the mazy lair of a huge, hateful serpentine beast to the Marauders’ blood-soaked battle arena where the sextet must fight for their lives.

 

Leseprobe

The Singular Six

By J. S. Volpe

Copyright © 2012 J. S. Volpe

All rights reserved

For Betsy

CONTENTS

Title

Copyright

Dedication

1. Sweetwater

2. The Old Castle

3. Research Lab B

4. The Field of Colored Cubes

5. Happyvale

6. Boko Zafendo

7. The Badlands

8. The Storage Tank

9. Yoyodyne (Outside)

10. Yoyodyne (Inside)

11. The Arena

12. The Road Home

Also by J. S. Volpe

Chapter 1

Sweetwater

1

A hush fell over the Sweetwater market as an RV pulled by eight draft horses rattled to a stop in front of the Quartered Orc Tavern.

The RV was thirty feet long and had been adapted for travel in this mostly pavement- and fossil fuel-free post-Cataclysm world: The engine, exhaust system, and all other now-useless components had been removed; a draw pole and swingletrees attached; the windshield taken out so the horses’ reins could pass through to the front seat; and the old axles and wheels replaced with sturdy oaken ones reinforced with iron bands.

But no one spared the RV more than a passing glance. Instead, all eyes were fixed on the horses. Horses had been rare in these parts ever since the orc invasion a few years back, during which the orcs had seized every horse they could find (not to ride, but to eat). Nowadays, owning one was seen as a sign of either blessedness or bastardliness.

Heads craned as the RV’s doors opened. The dust and mud that covered the vehicle indicated it had come a long way, and given how dangerous the roads were, with beasts and bandits as common as sparrows, everyone expected the RV’s occupants to be mighty warriors, or mages, or mutants with fantastic powers.

Thus everyone was surprised when two young women who at first glance appeared perfectly normal climbed out. A second glance, however, showed they weren’t perfectly normal after all, for while the women were dressed somewhat differently—one with a green cloak, one with a black one; one with white sneakers, one with black leather boots—they were otherwise identical: same brown hair, same brown eyes, same face, same physique. Whether this marked them as twins, clones, robots, or something else, no one knew. But it was intriguing. Or worrying, depending on one’s basic temperament.

While the black-cloaked woman reached back into the RV and pulled out an olive messenger bag, the green-cloaked one turned and eyed the crowd that filled the market in the town square. Not wanting to be caught staring by this possibly puissant entity, everyone swiftly returned to their business.

The black-cloaked woman slung the bag over her shoulder, and the women entered the market. They examined each seller’s wares in turn, making no move to trade until they had seen the whole range of goods on display, most of which had been scrounged from the countless pre-Cataclysm ruins that dotted the landscape. The low wooden tables were crowded with clothes, toys, wishing stones, canteens, dentures, holocubes, cookware, books. Here and there were rarer, and thus much pricier, items. On one table otherwise occupied by grimy dolls was a broken Chen-Chen X55 Laser Pistol that could probably be fixed by someone with the right knowledge. One old woman had a plastic replica of a human head that spoke an unknown language in a deep, resonant voice when you pressed a button behind its right ear. Fat Harvey, the shrewdest trader around, had a pair of ornamental daggers, one’s hilt set with a large ruby, the other’s with an emerald. Bingo Burberry, one of Sweetwater’s small halfling community, was offering, in addition to his usual selection of delicious home-made cheeses and top-quality home-grown pipeweed, a black leather doctor’s bag containing various medical supplies: a stethoscope, band-aids, gauze, a syringe, antibiotic ointment, and, most precious of all, Cipro.

It was this last table and this last item to which the two women returned after their circuit of the market. Practically everyone in the area had had their eyes on the doctor’s bag ever since Bingo first offered it for trade three months ago, after he found it in some weeds next to a cluster of thriving tanglevines in the depths of which could be seen a modest black coat, a pair of spectacles, and a grinning skull. But Bingo’s asking price was far too high: Seven sacks of grain was something no one could afford to part with. As time passed and it remained untraded, everyone figured he would lower his price, but he didn’t, insisting that someday someone would need it badly enough to pay up. Now, it seemed, that day had come.

“How much for the bag and its contents?” asked the woman in the green cloak.

“Seven sacks of the best grain or the like,” Bingo said in a cool, even voice that made it clear the price was non-negotiable.

The women looked at each other. The one in the green cloak nodded. The black-cloaked one reached into her bag and pulled out a shiny silver cylinder.

“We can give you an atomic flashlight,” she said.

Those nearby, who had been surreptitiously watching this exchange, now gasped. Though few had ever seen one, word had it that atomic flashlights worked forever, unlike the battery-operated ones, which were now no more than fancy clubs, their batteries having gone dead in the fifteen years since the Cataclysm.

Bingo, though equally awestruck, maintained a mask of professional cool.

“Let me see it,” he said.

She gave it to him. He pressed a button halfway up its shaft, squinted into the bright light that shone from the clear plastic head, then switched it off and examined it closely, turning it this way and that. Unlike most of those present, he had seen an atomic flashlight before.

When he had determined to his satisfaction that it was the real thing, he smiled and said, “Well, now. I think we have a—”

Somewhere in the distance a woman let out a long, shrill scream. It stopped with jarring suddenness, and a cacophony of hoofbeats flooded into the silence where it had been. Shouts rose up from the next street over.

“What’s going on?” said the woman in the black cloak.

Bingo shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably more—”

A mechanical whir rose above the shouts and hoofbeats. Bingo’s eyes went wide.

“It’s them!”

“What? Who?”

Before he could answer, two young men on hoverboards—large metal antigravity skateboards—shot out from behind the one-room schoolhouse on the west side of the square. The taller of the two men was skinny and pale, with wide rubbery lips and spiky black hair. He wore scruffy blue jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt with a white A in a circle on it. The other man, who was dressed much more conservatively in black shoes, gray slacks, and a white shirt with even the collar buttoned, had lank greasy hair, glasses thicker than Coke-bottle bottoms, and a perpetual scowl. They streaked toward the crowd, their boards glinting silver in the sun and kicking up clouds of dust as they glided a foot above the ground.

“Who are they?” asked the woman in the black cloak.

“Skippy and Oscar, two of the Marauders,” said the halfling, his voice cracking with panic. “We must flee.”

He snatched the atomic flashlight and, leaving everything else, dashed away.

Behind him, dozens more Marauders poured into the square, some on foot, some on horseback, all of them brandishing swords, or knives, or spears, or other weapons. Their ranks included Johnny Circumcision, a bug-eyed, bristle-haired psychopath with shiny silver coveralls and a pair of hedge-clippers in place of hands; Klaus von Klaus, who wore full Nazi regalia…and full make-up, including rouge, eyeliner, and Cherry Alive lipstick; the Cardiac Kid, a hooting, hollering, constantly drunk young man who always wore a Cleveland Browns helmet and a jersey numbered 8; Droke, a leathery-skinned creature with vestigial wings on its back and a pair of large white bull-horns sprouting from the sides of its misshapen head; Tricky Dick, a short wiry fellow in a black three-piece suit and a rubber Richard Nixon mask, the nose of which was shaped like a long, thick, upturned penis; Hairy Harry, a grizzled biker whose hirsute beer belly ballooned out between his black leather vest and his winged skull belt buckle; Schweeliski, a tall, blonde, rail-thin spaz in an Izod shirt and Dockers who had a thing for knives and kittens; Big Red, a massive, mead-soaked Viking, complete with horned helmet, two-headed battle-axe, and lice-ridden beard; and then there was the Grottle…

Seven-and-a-half feet of solid muscle, with completely hairless skin the yellow of rich butter and teeth so stained and pitted they looked like chunks of pumice, the Grottle resembled no known species or type of monster. It wore gray pants and a gray shirt both of which were so filthy and tattered they looked as if it had crawled out of its grave in them. Its “boots” were strips of similarly filthy and tattered gray cloth wound round and round its huge, splayed feet until they were so thickly padded the Grottle could stalk across a sheet-metal floor without a sound. Unlike the rest of the Marauders, it never used a horse or a hoverboard or any other mode of transport; instead it loped along on its thick legs, never tiring, keeping perfect pace with the galloping horses. When the Marauders attacked a town, it beheaded men left and right with mighty sweeps of the long-handled shovel it carried everywhere it went. And as it committed its slaughter, its mammoth frame shuddered with its terrible laughter—“hurr hurr hurr!”—the only sound it ever made.

And so when the people of Sweetwater saw this gang of nightmares descending upon them, they ran. And when the severed heads started flying and the air shivered with screams, their run became a stampede.

The two women fled for their RV, but before they could travel far, Skippy and Oscar veered toward them, having singled them out as good breeding-stock. Oscar reached them first and with the ease born of much practice pulled the black-cloaked one into his arms, his board wobbling a moment with the excess weight then steadying itself.

The other woman crouched down as Skippy raced toward her, and then leaped to the side at the last moment, avoiding his groping hands by centimeters. He whirred past, casting a hateful glance over his shoulder at her as he went. Then he banked the board around for a second pass.

While he did that, she sprinted after her companion, who thrashed about in Oscar’s grasp as his board carried them toward the edge of town, where several Marauders were opening the wheeled, horse-drawn cages in which they transported the women and loot they captured back to their base.

The woman writhed free of his grip and thudded to the dusty street.

“Bitch,” Oscar said. He jerked his board to a halt, then backed up quickly before she could get to her feet. Instead of trying to bring her onto the board with him again, he grabbed the collar of her cloak and took off at full speed down the street, dragging her through the dust behind him.

“Maggie!” she called out to the other woman. “Help!”

“Anna!” cried Maggie.

A whir behind her heralded Skippy’s return. She stopped in the middle of the street and waited, listening to the approaching hoverboard, calculating its speed, its distance, all her possible responses, and once again she dodged at the last possible instant, only this time she threw out a leg, clipping Skippy across the shins and flinging him from his board. The board continued speeding down the street until it slammed into the side of a building that resembled a giant teapot, at which point its whir ceased and it clattered to the ground. Skippy rolled back and forth in the dust, groaning.

Maggie started to resume her pursuit of Anna, but skidded to a halt when Hairy Harry and the Cardiac Kid stepped into her path. Harry held a switchblade in one hand and a length of chain in the other. The Kid gripped a baseball bat with foot-long spikes driven through the end. They strode toward her, grinning, while behind them Oscar reached the edge of town. A pair of Marauders grabbed Anna and threw her into one of the cages, where she joined half a dozen other frightened young women.

Her eyes never straying from the two swiftly approaching Marauders, Maggie turned her head partway toward the RV, which stood about fifty feet behind her and to her left.

“Adam!” she shouted as loud as she could. “We could use a little help here!”

Immediately the vehicle wobbled, the rear end dipped slightly, and the back door flew open.

The being that emerged from the RV was so tall he had to bend nearly double to get through the doorway, and when he stood up to his full height and looked around for Maggie, the top of his head was nearly parallel with the RV’s roof. But it wasn’t just his height that made both the villagers and the Marauders gawp at him in awe and terror. His bulk was equally great: His broad chest strained against his gray cloak, and his fists were the size of hams. His skin was yellow—not the buttery yellow of the Grottle’s, but the dirty yellow of old parchment. A pair of watery, jaundiced eyes glistened in the midst of a face almost as wrinkled as a mummy’s. His narrow black lips were squeezed into a thin line. His hair was long and black and tied back with an incongruously dainty blue ribbon.

Most of the villagers saw only another monster, no different from the Grottle. A more well-read few recognized this being, and their terror was worse, for this was none other than Frankenstein’s Monster, the infamous creature cobbled together from bits of corpses and brought to life to wreak havoc on the innocent.

The Monster—Adam—looked around in search of Maggie, eyes skimming quickly over the horrified villagers as if he were inured to such reactions. When he spotted her, he stormed forward.

Seeing him as the primary threat, Hairy Harry and the Kid swerved past Maggie and ran to confront him. Once they had passed, Maggie squatted down and whipped a dagger from a sheath strapped to her calf. She charged after the duo.

“Look out, guys! Behind you!” It was Skippy. He had risen to his knees and was pointing a finger at Maggie as she closed in on them.

The Kid spun around, swinging his bat. Maggie barely leapt back in time. As it was, she felt the breeze of the bat’s passage on her face.

Meanwhile Hairy Harry confronted Adam. With a fierce cry, he thrust his knife at Adam’s stomach. Dodging back, Adam slapped Hairy Harry’s hand so hard it not only broke the biker’s wrist but sent the back of his hand smacking against his forearm. The knife clattered away.

Hairy Harry gaped at his ruined hand a moment. Then, snarling with rage and pain, he swung the chain at Adam. Before it could travel far, Adam’s fist shot out and smashed into Harry’s throat, collapsing his windpipe and fracturing two vertebrae.

Adam stepped over Hairy Harry’s dying, twitching body and stalked toward the Kid. The Kid glanced back over his shoulder, saw Adam approaching, and mumbled, “Fuckin’ Modell.”

The Kid lunged forward as if to attack Maggie. The moment she backed away, he spun around and swung the bat at Adam. With no time for finesse, Adam raised his left arm into the bat’s path, letting the spikes punch into the thick meat of his forearm. He swept his arm to the side, wrenching the bat from the Kid’s grasp, then sent his right fist hurtling into the Kid’s face.

The Browns helmet and the skull beneath it shattered like china under a steamroller. The Kid’s lifeless corpse sank to the dust.

“Decerebrate scum,” Adam said as he wiggled the spike-studded bat out of his forearm. He flung it away with a sneer of distaste.

“Are you all right?” he asked Maggie.

“They got Anna!” She pointed at the cages, which were now nearly full.

With a low growl, Adam charged past Maggie, past the corpses, past the overturned tables and the scattered wares.

Most of the battles and bloodshed in the street had ended, and the majority of the Marauders were now converging on the cages at the edge of town, their job done. One of them saw Adam coming and alerted the others gathered there.

As Adam ran, his growl swelled into a roar. Even though he was still a good four hundred feet away, many of the Marauders unconsciously backed up. Those with more presence of mind locked the cages and drew their weapons.

As Adam passed a blacksmith’s shop, the Grottle burst from the front door and barreled toward Adam, shovel raised. Adam skidded to a halt and crouched down, arms spread, hands open, ready for the impending attack.

The Grottle swung the shovel so hard even Maggie, half a block away, heard the whistle as it streaked through the air straight at Adam’s neck. Adam blocked the shovel, grabbing its handle with one hand, while with the other he punched at the Grottle’s face. The Grottle tilted its head to the side, narrowly avoiding the blow, then tore the shovel from Adam’s grip. Before it could draw the shovel back for another swing, Adam leaped, hoping to knock the Grottle down, but it spun out of Adam’s path with almost balletic grace, and Adam galumphed past, whirling his arms to keep his balance.

By the time he brought himself to a halt and turned around, the Grottle had raised its shovel for a second strike. A hideous grin cracked its yellow face. It clearly hadn’t had this much fun—this much challenge—in a long time.

It swung. Adam dodged, but not fast enough. The shovel sliced into the meat of his left deltoid with a chuck.

Teeth gritted against the pain, Adam took hold of the shovel before the Grottle could yank it away, and tried to pull it from the Grottle’s grasp.

He almost succeeded. The wooden handle slid several inches through the Grottle’s hands. The Grottle’s eyes widened with almost child-like alarm.

Then fury replaced the alarm, and eyes blazing, it threw all its strength into twisting the shovel free. Adam refused to give an inch. Veins bulged in his hands as he held the shovel in place. The Grottle twisted harder, harder.

Adam let go. The sudden lack of resistance sent the Grottle crashing to the ground.

Before Adam could press his advantage, a streak of orange light struck the street in front of him, sending up a shower of dirt and leaving a small scorched hole in the earth.

Adam realized that for the last few seconds the whine of a motor had been steadily approaching above and behind him. Cursing his inattention, he turned.

Flying over the top of the blacksmith’s was the Annihilator, the Marauders’ field leader, a sleek shark-like figure in high-tech battle armor with a jetpack on the back. The armor was silvery gray except for the gauntlets, boots, belt, and some ornamental designs on the helmet and breastplate, all of which were a green so dark it was almost black. The helmet had a pair of tinted shatterproof lenses, a pentagonal speaker/air filter over the mouth and nose, and a disk over each ear with an antenna sprouting from the top. A small laser-blaster extended from the back of the gauntlet on his right wrist, and as he descended toward the street, he carefully aimed it at Adam.

Adam sensed movement to his left. He couldn’t risk turning away from the Annihilator to look, but he knew what it was anyway: The Grottle had regained its feet and was moving in.

The Annihilator fired his blaster just as Adam made a run for the blacksmith’s. More scorched dirt sprayed up.

Adam’s path took him directly under the Annihilator, who was able to get in two more shots before he had to stop firing lest he shoot his own foot. Neither shot hit the target, and by the time the Annihilator had spun around in mid-air, Adam had disappeared into the shop.

The Annihilator landed in the middle of the street, face to the blacksmith’s, then bent forward at the waist until his upper body was parallel with the ground. It was only then that Maggie noticed a trio of slender red rockets protruding from the top of his jetpack.

“No!” she said.

Ignoring her, the Annihilator fired off a rocket. With a mechanical buzz, it streaked straight through the shop’s open doorway, leaving a trail of smoke behind it.

For a moment nothing happened, and Maggie had time to hope that the rocket had been a dud.

The shop exploded. The entire façade split down the center like a double doorway opening, then disintegrated into a rain of glass and wood and nails. The blast shattered the neighboring stores’ windows and made the bell in the bell tower above the town hall give off one dolorous clung.

Maggie stared in horror at the shattered shop. Through the smoke, all she could see were pale flames flickering among vague, shadowy debris.

The Annihilator turned to the Grottle and the handful of Marauders still in the street.

“We’re done here,” the Annihilator said, his voice low and tinny through the helmet’s speaker. “Let’s get moving.”

The Grottle cast a leering grin at the ruins of the blacksmith’s and then trotted toward the cages.

As the Marauders’ caravan thundered away, Anna pressed her face against the bars of the rearmost cage and stretched one arm outside.

“Maggie!” she shouted.

But Maggie could only watch as the Marauders, and Anna, vanished over the brow of a hill.

The moment they were out of sight, she ran toward the wreckage of the shop, but stopped when Adam raced out of a nearby alley, his cloak streaked with dirt and soot.

Maggie threw her arms around him.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “I thought you were still in there when that man blew it up.”

“Actually, I was. I had made it to the shop’s rear exit and was about to step through the doorway when everything went white around me. The explosion propelled me through the doorway, and I slammed into the back of the building across the alley behind the blacksmith’s. It took me a minute to regain my wits.” He glared in the direction the Marauders had departed. “A minute too long.”

By now the braver residents of Sweetwater had begun slinking from their hiding places—some to eye the monster, others to gather their spilled wares, still others to mourn their dead.

The door of the sheriff’s office flew open and a short man with a great round belly and a shaggy handlebar mustache tromped out. A silver badge gleamed upon his black vest. A revolver hung in a holster at his side.

He started to approach Adam and Maggie with the stern and implacable air of a cop, but as he got closer and Adam’s features grew clearer, his steps slowed and his eyes widened with dismay. He stopped about ten feet away and swallowed hard.

“You, sir,” he said to Adam. “What, uh, what are your intentions here in Sweetwater?” The sweat cascading down his face suggested that he thought Adam’s intentions were to pound law enforcement officers into greasy red pulp.

“My intentions had been to simply lie low in my wagon while my friends purchased certain items we required and then go on my way. Now, however, I must find a way to rescue one of those friends, since it appears that the job of sheriff in these lands does not involve protecting the lives and livelihoods of his charges—even when he is one of the fortunate few to carry a gun in these desperate times.”

Despite his fear, the sheriff scowled. “Now see here, if I’d of come out while those guys were attacking, they would’ve killed me quicker’n you can say ‘Pepperoni’! And I can’t very well protect the citizens if I’m dead, now can I?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Your logic is impeccable. Now tell me who those men are and where they are taking Anna.”

Before the sheriff could answer, a middle-aged woman who stood four-foot-ten and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds came running down the street toward them.

“They took my baby!” she cried. “My Nala!”

The sheriff turned to her, grimacing as if he had been punched in the gut. “They took Nala?”

“They took most of the young women,” said a skinny bespectacled man as he strolled up to join the group. “Nala, Deirdre, Hari. And they killed about two dozen men.” The man gave Adam and Maggie a nervous glance. “I’m Gus Firth, the, um…well, I guess I’m the mayor now.”

“What?” the sheriff said. “What happened to Mayor Depuesto?”

Firth jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a body halfway down the street. “He’s there. At least part of him is. We still don’t know where his head ended up.”

“Forget about that!” the woman said. “What are you going to do about Nala and the other girls?”

“Calm down, Rin,” the sheriff told her.

“This is all very tragic,” said Adam, “but I need to know where these men are heading so I can begin my pursuit.”

Rin looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, hope shining through her tears. “You’re going to get our girls back? Really?”

The sheriff now stared at Adam with surprise. “You are?”

Adam shook his head. “I never—”

“Of course he will,” Maggie interjected with a sweet smile. She turned to Adam. “Won’t you?” The raise of her eyebrows and the precise enunciation of each word told Adam that if he said “no,” he would be in for a very unpleasant future.

Adam looked at her in bewilderment. “I…suppose so.”

“Oh, thank you!” Rin threw her arms around Adam and sobbed with relief onto his belly.

“Rin!” said the sheriff. “How can you trust him? I mean, just look at him! He looks more like one of them than one of us.”

Rin broke away from Adam’s cloak and glared the sheriff. “He’s doing more than you ever did, Osquin O’Toole!”

“But…but look at him. We can’t trust his kind. After all our problems with the orcs…”

“I am no orc, or friend of orcs,” said Adam.

“Yeah, well, that don’t mean much,” the sheriff said. “Way I hear it, those bastards’ll eat their own kind if they get the chance.”

“I can assure you I have never eaten my own kind. Nor could I, for there are no others like me in all the world. Now for the final time, who are these men, and where are they are going? If we hurry, we might be able to catch up with them before they travel too far.”

“And how do you propose to do that, exactly?” the sheriff said with a knowing, almost smug smile.

“We have an old vehicle with horses…” He trailed off, only now noticing that at some point during the battle one of the Marauders had cut the horses loose from the RV and taken off with them. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the way people do when they’re trying hard to keep their temper in check. “I do not suppose you have any horses or mules we could use?”

“The Marauders took the only horses we had,” Firth said. “And as for mules, well, a few people have mules, but there’s no way they’ll just give ‘em away. You’ll have to either trade or buy. And it won’t be cheap.”

“I see. And what of the Marauders? How do I find them?”

Firth shrugged. “No one knows exactly where their base is except that it’s at least a few days’ journey west, in the least populated and most dangerous part of Erizan.”

“Erizan, then, is the name of this land?” said Adam.

Firth eyed him with fascination. “How far have you traveled?”

Adam glanced at Maggie, clearly at a loss.

“We’ve been traveling for three months now,” she said. “We must have covered at least three hundred miles.”

Firth whistled. “Which way’ve you been traveling?”

“West. Due west.”

He nodded. “Well, if you want the Marauders, you can just keep heading that way. But west’s bad. Real bad. No one heads west. Heck, when we were having all the trouble with the orcs a few years back, even the orcs wouldn’t go into the west country. It’s—” He shook his head. “Sometimes folks head that way, and none of them ever come back. The Marauders’re the only ones crazy enough to live there.”

“What is there that is so terrible?”

“Dunno. Like I said, no one who heads that way ever comes back to tell about it. But you gotta figure, since hardly anyone lives or travels that way, the monsters’ve gotta be thicker than weeds. And I don’t know what it was like where you come from, but the monsters we’ve had around here make the Marauders look like kittens. We’ve had spiders as big as horses. We’ve had black rubbery flying things that ate people—someone named ‘em ‘night gaunts’ and the name kinda fits. We had a little flying metal ball that shot death rays. Heck, we even had a friggin’ dinosaur.”

“Stegosaurus,” said Rin. “It—” Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Oh! The robot!”

“What?” Maggie said. “What robot?”

Rin grabbed the sheriff’s shoulder, her face beaming with excitement. “The robot said it came from the west.”

“What are you talking about?” Adam said.

The sheriff snorted and said, “A week ago this damnable robot showed up in town and started annoying everyone with all this babble about somethin’ called ‘sicko analysis.’ It wasn’t hurtin’ anyone and didn’t seem like it would, so we let it stay. Which might’ve been a mistake. There’re times I’d love to smash the gabby little bastard to pieces.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rin said. “I think he’s rather charming. But the thing is, he passed through the west country on his way here, so he knows the terrain. He might even know where the Marauders live.”

“Where is this robot now?” Adam asked.

Rin looked around the square and up and down the streets leading off it.

“I saw him talking to some folks a few minutes before the Marauders attacked,” she said. “I hope he hasn’t been killed. I’ll hunt around for him, and if I find him, I’ll point him your way. He’ll be only too happy to help. He always is.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said. “We would appreciate that.”

The sheriff smiled. “So would I. That way the stupid pile of junk can go annoy someone else for a while.”

2

An hour later Adam and Maggie sat in the back of the RV with the back door open. The street had already been cleared of bodies and debris, though dark red patches in the dust attested to the afternoon’s battle. The citizens of Sweetwater kept looking into the RV as they passed by, which Adam found annoying. But Maggie insisted they keep it open “to air things out.”

Adam had stripped to the waist so Maggie could clean and treat his wound with the items from the doctor’s bag, which she had retrieved from the street after their talk with Mayor Firth, Sheriff O’Toole, and Rin. It was a miracle no one had made off it with it in all the chaos.

“It’s quite fortunate we acquired this when we did,” she said as she worked on punching a needle through his unnaturally tough, thick skin to sew up the gash in his shoulder.

“Mm-hmm,” said Adam as yet another cluster of women passed the back of the RV, openly staring at him as they went. He seemed to shrink in upon himself every time this happened, clearly embarrassed about letting people see his naked torso, which was broad, wrinkled, and yellow, but not, contrary to popular impression, covered in scars. Dr. Frankenstein’s genius had made scars and stitches unnecessary.

“You hardly need to do this, as you well know,” he said. “My body heals much faster than a normal man’s. The wound would have healed on its own within a day or two.”

“This will help you heal faster. Besides, we can’t have you bleeding all over yourself, now can we? It’s unsightly.”

“I am unsightly already,” he murmured, watching a little girl peep around the open doorway with eyes as large as dragon eggs. When she saw that he had seen her, she squealed and ducked out of sight. Adam sighed. “Why you insist on displaying my ghastly form for all the town to see is beyond my comprehension. Have you taken it upon yourself to invent new nightmares for the children?”

Without looking up from her work, she said, “People need to see that you are not the monster they fear you are.”

He turned his head and looked at her. “What?”

“If they see you receiving the same sort of medical care all men must get, if they see you doing normal things, they will think of you more as a man.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Your attempt at rehabilitating my image is touching but doomed to failure. The merest glimpse of my face is enough to set babes howling in terror and make men reach for their swords. I look like no man alive.”

“And the world as it is now looks like no world ever seen before, yet people are learning to accept it as well as they can. They can accept you, too, if you try. If you want them to.”

“Why do you waste your time in such a way?”

She stopped sewing and gave him a stern, level, I’m-only-going-to-say-this-once kind of look. “After the Cataclysm we spent over a decade hiding in that manor because you believed mankind was better off without you. And Anna and I went along with that even though we believed it to be a mistake.”

“A mistake? I—”

She shushed him. “So we played the game your way for a while. But now that we have been forced from our home and you walk among mankind once again, we will try a different approach.”

“Like what? Parading me naked among the masses?”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. Let me ask you one thing: Are you a monster?”

“So the world has named me, so must I—”

“I am not talking about the world. I am talking about you. Do you think you are a monster? Because I do not.”

He was silent for a moment. Maggie waited.

“I—” He faltered, started again. “I believe I understand your point. But things are hardly so simple. It is hard not to feel monstrous when everyone treats you like a monster.”

“Then you must prove to them that they are wrong.”

“I think I see now why you volunteered me to rescue those other abducted women: You hope that by good deeds I will be accepted into the fraternity of man.”

“Somebody has to rescue those women and stop the Marauders from abducting more of them. It is clear that few around here have the means or courage to do so.”

He snorted. “I fail to see why it should be my concern. I care only about rescuing Anna. Those other women would undoubtedly spit upon me under any other circumstances, so why should I concern myself with their welfare?”

Maggie didn’t reply. She only stared at him with sorrow as he watched the passing villagers. Then she shook her head and resumed sewing.

“This is taking too long,” he said. “Every minute we waste here is another minute between us and the Marauders. Why you insist on sewing my wound is unfathomable. She is your sister, for goodness’ sake. Aren’t you worried about her?”

She glared at him. “Of course I am worried. But we are in no condition to go after them right now. We have no provisions yet, no mules. And you still need to recover from the battle earlier. You are injured and weak and tired, even if you refuse to admit it. It is better to rest and gather our resources and energy for now and begin the hunt tomorrow.”

“Perhaps you are right. I—”

“Excuse me,” said a deep, refined voice from the doorway at the back of the RV. “I was told that you require my assistance.”

It was a humanoid robot with a gunmetal-gray casing and a flexible platinum-white substance serving as its joints. Its eyes were concave circles lit from behind with orange light, its nose a simple wedge-like projection, and its mouth a small rectangular silver grating. A trio of horizontal slits on either side of its head parallel to its eyes seemed to serve as ears or vents or both. As it moved, faint whirs were audible beneath its casing.

“Are you the robot who passed through the lands west of here?” Maggie asked.

“I am indeed,” the robot said. “Miss Rin informed me of your plans, and I will be happy to serve you in any way I can.”

“Do you know where the Marauders’ base is?” Adam asked.

“No, I do not. I do, however, recall passing through an area about thirty miles due west that showed signs of nearby habitation and the frequent passage of many horses. Perhaps that—”

“That must be it! How do we get there?”

“A simple description would not suffice. The terrain to the west is quite confounding in many places. It would be best if I guide you. I may be of aid in other ways, as well. Like all robots where I am from, I am programmed to protect human life at all costs. Thus, if there is trouble, I shall provide a first line of defense.”

Adam shook his head. “I doubt you shall be of much help in that regard; we are more than capable of protecting ourselves. But as a guide, your help would be invaluable.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I wonder, though: If the westlands are as dangerous and full of monsters as we have been told, how is it that you were able to pass through unharmed?”

“I imagine it is because I carry no valuables and am completely inedible.”

Adam grunted. It made sense. He looked at Maggie. “What do you think?”

She nodded. “I think we should bring him with us.”

“I agree.”

“Excellent!” the robot said. It paused, then turned its orange eyes upon Adam. “Forgive me if this is an impertinent question, but are you in fact the so-called monster created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein?”

“Why do you ask?” Adam said, though he was pretty sure he knew. He had been through this several times since the Cataclysm.

“Again, forgive any possible impertinence, but according to the Encyclopedia Galactica in my internal database, you are in fact a fictional character.”

“You are not the first to believe so, but I can assure you, master robot, that I am indeed flesh and blood and as real as anything in this madcap world.”

“So my various sensors inform me. But then, since the Cataclysm I have encountered quite a remarkable number of entities that my encyclopedia informs me are fictional, mythical, and/or deceased. I find it most perplexing.”

“As do we,” said Maggie.

“At any rate,” the robot said, “given your story and your unique ‘family’ situation, I believe that psychoanalysis would be of great value to you.”

Adam blinked at him for a moment, then turned to Maggie. “What does ‘psychoanalysis’ mean?”

She shrugged. “I have never heard the term before.”

“Oh, my,” said the robot. “I should have known. The great breakthroughs in psychology occurred long after your time! Well, let me explain, for I believe that knowledge of the psychological sciences will be most interesting and helpful to you, as they are to all men.”

“I am hardly a man,” said Adam.

“And I am a woman,” said Maggie.

“Oh, dear,” said the robot. “I meant ‘men’ in the sense of mankind—”

“That might include my cousin here, but it still precludes myself,” Adam said.

“Hardly. You have a man’s brain, or at least a brain composed of segments of men’s brains, am I not correct?”

“Yes…”

“Then your brain functions along the same paths, and thus you are a suitable candidate for psychoanalysis.”

“Which you still have failed to explain.”

“Because you have not given me the chance. Men who resist psychoanalysis are usually fearful of the results.”

“It is hard to be fearful of something I know nothing about.”

“Ah, but men naturally fear the unknown, as you yourself must understand firsthand.”

For a moment Adam said nothing, his eyes dark with unhappy thoughts. Then he waved a hand for the robot to proceed. “Very well. Explain this…whatever it is.”

“Psychoanalysis is the creation of the great Sigmund Freud, after whom I was named.”

“Your name is Sigmund?” said Maggie.

“Oh, dear. Perhaps I should tell you about myself first. My name is Freud. I am Mechanical Analyst Number One.”

“You mean there are others like you?” said Adam.

“Not exactly like me. Though my eleven ‘brothers’ and I shared the same boot-up date, the same basic morphology, and the same occupation of instructing and entertaining visitors to the Hall of Psychology on Old Earth, each of us was colored differently and programmed with the complete theories and writings of a different prominent psychologist from the science’s long and storied history. There was myself, Jung, Seldon, Ming, Shandra—”

“Pardon my interruption, but I understand very little of what you are saying. ‘Boot-up’? ‘Programmed’? These terms mean little or nothing to me.”

“I apologize,” Freud said. “I shall endeavor to explain things in a more comprehensible manner.”

“I do not know if I care enough.”

“Let him talk,” Maggie said. “I, for one, am intrigued.”

“Thank you, fair lady,” said Freud, giving her a small stiff bow. “Now then, psychoanalysis is a method of helping an individual come to terms with neurotic problems by examining the contents of their unconscious mind via talk therapy.”

“Unconscious?” said Adam. “You talk to people who are asleep or have been incapacitated?”

“Oh, no. You see, all people have mental processes of which they are unaware. In some cases, alas, these processes are neurotic disorders, often stemming from fixations and traumas in an individual’s childhood.”

“Ha!” said Adam, as if he had just beaten someone at a complex game. “I had no childhood. I was ‘born’ as you see me now. My consciousness developed quickly, and my education unfolded within a matter of months.”

“But it did develop,” Maggie said.

He goggled at her. “Whose side are you on?”

“I am on the side of truth.”

“Hmp.”

“The young lady is correct,” Freud said. “A careful reading of my Encyclopedia Galactica’s rather detailed synopsis of the novel that recounts your history shows that your overall development did indeed proceed in a manner similar to the average man’s, albeit much more rapidly. At first, the world was new and strange to you, and you could not speak, read, or communicate in any meaningful way. You were, in short, in a state similar to infancy. Then, alas, when you sought the love and affection of your creator—your father, if you will—he fled in terror, which is precisely the sort of traumatic event one finds at the root of many neuroses.”

Adam scowled and seemed about to say something, but before he could, Freud went on: “But of course your case also presents several highly unusual features, perhaps the most notable being that while your cognitive functions matured rapidly—thanks no doubt to your having a fully grown brain to begin with—your affects, your emotions, developed more slowly, building up through experience. Accordingly, your actions at that time, violent and abhorrent though they were, are about what one would expect from a small child if that child possessed a body and a ratiocinative faculty like yours.”

“Bah!” Adam waved a hand at Freud as if dismissing him. “This is absurd. It is infantilizing and insulting. Your work is irrelevant to me.”

“I apologize,” said Freud. “I did not mean to upset you.”

“Were you not necessary to the success of our quest, I would be done with you here and now. Now be on your way. Leave us in peace until it is time for our journey to begin.”

“And when will that be, exactly?”

Adam looked uncertainly at Maggie.

“Tomorrow morning,” she told Freud.

“Very well. I shall see you then.” Freud strode away.

Adam watched him go with slitted eyes.

“Now, now,” Maggie said. “We need him to find Anna. We will not regret taking him with us.”

“If he continues to be as annoying as he has been so far, I fail to see how I will do anything but regret it.”

3

After Freud left, Adam and Maggie went in search of a pair of mules. They found only one mule owner in town willing to part with any of his beasts—a decrepit though sly-eyed old man named Thénardier who was completely unphased by Adam’s appearance and refused to trade two mules for anything except an atomic flashlight.

“There’s no way in hell that snotty little halfling’s gonna get one up on me,” he said, shaking a withered fist.

“But we have only a single flashlight left,” Adam said.

Thénardier eyed him without an iota of sympathy. “Do you want the mules or not?”

Adam and Maggie exchanged a glance. They had hoped to keep the flashlight, but right now they needed the mules more.

“Very well,” Adam said with a bitter sigh.

By the time they got back to the RV, night had fallen and the center of town was dark and silent. They tied the mules to the RV’s drawpole and climbed into their beds, where they lay awake for hours, their thoughts returning again and again to Anna’s empty bunk.

4

Shortly after dawn, three loud raps on the RV’s back door jolted them awake. Grumbling, Adam opened the door. Maggie peered around him, squinting sleepily in the bright morning light.

A middle-aged man stood there smiling at them, a gray external-frame backpack on the ground at his feet. He had bright blue eyes and brown hair with white streaks at the temples, and he appeared to be in excellent physical condition: Muscles bulged beneath his safari shirt, and the legs of his faded blue jeans swelled at the quads. The most notable thing about him, though, was a sort of robust cheeriness, which set him apart from the beaten and weary folk of Sweetwater and most everywhere else in these grim days. The smile he beamed at them and the hearty and sincere “Good morning” he addressed to them were artifacts from a distant, nearly forgotten world.

Unfortunately Adam was too tired to reciprocate.

“What do you want at this wretched hour?”

The man smiled quizzically. “It’s already seven o’clock.”

“As I said, a wretched hour.”

The man shrugged. “I’ll make this brief, then. I hear you’re planning to hunt down the Marauders.”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Well, I’ve spent the last six months on their trail myself, and since we’re both after the same goal, I figure it’d make sense if we work together.”

Adam regarded the man with surprise. “Am I to understand that you have been hunting the Marauders alone?”

“Yep. I started out hunting only the Annihilator. He’s a member of my old rogue’s gallery. Now that he’s joined the Marauders, I guess I’ll have to go through them to get to him.” He clapped his hands together with an eager smile. “So, what do you say? You game for a team-up?”

Adam looked dubious.

“It cannot hurt to have another able body,” Maggie said.

“I agree,” said Adam, “but…”

“But what?” asked the man.

“I am not certain that merely ‘able’ is good enough. Battling the Marauders is a job for remarkable individuals. I, for instance, am far stronger and more resilient than any normal man. The robot who is accompanying us is, of course, a robot and thus is not prey to the many vulnerabilities of the flesh. And as for Maggie here, in the last fifteen years she has learned the arts of self-defense and can hold her own against all manner of men and monsters. What of you? I see that you sport the musculature of a strongman and the courage of a lion, but those alone will provide little protection against gigantic shovel-wielding brutes and armored madman with laser blasters.”

The man chuckled. “I appreciate your concern, but there’s more to me than meets the eye. Watch this.”