Playfair's Axiom. James Axler

watched wide-eyed as a chicken-size screamwing sank its talons into the blond dreadlocked sides of a goggled scavvie’s head so deeply that blood spurted. The screamwing struck like a snake at his face with its toothed beak. The goggles protected the man’s eyes—until the ravening flying mutie ripped them off and tossed them away with a screech of triumph.

      And then the man cried out much louder than the mutant bird.

      A flock of the winged horrors had descended as if from the churning orange-and-yellow clouds. After unleashing a few stinging droplets, the clouds had held off spewing lethal acid. But this fall of flesh and feathers and claws wasn’t much improvement.

      For the scavvies, anyway. The monsters seemed attracted by the movement of the attackers charging the ring-shaped ruin. Ryan saw at least a dozen. Some battled as futilely as the blond-dreaded man who was sinking to his knees as the horror clutching his head ate his face. Others ran for all they were worth back the way they had come.

      It usually meant they died tired as well as screaming. No matter how inspired they were to run, the screamwings flew faster.

      And wheeling above, a black crucifix against the mustard clouds, was a shape that seemed as big as a predark light plane.

      Not all the screamwings found prey. Some helped their comrades swarm the scavvies. Others turned their attention toward the defenders in the circular ruin. One uttered a squawk and swooped down from twenty yards up.

      A blast of .33-caliber double-00 balls from J.B.’s shotgun caught it square and ripped it apart in midair.

      The muties turned and flew away. Even the ones sitting and ripping strips of skin and flesh from fallen quarry, some of which still writhed and hollered, snapped open their wings and took off. They flew not in pursuit of the scavvie survivors, now in full retreat, but northwest, toward the top of the tall, dark tower. The ones chasing the scavvies sheered off to join them, uttering hoarse cries.

      “Wow,” Mildred said. “I know I busted that one like a blood piñata. But I never knew screamwings to let a little thing like that discourage them so easy before.”

      “Hey!” Jak called. “Other coldhearts run, too!”

      The words hit Ryan like a fist to the gut. So remarkable, not to mention horrific, had the sudden screamwing attack been that it had all but hypnotized him. He’d stone forgotten they were being hit in a flank attack by what was apparently a second set of enemies.

      His eye caught Krysty’s emerald gaze in passing as they both cranked their heads west. Pink spots glowed on her cheeks. She’d got caught up in their unlikely rescue-by-monster, too. And that kind of thing could get you chilled.

      Ryan looked toward the flattened building and the stadium looming beyond to see a scavvie stagger and slap his hand to his neck. A short thick feathered shaft transfixed the man’s neck right to left. Ryan knew a crossbow quarrel when he saw one.

      The boom of black-powder weapons echoed through the ruins, shot through with the sharp crackle of a full-auto smokeless blaster. Another of the west-side attacker fell. This bunch looked more clean-cut and less grubby than the others. The others turned to race back toward the cover of the collapsed parking structure, some loosing quick shots toward the south, others just beating feet.

      “Uh-oh,” Ryan heard J.B. croak. “We got company.”

      Something buzzed between Ryan and Krysty to strike off the stub wall with a crack and a little spray of concrete grit. Both tracked the crossbow quarrel as it fell to the mounded dust and broken masonry.

      Then both turned as one to look toward the gap in the south portion of the ring that led to the ruined walkway-curved building. A half-dozen men and women stood or knelt there, leveling crossbows and longblasters at them.

      Jak already had his hands hoisted over his head. He was normally as bitter-end a fighter as any of them. But a skinny kid in a T-shirt and shorts had appeared right across the ring-wall from him and held the twin muzzles of a long black-powder scattergun a handspan away from Jak’s pale right ear.

      Ryan glanced at Krysty, who turned to stand by his side. She shrugged.

      “Reckon you got the better of us,” he called.

      “Reckon we do,” said a tall, lanky man with a fair complexion, a sort of narrow carrot head topped by a tangle of ginger hair. He wore loose khaki cargo pants and a green T-shirt, both too new-looking to be anything but salvage recently unwrapped from the original plastic. His voice was soft, and he looked a bit unhealthy to Ryan. But he carried the M-4 as if he knew which end the bullets came out of, and he showed no hesitancy in voice or posture.

      Ryan dropped his panga beside him. “Do what you gotta do.”

      Men armed with crossbows disarmed the companions. Like their leader, they were dressed in crisp predark clothing that mostly fit them. One of the benefits of living in or near a nuked-out city was the ability to reap its bounty.

      One of their captors, a burly young man with brown hair, scraped the housing of the Steyr’s scope against the concrete wall.

      “Careful with that, son,” Ryan rasped. “That’s delicate precision optics you’re dealin’ with, there.”

      “Show some respect, Lonny,” the man with the M-4 said long-sufferingly.

      “Aw, Tully,” Lonny said. “They’re just coldhearts.”

      “They were fighting coldhearts,” Tully said. “So do we. That don’t make us coldhearts.”

      “Indeed,” Doc said. “So why not leave us our weapons and gear and let us go our merry way? We will not cause you a bit of fuss.”

      “Remains to be seen. Now if you like keeping your skins on you better get ready to hustle. Acid rain’s coming. Smells like a bad one.”

      As if in response, raindrops pattered off the top of the wall and dug little craters in the gray dust. Ryan felt his facial muscles wince tightly in anticipation of the pain of an acid strike on exposed skin. But the drops that struck the hands held over his head and his cheek were just normal rain. Fat and somewhat greasy, but not corrosive.

      Not yet. This was merely a little harmless foreplay.

      “What about J.B.?” Mildred demanded. “We’ve got a wounded man. You don’t propose we just leave him here to die?”

      “No,” Tully said. “But if he can’t walk you’ll have to carry him. Now get moving, or we’ll leave you all to sizzle!”

      “But he needs a stretcher!”

      “Woman, do we look like we’re carrying a stretcher with us? Pick him up and carry him, or leave him, but get moving right now.”

      “Easy, lover,” Krysty murmured. “He’s right.”

      “Yeah.” Ryan forced himself to unwind a notch as he unlinked his hands atop his head. When no one shouted or shot at him he hunkered down and grabbed J.B. by the shoulders. “Being ordered around by strangers goes straight up my back.”

      Krysty moved to Ryan’s side to help. He didn’t worry about her carrying her share of the load. She was a strong woman. He flashed a narrow-eyed look at Mildred.

      “You gonna help or let us drag his feet through the rubble?” he asked.

      Tears ran down Mildred’s cheeks. “It might kill him, just carrying him like this for any distance!”

      “You think the acid won’t? Jak, help her get his legs. Hang on, J.B. This is gonna hurt.”

      “Don’t be a stupe,” J.B. croaked. “Just leave me.” His eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out again.

      “Not gonna happen,” Ryan said. “Nobody gets left behind.”

      Shooting a final ruby glare at the captors to either side of him, Jak moved toward the wounded Armorer. Doc moved forward.

      “Allow