Planet Hate. James Axler

saw the flickering lights of the interphaser as it tried to lock on to the parallax point. Come on, good buddy, he thought, let’s make us a door out of here, already.

       Then the robed figure’s hands clamped around Grant’s throat, exerting tremendous pressure as he attempted to snap the ex-Mag’s neck.

      KANE FOUND HIMSELF struggling under the pressure of the mob, a heavy man clinging to his back and weighing him down. It reminded him of the worst moments of the obligatory Pit patrol, back in his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate. Each time he shoved one person aside, another rushed to take his place, kicking and clawing at him—ineffective against his shadow suit but still enough to wear him down so he couldn’t get back to the interphaser. With one determined shove, Kane wrenched the man from his back, tossing him over one shoulder in an urgent flexing of muscles. The heavyset man rolled away across the ground, tumbling over and over until he splashed into the shallow stream.

       Before Kane could extricate himself from the angry mob, he felt someone clutch at his Sin Eater, a pair of hands yanking at his right arm. He pulled his hand free, then swung the blaster around to shoot his attacker. Kane’s finger depressed the guardless trigger, but he whipped the pistol aside with just a fraction of an inch to spare. His attacker—attackers, in fact—were two children, a blond-haired boy and his sister, the elder of them perhaps eight years old.

       Kane’s bullets went wide, blasting harmlessly into the sky as he cursed under his breath. Bad enough that the adults had become indoctrinated into this cult of stone worship, but Kane wouldn’t forgive himself if he went and shot an indoctrinated child.

       With the echo of his wasted shots still fresh in his ears, Kane crashed forward as someone tackled him from behind, sacking him like a quarterback. Again Kane hadn’t noticed the attacker coming at him from his left; he had somehow been blindsided. Kane flailed for several steps before slamming into the ground with bone-shaking force. And suddenly he was breathing nothing but water, the clear stream washing into his mouth and nose. Kane choked as someone slammed him with a savage punch to the back of his head.

       Just a few steps away, Rosalia spun on her heel as a young woman came at her, slashing something at her face. It was the same woman whom Grant had noticed on their walk through the village, thirty-something years old with a weather tan to her features. Rosalia dipped out of reach as the woman slashed at her, recognizing the nine-inch knitting needles in the woman’s hands.

       Off to Rosalia’s left side, a man was rushing at her with a cosh in his hand, raising it overhead to bring down on her head. There was a blur of motion, and something leaped at the man. When Rosalia looked again she saw her faithful dog had clamped its jaws around the man’s arm, wrenching him around and around as it snarled angrily.

       Rosalia ducked again as the woman with the knitting needles whipped one of them at her face. Then Rosalia’s left leg stretched out and whipped back in a blur, catching the other woman’s ankle and tripping her off balance. The woman cried out as she slammed against the ground, but Rosalia was already moving, turning back toward the alleyway beside the silo.

       “Come on, you slow poke,” she snapped at her dog as she rushed toward where Grant had set up the interphaser. “¡Vamanos!”

       As she ran down the alleyway with her scruffy- looking dog at her heels, Rosalia saw Grant struggling beneath the pressure that the robed figure was exerting on his throat. Grant was urgently raising the Copperhead, but he was unable to bring it around enough.

       In a blur of movement Rosalia brought the fingers of her left hand up to her lips and blew, unleashing a piercing whistle that caused her dog to whine even as she drew her right arm behind her in a graceful arc.

       The robed figure turned at the noise, and Rosalia saw his lips were pulled back in an animal snarl. The knife shot from Rosalia’s right hand like a dart, cutting through the air and embedding itself beneath the robed figure’s hood. The robed man cried out in a splutter of pain, falling away from Grant as he reached for the thing embedded in his face.

       As his assailant’s hood fell back, Grant saw that Rosalia’s knife had pierced his left eyeball, burying its point there to an inch or more of its shining length. “Nice aim,” Grant acknowledged as he rolled out from under the hooded man.

       “There’s always a chink in an opponent’s armor,” Rosalia said, “if you know where to look.”

       Kane had done something similar to this before, using the piercing noise of a warning alarm to break the concentration of these so-called firewalkers. For a moment, the sound had caused the faux-Magistrate to lose his stonelike powers.

       The hooded figure was screaming in agony now, his meditative calm already a distant memory. Grant knew that if these firewalkers lost their concentration, even for just a second, they became vulnerable. With a wrench of his mighty arm muscles, Grant hefted the robed figure aside, plucking him from the ground like a toddler before whirling him around and finally slamming him into the solid wall of the silo before letting go. The figure sagged down the wall, head swaying in semiconsciousness. Grant glanced at the figure for a moment, confirming the thing he already knew: the man had a tiny ridge in the center of his forehead, a puckering of the skin where many religions believed the third eye was located. Beneath that ridge, the ex-Mag knew, lurked a stone, subtly altering the man’s thoughts and granting him his superhuman powers.

       “Where’s Kane?” Grant snapped, his eyes scanning the crowd massing at the end of the alleyway. Two sturdy young men rushed down the alley, farming tools raised in their hands like clubs.

       “You concentrate on getting our gateway open,” Rosalia instructed, dropping low and felling both of the young farmers with a leg sweep. “We’ll get him.”

       With that, Rosalia pointed toward the gap between the buildings, and her mongrel hound scampered ahead to where she indicated. “Get Kane,” she told the dog. “Go find him, boy.” The dog yipped excitedly as it rushed back down the alley.

       Though it seemed to spend most of its time in a dreamworld, the dog was able to follow commands without any encouragement. Rosalia suspected that the dog had previously been owned by a now dead dirt farmer out in the Mojave Desert, but beyond that she knew little about it.

       As the dog wended through the legs of another of the farmers, Rosalia’s second knife blade glinted and she leaped from the alley with all the fury of a wildcat.

      KANE KICKED and struggled as his own opponent shoved his face down into the silt at the bottom of the shallow stream. Though the water barely came over the back of his head, Kane was reminded of that adage that a man could drown in an inch of water—curse it all, if it wasn’t just the kind of random fact that Brigid Baptiste would have spouted by way of reassurance as Kane struggled for his very life. His eyes were wide open and he saw the big bloated bubbles pass by his face as another blurt of breath was forced from his aching lungs. He renewed his struggles, trying desperately to flip his attacker from him as the man held his head under the water with a viselike grip.

       As Kane struggled, the Sin Eater in his right hand kicked as a random shot blasted from the barrel. Through wide eyes, Kane watched as the bullet cut through the water beneath the surface of the little stream, burying itself in the far bank with a puff of silty debris. I need air, dammit, and I need it now.

       Then the weight on Kane’s back became heavier for a moment, and rather than freeing himself he was forced farther into the water, his chin scratching against the tiny flecks of stone at the bottom of the stream.

       But almost as soon as it started, it was over, the weight disappearing as the man above him was wrenched aside. Kane pushed himself up, taking an urgent breath as he broke the surface. An instant later something came splashing into the water beside him, and Kane saw a dull-faced man rolling over in the silt, red trails of blood immediately clouding the water around his throat.

       Kane turned and was shocked to find himself face-to-face with Rosalia’s mongrel dog. The mutt had blood on its teeth as it pulled its lips back in a wolfish snarl.

       “Good boy,” Kane reassured the dog, realizing it had been his savior.