Perception Fault - James Axler

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a dark shadow obscured the scope’s vision. Thinking the unit had malfunctioned, he started to remove it from his eye, only to have it torn out of his hand to crash into the floor beneath him, the tinkle of broken glass telling him it was now just another piece of junk like everything else around him.

      Instinctively, Ryan scooted down, hunching back into the tunnel. The action saved his life. A dirty, greasy hand slapped down on the tunnel floor right in front of him. The fingers wriggled on the dusty surface, then pulled free with a wet, sucking sound.

      Stickie! Ryan looked up in time to see a hulking form block out the dim starlight. Hoarse breathing echoed in the small corridor, and Ryan caught the fetid scent of rotting meat wafting from the mutie’s gaping maw. With a bestial grunt, the mutie grabbed both sides of the tunnel and began crawling inside, intent on destroying its prey.

      Ryan was about to shove himself down to the other end when the entire tunnel rocked at the bottom. With a sinking feeling, the one-eyed man knew what was at the other end.

      Forcing his right hand down to his hip, Ryan drew the P-226 Sig Sauer and aimed between his spread legs, all too aware of the slavering death only a yard or two away from his head. He fired blindly five times, the muzzle-flash illuminating the face of the stickie at the bottom of the tunnel, each burst of light revealing the destruction wrought upon its face as the 9 mm hollowpoint bullets slammed into it. Only when the last one punched through its eye did it whine shrilly and, expelling a fist-size wad of blood and phlegm, crumple to the floor, effectively blocking his retreat.

      Ryan tried to bring the blaster back up, but found himself wedged in the tunnel, and couldn’t straighten before the top stickie was almost upon him, its gluey hand slapping at his shirt and starting to pull him toward it. Above the pressure of being dragged to his death, the Deathlands warrior felt the sheath of the thin-bladed knife pressing against his neck.

      He pushed at the stickie’s rubbery arm with his left arm as hard as he could, trying to pin it against the tunnel wall, while he dropped his blaster and went for the blade at his neck with his right. As he brought his free hand around, the one-eyed smacked into something wet and slobbering, and he didn’t hesitate. He curled his fingers into a fist and smashed them three times into what could only be the mutie’s face, causing a howl of pain to reverberate through the passageway.

      The mutie pulled back enough for Ryan to free his blade from its sheath and slash up with it. He met resistance and struck again and again, not giving the stickie a chance to recover or launch its own offensive. At one point, he felt the tip of the blade scrape bone, and felt warm, thin fluid run down his hand. The stickie screamed in pain and thrashed around in the passageway, bucking back and forth against the walls. Squealing in pain and surprise, the mutie retreated back up the tunnel.

      When it was halfway out, it jerked in surprise, then slumped limply in the opening as the boom of the sniper’s longblaster echoed off the walls. The stickie flailed feebly, then stiffened as its head seemed to explode, showering Ryan with gore from its shattered skull. The mutie’s corpse sagged toward the floor of the tunnel, held up by the sucker pads of one of its fingers, still adhered to the wall.

      Ryan wiped foul-smelling gore from his face and eyes and considered his current predicament. The big question now was, why didn’t the sniper shoot the stickie when it was trying to climb in and tear Ryan’s face off? But there was no time to ponder an answer. The stench of dead mutie, combined with burned cordite, was overpowering, and Ryan began to cough and choke as he slid to the bottom of the tunnel to retrieve his blaster—after first making sure the bottom stickie was dead by kicking it in the head several times. Only when he was sure did he crouch to feel for his Sig Sauer, finally retrieving it from the mush that had been the mutie’s head and wiping off the gunk as best as he could. Then he tried shifting the body out of the tunnel, but even heaving at it with all his strength didn’t budge it—the corpse was wedged fast.

      Breathing through his mouth, Ryan knew there was only one way out. Panting with each movement, he began the laborious climb back up, the tunnel floor now slick with the stinking liquid dripping on him from the corpse above. At last he reached the sodden form and wedged his legs up into the tunnel to give himself a bit of a rest while he figured out the best way to escape the trap he found himself in.

      Over, under, around or through, he thought, remembering one of the Trader’s favorite axioms. With the other three options unavailable to him, there was only straight through, up and out, hoping the distraction of the stickie’s suddenly animated body would be enough to cover his scramble to shelter.

      The preparation for his escape attempt was almost overwhelming by itself. Ryan forced himself to get as close to the dead body as he could stand, after first confirming its deceased state by the simple expedient of putting a bullet in its brain. While there, he noticed something that made him pause. Stickies usually didn’t wear much clothing, maybe a tattered pair of pants, if anything, but this one had a black nylon collar with a small box around its neck. He reminded himself to check it out if possible once he was out of this stifling, would-be tomb.

      When he was wedged uncomfortably close, he heaved at the sticky, flabby body with all his strength, shoving it up and back until gravity took over, and the dead stickie slithered out of the opening to the ground below. Gagging on the stink, Ryan scrambled out as quickly as he could, diving to the ground and landing on the corpse, which expelled a loud, rank blast of stale air. He heard a crack over his head, followed immediately by the sting of concrete chips flying at his head, then the boom of the longblaster’s report all around him.

      Ryan was already moving, crawling over the debris to the nearest cover, a pile of concrete pieces that might have been a sidewalk a century ago. He’d just reached cover when the ground near his left arm puffed up dust, and the crack of the large-bore rifle exploded in the distance again.

      “This is gettin’ bastard old,” Ryan muttered. Going back wasn’t an option. As long that that keen-eyed coldheart held the high ground, they couldn’t leave the area without someone taking a bullet or two.

      The nearest cover was a copse of stunted trees, their thin trunks intertwined into a gnarled knot of wood that sprouted sickly branches reaching up to the sky. It was only a couple of feet wide, but it had to serve as shelter until Ryan could get to the half-standing house on the other side of it. Selecting a suitably large chunk of concrete, he tossed it to the left, then rolled right as fast as he could.

      The shooter was no slouch. Ryan had just stopped behind the tree when he felt something tug at his boot, and heard the thunder of the longblaster’s report again. Unslinging his own weapon, he felt the bottom of his combat boot and discovered the heel had been shot away.

      “Bastard.” Ryan slowly rose to a crouch, about to experiment with pushing the barrel through the tangled tree to see if he could draw a bead on his opponent, but a sudden explosion of wood above his head made him hit the dirt again. Looking up, he saw a fist-size hole in the profusion of tree trunks and immediately took off again, crawling like a snake through the rough terrain to the wall of the house.

      Steyr clutched to his chest, Ryan circled around the house’s right side, senses alert for signs of men, stickies or anything else that might try to kill him. The decaying landscape around him was eerily silent, considering all the recent activity, and the one-eyed man’s shoulder blades itched, as if in anticipation of a bullet drilling between them. Shaking off the ominous feeling, he kept moving, drawing closer to the building where the sniper was holed up.

      Stalking closer, he rounded a corner and ran smack into a pair of men coming the other way. The surprise was equal on both sides, but Ryan reacted faster, swinging his SSG’s stock into the first man’s jaw, slamming him into the wall and then to the ground, out cold. The second man was just bringing his rusty revolver up when Ryan jabbed the butt of the longblaster into the man’s forehead, breaking the skin and sending him staggering backward, the blaster flying from his hand. Ryan followed right after him, but he didn’t need to hit him again. When the man landed on the rocky ground, the snap of his broken neck was plainly audible to the one-eyed man. Nudging the now-limp body aside with his boot, he saw the sharp edge of the rock the guy had landed on.

      Straightening, he scanned the

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