"Time to move," Ryan whispered, taking a slow, careful look all around him and seeing nobody. At that moment it struck him that he hadn't seen a single living creature since leaving the mansion. Not a bird nor an animal — nothing but the ragged old woman who had led them here.

He braced himself as he moved away from the tar-painted wooden wall and kicked in at the flimsy door, ripping it off its single hinge. Almost simultaneously he heard a crash as the albino boy burst through the front.

The hut was less than twelve feet square, and nobody was in there.

He faced Jak, eyeball to eyeball, across the stinking squalor of the cabin. They were joined a brace of heartbeats later by J.B.

"Nobody?" the Armorer asked, immediately answering his own question. "No. Nobody."

"Got to be someone close by," Ryan said, pointing at the open hearth where a haunch of meat, vaguely resembling venison, was cooking on a spit. The outside of the meat was already blackened and scorched in a couple of places.

On the corner of the fire was a trivet that held a filthy and chipped enamel pot containing a mix of bubbling vegetables. Ryan licked his lips at the delicious odor that filled the hut.

"One bed."

"Big enough for two," Ryan amended.

"Two plates on table," Jak agreed. "Two spoons. Two mugs."

"One corpse," J.B. added.

The recce took only a couple of minutes.

Jak remained by the front door, watching for anyone coming along the same trail that had brought them to the hut. Ryan went one way and J.B. the other, checking the shed and the outhouse. The latter was empty. The former was packed with bales of furs, some of them already sewn into crude coats, cloaks and hats. The shed also contained a large smoked ham and some dried fish. A well at the rear of the property provided sweet water, achingly cold.

"Gotta be someone else around," Ryan said.

"Wind's shifted dry, loose snow. Covered any tracks out the rear." J.B. sighed. "Reckon we should eat what we can, then load up food, furs and water and head back to the others."

"Good sense. I'll watch. You two eat what you can get down. I'll eat, and you can guard and start pulling some furs together."

"Iron-runnered sledge behind the crapper," J.B. suggested.

"Easy for three of us. Carry more that way."

Ryan wished that Krysty had been with them. Apart from her strength and support, the mutie side of her genetic makeup would have been invaluable. She could "see." Not the way a doomie could make out the grim elements of the future, but she could often feel if there was an imminent threat of danger, even confirm that a place was deserted. It would be helpful to know the location of the person who used the second spoon and plate.

"Don't like it," Ryan muttered, rubbing the back of his hand across his stubbled chin. He looked around the room. "Hairs at the nape of my neck are prickling. It's close. Man or woman. It's real close."

Jak, moving as light as quicksilver, darted from window to window, rubbing at the cobweb-covered glass and peering out. "Nothing."

Ryan moved to the front door. "I'll go and keep looking around. You two get into that meat. And leave some for me." His hand was on the carved wooden latch. "And I'll..."

He didn't get to finish the sentence.

The door burst open, sending him tumbling across the room, knocking the legs from under J.B. and pushing Jak off balance. A shaft of light pierced the gloom as the door flew off its hinges, but the pale rectangle was swiftly blotted out.

"Fireblast!" Ryan shouted, fighting for breath.

"Dark night!" J.B. exclaimed.

"Bastard!" Jak yelled, voice cracking with shock.

One of the longest-lasting by-products of the destruction of ninety-five percent of all humanity was the endless chain of genetic mutations that resulted from the poisonous rad clouds that drifted clear around the globe. This was made infinitely worse by the inbreeding that followed in the myriad small villes and hamlets that survived: cousin lay with cousin, brother made love to sister, father to daughter and mother to son. And the spawn of these blasphemous couplings carried the taint on and on for every succeeding generation, on down the line. The curse lingered, like the malevolent smile of a habitual poisoner.

And muties came in all shapes and sizes.

What came in through the door was either a Russian version of a Rockies grizzly bear, or the biggest mutie that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

The man — this time there was no possibility of any mistake — stood at least eight feet tall. He'd stooped to enter the hut, and his head now scraped the rafters. Since he was wearing layers of fur, it was difficult to judge his weight, but Ryan's instinctive guess put the mutie at around seven hundred pounds.

His face showed all the intelligence of a fencepost and all the friendliness of a cornered rattlesnake: his eyes were like tiny chips of malachite, scarcely visible behind the rolls of puffy fat that swelled from his cheeks; his nose was a raw hole in the center of his face, edged with dribbling candles of green snot; his ears, under the fringe of straggly blond hair, were mutilated lumps of red gristle.

The man bared his teeth, his cracked lips surrounded by a downy mustache and beard. His huge hands flexed angrily, reaching toward the three invaders of his squalid demesne. He roared, the sound accompanied by billowing waves of stinking breath that made Ryan wince.

The cramped cabin wasn't the best place in the world for hand-to-hand combat with someone of that size.

"Mine!" Jak shrilled, recovering his balance and diving at the human monolith. He aimed a lethal kick at the giant's right knee.

The mutie never moved. Feet planted wide apart, he swatted the boy away from him as if he were merely an importunate gnat.

His hair like an explosion of frost around his face, Jak bounced off two walls, hitting a table on the way down. He landed near the fire and lay still, eyes closed.

"Fuck this," Ryan snarled, drawing his 9 mm pistol.

The mutie peered down at the neat blaster, threw his head back and bellowed with laughter. Used only to work-worn single-shot muskets, the giant was telling Ryan he thought he was holding a toy.

Ryan squeezed the trigger on the P-226.

The built-in baffle silencer did its stuff. There was a sound like a nun coughing discreetly during Compline, and a thin trace of smoke trickled from the end of the barrel.

Ryan had used the gun quite a few times and was used to seeing men go down when they were hit. For a mind-toppling few seconds he actually thought that the automatic must have misfired. He knew there was no way on the good earth that he could have missed the mutie at such close range. It would have been like missing a barn wall when you were shooting from the inside.

The Russian didn't even rock on his heels. He stopped his shout of rage and looked at Ryan with a puzzled expression. Slowly his right hand reached out and he touched himself in the lower part of his chest, where Ryan had aimed. In the gloom of the hovel it was impossible to make out any sign of the bullet's entry on his matted fur coat.

"Again," J.B. urged, his own blaster also drawn.

"Yeah." Ryan felt the first tremor of unease. The Deathlands was full of stories of muties, always someplace over the next hill, who were invulnerable. It was hard enough to waste a stickie, but a good head shot would send them off on the next ferry.

He got off two more rounds, feeling the satisfying kick of the pistol against his braced wrist.

The huge figure took a half step backward, into the doorway. He clutched his chest, this time his hand coming away smeared with bright blood.