Denver Run

by David Robbins

  Did anyone live here?

  Somehow, he didn’t think so.

  Curious, Blade advanced toward the house. He skirted to the left and found a large concrete porch, riddled with cracks, and a closed door.

  Actually, two doors. A screen door and an inner wooden door. His right hand on the hilt of his right Bowie, Blade cautiously opened both doors with his left and slid inside, surprised they were unlocked.

  The house was obviously uninhabited. Dust coated everything. There was a long white counter to his right. Suspended above the counter were white cabinets. A large metallic box stood to his left. Blade’s memory stirred. He remembered several of the photographic books in the Family library, and he was able to recognize the room he was in: it was called a kitchen, and the metal box was a refrigerator.

  There was an archway to his left, and a doorway near the refrigerator.

  Why wasn’t anyone living here?

  Blade took a step and froze as something rattled near his feet. He glanced down.

  There was a pile of human bones lying on the floor, coated with dust as was everything else, and partially covered by the faded remnants of a green shirt and a pair of jeans.

  Was this the reason the home was unoccupied?

  Blade peered at the whitish skull. There was a ragged, gaping cavity where the forehead had once been. He knew what could cause such a severe wound: a close-range blast from a shotgun.

  Did the bones belong to the former owner of this house?

  Blade moved to the archway and discovered a living room beyond.

  There was an ancient sofa to the right of the archway. To the left was a wicker chair and a small oaken stand with a white telephone resting upon it. A television with a shattered screen stood on a pedestal to the right of the sofa. Against the far wall was a cabinet containing several stereo components.

  The remains of four more bodies were scattered on the living room carpet, all displaying signs of having died a violent death by gunfire.

  What had transpired here?

  Blade walked toward a doorway on the far side of the living room, reflecting. He was fascinated by the artifacts. So this was how a typical residence had looked before the Big Blast, he thought. Quite comfy, in an ordinary sort of way.

  But why all the bodies?

  Blade stepped to the next doorway and found a bedroom, a smaller room harboring an unmade bed and a vanity, two wooden dressers, and a large maple cabinet. Again, on the opposite side of the room was a doorway, only this time the door was closed.

  Five more skulls leered up from the beige carpet, all of them situated near the closed door.

  One thing was obvious: there had been one hell of a fight in this house.

  But why?

  Blade approached the closed door, his right hand on his Bowie. What was beyond the door? Why had five people perished attempting to get through it?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Blade gripped the doorknob and turned, slowly pulling the door open.

  The hinges creaked as the door swung out.

  More barren bones. Four skulls and a pile of bones and old clothing formed a compact heap just inside the doorway.

  What a struggle this must have been!

  But the paramount question still remained: why?

  Blade entered, then stopped, perplexed.

  This room was the smallest of them all, not much more than 8 feet wide by 20 feet long. Shelves of books lined every wall. There was a large wooden desk in the middle of the room, and on top of the desk was a green typewriter with a sheet of paper under a paper bail.

  This was it?

  This was what 14 people had died for?

  Blade spotted a framed photograph on the wall above the desk. He moved closer. It was a picture of a man, a woman, and their children. The woman was exceptionally attractive, with an open, honest expression. The man bordered on the lean side. He wore a shiny metallic object on his nose, and it took Blade a moment to remember what the object was: a pair of glasses.

  Were these the former owners?

  He glanced at the paper in the typewriter. There was some faint printing on the sheet. He brushed the ominipresent dust aside and leaned over. The subdued light from a window near the desk illuminated the paper.

  Karen and Mark and Don and Chris:

  If you’re reading this, it means you’ve missed us and we are on our way to our cabin in the high country. We will stay there until you catch up. As you can tell by all the bodies, a band of looters attacked while we were packing. Not to worry. Ann and the kids are fine. I have a few scratches.

  Meet us at the cabin and watch out for the creeps!

  Larry Blade sat down in a chair alongside the desk and gazed at the photograph on the wall. Was the man in the picture the one called Larry?

  What had he done for a living? By what miracle had he protected his family from so many looters? Had all of this happened at the outset of the war? Was the house now shunned because of all the skeletons?

  Watch out for the creeps, the man had said.

  He sounded a little like Hickok.

  They must have been extremely close-knit, this family. The man had valiantly defended them against superior odds. But wasn’t that what familial relationships were all about? Loving selfishly. Putting the welfare of your loved ones first. Doing whatever was necessary to insure their happiness.

  Doing whatever was necessary…

  Blade frowned. Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? If you truly love someone, they always come first. No matter what. You do whatever you must for them, even if it’s something you don’t necessarily want to do.

  Like becoming Leader of the Family.

  So what if he balked at the very idea? So what if he found it difficult to confront the prospect of one of the Family dying due to his stupidity or negligence? Didn’t he love them? All of them? Weren’t they his friends and associates and loved ones? Then how could he refuse them?

  The answer was staring him in the face: he couldn’t.

  Blade rose and nodded at the photograph. “So long,” he said aloud.

  “And thanks.”

  The dust stirred as Blade walked through the bedroom to the living room.

  “Going somewhere, Warrior?” hissed a guttural voice.

  Blade froze in the doorway, startled.

  Three men, dressed all in black, including black masks over their faces, were waiting for him on the other side of the living room, lined up under the archway. All three had assumed martial arts postures. All three carried long Oriental swords.

  Blade had encountered a man dressed like these three before. The man had stealthily entered the Home in the early morning hours and attempted to blow up the SEAL, only a short while before Alpha Triad had departed for the Twin Cities.

  “You look surprised,” the speaker stated. “You shouldn’t be. The Imperial Assassins have kept your convoy under surveillance since Fort Collins, waiting our chance, waiting for you to drop your guard.”

  “Samuel has a message for you,” said the figure in the middle, a sneer in his voice.

  “He sent us to deliver it,” commented the third.

  “Three guesses what it is,” declared the first man. With that, he charged.

  Chapter Ten

  Never in all his born days had he seen a sight like it.

  Hickok stood on the rampart above the drawbridge, his hands on his hips, and gawked.

  “There are so many of them!” exclaimed a young Clan woman to his left.

  “That’s good,” Hickok told her.

  She eyed him skeptically. “How can it be good?”

  “It means you won’t have to aim as hard,” Hickok informed her, grinning.

  The Civilized Zone force had parked its trucks and other vehicles in the woods bordering the cleared fields. All except the tank. It rolled from the trees and parked at the edge of the western field, its engine idling, directly across from the drawbridge. The troops had followed the tank, marc
hing four abreast from the woods. Half of the soldiers bore to the right, half to the left, until the field near the forest was covered with green figures, all of them armed with M-16’s, all of them standing at attention. Some of them wore helmets, some didn’t.

  Either their discipline was lax, Hickok deduced, or there was a shortage of helmets.

  A hand fell on the gunman’s left shoulder.

  “Why are they massing to the west?” Spartacus inquired. “Why haven’t they deployed their troops to surround the Home and take advantage of their numbers?”

  Hickok indicated the drawbridge below them. “My guess, pard, is they intend to wallop the stuffin’ out of us on the first try. They know the only way into the Home is through the drawbridge. Their head honcho must reckon this here drawbridge is our weak link.”

  “It is,” Spartacus mentioned.

  “We’ll see about that,” Hickok stated grimly. He focused on a pair of men walking along the front rows of the opposing army. Was one of them the commander?

  “They got here much sooner than I expected,” Spartacus remarked. “I didn’t think they’d make it until noon.”

  “They’re in a hurry to die,” Hickok said.

  “May the Spirit preserve us,” Spartacus commented.

  Hickok found his mind straying. He thought of Sherry, his darling wife, and the night they had shared. She’d been overjoyed to see him, and had been all over his body like a bear on honey. He had tried to convince her they should get some shut-eye, to no avail. He’d even pleaded a headache, but still she’d persisted. He sighed contentedly at the pleasant memories.

  When a woman was warm for your form, there was nothing to do but take the heat.

  “Look at the size of that tank!” Spartacus stated.

  The tank was a behemoth, a mighty metal colossus, its huge cannon fixed on the drawbridge like the baleful gaze of a steel cyclops.

  “We’ll have to take out that tank,” Hickok said thoughtfully.

  “How?” Spartacus demanded. “We don’t have any explosives.”

  “Then we’ll improvise,” Hickok remarked.

  “How?” Spartacus reitereated. “What will we use to stop a tank?”

  “A pillowcase.”

  “A what?” Spartacus leaned closer to the gunman, certain he had heard incorrectly.

  “A pillowcase,” Hickok repeated. “Have somebody run to B Block and get me a white pillowcase.”

  Spartacus started to speak, then thought better of the idea. He hurried off.

  Hickok scanned the western rampart, noting the nervous state of most of the 67 men and women manning the wall. He couldn’t say as he blamed them. That blasted tank was a whopper.

  Spartacus hurried up. “I’ve sent for the pillowcase.”

  “Good,” Hickok said. “Now send runners to the north and south walls.

  Have every other fighter report here on the double, but tell ’em to keep their heads down. I don’t want the soldiers to see them when they take their posts. Have ’em crouch below the top of the wall. Pack ’em onto this rampart.”

  “On my way,” Spartacus ran off.

  Hickok pondered the formidable odds they were facing. He was grateful the enemy was concentrating its initial attack on the west wall of the Home. It meant Sherry would be spared the first assault. But sooner or later, the Army bozos would completely enclose the compound. Sherry would experience her baptism of fire as a Warrior. She, and the rest of the Family and the Clan, would be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.

  Blast!

  Why had he agreed to her becoming a Warrior?

  What did he have for brains? Rocks?

  Why were women such contrary critters? Why did all women have this peculiar notion about doing everything their way? Why couldn’t they let the men run things? Life would be so much simpler! With the menfolk as the ramrods, everything would be—

  He stopped himself, chuckling.

  No, that wasn’t such a great idea. The men had been handling things before the Big Blast. Plato had once said men had dominated society before the war. The men had dictated the direction of the government and the military.

  And look where it had gotten them.

  Blown to kingdom come!

  Maybe the best way, the only way, was to have the government and the military run along the same lines as a family: by couples. That way, every time some dipsy power-monger wanted an all-out war, his wife could slap him upside the head and tell him to go fishing until he cooled down. There was nothing like marriage to teach a man humility.

  “Here’s the pillowcase.”

  Hickok turned to his left.

  Spartacus held a white pillowcase in his right hand.

  “Thanks, pard.” Hickok took the pillowcase and held it behind his back.

  “How is that going to help us take out the tank?” Spartacus inquired.

  “You’ll see,” Hickok promised. “Trust me.”

  There was a lot of commotion near the tank. A man in green fatigues and a taller man dressed all in brown were standing near the armored vehicle. Other soldiers were forming a column behind it.

  “They’re getting ready,” Spartacus mentioned. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “It’ll be a piece of cake,” Hickok assured him.

  Fighters from the north and south walls were shuffling along the western rampart, hunched over to prevent their detection by the enemy troops. They quickly filled in the open spaces on the west wall, their various weapons at the ready.

  Perfect.

  Hickok grinned. To the Army commander, it would appear as though there were only 69 defenders on the western wall, when in reality there were now 135.

  Surprise!

  Hickok glanced over his right shoulder at the four men manning the drawbridge mechanism. “Get ready to lower the drawbridge!” he shouted down to them.

  “Lower the drawbridge?” Spartacus repeated in astonishment. “Are you crazy?”

  “Tell everyone to fire on my order,” Hickok instructed him.

  “What do you have up your sleeve?” Spartacus asked. “I thought you said you want my input on everything.”

  “I have this up my sleeve,” Hickok said, displaying the pillowcase. “I aim to—”

  “They’re coming!” a woman nearby screamed.

  Hickok looked out over the field. Sure enough, the tank was advancing toward the Home. Two to three dozen soldiers followed behind it.

  “No time now,” the gunman said to Spartacus. “Just have everbody set to fire when I give the word.” He hurried to the stairs.

  Spartacus, annoyed, turned to the man on his right, a Family Blacksmith. “Pass the word along the wall. Fire on Hickok’s command.”

  The Blacksmith started the message down the line of anxious defenders.

  What was the gunfighter up to? Spartacus unslung his Heckler and Koch HK93 from his left shoulder and checked the magazine, his gaze on the gunman.

  Hickok, armed only with his Colt Pythons, the white pillowcase in his right hand, descended the stairs to the ground. “Lower the drawbridge!”

  he barked at the quartet assigned to the mechanism.

  The four men exchanged puzzled expressions, but they promptly did as they had been told.

  Hickok stood on the inner bank of the moat, grinning in anticipation.

  He waited as the drawbridge slowly lowered toward him, thudding to a horizontal stop across the moat, its massive wooden planks mere inches from the Warrior’s toes.

  The tank and its deadly entourage had reached the halfway point between the forest and the west wall of the Home. The armored titan rumbled to an unexpected halt.

  Hickok deliberately backed up, placing a good ten feet between the drawbridge and himself. He raised the white pillowcase and swung the material in wide circles over his blond head.

  There was a metallic clanking sound, and an opening appeared on the top of the tank as an oval hatch of some kind was pushed aside. A man wearing a green
helmet popped into view, visible from his shoulders up.

  He stared at the lowered drawbridge and the man waving the white flag, then twisted and yelled a few words to the men following the tank.

  Hickok could readily imagine their confusion. They were wondering if the Family was surrendering. Why else would someone be signaling with a white pillowcase?

  Another man in green walked around the left side of the tank. He stopped and studied the situation with a pair of binoculars.

  Hickok smiled, hoping he seemed appropriately friendly enough for the occasion.

  The man in green, evidently an officer, lowered the binoculars and spoke to the man on the tank.

  The man on the tank nodded, and at a word from him the gargantuan engine of destruction lumbered directly for the open drawbridge.

  Hickok glanced up at the rampart. Spartacus looked like he was about to lay an egg. “Get that toothpick of yours ready,” he directed his confused friend, as loudly as he dared.

  Spartacus, his brow furrowed in consternation, slung the HK93 over his left shoulder and drew his broadsword.

  Hickok watched the tank approach, heading straight toward him. Dear Spirit, but the blasted thing was big! He could see its titanic treads tearing up the soft soil as it neared the west wall. Clumps of brown dirt flew off to the sides.

  The man with the helmet was still visible from the shoulders up, alertly scanning the drawbridge and the rampart for any indication of treachery.

  Keep coming, moron! Hickok backed up some more, flapping the white pillowcase overhead.

  The sound of the tank’s motor was a strident roar by the time the monster reached the other side of the drawbridge.

  Hickok grinned and waved for all he was worth.

  The man in the helmet cupped his hands around his mouth. “If you make one false move, I will blow you to shreds!”

  Nice guy! Hickok retreated several more feet. “Don’t!” he cried in false terror. “We surrender!”

  “Just like that?” the man responded skeptically.

  “We can’t fight a tank!” Hickok shouted. “I don’t want any of our women and children hurt!”