Zero City

by neetha Napew

  Five anxious faces watched her approach. Nobody spoke. Ryan sat in a chair holding a full cup of cold coffee. Earlier in the day, it had been steaming hot Krysty sat nearby, her hand on his. Doc crossed his fingers. Trying hard to appear calm, J.B. and Jak both looked as if they were about to defuse a bomb.

  “He’ll live,” Mildred reported, removing her homemade surgical mask and mopping her damp brow. Just a few layers of white cloth cut from a shirt and boiled clean, but it served the job. Her gown was a kitchen apron, bleached white and boiled in antiseptic mouthwash.

  Ryan started to rise, then sat down again. Krysty squeezed his hand, while J.B. slapped him on the back.

  “Told you so,” the Armorer said, grinning. “Dean’s tough as shoe leather.”

  “He’s young and strong, and everything went textbook perfect. Oh, he’ll have some scars, but the rib will be fine and there’s no danger of paralysis or blindness.”

  Walking to a punch bowl filled with bottled water and contact-lens cleaner, a mild solution of boric acid, Mildred washed her bare hands clean, using a spare toothbrush to scrub extra hard under her fingernails. Apparently, in predark days, business executives traveled unexpectedly a lot. Most of the offices here had travel packs in the desks. The old materials were a perfect mix for surgery-mouthwash, soap, floss. And the first-aid box in the receptionist’s desk had given her enough iodine solution for postop, once she revitalized the dried crystals with sterile water.

  “So he’ll be okay,” Ryan said without emotion.

  Patting her hands dry, Mildred snorted. “You should be so healthy.”

  On a nearby table, a glass pot of MRE coffee was simmering over a candle. J.B. poured Mildred a cup, added two sugars and brought it over. She accepted the brew gratefully and slumped into an empty office chair. Mildred took a sip and for the first time in a long while didn’t grimace in distaste. By God, even this military boot cleaner was good after six hours of meatball surgery. Homemade masks, flour, water and newspaper to make papier-mache for the cast, fishing line for sutures, vodka to wash the floor...Hawkeye Pierce, eat your heart out.

  Seeing her actions, Ryan drained his own cup untasted and stiffly stood. “Can I see him?”

  “Sure. You couldn’t wake Dean with a bomb. I shot enough sodium pentathol into him to keep him asleep for hours. Had to guess at the dosage, it was so old and weak. But he’ll be out for quite a while.”

  “You sure?” Ryan asked, taking a spare mask off the small pile on a restaurant countertop.

  Typical concerned parent. Mildred kept her voice soothing. “Yes, Mr. Cawdor, everything went fine. Dean will be his old self in a few months.”

  “Months?” Krysty repeated. “Mildred, we can’t stay here that long.”

  J.B. offered the physician a refill, but Mildred waved it off. Sleep was what she needed most now. “Don’t have to. We can leave as soon as Dean wakes. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Hallelujah.” Doc sighed.

  “We just have to take it real easy going over those dunes,” Mildred continued, fighting a yawn. “I don’t want my fine stitching to pop and have to go in again. I’m out of 4-0 silk, and you folks can’t afford the blood.”

  It was true. The companions were exhausted from the transfusions. Just prior to the operation, Mildred had taken a pint and a half from each of them, the maximum that could be safely drained without endangering the giver. Only Ryan’s blood type matched his son’s, so the rest went into mason jars and they were swung overhead at the end of a rope for hours until the clear plasma and the blood cells separated. Mismatch blood types, and a patient suffered horribly. But anybody could accept anybody’s plasma. Some mighty fine engineering there by the Lord, as her father used to remark during his Sunday services.

  Not bothering to try to stifle her next yawn, Mildred noticed a lack of enthusiasm from the others.

  “I said he’s going to be fine,” she stated irritably. “Why all the long faces?”

  “Skyscraper on fire,” Jak said, resting his elbows on his knees, his snowy hair tumbling down to hide his scared features.

  The physician frowned. “Still? I thought J.B. said the fires died from the cocktails he and Doc used on the muties.”

  “This is the new baron’s work,” Ryan said, stepping from the bedsheet tent, carrying the other lantern. Mildred was right; the boy seemed fine. He put down the lantern he had brought out and turned off the wick. No sense wasting fuel. Dean would sleep regardless, and they were low on juice.

  “Set fire to a whole building, just to get rid of us?”

  “More likely to flush us out of hiding,” J.B. stated, polishing his glasses on the sleeve of his new shirt. Smelled a bit musty, but it was nice and thick.

  “Me, specifically,” Krysty said, tearing open an MRE pack. Suddenly her appetite was back with a vengeance. Using her teeth to open a foil envelope of corned-beef hash, she dug in with the attached plastic spoon. One hundred years old at room temperature, and it tasted like ambrosia.

  “Damn.” The physician nervously glanced at the covering of barbed wire and curtains above them as if able to see the tall building fifty blocks away. “Is the blaze spreading?”

  “Thankfully no, madam,” Doc replied, resting his chin on top of his cane. “We kept careful track of its progress until the danger passed.”

  And they didn’t inform her so she could concentrate on Dean. Smart move. “Think he’ll set fire to the rest of the ruins?”

  “I doubt it. Too much here yet to be salvaged. Probably just removing a potential source of danger,” Ryan said, reclaiming a chair and laying the Steyr across his lap. Nimble hands began stripping the blaster for a cleaning. “After all, that’s where I launched the rockets from.”

  Mildred chose her next words carefully. “Yeah, about that, why didn’t you use the Hafla to kill the sec men? It carried four rounds. Should have been more than enough. Or do you have a plan cooking?”

  “No plan. Just common sense.” Disassembling the rifle without looking, Ryan patiently explained to Mildred that armor-piercing weapons were almost useless against troops. The damn rockets went through a heavy steel bulldozer before exploding. Shoot a man, and they would bury themselves underground. Only kill one or two at the most that way. But seal the tunnel and there were no more reinforcements coming. What troops and supplies Leonard had with him was it until they dug free.

  “At least we are safe for a while,” Doc said, getting himself a cup of coffee.

  “But while he’s digging in, the others will be digging out,” Krysty said, tossing the trash into a receptacle. “We may have only bought a few days.”

  “More than we had before,” Ryan stated, laying aside springs and levers.

  “The guy should be delighted we made him baron,” Mildred said, rubbing a tired hand over her face. “Unless Strichland was his father or something.”

  “Blood feud.” Jak frowned. “Nasty.”

  “Can’t be.” Krysty chewed a brick of gray U.S. Army cheese. “The baron was different, like me, and he wanted to breed a son. So it can’t be a member of his family. He didn’t have any.”

  “No, wait,” she added, blinking. “A guard did mention something about a boy named Leonard.”

  “So it’s his adopted son who’s after us.”

  A low moan sounded from above, the windows softly rattling.

  “I have a theory,” Doc rumbled, adding powdered milk and thoughtfully stirring the brew, “that the personnel of our redoubt established this ville. The military hierarchy, the greenhouses, the tunnel in just like our tunnel out.”

  Jak looked up from scratching at the bandage on his side. “Shit! New redoubt.”

  “Would explain a lot,” Ryan mused, adding a few drops of homogenized oil to the trigger assembly. “And thankfully, they don’t know about the real base in the mountains anymore.”

  Muted thunder rumbled somewhere.

  “What’s that noise?” Mildred asked, changing the subject. “Storm finally hi
t?”

  “Sandstorm,” Ryan said, sliding the assembly back into the bottom of the stock and tightening the screws. “And a real bastard. That’ll buy more time. It’s why nobody is on guard duty. We can’t even open the door against the pressure of the wind.”

  “Once Dean wakes up, I’ll do a few tests and we can leave.”

  “Useless to go hunting in a sandstorm,” the Deathland warrior continued. He inserted the bolt into the receiver slot and worked it back and forth a few times to make sure the action was smooth. A drop more oil was added. “Wind blows right down the barrel, and the grit clogs a blaster solid. Can’t get off more than a single shot before they jam.”

  “Autofires,” Jak said grimly. “They got muzzle-loaders. Be okay.”

  “No, my friend,” Doc stated. “Those will jam also. Much more grease in an iron works of a muzzle-loader than a modern rifle.” He affectionately patted the LeMat on his hip. “Trust me.”

  Jak accepted the rebuff. Doc would know.

  “Got knives.”

  “Sure, but the wind is still too strong. Even if they had diving weights tied to their shoes, the storm would smash them against the buildings like bugs on a windshield.”

  “Wonder how the greenhouses survive intact?” Mildred asked pensively.

  “Not care,” Jak said. “Their prob.”

  “However, when the storm stops, we can expect company.”

  Finished with her repast, Krysty wiped her mouth on a tiny moist towelette from the MRE pack. “Think Dean will be ready to travel by then?”

  Mildred shrugged. “Hopefully.”

  “We aren’t waiting that long,” Ryan said, dropping in a clip of fresh round and ramming the bolt home. “Once the wind dies down a bit, Krysty and I will move out to hit them hard. Cut down the numbers of the opposition as much as possible.”

  Unwrapping a stick of sugarless gum, the redhead nodded. The matter had already been discussed between them.

  “During a sandstorm,” Doc said, slowly arching an eyebrow.

  “How?” Jak asked pointedly.

  Mildred added, “Can’t wrap blasters in cloth as protection from the grit. Bolt action and autos would jam immediately on any loose fold, and the revolvers would set the material over the cylinder on fire.”

  “Nothing like that.” Ryan laid the assembled weapon across his lap. “True, we’ll need some specialty equipment, but I spotted the place to get it when driving back here.”

  “Don’t remember any scuba shops or anything like that,” J.B. said, scratching under his hat. “Mebbe a pharmacy. Going to put condoms over the barrels? No, the guts would still be exposed. What’s the place?”

  “Shoe store.”

  As the desert winds fiercely rattled the windows again, the companions stared blankly at the one-eyed man. Already knowing the answer, Krysty allowed herself a half smile waiting for the man to explain.

  Only J.B. burst into laughter. “You crafty bastard. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  “Agreed. As soon as the storm breaks, we attack.”

  IN THE NORTHERN section of the ruins, sec men were using the butts of their blasters to nail boards across the inside of thick Plexiglas windows. Boards were already on the outside, but the white expanse of the drive-through window shook from the fury of the storm, so it seemed a wise precaution. The front door of the bank wasn’t even visible through the stack of sandbags offering them protection from the storm.

  At a teller’s cage, the quartermaster was frying onions in a skillet held over a small fire of paper money to add to the soup for dinner. A lone corporal was playing harmonica in the lobby, while the night crew was sleeping in their bedrolls down in the cellar. Some officers were upstairs throwing dice for cigs. One enterprising private was skinning a lizard he’d caught, and the rest of the sec men were sitting on their duffs, ritually field-stripping their blasters merely for something to do. Out of the seventy-four men, only six stood guard duty with loaded weapons.

  “Hey, Marv, play something snappy,” a corporal asked, dry shaving with a straight razor.

  Tapping the moisture out of his harmonica, the musician seemed offended. “I was.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  Playing poker at a table with other sec men of various ranks, a lieutenant muttered, “Son of a bitch only knows four songs, and we’ve heard them all twice by now.”

  “Better than quiet,” the private said, drawing a new card.

  A snort. “That’s your opinion. I bet two cigs.”

  “Fold.”

  “I’ll cover that. Whatcha got?”

  “Read them and weep.”

  “Shit.”

  Using a paper clip to scrape the warm ashes out of his corncob pipe, a private asked, “Anybody got some corn silk? I can trade.”

  “Whatcha got?” a corporal asked, stitching a hole in a sock.

  “Token from the gaudy house for an hour with the new girl.”

  The quartermaster looked up from the sizzling onions. “You mean Laura? The one who’s so wild they gotta tie the bitch down to keep her from breaking your back? I’d trade a whole cig for that.”

  “How about a nice lizard?” the hunter offered hopefully, proffering his filleted catch at the end of a bloody knife.

  “Dream on, gleeb. I’ll take the cig.” The exchange was made.

  “One day,” grumbled a private off by himself, stabbing at the carpet with a knife. There was concrete under the flooring so the blade couldn’t gain purchase and kept falling over. “We leave the ville, the tunnel explodes, ten guys croak and now we’re stuck in a freaking sandstorm. In a single day. Shitfire!”

  “Could be worse,” another sec man suggested.

  “Yeah?”

  The man winked and nudged his friends. “Sure. Might also have to listen to some loud-mouthed blow-hard whine like a mutie with a broken bottle up its ass.”

  The knife took on a more aggressive posture. “Oh yeah, lard bucket?”

  “Cork it, the lot of you,” Sergeant Jarmal said low and menacingly. He was sitting against the wall, his thick arms crossed, with his battered cap covering his scarred face. But that didn’t always mean the coldheart was asleep. “Any more chatter and you’ll both walk the perimeter. Outside. Get me?”

  That dire announcement stopped conversation for a while, but over the long hours the voices slowly returned to the usual mix of lewd jokes, dreams, suggestions, bitching, yawning and lies, the ageless talk of bored soldiers.

  Reading a paperback war novel found in a desk, Leonard was sitting on a cot in the vault of the bank, the open door letting him listen to the troops. They were restless, but had good reasons to be. Luckily, he had the foresight to bring along extra provisions and supplies. Leonard thought they might be needed if the chase went into the desert. Now the rations were keeping them alive while trapped by the storm, although they were low on water and he was getting mighty sick of fried onion soup and baked potatoes.

  Outside, lightning flashed and the winds howled.

  “How bloody long will this last?” the young baron growled, placing aside his book. Too many of the words in it were unfamiliar to him, and he detested feeling like a stupe. In a fit of pique, he tore the volume into pieces, the pages fluttering to the floor like dead leaves in autumn. There, who was the stupe one now?

  Thunder rumbled again.

  “Seen worse,” Jarmal drawled from under his hat.

  “I doubt it,” Leonard snarled. “Captain Kelly, any word on the tunnel? Have the civvies broken through yet?”

  The officer turned from the poker game. “Unknown, my lord. I twice sent men to check.” He hesitated. “But none ever returned.”

  “Then send more,” the baron ordered impatiently. “Lash them together with ropes, tie bricks to their feet, but get me some information!”

  “As you command, my lord,” the officer said coldly.

  Then Leonard saw the faces of the sec men, the fear, the unwillingness to do the job, that fir
st fledgling trace of resentment, the brother to hate.

  “Cancel that, Captain,” the youth stated, fear a knot in his belly. Then, in forced gaiety he added, “Quartermaster, break out some wine. That’ll cut this dust from our throats. There were a couple of bottles in the trunk of my wag. Use them all! Give every man a half cup, starting with privates, then the officers. I’ll be last.”

  A score of heads turned his way, tired faces showing interest, with a dash of disbelief.

  “B-but, my lord,” the man stammered, rubbing his hands as if in absolution. “There won’t be enough to go around.”

  “Do what you can, but the men come first,” Leonard said with a straight face.

  “Three cheers for the new baron!” a private called out, and the rest took up the cry.

  Eagerly, the sec men formed a line for their liquor ration, and Leonard retired to his bulletproof room. He was a fool, an idiot! One of the very first lessons he learned was to always stay on the good side of the men. Whoever had the blasters was in charge. That was a fact of life he could not afford to forget again.

  And when the winds eased in force, the men could then prove their loyalty by bringing in that cursed redhead alive. How well he remembered the fierce beauty of her face and those ample, womanly curves. Starting a dynasty with the redhead had been a splendid idea of his father’s. Yeah, a very good idea. And after they were safely back in the ville across the river, his troops would burn these ruins to the ground, removing the problems of the wolves, the winged muties and the hidden weapons cache permanently. But first, he had to find the bitch.

  To hell with waiting for the storm to stop. Just as soon as the winds eased in force, Leonard would unleash all of his troops and let the final hunt begin.

  REEKING YELLOW WATER swirling around his patched boots, Harold slogged through the sewer of the ville, a tiny candle in his cupped hands lighting the way. A voice inside his head said a major storm had to be raging for the river water to be this high, and the hunchback was forced to cover his face in an effort not to choke on the chemical stink. Even if the acid rains didn’t reach the ville, the runoff from the mountains raised the level of the river until it flowed back into the normally dry sewers. Splashing in the wastewater, a rat scurried by, already dying from the diluted acid. There was no sewage down here. Alphaville saved its solid waste for the greenhouses.