Zero City

by neetha Napew

  Counting the feeder pipes carefully, the hunchback reached the last familiar intersection. Here was where he usually turned left to reach the ruins, but not today. Patrica was dead, the deal was off and he was going to claim his bride. A strange kind of cold anger was building within him, and he was eagerly looking forward to meeting anybody who tried to stop him.

  The previous day, Harold had reached the secret place where the old baron used to hide blasters. Oddly, the basement of the skyscraper was completely deserted, not a mutie there. But the sergeant left the bundle of food for their young anyway, took what he went for and departed again. The hunchback hoped his pets were okay. They were so innocent and shy.

  The two huge blasters rode heavy at his hips, and the rifle slung across his back was the biggest in the plastic trunk. Did he remember to release more argon gas into the trunk after he sealed the lid shut? He shook off the thoughts. It didn’t matter now. Harold knew he probably wasn’t going to survive this journey. But that was okay. He and Laura could be together in death.

  Reaching another intersection, the hunchback paused, waiting for the voices to tell where to go. He had never been in this section of the sewers before. It was forbidden for any to go down there, twenty strokes, and owning a map of the sewers was death by the Machine. The faint light of his candle displayed several side tunnels, extending out from a central pit. At the bottom was a main feeder pipe, and in a rush he knew that was his destination. A ladder was bolted to the side of the pit, and, starting to climb down, he stopped halfway as there came the telltale squeaking of rats. Lots of them.

  Holding on to the rungs, Harold lit a match and dropped it. Before the sulfur tip burned out, he caught a glimpse of what was below. Lining the bottom of the pit were river rats, hundreds of sleeping rats, their naked pink tails lashing about as the piles constantly shifted and moved. Real fear seized the man, and he had trouble breathing. This was bad. The hunchback knew the appetite of a rat. A pack like that could take the meat from his bones before he covered the few feet to the main pipe. Instinctively, he knew the silent whistle wouldn’t work here. Scaring the horde would only make matters worse.

  Several voices shouted conflicting suggestions to him, but only one rose above the others in clarity, ordering the hunchback to give the rats exactly what they wanted. All the food they could eat.

  Drooling slightly, Harold eagerly nodded. Yes, that should work fine! Pulling out his eating knife, the man carefully cut off the sleeve of his shirt, then realized he had no rocks. Taking one of the blasters, the hunchback tied it tightly inside the sleeve, leaving a nice long tail hanging loose. Then, stabbing his thumb with the knife, he squeezed out blood and rubbed it over the bundle until it was good and soaked.

  There was a flurry of movement among the rats, and Harold waited with a pounding heart until the rodents succumbed to sleep once more. One particularly large rat lying prominently on the very top of a pile yawned until its jaws threatened to crack, then blinked sleepily and settled back into position.

  Taking hold of the end of the cloth strip, Harold began whipping the bundle around and around, building speed until it started to hum, then released the makeshift bolo. Off it flew over the rats and landed with a clunk in a side tunnel, bouncing and rolling for another yard or so.

  Suspended above the furry killers, he clung to the ladder and watched. His vision was becoming adjusted to the darkness, faint streamers of light coming in from a street grating far overhead.

  In the side tunnel, a pink nose twitched as a rat at the far end of the pack lifted its head and glanced around, sniffing curiously. Waddling from its cozy position on the bottom of the gently breathing pile, the yawning rodent ambled over to the pistol and took a sniff, then a lick, then began happily gnawing on the bloody rag. Its squeal of delight roused another rat, which joined the first. Their quiet nibbling awoke a third, then a fourth. Soon a group was working on the warm morsel, and as more arrived, rats began crawling over one another to get to the food. Wiggling for position became shoving, then teeth were bared and hissing turned to snarling. One savagely bit another, and blood spurted. Its squeal of pain aroused hundreds more, and the wounded rodent was torn apart and eaten by its comrades.

  Soon dozens, then hundreds from the pile joined in the cannibal feast, the hot smell of fresh blood driving them insane. Screams filled the sewer as the hungry rats turned on one another, slashing and clawing in a wild feeding frenzy.

  Quickly reaching the bottom of the ladder, Harold tried not to step on any of the scampering rats underfoot as he crossed the pit into the tunnel. A few scurried after him, and the hunchback waited until he was a good distance away from the feeding frenzy before stomping them to death. One seemed less mangy than the rest, and he stuffed it into a pocket for dinner later.

  Moving fast along the pipe, he found more ladders leading into access shafts. The voices counted merrily until reaching number fourteen, then screamed at him to climb exactly here. Shivering under the chorus of commands, the hunchback obeyed meekly. A heavy iron grating blocked the top of the shaft. Harold quietly lifted the covering and gently set it aside as he climbed from the sewer.

  Standing, the hunchback saw he was in a storage room, boxes and barrels stacked haphazardly about in careless abandon. Moving quietly to the door, he peeked through the keyhole and saw Jimmy in the next room brushing his teeth at a dirty sink, humming a tune. The voices had done it. This was the gaudy house. The next part was his alone to complete.

  Lifting the door by the handle so the rusty hinges wouldn’t squeak, Harold crept forward, and, releasing the door, he drew the knife. A creak from the settling hinges caught the bouncer’s attention and as he turned, the hunchback charged and smashed the skinny man against the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  Gasping for air, Jimmy desperately slashed at the brute with his straight razor, but Harold knocked that aside with a meaty arm and grabbed the bouncer by the throat. Jimmy left the floor kicking, his eyes bulging as if about to burst from his head. Jamming a hand into his pocket, the bouncer partially drew the homemade zip gun when something loudly snapped in his neck. He trembled, then went completely limp, the razor dropping from twitching fingers.

  Squeezing some more until he was sure the man was dead and not trying a trick, Harold laid the corpse on a filthy bunk in the corner and covered him with a thin blanket. Now drawing the .44 AutoMag from his holster, Harold started up the dank wooden stairs to the first floor of the brothel, his face an inhuman mask carved from ice.

  Let the storm rage and thunder outside-this was his wedding day.

  Chapter Twenty

  Digging in their heels and shouldering the door to the shoe store open, Ryan and Krysty burst onto the street. Instantly, the wind slammed the door shut, shattering the glass. The sandstorm invaded the shop ruthlessly, overturning displays and sending shoes flying madly about in a whirlwind. Sacrosanct for a century, it was now just another dead store amid the crumbling predark city.

  Hunching over to walk against the fierce gusts, the companions started toward the destroyed skyscraper. The once mighty edifice had been reduced to a mere ironwork skeleton from the fires, but it still served as a landmark to direct them through the madness to the tunnel.

  Thunder rumbled in the murky sky as the quieting sandstorm still raged over the ruins, the winds howling along the barren streets, driving the sand before it with pounding fury. The windows of the buildings shook, and loose debris flashed by to disappear into the maelstrom. More than once, they found a dried splotch on a wall, marking where a lizard had braved the storm and had abruptly become part of the landscape.

  The pair was completely wrapped in strips of cloth bleached to mottled colors to help blend into the storm. Desert camouflage. Their right hands were swaddled in lumpy balls of oily cloth. Even their faces were hidden behind overlapping layers, only their eyes showing through the narrowest of slits.

  The wind noticeably lessened as they moved to the lee of a bowling a
lley, and Ryan and Krysty paused to examine a dead man embedded in the ground, his mouth packed solid with sand. The body was flayed to bones in spots from abrasion, and a smashed muzzle-loader that lay nearby showed he was from Alphaville. Tightening their own masks, the pair moved on.

  Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a billboard flew by overhead, tumbling end over end as the winds tore it apart. As if renewed by the destruction, the storm rose in power until the whole world seemed on the verge of shattering. The pair was forced flat against the wall, helpless to take a step in any direction. Then the winds diminished, dropping to a soft breeze. The lightning and thunder also eased, then died away completely. For a few moments, the companions stood listening to the blood pound in their ears as they adjusted to the unexpected silence. Then the tempest returned, but not as strong as before.

  “Almost over,” Ryan shouted, using a knuckle to rub the windblown grit from his eye.

  “Too fast!” Krysty replied. “We need another hour!”

  “We aren’t getting it! Better hurry.”

  A single strand of her fiery hair flying free, Krysty gestured onward with her cloth-wrapped hand when a figure walked around the corner of the building. The man was dressed in military fatigues, with a handkerchief covering his mouth and an M-16 assault rifle in his grip.

  Instantly, Ryan raised his swaddled hand and fired, the silenced SIG-Sauer coughing once inside the big shoe box, the rags outside muffling the noise to almost inaudible. But the wind shifted his aim and the sec man staggered, only wounded in the shoulder.

  Snarling in pain, he pointed the M-16 and savagely pulled the trigger to no results. The dirty autofire was hopelessly jammed. Lunging forward, Krysty stabbed the sec man with the stiletto knife in her free hand. Dropping the blaster, the sec man fell backward clutching his gushing throat.

  Kneeling, Ryan finished him with a slash of the panga. Reloading their blasters was impossible until out of the storm, so every bullet counted. Which meant no mercy shots for the merely dying. Checking the body for any explosives, Krysty found none and the companions moved away from the site.

  “Fireblast, we better watch that wind shear,” Ryan cursed, lowering his arm so the hot shell rolling about in the shoe box didn’t rest on his bare skin. “I almost chilled the both of us with that.”

  “Got you covered, lover,” Krysty said, nudging him with an elbow.

  He grunted in reply. No matter how good you were, mistakes happened to everybody. But mistakes got you chilled in the Deathlands.

  A few blocks later, the pair froze and retreated into a recessed doorway. Standing in the middle of an intersection and making no attempt to hide was a sec man holding a bolt-action rifle, a towel tied across his mouth. His hair a wild frenzy, the red-faced guard bowed under the gusts of wind, but stayed right there, squinting against the dust and sand.

  “Perimeter guard,” Ryan said, his hand double-checking that the safety was off his blaster.

  “We’re close,” she agreed grimly, making sure her own MAC-11 was set on single shot. “Double-team him?”

  “On the next upsurge. Check.”

  Lightning flashed, and the storm increased for a few moments, blinding the sentry completely. Covering his face with an arm, he rode out the buffeting until the wind eased. Dropping the arm, he recoiled as a mummy charged out of the dust clouds. He raised his blaster and white-hot pain took him in the kidneys, then the throat. A terrible cold washed over the sec man and he dropped to the ground, pumping out blood. The dry soil absorbed the fluid on contact, the storm covering the crimson fluid and the dying man with ruthless efficiency.

  Systematically, the companions moved sideways along the picket of guards, traveling from man to man, until finally reaching where they started.

  “None of these men were large enough,” Krysty said, wiping the gore off her stiletto.

  “So let’s find more,” Ryan replied.

  Two more guards were encountered and dispatched, along with a lieutenant found asleep in a telephone booth, before they reached the sloped ramp that led to the tunnel.

  Moving toward the embankment, the companions reached the tumbled entrance to the underground tunnel, the jagged pieces of concrete and twisted steel beams already partially buried under a softening blanket of sand. Four men struggled to haul away some of the smaller pieces of rubble, while a burly sergeant with an M-16 wrapped in a sweater stood guard. That was the right idea, but it was nowhere near enough protection for the weapon against the billowing sandstorm. However, the scuba mask on the sergeant’s face gave him an unobstructed view through the stinging dust clouds, and that was trouble.

  Quickly, tactics were discussed, then the companions moved. Approaching from the direction of the wind, Krysty took out the sergeant first with the stiletto between the ribs, twisting the blade to enlarge the hole and deflate his lungs. No pressure meant no sound.

  Ryan grabbed the blaster to stop it from hitting the ground, as the sec man sighed out a warning and died. Laying the useless blaster aside, the man and woman simply walked behind each of the armed workers and shot them at point-blank range.

  Removing the jackets of the two largest men, Ryan and Krysty bundled the garments into an empty bag and took refuge behind one of the searchlights. A few handfuls of sand rubbed out most of the blood spots. Trying the jackets on over the camou wrappings, Krysty’s fit perfectly in spite of her top-heavy figure. But Ryan’s was too small in the shoulders, and he had to leave the jacket unbuttoned. Hopefully, nobody would notice.

  Now resembling sec men, they crawled out from behind the searchlight and studied the buildings on either side of the access ramp. Several windows were gone, probably from the concussion of the rockets. It also removed those places from the list of possible campsites for the baron and his men. A liquor store with an iron grating over its front window seemed a good location until they noticed a sandbag wall that closed off an alleyway, alongside a massive granite building on the corner. Boards covered the windows on both stories.

  “That’s their base,” Krysty said, tucking a loose strand of hair away, only to have it immediately fly free again.

  Ryan agreed. “Wags must be in the alley to cut the wind.”

  Just then, light flared inside the liquor store directly across the street from the bank, then it was gone.

  “And there’s the guard station,” Ryan said, sounding disgusted. “Some fool is smoking on duty.”

  Without a comment, Krysty started to crawl that way, but he stopped her. “Wags first.”

  Rising, they darted across the street, hitting the wall, and waited for a response. None came. But now they could faintly hear the strains of a badly played harmonica. Moving to the sandbags, they climbed over to find a dozen vehicles draped with window curtains and carpeting. Krysty stood guard while Ryan opened the gas cap of each vehicle and slid a thin block of C-4 into the gas tank, the tiny timing pencil sticking out of the top like the wick on a candle.

  Crossing to the bank, Ryan stood guard while Krysty dug a small hole in the sand in front of the front door, placed a wrapped package gingerly inside, then smoothed the sand again. This process was repeated four times as they crossed the street.

  Reaching the sidewalk, the companions straightened their jackets, boldly walked over and knocked on the door to the liquor store. Nothing happened, so Ryan knocked harder to be heard over the gusting winds. There hadn’t been any lightning for a while, and that was making the man anxious. If the storm died now, their attack would completely unravel. Without the masking effect of the dust clouds to hide them, this was a suicide mission.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” a male voice said, and the door swung aside, showing a sec man with a napkin around his throat and holding a can of spaghetti with a spoon sticking out. “What the fuck is it now, Sarge? Rotation ain’t for another hour.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Ryan said coldly.

  The SIG-Sauer coughed, and a hole appeared in the man’s forehead. The corp
se tumbled off to the side, and they pushed their way into the store.

  The wall shelves and refrigerated cases were empty, along with the racks and displays. Not a speck of food remained anywhere. Even the cash register was broken, apparently from a sledgehammer blow judging from the damage.

  A fast recce revealed a back room with a couple of folding chairs, a table piled with supplies and a snoring man in an old Army cot against the far wall.

  “Wake up,” Ryan said loudly, kicking the cot.

  The sec man awakened and froze at the sight of the strangers. His hand darted for his belt and found the empty holster at his hip. His gaze flicked to the table, then back to the masked people standing with a wad of rags swaddling their right hands.

  “Who the hell are you gleebs?” he asked, the ragged edge of sleep blurring his words slightly. “What’s with the bandages-you hurt? Burned?”

  “Not important,” Krysty snapped.

  “Talk to us about the baron, and you can live,” Ryan added.

  “Whatcha gonna do, hit me with your bad hands? Fuck this,” he snarled rising off the bunk. “Hey, Sal! Sal!”

  Ryan moved closer. “Sal is dead. Shot through the head.”

  “With invisible blasters?” The sec man laughed.

  “Our blasters are protected from the storm.”

  “Yeah? Show me.”

  A head shake. “Takes too long to wrap them.”

  He smiled tolerantly. “Of course.” And with that, the man darted across the room toward a table covered with clothing and equipment.

  “Stop or die,” Ryan warned, raising his shoe box.

  The man shoved an arm into the pile, and as he started to withdraw something, both companions fired. The sec man buckled under the double assault and fell, sprawling to the floor.