This time I turn to Sneak. “You wanted a new pet. Now you got one. Just remember, he’s your responsibility.”
Sneak taps her leg for Klaus to follow and, when he does, I want to burst out laughing. I would, too, if the thought of where we were heading wasn’t tying my insides into knots.
-12-
Ret
“Ret, you sure this is the place?” Bron asks with a tinge of uncharacteristic doubt.
I turn to Dhal, who nods, and I have to admit, White Rock doesn’t look at all like I thought it would. First off, it isn’t white. It’s more of a dusty gray, without a scrap of vegetation above or below. A twenty foot high steel door, recessed into the base of the mountain, appears to be the only way inside, but without Jinx and his wonderful bag of tricks, I’m not at all sure how we’re gonna get inside. Not surprisingly, Bron doesn’t look fazed in the least. We back away a good distance and he tilts his arm into the air, at forty five degrees, and lobs in a handful of grenades. We duck for cover behind a nearby boulder. A series of explosions and concussion waves hit us in quick succession. When the dust settles, I peek up and see the door riddled with dents and black powder splatter marks from the detonations but, even from our position, it’s clear the barrier’s been breached.
Bron winks at me. “Stick around awhile, Ret, and I’ll teach you a thing or two.”
“Hey Dhal,” I say. “I’ll pay you a thousand USC if you reattach those spatulas?”
The kid giggles and so does Bron, in a rare moment of self-deprecation.
Oleg’s the only one who doesn’t even crack a smile. His weathered features are still smeared with soot from the workshop fire. The loss of Azina and Sneak is a major setback and the old man’s silence lets me know that’s all he’s been thinking about since it happened. I shoulder my shotgun as we approach the entrance to White Rock, trying desperately not to let it get me down. Truth be told, a large part of me is thankful I was tossed over that workbench and knocked unconscious because I don’t think I could have shot Azina. I’d never whisper a word of that to anyone, especially Bron, but it’s true. He only sees the Zee in her now. She’s changed more in the last week than in all the time I’ve known her, there’s no denying that, but I know the old Azina is still in there, lurking beneath all that hardened flesh. And I’d be willing to bet what’s really stinging Bron is that she got the better of him. We know each other so well that the battle could have gone either way. If Azina hadn’t dropped Bron with a shot to his nuts, she surely would have died.
We approach the entrance and find a gap where the metal is bent and Bron slides his fingers in and begins exerting force to pull the two ends apart. The strength in these new arms is something special. Back in the day, the big galoot woulda popped a vein trying to move something this heavy. Now, he makes short work of it. Soon there’s enough space to enter and I catch a smug look on his face. I didn’t think his overinflated ego could get any bigger. Clearly I was wrong.
The air inside is cool and smells of grease. A long corridor descends at a slight angle. It’s wide enough for all of us to walk side by side. Air ducts and piping hug the walls like lengths of human entrails, stretched end to end.
“When did the Keepers build this place?” I ask.
“They didn’t,” Oleg says. “They found it, the way they find most everything. Prospectors. We believe it was a bunker, built by Dusters before the fall.”
“So they could hide from Zees,” Bron adds with disgust.
“Even before that,” Oleg amends. “Back when the planet was governed by nations threatening to destroy each other with Atomic weapons. This isn’t the only one in existence, only the closest to Sotercity.”
“And the Keepers turned it into a hiding place for all the cutting edge technology they wanted to withhold from the bumbling masses.”
Oleg doesn’t look happy with my comment. “Technology that the masses weren’t ready for,” he says. “I’ll be the first to admit that the Keepers have made mistakes but, without them, we’d all either be dead or living in caves.”
“Yeah,” Bron says. “Like White Rock.”
Oleg’s got a soft spot for the Keepers that may never go away. What’s that famous Duster expression? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? It doesn’t seem to matter to him that the Keepers were the ones responsible for starting this whole Zee mess in the first place. Giving the Keepers the respect they’re due is just a bunch of hogwash, but there isn’t any sense debating the point, especially here.
We come to an area where the hallway splits in two directions. Dhal’s scratching his head, trying to remember which way to go, and the group looks to me. I freeze for a moment. These kinds of decisions were always made by Azina. I’m so used to following her into hell and back that the notion of choosing feels like a monumental task.
“I guess we’ll go right.”
“You guess?” Bron barks. “Is it right or left?”
“How the hell should I know? This whole thing was Dhal’s idea.”
The air inside is getting cooler and cooler, but I can see beads of sweat rolling down Dhal’s cheeks. “Right,” I say. “We go right.”
Bron sighs and I can’t help but feel like the world’s most incompetent leader. I know none of them could do any better, but the thought doesn’t do much to settle my nerves. We head right and enter a room big enough to contain two entire districts of Sotercity, one on top of another. Weak lighting spills out of brass fixtures strung along the walls, casting thick shadows along the floor and making the ceiling look like a starless night sky.
But, as impressive as all this is, it’s nothing compared to the two copper figures up against the far wall, surrounded by scaffolding. They’re nearly twice the height of Goliath, but not nearly as sleek looking.
A voice in the distance tells us to halt. That’s when we first become aware that the room isn’t empty at all. Men in white lab coats, swallowed in the enormity of the chamber, are perched over tables, working on bits of wires and metal piping.
Whoever the guard is, he’s coming toward us from an entrance at the far end, his weapon at the ready. Bron walks ahead, waving an arm. “Don’t mind us, we’re just here to take these,” he shouts, pointing at the prototypes. A shot rings out and ricochets off Bron’s arm. The big guy turns around with a look of disbelief. “That stupid sonofabitch tried to shoot me.”
So much for Bron’s attempts at diplomacy.
The shot sends the men in white coats running for safety. An alarm sounds, echoing through the colossal chamber. Before us. the floor is dotted with rows of tables and shelves, packed with cogs and gears and every tool an engineer could want. From across the massive hall, I catch the sound of stomping boots and men barking orders. Dhal had said this place would be heavily guarded, but he also said these guys had been cut off from the rest of the world. As far as they know, things topside haven’t changed one bit.
We scurry for safety right as a hail of bullets fills the air. Sparks explode all around us. A ricochet whizzes past my face and disappears into the darkness. They aren’t just trying to kill us, they’re trying to keep us pinned down, so they can finish us up close and personal. Dhal’s lying on the ground with his head between his hands. Oleg’s down beside him, not fairing much better.
My shotgun is all I have and the men blasting away at us are far beyond its effective range. I fire a few rounds in the air to keep their heads down, but it’s starting to look like we’re sitting ducks.
Bron’s got his back against the table beside me. The look on his face tells me he’s about to raise hell.
“We have to talk to them,” I shout over the whizzing bullets.
“I tried and they nearly took my new arm off.” He cradles it like an injured cat.
A round clangs against a piece of metal pipe lying on the table and sends it spinning into the back of Bron’s head. It makes a wet sound as it connects and Bron touches the back of his skull, his fingers running over the lump that’s starting to fo
rm.
“That’s it, if you’re not gonna do something Ret, I will.” He pulls back the bolts on each arm, stands, and opens up with an ear shattering roar of fire. The new shells Dhal gave him might be smaller, but they’re louder and far more destructive than anything the big man had before. Tracers go stinging off into the distance. One round splinters a work table, another catches two soldiers lined up and cuts their bodies in two. Tools and bits of metal go flying into the air. If their heads weren’t down before, they are now. Perhaps just to drive the point home, Bron’s right arm jerks as he lobs a handful of grenades. I plug my fingers into my ears as they go off. The shockwave from the blasts hits a second later, like five slaps across the back of the head. I peek over the upturned table to see a cloud of swirling dust and debris where the soldiers had stood.
“No one needs to get hurt,” Bron says, although I’m not quite sure he understands there may not be anyone alive over there to hear him anymore. The shooting has stopped completely. I’m up on my feet now, shotgun pointing into the shadows where those initial shots had come from. I’m about to wave us forward when I feel a jolt of pain fire through every nerve ending in my body. I hear Bron cry out beside me, before both of us collapse to the ground. It feels like the time I decided to go toe to toe with a Merc named Gor, a six foot seven bruiser who smelled of turnips and got a kick out of picking on anyone he thought he could beat. I won’t lie and say I beat Gor, but the feeling I had when I woke up was a lot like this.
A group of soldiers surrounds us and I see exactly how they did it. Distracted us with a feigned attack while the bulk of them circled around from behind. Smart. I’m still on the ground, getting a great view of their boots, when I’m yanked to my feet. My jaw feels like it’s been wired shut. Even Bron’s a mess and it takes five men to lift him.
Their commander looks like one mean sonofabitch. He’s glaring at me through a pair of ink black eyes, his face a moonscape of scars and craters only partially masked by a dark, wiry beard that reaches down to his chest. The men on either side of him all have beards, and what surprises me most is none of them look anything like Keepers. Oleg’s beside me, with his red robes and shortly cropped white hair, looking just as stunned. The contrast couldn’t be any clearer. Compared to this motley crew, Keepers aren’t much more than a bunch of clean cut librarians.
Two of the men are holding strange looking rifles I’ve never seen before. They send out some kind of electrical pulse, like the stun guns Dusters used on one another. Which is another unlikely feature for a group this rough around the edges, until I realize why. They wanted to capture us alive for one simple reason. The dead don’t talk.
All four of us are led past the gleaming bronze Titans, standing to attention on our right. Scattered around are the men Bron killed, or at least what’s left of them. A few bearded faces stare up at us with unmoving eyes as we hurry through.
The commander salutes the corpses as we go by. “They died a good death,” he says in a gruff, but reverent tone.
The comment seems to resonate with Bron. A thousand years ago, these two would have been sailing Viking warships up rivers, sacking anyone and anything in their way. I guess Oleg isn’t the only one who knows his history.
We’re brought to the mouth of the chamber where a row of chairs has been set up, all bolted to the ground. The guards bind us to the seats with heavy rope. No doubt this is where they intend to question us, one fingernail at a time, to find out why we’ve come. I knew it was a bad idea for Bron to open fire. Killing their comrades won’t have made this any easier.
A dirty looking man with a heavy limp and a dusty beard says: “This here’s Commander Tind. He hates liars and scoundrels and, above all, he hates Mercs. In a minute, he’s gonna ask you a few simple questions and, for your own sakes, I hope you answer ‘em truthfully.”
I’ll never let it show on my face, but the fear’s starting to settle in for the first time. Not just fear that we’re all about to die horrible deaths, or that Skuld is about to turn the world into a Zee playground. But fear that we failed to do anything about it. I can’t help but wish that Azina were here. She’s was the only one who knows a goddamn thing about diplomacy. Oleg’s too cranky. Bron’s too blunt and my sarcasm will more likely get us killed than anything.
Commander Tind folds his hands behind his back and stands before us, glaring with noticeable contempt. “You’ve broken into a top secret Keeper facility and killed my men. Tell me why I shouldn’t just slit all your throats and throw your bodies into the pits.”
A visible knot catches in Oleg’s throat and he swallows it down, hard, with an audible gulp. He may be an old sonofabitch, but he’s certainly not in a hurry to die. What I’m really worried about is Bron and that big ass mouth of his. There’s a smile on the oaf’s face and I just know he’s about to make things worse. I’m about to cut him off when I hear someone else speak and it takes me a second for the voice to register.
“We’ve come for the Titans,” Dhal says, his teenage voice quivering with fear.
Dhal’s answer produces a burst of wild laughter from Commander Tind’s men. “And for what purpose?” he asks and right there I get a sense of what we’re up against. These guys aren’t just trigger happy. They’re completely out of the loop. Oleg had mentioned they were largely cut off from the rest of the world, but now I know he wasn’t exaggerating. I’m about to feed him a whopper of a story when inspiration suddenly strikes. “We need them to kill Prior Skuld.”
That stops Commander Tind dead right in his tracks. The laughing behind him stops too and now he’s leaning in my direction. “Well, that was easy,” he said and turned to the limper with the dusty beard. “Slit their throats and throw their bodies down the pits.”
Men with knives come toward us. Commander Tind’s walking away when I shout after him. “You do that and you sign a death warrant for everyone in the ten territories.”
Tind takes three more steps before halting. The men with the knives are almost on us, I can see the murderous glint in their eyes. They can’t wait to teach us a lesson for killing their friends.
“Death warrant?” he asks, a single eyebrow raised.
“Tell your men to stand down,” I shout. “Stand down and I’ll tell you.”
Tind nods at them and the men with the knives pause. “You’ve got ten seconds and this better be good.”
I take a deep breath, feeling the stale, musty air rush into my lungs. “Skuld turned himself into some kind of super Zee and awoke all the Hives. Sotercity’s in ruins. Now he’s heading to destroy the capital.”
It’s impossible to tell from here if Tind believes me or not. Dusty beard’s right there beside him, pulling his thumb across his throat and you don’t need to know sign language to see where he stands. Tind seems to be mulling the story over. Not that I can blame him. It would be a hard thing for anyone to believe, especially if you’ve spent most of your life locked away from the world.
The Commander steps forward. “We’re sending a runner to Sotercity to verify your story. If you’re lying, we’ll discover it soon enough.”
But that’s where Tind is wrong. They’ll discover the truth all right but, by then, it might be too late.
-13-
Azina
Slipping out of Sotercity is proving to be tougher than we thought. The gates are closed tight and I can see some of the survivors manning the walls are armed with Keeper rifles. Grinders are forbidden from owning weapons, another means of preventing the masses from getting too uppity I think, but with so many bodies lying around, guns and ammo aren’t hard to come by. We catch sight of another armed group heading for the keep and I can only assume they’ve given themselves the undignified job of clearing out what’s left of the Zees.
“Krantz’ hideout,” Sneak signs.
She may have a point. The same route we used to enter the city before this mess started could get us out. Although I recall our hasty departure and the horde that was clawing after us. Chance
s were good they’d have followed Skuld’s orders and left the city with the other shitbags. Only one way to find out.
We come to a narrow street with shops on our left. I recognize a grocers market as the place where Bron helped a group of frightened people seek shelter. Only now the metal shutter is open; I hope they were smart enough to wait out the carnage. A peek inside reveals that same upper class woman with the silk pajamas and the soft white skin. Except much of that skin’s been chewed off. But she isn’t the only one. Looks like the whole lot of them were killed at once.
“Idiots,” I murmur. “All they needed to do was keep the door shut.”
Klaus hears me talking to myself and his expression makes it clear he isn’t sure why I’d concern myself with a bunch of strangers, and maybe he’s right.
One of my earliest memories from childhood is collecting stray cats. Seemed whenever I’d go out to play, I’d always come home with some malnourished fur ball in tow. I still recall returning from a game of Keepers and Monsters, a kitten with a broken leg limping after me. And no matter how much I begged, my father wouldn’t budge. We didn’t have enough to feed another hungry mouth. That’s when he took my weeping face into his callused hands and said: “You have a gentle heart, Azina. But you can’t save the world.”
The words still ring in my ears when we reach the manhole cover and the trash container Bron pulled over it. Doesn’t take more than a quick shove to move it out of place. As always, Sneak is the first one in. Klaus and I aren’t far behind. There’s hardly a stitch of light down here, but I can see just fine. Klaus’ got his hands out in front of him like a blind man, while Sneak seems to be faring a little better. She doesn’t need to see in order to slit you from ear to ear.
We pass what’s left of Krantz’ man, Vasser, lying on the floor like a half eaten meal. And that’s exactly what he looks like. His arms are little more than bones. Seems the Zees worked on him for a while after we locked them in here.
Hive III Page 4
