Bonner raced by the flaming corpses, registering their screams as he passed. He hardly heard them. But they would come back to him some night, some bad night, when he couldn't sleep, when his mind would be tortured by the thought of the endless killing. But that was in the future. Right now those burning corpses were just Stormers, Stormers who had once been in his way. No longer.
They reached the second floor. Three Stormers reared up from behind an old desk like cobras. They loosed their rounds tearing holes in the plaster of the stairwell. From over Bonner's shoulder came one of Starling's arrows. It slapped into the desk and blew away the three Stormers in a shower of splinters. Two were killed instantly, the third writhed in silent pain, his face a mass of wooden needles.
"You owe me," shouted Starting, his voice echoing in the stairwell.
Bonner paused, listening for the chanting. "Third floor," screamed a voice, "third floor." One of the prisoners had brains enough to show the way.
"One more up," said Bonner and he started taking the steps two at a time. His brain was working feverishly. The Stormers would know by now that they had not been attacked by a large force. This meant that they would be coming down off the roof and searching the building systematically. Also, they would know that whoever attacked the place was there to stage a breakout. Bonner knew they could expect a hot reception when his small force made it to the cell level.
Just before the top of the stairs, Bonner brought up Starling.
"Okay," he panted, "top of the stairs to the left is the big room. Cells line the walls. Can you get the dynamite in there and clean up the Stormers? They gotta be waiting for us."
"No problem," came the customary reply. Starling caged a light off Cooker's thrower.
"We go in right behind the blast. Keep looking up, a balcony runs around the top of the room, just below roof level."
"Check." Starling threw the deadly bundle in a graceful arc. It bounced into the room and exploded with a roar so intense that for a single terrible moment Bonner thought the whole ancient building was going to come down around them.
A smoking crater took up most of the middle of the vast room. Bonner darted left and pressed himself flat against the first cell door. From the little barred window in the cell door came a voice.
"Hey man, lemme out. Gimme gun. I can fight." Bonner trained the snout of the AUG along the roof line watching for the dust to clear.
"Come on, man," whined the prisoner.
He was going to give away Bonner's position. "Shuttup," he ordered.
"Aw, man..."
"Shut your mouth," hissed Bonner.
The whole building had gone quiet. It was as if the blast had temporarily numbed every Stormer in the place.
The smoke was dissipating and Bonner could make out a Stormer kneeling on the balcony peering into the mist. The Steyr AUG let rip and the man toppled. Bonner was coming to love his little gun.
It was as if Bonner's fire was a general signal for the fight to start again. From every comer of the room came the sounds of gunfire. Bullets sprayed wildly, chopping across the walls in neat rows. Illuminating it all were the short spews of fire that Cooker spat'at the gallery. Men ignited like balls of paper held over a flame. The screams of the burning Stormers mixed with the wild cries of the prisoners.
"Let us out."
"Don't bum me."
"Let us at the fucks."
"Let's go, man, let's go."
Somewhere of to the right, Bonner heard the chattering of Starling's automatic. He was doing his job, like always.
"Starling!" shouted Bonner.
"Yah?" "Start letting 'em out."
'' Awwwright,'' screamed a prisoner, '' awwwright!''
"Starling! Starling!" yelled a voice, "it's me. Harvey! Over here! Starling!"
"Starling," yelled Bonner, "find him."
Cooker was dancing around the room firing great balls of flame into the room. Sometimes they connected with a Stormer, sometimes not. Bonner couldn't be sure but he thought that they were no longer drawing fire from within the room.
He started sliding the bolts off the metal doors. They flew open and a crowd of prisoners flew out, like animals released from a cage. One dashed into the middle of the room and fell through the jagged hole made by the bomb.
On the far side of the room Bonner could hear Harvey's happy hysterical screams.
"Starling! Un-fucking-believable!"
"Cooker," yelled Bonner.
"What?"
"Cut the flame, you're setting the place on fire." The old floorboards and the piles of debris turned up by the blast were burning brightly.
"Starling?"
"Yah?"
"Got him?"
"You bet!"
"Then let's get the hell out of here."
"Right behind you, boss."
The halls were clogged with prisoners, all of them running blindly for the stairs. Suddenly, the adrenaline pumping through him like sweet, powerful high octane fuel, made him feel like he was flying. The deafening noise of the prisoners, the vicious gunfire, the crackling of the flames all blended into one symphonic, seamless belt of noise. He had ceased to think, his brain, the command center that told him to be scared or wary or worried had shut down, he was an animal of pure instinct. Acting, reacting, fighting on the strength of his nerves. He seemed to be able to see everywhere, anticipate every move of his enemies;
it was as if he controlled them and could make them dance to his tune. The killing got easier and easier, until it was effortless.
This was the Bonner men feared most. Standing in the midst of the firefight, his senses heightened, sharp, taut. The men who opposed him saw that look, the set jaw, the blazing eyes and knew they were going to die. Back there, a thousand miles away Coldchip had felt it: the man was marked, he had something deep in his soul that the rest couldn't find or didn't have. They were just men with guns. Bonner was an avenging force meting out justice and death at will.
A crowd of prisoners had started down the stairs and were caught there by some Stomiers working their way up. They fell in a hail of bullets. Smoke from the dozens of small fires that Cooker had started began to creep through the building.
"I know another way out," screamed Harvey.
"Go," shouted Bonner.
Harvey headed for a wide main corridor yawning down the middle of the building. A score of doors opened onto it.
"There's another set of stairs here. One of these doors."
The four men started kicking in the thin wooden doors. Just as Bonner smashed one in Cooker called out: "Found it!"
But Bonner could not move. He stood framed in the doorway, transfixed.
"Bonner," screamed Starling, "let's go!"
Bonner took a step into the room. Hanging from the ceiling, head toward the floor, was a man-at least what had once been a man. The floor was slick with his blood. His blood and that of a thousand others. The skin had been carefully lifted off his chest and it hung around his shoulders and head like a dirty, bloody curtain. Cowering in a comer, his hands covering his head, was another man. He squirmed as if trying to make himself smaller, in the forlorn hope that Bonner would not see him.
"Bonner!" screamed Starling.
Bonner advanced. The man wore the red shirt and black stripe of Leather's torture squad. They were specialists in pain. There was nothing they didn't know about inflicting it until men begged for death. Begged, that is, if the squadsmen had left their victim a tongue and a voicebox. Bonner looked at the dead man. He couldn't save him but he could exact his revenge.
Bonner stood over the squadsman. The man raised a tear-stained face, pleading, beseeching. Inarticulate sounds came from his throat. Bonner didn't know the man that had been tortured. He didn't care if he was a thief, he didn't care if he was a murderer, it didn't matter. No man deserved that.
He pumped a whole fast clip into the torturer's head, the force of the close range shots bouncing the man's head on the floor like a rubber ball.
Bonner left the room behind Starling, calmly reloading as he went.
Chapter 13
The land was still rich. That was Bart's conclusion after travelling for six uncomfortable days in a truck that was part of one of Leather's tax collecting convoys. Eleven trucks were now entering the Cap, each crammed with the remaining spoils of the old world. Every few miles the convoy had stopped and the tax men had handed over the loot: food, liquor, gas, ammunition. A single truck carried twenty or so women. The best looking would go to Leather and the deputies, the others would be given to the Radleps and the rest would make their way down to the Stonners and beyond.
Leather was squeezing the last drops of richness from the land. He took for himself and gave nothing back. One day it would all be gone and the little order that Leather's will imposed on the land would break down. Bart hoped he wouldn't be alive to see that day.
Only a small piece of the city was occupied now, just the center where the old seat of government had been, when the continent had been called the United States of America. It must have been quite a town once. There was a tangled overgrown strip of grass right down the inhabited area. It stretched from the huge domed ruin at one end to the broken white stone needle at the other that everyone called The Tower. It had been taller once, but it had been broken off jaggedly about two thirds of the way up. Leather had a big fire built in The Tower and it burned day and night, the flames from the bonfire leaping twenty-five feet into the air.
The Cap was just the center of town. Surrounding it were the acres and acres of the remains of the old city. Now they were nothing more than silent ruins. Everything centered on that green strip and the decaying government buildings that clustered around it. The officials of the Slavestates lived in those huge old marble tombs, each of them laying up as much plunder as they could and intriguing against another colonel of Stormtroopers or a tax-general who was taking too much for himself. No one was safe-except Leather. His power was absolute because he was ruthless. His subjects lived and died at his pleasure alone.
Seth left the convoy and decided to check out the bazaar that was always going on in the avenue that skirted the green space. Here you could buy the spoils left over after the ruling powers had taken their share. There were rusty firearms, homemade ammunition, canned food from the old world that might be edible-you never knew until after you bought it- and odd pieces of bric-a-brac from the dead time:
tattered umbrellas, a worn pair of shoes, old clothes, eyeglasses, a book or two (very hard to sell), a few sticks of furniture....
Bart made his way through the crowded bazaar. Stormer officers swaggered by, evil-looking torture squadsmen, harried-looking tax-generals always worried that their sectors wouldn't make their quotas, slave overseers with their savage whips dangling over their shoulders like dozing snakes; the crowd shrunk away opening up a path for a single crazy-eyed Radlep. He stalked through the crowd, the pain of his wounds showing plainly on his face, begging for trouble. But no one ever bothered a Radlep...
Bart paused to watch a slave auction. A few tired women, coarse-boned slaves from the back of beyond, stood listlessly on a platform while a slave broker tried to whip the crowd up a little.
"Come on, come on, these fine young ladies are the best stock you seen in plenty long time..."He grabbed one of the gray women and tugged at her dirty dress. A breast flopped out like a dead fish.
"Now how do you like that? Choice!" he bellowed. The crowd, the woman, were unmoved.
Bart turned on his heel. It was time to see Leather. He grabbed a passing Stormer.
"Leather at the big house or is he in the throne room?"
"He's going to be at the throne tonight. Right now' I figure he's at the house." Bart made his way to the big house. In the old days the head of the whole continent had lived there. Now it was Leather's main dwelling. The walls, once a bright white, had been tinged a dirty gray and they were stained everywhere with the red rust of broken plumbing and with the green of Spanish moss. The elegant gardens that had surrounded it were wild tangles now, although once in a while a pink rose popped up, as if gasping for air and light, just the way every so often a pretty face would be put up for auction at the slave market.
The entrance to the big house was guarded by two Radleps. The closer you got to Leather the more Radleps you saw. They gave Bart the creeps, they gave everyone the creeps, but they were devoted to Leather and would happily die for him. The halls of the house were crowded with people, Leather's government, all waiting to see the man, waiting to see how they could curry favor with him and use it to destroy a rival and advance themselves. They whispered together in doorways and their maneuverings were observed by the cracked, grave-looking portraits of statesmen that looked down from the walls. No one remembered who they were and no one cared. Someone had gone around poking out the eyes of a lot of them, someone else had drawn obscene additions to the thin elegant forms.
Bart got lucky. As he entered the house he bumped into Jojo. He was Leather's right-hand man. Leather's schemer, some said Leather's brains. It was Jojo who controlled access to Leather. If Jojo didn't want you to see the man, you didn't.
"Hey, Jojo," called Bart.
Jojo, a fat, dirty little man with a self-important air, stopped. "Yeah? Do I know you?"
"Bart. I'm a Stormer in Drexy's outfit."
"So what are you doing here? Drexy is s'posed to be up on patrol in the gap."
"We ran into some trouble... Listen, I gotta tell Leather something."
Jojo crossed his arms across his chest, supporting his fat little tits, like a woman. "So tell me."
Bart took a deep breath. "Drexy's dead. The whole outfit got sliced... By Bonner.''
Jojo nodded. "Fer Chrissake, keep your voice down. Jesus, where did you see him last?"
"Up near the Pittsburgh ruins."
"Was he inbound?"
"Figure so,"
"You better see Leatherman."
Jojo steered Bart past the elite that waited patiently for an audience and into the private wing of the big house. Here was Leather's lair. He kept his women and his slaves there, a Radlep was posted every few yards in the long corridor.
Colley, the general commanding the Stormtroopers, was about to be shown into Leather's office when Jojo stopped him.
"Take a seat, Colley. We gotta go in. This is important." "For fuck's sake, Jojo, I been waiting two hours to see the man."
"Too bad."
"Wait. That's one of my boys you got there. What's your name?"
Bart was about to answer when Jojo cut him short. "None of your fucking business, Colley."
"Yeah, I know him, he's with Drexy. You a deserter?" Colley had grabbed Bart by the shirt front.
Jojo stepped between them. "Colley, sit your ass down and don't bother me." He pushed the Stormer commander back toward a delicate-looking little chair.
Like a chastened dog Colley sat down and silently swore that there would come a day when Jojo wasn't going to be quite as powerful. They would have some accounts to reckon then.
Jojo pushed Bart into Leather's office. Bart had never been in there before and he could hardly take it all in. It was a circular room, bare except for a big wooden desk, its top littered with three or four different handguns. There was no chair in front of it. No one sat in Leather's presence.
"Leather," said Jojo timidly, for even he was afraid of him, "this guy has something you should hear."
Leather swung around in his big swivel chair and placed his feet on the desk. Every time Bart saw Leatherman it was a shock. He was a big man with shaggy dirty hair that hung down to his shoulders. His chest was as broad as a barrel and it was scarcely contained by the tight leather shirt he wore. It was tucked into leather pants that Bart could see were made of leather that was soft and supple, like the skin of a young girl.
He was unshaven. A dark stubble spread across his face then thickened into a bushy moustache that drooped on either side of his thick, cruel lips. His blue eyes were wide-set and stared with an intensity that seemed to pass right through you. But the most noticeable feature was the jagged scar on his face. It began up underneath the black eyepatch and ran like a claw down the side of his face to his powerful chin.
Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Page 9
