her away. Bonner felt tears well into his eyes.
Dara was dragged to the platform that stood at the base of the throne. Leather stood.
"I'm first, Bonner." He climbed down from his throne, loosening his pants as he went, "then every body will get a turn."
Bonner looked away as Leather whipped awav Dara's scant covering. Her long, white, muscled leg' seem to gleam gold in the light cast by the crackling braziers. A Stonner grabbed him by the jaw and forced his gaze back onto the rape.
"He gonna fuck her," he said. "You gonna watch."
But Dara had not given up. As Leather advanced on her, she scissored her legs, brought her knee? back to her chest and then, with every ounce of strength she could summon she kicked at his exposed crotch. Her heel slammed into Leather, crushing the softness of him against the hard ridge of his pubic bone. Leather yelped and fell backwards, holding himself in both hands, screaming in his pain:
"Okay. That's it. Take her, beat the rucking bitch to death. Cut her, kill her..."
Instantly, a dozen people were on her, Radleps, tax-men, anybody, pounding her, torturing her de-fenseless body. In a matter of seconds her pretty. fragile face was a mass of blood.
"Bonner!" she screamed. He closed his eyes as a. torture squadsman approached with a blade. Dara's attackers stepped back as if deferring to the master. She dragged out the last syllable of his name, her voice arching into a long, tortured, inarticulate cry that begged, pleaded, beseeched him for salvation. Her scream filled his head with the searing intensity of hot oil and every fiber of his being flared up in a crescendo of unalloyed pain and anguish.
The two Stormers on duty outside the fuel dump never saw the Mean Brothers. They died with the sound of the crack of their own bones filling their ears. Bonner's force sprinted up the long wide flight of steps into the domed ruin and found themselves in a huge round room. It was crammed with oil drums. In corridors running off the rotunda they could see rows of gasoline cans, orderly as a rank of soldiers, running down the long hallways for what seemed like miles. Harvey crashed into a few rooms off the corridor: more drums. "Holy shit!"
"Can you blow it?" demanded Starling. "Can I blow-it? A fucking dog could blow it. The question is can we get clear?"
Cooker looked like a man who had been allowed a glimpse of heaven. He stood staring about him like a man in a trance. He sniffed deeply. The sweet fumes smelled as good to him as home cooking. He tried to say something but found his words caught in his throat.
"You and the sisters take as many barrels as you can and roll them down the steps. I want them steps soaked in gas." They jumped to his command. Harvey started kicking over fuel drums until the round room was awash in gasoline. The bluish green fluid belched out onto the smooth marble. The fumes rose, choking.
"Means. Go down the hall; open as many drums as you can." The Mean Brothers nodded and lumbered down the long corridors. They swept open two giant doors and found themselves in a vast room ringed around with heavy mahogany desks. A balcony overlooked the huge space. Every inch of the room, including the massive raised lectern that stood against one wall, was covered in gasoline drums. They raced to the platform and began knocking open the containers, starting a waterfall of gasoline, coursing down over the woodwork.
Harvey appeared at the door. "Okay, Meanies, out!"
The Mean.Brothers paused to kick open a few more cans, then followed Harvey to the exit.
Back in the rotunda, Harvey made sure everybody was there. "Okay, out, everybody out."
The sisters and the rest sloshed through the gasoline lake and out onto the slick, wet steps. "Move it," screamed Harvey, coughing and choking on the dizzying gasoline. The crew sprinted down the stairs and into the park that fronted the gas dump. "Keep going, keep going," Harvey urged.
He followed but stopped in the cracked street before the huge domed building. He withdrew one of his little glass bombs. He leaned back as far as he could, then whipped the bottle as far as he could up the steps. Before it landed he was off and running, through the tangled green strip trying to put as much ground between him and the dome before it went. With a sound like a wind from a hurricane the gas on the outside stairs went up: "Whup."
Harvey felt the heat of the flames wash over him, singeing the hair on his head, the green slash suddenly illuminated by a huge black and orange fireball.
Just then, the dump went. It sounded like the end of the world. Harvey skidded in the grass and stopped. He had to watch. This was the biggest explosion since the bomb and he had caused it. A blast of flame like a tidal wave washed over him and he burned in a flash as bright as day.
Chapter 19
The first blast of the gas dome swept into the throne room and the crowd, until that moment hypnotized by each savage refinement as practised on Dara's helpless naked form, froze. All eyes turned toward the elegant columned facade and saw reflected in the long pool before the throne room, a blinding sheet of flame. The ground rocked, the air was filled with the bellowing roar of explosions, one on another, followed with the buffeting of shock waves. There was a hot, suffocating smell of burning gasoline.
Dara was unaware of the cataclysm. She lay on her bier, blood flowing from her chest like a river. Bon-ner hardly heard the explosion. His eyes were fixed on Dara, trying to transmit life to her, pumping his thoughts into her brain like a blood transfusion.
Starling bounced up the stairs into the throne room, the Sisters and Cooker fanning out behind him. The dome continued to explode, boom following boom, like a thunderstorm in hell. "Evening, folks!" screamed Starling and the Steyr started spitting bullets into the packed crowd. Courtiers began falling like scythed wheat. The Sisters set up a gutslamming field of fire, chopping down a phalanx of Radleps before they could bring their weapons to bear. Bonner's force took the element of surprise and used it for all it was worth. They fired so rapidly and their coming was so unexpected that having surprise on their side was as valuable as having another ten men with guns.
The Mean Brothers ran into the crowd, their crude weapons harvesting skeins of flesh with an even more savage sweep. The ten fighters in Bonner's force fought like a hundred. In seconds courtiers were dying as if they were the victims of a strong and virulent plague. People screamed, clutching at their wounds, their cries floating up to the roof of the marble chamber. Their anguished yells, mixed with the constant and bone-rocking detonations that rolled over them from the gas house made the throne room resound with a bestial concerto that seemed to have been composed by the devil himself.
Bloodlust seized the attackers. Starling, the Sisters, Cooker, even the Mean Brothers felt that driving sense of hate pulse through their bodies like a murderous, hot liquor, intoxicating, satisfying... It drove them on, making them mad for blood, thirsty and anxious for more.
"Burn," screamed Cooker, "burn you fuckers, bum!" The thrower hit the living with sickening accuracy. The air was filled suddenly with the sweet smell of burning meat.
The Mean Brothers slashed back and forth with their iron weapons as if they were cutting their way through dense underbrush. Blood ran down the shafts of their axe and shovel, staining their arms, flecking across their furry chests, splattering into their lips. They tasted the gore of their enemies and felt rejuvenated, and they were egged on to a fury of destruction and vigorous death-dealing that their immense strength surged to fulfill.
The heads of the axe and shovel became embedded in the bodies of their victims and the one with the shovel simply yanked the blade from the body of the Radlep he had impaled. The one with the axe rocked the shaft back and forth unable to free it. He pulled his victim to the ground and jammed his foot into the man's stomach to give him the leverage required to remove the heavy axe head. A Stormer dropped to his knees before one of them, his voice unable to form the plea for mercy that the features on his face plainly telegraphed. The Mean Brother, the heavy muscles on his back flexing, swept his axe into the man's neck, severing his head through the thin bridge of fl
esh and bone in a single blow.
Blood slicked across the floor a quarter inch deep. Those still alive slipped and fell, wailing. Starling and the Sisters stitched bullets across the writhing mass, chopping a dozen bodies into a hundred pieces. The two Stormers that were guarding Bonner flopped to the floor and lay there in blood, firing wildly at the point at which they thought Starling and the Sisters stood. The shifting, screaming crowd blocked their view and some of their bullets cut down some of their own. They fired crazily, terrified and only concerned with their own survival. Suddenly the Mean Brothers stood over them. Veins pulsed in the giants' faces and they whipped their weapons in a vicious downswing sweeping into the Stormers' soft bodies as if they were clay men. The Mean Brother who carried a shovel freed Bonner of his constraints. The Mean Brother with the axe held it out to Bonner, urging him to take it.
"No," said Bonner, "you need it."
The Mean held out his hands. These are the only weapon I need, he seemed to say, and, as if to illustrate his point he grabbed a Stormer who cowered nearby and, picking the man up as if he was a doll, slammed him to the ground. He took hold of the man's jaw, forcing his teeth apart until the man's fleshy cheeks split. The Mean rocked the hapless Stormer's jaw back and forth like a barn door on its hinge-then, with a special burst of effort he tore the jawbone from its socket. The Stormer screamed a scream that was choked with blood and his pink tongue slathered about like a fat eel suddenly rousted from its hiding place. The Mean shrugged at Bonner. It's easy, he was saying, you take the axe.
Bonner took the axe and felt the stickiness of blood on his hands, the shaft ran red with the blood of scores of people. He strode through the crowd oblivious to the bullets and knelt at Dara's side. Her eyes were open but her mind was miles away, lost beyond the forest of pain and humiliation that she had travelled through that long night. Her breath was shallow and forced, her chest a mass of blood and tattered skin. Bonner gently laid his forehead against hers.
"Dara... Dara... Dara, do you hear me?" Her lips were frozen in a rictus of death but she hissed something through her ripped lips. Bonner leaned closer to catch her words. She whispered again. Bonner strained to hear over the screams and the explosions. He wrapped his strong arms around her and felt her frail body strain with the attempt at speech.
"Kill me," she hissed.
He looked down at his Dara, the woman he loved, the woman he would willingly have died for, the woman that gave his violent life meaning. She was a bloody wreck, her body so fragile housing a mind so tough, so singleminded, she had become the delicate battlefield upon which hate had played its final, deadly chord.
"Kill me."
Bonner's hands closed like steel bands around his beloved's throat. He squeezed and a tiny smile, the smile of release floated across her scarred features. Slowly, he felt the life flow from her. Dara released herself to his grip, confident that he would see her through the torment of this foul world that she had tried to change. As the last of her young life drained out of her she Suddenly the Mean threw down his shovel and gestured at the Radlep. He pointed at his massive chest. Take your best shot, he was saying. The Radlep saw his chance and lunged. The hard, hairy arm of the Mean Brother clotheslined him, crook of his arm settling like a vise around the Radlep's scaly neck. Instinctively, the Mean Brother slammed the Radlep's head down onto his upraised knee, exulting in the soft give of the man's face. The little bones in the Radlep's neck snapped and cracked like firecrackers.
The gas dome continued to explode, blowing into the throne room a sheet of noise so loud the detonations of Starling's arrows were drowned out.
Leather was screaming, staring at his severed hand as it lay on the red, wet floor. Bonner swung again and Leather threw up his arms to protect himself, his chopped wrist spraying blood. He whimpered and rolled and screamed when the axe tore through his good hand, scattering his fingers.
Radleps were pouring from their headquarters like maddened bees from their hive. They made for the throne room, guns blazing.
Starling reached for another arrow and found that he had only three left. Starling had no intention of dying in that bloody pit. He decided it was time to pull the crew out. Cooker was coming to the same conclusion. He pumped up his tanks and tried to shoot a bolt of flame but only a dribble of fire tumbled from his thrower. He was out of gas. He paused a moment and listened to the screams and to the constant explosion of the gas dump. This was the happiest night of his life.
Clara's gun chattered and stopped. She was out of bullets. The bodies of four of her sisters lay at her feet.
"Time to split," she yelled at Starling. She stooped and scooped up Jamie's Iver Johnson, pushing her body roughly to one side. There would be time to grieve later.
"Right, Sister," said Starling, grabbing an M-16, once the proud possession of a Radlep.
A Radlep had tried to get between Bonner's axe and Leather. In the moment that Bonner turned to defend himself, dispatching the Radlep as if he was a sapling that had to be cut down. Leather made his escape. He burrowed into a mountain of torn, bloody dead flesh and lay still hoping to escape Bonner and his blade.
Crazed with hate, Bonner's eyes darted about the room. "Where- are you?" he yelled. "Where are you?"
Bonner swung around, the axe raised when he felt a hand on his shoulder. But it was a Mean Brother.
"Don't mess with me, man," said Bonner. "I got to find him."
"Bonner," shouted Starling, "everybody out." "I'm not leaving," said Bonner, his blazing eyes still surveying the carnage of the room.
Starling shrugged and signalled to the Mean Brother. The Mean reared back and Bonner felt the man's fist, as weighty as a load of bricks slam into his head. Bonner slumped, the Mean catching him before he hit the ground. He shouldered Bonner's compact body as if it were that of a child, and gently took the axe away from him.
Chapter 20
The night air coursed cool over Bonner's hot skin as if it was water from a refreshing clean mountain stream. His eyes flickered open and he looked into the worried faces of Starling, Clara and Cooker.
"Phew," said Starling, "I was afraid the Mean man had hit you too hard."
Bonner struggled to his feet, rubbing his throbbing head. He had taken a lot of punishment in the last twenty-four hours and his body felt bruised from head to toe. "Who didn't make it?"
"Five of the Sisters," said Starling, "and Harvey." Clara's big face ran with fat tears. "Sorry, Sister Clara," said Bonner softly. "Not your fault. Brother Bonner. The Sisters knew what they were getting into..."
"We have the same enemies now," said Bonner. Clara raised a clenched fist. "Damn right, Bonner. I'm going to hit Leather again and I'm going to keep hitting him." "I'll help you," said Bonner.
"Me too," said Starling.
"Hey, fuck that," said Cooker, "we gotta get out of here."
Bonner looked around the clearing. "Do we have any idea where they are?"
"I got the Mean Brothers posted so they can't sneak up on us. But it's a cinch that the Stormers and leps are sure to have cut off the city to the north and the south. We can head east but we'll just run into the sea... We might be able to swing north but the roads are going to be jammed with Leather's men. We could try it on foot, but we need the speed. Leather's probably screaming for blood because we hurt him bad... He's not going to let us get away easily."
"West," said Bonner.
"West!" said Starling.
"Bonner, due west of here is the firelands."
"Yeah, I know."
"Bonner," said Clara, "you know there's no way through the firelands..."
"There's no easy way," said Bonner, "but there's a way."
Starling leaned forward, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You done it? You done this path through the firelands?"
"Yep. Me and Seth."
"Jeez, Bonner," said Clara, "the firelands? I dunno..."
Bonner squared his shoulders trying to throw off a yoke of pain and fatigue that seemed to w
eigh heavily on his shoulders.
"You got a better plan?"
Leather writhed in pain, bucking off the bed as a few of his harem girls tried to attend to his terrible wounds. He was spread out on a huge bed in the big house, the bandages on his arms growing more sodden with blood as the moments passed. Colley, the general in chief of the Stormers, stood over the bed, big blobs of sweat sliding off his grimy red face. Jojo stood by, a worried look in his eyes.
"Five!" screamed Leather, "we got five! We got five of those fucks? Five!"
The gas dome exploded again like summer thunder. "How many did we lose?"
"Leather, come on, they caught us with our pants flappin'. They surprised us..."
Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Page 13
