James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  "What does 'couldn't' mean, son?"

  "It means Jak said it would be double dangerous to go into thick brush. Like chasing after a wounded animal into mesquite. So he said to come tell you."

  "The others up? Where's Krysty?"

  "Taking a wash. Everyone else is up."

  Doc appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, grinning wolfishly. "The sun has got his hat on, Brother Cawdor, and there is likewise a wind on the heath."

  Ryan recognized the quote from previous repetitions by the old man, but he couldn't remember the source. "Life is very sweet, brother. Who would wish to die?"

  "Good. Very, very good, Brother Cawdor. We shall make something of you as a scholar after all. You've heard the body has gone from the secret garden below?"

  "Yes."

  "I shall go and reconnoiter what I may of this mysterious disappearance. Will you join me?"

  "Soon as I can get my clothes on in some privacy. Like a gaudy saloon on a Saturday night in here."

  THE GARDEN WAS MOIST and green and mostly in heavy shadow, the sun rising far off to the east, across the Lantic, behind the frame house.

  "See impression where body lay," Jak said, sitting on the bottom step of the porch.

  "Which way did they go?" J.B. asked. "Not that it matters much in the green hell out there."

  Jak pointed toward a flowering wisteria that had curled itself around the trunk of a tall self-seeded sycamore. "Vanished in bushes."

  "We going to take a look for the other man?" Krysty asked. "I can sort of feel him close by."

  "Might have a blaster." Dean dropped his hand to the butt of his own 9 mm Browning Hi-Power.

  "Best move on toward the center of Washington Hole." Ryan glanced up at the sky. "Could be a nice day."

  Doc stood with his right hand holding one of the pillars of the porch, his fingers spread wide. "King George says go, we must obey, over the hills and far away." He sang the old song in a surprisingly melodious voice.

  "Might as well move. See if we can pick up some breakfast on the road."

  "Pity," Doc said. "You know, Ryan, I would dearly have loved to see a real-life samurai warrior. Or, even a real-dead samurai warrior. I am sure he could have offered so much arcane wisdom to us."

  There was a strange thrumming noise in the bushes, and a whir of movement, a resonant thud, and an immensely long arrow, nearly five feet from honed tip to feathered end, cracked home into the wooden pillar, right by Doc, landing between his spread fingers.

  Chapter Nine

  "By the Three." The words whirled out Doc's mouth, ending in a gasp as Ryan snatched at the old man and hurled him prone on the porch, behind the cover of an ornamental fence.

  Everyone else hit the dirt, blasters drawn, peering through the gaps at the still and silent garden.

  A little way off a pigeon, red-collared and crested, clattered noisily from the brush, flapping up to perch on a high branch of a stately elm.

  "That way," J.B. said, pointing with the blunt muzzle of the Uzi.

  "Thank you for saving my life, my dear Ryan, but I feel you might have been a little less violent. I am quite breathless with the sudden exertion of it all."

  "Quiet, Doc." Ryan was looking up at the bizarrely long arrow, with its elegant goose-feather flights. "You seen anything like that, J.B., anywhere in Deathlands?"

  "Never. What kind of a bow does it take to fire something like that?"

  "Looks like would go through wall of house," Jak muttered.

  "And it passed between my fingers. Brushed both of them with the force of its passing. Look." Doc held out his hand, trembling a little. "See the scratches on them."

  "Probably aimed for that," Mildred said. "Not at all impossible," Doc replied. "I have read a little on the subject of the samurai, and their skill at arms is quite legendary."

  "Can't see anyone out there," Dean said. "We going to go out after him?"

  "That sounds like a triple-good way to get yourself chilled, son."

  "Yeah, I suppose so. If he's got a big bow to go along with that arrow. It's more like a spear. I've seen people fishing through ice with a sort of arrow a bit like that one."

  J.B. glanced back over his shoulder. "Thought just occurred to me that we might do better getting ourselves back into the house, friends. The samurai could easily have gotten himself around behind us."

  It was an uncomfortable suggestion and a more uncomfortable thought.

  Keeping low, they all crawled back inside, taking up defensive watching positions on every floor and on every side of the old building.

  "Don't open fire if you see him," Ryan ordered. "Be good to take him alive and ask him some questions. Like if he and his friend used the gateway. Following from that, do they actually know how the system works? They could hold keys to unlock doors that could transform our lives."

  "He's still around," Krysty said from the back bedroom. "I can feel him."

  "What's his game?" Mildred asked. "Just going to try and keep us holed up in here?"

  "Revenge would be guess." Jak was on the attic level of the house, his hair like a beacon in the gloom as he peered over the banisters.

  Ryan walked slow up the stairs, SIG-Sauer in hand, into the room where Krysty was flattened against the wall, her own blaster drawn.

  "Nothing," she said, squinting cautiously around the edge of the empty window frame. "Just a lot of green."

  "Never got trapped by one man with a bow." Ryan moved fast across to the opposite side of the window, keeping flat against the wooden wall.

  The second arrow came without any warning. Its splintering arrival, missing Krysty by less than a foot, followed a second later by the deep song of the bow, somewhere out among the overgrown garden. It pierced the outer and inner walls of the house, exploding in a burst of white plaster, burying itself at an angle in the far wall of the room, up close to the ceiling.

  "Gaia!" Krysty gasped, belatedly dropping to the floor, brushing powder from her face.

  "Son of a bitch!" Ryan stood for a moment in the window, daring the archer, his automatic searching the greenery for any sign of then: enemy.

  His eye caught a flicker of movement, deep in the shadows of a feathery palm tree, just in time to pull back into the corner as a third long shaft hissed into the bedroom, clear through the broken window, burying itself within a couple of feet of the other arrow.

  There was the boom of Dean's Browning far below them, and Ryan was back at the window in time to see the leaves shaking as someone moved quickly away.

  "Missed him, Dad."

  "Nice try, Dean. Bastard came close to hitting us up here. Saw me speak to Krysty and worked out where she might be. Put an arrow clean through the wall."

  "Think gone." The teenager was directly above them in one of the attics.

  "Spot him, Jak?"

  "No, Ryan. Just movement going away after Dean's shot. Good try, kid."

  "Don't call me 'kid,' Jak."

  The albino laughed softly.

  J.B. WAS INTRIGUED by the quality of workmanship shown in the arrows. "Don't know what kind of wood they're made from," he said, handling it like a religious icon.

  "Goose feathers, for the flights, I thought," Ryan offered. "Steel tip. Beautiful thing."

  "Certainly not Native American. No tribe would use something of this length. Damned nearly as tall as me." He held it against his five feet eight inches. "To get this kind of power and velocity, the bow has to be." He shook his head. "Wish we could capture this son of a bitch, Ryan. Surely wish we could."

  AFTER TWO HOURS of waiting, Ryan had begun to think that the samurai warrior had departed, possibly going back to the redoubt to jump away to where he'd come from.

  Doc stood at the bottom of the stairs. "I think that I can wait no longer, friend Cawdor."

  "What for, Doc?"

  "A personal matter." His voice tight with tension. "But one that can wait no longer. I beg you to trust me implicitly in this matter."

  Krysty l
eaned toward Ryan, her face so close that her bright red hair brushed his cheek. "Doc means that he's bursting to take a crap," she whispered.

  "Oh, yeah." Ryan raised his voice. "You want to go out into the garden, Doc?"

  "Indeed I do."

  Mildred had been watching the front of the house, peering between the tall, rambling trees toward the narrow side street. Now she reappeared, holding her Czech ZKR 551 target revolver. "Want me to keep him covered?"

  Though Ryan had the hunting rifle with a Starlite night scope and laser image enhancer, he knew that Mildred was much the best shot of the party. And if the Oriental assassin appeared, the range wasn't going to be much above thirty yards.

  "Sure," he said.

  Doc hobbled off the porch, legs oddly tight together, glancing back toward the house. Seeing Mildred watching him from the rear second-floor window, he gave her a hurried, self-conscious wave and a broad, toothy grin.

  "If our man's still out there, he could put an arrow clean through the old guy's skull and out the other side," J.B. said quietly.

  Ryan had called everyone to the garden side of the building, making sure that they were all on the reddest alert, watching for a glimpse of the Oriental archer.

  He was using the laser sight, its tiny crimson dot flickering among the leaves, peering through it and searching for any sign of life, breaking off now and again to check the birds in the trees. But none of a flock of pigeons was moving at all.

  Which probably meant the garden was deserted and their enemy was gone.

  Or, Ryan reminded himself, it could mean that the samurai had never left and was simply waiting patiently for his opportunity to avenge his comrade's death.

  Doc had stopped just beyond the fringe of rhododendrons and dropped his pants, squatting down out of sight, the top of his silvery mane barely visible.

  With the pressure of danger, Doc was quickly done, the bushes shaking as he plucked a handful of broad leaves to wipe himself clean.

  Then be was up again, running both hands through his hair, offering a mocking bow to the six faces staring at him from the windows.

  "Move it, Doc," Krysty called, her voice harsh. "Got a feeling that."

  The tall, frock-coated figure was striding toward them, walking far more freely than three minutes earlier, but Krysty's shout made him halt, looking behind himself at the great shifting bank of green.

  Ryan had been watching carefully, but he didn't actually see the man come out of the foliage. One moment he wasn't there. Next moment he stood at the edge of the bushes, an enormously long bow drawn in his hands, an arrow notched on the string, aimed at the center of Doc's chest.

  Ryan's instant reaction saved the old-timer. He hissed to Mildred, "Don't shoot the man. He'll loose and chill Doc."

  The black woman didn't need the explanation, instantly altering her aim, the big six-shot revolver an extension of her right arm. Both eyes were open as she looked down the barrel, her finger tight on the trigger.

  The man was an almost identical copy of the Oriental that Ryan had slain. Short and stocky, in a helmet with a bronze moon in its crown, a long sword sheathed at his waist, his armor glittering in the mid-morning sunshine.

  "I am Takei Yashimoto, and I am here to take a life for the life of my brother, Tokiruasha. Then I will offer my own unworthy self as a hostage in combat against any of you round-eye barbarians who wish to accept my humble challenge."

  "We have guns," Ryan called. "A word from me and you're dead meat."

  "I value my life less than a feather," the samurai replied. The point of the arrow hadn't deviated by an inch from Doc, who was standing, frozen, a few yards away.

  "Gonna shoot, Ryan," Mildred breathed.

  "No. I told you-"

  But there was the boom of the blaster, and the Smith & Wesson.38 round was on its inexorable way toward the armored figure.

  There was a deafening crack, and the bow seemed to explode in the man's hands. The arrow flew sideways for a dozen feet, before flopping harmlessly to the grass.

  The samurai staggered backward, his helmet sitting crookedly on his head, the two halves of the broken bow clutched uselessly in his hands.

  "Brilliant, love!" J.B. exclaimed, slapping Mildred on the arm. "Brilliant shot. The best."

  "Worst, John. I was aiming at the point of the arrow and hit the damned bow. Still."

  Below them, the frozen tableau had suddenly thawed.

  Doc was fumbling for his Le Mat, yelling incoherent oaths at the bemused Japanese warrior, who threw away his shattered bow and stood staring in disbelief at the furious old man who was threatening to shoot him.

  Ryan brought the Steyr to his shoulder again, but a dip in the land meant that Doc's greater height lay between him and a clear shot at the lone enemy.

  "Move it, Doc!" he bellowed.

  But Doc was deaf to anything, his blood racing as he finally managed to draw the big Le Mat and thumb back on the spur hammer above the scattergun round.

  The armored figure half drew his sword, then seemed to realize he had no chance at all.

  As quickly as he'd appeared from the undergrowth, the man vanished in a swirl of leaves, the quiver of long arrows snagging for a moment on a low branch.

  Doc fired the gold-engraved Le Mat, disappearing in a great cloud of powder smoke, ripping a chunk out of the bushes. Ryan thought that he heard a sharp cry of pain, but he couldn't be absolutely certain.

  "Gone," Jak said.

  "Did I hit him?" Doc called, trying to shift the hammer to the revolver barrel, with its nine.44s.

  "Mebbe," Ryan replied. "Come on back to the house, Doc, and we'll get moving. Leave this quiet suburb of Forest Heights. Come on."

  "By the Three Kennedys! My heartfelt thanks to you, Dr. Wyeth, for some damnably pretty pistolry. If I ever set these glims on another of these Oriental demons, then I'll. Had I not just relieved myself, I fear that I might easily have soiled my best linen."

  He bolstered the Le Mat and stooped to pick up the spent arrow. He snapped it across his knee, then gripping the two broken pieces and breaking them again, hurled the four sections of the samurai's arrow into the bushes.

  "Know the feeling, Doc," Ryan said.

  Chapter Ten

  As they walked slowly through the bright morning, along deserted streets of houses, which became more ravaged the nearer they came to the lip of the gigantic crater, the main topic of conversation was the encounter with the pair of Japanese samurai warriors.

  "Think that last one escaped, Dad?"

  "Could be. But I thought I heard a yell when Doc shot after him."

  "I thought I heard it, too," Krysty agreed.

  "Where the dark night do they come from?" J.B. asked, puzzled. "I figure we've been just about all over Deathlands, and I never saw nor heard a word of them."

  "Until in the last few weeks." Ryan kicked the gnawed body of a rat out of his path.

  Doc had been quiet, walking along, absently tapping his cane. Now he stopped and faced Ryan.

  "That wasn't some young fool pretending to be a samurai, Ryan. I was as close to him as I am to you, and I would swear on the grave of my beloved Emily that he was the real article." He hesitated. "Her grave. I have never thought where she might lie. When I was first a prisoner I tried to discover something of her later life. Where she might have been interred, but they watched me. Now all records have gone. Did she marry again, I wonder? A part of me hopes she stayed a widow, true to my memory. But my disappearance.she would never know why I was taken or where I went. I would not truly have wanted my Emily to pull in single harness for all that remained of her life." He drew out his swallow's-eye kerchief and blew his nose. "I wandered, dear friends. I am so sorry. I was saying I believed the samurai was genuine."

  "But there haven't been men like that for two hundred years or more, Doc," J.B. said.

  "True, John Barrymore. True. First came the Totality Concept. A secret range of subdivided projects designed to insure the safety and po
wer of the United States against all aggressors. A part of that was Overproject Whisper, which included the section known as Cerberus. Matter transfer was their main aim. But there was also Operation Chronos. The whitecoat murderers who time-trawled me here from my happy home."

  "We know this, Doc," Krysty said. "What are you trying to say?"

  "They spoke English. Mine did. You said that yours did as well, Ryan?"