by James Axler
As the crew hastily dropped back, the M-60 machine guns of Two and Three cut loose, the big .308 rounds chewing the bodies into pieces. Shaking off the lumps of flesh, the green vines snaked out after the fleeing norms, catching the crippled crewman in the back. Instantly he went stiff, his eyes rolling in unimaginable agony.
Releasing his arms, the other crewmen fired point-blank, blowing out the back of his head, the pink brain already full of wiggling tendrils.
Not bothering to open the backpacks on the misty ground, the panting crewmen peppered the canvas bags with blasterfire until the Molotov cocktails inside ignited. Engulfed in flames, the puppets kept walking onward until the ivy blackened and jerked out of the bodies to lash around madly. Throwing off charred leaves, the greenery began to shrivel, then the vines snapped in two, the undamaged sections retreating to the bridge, the rest of the hellish plant consigned to deadly flames.
Only now more vines came snaking down from the bridge from every side, some with puppets attached and some without, obviously on the hunt for new slaves.
“Fucking mutie!” Jefferson screamed, blowing thunder at the moving greenery.
Throwing down more Molotovs, the crew tried to form a wall between them and the vines, and the plants disappeared. But then vines erupted from the ground well past the conflagration and surged forward.
Any semblance of organized resistance disappeared at that, and everybody took off, firing and running in a near panic.
Pausing to pull the arming ring from a gren, a crew member dropped her explosive charge as a vine whipped around her throat and entered her cursing mouth. Gagging, she tried to chew it out, then went oddly stiff and turned to face the other norm fumbling to work the gren in his clumsy hands.
Ruthlessly, the others cut her down, then ran for their lives.
Charging out of War Wag One, Abduhl strode into view, the pressurized canisters of a portable flamethrower strapped to his back.
As the other norms streamed past, he rained fire on the plants, forcing them back, clearing a safe zone for his brothers, then the ground below him sprouted a leafy green that went straight up between his legs. Shuddering all over, Abduhl sent a column of fire high into the sky, then he paused to turn and sweep the burning lance of lambent chems across the other crewmen. Two of them were engulfed, and instantly became screaming human torches. But even as they fell, the vines arrived, and the cooking flesh rose once more to shamble toward the open door of War Wag One.
Now, the big Fifties started working, flame and hot lead vomiting in gouts from the long vented barrels. Golden arcs of spent brass flew high, and the high-velocity barrage of combat rounds tore the walking carrion apart, intestines spilling onto the dirt. But the vines merely withdrew undamaged, and this time snaked directly toward the door.
Stepping boldly into view, Jessica smashed a Molotov on the short ladder leading to the war wag, and the vines paused, temporarily stymied. Then they began to crawl up the sides of the great machine, seeking new avenues to reach the rich, red meat inside.
More crew members poured from Two and Three, blasting away at the thrashing vines, and crashing Molotovs onto the armored hull of War Wag One. The vines retreated, and again the big .50-caliber machine guns chattered and yammered away at the mutant greenery. But as the vines shriveled, more ivy wiggled over the predark bridge. The supply of them seemed endless.
Starting its engine, War Wag Two moved forward with the flamethrower on top sending out streams of annihilation. The bastard mix of gasoline, kerosene, coal oil and shine covered the descending vines like napalm, and the plants lashed furiously, trying uselessly to dislodge the sticky chems.
Then the honeycomb pod on top of War Wag One angled around to point straight up, and launched a full salvo of missiles. The fiery warbirds streaked away, disappearing into the starry night only to return a few heartbeats later and impact directly on top of the mutie-infested bridge.
The detonations lit up the sky, cars and flame creating a hell flower. Visibly swaying, the entire bridge groaned, cables snapped, steel beams buckled and both pylons cracked.
Slamming shut the hatch, Jessica cut off the nightmare scene and threw the lock so hard she gasped in pain. Looking down, she saw the bandages around her chest staining red again, but she really didn’t give a damn. The door was closed, and no ivy had gotten inside. Thank…well, thank everybody who watches over idiot norms, and gives a flying frag about our little lives. Amen.
“Well?” Roberto bellowed from his chair.
“We’re tight!” Jessica replied over the growing noise coming from outside. Stumbling to the control room, she saw through the windshield that the bridge was crumbling, huge pieces falling like burning meteors.
“Time to book, Chief,” Jake said, his hands tight on the controls.
“No, not yet,” Roberto replied, leaning forward in his chair. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
More assorted destruction rained down, bodies, cars and chunks of burning pavement, the molten asphalt dripping off like black blood.
“Sir…” the driver urged, stressing the word.
“We’re not leaving yet!” the trader barked furiously.
Just then, something large fell from the bending trestle of the fiery bridge. It landed hard, indenting the bloody soil, and hundreds of wriggling vines extended to haul the huge shapeless form away from the mounting destruction.
“Light it up, Tex!” Roberto commanded into the mike.
Once more, from the top of the war wag a shimmering beam of cohesive diamond light stabbed out to pierce the leafy blob completely through. Something inhuman screamed as every vine went stiff, then began to shrivel from the intense heat of the mauling power ray. The main bulk of the mutie plant obscenely squirmed as wisps of steam appeared from inside, then the whole thing burst into bizarrely colored flames. The inhuman cry of unbearable anguish sounded again, then faded into nothingness.
“Did we recover everybody chilled?” Roberto asked, leaning back in the chair with obvious satisfaction.
“Yes, sir, that is, everybody who still had…”
“A body. Yes, I understand, Jess,” the trader said, closing his eyes. “Have Shelly check ’em over for any sprouts, and recover what we can, boots, blasters and such.”
“Already being done,” the petite blonde replied, taking her assigned chair.
“All right, Jake, move us out,” Roberto commanded, painfully rising from his chair and starting down the hallway. “I want to see what we bought for so much blood.”
“Better be worth it,” the driver said, shifting into gear and angling the war wag away from predark ruins. Behind them, the Bridge to Nowhere was still coming down, the tons of metal and concrete burying the corpse of the vine master forever. At the thought, Jake gave a little shiver as if he had just gotten a brief glimpse of the future.
“Never did like bridges,” he muttered to nobody in particular, increasing their speed into the misty night.
Chapter Six
Side by side, the two hellhounds loped across the sandy ground in hot pursuit of the redflesh.
Upon awakening in their freezer units, the bioweps had been assailed by the reek of human sweat, their genetic coding making them berserk with rage.
Utterly ravenous, the creatures consumed the body of their deceased mother, then charged into the swirling sandstorm. Almost instantly, the salty wind purged the smell of human from their senses, but they found the physical tracks of a vehicle and took off in that direction. The genetic coding seared into their brains would not allow the living weapons to abandon the hunt until the enemy had been found and consumed. That was the very reason they had been created in the terrible white labs. To hunt and kill, nothing more.
Sooner or later, the redflesh would be found again. It was only a matter of time…
STRONG WINDS SHREDDED the storm just before dawn, and J.B. drove the urban combat vehicle into a clean new day. But that didn’t last very long, and soon the us
ual black clouds covered the world once more, oily and thick with toxic chems, the sun only a fleeting memory of warmth and light.
During the night, each of the companions had taken a turn behind the wheel to become familiar with the controls. This was no steam truck hammered together by some ville baron, but a predark military wag, and it was equipped with GPS, a satellite uplink, multichannel encoded radio, radar scrambler, infrared defuser, massive proximity sensors for finding land mines, and a host of devices unknown to the companions, including Mildred, and it was from her time period. At the moment, Krysty was driving, with the rest of the companions settling into the routine of life inside a steel can.
“This is the life!” J.B. said, lounging in the gunnery seat of the wag. “Reminds me of our days with the Trader, eh, old buddy?” His warm boots were resting on the dashboard, and his shotgun was neatly tucked in a wall clip that seemed to be designed exactly for the blaster, the Uzi resting in his lap.
“Better than walking,” Ryan agreed, dry shaving with a knife. The deadly panga stayed sheathed at his hip; the long curved blade was perfect for slitting throats, not shaving them.
Just then, something smacked hard into the window near Krysty, and she drew her blaster with lightning speed before lowering the weapon. “Well, I certainly like these windows,” said the redhead with a thin smile.
Clinging to the Lexan plastic was the crumpled body of a stingwing, its head pulped beyond recognition. As the wag took a dip in the ground, the mutilated corpse began to slide down the window, leaving behind a gory trail of brains and blood until it was gone. Only seconds later, hairy black mosquitoes converged on the window, hungrily cleaning away the precious fluid.
“Not know window there?” Jak asked in contempt, his pale hands busy reassembling the huge .50-caliber machine gun.
“They probably can only see in the infrared spectrum,” Ryan said unexpectedly. “Just like night goggles. Anything not generating heat is something they can’t eat, so they’re not interested.”
“Make sense,” the teen replied cautiously, considering the matter. “But then, why no hit tree when fly? That not hot.”
“Mildred?” Ryan asked the woman.
“Beats me,” the physician replied honestly.
“Mutie,” Jak snorted as if that settled the matter, and went back to his work. They were out of the good homogenized gun oil, but there had been plenty of motor oil. Filtered through a piece of clean cloth, it worked well enough for the present. There was no ammo for the big-bore blaster, but a clean weapon also got a better price than a dirt hunk of junk.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, Krysty saw a dozen snakes battling over the aced stingwing, then an alligator charged out of a salt pit and attacked them all, stingwing and snakes alike going into the toothy maw of the ravenous reptile.
“Oh yeah, this is much better than walking,” Krysty added out of the corner of her mouth, feeding the main engine a little more juice.
Once they were out of the storm, J.B. had aced the second engine to try to save fuel. But the UCV was still consuming juice at a prodigious rate. They were already down to a quarter tank, and had only traveled about eighty miles. Unfortunately, without knowing how many gallons were in the fuel tanks, she couldn’t calculate their mileage. She could only guesstimate that they were getting ten or twelve miles per gallon. Which was pretty impressive for a century-old machine that weighed about ten tons.
Just then, another stingwing hit the wag, making Doc jump. He scowled as it fell away. “Nature red, in fang and claw,” the scholar mumbled.
Slowly the day progressed, the sandy desert gradually yielding to a barren grassland. At first, there was only a random tuft of green sticking out of the sterile soil, then patches, small islands and now long fingers of black loam and living plants were stretching outward, slowly coming together to form a proper forest. It was like watching a wound close and heal.
Soon the grassland boasted flowering bushes, then saplings and finally trees, tall and stately, although the species was unknown. They were thick as oak trees, but with a white bark like a birch. Spanish moss hung from a few thick branches, but most were adorned with festive flowering vines that were simply beautiful. That was until Mildred saw a robin land on a vine and start pecking at a juicy fruit.
In a flash, the vines were around the startled bird, squeezing out the life, blood and feathers falling away. Then, as it went limp, the pretty flower closed over the corpse of the songbird to begin a long slow digestion. The woman felt her heart go out to the poor thing, and hoped the bird was dead and not merely stunned. As a physician, pain was her natural enemy, and she never gave it a willing victory.
“How far is the redoubt?” Mildred asked, trying not to scratch at her arm. The wound was much better after a night inside the warm vehicle. With her bedroll spread out in the back, the cushioned floor had made for a pretty comfortable sleep.
“That depends,” Ryan said, tucking away his knife and running a hand over his jaw to check for missed bristles. “There’s a redoubt down in Kentuck, and another near the Pennsylvania border. Both are a good distance to travel.”
“That one is near Rock ville,” J.B. added, “where we ran into the Sons of the Knife, and that mutie ivy.”
Absentmindedly rubbing her arm, Mildred remembered the biker gang, as well as Rock ville, the predark prison that had been made into a fortified ville. The nearby redoubt had been guarded by Ranger, a robotic tank, but that was aced. However, both of the redoubts were empty of food and brass.
“My vote is for Rock ville,” Krysty said, shifting gear to take a low hillock. “The redoubt had plenty of fuel in storage, and then we can head for Front Royal and trade that Fifty for food at some local ville along the way.”
“As long as we stay far away from the Wheel,” Ryan voiced sternly. “I don’t want to tangle with that mutie ivy plant again.”
“And this time, we have no flamethrowers,” Doc added.
Keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel, Krysty shivered at the memory of her captivity inside the giant plant.
“Sounds okay to me,” Jak drawled. “Mighty good hunting in Shens. Lots of possum and conie.” His hands and face were streaked with grease, but the big-bore rapidfire he was cleaning shone like a fresh sin.
“Ah, pan-fried conie,” Doc said softly, his sight lost in private reverie. “My dear wife Emily liked to fry the rabbits in cornmeal, but always burned them no matter how hard she tried. However, I ate them anyway, beaming a happy smile. She knew how terrible they were, but we were young and in love…” His voice trailed away and Doc stared blankly at the sword stick in his hands, the reflected light playing across his unseeing eyes.
The other companions remained silent. Nobody blamed Doc for fading away now and then after the horrible tortures he had endured at the hands of Cort Strasser and the lunatic whitecoats of Operation Chronos. He usually snapped back to reality if there was any trouble. The man looked sixty, but was actually only about thirty-eight years old and possessed a wiry strength. Doc was a valuable asset to the group, not a liability.
Just then a soft beep sounded from the radar.
“There’s something big to our left,” J.B. said, studying the glowing screen. “It’s kind of hard to tell with all the trash in the air…but I’d say, a thousand yards, mebbe two.”
“Something moving this way?” Ryan asked, finishing lacing his boot and quickly pulling on the second.
J.B. watched the screen for a minute. “Nope, it’s not moving at all. Must be ruins, or mebbe a ville.”
“Sounds good.” Krysty grunted and sent the vehicle in the new direction.
Less than a mile later, the companions rolled through a wall of brambles to see a jet plane sitting in the middle of a field of grass. The plane looked in perfect condition, and there was a human body lying facedown on the ground nearby.
“A sky fighter!” Krysty exclaimed, shifting gears and applying the brakes to stop the wag. “Haven’t seen o
ne of those in years!”
“Not just a plane, that’s a Harrier jumpjet!” Mildred exclaimed, needlessly pointing. “Or whatever it is the U.S. Navy called the things! It carried more bombs and missiles than a dozen other jetfighters!”
“That’s mighty interesting,” J.B. said, putting his boots down on the floor and grabbing the S&W shotgun. “Think it might have a survival pack for the pilot?”
“Worth doing a fast recce,” Ryan agreed with a smile, taking up the Steyr and walking to the rear doors.
As J.B. joined him there, the men checked over their weapons before throwing the bolt on the heavily armored door. Instantly, both of their rad counters started clicking wildly. They quickly pulled the door shut again, ramming the bolt back into place. With pounding hearts, they waited as the clicking slowly eased and then stopped.
“Fireblast, it’s triple hot out there,” Ryan growled, checking the now silent rad counter again just to be sure. “We’d have been aced in seconds if the door had opened all the way.”
On closer inspection, he now could see that the aircraft’s tires were flat, and small vines had grown over the body, holding it motionless to the ground. The plane and pilot had been lying in the exact same position for countless years.
“Poor bastard must have caught an airburst nuke and died of rad poisoning just after landing,” J.B. said with a snort. Dark night, he could see the missiles under the wings! The thing was a treasure trove of blasters and tech only yards away, but even if they could reach it, the items would only bring a long, painful death.
“Thank Gaia the our vehicle is rad proof,” Krysty said, starting the engine again and moving away from the plane. Then she sharply changed direction and headed into a wild thicket of thorny bushes.
“Smart,” Ryan acknowledged, reclaiming his jumpseat. “If the pilot was trying to reach an airport, there should be something in his last direction.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Krysty agreed, crossing a small creek.
