by Matt Forbeck
Nathan and his bearer had gotten far ahead of Mitch, as he’d taken his time climbing down. Nathan had been giving his mutant bearer trouble, and the creature had hauled him a bit off the beaten path, away from its fellows, so it could deal with him. Nathan had groaned louder and louder with every step, and just as Mitch had reached the sewer, he had managed to push himself off the mutant’s hook.
As Nathan fell off the bonehook, the mutant dragging him stopped and turned around to recover him. Nathan put up his hands to fend the creature off with the little strength he had left.
Mitch started forward, being careful not to confront the other mutants. They might ignore him as long as he kept away from them, but he guessed that if he annoyed them directly they might have something to say about it.
The hook-handed mutant grabbed Nathan and started to draw back its terrible arm to finish him off. Mitch knew he would never be able to reach his friend in time to save him. He was going to have to risk a shot.
He drew his pistol and aimed it at the mutant. From this distance, though, he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t hit Nathan instead. Before the mutant could bring its arm down, Mitch switched his aim and fired a single bullet.
It smashed into a massive stalactite hanging over Nathan. The bulk of the huge thing fell free and plummeted straight down.
The stalactite’s point stabbed straight into the mutant leaning over Nathan, just as it brought down its hook.
Mitch raced forward, hoping his gamble had paid off. The mutant’s blow might have still landed, or the stalactite might have gone straight through the creature and killed Nathan too. It had been a hell of a shot, but the only thing that mattered to Mitch was its result.
He rushed to Nathan’s side, thankful that none of the other mutants seemed to care about the one he’d just killed. He knelt down next to his friend and propped him up. The wound in his shoulder oozed black fluid, and the skin around it showed the angry red of infection.
“Nathan,” Mitch said. The man’s eyes were open but unfocused. His skin felt slick with sweat and flushed with fever. It took a second for his eyes to snap together and then for him to realize his vision of his friend was real and not just a fantasy of his fevered mind.
“Mitch,” he said, surprised and disappointed. His voice rasped with congestion. “Huh. They got you too.”
“Don’t talk. I’m getting you out of here.”
Nathan grabbed at Mitch’s jacket. “My girls? Where’s my girls?”
Mitch nodded, a small smile on his lips. “They’re safe. Halfway to Mars by now.”
“Good. That’s good.” Although he was grateful for the news, this seemed to be the only thing he needed to hear. He fell limp in Mitch’s arms and closed his eyes.
“No you don’t,” Mitch said as he wrenched his friend to his feet. He slung Nathan’s good arm over his shoulder and gave the man’s wound a painful nudge to wake him up.
“Come on.”
Half dragging and half carrying his friend, Mitch began to make his way back down the tunnel.
47
When Mitch got to the steep slope that led back up toward the smaller tunnel and to the elevator foyer from there, he stared up at it and wondered how the hell he could get his wounded friend up it. He fell to his knees and let Nathan slide off his back.
“Mitch, what the fuck are you doing?” Nathan asked from where Mitch had propped him against the wall. His face was covered with blood, and he could barely breathe.
Mitch struggled to his feet and staggered over to the slope. “Make you a sling,” he said, coughing out the words. “Get you out of this hole.”
“I’m dying.”
Mitch ignored that. He knew Nathan was dying and that if he didn’t get him out of here fast his time would run out. “Goddammit, shut the fuck up will you? Just shut the fuck up, and let me do this thing.”
He looked up at the slope and knew there was no way he could manage it. He’d saved Nathan from the Machine, but there was no way he could save his life. As he’d asked, Nathan remained quiet, at least for a while.
“Mars, huh?”
Mitch wiped the sweat out of his eyes. It had begun to sting. “Mars.”
“How’d you swing that?”
Was Nathan impressed, or did he think Mitch had lied to him to keep up his spirits? “I did a job for a man.”
“Yeah?”
Mitch felt his guts tighten at the thought of what he should be doing right now instead of this. He pushed that aside. “Save the world kind of thing.”
“And how’s that working out?”
Mitch gave a bitter laugh. Not fucking well at all.
Nathan started to gag. Mitch knelt next to him and shook him. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “Jesus.”
Nathan finally managed to clear his throat and start breathing again. As he did, he pulled back his shirt to expose his shoulder, the one through which he’d been hooked. Black streaks of the mutant infection had spread into his chest and up his neck like a web of cancer growing inside him.
More frustrated than he could bear, Mitch slumped down next to his friend, their backs both to the same wall.
“I thought, if I could save you,” he started, the bitterness so harsh he could taste it on his tongue. “If I could do one good thing…”
“Do the mission,” Nathan said.
Mitch bowed his head in misery. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“You know, she missed you,” Nathan said. “You know how I know? Because she never talked about you. Didn’t even say your name.”
Mitch shook his head. He didn’t need to hear this. He just wanted his friend to live and be happy with the girl he’d stolen from him, along with their little daughter. That’s what he wanted more than anything else.
“You could have come by.”
“No, I couldn’t.” He had done it once, around Grace’s fifth birthday. It had nearly killed him. He’d gone off on a weeklong drunk after that and had almost been charged as AWOL.
“I guess not.”
Mitch finally looked at his friend. “I can’t leave you here.”
“I’m not asking you to,” said Nathan. He gave Mitch a knowing look.
Mitch drew his sidearm—his Bolter—from its holster. It felt like he’d pulled his heart from his chest instead.
Nathan looked out at the opposite wall, his eyes unfocused as if they were gazing across some unknown vista from their past. “Tell Adelaide and Gracie. Tell them…Tell them…Tell them…” He turned away. Mitch thought he heard Nathan say, “I love them.”
“Right.” Mitch’s throat felt so thick he thought he might choke on the word.
Nathan perked up for a moment and looked straight ahead again. “Oh. Remember that—”
Mitch snapped up his gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught Nathan right in the temple and blew his brains along the wall on his other side.
Mitch holstered the smoking gun, then reached down to remove Nathan’s dog tags. He added them to his ring of tags, then slipped them back into his belt pouch.
48
Hunter had disappointed Samuel, but the monk didn’t see what he could do about it. He wasn’t about to kill the man for abandoning their mission, although he hadn’t stepped in when Steiner had threatened to. With so much at stake, he’d been willing to gamble with Hunter’s life that Steiner had been bluffing, although it seemed that Hunter had been ready to roll those dice too.
He felt conflicted about that. He was a man of God, but where did you draw the line between good and evil when you were talking about defending humanity from the Enemy? Where were the limits? Should there be any?
The team—what was left of it—emerged into a gigantic cavern crisscrossed by several levels of beams that spanned from one distant side to the other and often met in various spots in the middle. Each of the beams stood narrow, high, and precarious, without a single railing in sight, perhaps a good metaphor for the path to paradise.
On some of the b
eams, the worker mutants marched along with their suffering cargo, taking them to only the Enemy knew where. They were close now, Samuel knew. They just had to make it past the last few parts.
Duval led the team into the cavern, and Samuel followed straight after her. Although she made a good scout, she was not willing to follow her instincts about which direction to go and so constantly looked to Samuel for guidance. This he willingly gave, although it tended to slow them down compared with the way they had moved when Hunter or Juba had been up front.
El Jesus came after the monk, then Steiner, and faithful Severian brought up the rear. Although Samuel had never had a conversation with the woman, he treasured her above all the others. Her faithfulness and her belief in the sanctity of her vows set her above every other member of the Brotherhood he’d ever met. She never compromised and always accomplished what she set out to do.
As they moved out onto the first beam, Duval stopped and waited for Samuel to direct her. He consulted the Chronicles quickly and found a part of the prophecy that showed him the way, or at least what he thought was the way. Prophecies were rarely as clear as a road map.
He gestured for Duval to go straight ahead. When they reached the center of the bridge, it met another that crossed it, and Samuel stopped again to get his bearings.
El Jesus had been peering below when Samuel stopped, and he almost ran into the monk. He lost his balance and barely avoided smacking into Samuel and sending them both over. As he windmilled his arms, trying to recover, Duval snaked back past Samuel and grabbed El Jesus by his shirt. She braced herself against his weight, stabilizing them both.
When El Jesus had started to go over, though, he’d nearly hit Steiner with his shotgun. The Bauhauser had reeled back to avoid the weapon, and that had caused him to tip right over the edge.
Steiner reached out as he dropped past the bridge and managed to grab it. His weight, plus that of the bomb he still carried on his back, pulled him downward and left him hanging there by his fingers.
Before anyone else could react, Severian was in motion. She dropped down and wrapped her legs around the thin bridge, then let herself flip over so that she hung upside down by her bent knees. With not a moment’s hesitation, she reached for Steiner.
“The bag!” Samuel said, his heart in his throat. “We can’t lose the bomb!”
El Jesus knelt down and held Severian’s legs, ensuring she would not fall. Steiner let go with one hand and carefully worked the bomb-filled bag off his shoulder. He held it up to Severian, stretching as far as he could.
“Take it,” Steiner said. “Take it!”
“Give me your hand!” El Jesus reached out from above, down on his knees on the beam.
Severian snagged one of the bag’s straps in her fist. As soon as she did, Steiner’s grip gave way, and he let go.
As Severian and El Jesus brought the bomb back up, Samuel and Duval peered over the edge of the bridge to bear witness to Steiner’s fate. The oberleutnant fell about fifteen feet to a broad stone platform suspended in the middle of the room, on which several beams converged.
Worker mutants milled about the platform, ignoring the intruder. They didn’t care about his presence at all, it seemed. As Steiner stood up and drew both of his pistols, Samuel breathed a deep sigh of relief, thinking the man would not have to use them.
Steiner, though, had seen something Samuel had not. He brought his guns up just as the workers in front of him parted to reveal a warrior mutant approaching the oberleutnant, its boneblades at the ready.
Steiner let loose with both of his pistols at point-blank range. The mutant coming at him danced to the tune, the bullets blasting it back a burst at a time, shredding its flesh and knocking it straight off the platform.
By the time the first mutant fell, though, another had stepped up to take its place. Worse yet, Samuel could see others converging on Steiner’s position from all around the chamber.
Steiner kept hosing down all comers. He blasted away another mutant, then another and another, but soon his guns ran empty. Dropping his pistols, he drew his sword, but he paid for the time to switch weapons with a long gash down one arm.
“We must go on,” Samuel said to the others. “We have to go on!”
Duval and El Jesus looked at him as if he were insane. The monk had to admit to himself that his words had sounded hollow even in his own ears.
“We’re still human, Samuel,” Duval said softly and sincerely. With that, she stepped off the bridge. She hit the platform below perfectly and rolled with her momentum, somersaulting down the arc until she came to her feet next to Steiner.
“Thank you,” Steiner said to her.
Duval nodded at him. “It’s an honor.”
El Jesus leaped down straight after Duval. He pumped his gun as he went, then blasted a shell straight through the first mutant he saw, just before the creature tried to run Steiner through.
Then El Jesus pumped his shotgun again and blew another monster away with a white phosphorus shell. It exploded in a flash of white-hot light.
Severian begged Samuel with her eyes. The monk looked at her, then back down at the others, who were about to be massacred. He sighed and shook his head.
They’d given saving the world a good try, but it was over. There was only one thing to do.
“In ainm Dé,” he said.
Then he and Severian jumped down to the platform below and joined the battle in earnest.
As he hit the platform, Samuel already had his sword out and ready. Although he had not used his weapon in battle in years, Samuel trained with it regularly and knew which end to stab into his foes. Severian rolled to her feet beside him, her twin blades at the ready.
The two of them joined the fray, weaving a shield of razor-sharp steel around them. Any mutant unlucky enough to be caught in it lost its arms, legs, or head—and sometimes all of them at once.
El Jesus kept pumping shell after white phosphorus shell into the tide of mutants that came at them from every direction. Samuel noticed that the barrel of the man’s gun had started to glow red.
Duval ran through clip after clip. Each time she had to reload, Steiner stepped up with his sword and protected her until she was ready again. Samuel glanced over at the man and saw a determined smile on his face, a wild light in his eyes.
He’s actually enjoying this, Samuel thought. Try as he might, he couldn’t find that emotion in himself. He was tired and terrified, not necessarily in that order.
Mutant after mutant fell before the team, but the tide never slowed. The workers had cleared out, leaving the hard work of killing active soldiers to their warrior kin, and there were plenty of them to take on the job.
The barrel of El Jesus’s gun began to glow white hot, but the man didn’t seem to notice. Samuel was about to shout a warning when Duval beat him to it.
“No!” she said, but her cry came too late.
El Jesus pulled the trigger of his gun one last time, and the weapon exploded in his hands. He vanished from Samuel’s view in a burning white cloud.
The blast knocked Steiner back off his feet. He landed hard next to one of the arches that swept into the platform. His head snapped back and smacked into the stone, knocking him cold.
Her guns empty, Duval switched to her sword and charged into the horde of mutants. She swung her blade about left and right, but she could only last so long against such superior numbers. Soon she vanished beneath the countless mutants slashing at her.
That left only Samuel and Severian to stand against every mutant in the city, perhaps the world. He wondered now if he and Severian should have left the others to die. It would have been the wise thing, but would it have been right? It was too late now to know.
The monk began to pray in Gaelic, loud and strong, as he and Severian faced the horde encroaching on them from all sides. Every time a mutant lunged at them, Severian put herself between the creature and Samuel, but she could only attack so many at a time, even as fast as she was.
Samuel did the best he could against the others who swept in when her attention was elsewhere. His sword ran black with mutant gore, and he bled from a dozen tiny cuts on his arms and legs.
The worst part, Samuel thought, was that the mutants never tired. Here he was—his breath growing short and ragged, his arms beginning to feel like lead—and each one of them that came forward was as fresh as the first.
A boneblade pierced him through the back, and he fell to his knees. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, and try as he might he could not force himself back to his feet.
Samuel thrust at a mutant that came at him, but the creature’s parry knocked his sword from his numb fingers. Defenseless now, he barely had time to bring the Book of Law up before him as a shield before the mutant went for the killing blow.
The creature’s boneblade stabbed straight through the thick book. It pierced parchment and leather like they were little more than a thin veil, then shoved through his skin.
The blow pinned the book to Samuel’s chest. His prayer faltered as he stared down at the wound and started to cough up blood.
Severian opened her mouth and screamed.
49
Mitch climbed back up the slope until he reached the ledge from which he’d left the others. From there, he worked his way back to the fissure at which he’d last seen them. Ducking in, he ran ahead, his sword drawn and ready, hoping to catch up with them soon. Instead, he came to a massive chamber full of crisscrossing beams, so many of them that it became impossible to see across them.
As he stood on the edge of the first beam, he realized he had no idea where to go. There were just too many choices—and too many mutants wandering around them.
“Come on,” he said. “Come on, give me a sign.”
As if in answer, he heard a horrible explosion straight ahead and down a bit. He dashed forward, hunting for the sound. A moment later he heard a woman scream.
The noises stopped then, and Mitch spent a few frantic moments trying to triangulate where he thought they’d come from. With nothing more to go on, he resorted to charging down one beam after another, hoping to do more than shove a worker mutant off the intricate gridwork.
