Labyrinth

by James Axler

  They split up after jumping through the first row of corn. As Doc moved away, he unsheathed his sword stick. Jak sprinted in the opposite direction, the leaves rustling softly against his legs.

  As he approached the last silo, he stopped and ducked into a squat. He shook a pair of leaf-bladed knives from his sleeve. Jak had hunted small game with the wicked blades since he was a little boy. He had absolute confidence in his ability to put them exactly where he wanted them to go.

  Leaning forward between the stalks, he had a view of the entire side of the grain elevators. He saw the two men come around the last silo, giving it a wide berth. They had their handblasters in both hands and aimed, looking for an immediate ambush.

  Which wasn’t there.

  Boots crunched at the other end of the silos. Jak turned and saw three more hunters closing in. This bunch moved quickly to the cover of the carts. The first pair, meanwhile, stopped at the second silo. They were keeping distance between them, instead of bunching up, which would have made them easier targets. They weren’t triple stupes.

  Now would’ve been the time to blast the bastards. With their backs to the silos. But blasterfire would have alerted the ville and made it harder to free their companions.

  Jak listened hard and heard the hunters’ hushed conversation.

  “Where’d they go?” one of the pair said. “Did you check under the carts?”

  “Nothing there,” a man on the other side said. “Nothing under them or in them.”

  “They gotta be here,” the first man said.

  “Shit, look at the inspection door,” one of the trio said. “We never leave it open.”

  “Think we found our rabbits,” the first man stated.

  “Just in case we didn’t, you two sweep the field. Shoot to kill.”

  The two men crossed the bare stretch of ground and disappeared in the corn to Jak’s left.

  His plan was in need of some fine-tuning.

  Jak picked up a clod of earth and lobbed it into the field in the direction of the dam. It was too dark to see the track of it flying through the air, but it made a rattling sound as it landed among the leaves.

  “Over there,” one of the men said. “Fan out.”

  They moved quickly, working deeper into the field, stepping over and looking down the corn rows. They weren’t trying to be stealthy. They were trying to spook their quarry into breaking cover and making a run for it.

  Jak waited a few seconds, then crabwalked toward them. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them. He slipped between the rows like a ghost. They weren’t looking his way, so they couldn’t see the tops of the plants move. And the men by the silo were too far away from the action to see what was about to happen and shout a warning.

  Even so, Jak couldn’t risk chucking another dirt clod to bring them closer. He wanted to keep their backs to him. He circled around, anticipating their direction of travel, and putting himself in position to strike.

  Squatting, he let the nearest man get even with him, three or four rows over. He used the man’s footsteps to time his attack. When he had the rhythm, he popped up to a half crouch and sent a throwing knife whistling. The hunter had his back turned in a three-quarter view. Caught in midstride, there was no way he could whirl and fire his pistol.

  The knife hit him in the side of the neck with enough force to make him stagger. Jak could see the pointed black shape sticking out below the man’s ear. It was a jugular hit. The hunter automatically reached up and tore out the object. Big mistake. Blood gushed from the side of his neck.

  He never got out a word.

  A brain without blood is just a lump of spongy meat. His legs gave way and he sat down in the dirt.

  Before his butt hit the ground, Jak was back in a squat and moving down the row, circling behind the other man.

  From Jak’s left came an urgent whisper. “Terry? Where the hell are you? This isn’t funny.”

  “Here,” Jak said softly, rising to his full height, his arm flying forward. He really put some mustard on it.

  The leaf-bladed knife curved left to right.

  The second man turned just in time to catch the steel star full in the forehead. The point penetrated bone deep enough to stun, but not deep enough to kill him outright. Jak high-hurdled the corn and threw a shoulder into the bigger man’s gut, driving him to his back on the ground. Before the man could cry out, Jak clamped a hand over his mouth. Then he dragged the edge of another knife across the front of his throat from ear to ear, and held him down until he stopped kicking.

  DOC HUNKERED DOWN in an uncomfortable crouch, his legs folded under him, his sword ready in his hand. Parting the leaves slightly, he peered across the open ground, at the three men standing by the grain carts. If it was difficult for him to see them in the dim light, it was infinitely harder for them to see him amid the stalks.

  All to the good, he thought.

  As the other two men moved into the corn, he cocked an ear, eavesdropping on the conversation of the trio that remained beside the grain elevators. They had all turned to face the fourth silo, and were looking up at the inspection door.

  “One of us has to climb up there and shut that door,” the tallest man said. But he made no move to do so.

  “Lock the bastards in,” another man muttered. “Then we can take our nuking’ time chillin’ them.”

  “That ladder don’t look too sturdy,” the third man stated. “It better not be me that climbs it. Might not hold my weight.”

  From what Doc could see, the man had cause for concern.

  “It could be some kind of trick, leaving it open like that,” he went on. “They could be waiting for the first one to try the ladder. Pop out the door and shoot him dead before he gets halfway up.”

  “We can handle that,” the tall man said. “The two that don’t go up just draw a bead on the door. If something moves up there, blast it.”

  “So, who’s going?” the second man said.

  The tall man turned to the chubby one. “You’re the worst shot, Fisher. So you get to do the climbing.”

  He took a position at the front of the line of carts. And the second man moved around to Doc’s side, squatting and bracing his autopistol against the cart.

  “Go on, now,” the tall man said. “We’ve got your back.”

  The third man stuffed his revolver in his waistband and lumbered toward the ladder.

  From behind Doc, out in the field, there was a scuffling sound. It was over so quickly they might have imagined it.

  “What’s that?” the man at the ladder said.

  “Terry, Bill, you all right?” the tall man called. “Damn, I can’t see them anymore.”

  There was no answer from the field.

  The tall man didn’t want to yell louder, as that could draw gunfire his way from the darkness.

  “Shit, get it over with, Fisher,” the second man said.

  The third man began to climb.

  Doc waited until he was almost all the way to the inspection door before he moved from the corn, his sword point held low and to the rear, his body coiled for the strike. He crossed the gap in three long strides. The man on his side of the carts sensed his approach at the last instant and turned, trying to bring his weapon to bear.

  The thrust had to be perfect.

  And it was.

  The blade slid over the man’s wrist, through the center of his chest, and skewered him, splitting his heart. The only sound was the slither of steel on bone.

  Doc ripped the blade free and let the man fall.

  He spun to his left and dashed for the last cart, keeping low, so the tall man couldn’t see him coming.

  Above them, the heavyset man on the ladder was cautiously reaching for the door.

  Doc rounded the cart on a dead run, catching the tall man kneeling, with his back turned, and his weapon aimed up at the silo. Like a bullfighter, Doc knew exactly where to place the blade. Behind the right arm, five inches below the armpit, at a slight down
angle. The sword hit a rib, flexing as it was designed to do, sliding around the bone, and through both lungs and the heart.

  Instantaneous killstroke.

  From the ladder came an anguished cry.

  Doc looked up to see the man hanging on the ladder with one hand, and drawing a long-barreled revolver from the front of his pants with the other.

  Doc groaned, realizing he had no choice but to return fire. Dropping to a knee beside the man he had just chilled, he hauled out his Le Mat and took aim.

  Something swished through the air high overhead. The man on the ladder stiffened. His gun hand dropped. And his body fell.

  He crashed to the ground, headfirst, raising a cloud of dust.

  Doc stepped over, his sword ready for a coup de gráce. But the neck in question was clearly broken.

  “All your trials are over, my friend,” Doc said as he wiped his blade on the dead man’s shirt.

  “Getting light,” Jak said. To the east the sky was already starting to turn lavender. “Sun up soon.”

  As Doc retrieved his ebony scabbard, they heard chanting and clapping from the ville.

  They couldn’t see what was going on from ground level, so they climbed the ladder to the top of a silo. From the domed roof they had a perfect view of the end of the square, and everything between. It looked like the entire population had turned out for the procession, which was slowly leaving the town center and heading in their direction.

  “By the Three Kennedys, this bodes ill,” Doc said.

  Ryan and J.B. were at the head of the file, their hands tied behind their backs.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan didn’t see the man with the broken leg hang himself with his bandages. If anybody in the jail saw him, they hadn’t tried to stop it. The other prisoners kept themselves busy moaning over their injuries and lamenting their fates. And blaming Ryan and J.B. for both.

  Ex-Pilgrim Wicklaw was especially vocal. He who had lost too much—wives, position, teeth, toes—was now poised to lose everything else.

  Ryan had tried to get more information from him about Jubilee’s demons, but like her, he claimed to know very little. To hear him tell it, what the demons were and what they did were secrets sealed inside the dam. And rightfully so. The only thing Wicklaw could add was the reason why he and the other wounded were to be offered.

  Demons liked their food alive, which was undoubtedly why the man with the broken leg had hanged himself.

  Shortly after the other prisoners joined them, and the moaning and lamenting kicked into high gear, Jubilee had retreated into a corner and curled up like a pill bug. There was nothing Ryan could do or say to comfort her. And comfort was misplaced effort at this point.

  Ryan shut out the ranting of the other prisoners and withdrew into himself, to a place of calm. A piece of high ground to recce from. He was looking for an opportunity. And as always, he was patient. Expecting it to come. And ready to take hold of it when it did. J.B. was doing the same thing, he knew. Eyes open, brainchurning. Survival was part luck, park skill, part hard experience. They had learned that from their years backing up Trader, Deathlands’s legendary convoy master.

  Based on his own experience. Ryan couldn’t swallow the idea that Little Pueblo’s demons might be some kind of avenging eternal spirits. The hellscape was dark and twisted territory, full of nuke-spawned predators that fed upon the weak and the strong alike. Real predators, not ghosts. This wasn’t the first time he’d come across people convinced that the horror-show monsters that plagued them were more than flesh and blood. It was a way for dealing with their powerlessness and fear. But in the end those predators, no matter how large, how numerous, or how terrible their weapons, were always killable. Ryan knew because he had killed them.

  By the wag load.

  It was also possible that the demons of Little Pueblo didn’t exist at all. According to Jubilee and Wicklaw, no one had seen one of these critters and lived to tell about it. Someone locked in a concrete prison without food would surely starve to death in a couple of weeks. And if there were no guards down there, no one went in to see what had actually happened, the chilling could be attributed to anything.

  Even to demons.

  The trouble with legends, Ryan thought, was that they were ninety percent bullshit and the rest was pure crap.

  Less than two hours later, Pilgrim Dennison and Ardis reappeared in the corridor with the half-dozen guards who rousted the prisoners from their cells at gunpoint. All but the hanged man who lay on the floor, one end of the bandage tied around his neck, the other to the chain that held up the bed, his face the color of a plum pudding.

  As he looked back over his shoulder, J.B. said, “Now that’s a man who really wanted to die.”

  A guard pulled Jubilee to her feet and shoved her out into the hallway. She moved woodenly alongside Ryan, her eyes red from crying, her face white and drawn. She knew what was coming. She had witnessed it before. And now it was happening to her, a nightmare come to life.

  “Are we going to get a last meal?” J.B. asked Pilgrim Ardis as they started up the stairs. “I’m feeling kind of hungry.”

  “You are the meal, dimmie.”

  The joke made the guards laugh out loud. Ryan didn’t think it was all that funny. He was hungry, too,

  With the exception of the blinded man, the wounded climbed the stairs without help from the guards. None of them struggled because they knew it was useless.

  When they reached the foyer, Ryan saw light through the front doors. It was nearly sun up. A beaming Pilgrim Plavik greeted them as they stepped through the doors and onto the landing. On the street below, the entire ville had turned out for the big show, close to 150 men, women and children, dressed in their best sackcloth. They were no longer hiding their weaponry. The men and some of the older children carried blasters.

  “Do you see them?” J.B. asked, scanning the throng.

  “No,” Ryan said.

  Krysty and Mildred were nowhere in sight.

  “Come’s a time,” Plavik bellowed to the crowd, “when each of us must go into the darkness and answer the final question. For some that time comes sooner than for others.” With a sweep of his arm he indicated the assembled prisoners. “Today is their time.”

  “Praise Bob, praise Enid!” someone shouted.

  “We will walk in solemn reverence,” he continued in a shout, “as a whole and united people. We mount the noble crest, to trace the sacred line between desert and paradise, between heaven and hell, and give living offering in the name of Bob and Enid, that this place might prosper and that we might be safe forever.”

  The crowd began a rhythmic chant, punctuated by clapping. “Praise Bob, praise Enid. All glory to Bob and Enid. Praise Bob. Praise Enid. All glory to Bob and Enid.”

  Pilgrim Plavik clapped his hands in syncopated time and pranced about, dipping his shoulders this way and that, and cutting agile 360s. The ville folk did the same.

  Everybody danced.

  When the prisoners were forced down the steps into the street, the crowd made way for them, but continued to clap and sing. Once more Ryan noticed the conspicuous absence of oldies. The reason was clear to him, now. No one lived long enough here to grow old, even if they followed the rules. When their work slowed down or they got hurt, they got dumped in the dam. They got dumped while still alive. To serve the greater good.

  Until that awful, private moment came for each of them, they were damned happy to join together as a community to celebrate the misfortune of others. Damned glad they weren’t among the wounded being helped into a four-wheel car for a last tour of Little Pueblo and environs.

  Ryan, J.B. and Jubilee were pushed and kicked to the front of the mob. Behind them, four men took hold of the cart’s yoke and began to pull, even as the others pushed it from the rear.

  Chanting their adoration of Bob and Enid, the crowd left the edge of the square and started for the dam en masse. They walked at a steady, leisurely pace, past the washed away
neighborhoods, toward the silos, the lush green fields and the shining lake.

  “Looks like we’re going to find out firsthand what those demons are all about,” Ryan said.

  J.B. glanced back at the street overflowing with people, most of them armed, and said. “No way are we gonna get rescued. It would be suicide for Jak and Doc to even try. From here on we’re on our own. Hands tied behind our backs and chucked into the pit.”

  “Just like old times,” Ryan said.

  It took them twenty minutes to reach the shore of the lake, and when they got there the procession turned right, walking in the lee of the enormous, sloping wall of smooth white concrete. Standing there naked in the light of the day, vast, windowless, the dam did not look like a prison.

  Or a giant’s tomb.

  Ryan couldn’t see any evidence of a crack.

  Where the dam ended, an old roadbed, a remnant of the project’s construction phase, angled up on the canyon’s side. The crowd chanted and clapped all the way to the top.

  Ryan and J.B. turned at Plavik’s command and started down the paved road that ran along the dam’s crest, supported by the massive concrete piers that framed the overflow gates. To their left was the verdant valley of Little Pueblo; to the right, for as far as they could see, was beige hell. Beyond the dam, the canyon grew wider and wider, opening onto a blasted plain that stretched all the way to the horizon

  At the far side of the spillway, Plavik made them stop while three pilgrims used long pry bars to lever up and slide back a steel manhole cover from the middle of the road. Inside the three-foot-wide-hole, Ryan could see what looked like rungs, leading down. How far down, he couldn’t tell.

  Plavik stepped behind him, and he felt pressure between his wrists. Then his hands were free. Ryan turned to see the pilgrim holding his beloved panga, edge up.

  “You’ll need your hands to climb down,” Plavik said.

  At his signal, Pilgrim Dennison cut J.B.’s bonds, then Jubilee’s. The others started pulling the wounded from the cart.

  “I’ve lived with that blade for a long time,” Ryan told Plavik. “Always figured on dying with it.”