by James Axler
Cheetah Luis waved his people closer, then he addressed them in an agitated voice. “You all heard the names read out,” he said. “Half of our people have been taken for cannie meat, either chilled or prisoners. Some of our best fighters are gone. Up until now our hit-and-git tactics worked smooth because we had plenty of folks to control our chill zones. When we struck, we overwhelmed the enemy with firepower. We left no survivors. Now our numbers are cut by half. We can’t replace any of the people we lost, which means we’ve got to run smaller, much riskier ops, and to do the same damage to the bastards we have to run a whole lot more of them. If we do that, the odds are stacked against us. It won’t be long before the cannie bastards grind us down and shit us out. That’s the only future I can see if we don’t seize the moment now, if we don’t take the fight to the queen bitch. That way, at least if we go out, we go out in a blaze.”
His animated rallying speech didn’t bring cheers or shouts of enthusiasm from his audience. Sugar-coated suicide was just that. But his logic was irrefutable. Grim-faced, the Cajuns nodded.
“Gather up all the ammo and pipe bombs you can carry,” Cheetah Luis told his fighters. “Bring the lanterns, too. The cannies are gonna be hobbled hauling the dead and the prisoners. We’ll run ’em down.”
The Cajuns really hustled. In a matter of minutes, pursuit was under way through the woods. Ryan, Krysty, J.B., Doc and Sprue ran in the middle of the strung-out pack. Progress stopped when they came across the first light stick tacked to a tree.
“This is how the bastards found their way out,” Cheetah Luis said. “How they got in is another story.”
“These’ll burn out soon,” Lyla said, tearing the luminescent stick from the trunk, “but even burned-out, the cannies could use them to find their way back in daylight. Should we pick ’em up as we go? When we get enough gathered, we could send runners to start moving ’em way off to the west, make a false trail deeper into the swamp. Cannies would never find our stronghold again. Find nothing but gators and snakes.”
“No point in that,” Cheetah Luis told her, “we aren’t coming back here, no matter what. Either we take over Marsh Island by daybreak or we’re gonna be somebody’s bacon.”
The question of how the cannies found their way in was answered a short distance farther on.
Lanterns illuminated crude cut marks on tree trunks.
“These are fresh,” one of the Cajuns said.
“Somebody tracked us here from the road,” Cheetah Luis said. “Left these signs behind for the others to follow. The convoying cannies were too far away to catch up and find our trail.”
He turned to Ryan and said, “Mebbe that pet flesheater of yours did the job?”
It was exactly what Ryan was thinking. Junior Tibideau had doubled back on them.
“We should have tracked the bastard when he ran off,” the Cajun said.
Again, exactly what Ryan was thinking.
THE SLOG BACK through the swamp was grueling. Even in darkness, the heat and humidity were smothering. Nothing stirred. Not a breath of air. The stagnant water around their legs felt tepid, like lukewarm soup. At one point Ryan thought he heard distant blasterfire ahead of them. The cannies were popping off at something. Then it stopped.
Ryan kept a close watch on the companions. Krysty and J.B. seemed fine. Not happy about the conditions, but fine. Doc was muttering to himself as he walked. Too soft to make out anything but the occasional curse word. The old man’s face was flushed, his breathing labored, but he tracked a straight line through the muck. Harlan Sprue was having a much tougher time of it. Because of his weight, his boots sank deeper in the mud. Because of his girth, his body had more resistance through the water. Every step was harder for him. If Doc was breathing hard, Sprue was gasping. He was stubborn, though. Sweating and grunting like a pig, he somehow maintained the pace.
As they hurried past a wide mud bank, at the edge of the lanterns’ glow a pair of large, wide-set eyes tracked them. Wide-set, low slung eyes that reflected red in the lamp light.
With a tremendous splash, the monster surged into the water.
Everyone turned toward the sound.
Doc raised his hand cannon as a fifteen-foot-long critter swam straight for him. “Not a good choice,” he informed the reptile, cocking back the hammer on the Le Mat’s barrel.
“No, don’t shoot,” the Cajun head man said, pushing aside the black-powder blaster’s muzzle. “The noise will give us away. Leave it to us.”
Four of his fighters moved into position between the alligator and the Cajuns. Two had long wooden poles, and two had substantial clubs with knobbed ends. These were the band’s designated gator-getters. While the pair with the poles occupied the monster’s fang-lined jaws, the other two stepped in and beat on its head with the clubs. They laid on alternating, sizzling blows with plenty of snap, concentrating on a precise strike point between eyes and back a couple inches.
After a couple of smacks, the gator forgot what he was about. After a couple more smacks the clubs made wet, squishy sounds on impact, which told Ryan the knob ends had to be lead-loaded. The blows crushed the bony skull and scrambled the brains within. As the clubbers quickly retreated, the gator helplessly spun and thrashed. Unable to swim or to even hold its snout out of the water, it slowly drowned.
In the course of the forty-five-minute forced march, this scenario was repeated only two or three times.
“What happened to all your gators?” Krysty asked Cheetah Luis as they waded through the last stagnant pool. “I thought they were as thick as flies in these parts.”
“The big ones are already chockfull,” he told her. “Off sleeping in the reeds.” To make his point, he reached into the mangroves and between two fingers gingerly picked up a bloody shred of clothing. He sniffed at it, made a disgusted face, then tossed it back. “Wildlife put a big-time whupping on them baby-eaters.”
They climbed up the slope to the road, along the tunnel hacked into the bush. After crawling on their bellies the last bit, they came out onto the narrow, hidden path. Having fresh air and space above felt good to Ryan. A long convoy roared down the road from the north. They let the wags zoom past, then running low, they advanced single file to the top of the hill.
There was nothing waiting for them when they got there.
The wags were gone.
The prisoners and dead ’uns gone, too.
Ryan examined the crisscrossing tire tracks on the shoulder. They all pointed south, toward Vermillion Bay and La Golondrina.
“The bastards got away,” one of the Cajuns said. “Are we still going after them?”
“Hell yes, we’re going after them,” Cheetah Luis replied. “Got to get us some wheels first. It’s twenty miles to the tip of the peninsula, and another ten across the water. Be way past sunup before we get there walking.”
“Set up a barricade?” Sprue asked.
“Won’t work, they’d just crash through it. Even if we stopped a wag or two that way, they’d be in bad shape. Either wrecked or shot to shit. Don’t worry, we’ve pulled this off a dozen times before. And it’s worked perfect every time.”
Cheetah Luis led Ryan and the others to the brush on the far side of the road. “Make yourselves to home,” he said as they slipped into cover.
Behind them on the road, three Cajuns handed their blasters to their comrades. Then they laid down in the middle of the tarmac. One lay on his side, one on his belly, and one on his back, heads all pointing in different directions, legs tangled up.
They looked like they had just fallen off a speeding meat wag.
Which was the whole idea.
“These cannies coming back from Marsh Island,” Cheetah Luis said, “are all heading back out to join the hunt. The bastards are always hungry. And they can’t pass up easy pickings.”
“If you’ve run this trick so many times,” Ryan said, “how come the cannies never figured out it’s a trap?”
“None of them ever lived to tell the tale
,” the Cajun told him. “We start fresh every time.”
It didn’t take long for more headlights to appear on the road from the south. A three-wag convoy rumbled their way. As it got closer, Ryan could see a dilapidated SUV in the lead, and two full-size pickups behind.
For a second Cawdor thought they were going to roll right over the possum-playing Cajuns. Then the SUV hit the brakes, forcing the other wags to do the same. They came to a stop almost directly across from the companions’ hiding place, engines idling.
Ryan counted four cannies in the metallic sand-colored SUV, backlit by the high beams from behind. The second wag had that many packed into the front seat; eight more in the pickup’s bed were spotlighted by the headlights of the last wag. He couldn’t see much of the second pickup.
The SUV’s driver and passenger doors swung open. Two scrawny females jumped out with drawn handblasters. They walked around the front of their wag and looked down at the bodies caught in the headlights. The driver said something in a hoarse voice that Ryan couldn’t quite hear, but it made the passenger laugh. The driver turned to the wags behind and waved.
Somebody back there let out a yee-hah of delight.
The cannies hopped down from the pickup beds and cabs, and the other two passengers climbed from the SUV. As they pulled out long knives to divide the spoils, the Cajuns opened fire, angling their shots due south so as not to hit their comrades on the other side of the road.
Ryan, J.B., Krysty, Sprue and Doc didn’t participate in the slaughter. There was no need. Beside them, Cheetah Luis cut loose with his M-16.
Careful to keep from hitting the tires, fuel tanks and engine compartments, the Cajuns stitched autofire through the cannies. The SUV driver and passenger went down first, hit by so many bullets that their torsos were practically cut in two. The torrent of slugs peeled the rest of the flesheaters off the wags and sent them crashing to the road. It was over in fifteen seconds. The cannies hadn’t managed to return a single shot.
The Cajuns lying on the road jumped up and those hiding in the brush stepped out from concealment. They quickly turned over the bodies, making sure the cannies were dead. Occasionally a handblaster popped off, making double sure.
“Check the gas tanks,” Cheetah Luis shouted to his fighters. He looked into the SUV’s driver door for a second. “Got plenty of gas here.”
The other wags were full-up, too.
“Get the bodies off the road,” Cheetah Luis said, waving his machete. As his fighters began dragging the corpses into the brush, he knelt over one of the dead. He stretched out the arms on the tarmac, then with two deft chops of the machete, severed both hands at the wrist.
“Why did you do that?” Krysty exclaimed. “Are you taking trophies?”
“Nah.” He shook the blood off the stumps and laid the hands on the SUV’s floorboards in front of the driver’s seat. “Meat wags always give out free samples.”
When the road was clear of corpses, Cheetah Luis divided his fighters and the companions between the three wags. J.B., Doc and Sprue laid down in the first pickup’s bed with five Cajuns and played dead. Ryan and Krysty got in the SUV with Cheetah Luis. Cawdor took the shotgun seat, with the Steyr propped between his knees. Krysty sat behind him in the rear; beside her was Lyla, the Cajun’s chubby lieutenant.
The Cajun K-turned the SUV, then headed south. The other wags followed him.
Ryan stuck his head out the window and let the wind whip over his face. The rush of air felt cool through his sweaty hair. Overhead, the stars were disappearing behind a blanket of cottony clouds. The road was deserted. They traveled down a narrow tunnel created by the SUV’s high beams. Ryan actually drifted off to sleep despite the jolting of the wag. He awoke every time a convoy heading north whooshed past. It didn’t happen often, and he managed to sneak some much-needed rest.
Half an hour later, Cheetah Luis tapped the brakes. Ahead of them was a string of red taillights. Ten other wags were stopped on the road. No doubt the convoy they’d seen barreling over the hilltop. Beyond the wags was the foot of a bridge that spanned a wide strip of dark water. A mile or more, was Ryan’s guess.
“We’ve got to go over that bridge,” Cheetah Luis said.
“Looks like somebody’s directing traffic,” Ryan said.
“First one way, then the other,” the Cajun said.
“What about the people in the back of the trucks?” Krysty asked.
“They’ll be just fine,” Cheetah Luis told her, “as long as they stay down and don’t move. The cannies won’t look at them that close. They’ve been the top dogs around here so long they don’t expect this kind of trouble coming in their front door.”
As they crept toward the bridge, Ryan saw a battered signpost beside the road that read Intercoastal Waterway. When they were three wags from the cannie directing traffic with an AK-47, he got a good look at the looming structure. There was no guard rail on the right lane. No right lane, either. That side of the predark bridge had fallen off into the water.
As they waited their turn to cross, Ryan took in the cannie traffic cop. He was bug-eyed, with long, greasy hair, a fat, pale face and wispy, dirty-blond beard. He wore a long, cream-colored duster and knee-high rubber boots. The cannie shifted the assault rifle from sling to hand and swaggered toward them.
“Shit,” Ryan said, easing his SIG-Sauer from its holster and dropping the safety.
“Leave this to me,” the Cajun said. “Don’t do anything. Don’t say a word.”
Cheetah Luis waved out his open window and smiled as the cannie stepped up.
“Nice night for a luau,” the traffic director said, pointing the muzzle of his AK toward the sky.
“Brought along the appetizers,” the Cajun said, jerking a thumb at the truck lined up behind him.
“Damn, I love finger food,” the cannie said.
“Lots of toes back there, too.”
The traffic director reached under his coat and pulled out a pair of long-handled side-cutters. “Mind if I snip off a couple? Been a long time since I had my dinner. Don’t know when I’m going to get my next meal.”
“Why don’t I just give you a hand?” Cheetah Luis said, reaching down to the floorboards for one of the pair he had removed. He passed it out the window.
“That’s fresh as they come.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, we got plenty.”
“You can go on ahead, now. Take it slow. Keep well to the left. That bridge ain’t what it used to be.”
“See you later.”
The cannie mock-saluted Cheetah Luis with the severed hand. “Y’all drive safe, now,” he said, grinning.
The SUV started to roll.
“Flesheatin’ asshole,” Ryan said as he reholstered his handblaster.
Cheetah Luis shifted into second gear and left it there. The bridge didn’t start to shake until all three wags were on it. Ryan could hear the structure groaning and shrieking over the sound of the engines. And he could hear stuff falling off, chunks of concrete and asphalt splashing into the water below.
When they reached the other side, the Cajun shifted to third, then fourth. The SUV rapidly picked up speed. Beyond the traffic waiting its turn at the foot of the bridge, the road ahead was empty. The three-wag convoy traveled without incident for seven more miles, then they came up over a rise that revealed the end of the road. And more.
Across a wide, black bay, Ryan could see orange lights dancing on the far horizon. Bonfires, he thought. And they had to be huge to be visible this far away.
“That it?” Ryan said.
“That’s it,” Cheetah Luis replied.
“Long swim,” Ryan said.
Chapter Eighteen
Rows of headlights swept past on the two-lane highway, lighting up the abandoned meat wags parked on the shoulder. One of the drivers honked long and loud. The wail trailed away as the convoy barreled north.
Ahead of Mildred, the cannies were dragging the bodies and parts bags d
own the side of the road. Circumstances dictated that they had to do their own dirty work. They hadn’t tried to force the Cajun prisoners to haul the dead. With the extra weight and their bound ankles, they would have moved even more slowly, allowing any pursuit the chance to catch up. And if the cannies had cut the ankle ties, their captives would have scattered for the brush in all directions, and many would have gotten away.
Even though the ropes on Mildred’s feet were soaked, the knots hadn’t loosened a bit. She had rope burns on the outside of her ankles from the friction of the long march.
En route, alligators had taken down cannies in spectacular fashion. If, as Cheetah Luis had said, live Cannie butt smelled like fresh-baked bread to gators, dead Cajuns had to have smelled like raspberry jam. The reptiles ignored the bound prisoners and ripped away corpses, tow ropes and corpse pullers. These were huge animals, possibly mutated, well over twenty-feet-long, easily eight hundred pounders. And they were hell-bent on dinner. Streams of bullets only angered them; the cannies who stood their ground and kept shooting got their heads crushed to pulp by the monsters’ back teeth. That tactic was abandoned after the first disastrous try. All they could do was flee while the beasts were otherwise occupied with the unlucky.
At the head of the line of parked wags were three full-size pickups. The cannies hoisted the corpses by their hands and feet and swung them into the beds.
Beyond the pickups were three small semi-tractor-trailers. The trailers were vented with thousands of holes. In predark times they had been used to haul cattle to slaughter. The cannies shoved and booted their shellshocked, bitten and bleeding captives up the rear ramps and into the trailers.
There were already people inside the first trailer. Waiting. They got shoved to the front as the cannies packed in the newcomers. It was either stand up or be stepped on.
Mildred looked into the dirty faces. Some were frightened. Some were blank, dead-eyed—the ones who had already given up. It smelled bad, not just from fear sweat. The wags had been sitting on the side of the road while the cannies went hunting for more victims to top off their load. The trailer’s grated floor could have served as a toilet if the people inside hadn’t been bound hand and foot. As it happened, the only toilet was in their pants.
