Cannibal Moon

by James Axler

  She so detached herself from the act that she was able to view it as a disembodied spectator, an apparition floating along the ceiling of the room. She recognized the woman below her, but it wasn’t really her because she wasn’t there.

  Before she was finished, the gunfire outside the wheelhouse ceased. There were more full-auto bursts, scattered and erratic, but they came from the deck below. Then she heard the heavy tramp of boots coming her way.

  She hurried.

  Ryan burst into the wheelhouse, blaster in hand.

  He was a sight for sore eyes.

  “Mildred are you—” He stopped in midsentence when he saw the blood dripping from her mouth and hands.

  Then he looked down at the shriveled old woman on the floor beneath her. The top of her head was gone. Her skull plate and the attached hair had been tossed aside. The cranial vault had been emptied.

  It was a moment frozen in time.

  A moment that should have spanned an hour.

  But didn’t.

  When Mildred opened her mouth to speak, Ryan cut her off with a chop of his hand.

  “Mildred, you know I always keep my promise,” he said.

  Ryan’s face twisted in sorrow. He pointed the SIGS-auer at her heart and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “No, Ryan, don’t!” Krysty shouted at his back.

  A fraction of an ounce short of trigger break, Ryan caught himself. This wasn’t an act he cared to perform in front of an audience, particularly an audience that included his lover. Ryan was certain that Mildred didn’t want it done in front of the others, either. That wasn’t her style. He released the trigger and lowered his SIG-Sauer.

  Doc and Sprue entered the wheelhouse behind the tall redhead. Doc looked as startled and concerned as she did.

  “Good grief, my dear Dr. Wyeth!” he exclaimed. “What has happened? Are you injured? Have you been shot?”

  “It’s not her blood,” Ryan informed them as he holstered his weapon.

  When the awful truth sank in, shock, anger and betrayal replaced the concern on the companions’ faces.

  Of the three companions, Doc the Victorian was without a doubt the most hurt and the most outraged. “Well, Dr. Wyeth?” he demanded angrily.

  “Ryan’s right,” Mildred said, “it isn’t my blood.” She picked up an embroidered pillow from the floor and wiped her hands and mouth on it. Tossing the cushion aside, she pointed at the supine, emaciated body. “It all came out of her. That was La Golondrina, the cannie queen. I shot her dead with Jak’s blaster.”

  “The means by which the killing was accomplished is of no importance,” Doc said. “I think I speak for everyone when I say that what you did after you shot her is our only concern.”

  “It was the last thing I ever wanted to do, believe me. I know what this looks like. But really, it isn’t what you think.”

  “Evidence to the contrary is smeared on that pillow and clotting under your fingernails,” Doc said. “I understand why Ryan was prepared to immediately dispatch you to hell. I commend him for his initiative, and second the motion.”

  “She asked me to do it, Doc,” Ryan said. “Right after she got dosed by that scarface Tibideau. She said I was to put her down, no questions asked, if she ever showed any signs…”

  “I think what we have before us constitutes more than a mere indication or a potentiality.”

  “I haven’t turned cannie,” Mildred insisted. “What I mean is, I’m not the pawn of some infectious disease. I chose the act. Consciously. Rationally. In full possession of all my faculties. It was the only way I could think of to cure myself.”

  “But you’re not sick,” Krysty said.

  “That’s right. I don’t have any concrete symptoms. I felt lousy for a while, but that seems to have passed. Nearly getting your head cut off tends to clear the mind. Maybe what I felt was the power of suggestion. Junior’s suggestion. By all accounts, the disease should have kicked in by now. And it hasn’t.”

  “If you are not sick,” Doc said, “pray tell why did you subject yourself and your victim to this abomination?”

  “Mildred, haven’t you risked an even bigger chance of infection?” Krysty asked.

  “Not from La Golondrina,” Mildred said. “She could never infect anyone. After she came out of cryosleep she no longer had the virus, she just had the antibodies to it—the virus killers her body manufactured. It seems logical to assume that if one drop of her blood can save a hundred cannies from the Gray Death, a massive dose of her antibodies will keep an early stage infection from ever taking hold. I wanted to make certain that I never got the oozies.”

  At least one of those present wasn’t willing to let it go at that.

  “I concede that you were forced into the vile act against your will in the first instance,” Doc said, “but this time is different. You perpetrated the deed all on your own.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “All you are giving us is conjecture and speculation,” Doc said. “What proof do we have that you are really cured of anything? All we have is your admission to what you have done. Perhaps you have already succumbed to the disease and don’t realize it yourself.”

  “That’s where I puked it all up the first time,” Mildred said, indicating an opaque, pinkish residue on the floor beside the corpse. “Ask yourself, Doc, if I had already turned cannie, would I have thrown it up? Or would I have wolfed it down and be out looking for seconds?”

  “I find that argument less than convincing,” Doc told her. “As we used to say in my day, ‘A cannibal is as a cannibal does.’”

  “That’s a catch-22, Doc,” Mildred said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A no-win situation. You’re saying a person is defined by his or her actions, ignoring his or her intent. By your yardstick, I became a cannie the instant I was forced to swallow brains in that cave.”

  Doc reflected on that for a second. As he did so, his anger seemed to abate. Then he looked chagrined. “Yes, yes, I do see the problem. The logic is circular and absurd. An elementary confusion of case and class. Aristotle would be horrified. Please accept my sincerest apologies. I let emotion sway my reason. It was both unfair and unseemly.”

  “No apology needed, Doc. It’s like that old predark joke—when I occasionally cook up some dinner, you don’t call me Mildred the Chef. When I happen to shoot a rabbit, you don’t call me Mildred the Rabbit Killer. But just eat one little brain…”

  “At least you’ve still got your sense of humor,” Krysty said, obviously relieved.

  “I never heard of a cannie cracking a halfway decent joke,” Sprue chimed in.

  Neither had anyone else.

  “You really ate the whole thing?” Sprue asked her.

  Mildred nodded. “If a brain can make me sick, a brain can make me well. Sad to say.”

  “Two brains in as many days,” Doc remarked, his face completely deadpan. “I sincerely hope you are not acquiring a taste for it.” He hadn’t lost his sense of humor, either.

  “If you knew how absolutely gross they were, you would never say that, my friend.”

  “I believe I shall take your word for it, if you do not mind.”

  “What are we going to do with the rest of her?” Krysty said, indicating the body on the floor.

  “She has to be completely destroyed,” Mildred said.

  “Let’s check those lamps,” Ryan said. “See how much oil they’ve got left in them.”

  There was oil aplenty.

  For a funeral pyre.

  At Ryan’s direction, the companions gathered, then heaped all the cushions in the middle of the room, piled on the ripped-down gauze. Ryan and Sprue lifted the frail corpse by ankles and wrists and deposited it on top of the mound. Mildred bent and snatched up a hank of long black hair to which part of the skull plate was still attached. She tossed it into La Golondrina’s lap.

  Doc and Sprue poured the lamp oil over everyth
ing. Pillows. Gauze. Black baggy dress. Anorexic form.

  “Our Cajun friends are waiting for our signal to start the attack on the main deck,” Ryan said. “This should do them just fine.”

  He struck a wooden match on the back of his pants and tossed it onto the heap.

  With a whoosh, the oil ignited. Brilliant blue flames licked around the queen’s pallid form; they threw off tiny sparks as they leaped from the fine gauze to the saturated pillows. As the flames jumped higher, fed by cloth and flesh, they turned vivid orange. The fire quickly spread and grew in intensity. In seconds, the entire mound was ablaze and the flames shot up to the gauze-draped ceiling.

  Behind the curtain of fire, the freezie’s parchment skin crackled as it blistered, peeled and blackened; her blood hissed as it turned to steam.

  The firelight danced in the reflection of the wheelhouse’s windows. It flickered off the walls, casting wild shadows over the grisly ceremony.

  The signal was duly noted on the deck below.

  Shooting started up almost at once. Automatic weapon fire clattered from the bow.

  Ryan and the others moved to the windows for a look.

  The cannie defenders were trying to hold the bow, and the attackers were trying to seize it. A wicked crossfire from the flesheaters scythed down the first group of fighters as they rushed from the stairwell entrance onto the deck. The total wipeout produced a momentary stalemate.

  An explosion in the midst of the ambushing cannies put an end to it. The blinding flash and powerful shock wave rattled the glass in front of the companions’ faces.

  “Better stand back from the windows,” Ryan said.

  They moved away, but not before they glimpsed the Cajun’s considerable reinforcements. Dozens of escapees spilled out of the entryway and joined in the pitched battle. The fighting quickly spread to encompass the entire length of the huge ship. Flurries of blasterfire seesawed back and forth.

  “They’re pushing the cannies this way so they can trap them belowdecks,” Ryan explained to Mildred. “The ship’s already set to explode. We want them inside when that happens.”

  “Shouldn’t we go down and help the Cajuns?” Sprue said. He was clearly itching to get into the fray with his Desert Eagles.

  “You guys go on ahead,” Mildred told them. “I’ll catch up. I’m not leaving until she’s completely burned.”

  “We’ll all wait,” Ryan said. “The Cajuns are doing fine on their own. They don’t need our help, now. Getting the job done here is more important.”

  “Besides,” Krysty said, “we don’t want to get split up again. Not under these circumstances. We’re sitting on a very big bomb that’s about to go off.”

  As the ceiling’s drooping fabric channels caught fire, the heat at the room’s center became almost unbearable. The companions were forced back from the pyre, their hands clamped over their mouths and noses—a small measure of protection from the lung-scalding high temperature and the choking black smoke given off by the burning cushion foam.

  At their backs, more pipe bombs exploded, making the window glass shiver. Sustained blasterfire rattled on and on. As the fight moved inexorably in their direction, they stood silent witness to La Golondrina’s incineration.

  The baggy cocktail dress was long gone. The queen’s blackened skin had withered to ash. Her internal organs had shriveled and charred. Her skeleton glowed red as air sucked in through the open door and broken windows fed the flames.

  Sweat rolling down their faces, Ryan and the others let her cook to a turn, until there was not a single drop of her juices left. Until the ligaments and sinews that held her bones together gave way. Until her skeleton collapsed in on itself, throwing up a shower of bright sparks.

  “She’s done, let’s go,” Ryan said. “I got the impression Cheetah Luis isn’t going to wait for us to show up before he blows the ship. He’s going to demolish it the first clear chance he gets, whether we’re off it or not.”

  With Ryan in the lead, they left the wheelhouse. Outside, the air felt cool against their sweat-soaked clothes and skin. They stepped around the dead Angels on the deck, retracing their route across the bridge wing to the staircase entrance.

  Ryan looked down from the top step, SIG-Sauer in hand. There were four flights and two hallways between them and the break in the staircase just above the fourth floor. He couldn’t see any farther than the next landing down where the steps doglegged left. He couldn’t see what was going on out on the deck, either. But he heard more sharp explosions. Shrapnel rattled against the outside the stairwell, streams of bullets sparked off it.

  “Hold at the first landing,” he told the others over his shoulder. “I’ll go down and check the door to the next hall.”

  As they began their single-file descent, they had a new problem. Or rather, an old problem exacerbated. With Mildred’s additional weight, the staircase was under even more strain. It quaked and swayed, steel groaning on steel.

  It was like walking on a suspension bridge—or a tightrope.

  “Shit on a stick,” Sprue moaned, no doubt reliving in vivid detail what he had already been through. The way his legs were trembling wasn’t helping the situation one bit.

  “Not so fast,” Ryan cautioned. “Take your time.”

  When they stopped on the first landing, the shaking subsided.

  Ryan continued down the flight of stairs. As he was about to step off onto the landing, the hallway door opened inward. A big man in pigtails and chin beard looked up, very surprised to see him.

  So many questions.

  All with the same answer.

  Ryan clocked the Angel in the middle of the forehead with a steel-jacketed 9 mm round. The bullet impact sent the cannie flying through the doorway in reverse. As the Angel toppled onto his back, rag-doll limp, the spring-loaded door automatically swung shut.

  It slammed with finality, but the action was far from over. Almost at once, autofire burst through the outside of the door. Thirty or forty rounds blistered the sheet steel, slamming and shattering into the staircase wall, ricocheting around the well. Ryan retreated up the stairs as the others descended, their weapons ready to back him up.

  “Don’t fire!” he shouted at them. “The bastards can’t hit us from here. They don’t have the angle. Let them waste their ammo.”

  Abruptly the shooting from the hallway stopped.

  “How many do you think are in there?” Mildred asked Ryan.

  “Three, mebbe four, if the blasters are anything to go by.”

  “They’re joining the party on deck a little late, don’t you think?” Krysty said.

  “Mebbe they thought their pals had it under control,” Ryan said. “Plenty of numbers. Plenty of blasters. No need to ruffle their skanky little braids. Doesn’t look that way to them now.”

  “If the bastards were heading down the steps to help their cannie kin, you changed their minds in a hurry,” Sprue told Ryan. “They saw you blast that Angel from above, mebbe even heard us coming down. They’ll be desperate to go the other way, to get up to the tower and see to their queen.”

  “He’s right,” Mildred said. “The Angels’ mission is to protect La Golondrina. They probably don’t even know the wheelhouse is on fire. They can’t see it from here. They’re thinking about making a last-ditch stand. There is only one way up to the wheelhouse, and it’s defendable.”

  “You know they’re gonna beat feet up the steps to check it out as soon as we’re past,” Sprue said.

  “And your point is?” Doc asked.

  The convoy master put a hand to the wall to brace himself and bobbed his weight on the staircase, making it screech in complaint. All became clear.

  “Mr. Sprue would have us thwart their efforts by rendering the tower approach certain death.”

  “Yeah, what he said,” Sprue agreed.

  “We sure don’t want to leave these guys with access to the tower windows,” Ryan added. “Don’t want them potshotting at us while we cross the deck. But
we don’t have time to bust through the door and take the hallway room by room.”

  “Sounds like Sprue has the best option,” Mildred said.

  “The only option,” Krysty corrected her.

  “Get busy, big man,” Ryan said.

  Sprue started bouncing up and down, getting a good rhythm going. The entire staircase began to flex. The others fell into swing of things, adding their weight to his efforts. The stairs’ upflex levered the lagbolts from the walls. The downflex did same thing. In fractions of an inch, with the staircase creaking like rusty bedsprings, the retaining bolts backed out of their holes. The risers and the treads separated.

  “Enough!” Ryan ordered. “Sprue, you and me will put up covering fire while the others slip past the door. Keep on going until you reach the fourth floor. Don’t wait for us. Don’t stop for anything.”

  The convoy master stepped carefully down beside him and unlimbered both of his semiauto blasters. “Ready,” he said.

  “Now,” Ryan told Sprue as he descended the stairs, cutting down the firing angle. Sprue did the same. When they were shoulder to shoulder on the landing, they both opened fire on the door, pumping round after round through it and down the hallway beyond. If there were Angels on the other side, they were either shot to pieces or ducking for cover.

  Behind them the others slipped safely past. As Krysty, Doc and Mildred raced down the steps full-tilt, the weakened landing shuddered sickeningly under Ryan and Sprue.

  The Deathlands warrior grabbed hold of the big man’s shoulders and pulled him away from the door. They hurtled down the swaying stairs three at a time, hearing the lagbolts popping free.

  Then the door above slammed back hard. Angry voices shouted unintelligibly. The Angels were having a bit of a confab.

  “Go, go, go!” Ryan urged the convoy master as they rounded the last turn. Below them, the gap in the staircase loomed; below that was the fourth-floor landing. To Sprue’s great relief, jumping down proved a whole lot easier than had jumping up. In unison, the two men leaped from the stairs to the small, grated platform. It groaned under them, it buckled in the middle, but it held.