Tainted Cascade

by James Axler

“Get water buckets!”

  “Get grens!”

  “Find Big Joe!”

  As the tail section of jet unexpectedly exploded, the bonemen scattered like leaves in the wind, shouting and waving their arms, the rumbling detonation echoing across the crumbling metropolis like unchained thunder.

  On the roof, the Pig Iron Gang peeked over the edge and grinned in delight.

  “That worked well,” Thal muttered in frank approval, tucking a spare pipe bomb back in his munitions bag.

  “Think that’ll keep them busy for a few minutes?” Rose asked, tucking a knife back into a sheath.

  “Shitfire, they’ll be running around like a mutie with its head cut off for the rest of the bastard day,” Charlie said with a smirk, adjusting his glasses.

  “Look at ’em dance.” Petrov grinned, showing all of his teeth.

  A large man dressed all in black strode out of the museum, a rapid-fire in each fist, his bald head gleaming as if freshly shaved.

  Instantly, Petrov jerked back to not be seen. “Now, let’s go get those hogs,” he whispered, crawling across the roof toward the skylight.

  Using some oil from the munitions bag, Thal lubricated the hinges of the access hatch, and Petrov forced it upward, using the Steyr as a pry bar. Large red flakes of rust sprinkled off the corroded metal, and a boneman stepped into view, first staring at the rust on the marble floor, then looking up.

  “Hi,” Petrov whispered, and stabbed the man in the throat with the sword hidden in the ebony walking stick.

  As the man’s eyes went wide in recognition, Rose pulled the trigger on the SIG-Sauer. The weapon gave a hard cough, and the head of the boneman jerked backward as a black hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. With a guttural sigh, the gurgling man eased to the floor, just as the Pig Iron Gang climbed down the ancient access ladder, neatly avoiding the rigged explosives attached to the third step.

  Twitching feebly, the dying man tried to reach the blaster holstered at his hip, but Charlie kicked him in the face, then took the weapon, along with the spare ammo clips. Yes, exactly as Petrov had said, .38-caliber rounds, just what he now used. Perfect!

  Risking a quick peek over the balcony, Petrov saw the people scurrying about on the ground floor, beating wet blankets on countless small fires, the air murky with thick smoke.

  Tapping the man on the shoulder, Rose silently asked a question, and Petrov jerked a thumb to the right. Moving low and fast, the gang swept through the noisy building, passing numerous glass cases full of blasters, uniforms and such. It looked like a military storehouse to the gang, but Petrov had assured them not to waste any time trying to jack anything. The clothing was usable, but the weapons were dummies, the barrels blocked solid.

  Back when Petrov was a kid running with the bonemen, it had been his job to scrape the barrels clean, using the parts of one blaster to fix another, slowly building an arsenal for Big Joe out of the mementos of the past. Then he had accidentally broken a mil weapon called a bazooka and been severely punished for the mistake. Petrov wouldn’t talk about what happened, but the next night he escaped into the jungle and had been on his own ever since, stealing from the people he once called family.

  Two more bonemen were ruthlessly dispatched before the gang reached the end of the corridor. Stopping at a glass case, Petrov used the panga to force the lock, then chose two slim books from amid the many inside.

  “Fuel,” the man whispered to the others, closing the door once more.

  Grimly, they nodded in understanding.

  Now, going to the elevator, Petrov thrust the sword between the double door and eased it down until there came a soft twang, as if the string on a guitar had been cut. With a grin, he sheathed the blade and pulled the unlocked doors apart. The shaft inside was dark and smelled of old dust.

  Having been inside a predark elevator before, Char lie started to ask about the missing cables, when he remembered Petrov said that was what had been used to anchor the skykiller.

  Flicking a butane lighter to life, Rose played the flame about until she found the steel ladder bolted to the interior wall. Without a word, she stepped onto the first rung and began to quickly climb downward. The rest of the gang followed, with Thal at the end. Carefully, he closed the doors, lashing them shut with twine, a predark gren securely knotted in place to hold down the arming lever, the safety ring already removed.

  Reaching the basement, the gang checked over their weapons, then Petrov cut open the double doors and pushed them aside.

  Sitting near a gun rack full of bolt-action longblasters was a boneman at a small table. An oil lantern gave off a soft glow, and the guard was noisily eating a plate of stew.

  Taking a single step forward, Petrov froze as the guard quickly looked up, a hand going to the blaster on his hip. Then he beamed a greasy smile. “Pete!” the boneman said in delight.

  “Goodbye, Frank,” Petrov growled, and Rose fired twice, punching out the man’s eyes, the 9-mm Parabellum rounds cracking the back of his head.

  As the body tumbled from the chair, Petrov searched the boneman’s pockets, but came up empty. Snarling in frustration, he moved onward, the rest of the gang only pausing for a heartbeat at the cabinet to grab some loose rounds on a shelf. Who knew if they were right for their weapons? But you just didn’t pass up free ammo. The last in line again, Thal used another length of twine to rig a fast trip line across the floor at ankle level, one end attached to the gun cabinet, the other end to another gren, this one marked with a broad red stripe. He had no idea what the marking stood for, but hoped it was something good; high-explosive or poison gas maybe, not just smoke.

  Several empty prison cells lined a wall. Only the two at opposite ends held a prisoner, a teenager who beamed at the gang in delight and a naked woman who stared at them in open hatred. Moving quickly, she tried to crawl underneath the bed that filled most of her cell. Petrov paid no attention to the slut. However, Rose paused to aim the SIG-Sauer and mercifully end the woman’s years of imprisonment.

  “Waste of brass.” Charlie snorted, watching the body drop.

  “Let’s hear you say that after you’ve been ridden by fifteen men in an hour,” Rose growled hatefully, her pretty face distorting briefly in an inhuman mask of hatred.

  Wordlessly, Thal touched her on the shoulder, and Rose jerked away, only to relent and gently elbow the giant. Big enough to take whatever he wanted, Thal would never join her in bed unless asked first. In her dark world, that was as close to love as Rose would allow herself to imagine.

  “That was mighty hard mercy,” the teenager whispered. “But I guess there was no other way. Quick, now, get the keys for my door! You’ll find them near the gun cabinet!”

  “We’re not here for you, little baron,” Petrov drawled, walking past the cell.

  “B-but I know you!” he stated with growing conviction. “The something gang…the Iron Boys…from that tavern, Haven…no, Heaven! You live in my ville!”

  “Not anymore,” Thal rumbled, walking away.

  Reaching a steel gate, Petrov paused at the sight of a long corridor on the other side. There was a plain wooden door at the far end, and beyond that…freedom.

  “Nuke it,” Petrov commanded, sheathing the sword.

  While Thal got busy with a pipe bomb and fuse, the rest of the gang moved away from the gate to go into an empty cell. Puzzled for only a moment, the teenager flipped over his bed, quickly taking refuge behind the hard mattress.

  “Razor up, boys,” Petrov said, swinging up the S&W M-4000 and working the pump. “Because, once this blows…”

  There came a loud hissing, and Thal charged away from the gate to dive into the cell. A split second later, the world seemed to explode, the entire four-story building rocking as dust rained down from the ceiling and loose bricks tumbled out of the walls.

  The roiling smoke of the blast still filled the air as the Pig Iron Gang stumbled out of the cell. Coughing from the acrid fumes, they shuffled to the ruined gate an
d kicked aside the mass of twisted metal to head for the wooden door. Dimly from the floors above, they could hear raised voices and a bell clanging.

  “Here they come.” Charlie laughed softly, hefting both of his blasters.

  “Frag ’em!” Petrov shouted, using the scattergun to remove the lock. The wood and metal vanished under the assault of the 12-gauge cartridge, and the door slammed aside. Clutching a bloody arm, a boneman was crouching on the floor, his face covered with splinters as if he was some sort of a mutie porcupine.

  “Hello, Kelly,” Petrov whispered, pressing the barrel of the weapon against the man’s stomach.

  “Wh-who the f-frag are you?” Kelly asked, confused.

  Enraged at the lack of recognition, Petrov shifted the aim of the weapon and shot the man between the legs. Shrieking in pain, Kelly hit the floor, clutching the ghastly wound that had once been his manhood.

  Walking past the weeping man, Petrov turned and fired again into his buttocks. Thrown forward, blood erupted from the boneman’s mouth, and he landed sprawling in the corridor, crimson gushing from both ends.

  Thumbing in fresh cartridges, Petrov saw Rose look at him in sudden understanding. She started to speak, then shook her head and walked on, brushing aside a heavy tarpaulin that hung from the ceiling like a curtain. A garage came into view, the walls lined with spare parts and tools and various machines. A concrete ramp led upward to a set of wooden doors, and light came from several small alcohol lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

  Quickly, the gang spread out, hunting for their targets. The garage was filled with wags, most of them in various stages of disassemble or repair, but off to the side were five motorcycles, the windshields slightly milky but intact, the tires black and firm.

  “Jackpot!” Charlie grinned. Any one of these hogs would fetch the entire gang a year of room and board from any baron west of the Darks.

  “Nothing with a sidecar!” Petrov directed sternly. “We’ve got some deep water to ford. Two-wheelers only!”

  Just then, something detonated in the distance, closely followed by the screams of wounded men dying.

  “Thal, open the exit!” Petrov bellowed, the time for secrecy long over. “Rose, stand guard! Charlie, start filling gas tanks!”

  As the gang rushed to their tasks, Petrov went to a wall locker and used the stock of the scattergun to smash off the padlock. Inside was a collection of keys for the vehicles. Ignoring the fakes, Petrov pushed on a corner of the board, and it swung around to reveal the real keys. Big Joe was smart, and a master of the rigging traps, but he talked too much when drunk, and Petrov remembered everything he had ever heard.

  “Payback’s a bitch.” Petrov chortled, taking the keys for the bikes and walking over to shove them into the ignitions.

  A second detonation came from the other end of the corridor, and Rose sent a long spray from the Uzi into the expanding cloud of smoke. A man cried out, but more in surprise than anything else.

  “How many of them are there, boy?” Big Joe demanded from inside the cloud. “Are they barbs? Muties?”

  “Nuke you!” a youthful voice replied defiantly. “There’s a thousand of them! All ten feet tall and armed with rapid-fires!”

  Quickly, the gang took cover behind the wags.

  “Tough kid,” Charlie whispered in grudging admiration.

  “Now I’m sorry we didn’t set him loose,” Rose snarled in agreement.

  “Frag him,” Petrov whispered, then loudly shouted, “Hey, Joe! Why don’t you come on down and count us for yourself!” Then he unleashed three rounds from the scattergun, the spray ricocheting off the cinder-block walls of the corridor to no effect whatsoever, but sounding like predark artillery.

  A hail of blasterfire replied from the other end of the passageway, the assortment of lead punching different-size holes into the sheet-metal bodies of the predark cars or ripping off chunks of the fiberglass fenders. Undamaged, Petrov and Rose answered back with hot lead as the other members of the gang feverishly tried to get their tasks done in time. A split second either way, and they’d be on the last train west.

  In a splintery crash, the exit doors burst open, and Thal blinked at the sunlight streaming into the basement. Then he saw figures moving through the ruins and drew both of his blasters to instantly fire. The double discharge threw the big man backward from the brutal recoil, and he almost dropped both weapons. An arrow came out of the shadows across the street, and Thal used just the Colt, sending out five fast rounds. A window shattered, leaves went flying and a boneman stumbled into the middle of the street, his shoulder pumping lifeblood. Holstering the Colt, Thal used both hands to aim the LeMat and fire. The trigger merely clicked, then Thal remembered to cock the hammer first and try again. This time, smoke and flame lanced from the black-powder weapon, and the boneman flipped over backward from the triphammer arrival of the .44 miniball.

  Hosing a long stream from the Uzi, Rose lost control of the chattering rapid-fire, the 9-mm rounds hitting nothing in particular. Dropping behind a derelict police car, the woman frantically reloaded, while Petrov sent off four thundering discharges from the S&W scattergun. As he knelt to reload, Rose stood. Switching to short bursts, she found the weapon much easier to control and began to hammer away at the people on the other side of the corridor. A flurry of boomerangs sailed down the corridor to smack into a stack of tires, and several arrows slammed into windows, the sheets of glass shattering into tiny green squares that rolled and bounced everywhere underfoot.

  Ducking, Charlie almost got hit in the head while forcing open another unmarked canister. A lot of them were filled with a mixture of gasoline and sugar water, which would ace the engine of a hog in only a few minutes. Just another fragging trick of Big Joe’s to stop a thief. However, Charlie was smart enough to taste the fluid inside each canister until finding the real juice, a combination of gasoline, diesel and shine that worked perfectly in the old engines.

  Still standing in the open exit, Thal saw another movement in the lush greenery, but did nothing until he saw a boot. Aiming carefully, he shot once, and a boneman howled as his foot erupted into ragged meat and bone, the boot torn off to tumble down the street. As he fell, Thal fired the LeMat again, sending the body rolling back into the grass and weeds.

  Trying to fool the others into thinking she was out of brass, Rose pulled out the panga and threw it at the bonemen, but the curved blade merely wobbled in flight and smacked into the floor, skittering out of sight. Shitfire, what a crappy knife! That one-eyed man had to have been a feeb.

  Unexpectedly, the blade came flying back, but this time it was spinning sideways, moving parallel to the floor. Only a blur in the air, the panga skimmed over the police car, just missing Rose, and slammed into the wall. She gasped in astonishment at that and started to reach upward, when an arrow smacked into the wall just below the panga.

  “Clever,” Rose growled, quickly tugging the panga free, then pulling a spent clip from her pocket to throw it on the floor. At the clatter, three bonemen charged out of the smoke, grinning like fiends. Instantly, she cut loose with the Uzi and mowed them down, wasting precious brass until the bodies were barely recognizable as humans anymore.

  “Done!” Charlie announced, screwing the cap back on the gas tank of a motorcycle. Tossing away the empty gas canister, the man then drew both of his blasters and banged away at the unseen attackers.

  “Rock and roll!” Petrov shouted, lighting a stubby candle and placing it strategically on the floor, just behind a heavy toolbox.

  Going to the largest hog, Thal revved the knuckle-head engine alive and roared out of the basement, leaving behind a trail of blue smoke. Hopping onto another bike, Rose needed three tries to make the twin-V engine catch, then she twisted the throttle on the handlebars and charged out of the basement, driving at breakneck speed.

  “They’re jacking the hogs!” a boneman yelled.

  Howling like banshees, a mob of the Boneyard boys charged into view. Petrov laughed insa
nely while triggering the scattergun. The range was too great for a chill, but the barrage of double-O buckshot drove the men back inside the main building, limping and bleeding.

  “Whoever you nuke-suckers are, I’m gonna personally rip out your fragging hearts!” Big Joe yelled, stepping boldly into view, both of his Ingram machine pistols spitting fire. The streams of small-caliber rounds knocked paint off the walls and zinged about the garage, shattering more windows, throwing sparks off tools and punching holes in oil cans.

  “Don’t you know me anymore, Father?” Petrov screamed at the top of his lungs.

  There came a moment of silence.

  “Peter?” Big Joe asked in a strained whisper.

  “Not anymore!” Petrov answered, kicking over a row of open gas canisters. Pinkish juice gushed out to spread fast toward the waiting candle.

  Climbing onto a couple of motorcycles, Petrov and Charlie gunned the hogs alive and raced out of the basement at full throttle, thick black fumes pouring from the exhaust pipes. They collided on the exit ramp, almost knocking each other down, but the confines were too tight, and the men stayed in motion, reaching open ground outside to separate and head in different directions to confuse any trackers.

  Charging into the garage, Big Joe and the bonemen looked about for any traps before heading after the thieves. They found the candle a split second before the fuel did, and a boneman dived forward to grab the wick and crush it dead in a fist.

  Charging out of the exit ramp of the basement, Big Joe and the others opened fire with every weapon they had at the departing thieves, but the bikes were already out of range of the small-caliber blasters.

  “Juice up the war wag!” Big Joe snarled, holstering a piece. He ran a hand along his neck and inspected his blood-smeared palm. The ricochet had only grazed his neck, nothing more. “I want it running in five minutes!”

  “No prob, Chief,” a boneman replied, dumping out the spent rounds from his .32 revolver and pocketing the brass to reload later.

  Then the man blinked at the half stick of dynamite lying on the side of the smooth road.