Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  An explosion suddenly blew a gap in the security force. From the limited but certain devastation, Hella thought one of the Sheldons had triggered an antipersonnel device. Shell-shocked, the security people fell back, and the Sheldons surged forward again.

  One of the security guards aiding Colleen went down suddenly, keeping his grip on her and bringing her down with him. She threw her arms over her head, lay there for a moment, then tried to get up. The surviving guard attempted to aid her, but one of the armadillo bikers who had gotten into the camps threw himself off the machine and tackled him. Both of them went down.

  Hella didn't think twice, though she thought about it a lot later. She gathered herself and jumped over the wall. At the bottom of the five-meter drop, she landed on relaxed legs, sank to the ground, and rolled to her feet with the XM25 up in front of her. She ran for Colleen, leaping over the bodies of camp visitors who hadn't been prepared for the onslaught.

  "Fire in the hole!" The yell didn't belong to Stampede, but it came over his comm link.

  On the heels of the warning, the ground around the campsite erupted into a ring of explosions that threw Sheldons high into the air and left smoking craters.

  Faust shouted curses that came over the comm link. "You like that? Electronic mine field. My idea and Carnegie went along with it. Figured it would be a last-ditch effort for us if we ever got attacked en masse like this."

  Smoke and dust burned Hella's lungs by the time she reached Colleen. The woman looked dazed, and Hella was sure that was as much from the drugs Pardot was giving her as the attack.

  "Colleen!" Hella started to help the woman up, but a motorcycle closed on them fast. She lifted the XM25 in both hands and aimed point-blank, hoping that they wouldn't get caught in a backlash of whatever the blue tape meant. She squeezed the trigger as the rear rider pointed a shotgun at her.

  The grenade exploded just as Hella turned and dived on top of Colleen, burying them both in the ground. A swarm of fléchettes turned the two Sheldons into chopped meat, wrecked the motorcycle, and took out three more riding teams.

  With the sound of the explosion still ringing in her ears, Hella grabbed Colleen's arm and yanked her up.

  They're going to kill us! We're going to die!

  "No, we're not." Hella didn't know if she'd spoken or not because the near explosion had left her almost deaf, but Colleen seemed to calm down a little and became more pliant. She held on to the woman's arm and pulled her toward the gates.

  A trio of Sheldons raced at her. The armadillo bikers were smoking from the minefield. Embers flamed in their clothing and on their leathery skin. Hella lifted the XM25 but didn't fire because the Sheldons were too close to her. She dropped the grenade launcher and morphed her free fist into a .50-caliber weapon, but it would be too late.

  "Hella, get down!"

  Recognizing Stampede's voice, Hella wrapped her arms around Colleen and took them to the ground again. The rough earth tore at her skin, leaving bruises and abrasions. Helplessly she stared back at the approaching riders.

  Then, out of the whirling chaos at the gate, from the mire of frightened people struggling to get in at the last minute and the guards trying to shut the doors, Stampede stepped into the open. He held his rifle loosely in his arms and didn't try to bring it around. Instead he lifted his left foot and brought it down—hard.

  A seismic shock ran through the ground, jarring Hella as she held on to Colleen.

  They're going to kill us!

  Hella watched as the quake bowed the earth in front of the armadillo bikers. The tremor leaped from the ground and into the bikers, scattering them like leaves in a stiff breeze. One of the motorcycles shot by Hella and took down a small dome tent before crashing onto its side.

  The Purple Dragons struggled to get to their feet, but by that time Stampede was on them. His fists, aided by his seismic power, smashed into his enemies and broke their bones, killing them with sheer concussive force.

  One of the bikers tried to blindside him. Hella raised her hand, but before she could fire, a gout of flame turned the Sheldon into a fireball.

  Eyes burning, body covered in flames, Silence took the battlefield and gazed at Stampede.

  Stampede gripped his rifle. "Not bad, Sparky."

  Silence grinned, flexed his arms, and shot upward on a pillar of fire. Then he spit another fireball that engulfed a second group of bikers.

  Stampede raced over to Hella and Colleen. He hoisted the woman up into his arms as though she were a child and ran back toward the closing camp gates. Hella followed, providing cover fire from both blazing hands.

  "Hold those gates!" Faust leaped to one door above the heads of the struggling crowd, gripped the door's edge in both left hands, and fired into the arriving mass of armadillo bikers with guns gripped in both right fists. His bullets tore through the front line of the Purple Dragons, and he kept firing despite the fact that bullets drummed the heavy, metal doors.

  Hella stayed close to Stampede, no more than an arm's reach away, and he bulled through the mass of frightened people.

  "Close the gates!" Faust flung himself through the air, flipped over the heads of the people, transferred his pistol to his left hand, and dropped onto his two feet. He reloaded his weapons, and a bullet ricocheted from his Kevlar helmet while two others thudded into his vest and drove him backward two steps. "Close the gates! Now!"

  Hella fought clear of the crowd, found a nearby ladder, morphed her hands back, and practically ran up to the catwalk. As soon as she hauled herself onto the catwalk, she morphed her hands back into weapons and joined the other defenders at the wall.

  Below, all of the campers who remained alive had managed to make it into the trade camp. However, a large knot of Purple Dragons smashed up against the closing doors like waves breaking against a reef. Hella fired blindly down into them and regretted the loss of the grenade launcher.

  Gradually, though, the withering fire broke the line of armadillo bikers. They'd fought to get inside because they were afraid of retreating back across the no-man's-land that remained of the campsites. In the end, though, there was nowhere else for them to go. A few broke away at first; then they retreated en masse, like the tide going out.

  Sharpshooters picked off all they could, but when she looked at all the dead strewn across the ravaged field that lay around the trade camp, Hella didn't have the heart for it. Silence flew after them for a short distance before gunners chased him back. He spit fire at the retreating bikers and succeeded in roasting several of them.

  "Don't give up killing them." The guard to Hella's right glared at her as he reloaded his sniper rifle. "The ones we don't kill today, we'll have to kill tomorrow. They'll be back when they get desperate enough."

  Hella ignored the man and returned to the ladder. She morphed her hands back, gripped the ladder, and slid to the ground. When she got there, Stampede was still holding Colleen in his arms. The woman lay still as death.

  Hella couldn't see any wounds. "Is she okay?"

  "Yeah. Passed out." Stampede rolled his head and grimaced.

  "You okay?"

  "Bruised and banged up. You?"

  "I'm fine."

  "You took a risk diving off that wall, Red."

  "Didn't stop to think. I just saw Colleen in trouble and knew I had to get to her."

  "Your choice?"

  Hella shook her head. "She didn't even know I was there. She had no control over me. She was so scared—or drug addled—that she couldn't save herself."

  Stampede growled. "I'm going to have a word with Pardot. He's not going to continue to make her like this. In this state, she's a liability."

  "Pardot's not big on listening."

  "He'll listen now. I'm going to make him."

  CHAPTER 11

  As she walked through the dead, Hella turned off her emotions. She concentrated her attention on taking salvageable goods from the armadillo bikers, leaving the other corpses to family and friends who would claim them and t
ake care of their burning. If she didn't touch the fallen campers, the sadness and the loss didn't linger, didn't become attached to her.

  As part of the defenders, she and Stampede had salvage rights to the dead enemies. Anything—gear or weapons that could be saved—was theirs to claim when she found it, as much of it as she could carry back to the camp. Stampede was working out details with Pardot because they were leaving in the morning.

  Despite the number of the dead lying around her and the number of salvagers working them, Hella moved slowly and carefully. She took her prizes methodically.

  She was on her second trip back through the battleground, skirting a still-smoking crater, when she realized Riley had fallen into step with her. "What are you doing?"

  "Came to check on you."

  "I'm fine."

  Riley looked tired and anxious. His restless gaze wandered around the dead and all the destruction. "About what you did to save Dr. Trammell—"

  "I was just doing my job." Hella didn't want to talk about the woman. If she did, she was afraid that she would unload on Riley for helping keep the woman drugged. "Just part of the service."

  "No, it wasn't. That was a brave thing." Riley shook his head. "I don't know if I would have dived over the wall and gone down into that bloodbath."

  Pride and embarrassment warred within Hella. She was glad that Riley had noticed her helping rescue Colleen. She liked the idea that her actions had made an impression on the man. And she was at once irritated at feeling that way. She didn't like not being in control of how she felt or what she thought.

  Hella knelt and fished a bandolier containing three magazines from under a file of dirt near a crater. The magazines held rounds that Stampede could use in his rifle. She hung the bandolier over her shoulder and stood again. "Stampede was the one that rescued Dr. Trammell and me. We wouldn't have made it out of there without him."

  "If you hadn't reached Dr. Trammell, Stampede would never have gotten there in time. A handful of my men have told me that. I don't mean to take anything away from Stampede, and I've already thanked him. So has Dr. Pardot."

  "I wish I hadn't missed that."

  Riley grinned in the shadows of the open face shield. "Yeah, well it doesn't happen very often, I can promise you."

  "Why are you working for Pardot?" Hella kept walking and Riley kept pace. "Isn't there someone else you can work for where you come from?"

  "I'm a security guard, Hella. That's what I was tasked to do while I attended school. But I wanted to see more of the world."

  "You went to school?"

  "Sure. Didn't you?"

  Hella smiled at him and shook her head. " You seen many schools while you've been out here?"

  Riley sighed and shook his head. "No. They don't have schools here?"

  "Not many in the Redblight, no." Hella pointed back at Blossom Heat. "Trade camp's got a school, but probably not like you're used to. You can't learn to be a security guard there, but you do learn how to defend yourself when you travel the trails or stand post inside the camp. If you don't learn, you die."

  "Then what do you learn?"

  "How to work at a trade camp. They teach you to read and write, some math, and maybe some kind of skill. Repair work mostly. Or maybe you get taught how to build buildings, furniture, stuff like that."

  "How did you learn to be a scout?"

  "On the trails. Same as every other scout. There's no other way to learn, and your marks come hard and quick. You fail, you get burned. If you were around long enough, your friends feel sorry you're gone. If not, they just burn you to prevent disease." Hella spotted a bit of shiny metal under an armadillo corpse, which didn't appear to have been moved yet. The body covered another magazine. She knelt again and slipped a small skinning knife from her boot.

  With quick, deft movements, she sliced through the dead biker's pockets and emptied the contents, checking her haul before she slipped it into a leather bag that hung around her neck. The take wasn't much. A worn pocketknife, a couple of rings that didn't look silver and held glittering stones that looked artificial, a few ancient coins that really didn't have any worth anymore, and a green and white disk. She read the writing on the disk.

  "Blue Skies Casino."

  "That's a poker chip. From a gaming center that probably stopped existing shortly after the collider imploded. Where did you learn to read?"

  Hella knew what a gaming center was. Gambling went on in trade camps and along the trails as well. She'd never been drawn to the games. Staying alive every day was gamble enough. She didn't know why other people didn't recognize that. "Stampede taught me."

  "He knows how to read?" Riley couldn't hide his surprised look.

  Hella shook her head and snorted. "He couldn't have taught me any other way, now could he?"

  "Why did he teach you?"

  "Because he thinks reading is important."

  "Do you?"

  Hella kept walking. Around her, other camp defenders raced from corpse to corpse. "You don't use reading for much while you're on the trail. Usually for identifying salvage. Occasionally Stampede and I share a book."

  "Share a book?"

  "Take turns reading out loud. We don't waste batteries on vox-players." Hella hated that she was talking so much and wished she could find some way to shut up. She reminded herself that Stampede's comm link was on and he could be listening in. The whole situation was embarrassing—at both ends.

  "Oh."

  Hella studied Riley's reaction. She wanted to know if "oh" was a negative reaction and if Riley thought she was being an idiot. Then she told herself that worrying about what he thought proved she was an idiot... at least about that.

  "You can learn a lot of things from books." She sounded more defensive than she wanted to.

  "I suppose." Riley didn't look convinced.

  "Do you read?"

  "Manuals. But most of those are computer downloads."

  Hella had seen computers only a few times. "I've never used a computer."

  "Really? Because that surprises me. You've got nanobots in your body. That should give you some kind of affinity for computer hardware and software, I'd think." Riley seemed contemplative so Hella didn't know if he thought her nanobots were like a disease or not.

  She also didn't like admitting that she didn't know much about the nanobots inside her system. "If I ever get curious about that, maybe I'll look into it." She pulled an M4A1 assault rifle from under the dead man. The weapon looked to be in good shape. With a little cleaning, she'd be able to barter it successfully

  "Is it all that important to rob the dead?"

  Anger sparked inside Hella. "They're dead. They're not going to use any of this stuff again." She kept moving, forcing Riley to stay up with her. "Besides that, only a short time ago, one of these guys would have killed you. Or anybody else." She took a breath. "And it's not robbing them. It's salvage. It's also important. These are goods that Stampede and I can use to stay alive. Either we can use them with part of our kit, or we can trade them for stuff we can use. A meal. A room. Supplies."

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend."

  "You didn't." Hella didn't want to let him see that she felt defensive, and she was angry at herself for feeling that way because it meant she felt vulnerable.

  "I'm just trying to understand. This world... is different from where I grew up." Riley looked around. "It's hard and it's dangerous and it doesn't care for you very much."

  "Your world cares about you?" The idea was intriguing.

  "I think so." Riley smiled. "We live in homes, Hella. With our families. We're safe. When we go to bed at night, we don't have to worry that someone will have a knife at our throats in the morning. There's always food on the table, and we don't have much sickness."

  Hella remembered Colleen Trammell's concern about her daughter and almost asked about that, but she stopped herself. One thing that travelers on the trails learned quickly was to keep their curiosity to themselves. "Pardot is the leader
there?"

  Riley shook his head. "He's on the council, but he's not the leader. His voice is heard, and he gets a lot of respect."

  "Then why is he out here?"

  "Because our community is strong and we want to keep it that way. That means we have to find new things and adapt them if we can use them. Dr. Pardot is good with technology. He's reverse-engineered power sources, machines, and even"—Riley tapped the hardshell armor—"designed some of the microsystems inside these suits. The man is a genius."

  "Sounds like a guy no one should be risking out here."

  Riley nodded. "Everyone thinks that way and they tried to stop Dr. Pardot from coming. But he doesn't trust anyone else to do the job."

  That was something Pardot shared with Stampede. Except that Hella knew Stampede trusted her.

  "When they found the first—" Riley stopped and grimaced. Then he shook his head. "Sometimes I talk too much."

  "What did they find?"

  "I can't tell you. When the time comes, Dr. Pardot will make sure you know."

  If we're not dead first. Hella kept that thought to herself. One of the salvagers ran past her.

  Riley smiled. "I guess he's in a hurry."

  "He's young and stupid. That's a combination that doesn't last long. Sometimes, when an invading force has to retreat, they leave booby traps under the bodies of their dead."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Good thing you're not out looking for salvage."

  "Did these bikers really think they could bring down the trade camp?"

  Hella looked at the dozens of dead armadillo men and women spread across the ravaged earth. "They did. But Stampede thinks their leader got desperate."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Whoever put these gangs together, the group grew bigger than he expected. At first we thought maybe he was just stupid, believing that more was better."

  "Isn't it?"

  "Look at how many men you've got on this expedition. Think about how many supplies you've got to bring with you to survive. If you didn't have your own food, Stampede and I never would have agreed to sign on with you."