Sunspot

by James Axler

  Outside the Welcome Center, blasterfire from the ville’s gun positions raged on, unabated. He could hear intermittent answering fire from attackers at the bottom of the gorge. Ineffective fire, as it was directed at hardened positions and yards-thick berm walls.

  Doc followed Isabel past the portable gibbet where he had been scheduled to hang. As he ran under the basketball backboard and its stiff, empty noose, he smiled.

  It was a fine day to die, but not that way.

  The ville’s head woman cut across the compound, moving low and fast. She took him between the rows of wheelless Winnebagos, converted semitrailers and cargo containers where the people of Sunspot made their homes. No one stepped out of the shadows to challenge them. All of Haldane’s soldiers had moved to defensive positions on the berm. Accustomed to invasion, the ville folk had taken cover.

  Isabel led him to one of the cargo containers and pushed aside the sheet of opaque plastic that was its door. The windowless space was lit by a single torch. Tiers of wooden bunks lined one wall, all empty; an oil drum stove stood in the far corner. Two men were waiting inside. At Isabel’s signal the two men shifted the cold stove off its wooden platform, then swung the platform aside, revealing a hole braced with timbers, leading down into blackness.

  At that moment Doc realized that the folks of Sunspot weren’t the meek victims that they seemed.

  Isabel shoulder slung her AK and grabbed the torch from its stanchion. “Stay close, or you’ll get lost,” she warned him.

  Doc followed her into the hole. Four feet down was a dirt floor. Ahead in the hissing torchlight, under timbered bracing, was a narrow, dusty tunnel. The ceiling was so low that Doc had to drop to his hands and knees and crawl.

  After thirty feet or so, the tunnel grew taller and the earthen walls, floor and ceiling gave way to bedrock. Doc got to his feet, though he still had to lower his head to keep it from hitting the roof. The passage was triangular-shaped, narrower at the bottom than the top, a natural fissure in the stone.

  Because of the tunnel’s gradual turns it was difficult for Doc to keep track of their direction. Though the heavy machine-gun fire was muffled by the stone overhead, he could still hear its ominous rumble. They encountered numerous pitch-dark side passages in the bare rock. He had no way of telling whether they were dead ends.

  Doc tapped Isabel on the shoulder and said, “Do these passages provide the scagworms access to the ville proper?”

  “They do, unfortunately. We’ve blocked off the tunnels we know they are using, but they keep finding new ways in.”

  “This is how they decimated your stock of pigs.”

  “Hogs are no match for the big old scagworm sows. They burrow up under the sty, get hold of the hogs’ legs and pull them down into the tunnels. Even though we knew what was coming, when it happened, it happened so fast we couldn’t stop it. The poor bastard guarding the last pig jumped into the hole after it. He let out a scream and was never seen again.”

  “So they’re fond of long pig, as well.”

  “They like their food alive and kicking. And warm-blooded.”

  After they had traveled for a few minutes more, Isabel hopped down into wide, low-ceilinged stone chamber brightly lit by a ring of torches. Doc paused on the verge. Leaning against the far wall he saw a row of AKs and olive-drab ammo cans. Armed men and women, at least twenty-five of them, stood waiting, grim-faced.

  As Doc dropped down into the room, the muzzles of all the assault rifles swung up to cover him.

  “Put up your hands,” Isabel ordered him.

  “As you wish.”

  “Are you a spy for Baron Malosh?” she demanded.

  Doc momentarily considered denying the accusation, but decided it was time for him to start telling the truth. “A most unwilling spy,” he told her. “Malosh holds my dearest friends as hostages. Their lives hang in the balance. I had no choice.”

  “You bastard. You lied to me.”

  “Would you lie to save your people?”

  “I have lied. I have chilled to save them.”

  “And you are ready to die in that cause?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what separates us is a distinction without a difference, my dear.”

  “The difference is you put my people at risk,” she said.

  “The risk existed, whether I cooperated with Malosh or not. He is intent on retaking this ville.”

  “Why did you walk away from me last night?”

  “I would no more dishonor you, Isabel, than I would myself.”

  Isabel gave him a searching look. She was handsome, brave, intelligent and utterly capable. There was the promise of great tenderness in her lovely eyes.

  “It was not for lack of desire, I assure you,” Doc said. “I could not betray you in that way. Thankfully such an abomination was not part of the terms the Impaler dictated to me. Madam, I did only what I had to do in order to save my friends, nothing more. I owe them my life, many times over. If it costs me my life now, so be it. Do what you will.”

  After a pause, Isabel waved for her people to lower their weapons.

  “If you thought I was really Malosh’s spy, why did you not just let them execute me?” Doc asked.

  “My husband was hanged by Haldane’s head sec man, Bollinger,” Isabel said. “Have you ever seen a person chilled that way?”

  “Regrettably, yes.”

  “It broke Paul’s neck and stretched it until it was two feet long,” she told him, her violet eyes flashing in the torchlight. “He was Sunspot’s duly elected leader. Paul never personally raised a hand against either one of the barons, or their sec men. He was trying to hold things together, trying to keep as many ville folk alive as he could. Some people here called him an appeaser. But it wasn’t true. He wanted freedom for the ville, an end to occupation. He did his best to protect the emerging underground. It was Paul who discovered the honeycomb of tunnels under the ville. The same slippages of rock that produced Sunspot’s sweet springs also produced the underground passages, which haven’t been completely explored because there are so many of them, and because of the danger of falling into deep chasms or being trapped by cave-ins.

  “Though Paul tried, he couldn’t control a small group of ville hotheads. They insisted on not just sabotaging, but chilling our oppressors. It started with poisonings in the garrison mess, which were blamed on bad water, bad food, or contagious disease. Bloody revenge murders weren’t so easily dismissed. Bollinger caught the guilty ones and hanged Paul, too, because he hadn’t turned them in.”

  “Why didn’t you side with Malosh, then?”

  “One baron is just as bad as the other. Both of them bleed us dry. Which one was in charge at the time didn’t matter. It could have as easily been Malosh who hanged Paul.”

  “How have you kept this tunnel system a secret?”

  “The entrances are concealed inside the cargo containers. For reasons of personal safety, the barons’ troopers don’t like to enter them. When they do search our homes, it’s over quickly. There is another entrance near the latrines in the garden.”

  “You intend to throw off your shackles by force of arms?”

  “We have been planning it ever since Paul’s murder. We have armed ourselves with good weapons and ammo, stolen from our enemies.”

  “Do you really think you can defeat both Malosh and Haldane?”

  “We have no choice.”

  “Indeed, it appears you do not.”

  Isabel stepped up to him and said, “Will you fight with us?”

  “Either my companions are safe or they are not. Either way, there is nothing more I can do for them at present. Under the circumstances I would be most honored to join your cause. My gun and my sword are at your service, madam.”

  No sooner had he finished speaking than a string of muted explosions burst almost directly overhead.

  “Grens,” Doc said.

  Then came the clatter of machine-gun fire, likewise muted by the layers
of intervening rock.

  “Malosh’s real attack has started,” Isabel said.

  A moment later the subterranean room was jarred by a rocking blast. The walls and floor shuddered violently, and with an awful grinding roar, a section of the stone ceiling broke free and came down on top of them. As Tanner grabbed Isabel’s arm and swung her out of the path of the massive deadfall, clouds of dust whooshed over them and the other survivors, extinguishing most of the torches.

  They coughed and gasped in the dim light. More gren explosions came from above; though less powerful, they still shook the chamber. With a groan, another chunk of the weakened roof broke loose and crashed to the floor.

  “Gather the weapons and ammo!” Isabel shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here before the rest of the ceiling comes down.”

  The ville fighters hurried to obey her.

  Doc picked up a dropped torch so he could help. As he stepped forward, he almost kicked a man’s head that was sticking out of the rubble on the floor. The face was a strangled black, the eyes popped out of their sockets and dangling upon his blood-suffused cheeks. Hidden from view, his torso had been crushed flat by a huge block of stone. He had bitten off his own tongue by reflex.

  It lay on the floor under his nose.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan stretched the cramps out of his legs while blasterfire raged on the gorge side of ville. He figured the Haldane sec men who weren’t assigned to defend the north wall would be scrambling up the slope of loose scree on the south side, eager for the chance to rip off a few clips at a pinned down enemy. The machine gun in front of them was his one and only concern.

  The steady chatter of blasterfire was loud enough to cover conversation. Ryan waved for J.B. and Mildred to come closer to him.

  “The big gun position is going to be tough to crack,” he said. “Its kill zone runs through nearly 180 degrees of arc. And there’s just bare ground between it and us.”

  “The officers brought along plenty of grens,” Mildred countered. “Fraggers.”

  “The emplacement’s SUV is buttoned up tight with plate steel,” Ryan told them. “Windshield and side windows are covered. The wag is sitting on its rims, and the undercarriage is mebbe six inches off the ground. The only decent-size opening is in the roof behind the machine gun, the port for the gunner. It’s going to take a hell of a pitch to drop a gren down that hole.”

  “Nothing but net,” Mildred said.

  “Nukin’ hell!” J.B. exclaimed, looking up as a flare burst high over the ville. It reflected in his spectacles, casting a sickly red light as it drifted down out of sight behind the wall of dirt and rubble.

  If they could see Malosh’s attack signal, the trooper behind the Haldane machine gun could, too.

  So much for surprise.

  “Get ready,” Ryan said, tightening his grip on the SIG-Sauer and bracing himself to charge over the top of the cliff.

  Farther down the cliff edge, he saw Malosh’s officers yank the pins on the grens they each held. Counting out loud, they let the safety levers flip off, then lobbed the bombs in high arcs toward the emplacement.

  Pure chuck and duck.

  The machine gun opened up at once, strafing the edge of the cliff with 7.62 mm NATO rounds.

  Ryan couldn’t hear the grens land because of the roar of blasterfire. The hard, cracking explosions were impossible to miss, however.

  Whump! Whump! Whump!

  As the companions crouched, shrap sizzled and whined through the air scant inches above their heads. The stench of burned Comp B swept over them.

  And the machine gun went dead.

  Mildred and J.B. started to move forward. Ryan put out both arms, holding them back.

  Other norm fighters concealed below the summit weren’t as cautious. Following their officers’ command, the first twenty vaulted the cliff edge and charged.

  The M-60 came to life at once.

  Amid the 550-round-per-minute thunder and the howl of flying lead, men and women screamed and fell. Those who weren’t flattened by gutshots or head shots in the first twenty-five feet abruptly reversed course and tried desperately to dive or jump over the cliff edge to cover.

  Some of these unlucky ones were lifted in the air by multiple bullet impacts and thrown over the cliff. They toppled soundlessly down the cliff face. Others reached the edge only to be cut down before they could make the headfirst leap. A man whose skull was largely shot away slipped past J.B., who instinctively reached out for his arm and missed. The body slid by, limp as a rag bag, rapidly gathering speed.

  The first wave of the attack was over. None of the attackers had survived it.

  When the officers reared back and chucked a second round of grens, the emplacement ceased fire. This time the gunner wasn’t caught off guard. When he saw the grens arcing toward him, he abandoned the gun and ducked into the protection of the armored wag.

  With three distinct thunks the grens hit the hood of the Suburban and bounced or rolled off.

  Again, they hadn’t managed to hit the hole.

  Explosions ripped the air, shrap screamed and smoke billowed.

  “Go!” the officers shouted to the norm fighters.

  The second wave of attackers surged over the hilltop, shouting at the tops of their lungs. They burst onto the killing ground, now a blood-slick obstacle course of sprawled bodies. The machine gun roared from its hard site, sweeping through the skirmish line like a weed trimmer. The fire was so concentrated that some of the poor bastards were nearly cut in two. All were cut down. Before the wounded could crawl over the edge to safety, the gunner methodically stitched up their backs with lead.

  This was going nowhere.

  “Give me a gren!” Ryan bellowed through cupped hands at the officer closest to him.

  Without hesitation, the man dug out another fragger from his bag and underhanded it to him.

  Ryan caught the bomb in his left hand. “Cover me,” he told J.B. and Mildred.

  He waited for the officers to pitch the third helping of predark grens. He waited for the rocking triple blast. But he didn’t wait for the smoke to clear to gauge the effect.

  An instant after the overlapping explosions shook the air, with the shrap still flying, Ryan was up and over the cliff edge. He ran low and quick through the rolling white smoke, his bootheels sliding and crunching over the bodies and body parts.

  Blasterfire rattled at him from another gunpost far to his right, the one that defended Sunspot’s western gate. The machine-gun bullets slapped and shook the bodies at his heels, but no fire came from the smoke-shrouded emplacement in front of him.

  As he raced for the bumper of the SUV, the gren smoke began to thin out. A dark head and shoulders popped up behind the roof-mounted M-60. Ryan saw the gunner shoulder the stock and grip the foregrip. Then he tipped the barrel down to put him in its sights. Ryan threw himself against the Suburban’s grille as the machine gun cut loose, blasting ragged rents through the leading edge of the hood, just above his head.

  Smoke gone, target acquired, J.B. and Mildred opened fire on the shooter from the edge of the cliff. A combination of 9 mm rounds and .38 caliber slugs rained on the makeshift gun turret, sparking off the steel-plate armor.

  The gunner reacted by swinging up his sights, walking a stream of hot lead toward them.

  With the machine gun howling overhead, Ryan holstered his SIG and pulled the gren’s safety clip and yanked the pin. Holding down the safety lever, he crawled from the front to the left side of the wag. When he was below the front passenger door, as close to the gunner as he could get, he let the lever flip off. He sprang to his feet and stuffed the gren in the gap between the edge of the hole and the very startled man’s back.

  One thousand one.

  The gunner tried to turn the muzzle on him, but Ryan blocked the barrel and gas cylinder’s swing with his forearm. Suckers were hot, too. Burned his skin right through his jacket.

  One thousand two.

  Ryan looked i
nto the man’s eyes.

  A dead man’s eyes.

  One thousand three.

  The gunner pulled the machine gun’s trigger and held it pinned, firing wild, trying to take the one-eyed man to hell with him.

  One thousand four.

  Ryan dropped to his knees, letting the roaring barrel pivot over his head.

  Whump!

  The explosion knocked the one-eyed man flat on his butt and made him go both deaf and blind for an awful instant. But the real force of the blast was focused upward, through the aperture in the SUV’s roof. It blew the gunner clean out of the makeshift turret. He landed facedown and smoking on the Suburban’s hood. Half of him did, anyway, from the waist up. The rest was a goulash of bloody shreds and stripped bones.

  Smoke continued to pour out of the turret hole and for a few frantic seconds belted .308 rounds cooked off, hammering in vain against the inside of the armor plating.

  When the cook-offs stopped, Ryan waved J.B. and Mildred forward.

  The gun emplacement at the gate tried to nail them as they crossed the bloody ground in a sprint. A volley of 7.62 mm rounds plowed the earth and spanked the bodies in their wake. They dived for cover behind the smoking hulk of the Suburban. Protected by the side of the emplacement, J.B. and Mildred knelt next to Ryan, gasping for breath.

  The one-eyed man looked back toward the cliff edge and saw one of the officers running toward the berm with a hefty satchel charge.

  The smoke from inside the SUV had thinned.

  Way too quickly.

  Cross ventilation. J.B. noticed it, too. His eyes widened behind his smeared spectacles.

  “The gun position has got an open exit door on the ville side of the berm,” Ryan said. “Let’s use it.”

  J.B. climbed into the hulk first, followed by Mildred.

  “Oh, man, there were at least three guys in here,” she groaned as she dropped down. “They’re all turned to spray paint.”

  Ryan slipped behind the ruined M-60 and lowered himself through the hole in the roof. At once he was slammed by the coppery sweet reek and the intense residual heat. Blood and pulverized bone and pureed intestinal contents dripped from every interior surface. Eyes on the prize. Stuck through the Suburban’s open rear doors was a three-foot-wide, corrugated steel culvert pipe that ran through the berm wall. J.B. had already disappeared down it. Mildred was right on his heels.