by James Axler
When Ryan looked up, he saw the Impaler pop up over the top of the berm. Firing his AKs two-handed, the baron stormed down the slope, leading his troops toward the Welcome Center.
“Stop them!” Ryan shouted to the others as he brought up his SIG. He took a fixed aimpoint and punched out a string of rapid-fire single shots, letting the troopers run into his kill zone. He sent a couple of the fighters sprawling, but Malosh, his number-one target, was already behind the cover of the predark building.
The companions added their fire to the mix, leaving bodies dotting the side of the berm. Most of Malosh’s troopers made it to safety.
“Now there’s nothing between us and the nukin’ worms,” J.B. said ruefully.
“They’ll be coming over the battlements in a minute or two,” Ryan said. “Then it’ll be too late to do anything.”
“Isabel,” Doc said urgently, “it’s time to find cover. We can’t do anything more here, except die.”
“All right, all right,” the blond woman conceded as she stood. “Everybody pull back. We’ll join the others in the caves.”
As they all turned for the cargo container that hid the entrance to the tunnels they heard something in the distance. A whining sound. Coming from high in the sky. Growing louder and louder.
“Fireblast!” J.B. cried. “That’s incoming!”
There wasn’t enough time to take shelter. Ryan shielded Krysty and the boys with his body, anticipating a violent explosion and flying metal. The explosion was all flash and no shrap. More of a wet pop than a thunderclap. When Ryan looked over his shoulder he saw a thick pillar of white smoke rising from the middle of the garden, rising straight up in the air.
“That’s a ranging round!” he said. “It’s got to be Haldane. He’s shelling the ville! Go! Go! Go!”
With Isabel in the lead, they all raced for the cave entrance.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
On the eastern side of Magus’s artillery encampment, away from the master and the main body of his road trash, two low-level minions hunkered in the shade of a Winnebago’s flank, waiting for the shelling of Sunspot to begin. They had gotten as far from Steel Eyes’ pounding boom box as they could. Magus was playing some kind of godawful predark racket. Squawking horns. Screeching fiddles. Thundering drums. A selected accompaniment to mass slaughter. It made their skins crawl. And they didn’t dare get caught with cotton wads stuffed in their ears.
Magus took that as an insult to his musical taste.
Insults to his taste, or anything else for that matter, were repaid by insults to living bodies. Vitals removed. Guts strung like garlands over the tops of the sagebrush.
One of the minions wore a headband made from a long strip of plastic trash bag. His face was rimed with dirt mixed with body oils; it made his lips look extra red and his eyeballs extra white.
The other man was equally filthy, as if he’d been slathered with lard, then rolled head to foot in coal dust. He sported a dense black beard that came down to the middle of his broad chest.
In contrast to their shabby duds and absent personal hygiene, both men carried brand-new, full-auto blasters on canvas shoulder slings.
“This job is a piece of cake,” Headband said.
“Yeah, I wish they were all this easy,” Beard said. “Chilling at long distance is sweet. Only hassle is the looting.”
“What looting?”
“That’s what I’m talking about. There ain’t any of that good old hands-on with this one. We get paid out of the price Haldane is giving Magus. No extra. Me, I like a treasure hunt. Adds some spice to the day.”
“Folks up there on the ridge gonna get a big surprise,” Headband said with a grin.
“So will the buzzards who try to eat ’em.”
Headband wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The hand stayed dirty, and his mouth was no cleaner, either. “Damn, I wish I had me a gallon jug of beer. None of that week-old green shit, either. Gives me the runs something fierce.”
“Yeah, some six-week brew would be good right now. Even warm. Can’t seem to wash the grit out of my back teeth with plain water.”
“You gonna stick around for Steel Eyes’ next job?”
“Dunno,” Beard said. “Been thinking about spending some of the jack I got put away, mebbe take a little vacation from the mercie trade for a while.”
“You mean, two weeks in a trailer-house gaudy?”
“More like a month. Take me that long to catch up on my screwing. You heard about what the next job is yet?”
“No. And I know better than to get nosy. Nosy can get you chilled in a hurry around here.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“What was that?” Headband said, stiffening. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“What was what?” Beard asked.
“I saw something move over there.” Headband raised his H&K, using it to point away from the circle of wags. About twenty yards distant, out on the desert, there was a fresh hole in the dirt.
“What was it?”
“Didn’t see it that clear. Just caught the butt end of it as it slipped down the hole. Looked mighty big and meaty. Mebbe a nice fat jackrabbit. You a little hungry?
“Always.”
“Let’s go get us a snack.”
The pair of road trash spread out and approached the hole gingerly from two sides. Headband paused en route and used his sheath knife to hack off a long branch from a creosote bush. He quickly trimmed off the side stems, creating a pointy stick. Creeping forward, he dropped to his knees in front of the hole and shoved the stick in, poking it around.
Beard had his machine pistol ready to fire, his stout legs braced. Headband was trying to encourage whatever it was to pop out of an escape hole so he could blast it with his H&K.
Nothing doing.
“It ain’t coming out,” Beard said after a minute or two. “Mebbe it ain’t a bunny.”
“What do you mean?” Headband said, drawing back the stick.
“Shit, it could be anything hiding in there. You didn’t see it, you said.”
“You sound scared. You scared?”
Beard didn’t like the question, or its implication. “Gimme that stick,” he snarled, and snatched it away.
“Don’t worry, I’ll cover you,” Headband said sarcastically.
Beard hunkered down on the ground on his belly and rammed in not just the stick, but his arm all the way to the shoulder. Driving with his legs, he straining as far forward as he could get.
“I feel something…”
“Get it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Don’t let it give you the slip.”
“I think I got it. Yeah, I got it. It’s tugging on the end of the stick. Man, the sucker’s strong!”
“Hee, hee, ha.” Headband chuckled.
Beard carefully started backing up, scooting on his knees, pulling his arm and the stick out of the hole.
What was clamped onto the end of the probe was no rabbit.
It had a black, eyeless, domelike head and a black, segmented shell. Halfway out of the hole, its transverse jaws snapped open, releasing the stick. They looked like ebony meat hooks.
“Chill it!” the kneeling and totally vulnerable man cried.
Before Headband could bring the muzzle of his machine pistol to bear, the creature moved in a sinuous blur, its hundreds of legs churning. It shot out of the hole and ran up under the man’s coarse black chin whiskers.
Beard jolted backward. A gargling sound came from his gaping mouth and the thing’s tail end thrashed against his chest.
“I think it’s got you, droolie,” Headband said, “instead of the other way around.” Then he started laughing and couldn’t stop himself. The sight of the squirming fat tail of the black critter hanging out from under the guy’s beard, and the guy trying to pull it off his neck was most comical.
Headband was too preoccupied watching his road buddy roll and thrash in the dirt, unable to dislodge the two-foot-long attacker, to ke
ep his eyes on the hole.
A second black mutie scuttled out of the opening, ran across the sand, up his right leg to his hip. He felt rippling, scratchy bug feet on his chest a second before it sank its pincer jaws into the front of his throat. Their power was astounding. The twin prongs locked down in a vise grip, shutting off his laughter, and turning his breathing into a faint shrill whistle.
As the black worm squirmed from side to side, its jaws dug deeper and gripped even tighter, and hot blood sheeted over his chest.
Headband fought for his life, his eyes bugging out from the pressure of trapped blood inside his head. He let his machine pistol drop on its sling. The creature was too close for him to try to shoot it. Reaching to his belt, he managed to unsheathe a long knife. Grabbing a handful of bug ass, he stabbed at the back of the shell. The knife point, though needle-sharp, slid off; it wouldn’t penetrate. Headband dropped to his knees and stabbed again. Failed again. The blade wouldn’t even penetrate the dark band of cartilage between the armored segments. Because of his angle of attack, he just couldn’t stab hard enough to get the job done.
He became more and more frantic, realizing that his time and his air were running out. He made a mighty stab and the point slipped off the shell. The long blade speared into his chest to the hilt. While he clutched the knife handle, eyes wide with surprise, the creature continued to squirm and thrash, slicing its jaws in deeper, as if trying to behead him.
Even though help was only a few dozen yards away, with their airways cut off, neither of the road trash could scream.
Not that screaming would have helped.
Nothing short of a gunshot could have been heard over the roar of Wagner emanating from Magus’s boom box.
OUT OF SIGHT BETWEEN the parked wags, his arms folded across his chest, Baron Haldane watched the two men’s futile struggles with fierce satisfaction on his face.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” Bertram asked him, without suggesting what that something might be. Even the seasoned sec man blanched at the brutality and savagery of the attack.
“Let them die,” Haldane said. The insect muties had saved him the trouble of chilling them.
And when the road trash stopped jerking under their own power, the worms slithered into their bodies, biting holes in their soft bellies, flopping back and forth until their tails disappeared inside. Then the stilled flesh moved again, shuddering, pumped by internal puppet masters.
“That’s what we’ve been hearing creeping around here all night,” Cuzo said. “What the hell are they?”
“Fucking deadly, that’s what,” Bertram replied.
“Stabbers sure don’t chill them,” Cuzo said. “We know that for a certain fact.”
“Mebbe blasters don’t, either.”
“Don’t be a triple-stupe,” the baron said.
“Fucking A,” Bertram countered, looking warily at the surrounding desert, “those rad-blasted things could be anywhere.”
“They could be tunneling under our feet,” Cuzo said.
“They can’t eat through Humvees,” Haldane said. “Safeties off. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“What about those bodies?” Bertram asked.
“Leave them where they are,” Haldane said. “Unless you want to risk getting a dose of what those two got.”
“They might get seen by Magus’s men.”
“So what? We didn’t chill them.”
“They might attract more of those things,” Bertram continued.
“The more the better,” Haldane said. “They can do the mopping up for us.”
The baron stepped out from cover and walked away from the corpses, toward the loud music. Thorne was still out in the open, under the full sun. He knew had to be broiling inside that tiny plastic cage. Haldane could see the remote detonator’s red arming light. It was blinking.
The doomie oracle hadn’t said that his son would be put in danger. Had it slipped his mind? Or had he just not seen it coming? Either way, another chilling was on tap when Haldane got back to Nuevaville. Mebbe he’d toss the whole lot of them over the cliff.
His plan for rescuing his son was to hit Steel Eyes and his men with an all-out assault as soon as the last of the chemical weapon rounds was fired. Before that happened, he and his sec men had to put some of Magus’s wags out of commission.
From what he’d seen of the remote detonator and the firing device, he figured they had to be radio-controlled. Which meant the only way to block the omnidirectional signal was to surround the pet carrier in a thick lead box. Which of course he had no access to. Shooting the firing device out of Magus’s hand was a dicey proposition, even at close range. And the half man still might be able to detonate the bomb before he was hit. The guards surrounding Steel Eyes would expect an attack on foot, and would be prepared to thwart it. Without the element of surprise, there was no way to free Thorne.
His plan involved not only what he hoped was surprise, but a critical supposition about why Magus had ordered his men to draw a wide perimeter around the cage. If the explosive device on the carrier had had a motion sensor on it, there was no need for the circle in the dirt. Just touching it would have set it off. If the bomb didn’t have a motion sensor, then it could be removed.
Even if Haldane was right, he knew the odds for success were piss poor. But failure had its compensations. If father and son were both blown up in the attempt, at least Thorne wouldn’t be vivisected, and the baron wouldn’t have to live with the fact that he could do nothing to stop it.
Magus came into view, lounging in his throne chair. Boom box by his feet. He raised his hand and made a circular motion to the gunner waiting beside the cannon in the middle of the ring of wags.
Let’s roll.
Steel Eyes reached up and turned off his auditory sensors.
“Stand clear!” the gunner barked. Sticking a finger in the ear facing the gun, he yanked the lanyard with his other hand.
Blam!
The Lyagushka jolted on its carriage, its barrel belching smoke.
The ranging round arced away, sizzling and squealing as it cored the fresh morning air.
With the gathered road trash cheering and jumping up and down, Magus turned his ears back on, then cranked up the awful music. Valkyries shrieked at top volume.
Haldane couldn’t follow the round as it streaked downrange; it flew too fast and too high.
Seconds later, a puff of white erupted over Sunspot’s ridge, plainly visible in the bright sunlight. The shell had landed inside the berm; its smoke swept east, into the canyon. The breeze over the target was blowing from left to right, thanks to the funneling effect of gorge.
“Nice shooting!” Magus shouted over the musical clamor. “Let’s see if you can lay another one in the ten-ring.”
As the gunner and his crew started to reload, Haldane and his seven sec men retreated along the outside of the ring of wags; when they were out of sight, they broke and ran. The goal was to decommission all but three of the fastest vehicles. They ignored the Winnebago Braves and the milspec six-by-sixes, which didn’t have the top-end speed to keep up with Humvees. They moved quickly to their preassigned targets.
Easing a Hummer’s front passenger door open, Cuzo slipped inside, across the seats. He reached under the dashboard for the ignition wires. Yanking down a bundle of brightly colored spaghetti, he slashed through it with his sheath knife several times, cutting it into short, useless pieces. Elapsed time, twenty-five seconds.
As Haldane stood guard for Cuzo, the landship’s blond-dreadlocked caretaker stepped out of nowhere, appearing right in his face. Before the man could yell a warning, the baron jammed the muzzle of his Remington sawed-off hard against his chest. The sound of the contact gunshot was drowned out by the earthshaking boom of the second smoke round’s launching.
The force of the shot lifted the sec man off his feet and hurled him backward. He hit the ground limp and lifeless; four inches of his spine had been blown out his back.
The yank-a
nd-slash sabotage of three Humvees took a little more than two minutes, and was accomplished without raising an alarm. Haldane crouched on the passenger side of one of the still-operational SUVs while Cuzo crawled in behind the steering wheel.
In the middle of the wag circle, the gunner was finishing his final calculations. He made a show of kissing the nose of the sarin projectile before it was rammed into the Lyagushka’s breech.
Through the Humvee’s grimy side window windshield, the baron saw Cuzo reach for the ignition switch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Baron Malosh stiffened when he heard the noise coming from the south. He couldn’t believe his ears. It got louder and louder until it drowned out the seesawing autofire, until it was screaming down on Sunspot like a meteor.
The screaming ended with a sudden bright flash and a hollow whump in the middle of the garden. Limp foliage and clods of dirt flew in all directions. From the blast crater a broad pillar of smoke drifted upward, angling over the east end of the berm, spiraling into the blue sky.
A targeting round.
Malosh was momentarily stunned. The use of predark artillery in the hellscape was as rare as the proverbial thirteen-year-old virgin. Even though such weapons existed in the arsenals cached in hidden stockpiles, no more than a handful of Deathlanders understood how to use them. Like so many other elements of whitecoat science, ballistics was a semi-lost art. Artillery wasn’t favored in post-Apocalypse warfare because the stationary targets, isolated villes, weren’t so well defended that they required bombardment. And at the first sign of a shelling, the human targets could usually run away.
In this case, that wasn’t possible.
There was no time to run. Nowhere to run.
As the second smoke round exploded, hitting the top of the berm near the western gate, the baron knew the ville had been effectively bracketed. Moreover, he and his fighters were sandwiched between cannon fire and the waves of chill-crazed muties slithering up the side of the gorge.
The artillery was Haldane. It had to be.
The bastard had trapped him good.
“Get inside!” he roared at his men as he grabbed the reins of his stallion.
