If Lil’s reflexes had been a fraction of a moment slower, she would have been beneath the beast’s dexterous claws. Alas, though she was able to spring from the chair of the gun, when the animal struck the cart it was nearly enough to topple the overloaded vehicle. The pitching to the side didn’t manage to dislodge the well-secured cargo, but it sent Lil tumbling over the edge.
She rolled to a stop and the beast leaped from the back of the cart and bounded toward her. Nita wrenched a brake lever into place, bringing her cart grinding to a halt. Ahead, the other carts were curving aside, bringing themselves into position to target the creature as it stalked toward her slowly recovering crewmate. Each cart’s gunner perched in its seat, fingers ready to fire as soon as the motion steadied enough to offer some accuracy.
“Don’t shoot! You’ll hit Lil!” Nita cried.
Without waiting for a reply from the others, she sprang into action. She scrambled across the cargo and reached down to the controls for the gun, twisting the valve to maximum pressure. This brought the whistling sound back in all its deafening intensity. The monster behind them turned from Lil, who was just beginning to climb to her feet. She groped for her pistol, and a very shaken but apparently unharmed Nikita was crawling from within her coat.
Nita jumped down from the cart and noticed two things that Lil, in very short order, noticed as well. The first was that the pistol was missing from her belt. It had bounced free of its holster and now lay among the deep purple foliage just on the other side of the beast before her. The second realization came when she tried to take a deep breath. One of the buckles of her mask had broken, and thus a small gap had opened between her face and the mask. Her deep breath pulled in a stinging dose of fug that doubled her over in an agonizing cough.
The monster charged past Nita, ignoring her in favor of the blaring whistle the gun had become. She reached her ailing friend and tugged a length of cord from a pouch on her belt, fumbling a bit with her gloves to help cinch the mask tight to Lil’s face.
“Why ain’t they shooting?” Lil said once she was able to get a clean breath.
“I told them not to. They might have hit you.”
“Well why ain’t they shooting now?”
They both turned to see the creature perched atop the cart. It had its jaws locked around the gun, straining to tear it free.
“I think they’re afraid to hit the cargo.”
“Where’s the sense in that?” Lil growled, stroking Nikita once before opening her jacket to let her crawl back inside. “What good is saving the cargo if you don’t live to put it to use?”
The whistle came to a sudden end as the beast put a tooth through the supply line. Scalding steam rushed to fill its mouth, and the monster threw its head back and released the loudest screech yet. The sound alone was enough to shake ice from the trees and instantly robbed Nita, Lil, and likely the rest of the crew of their hearing.
A dull hiss chased away any hint of sound as Nita’s ears coped with the din. The lights of the other carts were all focused on the beast as it bounded from the cart and into the trees again, leaving the Wind Breaker crewmembers alone in the darkness.
Nita scanned the trees while Lil felt along the ground where she’d last seen her pistol before the lights trailed away from them. Each was yelling instructions to the other, completely unheard.
Finally the light drifted back, initially to Nita’s relief. Then her frazzled mind latched on to a simple fact that chilled her to the bone. The lights were following the monster, and if the pool of illumination was trending toward them…
Just as her fingers closed around one of the heftier wrenches in her sash, she felt an impact on her back. A weight forced her to the ground and squeezed the air from her lungs. The sashes and harnesses tightened and she felt something pin her legs to the earth. The thing was on top of her, making a concerted effort to pull her apart.
For better or worse, it lost its grip on her legs first and yanked her into the air. Her hearing was beginning to return, and the first thing to break through was the high-pitched screech of tooth on metal as the beast clamped ever tighter on to the massive wrench head that she kept faithfully strapped to her back.
Nita shut her eyes and tried to ignore being shaken like a rag doll by a ravening creature, focusing instead on unfastening and removing the only tool for the current job. It was a standard fixed wrench on one end but extended to a two-foot-long spike on the other side. She pulled it free and thrust it blindly behind her. The one good part of facing a massive beast was that it was a large target and difficult to miss. The sharp handle sank deep into the monster’s flesh, and it released her to screech again. She struck the ground with a thud, and the next sound she heard was the six short barks of Lil’s pistol emptying into the beast’s face.
The accumulation of injuries were finally enough to convince the thing that whatever it wanted from the convoy, it wasn’t worth the effort. As quickly as it had come, the monster bounded into the distance.
Lil pulled Nita from the ground and rushed her to their cart. As they climbed on, the rest of the crew began to fire spikes at the retreating beast for good measure. The crewmates’ vehicle still spouted steam from the damage it had received, and a length of the barbed wire had been dislodged from the improvised armor, but the rest was relatively intact. Lil followed the steam pipe leading to the gun until she found a valve that could shut it off while Nita disengaged the brake and slung dirt with the wheels before launching after the rapidly departing convoy.
“Are you all right?” Nita called.
“What?!” Lil answered, making her way unsteadily to Nita’s side.
“I said are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. You’re the one who got shaken by that panther-bear-thing! You’ve got holes all up and down the back of your coat, but I don’t see blood.”
“I’m fine. It latched on to the monkey toe. Heh. And you questioned my decision to bring it along.”
“Darn good thing you did. And that you brought that shiv, too.”
“What, the thing I stabbed that monster with? That’s not a shiv. That’s a podger spanner with a drift pin.”
“Whatever you call it, it does a fine job of poking holes in folks.” Her lips pulled into a sneer behind her mask as she glanced ahead. “And speaking of poking holes in folks, you reckon there’s any chance at all this whole mess was just bad luck?”
“I would be profoundly amazed if that gun malfunction was anything but sabotage. Do you think you can manage getting the spike out of the barrel?”
“Way ahead of you,” Lil said, crawling over to the gun and working at the steaming hot barrel. She levered open the breech and slid out the spike. “Well that settles it.”
She returned to Nita’s side and showed what she’d discovered. Rather than the stout, heavy solid spikes that made up their ammunition stores, it was a hollow tube with a sharpened end.
“It was loaded in backward, too. No wonder it made such a racket,” she said. “Seein’ how that thing came a-running back just as soon as this started singing its song, I’d say whoever slipped this in our ammo belt knew what it would do. So what do you suppose? Someone just hates us? Wants us dead? Heaven knows we’ve given the fuggers plenty of reason over the last few months.”
“Granted, Lil. But they need our help. Why kill us before we’re through with the job at hand?”
“Not so much anymore, right? We’re nearly there. And these folk can build just fine.”
“Bolting some guns to some carts is simple enough, but there’s a good deal of work to be done that we’ve only scratched the surface of when it comes to design. We’ve got to assemble whole boilers, modify them for operation with—”
“All right, so there’s more to do. So this was more about how much they hate us than how much they need us.”
“… I’m not so sure it isn’t both. They sabotaged the gun. Of the two of us, you’re the only one who’s used the gun. Getting the ref
inery fortified and functional relies more heavily on me than you.”
“So the best of both worlds. Kill the ornery one and keep the smart one.”
Lil tugged off one glove and flipped open the cylinder of her revolver. She dumped the casings out and one by one loaded fresh bullets from an inside pocket of her seemingly endless coat.
“What are you planning?” Nita said warily.
“I’m planning on getting some answers. Is it one of these fuggers that wants me dead or all of them. Are we actually heading somewhere, or is this all a roundabout way of getting rid of me and hoping the rest of the crew will chalk it up to bad luck? Because all I seen so far is dark, thorn trees, and weird critters. None of this ichor stuff they’ve got us after. I’m startin’ to think it was all a lie.”
“And just how do you expect to get your answers?”
She clicked the cylinder in place. “I’ll ask real nice. Get up real close on this next train of carts here.”
“Wait. You’re going to do it now? You’re not even going to wait until we stop?”
“The gun’s broke. Ain’t much for me to do till we fix it. We ain’t gonna fix it till we stop, and we ain’t gonna stop till that thing we shot full of holes is far enough behind us to not be able to change its mind about leaving us be. I’m liable to get impatient twiddling my thumbs all that time. Besides, in my experience, the quicker you show a body who they ought not meddle with, the quicker they don’t do it again.”
“Any chance I can talk you out of it?”
“Not likely.”
“Can I at least convince you to leave Nikita behind? No sense putting her through another bit of excitement if we can avoid it.”
“Oh, sure thing.” She tugged her coat open and looked down at the frightened creature clinging to her. “Hop along, darlin’. Mommy has some business to tend to. Your other mommy will take care of you.”
Nikita, moving quickly to avoid spending any more time in the cold than she had to, crawled from Lil’s coat to Nita’s. Once the creature was safely stowed away, Lil crawled onto the barbed-wire-laden front wall of the cart, standing with unnerving steadiness atop the precarious perch as the cart rumbled across the uneven ground.
Nita dialed up the speed gradually, closing the gap between her cart and the end of the train dragged by the cart ahead. When she was ready, about three feet farther away than Nita would have expected, Lil sprang from the top of the wall and nimbly snagged the rear of the cargo cart ahead. From there the defenses barely slowed her as she scrambled onto the teetering mound of secured cargo and moved toward the unwitting focuses of her wrath.
With her crewmate delivered, Nita backed off the throttle a bit and tried to keep an eye on Lil. The chances were better than average that in short order the convoy would bring itself to a sudden stop to deal with the chaos Lil was certain to cause. After a moment, she became aware of a tapping within her coat. It was Nikita.
Why do Coop and Lil do these things?
Nita sighed. “Because if the Coopers didn’t do that sort of thing, they wouldn’t be the Coopers.”
#
Lil made her way easily across the rattling trail of carts. The armored walls, with the one recent exception, had done a fine job of keeping the local wildlife at bay. It would have taken considerably more to dissuade a motivated member of the Wind Breaker crew. An army might not have been enough to do the job. She wasn’t making any effort to avoid being seen. An attack from a forest monster was more than enough to keep the eyes of the fug folk on the surrounding trees. After hopping the couplings between three heavily laden carts, Lil climbed onto the steam contraption responsible for doing the pulling. There were six fug folk on board, Kent among them.
“Hello, boys!” Lil said, bracing herself atop the wall.
Her coat fluttered in the wind, and one gloved hand gripped her pistol with its hammer cocked and the barrel held high. The other hand held firm to the top of the wall. Though she was barely two thirds the height of the shortest man in the cart, she more than made up for her size with the fire in her eyes. They gleamed with a potent mix of madness and purpose, and if not for the mask, the fug folk would have seen an exhilarated grin.
“What in blazes?!” Kent said, stumbling back. “What are you doing?! I thought you were back with Nita.”
“Oh, I was. But I got curious, and I just can’t sit still when I got questions floating around in my head. So help me set some of that at ease, will you? First off, is it just me you all want dead, or both of us?”
“Calm down, Lil,” Kent said, as the others began to anxiously reach for their weapons.
“Oh, I’m calm. I always try to be calm when there’s shootin’ to do. Otherwise my hands get all shaky and I end up wasting bullets.”
“No one wants you dead, Lil,” Kent said.
“That true?” she asked, raising her voice and sweeping her eyes across the others. “Me and Kent here got more of a history than me and the rest of you, so him I’m liable to believe, but the rest of you seem awful quiet on the subject. Maybe the question’s too hard. Okay, here’s an easier one. Who was the one that portioned out the ammo this morning? Because I got a bone to pick regarding the quality. It was a bit noisy.”
No one said a word, but one fug person who had never bothered to introduce himself reached subtly for his gun.
“If I was you, I’d either draw that pistol or leave it be. You keep teasing at grabbing it and I’m liable to make your mind up for you,” she said.
Kent stepped between them. “Lil, calm down. We only just survived an attack a moment ago. We’re all on edge. Why don’t we—”
“Who’s ‘we’? Because I don’t know about you, but from where I was lookin’ it wasn’t you folk who just survived an attack, it was me and Nita. And thanks so much for all the help while we were down there getting torn up.”
“We thought you were done for! No one’s ever survived on foot when one of those things are around,” remarked the would-be gunman.
“Uh-huh. So that’s how you fellas work? You know how many times my crew went toe to toe with something no one ever came back from? If you boys are the sort to give up on someone just because saving them doesn’t seem likely, I ain’t sure I’m keen on collaborating.”
“Put the gun away and we’ll talk about whatever it is we can do to set you at ease,” Kent said.
“Folks tend to be more obliging when I’ve got the gun out. And if you want me at ease, answer my questions, and they better be honest answers. First one up: Which one of you passed out the ammo the morning?”
“If I answer, what exactly are you going to do?” Kent asked.
“Just about the same thing I’ll do if you don’t answer, only to someone else.”
“I’m not going to rat out one of our own if you’re going to pull that trigger before hearing out what might have to be said. So you just—”
“It was Branca!” yelped one of the smaller fug folk.
Kent shot him a sharp look.
“I’m not going to let that crazy surface lady shoot me for trying to keep a secret.”
“Sensible fella, that one,” Lil said. “There being only one more train of carts, I figure I’ve got a bit more climbing to reach the culprit. Pull up closer so I can hop along.”
“Don’t do it,” Kent said.
“Kent, you and me been through a bit together, so I’m not eager to put a bullet in you, but you’re working hard to change my mind on that.”
“This is too important a job and we’re too deep into it to let it fall apart because you got a wrong idea in your head.”
“Then put some right ideas in my head, Kent. Give me some sort of proof any of this is on the level.”
“You’ve seen the ichor, the demonstration.”
“I seen Coop make a ball disappear during a shell game, too. Could be the only difference between the two is I know how Coop did the trick. You folk are smart. You could pull some stunt to make what I saw happen look like it w
as happening when it wasn’t. I ain’t seen or heard one thing so far that couldn’t have been double talk and parlor tricks. You want me to put this gun back? Show me something that proves what we’re after is really there.”
Kent’s brow furrowed in combined frustration and concentration. Then he raised his nose and took a sniff.
“All right. Seems like luck is with us. You’re about to see for yourself we’re telling the truth, because we’re just about to get there.”
“Oh, that’s awful convenient.”
“It’s three days and a bit more since we left, which is about how long we said it would take. That isn’t convenience, that’s just sticking to a schedule.”
“And how exactly do you know we’re just about to get there?”
“I can smell it. You know how the fug is thickest and densest right where it meets the surface air?”
“Yeah.”
“To our noses, it’s not just thicker there, it’s got a sharper smell. And the smell around here is pretty sharp and getting sharper.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? We ain’t heading for the surface.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Give it a try.”
“You know how that bottle of ichor chases the fug out of that tent you girls share?”
“Yeah.”
“A whole well of the stuff chases it out of a whole stretch of the forest. From what I heard, it’s a pretty wide swath.”
“Seems like that’s the sort of thing we’d be able to see.”
“It’s a wall of deep purple haze hidden in a thick fog of deep purple haze. You can’t see it for the same reason no one’s spotted it from above for all these years. It blends in perfectly.”
Lil narrowed her eyes. “All this is just about perfect for me to not be able to prove what you’re saying is true or not.”
“What do you want me to—” Kent blurted. He paused and regained his composure. “Look. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s someone here who wanted you dead. But maybe they acted now because they knew I wouldn’t be able to prove what I’m saying, and they expect you to lose your temper and kill someone, which would give each of us reason enough to kill you.”
Ichor Well Page 20
