Arisen, Book Four - Maximum Violence
Page 10
Handon’s empty mag slid out with a shick and hit the deck, a new one already on its way up to replace it. During his half-second reload, he methodically scanned every hatch, porthole, and shadow of the vessel opposite. He needed to not miss anything else. But nothing moved. Nor was there any more screaming or gunshots from below.
For a second, silence reigned.
They could hear the water of the lake gently lapping against the hull.
And then Handon heard splashing and spluttering behind him. He turned, not having to tell Predator to cover them. Both of Henno’s arms scrabbled at the gunwale, as he struggled to drag himself back on board. Handon moved his gun to his left hand, and clasped Henno’s right hand with his own. Both of their biceps swelling, Handon braced himself to haul his man back in – and then Predator called to him by name, which didn’t happen too often.
“Handonnn…”
Keeping his iron grip on Henno, Handon swiveled his head around behind him. There was motion again from the upper deck of the Diablo. It was that tarpaulin, sliding backward now, pulled by unseen hands. Handon trained his weapon on it, left-handed, his mind taking a good second to work out what his senses were now telling him was underneath it.
It sat on a steel carriage, with ancient olive paint peeling off it in flecks, rust showing underneath. It was supported by four big knobby tires. In the center were four enormous barrels, long and slim and flaring outward conically at the ends. Two fat steel ammo boxes straddled it on either side. And then there was a heavy steel ratcheting sound as all four barrels traversed and depressed, straight down toward the deck of the Three Brothers, and right at Handon, Henno, and Pred – and, given the size and destructive power of this weapon, effectively also at Park in the inside cabin.
And Handon realized, feeling like a complete idiot, that he now had to decide whether to haul Henno back in – or else jump in after him. And he didn’t have too damned long to decide. He stood for an instant frozen like this, drawn taut between the weight of the wounded Henno on one side, and the gigantic Russian ZPU anti-aircraft gun on the other.
And then there was a sound like frost giants ripping the sky in half as all four barrels of the gun began to fire – and a brutal, concussive hammering as the giant 14.5mm rounds came slamming and tearing through the cowling of the Three Brothers, like a killer hailstorm.
* * *
The man hollering down below, the one who until a second ago had been leaning over Ali from behind and feeling her up, proved upon closer examination to be even shittier and dumpier than she’d imagined him. Facial tattoo. Couple of silver teeth. Hair styled in a greasy mullet.
Your basic post-Apocalyptic shitbird.
Ali had a second to examine him as she slowly broke his wrist by bending his hand backward, after having removed it from her hip. While she twisted and looked into the agonized face of the screaming man – Whatever else, she thought, the dude had some lungs on him – she also rapid-fired her pistol, which she had already drawn in a flash with her right hand and pointed behind her, putting seven no-look shots into the opening to the bathroom, and then another half-dozen in a staggered pattern through the thin bulkhead behind which the bathroom lay. She was rewarded with another yelp of pain, beneath all the hollering, and a thunk, as whoever had been hiding in there fell to the deck.
While he was screaming, the shitbird still held the flashlight in his free right hand – or, rather, he was waving it around spasmodically, flailing at nothing. The bright beam swept across the walls, ceiling, floor, and the other people in the cabin. It picked out the face of the older girl, who stood frozen in place on the other side of the room, her lips parted in terror. It swept past the younger girl, who was trying to crab-crawl away and burrow into the corner of the bed. And it strobe-lit the motion of the cowboy, on the other side of the bed, who was slightly belatedly drawing his side arm and going into a firing stance. To his credit, as Ali instantly noted, he held the weapon in close to his body – good tactics in tight quarters. You didn’t want your gun grabbed or taken off you.
But Ali didn’t want his gun – she wanted him. Lunging across the bed, pulling the broken-wristed man behind her, she jabbed the barrel of her now-empty pistol straight into the cowboy’s face – smashing his nose, launching a gout of blood, and causing him to drop his gun as he brought both hands up to his face.
In peripheral, Ali clocked more motion, or rather light – it was the shitbird, belatedly working out that his right hand was still free, and bringing it around to try to hit Ali in the head with the flashlight. She simply wrenched his left arm into a steeper angle, making it impossible for him to reach her – not to mention causing enough pain to make him forget the whole plan. The beam flicked across the ceiling like a searchlight on speed. She then punched him in the throat with her gun barrel and let him go.
He dropped the light, brought both hands to his neck, and fell to his knees.
The fallen flashlight rolled across the floor and finally came to rest pointed toward the door. In its penumbra, Ali saw the cowboy struggle back to some kind of composure, or at least operational effectiveness, and then draw a knife from his boot. In the half-light, standing perfectly upright, and despite her best intentions and the seriousness of the situation, Ali looked at the man, snarling beneath the blood that covered his face and shirt front – and she laughed out loud.
This was too much for the older girl, who ran for it, bolting between the two of them and out the open hatch.
* * *
Wood splinters and fiberglass from the superstructure of the Three Brothers filled the air with a haze of destruction, adding to the nightmare unreality of the anti-aircraft gun roaring only a few yards away. The enormous rounds, full-metal jacketed with tungsten-carbide cores, and spitting from all four barrels, began chewing through Alpha’s little cabin cruiser. It would only take seconds for it to finish the job.
Handon, surprised that he hadn’t been cut down in the first volley, let go of Henno and coiled himself into a crouch, ready to drive himself out of it with his leg muscles, powering his body into a dive overboard.
His destination: anywhere but here.
But he aborted the dive at the last second, instead maintaining his tight crouch.
Because the explosive firing stopped almost as soon as it began. It had blasted on full-auto for about one second, admittedly triggering off forty rounds in that time – but then it went quiet. Handon trained his .45 on the ZSU and waited. He didn’t have to wait long. A limp, and most likely dead, body flopped out from behind the carriage. Then a second one, clearly alive, got frog-marched out into view in front of it.
Behind this one stood Juice, holding the second guy’s flexicuffed arms, and visibly dripping water from his hair, beard, and clothes.
To Handon’s left, Predator brought his huge frame up to a standing position, rifle still at his shoulder. Small bits of insulation continued to float down around him and onto the deck. He angled his head upward at Juice and said, “Well, that took you long enough.”
Juice spat into the water from the top deck. “Hey, this thing displaces like three hundred tons. You try holding your breath long enough to swim under it, then climb all the way up the other side. All without making any noise.” He spat again. Handon noted the spit was brown and viscous. Somewhere along the line, he’d had time to put in a wad of chewing tobacco.
Or, hell, Handon thought, knowing Juice, he probably swam over with it in.
Another voice sounded now, in an unmistakeably English accent. “Yeah, and I reckon you just look right graceful in the water…” Handon turned. It was Henno, clinging to the gunwale, holding himself high enough to clear the bolt that was still sticking out of his chest. Red-tinted water pooled and sloshed on the deck before him. Handon moved to help him climb back in.
Predator stood where he was, and lowered his rifle casually. He nodded up at his friend Juice. “Don’t listen to the Limey, man. I bet you’re a regular goddamned mermaid.”
“I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the world.”
Though he didn’t know where the hell that left all of them now.
* * *
Silence also reigned down in the master sleeping cabin on the Diablo. There was a little wheezing from the guy Ali had throat-punched, as he rolled around the floor at the foot of the bed. But all the firing from up top had stopped. The muted sound of the gunfight had been punctuated with the roar of something absolutely enormous and large-caliber – it sounded like something crew-served to Ali – but she let it go, not least because it had been silenced.
And also because she couldn’t do anything about it from down there.
Now she faced down the last man standing, from across the bed. Really, Ali considered, looking at him now, he did look more like a cowboy than a biker, ’stache notwithstanding. He had kind of a rugged, lanky Marlboro Man thing going on. Though that sort of fell apart with the broken nose, and the blood all down his front.
And just as he had known how to conduct a gunfight in a tight place, now he showed he knew his way around a blade. With minimal theatrics, he got his knife out and held it close in to his right hip, left hand extended out to protect it. He’d only be putting the blade out there when he had an open avenue to strike. Also smart.
Ali figured this might even be a guy who had been in a real knife fight before.
From the moment of the girl Emily’s first terrified look to her big sister, Ali knew something was going to go down here. But, then again, she had pretty much known it all along. Any of a thousand contextual clues told the story. At least she’d given them every chance first, the benefit of every doubt. Which was probably a lot more than these guys ever gave other people. Ali thought again about the two girls, stuck on this boat with this terrifying group, and how they got there – and what it might be like to live that way.
And that reminded her of her own sister again. Whom she’d failed to help escape from her bad situation, back in the world that was. And who it was far too late to help now.
Ali was normally the consummate professional – never one to indulge in vengeance or theatrics, or bring a knife to a gunfight. She knew that unit survivability and mission accomplishment were everything; and that the only dirty fight is the one you lose. Basically, she was a pro. And she knew she ought to just gun this guy down quickly and safely. Still… there was just something about these guys that flipped her damned switch.
She convinced herself, not totally implausibly, that the time she spent reloading the pistol would make her vulnerable to his knife in such close quarters. She wasn’t wrong – at very close range, a knife is more dangerous than a gun. So she dropped her HK in mid-air and pulled her Gerber LMF II Infantry knife from her boot, all without ever taking her eyes off her opponent.
The Gerber was jet black from its wicked tip down to the sharp end of the pommel, which could be used to shatter windshield glass. It went ten and a half inches long, nearly half of that tempered steel blade. It even had lashing holes to turn it into a spear – just add a stick. It was an awesome survival knife, and a better Apocalypse one. And it made it very clear that Ali wasn’t fucking around.
Y chromosome or no.
She squinted into the eyes of the big, muscular man across from her. For a second, she thought just maybe he was going to leg it. But before he could decide either way…
The overhead cabin lights came on in a flood of illumination, causing both of them to squint. Then the whole structure around them, but particularly the deck flooring below, began to hum, vibrate, and shake. It’s the engines starting, Ali thought. Yeah, this thing is about as dead in the water as my nutsack…
And then the whole room lurched powerfully around them, sending Ali and the cowboy both stumbling into the bulkhead on opposite sides of the bed.
Someone up top had put the throttle down, and sent the big boat blasting off at high speed from a standing start. And this thing had some serious horsepower. Wherever they were going now… well, it wasn’t going to be very close to where they started. Ali pulled herself upright and got her feet under her.
And she got ready to conduct a knife fight on a theme-park boat ride.
Boating for Beginners
Lake Michigan
Handon clocked more movement up top on the Diablo – in the wheelhouse this time. He holstered his custom Kimber .45 in a blur and snatched up his rifle from the deck, putting the red holographic dot of the EOTech sight on the window of the piloting room. Behind two panes of glass, one close and one far, he saw the older girl come into view, walking quickly. Handon eased off his trigger, just before she disappeared again.
Suddenly, there was a throaty roar and a burble from the rear of the big boat – Handon stole a glance to his left at Pred, who frowned. They had both heard it right – it was the Diablo’s engines starting up. Handon pulled his rifle into his shoulder again. Now he could make out a man behind the window, one they hadn’t seen before, at the very front of the wheelhouse – presumably at the pilot controls. Handon put a couple of pounds of pressure on his curved trigger, then hesitated.
Like Ali, he had a funny feeling the girls on that boat were innocent, or at least coerced. Could there be an innocent man? It was possible.
But damned unlikely. Handon squeezed his trigger.
The Diablo lurched, its huge bulk lunging forward in a surge of wave and spray.
Handon’s shot went wide – through the glass but behind the man’s head.
The rope line mooring the two boats together ripped out the cleat it had been secured to, then took off flapping in the air behind the bigger boat as it roared off.
“Fuck!” Handon spat, as he leapt back into the cockpit, started up the engines, and peeled The Three Brothers around in a tight U-turn, sending a tall crescent of spray surging up behind them. He then gunned the engines, sending them blasting off after the Diablo. Handon was squinting at the back of escaping craft ahead when a voice thundered behind him.
“Oi! You daft bastard!”
Handon looked over his shoulder as the acceleration of the boat pulled at him and tried to yank him from the controls. And there was Henno, still clinging to the edge of the gunwale, half in and half out of the water, crossbow bolt still sticking out of him, legs now kicking wildly in the churning water. Oh, shit… Handon thought.
But Predator was already clambering across the cockpit and into the stern. With one frost-giant hand on Henno’s assault suit, he hauled him back in.
Handon jammed the throttle into the console, all the while eating spray.
* * *
Down in the suddenly illuminated lower deck of the Diablo, and for some reason that was obscure to Ali, the cowboy seemed to like his chances better with the boat rocking.
As it finished accelerating, but still blasted forward and bounced around, he got offensive, circling the bed, advancing aggressively on her. And just like that, Ali had a solid bulkhead to her back, which she didn’t like one bit. Room to retreat was damned helpful in knife fights.
Oh, well, she thought. Adapt and overcome.
So she leapt up onto the bed and kicked the twisted blankets through the air at her opponent. It was only when they flew off and revealed the girl underneath, squealing, that Ali remembered – she was still in the bed! Emily rolled away and off the opposite edge, disappearing into the small space between bed and wall, still squealing.
Ali followed up her ballistic blanket kick with an underhand knife swing, right up at the cowboy’s chin. If it landed, it ended the fight. But he caught the blanket in his free hand and wrapped it around Ali’s advancing arm and blade. He was faster than he looked. Then he yanked, pulling Ali down and toward him
, as his knife flashed out at her midsection.
Losing her balance and footing on the bed, she instead went with the motion and powered forward. She lashed out with her left hand, pushing the man’s advancing blade aside with her forearm. The assault suit that covered her body was no longer optimized to protect from bullets and blasts, but from bites – which made it pretty decent against blades. She definitely felt the edge through the high-tech material, and would find an ugly welt later, if she lived. But it deflected the strike. She let the guy pull her into him, putting her own weight and momentum into it.
They both crashed to the wall, then to the floor, one atop the other in the narrow space beside the bed. Limbs, knives, blanket, and curses rolled and pistoned in the tiny space. It was substantially smaller than a phone booth. And with less room for error.
And, in a ground grapple, the man’s greater upper-body strength might be decisive.
Ali punched, kicked, twisted, and mustered herself for one big effort to lever herself out of there, before he pinned her to the ground – probably in two different senses, one more lethal than the other…
* * *
Up on the top deck, beside the anti-aircraft gun, the blasting acceleration of the boat nearly took Juice off his feet. He stumbled, legs buckling, but stopped himself in time – and quickly saw that his flexicuffed prisoner, formerly one half of the anti-aircraft gun crew, was not doing so well. The young guy slammed into the railing – and his momentum and high center of gravity took him over, legs flying up and out.
Juice flashed out with his left hand and caught him by the belt. The guy’s weight, now hanging over and free, pulled Juice up against the railing. But he had him. The dangling man looked up, and Juice almost smiled down at him. Up close, what Juice had thought before was now obvious: he was a kid, no more than fourteen or fifteen. His face was covered with long but sparse peach fuzz, and it occurred to Juice that he may never have shaved. The ZA had pre-empted his whole transition into manhood. And his eyes still had some pleading innocence in them, which was damned rare this far along into the Apocalypse.