by James Axler
The bioengineer had turned out to be something of a prima donna, too. He’d claimed he’d lacked the proper equipment to complete the task he had been given; he’d moaned about the unfairness of it. That had reminded Magus of the old saw about a poor workman blaming his tools.
He had left Nudelman hanging from a basketball hoop in a high school gymnasium, en route to the redoubt.
The only captive from his most recent trip to the past who had survived the full eight months was the wag driver, McCreedy. When pressed, he’d turned out to be a very resourceful fellow. Mechanic. Chiller. Carny master. The Deathlands’ lifestyle agreed with him. And what was not to like? No traffic. No police. No laws. No wife. No mother-in-law. Plenty of jolt and joy juice and gaudy sluts. Two weeks into his stay, he had asked if he could carry a blaster. And when handed one, he’d promptly taken it and shot in the head a sec man who had been giving him grief. No one gave him grief after that.
Magus looked over at McCreedy, then at his head sec man, Kossow, both of whom sat on the hardest bench Magus could find. Neither of them was intelligent or educated enough to fully grasp the implications of what he had accomplished.
By taking the place of his former self and returning to Deathlands before he had in fact ever left, he had created a new parallel universe. One in which he hadn’t yet caused the merging of timelines. Everything that had happened had to be repeated, only this time with a point in mind and a certain outcome: Cawdor’s destruction.
The trail for Cawdor and his band to follow had been laid down as before, on purpose. His men were ordered to give away secrets in the gaudy, which led Cawdor and company to the redoubt. It would have been fine if the enforcers had chilled them before the jump, but that hadn’t happened. He’d made the time jump, they’d followed, all according to plan.
Some people might find reliving their life boring. Not so with Magus. Killing never failed to amuse, and there were nuances missed in the first go-round. It all happened too quickly to capture every detail. And it gave him the opportunity to refine the story’s unfolding and make the ending all the more satisfying.
Oh, what a surprise when the Cawdor crew arrived and saw what and who was waiting for them on the other side of the door.
They would have nowhere to go.
They would have no choice but to surrender to him.
The very thought of it made the human side of his face salivate.
Magus always considered himself a grand showman, if not a genius of spectacle. Having assured himself of the capture of Cawdor and his companions, he had spent much time and energy deciding what to do with them. A theatrical event centered around their torture and killing seemed most appropriate. Working out the details kept him up at night. He sketched scenery and elaborate torture devices. He sent out scouts to round up acts that would fill in the rest of the show: aerial acts, mutie fights, gladiatorial contests, a musical group or two. It would be a spectacle for the ages. McCreedy had been a great help in the enterprise. He had a knack for knowing what Magus wanted in terms of entertainment and knowing how to find it. The wag driver had become his carny master. Magus saw him as a possible replacement for Silam, whose oversize head he had crushed after the Cawdor-induced disaster at gladiator island.
A carefully staged exercise in godlike power had turned out to be just the opposite. Magus’s stranglehold on the hellscape was based on fear; that was the fiat by which he ruled. No one defeated him. No one crossed him and lived.
Cawdor had shown him to be vulnerable. The tales had spread far and wide.
That damage had to be undone.
By a public, not a private, show this time, with all the barons and their inbred families invited. Those who refused would be kidnapped and chained to their seats with their eyelids taped open.
“My men are nervous about all the enforcers on the loose,” Kossow said. “They don’t like running into them alone in the hallways.”
Magus knew his sec men didn’t trust the enforcers. And why would they? The reptilians were evil-tempered, foul-smelling bastards. The sec men had every right to feel threatened by creatures that couldn’t be chilled. But Magus needed both types of soldier for his hellscape operations. The kind that killed until there was no one else to kill. And the kind that saw other routes to achieve a desired result. If the sec men had their way, the enforcers would all be locked in darkened cold storage, putting them and their primal urges into hibernation.
A knock on the door broke his train of thought. “Enter!” he said.
A sec man stepped into the bleak room. He seemed out of breath. “Sir, you asked to be warned when the time apparatus has been activated.”
“That has happened?”
“Yes, sir. The sequence is underway.”
“Excellent,” Magus said. With a wave of his steel hand, he dismissed his carny master and sec man. They both had work to do.
* * *
MCCREEDY TROTTED AT a brisk pace down the long corridor. He was a changed man. It never failed to amaze him how quickly he had cast off the trappings of civilization and embraced the mantle of savage. After eight months in the hellscape, he rarely thought of his previous life. There were too many exciting and interesting things to do. It was hard at first, because he had to learn the ropes, the chain of command, a language that was choked with new words and twisted meanings. Once he had a blaster in his hand, everything had fallen into place. Blowing off the head of that asshole sec man was the most satisfying experience of his life—up to that point. After being bullied and kicked, robbed, humiliated in front of Magus and the rest of the human crew, it was his coming-out party. After that the floodgates of plenty opened for him.
Magus was a big-time operator, the Donald Trump of Deathlands. And in the short span of eight months, McCreedy had become his right-hand man instead of an organ donor. It was a rags-to-riches story that could never have happened in New York City. Not even on a reality TV show. He was still servant to a greater master, but his service included being a rock promoter. A rock promoter in hell. It was a sink-or-swim proposition, but he had been raised on tabloids and gossip magazines, grown up watching big-league sports and action movies. He had the right credentials for the job.
Magus could be a generous employer, but working for him was like walking a tightrope. If something short-circuited in that cobbled-together brain of his, suddenly down was up and you were heading for the nuke power plant in shackles.
The threat of violent, horrible death no longer kept him up at night. Perhaps because he had seen so much of it in eight months.
The venue for Magus’s big show had yet to be chosen. There were many options on the table, but he was looking for a natural amphitheater at a hellscape crossroads. An open-pit coal mine would do nicely. There was time to make the perfect choice. The actual performance wasn’t scheduled to take place for months. It would take that long to construct all the stages, gather the supporting acts and assemble the select group of spectators.
He was going to promote it as the biggest event in Deathlands since the nukecaust. The Second Coming of Armageddon. Magus intended it to be a command performance. From what McCreedy had gathered, most of the hellscape royalty was going to be eager to attend the festivities anyway. It seemed Ryan Cawdor and his companions had made a lot more enemies than just ol’ Steel Eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryan held his ground in front of the porthole window. Warty faces fought for position on the other side, maws gaping, noses pressing, tongues flicking, their secretions smearing the view through the glass.
“How many are there?” Krysty said over his shoulder.
“I can’t tell. The window is too small. Can’t see into the room. And they all look alike.”
“Does it matter how many?” J.B. said sourly. “One of those bastards can kill us all.”
“We could always wait in here until we dehydrate to death or starve,” Mildred said.
“Or go back to New York and be nuked,” Doc added.
“Stop it!” Ryan said. “We got chased into this machine, thinking it was something else, not knowing what it really did. We figured it was a regular mat-trans unit because it looked like one from the outside. If we’d known what it was when we locked ourselves in here, we would have done something different. We had options we discarded.”
“Such as?” Krysty asked.
“We didn’t use thermite on the enforcers in the anteroom because we needed the system intact to get home.”
“We home,” Jak said.
“Exactly. We’re never going down the time hole again. And never is anyone else. One thermite gren should do the trick in a room packed with enforcers. The floor has got to be slick with their sweat.”
“Uh, Ryan, the gren could do us, too,” J.B. said. “Those critters go up like napalm. A bunch of them jammed in a small room is a great big gren waiting to go boom.”
“But they shouldn’t explode,” Mildred said. “They aren’t violating some time paradox here. They should just burn.”
“If we stay at the other end of the chamber, we should be okay,” Ryan said.
“Sounds like a lot of shoulds to me,” J.B. said.
“Look out the porthole, J.B.,” Ryan told him. “You got a better plan?”
“Once we undog that door, they’re going to be pulling it open,” J.B. said. “They’re ugly as shit and they stink like it, but they’re not stupe. They’ll get their big old hooks inside of it quick as a flash. You know how strong these bastards are, like bastard bulls. We’ll never get it shut again, and its got to be shut tight before the thermite goes off or all our oxygen will burn up with them.”
“Maybe Vee’s hand cannon can help?” Mildred suggested.
“Shoot them and they don’t die,” J.B. reminded her.
“Sure, but shoot them and they catch fire,” she said. “That would make them take a big step back.”
“If we timed it right, that might just work,” Ryan said.
“Okay,” J.B. went on, “assuming we pull that off and don’t burn up in here, what happens next? We have to get the plan together now. There’s not going to be any time for a sit-down after we step out of this thing.”
“Long way to surface,” Jak said.
“Remember how many enforcers chased us in here?” J.B. asked. “We’re not going to be able to burn them all. Not enough grens.”
“Get out,” Jak said. “Get bikes, get away.”
“Excellent plan, but the first part is tricky,” J.B. said.
“We have two weapons we know will work,” Ryan stated.
“But the circumstances have to be just right to use them,” J.B. countered. “And I doubt we can outrun them without a big head start.”
“We followed the sweat trail to get in here,” Mildred said. “Can we really follow it out?”
“I remember way,” Jak told them. He tapped the top of his head. “All here.”
“We don’t know what else Magus left behind for us, either,” J.B. said.
Ryan had had enough of the speculation. “I think we have enough to worry about. Mildred, can you handle the Desert Eagle?”
“My pleasure.”
“Krysty will you chuck the gren?”
“What is that, women’s work?”
“No, I just...”
She laughed at him. “I’m pulling your leg, Ryan. You know I like my lizard butt well-done.”
“Yeah, nice and crispy,” he said. “Mildred, after you take the shot, move to the back wall. Krysty, same for you. Drop the gren and get back. We need as many hands on the inside of the wheel in case they do hook their talons under it. We slam it closed and keep it closed while I dog the wheel. Then we dive for the rear wall, get as far from the fire as we can.”
“Stay low,” Mildred said. “Heat rises. And as long as we’re talking about a lot of heat, maybe it could even melt the window glass.”
“Don’t say that,” Ricky groaned.
“If this doesn’t work out, I just want to say it’s been nice knowing you,” J.B. told them. He could hold a straight face for only a second before breaking into a wide grin.
“He’s starting to sound like Vee,” Krysty said.
“It’s a big improvement,” Mildred said.
Ryan handed her the Desert Eagle. She cracked back the action, checking the chamber for a live round.
“That puppy will buck some,” he said.
“I’ll try not to knock out my own teeth.” Wrapping her hands around it in a double grip, Mildred stood with her right shoulder against the wall, next to the edge of the door.
“One other thing,” she said, “when this thing goes off in an enclosed space, it’s going to be loud. I’m not going to stick the whole weapon out the door, just the muzzle. I don’t want one of them grabbing it before I can fire. I’m just saying we may lose our hearing temporarily, from the blast.”
“We’ll use hand signals, understood?” Ryan asked, looking from face to face for confirmation. Then he turned to Krysty. She knew what he wanted to hear.
“I’ll yank the pin after Mildred pulls back,” she said, “shove it out at the bottom of the door. Then hit the back wall. Low.”
“I think we’re ready, then,” Ryan said.
Hideous faces were jostling at the porthole, trying to get a look inside.
“They’re going to go crazy when they think we’re opening up for them,” Mildred said.
“Just do your job and we’ll be all right.”
Ryan started turning the wheel, rolling back the locking bolts. The enforcers didn’t get excited until they heard the resounding click of the lock snapping open.
“Now, Mildred!” he said, pulling the door open two inches.
Mildred poked the Eagle out and fired once. The noise was earsplitting, the muzzle-flash lighting up the anteroom. She rode the recoil wave, raising the weapon up and out of the gap between door and frame.
The yard of flame fanned across two enforcer faces pressed to the glass. They went up like a pair of match heads. An amber talon hooked around the door for an instant, then it was beating on its owner’s face, trying to put out the blaze.
Krysty let the safety clip pop off the red canister and tossed it out onto the anteroom floor.
“Shut it!” Ryan cried, throwing his weight against the inside of the door.
The others did the same and held it pinned while he dogged the lock.
The gren had a three-second fuse. They had only a second to reach the back wall. They were still a yard away when a roar like a blast furnace shook the little chamber. The far side of the porthole was solid flame.
Something heavy slammed into the unit’s door. Then again. And again. The enforcers were whirling around, bashing into the front of the unit.
“Get down!” Mildred shouted.
The heat inside the chamber rose with incredible speed. In less than a minute their faces were dripping with sweat. Breathing became difficult because the air was so hot it burned noses and throats. The time-travel unit had turned into a bake oven.
The thumping from outside stopped.
“How long can they burn?” Ricky asked.
“How long before that wheel cools off enough for us to get out?” J.B. asked.
Ryan looked at it glowing red. If it started to melt, they were in deep shit.
* * *
MCCREEDY BROUGHT UP the rear of Magus’s welcoming committee. Ahead of him, the cyborg was borne along in the arms of one of his enforcers. Two more of the creatures bracketed them on either side. Behind them was Kossow and a phalanx of sec men. They marched with an absurd dignity, a pomp and circumstance that seemed entirely out of place.
The quintet of enforcers had started acting strangely the moment they’d reached the floor. Normally they were calm, now they were skittish, tongues darting; they seemed agitated.
“What is that smell, McCreedy?” Magus shouted back at him.
McCreedy had no immediate answer.
“I have hal
f a nose, and even I can smell it. Something’s burning. It smells like fish.”
When they made a left turn at the intersection leading to the time unit, the burning smell became stronger and a haze of smoke was visible down the hall. At the sound of running feet, the sec men shouldered their weapons and the enforcers closed ranks around their master.
A fireball on two legs came running out of the smoke. It bounced off the wall and kept running, arms out in front like a sleepwalker. A hundred feet down the hall, it collapsed. A pillar of smoke rose from the body, spreading across the ceiling in a churning black fan.
Because of its size, McCreedy had no doubt it was an enforcer. It was one of the creatures Magus had assigned to guard the time unit. Something had gone very wrong.
“Get closer!” Magus shouted.
The enforcers reluctantly moved forward, as did the sec men. The heat from that end of hall was withering; it hit them full in the face.
“Uh, Magus,” McCreedy said tentatively, “Maybe we should wait until it cools down a little and the smoke clears.”
“Why?” Magus asked. “I’m not going down there; you are.”
When thwarted, Magus made bad things happen. When he was double thwarted, the things he made happen were double bad.
“Okay,” McCreedy replied, but without enthusiasm.
He set off at a trot, his mind racing. The closer he got to the time unit, the worse conditions got. He realized there was no way he could survive a peek inside. The heat was blinding, the smoke so thick he could barely breathe. If all the enforcers in the time unit were burning, he’d been sent on a suicide mission. He could do Magus’s bidding and die in his service; he could die trying to run away from Magus’s wrath—or he could simply lie.
He looked over his shoulder. It occurred to him that if he couldn’t see Magus, then Magus couldn’t see him. He sucked in as deep a breath as he could manage and plunged into the heart of the smoke. The heat stopped him after a couple yards. He counted to twenty, then threw in an extra five for good measure. The last numbers were very hard to hold out for. It felt as if he was going to burst into flames or melt.
