Death Hunt

by James Axler

  Horse paused before answering. “Let me answer you like this. If you were supplying something that no one else could, and if you were wiped out and that would disappear, then wouldn’t that give you a kind of security? Make you…I dunno, kind of exclusive?”

  “Sure, but what could be that special?”

  Horse frowned. “I’m gonna have to stop at that. Ethan will tell you when he’s ready. But I like you, Ryan Cawdor, and even saying this much could get me chilled, but keep up your guard, Ryan, and remember that whatever happens, I may not want to have any part of it.”

  The sec chief strode off, leaving Ryan in his wake. The one-eyed man watched him go, every nerve ending straining with the sense of danger that now coursed through his veins.

  “PLEASE, YOU MUST make yourself at home and examine what you will. I have work to do. You’re perfectly welcome to join me if you wish.”

  Bones polished his thick-lensed spectacles and put them back on his nose, peering through them owlishly. He was sitting across the table from Doc Tanner. The table was covered in papers, both printed and handwritten, covered in stains from the strange coffee-type barley brew that the wizened man seemed to exist upon. He had hardly spoken to Doc since the old man had arrived, merely to point out the facilities and where Doc would sleep. He had been engrossed in a series of old manuals, trying to make an old comp work. He had still been working when Doc retired for the night, after examining the contents of several bookcases.

  This was their first chance to talk and Doc was determined to make the most of it.

  “Tell me, before you become engrossed in your mission, how did you end up becoming the keeper of such a magnificent archive?”

  Bones allowed himself a small smirk, taking this as a compliment. “I’ve always been the one who was interested in the past. I suppose it was because I was quite a weak, ill child, and when we all used to go into the old city, I’d always come back with something about the past. It was just something I did. To be honest with you, I don’t know how I survived. Must be hardier than I thought. But when I grew up, and we started to fence off the ville, and less and less people plundered the remains, I would still go, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I was useful for working with traders, as I have a better brain for jack and trade than anyone else I’ve ever met—that’s not an idle boast, just an observation. And a truism—it kept me alive, as I would have been a liability otherwise. Physical endeavor isn’t my suit, and this made me valuable to past barons.”

  “And Ethan?” Doc interjected, a little bewildered at the torrent of words that spewed forth from Bones.

  “Ethan is different. A planner and a dreamer, but also a pragmatist. He knew I was getting old and, although my brain is still sharp, my eyes weren’t at their best anymore. I looked too vulnerable to outside traders. So I trained my successors and he told me to build this archive, to use what I had spent my life amassing as a pleasure. He has plans, you see, and some of them he has been able to put into operation. He is what the old books call an entrepreneur. A unique service, and a unique way to show people what it is, using the old tech that I can use for him. He’s quite a man.”

  “I am sure,” Doc murmured, beset by qualms that he couldn’t quite pin down.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be getting on with this,” Bones said, rising to his feet. “Please, avail yourself of anything here.”

  “I will,” Doc promised. “It has been a long time since I have been able to glory in books.”

  Bones returned Doc’s smile with a genuine pleasure. He was sure he had found a kindred spirit in the old man.

  Perhaps…Doc was cautious. He waited sometime, leafing through a couple of old books, before he went over to the wall of videotapes. He read the spidery writing on the labels with care, selecting one that seemed to be recently recorded. He went to the doorway and checked to ensure that Bones was ensconced in a far room. He was running an old tape machine from the mains. A generator outside powered electricity for his work, and Doc idly wondered how much wag fuel he used, and how important Ethan considered his work to allow such a usage.

  Discordant music came from the tape machine, and a man with an English accent Doc recognized from his own past was yelling over the music. Something about “please don’t take me to the sanatorium…” Doc shivered. This was a sanatorium of sorts, if his suspicions were correct.

  Seeing that Bones was immersed in his work, Doc turned and strode across the room to one of the video machines that was connected to an old television set. He tried to put the tape in, but found one already in the machine. Taking it out, he saw that it was, if the title was anything to go by, a pornographic tape. No wonder the old man’s sight was so bad, he chuckled to himself.

  But the laughter stopped when he placed the tape in the machine, clicked on the TV set and let the video run, being careful to turn down the sound lest Bones should hear what was happening.

  As the action unfolded on the screen in a blur of color and motion, Doc realized what this unique service was, and why Ethan would record it to show to visiting traders and barons.

  It was violent, nasty and could have only one possible outcome. It couldn’t be staged often, but it could command big jack for the ville.

  And Doc Tanner had the nastiest feeling that he and his companions were being lined up for Ethan’s next big payday.

  THEY HAD AGREED to meet as soon as possible to discuss whatever they had learned. But that wasn’t to be as easy as they had hoped. The people with whom they had been billeted were keeping a close eye on their activities.

  Doc was bursting to tell the others about what he had discovered, but whenever he tried to leave the house, Bones would emerge from his self-imposed exile with his old tech and always have something he wanted to discuss, some ancient tome on which he wished to elicit Doc’s opinion.

  Ryan found that the sec training would suddenly expand if he wanted to get away; Jak found himself on a hunt when Jonno found him attempting to make his way toward the sec camp. Krysty had to suddenly assist Angelika whenever it seemed downtime would allow her to get away; J.B. found that Scar would find some piece of his armory that—surprisingly for such an egotistical man—he would want J.B.’s advice on, mysteriously realizing that he’d had this blaster for a while but still wasn’t sure about some of the attachments that he’d bought in the same consignment.

  Distracting the companions had been accomplished so subtly that the friends only realized in hindsight what had been happening.

  Except for Mildred. It seemed that Michaela, who had taken a liking to the medic, had found it hard to lie to her. There was little illness in Pleasantville, thus it took only a short while to deal with the patients at the hospital.

  Mildred sighed as she stripped off the white gown that Michaela had given her, to match her own.

  “I can’t remember the last time I wore whites,” she said, placing the gown in a dump bin to be washed.

  “Wherever it was, it must have been somewhere that was able to raid an old city, right?” the healer questioned, her curiosity piqued.

  “Something like that,” Mildred replied offhand, reminding herself to watch her words—she didn’t want to have to explain too much unless it was necessary. Especially as it would be bound to get back to Ethan and stir up his curiosity about them even more than it already seemed.

  “No, but really, you must have seen a whole load of really odd stuff out there. I mean, you’ve traveled. I’ve never been more than a day’s ride from this ville all my life. Like being in a cage, really…” Her voice took on a wistful edge. “I mean, we only really know what’s going on from convoys and hunting parties, and they might not be telling the truth, might they?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Mildred questioned. The use of the phrase “hunting parties” made her feel uneasy. There wasn’t enough wildlife around here to support regular hunts from the ville, let alone any outsiders, but she felt she should play it slow.

  Michaela shrugge
d, gave a vaguely embarrassed grin, as though she knew she had let something slip that she shouldn’t. “I dunno, really. It’s just that they don’t have to be honest, do they? Mebbe there’s something out there that would stop us giving them…Well, they wouldn’t get what they want,” she finished, confused, embarrassed even more, and aware that she was encroaching on dangerous territory.

  Mildred came over to the young healer, took her hand and fixed her with an intent stare. “Hey, listen to me. If there’s something going on here that I should know about, something that you’re not so happy with to judge from what you’ve just said, then maybe you should talk to me about it. If it’s something that puts me and my friends in the firing line, then we deserve to know. You save lives. That means that you feel a certain way about people,” she continued, choosing to ignore the fact that she saved lives, as well, but would equally take them if necessary. That was different: that was pragmatism. She continued. “You said something about a hunt, honey. What is there to hunt around here?”

  Michaela pulled away, refusing to meet Mildred’s gaze. “No, I’ve already said far too much. I shouldn’t have…Where are you going?”

  Mildred had turned her back and was walking toward the door that led to the street. “I’m going to find Ryan, maybe the others. I think it’s about time we got the hell out of here.”

  “No!” Michaela chased her, grabbed her by the arm, almost pulling her back. “That would be the worst thing you could do. You wouldn’t get more than a couple of miles.”

  “Then what is it, child? Tell me,” Mildred implored, taking the young woman by the shoulders.

  Michaela refused to meet her eyes. “I can’t. I’ve told you too much already, without even meaning to…Look, all I know is that we’re not supposed to let you all get together and talk until we’ve found out about you and told Ethan about it.”

  “You’re supposed to spy on us?”

  Michaela nodded.

  “Then what does Ethan want to know about us? Why?”

  “He likes to collect knowledge. He says it’s powerful, more so than jack. And he thinks you’d be good material.”

  “For what?”

  Michaela refused to look Mildred in the eye. When she spoke, it was almost a whisper. “For the hunt…”

  Mildred let her go, stepped back. Every gut feeling had been telling her this, but now it was confirmed. “He wants to hunt us?”

  “Not him, and not exactly hunting you. It’s how we live so well. He sells the hunt to other barons for big jack. They watch or take part, depending on what they want. And every hunt is different, no two the same. He uses this word he got from an old book. Com…Com something…”

  “Commodity,” Mildred whispered. “A unique commodity.”

  J. B. DIX WAS BORED—bored to tears with hearing about the armory and about Scar, and about how good Scar was at keeping the armory. He had never before thought that he could get bored with inventory, the care, upkeep and use of…but Scar had taken him places he thought he could never go.

  He’d had enough. These past few hours had been excruciating. Nothing could ever be this bad again, not being covered in syrup and left to the mercy of razor-jawed mutie ants, not being submerged in a sea of slavering stickies, not anything…any or all of it would be preferable to having to listen to this stupe bastard babble on and on and on…

  The big man was rambling about an M-16 that he’d recently acquired, and how bad a state it had been in, and what he’d had to do to clean it up. “I’ll show you what I mean,” he added at the end of his monologue, disappearing into the back room of the armory building to hunt it down from his workroom, where he modified and cleaned inventory.

  This was J.B.’s chance. While Scar was out of sight and earshot, he could slip away. He wanted to find out what information, if any, his companions had gleaned during the day. He could report nothing, except how boring Scar could be, but the others may have some information.

  J.B. slipped out of the building and hurried across the impound that housed the target range. He was past the main gate and into the ville before Scar had even found the M-16 in his junkpile workroom.

  The Armorer knew where the others were billeted, and decided to try to find Mildred first. The hospital was in an easterly direction and he walked that way, scanning the busy streets. He didn’t want to call attention to himself by asking directions, so he walked in silence. The farther he went, the more every nerve ending screamed that he was being followed.

  Shit—he knew that Scar would be looking for him by now, but this felt like more than that. As all the companions, he’d seen so much danger that the signs affected him on instinct, without his being able to rationalize how he could feel like this.

  An alleyway. J.B. changed direction suddenly and ducked into the fortuitous cover, making for the far end. He scanned the side for anything that would provide a hiding place from which he could observe his pursuers. There was nothing.

  And now there were two men at the far end of the alley. J.B. recognized one of them as a sec man who had been in the party that had bought them here. He turned and could see two more entering the alley behind him.

  Four to one. Not good odds. Even less so as he only had his Tekna, and they had knives and chains, with blasters at their hips and shoulders.

  J.B. unsheathed the knife. He was ready for attack.

  But he wasn’t ready for what happened next. One of the sec men took an airgun from one of his holsters, leveled it and fired. J.B. tried to move out of the trajectory, but the alley was too narrow. The sec man had aimed a body shot and J.B.’s surprise had made him too slow. A dart pierced his clothing, puncturing the skin. He looked down to see that it was a cylindrical dart with a flight on the end. He felt a hot shiver as something entered his bloodstream. Then nothing.

  He looked up, Tekna still in his hand. To his astonishment, the sec men had vanished from each end of the alleyway.

  He was alone. Alone with the dart he plucked from his skin and clothing.

  What the hell was that about?

  Chapter Six

  The Armorer came out of the alleyway, looking around cautiously. There was no sign of the sec men who had trailed him, neither was there any indication that anyone on the main street had noticed what was going on. Everything seemed to be as normal, as if nothing had happened.

  But what had happened? J.B. rubbed thoughtfully at the area where the dart had pierced cloth and skin. It tingled, a very slight pain where the skin had been broken. And there had been that warm feeling where something had entered his bloodstream. But what?

  It was more of an imperative than ever that he get to Mildred, let her take a look at him. Then gather the others. Before, it had been to share intelligence. Now it could be much more serious. It occurred to him that if the sec men had been following him, then it was possible that Scar Longthorne had deliberately given him space to make a run, leaving him out in the open for the sec men. Thoughts whirled around J.B.’s brain as he searched out the hospital. Why was he the one who had been selected? Or was it possible that this was happening to all the others? Had they all been targeted in this manner? And what was the point? Ethan had them at his mercy in many ways, having separated them. Why not just attack them all when they were together rather than have them stalked like wild animals when they made a run?

  Shit, there was a kind of logic here that would make sense if they knew Ethan’s purpose. But until then, it was a complete mystery. Perhaps the others would be able to come up with some answers, mebbe they’d found out something else…

  The ville was still unfamiliar, and J.B. felt hot. It seemed such an effort to try to find the hospital. He looked up at the sky above, squinting through his spectacles at the sun, which was on the wane. It shouldn’t be this hot, still…Alarm bells began to ring in his head. This wasn’t a natural kind of heat. The sooner he got to Millie, the better…

  BUT MILDRED WYETH had left the hospital. She hadn’t wanted to hang around after h
earing what Michaela had had to say to her. Like J.B., she’d felt a pressing need to consult with the others, to form a plan. They had been forced into a backs-to-the-wall situation without even being aware of it, and it was now time to reunite.

  “The hell with this,” she’d said to the small healer. “I know you’re supposed to keep me here, and I like you, but don’t try to stop me.” Mildred had glared at the girl. Michaela had backed off; there was something about Mildred’s body language that bespoke of an ability to forget she was a healer and to become a hurter.

  “The baron has sec men watching all the buildings where you are, do you realize that?” she’d said in a small voice—partly from fear and partly from a desire to avoid being overheard. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  Mildred’s demeanor had softened a little as she’d noticed how scared the girl was and how much it had taken her to speak those words. “Okay. I guess you need to be careful, too. This’ll get you out of trouble,” she’d said, stepping forward quickly and hitting the girl on the side of the neck with a straight-handed blow learned from the martial arts she’d studied a little of back in the days when she had been young and the world had made sense…of a kind.

  Michaela’s expression had held a sudden mixture of shock and hurt, passing over in a fraction of a second before she’d fallen to the floor, unconscious. Mildred hadn’t wanted to hurt the girl, but at least she could claim she had been overpowered if Mildred was caught. If? Chances were that she would be, but what the hell.

  Mildred had left the building in plain sight, not bothering to hide. If there were sec men waiting for her, she was prepared to stand and fight if that as what they wanted. But she suspected that they had a more devious game afoot.

  Unbeknownst to her, her thoughts echoed those of a disoriented J.B. as he searched for the hospital. The world was beginning to look as though he were seeing it through a distant heat haze. What the hell was in that damned dart? Dark night, but he needed to find Millie, and quick. It was now obvious that there had been some kind of trank in that dart. Millie might be able to help him, but only if he could stay on his damned feet until he found her.