Others had tried to stop it-and failed. Burnt, blistered areas of skin. Additional holes near its eye sockets and skull.
None of it seemed to matter.
It was doing just fine.
Raine sent one bullet into an eye socket. But the giant bobbed and weaved as it moved, maybe a strategy learned… or simply its natural style. If he had damaged the thing’s sight, there was no sign of it.
He kept firing the shotgun, the blasts echoing, even as he looked… seeing what was behind the creature.
A few “normal” mutants trailed it, like lampreys sticking close to a shark.
The creature brushed at its eye where he had hit it. Then it bellowed.
Raine could swear the nearby buildings vibrated from the horrific sound.
The creature picked up one of the smaller mutants at its feet.
And threw it Like a toy. A doll. The crazed mutant kicking and flailing as it flew toward him.
Bad aim, though-as the mutant went harmlessly splat behind him.
He fired his shotgun at the giant’s head. The blast left its cheek with a blackish hole.
Did it do anything other than change the cratered landscape of that thing’s face? Because, Raine thought, if it did nothing… then he was truly fucked.
He stood up. This taking time to stand and deliver, taking aim at the thing… didn’t seem to do any good.
Options. He imagined the other mutants streaming down. Soon they’d join this party.
Raine pumped the shotgun, aimed and fired again… and again, feeling more and more that the shells were mere pinpricks to the monster.
When now, the giant only meters away, he noticed something in the creature’s repetitive bobbing and weaving.
At the tip of its skull-an opening.
Something had wounded it there, and blew off a piece of skull.
And, glistening on the top of its domelike head, what sufficed for its brain.
Raine turned away and dug out the last grenade, ignoring the hissing, howling shrieks behind him.
The thing had started swinging its girder at him. It wasn’t close enough to hit him-not yet-but he could feel the force of the wind as the steel flew in front of his face.
Raine pulled the pin.
His fingers shook, whether from sheer fear or the residual ache of getting out of the hospital.
Twenty-second timer. Could be an eternity.
He attempted to count. Another thumping step from the thing, and it reared its head back as it roared.
A totally unpredictable move.
Counting…
Had to be time, he thought. Now.
And he lobbed the grenade upward. Thinking he had not gotten it high enough.
He had always been a football guy. Needed better skills on the basketball court. Never could sink the big ones. The grunts from East New York and Bed-Stuy always whipped his ass.
But then the thing lowered its head as if curious what this small thing flying toward it could be.
The open pit on the skull a good-sized target. But now-it was all a matter of luck.
And then Raine-thanking a God he didn’t believe in-watched the grenade bounce into the open pit, hit the thing’s brain material, start to roll out of the pit-when it exploded.
Stuff went flying from the thing’s head.
It dropped its girder, pinning a group of mutants at its feet.
The thing’s hands went to its head, thoughts of a human lunch replaced with a message of pain, and probably a loss of functioning as its brain material flew into the sky, spraying this closed-off street.
Raine didn’t waste any time watching the thing tumbling to the street. He raced past it, taking care to watch which way the tree-sized monster would fall. He ran fast, knowing that the mutant horde couldn’t be far behind. He reached the piles of cars and scurried over.
He heard the crash of the mutant falling behind him but didn’t stop to look back.
Jack had his beanstalk… I have a pile of burnt-out cars.
As he came down the other side, he half expected his buggy to be smashed. But when he reached the ground, it sat there.
Looking perfectly fine.
One of the best damn things he had ever seen in his life.
Raine jumped in, taking care to stow the backpack securely in the rear.
He started it up and then hit the accelerator with a near maniacal fury as he raced away from the hospital. The buggy barreled down streets, past the eerie remnants of this place, this now dead city.
And when he was finally out of the city, he thought…
Dead City.
Yes… but I’m still alive.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SEEING KVASIR
The first hint Raine got that something was wrong was when he stopped at the entrance to the rickety bridge to Kvasir’s place.
The gate was up-and considering how paranoid Kvasir was about keeping his place safe, it triggered an immediate alarm.
He pulled up to the order-box intercom.
“Kvasir?” Then again louder. “Kvasir. You there?”
But the automated response failed to come on. Was Kvasir’s security system down? No booby traps ready to explode?
He looked at the squat building on the hill ahead, just across the bridge.
Couldn’t see anything wrong.
Raine ached from his time in the Dead City. Some quiet and some security for the night would be good.
In fact-he wasn’t even sure he could do anything more than get into Kvasir’s place and collapse.
Now-he was immediately on guard.
He started across the bridge, traveling slowly, waiting for something to stop him…
But nothing did.
He stopped, and saw what now girded the building. Surrounding the building, overlapping, covering the doors and window, were banner-sized bills.
NO ENTRANCE PERMITTED BY THE ORDER OF THE AUTHORITY, UNDER PAIN OF IMPRISONMENT.
They’d been here.
Looking for me?
And where was Kvasir?
He grabbed his pack, the guns, and walked up to the forbidden door.
A board had been nailed across it.
Raine grabbed the wooden board and started pulling. The nails were driven in deep, but he yanked hard at one end and it finally sprang away. He then twisted the board back and forth until it popped free.
He took the stock of the shotgun, slammed it down on the handle, and the door kicked free of the jamb.
He paused a second, then walked in.
The place had been ransacked. The shelves, once filled with vials and containers and trays… now all empty.
The old-school microscopes-also gone. Nothing here at all.
But one sense told him that wasn’t exactly true, and for a moment his intense fatigue was dispelled.
Something smelled wrong.
He walked back to where Kvasir slept, the dark room behind the lab. The smell stronger.
And he saw the old man.
Tied to a chair, head down. Blood spatters around the room. He saw… what had to be a terminal wound in the man’s chest. Kvasir looked down at the floor as if wondering: How did this happen?
The pigs-they didn’t even take time to bury him.
Just took everything, and left the body there to rot.
Raine could imagine the scene. The Authority blasting their way up here, past Kvasir’s gate. Was there a firefight with the old man, or did Kvasir somehow hope he could talk to them?
He had been able to do his work and deal with them and the Resistance, for years.
What changed?
Raine guessed the answer.
They wanted me. They followed me here.
Did they then go to the Dead City? Did Kvasir tell them anything?
He hadn’t seen them on the return trip. That, and the scene in the room, seemed to say no.
Kvasir said nothing and paid the ultimate price for it.
Raine walked around to see if
there was anything left in this room. But aside from the man’s clothes, it had been picked clean, too.
He turned and walked out to the lab area again, now as empty as the examination room in the Dead City’s hospital.
Soon it would be dark.
The bridge was still there, but the gate wasn’t functional.
He knew he couldn’t go anywhere, not with night close. And besides, before he left-there was something he had to do. • • •
He found a spot behind the building, flat dirt that ran flush to a sheer wall of rock.
Dirt that he could dig.
A small shed behind the house contained a few tools: a hand rake, clunky sheers. And a small shovel. Not really up to the job, but it would have to do.
So Raine dug, occasionally hitting stones that he had to pull out with his bare hands.
Until he had a hole he felt could hold the old man’s body.
He went back into the house, the light fading more each minute, and cut Kvasir’s body free. He picked him up. Some of Kvasir’s blood stained Raine’s clothes as he carried the body. It seemed a small price compared to the old man’s.
Outside, he lowered the body down.
A different person might have said something more, Raine knew. But all he said was, “Rest in peace, Kvasir.”
And he started covering the body with the dirt, eventually filling the hole, pounding the dirt mound flat with the back end of the shovel.
Then he went back inside.
Night was beginning.
And so, too-Raine guessed-his problems.
He sat on the porch, the generator-still some fuel inside, thankfully-humming away. Lighting the place up. He sat on the makeshift bench on the porch, the rifle across his lap.
Would anything come? Bandits, mutants, or maybe… for some reason… Authority Enforcers?
His eyes would shut and he’d quickly force them open.
And so, like that, eyes locked on the entrance to the bridge, he passed the next few hours.
Until he woke with a start and realized he had fallen asleep. He was still sitting out in the now cool desert night air.
Not good, he thought. Easy pickings to be out on the porch, exposed.
The generator still hummed away.
He got up and walked inside the building, the smell of death still in the air.
Raine shut the door, wedging a chair under the knob. He knew it wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to get in, but at least he’d hear if someone tried.
He walked over to the cot Kvasir had put out for him only days before.
He lay down.
For a few seconds he cocked his head, listening to the sounds of the place, as if making an imprint of what the sound of safe and quiet was… so he’d know the difference.
If things changed.
Then he allowed himself, gun still in hand, to fall asleep.
He woke with a start. Light outside. Morning. He felt immediately that he held nothing in his hands. He turned to the side and saw the gun on the floor. He sat up, taking a breath.
He had been-as the expression went-dead to the world.
In a way, I am kind of dead to the world. Does anybody know that I’m here?
He stood up. He knew a few things. Staying here wasn’t an option. There was no future in hiding at Kvasir’s hut until something came for him.
No, Wellspring, and whatever surprises it held, was where he had to go. He had something the Resistance could use, if Kvasir had been able to tell them.
Otherwise, he would be on his own, having to find them somehow.
And how long before he encountered the Authority in Wellspring?
Maybe that was something that-now-he looked forward to.
This wasn’t the first time he had seen an innocent person trussed up, tortured, brutally killed. And if he ever asked himself why he did his job-why the hell he was a solider in a strange land-seeing something like that answered the question.
Just as it did now.
Time might have passed, but the vicious, bloody battle of good and evil didn’t look all that much different.
Raine always knew what side he was on.
That’s all he ever needed. He might have to be careful, he might have to bide his time, but in his own mind he knew why the hell he was here.
And with his body still aching, he walked out of Kvasir’s lab, taking his things out to his buggy for the journey to Wellspring.
THREE
WELLSPRING
TWENTY-NINE
THE MAYOR’S SUGGESTION
The walls that surrounded the city towered two stories high, each metal plane ending in a giant, toothlike serrated edge, as if to discourage oversized pigeons from landing on them.
Raine saw people streaming in and out of an entrance, guards milling about. By the time he got closer, he had joined a line.
He saw other buggies. Some were as small as his, while others were more like trucks, loaded with material in the back. Each driver had to stop and talk to the guards before being waved in.
Might need my passport, he thought, only half joking.
He pulled closer, and the guards held up a hand, stopping him, while they walked around his buggy. Finally one guard came closer.
“Don’t see a travel tag.”
Raine took a breath. He knew it was dangerous to expose how much he didn’t know about this future.
“Travel tag?”
The guard looked at his compatriot. A small shake of the head. As in, Maybe we gotta watch this one.
“Anyone coming into the city needs a tag to do business. And if you’re staying, you need to have a garage and place to stay. No buggies, armed or not, allowed sitting on the streets of the city.” Another shake of the head. “Where the hell you from, anyway?”
“Right now? Came from the Hagar Settlement. Before that, did some work for other settlements.”
Raine guessed that lie sounded okay, since the guard nodded.
He also knew it was best to anticipate the questions and problems in a situation like this.
“Dan Hagar said I should speak to the mayor.”
“Looking for work? Ain’t much here, stranger. Unless”-now guard one looked at guard two, this time with a grin-“you like to drive. ”
“I drive okay.”
“In this? Piece of-” The guard looked up. More vehicles had lined up behind Raine. This chat was slowing the operation down. “We’ll let Mayor Clayton know you’re coming right over. He can decide whether you stay or go.”
Raine nodded. “Right.”
The guard gave him a few directions to get to the mayor’s compound. Then the two guards stood back and let him into the city of Wellspring.
And it was a city, with buildings looking almost normal-except where a wall had peeled away, replaced by random metal sheeting. Or the brick structures that turned into wood halfway up.
And everywhere there were signs. Some advertised things Raine didn’t understand, such as a fat grinning face-a jowly man with poached-egg eyes-saying in a speech balloon, “Watch and Win! Mutant Bash TV, every Friday!”
Don’t want to miss that, he thought.
Then there were signs from who called the shots here, messages from the Authority.
One sign: REPORT ANY ILLEGAL TRADING TO THE ENFORCERS.
And: THE VISIONARY AND THE AUTHORITY ARE THE FUTURE.
There were even bars, and Raine was reminded about how this started for him, being picked up at that Red Hook dive near his apartment.
People looked at his buggy as he drove down the streets, a few of the roads with rough, near-cobblestone pavement, but most just dry, packed dirt surfaces.
He drove past what looked like a sports stadium. A sign: RALLY TOMORROW-THE WHITE RABBIT!
This was where they race, he realized. The place was dark now, quiet.
Ahead he saw a building that looked like it had once been a museum or library-a few pillars left standing outside-save that half the building was
gone.
Guess repairs and renovation don’t get done around here.
There were more guards on the steps, standing casually, dressed like Wild West characters who’d had too much of the local brew. Long coats, big hats, vests, and guns in holsters, rifles slung over their shoulders.
He pulled his buggy alongside the building entrance.
“Can’t leave that here,” one guard said.
“Got a meeting with the mayor,” Raine said.
“Best be back in fifteen minutes. Never know what can happen to a vehicle left on the street.”
The guard laughed at that, and his partner joined in.
Raine walked past them. “Sure hope nothing happens to it,” he said as he passed the guard who spoke to him. “That would be unfortunate.” He held the guard’s eye, unflinching. “All around.”
The guard looked away.
Raine went into the building-a sign pointed to a stairwell, MAYOR’S OFFICE -and he went up the stairs to meet the mayor of this not-so-fair city.
Clayton had his feet up on a desk and smoked something. Not quite tobacco, yet it didn’t smell like anything more powerful, at least anything Raine had ever smelled. He blew a smoke ring into the air.
“Son, come on in. Pull up a chair.”
“Mayor, thanks for seeing me.”
Another puff, another ring. Raine remembered a favorite film from his childhood. A videotape-God, VHS-of Alice in Wonderland. Of the caterpillar sitting above Alice, puffing away.
Talking in riddles.
He looked around and pulled a wooden chair close to Clayton’s desk.
“Looks like you’ve had some bad times out there.” Clayton gestured with a hand, pointing at the obvious smears on Raine’s clothes. “Best get some new clothes, son. Stuff like that unsettles the good citizens. They’re nice and safe here. Don’t need any reminders of what’s out there.” A big smile. “Beyond our walls. ”
Clayton wore a hat as well, a leathery fedora of some kind. And what appeared to be a monocle that he could flip up and down. Added to his carefully crafted beard and mustache with tapered points and a perfect V shape, the mayor of this city was… something to see.
His long jacket had to be miserable to wear in the heat.
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