by James Axler
“Whoever built, expect trouble,” Jak stated, patting the five-foot-thick walls as they passed through the open gates.
There were two of them, one on either side of the wall, and each forged of assorted pieces of metal into a single massive slab. There were dents in the outer gate, probably from cannonball impacts, or possibly grens, but there were no actual breaks in the resilient material.
Past the double gate was a sandbag nest for the local sec men to stand behind to fight off any invaders. There was an old howitzer cannon, but the companions could see that it was a piece of drek, just something to intimidate outlanders. However, there were quivers of arrows and a rack of wooden crossbows, the arms made from the leaf-springs of a car. Those were very powerful weapons, fully capable of driving an arrow completely through a person at five hundred feet.
The rest of the ville was pretty standard, dirt streets and a lot of small veggie farms. Ramshackle huts for the ville people, wooden barracks for the sec men and a big stone house on a hill for the baron. That’s where they went first, as all of the best stuff would be located there. Rank doth have its privileges, as Doc liked to say, while Mildred always countered with, It’s good to be king.
There was a lot of spent brass everywhere, as if the ville sec men had been in the fight of their lives. But no bodies, only the occasional piece of torn cloth or a broken blaster. Curious, Ryan lifted one to inspect the weapon. It was a classic, a Browning longblaster, one of the best blasters ever created. Obviously this had been the property of the sec chief or the baron. Only now the weapon was compressed flat, as if a smithy had laid it on an anvil and pounded the weapon with a sledgehammer. Ryan found the idea that somebody would ace a perfectly good blaster stupe, and tossed the weapon away. It landed in a clatter near a water trough that had recently been smashed into splinters.
“Something wrong here,” Mildred said, looking up at the cloudy sky. “From the bloodstains, I’d say this fight couldn’t have happened more than a few days ago, so where are the scavengers? I’d expect the sky to be full of vultures and eagles, flocking in to feast on the decaying bodies.”
“What bodies?” Jak asked with a scowl.
“My point exactly,” Mildred replied, testing the draw on her blaster.
In the center of the ville, situated on a small hill to make it dominate the landscape, was a brick building, formerly a public library, and now the castle of the baron. Ryan noted more dents in the brickwork from cannonball impacts, as well as a couple of breakthrough points.
“Strange, but I don’t see any cannonballs partially buried in the ground,” J.B. observed, working the arming bolt on his Uzi. “That’s either mighty good shooting, or else the winner took back their balls.”
Unable to stop himself, Jak made a rude suggestion, and everybody laughed at the sage wisdom of always taking your balls along with you, just in case of trouble.
The front doors opened into the audience room, a fancy throne set at the far end to make folks have to walk over to meet the ruler.
“Intimidation through the positive use of negative space,” Doc muttered. “Very clever. The ruler here was no fool.”
Checking behind the throne, J.B. located the hidden escape route that most barons fashioned, and it naturally led to his private armory. However, that had already been looted to the walls. Every ammo box, wooden barrel and shelf was empty; there wasn’t a single live brass left behind, only some empty gunbelts, a bundle of fishing spears and a couple of wooden shields covered with scaly leather.
“I guess the winners did take everything back home with them,” J.B. noted, removing his fedora to massage his scalp before putting the hat back into place. “To the victor goes the spoils, eh, Doc?”
“Indubitably, John Barrymore,” the scholar agreed pensively. “As well as everything else, it would seem. I am surprised that Ryan and Krysty found what little in provisions that they did.”
“The self-heats were on a top shelf, out of sight from below,” Krysty answered, checking some boxes set into the wall. From the strips of tape left behind, it was clear this had been where the locals stored the grens. Those had also been taken, or else all used.
“Kraken hit ville?” Jak asked with a scowl.
“This far from the sea?” Mildred scoffed. “I doubt that highly. Besides, there isn’t enough wanton destruction. After a kraken attack there usually isn’t anything left standing.”
“Kraken, or not, this is the second ville we’ve found destroyed,” Ryan stated grimly, rubbing his unshaved chin. “And I’m starting to feel that these aren’t random events. I think we landed in the middle of a bastard war. Somebody wants to take over the whole damn island, and is arranging for any troublemakers to get aced.”
“Okay, we do a fast recce for any food or wags, then leave,” J.B. commanded. “I don’t want to be here if this warlord comes back with his army to inhabit the ville.”
Everybody else agreed, and the companions quickly left the library via the kitchen. There was plenty of dried fish on the upper shelves, along with a few jars of preserves, but absolutely nothing on the dented lower shelves. The companions left with their pockets full, but feeling positive that they had just missed some vital clue to the destruction of the ville population.
In the back courtyard a dozen chickens were trapped inside a wire enclosure. The scrawny birds fluttered eagerly around the food dish, thinking they were going to be fed at last. Instead the companions snapped the necks of the chickens and stuffed them into their backpacks.
As expected, the garage was located directly alongside the baron’s home. Unfortunately there were no wags, nor any signs that the locals even had any wheeled transport aside from some buckboard wags and a few wheelbarrows. However, wags meant horses and the companions located them in a corral behind the garage. There were a dozen gaunt animals standing listlessly around, too weak to move. Their feed bags were flat and as empty as the water trough. A stallion was lying aced on the ground, tongue extended and covered with maggots. Everything within reach of the animals trapped in the corral had been consumed, including the leather halters, hemp ropes and canvas bags.
“Water first,” Krysty decided, going to a hand pump. Working the lever, she filled a plastic bucket and sloshed some water into the trough. By the third bucket, the horses shuffled closer to lap at the tepid fluid, their tails weakly moving in delight.
“I find feed,” Jak stated, running into the barn. He soon returned with a half bag of oats and poured some of the contents into each of the feeder troughs. The oats had to be spread out, as he knew full well that the starving animals would fight one another to the death for the meager handful of food.
“Looks like we’re here for the next couple of days,” Ryan said, reaching out to pat one of the mares on the muscular throat as she continued to lap up some water. Pausing in her drinking, the horse nickered her thanks, then went right back to putting as much water inside her belly as possible.
“We can travel a lot farther and faster on horseback,” Krysty agreed, laying aside the bucket. “They’re in good shape, too. Just hungry.” There were no signs of the animals ever having been beaten by their owners, or having suffered the use of spurs. A good kick in the rump with the heels of your boot got a horse moving fast, there was no excuse for the use of spurs except plain old-fashioned sadism.
“There certainly is enough green grass growing about to feed them properly without tapping into our own limited stores,” Doc said, looking over the ville. “And I will wager that they would love to try some of those nectarines from the orchard.”
“Just remove that huge pit first,” Mildred warned, but then stopped as there came a low rumble from the ground.
“Dark night, is this an earthquake?” J.B. asked, glancing around the ville. However, there were no telltale spurts of dust rising up from the soil. Then at the far end of the street, something large stepped through the ville gate.
At first, the thing resembled an oversize African rhinoc
eros. But there was nothing special about those; the companions had encountered dozens of the huge, ungainly beasts, the descendants of the original animals on display in city zoos. Before the civilization completely collapsed, many of the zookeepers released their charges into the wild to fend for themselves rather than slowly starve to death in their cages. The survivors roamed parts of the Deathlands to this day: zebras, gorillas, lions, giraffes, emus and such. None of which were particularly dangerous to people armed with rapidfires.
“Wonder if taste good?” Jak asked, swinging up the M-16 and clicking the selector switch from single shot to full-auto.
“I’ll gut the big bastard if somebody else digs the firepit,” Ryan offered, then paused as the huge beast lumbered past the dented gates. The height of its oversize horn perfectly matched the location of the dents in the thick metal. That was when he saw the creature had three-toed feet instead of the usual two. Its ears were flat against its skull, and its eyes were a dull yellow. Clearly, this wasn’t a rhino heading their way, but some mutie animal that only resembled the peaceful herbivore.
“Oh, hell,” Mildred whispered, looking down at the street. In a flash she could identify the flat patches in the dirt as footprints. Three-toed footprints.
“We chill,” Jak said confidently.
“My dear Jak, the entire sec force of this ville failed to stop that monster before,” Doc whispered, drawing his second blaster and cocking back the hammer. “Pray tell, what makes you think that we can?”
Before the teenager could answer, the rhino turned its squat head in the direction of the companions standing near the corral. Pawing the dirt like an enraged bull, the animal lowered its head and charged.
Instantly, Ryan swung up the Steyr and took aim.
“Lead won’t stop the brute,” J.B. snarled, pulling out a pipe bomb and lighting the fuse.
The reverberations in the ground steadily grew stronger as the thundering beast grew ever closer, and the man swung the explosive charge overhead on the end of a short rope. When the beast was less than a hundred feet away, J.B. let go, and the sizzling bomb sailed down the street to land directly in front of the rhino and violently explode. The blast filled the street, smashing open the doors of a dozen huts and throwing out a billowing cloud of dust. Then the mutie appeared from the heart of the cloud, still moving, its smooth hide completely undamaged from the powerful detonation, or the hail of deadly shrapnel.
In stark clarity, the companions could now see that the entire hide was covered with oddly shaped scales. Her hair tightly coiling, Krysty recognized them as the scales sewn into the shields in the ville armory. Gaia, the thing was armor-plated!
“Aim for the mouth!” Ryan snarled, shooting as fast as he could work the bolt. In fast succession, he hit the beast three times, but with its head lowered for the charge, the mouth was well protected and the 7.62 mm steel-jacketed rounds merely bounced off the adamantine hide.
In a surge of motion, the companions separated, everybody going in a different direction to try to confuse the animal.
The rhino paused for a heartbeat, trying to choose, but that was enough. A second pipe bomb from J.B. exploded, showering the beast with the slimy contents of a rain barrel. Shaking off the water, the rhino glowered at the animals trapped inside the nearby corral. Instantly the horses released the contents of their bladders as a sign of submission. Sniffing the air, the rhino turned away and stomped off in search of other prey. Human prey.
We smell wrong, Doc mentally noted, running sideways toward the barn, discharging both of his mammoth blasters, the LeMat and the Webley sounding louder than pirate cannons. The big rounds slapped onto the rhinoceros and ricocheted off harmlessly.
Scrambling up a tree, Jak kept going along a thick branch until diving for the roof of a building. He landed flat, cracking several of the ceramic tiles and sending down broken pieces in a loose flurry. Heading that way, the rhino circled the house, then it slowed to a stop and bellowed in frustration, the thundering challenge sounding more like a reptile than a mammal.
Aiming the M-16 carefully, Krysty emptied an entire clip into the face of the creature, trying for the eyes. But they were protected by a sloping ridge that seemed as impervious to bullets as the rest of the armored body.
Coming out of the shadows, Ryan stepped onto the balcony of the gaudy house and fired twice more at the rhino. The slugs slammed deep into a black nostril, but instead of a gush of blood, the beast merely snorted as if stung by an annoying bee.
Pulling out a hatchet, Jak threw it from the rooftop and the blade thudded into the back of the beast, glancing off without even leaving a mark.
Popping into view from the second floor of the barracks, J.B. put a long burst of 9 mm rounds from the Uzi straight into the beast’s backside. The soft lead rounds flattened upon impact and tumbled to the ground. An armored rear end. Now J.B. had seen everything.
Spinning, the rhino bellowed in rage and charged, crashing straight into the wooden building. Windows shattered, the whole structure shook and roof tiles slipped off by the score. The chimney toppled over, and the rhino came out the other side, covered in dust and debris, but still looking for its mysterious attacker.
“Son of a bitch! How did the locals stop this thing?” Mildred demanded, snapping off rounds from the branches of another tree. But then the physician understood that they hadn’t; this juggernaut had trampled every living person in the ville.
No, that was not quite right, Mildred silently corrected. The thing chilled every person in the ville. But it ignored the horses and chickens. This was a people killer, nothing more.
“Not mutie, biowep!” Jak shouted, reloading his blaster. A round slipped from his hands and tumbled along the slanted roof to hit a rock on the ground with a musical ping.
With both ears twitching, the rhino turned at the tiny noise and trotted closer to sniff suspiciously at the fallen cartridge. Then it smashed the brass into the dirt with a three-toed hoof.
“This is why that picket fence around the cannie ville was tipped with poison,” Krysty snarled, working the arming bolt to clear a jam from the ejector port of the rapidfire. The bent shell spun away, glittering in the sunlight like stolen gold.
“I still have that piece of wood,” Mildred offered, touching her canvas med kit.
“If you feel like diving onto that thing armed with a sharp stick, you go right ahead!”
“I’ll pass!”
“An implo will take him out!” J.B. yelled, tracking the beast in the street with the barrel of his Uzi. “But we only have two left, and I hate to waste one on an overgrown armadillo!”
Especially since there could be more of these things in the area! Ryan thought, twisting his hands on the longblaster. Briefly, there came to mind the unbidden image of a herd of the unstoppable rhinos stampeding across Clemente Island, flattening everything in its path.
“Save them until we got no other choice!” Ryan yelled, firing a single round at the beast. The 7.62 mm slug smacked directly into the panting mouth and disappeared. If the slug did any damage, it wasn’t readily apparent.
Lighting a fuse, J.B. threw a stick of TNT at the lumbering behemoth. The hissing cylinder landed alongside the rhino, and it galloped away, shaking the ground. A few seconds later the explosive charge detonated, throwing a wealth of dirt and grass into the air.
“Son of a bitch is smart,” J.B. muttered unhappily, returning the second stick to his bag. “Got any ideas?”
“Give me a pipe bomb!” Ryan shouted, holding up a hand.
Leaning out the window, J.B. dangled the charge at the end of a rope and slowly spun it into a blur, then let go. Trailing the short rope behind, the bomb sailed over the rhino pawing at the dusty street, and Ryan made the catch.
“Now what?” Krysty yelled through cupped hands.
“Cover me!” Ryan answered, twisting off the fuse to only a tiny nubbin before going back inside. A few moments later the one-eyed man appeared at the front door of the
tavern and sharply whistled.
As the rhino turned, Ryan shot it in the face, then ran for the gate. Lurching into hot pursuit, the beast bellowed an angry challenge and galloped after the hated two-legs. However, Ryan immediately changed direction to head for the sandbag nest in front of the open gate. Reaching the nest, he climbed over the wall and dropped out of sight. Roaring in victory, the rhino plowed straight into the sandbag nest just as the dropped pipe bomb exploded.
The sandbag wall channeled the full force of the blast directly into the beast, and it staggered backward from the swirling cloud, the entire hide bristling with arrows. Then with a groan of tortured metal, the howitzer toppled over to smack the rhino across the back, the body deeply bowing as the spine audibly cracked.
Scrambling up a guard tower, Ryan reached the top of the wall just in time to see the rhino straighten and the arrows start to fall off the thing, the tiny punctures in the thick hide closing to disappear completely.
“Fireblast, the fat bastard regens!” Ryan shouted, aiming the longblaster, but withheld firing. What good would copper-jacketed lead do against a juggernaut like this?
At the cry, the rhino ran at the wall and slammed into the limestone blocks. The blunt horn cracked off a piece, leaving behind a dent that strongly resembled cannonball damage. With nothing in sight to throw at the rhino, Ryan forced himself to do nothing, while the thing rammed the wall again and again, the impacts making the gates creak as they moved.
Finally tiring of the useless assault, the rhino trotted back down the main street of the ville and returned to the horse corral. Using its curved horn to open the wooden gate, the rhino walked inside. Whinnying in terror, the panicking horses backed into the far corner, but the behemoth ignored them and went straight to the decaying carcass and began to eat. Maggots, worms, flesh and bones, the rhino chomped on everything, the bones audibly cracking under the brutal eating of the blunt jaw.
