by James Axler
In the morning the companions were pleased to discover that the rhino had departed. However, they felt sure he was still in the area, watching and waiting for them to make a mistake and cross the river into his part of the world. Suspiciously, the corpse of the fat sec woman was untouched, the blaster still lying in her outstretched hand.
Well-fed, curried and rested, the horses now accepted the companions as their new masters, and made no complaints as they climbed into the saddles. With the loss of his stallion, Ryan took the next-largest animal, a barrel-chested mare with a reddish-brown coat and a thick black mane.
“Okay, let’s ride. But close to the river,” Ryan directed, sliding the Steyr into a gunboot set alongside his saddle. The leather sleeve hadn’t been made for this particular weapon, and the telescopic sight made it a snug fit. That meant Ryan wouldn’t have to worry about the longblaster bouncing free if they were chased over rough terrain.
“No argument there!” Mildred replied, wrapping her arms around the waist of J.B. while the man shook the reins and got his gelding into motion.
Staying at an easy pace, the companions rode on through the next few days, stopping only to cook meals, sleep and regularly check for any saddle sores. But the horses were in fine shape, and actually seemed to relish the relaxed pace of the ride, along with the steady supply of food. Each of them was starting to noticeably fill out a little, the gaunt look easing in their long faces, muscles swelling, a healthy shine returning to their coats.
There was no further sign of the rhino, but the companions wisely stayed close to the river anyway, until it snaked away to the south, with the predark ruins just to the north. With no choice in the matter, Ryan led the group away from the waterway, feeling steadily more vulnerable as it receded.
“What weapons got left?” Jak asked, his body moving to the motion of the horses as if he had been born in a saddle.
“Two pipe bombs, the two implo grens, a jar full of firecrackers and a dozen road flares,” J.B. answered. “If that damn thing charges us again, you can fragging guess which I’m using first!”
Hearing the worried tone in his voice, Mildred gave the man a squeeze around the waist, and he replied by patting her hand.
At dawn the next day the companions reached the outskirts of the city. Traces of a paved road appeared sporadically under the thick grass, and occasionally the rusted remains of a mailbox would appear inside a clump of weeds. There was a large irregular hole in the ground alongside a tall sign announcing a gas station, and a U.S. Navy Hummer sat in the middle of a field of clover, the interior now, ironically, a humming beehive.
By noon, the ruins were coming closer together, the scattered remains of the suburbs giving way to office buildings and stores. There were a lot of cars scattered on the streets, and an APC rested amid the rubble of a smashed fountain.
None of the buildings rose more than ten stories. Palm trees grew randomly, often out of the wrecks of cars or store windows. A large building seemed to have a small rain forest thriving on the roof.
“Must have once had a rooftop garden,” Mildred guessed, using a hand to shade her face from the sun. “They made good insulation, and even better PR.”
“Better what, madam?” Doc asked, titling his head.
“Public relations,” Mildred replied, feeling sheepish for some reason. “A lot of business executives didn’t care how they made money, as long as they were liked by the public.”
“Scalawags.” Doc snorted in contempt.
She nodded. “At the very least.”
“Folks revolt and hang?” Jak asked, checking over the passing ruins.
“Sadly, no,” Mildred said with a sigh. “But sometimes, it sure would have been nice if they had.”
“Bastard odd place,” Ryan muttered, the Steyr lying across his lap for quick access. “The city looks like it was nuked before skydark.”
“It was,” Mildred answered. “Well, sort of, anyway. This isn’t a real city, but the training grounds for the SEALs to practice fighting in an urban environment. This was built to resemble the ruins of a bombed-out city.”
“They make like this?” Jak asked. The teen wasn’t sure if he was more shocked or offended.
“Deuced clever, I must admit,” Doc rumbled, riding past the marquee of a crumbling movie theater. “Albeit, a tad Draconian.”
“The only way to practice putting out a fire is to set something ablaze,” Krysty said pragmatically, her hair steadily flexing and coiling to show her unease. Ever since the companions landed on this island, she had the feeling of being watched, but never so intently as now. It was as if a thousand eyes were studying her every move.
“Something like that,” Mildred agreed. “Although the SEALs mostly practiced rescue operations, saving hostages, recovering stolen nukes and such.”
“Mostly,” Ryan said. “But not always.”
“Sometimes they did nightcreeps on terrorists,” Mildred admitted honestly. “Or at least, I think so. All of their work was very hush-hush, burn-before-reading, that sort of thing.”
“Midnight soldiers,” Doc muttered, using his ebony sword stick to flick aside a rusty soda can from the top of a crashed jetfighter, the fuselage oddly marked with what appeared to be Cyrillic lettering. The can skittered along the cracked sidewalk and rattled around inside a pothole, the noise echoing slightly along the rows of artificially destroyed buildings.
Suddenly a fuzzy little monkey appeared in a window. Scarily larger than a sewer rat, its fur was a deep brown with a distinctive white belly and matching bib just under the jaw. It chattered nosily at the riders, clearly annoyed over the invasion, then hissed with surpassing volume, exposing dagger-like teeth, the front two dripping a greenish fluid.
Instantly, Ryan fired from the hip, the slug slamming the animal off the ledge and sending the corpse tumbling away.
“Acid,” Mildred cursed, thumbing back the hammer on her Czech-made ZKR target pistol. “The little bastard had acid-based venom!” The wood was rapidly dissolving where the venom splattered on the window-sill, tendrils of black smoke rising from the sizzling splotch.
“Hopefully, he was alone,” Krysty said, hefting the M-16 rapidfire. She was down to her last clip, the same as Jak. In short order, they would be back to their handblasters.
Just then there came a scrambling, scratching noise from the sewer and a second monkey appeared, closely followed by another, then a dozen or so more.
“Ace them!” Ryan yelled, cutting loose with SIG-Sauer. The first few rounds blew away the nearest monkey, then two more behind. But the rest kept coming, as unstoppable as the morning tide.
However, the rest of the companions opened fire, the hail of lead from the rapidfires chewing a crimson swatch through the howling monkeys. Immediately the rest of the tiny creatures changed direction, wildly jumping back into the sewers and drains. Some of them fled under the rusted wrecks of predark cars, or hurtled themselves through the smashed windows of stores in a frantic effort to escape. In only moments the street was clear of any live animals. A score of furry bodies were sprawled on the weedy asphalt, twitching into death.
“Little bastards afraid blasters,” Jak growled, pleasantly surprised at the reaction.
“Indeed, my young friend,” Doc muttered, easing down the hammer of his LeMat. “They must have encountered firearms before and the survivors of that experience informed the others to beware.”
“Well, they certainly have now,” J.B. snarled, glancing around. Scampering along the ruins on the corner, a dozen monkeys ducked out of sight.
“Stay razor, people,” Ryan added, turning his head to check his blindside. Sure enough, a monkey was crawling through the leafy vines growing over the hood of a burned-out ambulance. The man stroked the trigger and the 9 mm round plowed into the creature, throwing it backward to smack into a brick wall, leaving a ghastly stain of green venom and red blood.
“These little bastards like to jump at you from behind,” Mildred added, holsteri
ng the ZKR to haul the scattergun from the boot. As she worked the pump-action, a monkey leaped toward her from the stained-glass window of a church. Instinctively the physician triggered the weapon. The blast shredded the tiny simian, and finished the destruction of the century-old window.
“We better find that part, then get out triple fast,” Krysty said, then she heard something scramble overhead.
Looking up, the woman cursed at the sight of a monkey scampering along a telephone cable stretched across the street. She fired twice, the first round blowing off the head of the animal and the second cutting the line. As the cable dropped to the ground, more monkeys rushed around on the roof of the apartment building directly alongside the telephone pole. Damn little muties were smart. Too damn smart for her liking!
“Make haste, Ryan. Where do we try for the part we need?” Doc asked, tucking the LeMat into his belt to crack open the Webley and quickly reload.
Brushing back his long hair, Ryan scowled over the pretend city, dourly noting the incredible number of monkeys that were jumping around the companions, always trying to stay behind the group.
“Mildred, you sure this place was fully operational,” Ryan demanded, “and not just a mock-up, like one of those displays in a museum?”
“Everything worked,” she stated with conviction. “That was the only way for the SEALs to rehearse an operation.”
“Okay, then, a plumbing store would be the best, I reckon,” Ryan decided, looking down each of the streets of the intersection. If there had been any signs, they were long gone, consumed by the acid rains or ripped away by tropical storms. “After that a hotel or laundry would do fine.”
“A laundry?” Doc asked quizzically, then nodded. “Because of the industrial water heaters needed, of course.”
“How about an air plant?” Krysty said out of the blue, riding around a blast crater in the street. At the bottom of the depression was a gigantic diesel engine, a small bush starting to grow around the smashed slab of technology.
“That’ll do fine,” J.B. said with a growing smile.
As the companions rode toward the building, the monkeys followed along, jumping from roof to roof, scampering between the parked cars, always in motion, always trying to get closer.
Guiding their horses into the empty parking lot, the companions managed to leave the monkeys behind, the vast expanse of cracked asphalt offering the creatures nowhere to safely hide. There were a couple of big rigs at the other end of the lot, a Mack truck and a flatbed Fleetwood, parked near a fuel pump. But they were too far away to be used as cover.
Sliding off his horse, Ryan passed the reins to Krysty and pulled out his Navy telescope to check inside the building.
“Clear,” he announced, compacting the device once more. “Krysty and Doc, stay with the horses, everybody else with me. Watch your six. These little rad suckers mean business.”
“Me, too,” Jak growled, hefting the M-16 rapidfire.
Taking the point position, Ryan eased up a short flight of concrete steps to the loading dock and then inside the cavernous building.
The interior was thickly coated with dust, which the companions took as a good thing, since it showed there hadn’t been any recent monkey activity in here. Filling the cavernous room were row after row of compressed air cylinders, each standing six feet tall and topped with a brass valve. Hundreds of the cylinders were still connected to the overhead feeder lines, flexible hoses snaking down from a rigid main line. Every few yards there was a safety valve, or a pressure meter, to check for leaks. Fire extinguishers were everywhere. A lot of other equipment stood around, hulking machines covered with dials and gauges.
Dimly, Mildred remembered seeing a news report about a fire at a compressed-air plant. The company not only sold compressed air, but also medical tanks full of pure hydrogen, pure oxygen and nitrogen. The blaze exploded the hydrogen tanks, and the oxygen fed the flames until the nitrogen tanks popped their valves on top. Weighing no more than a hundred pounds, but charged with two thousand pounds of compressed gas, the cylinders took off like rockets, zooming randomly in every direction, smashing through brick walls and people with equal ease. The death toll had been staggering, and several of the flying bottles had finally come to rest almost a full mile away, usually in the wreckage of a house.
“Careful of what you shoot,” Mildred warned. “One bullet in the wrong place and we could all be blown to kingdom come.”
Pushing aside a set of double doors, Ryan paused as they swung out of the way, then broke off from the corroded hinges and slammed to the concrete floor with a deafening crash. That brought a chorus of screaming from the dozens of monkeys hidden behind the bottles, and they scampered away, one brave soul pausing to spit venom at the two-legs before joining the others.
As the globule of deadly saliva smacked into the cinder-block wall nearby, J.B. swung up the Uzi, but withheld firing. If any of those bottle was still charged, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds could start a chain reaction of gaseous explosion that would level the building, as well as the companions.
Squinting into the gloom, Jak flicked a butane lighter alive, then walked to a sign and blew off the dust to read that it was the hydrogen charging line. Quickly he released the lighter and backed away.
“Need light or they ace,” the teenager warned.
“That’s the plan!” J.B. muttered, and opened fire with the Uzi. The small windows set along the top of the walls exploded under the assault of the chattering machine pistol, the rain of glass heralding an infusion of sunlight. As the falling shards shattered among the rows of cylinders stacked in the corners, the companions heard monkey screams, and a host of bloody forms darted out of the shadows to race away, clutching their ghastly wounds.
As the reverberations faded away, there came a sharp whistle, and Ryan waved the others closer. Located behind a locked iron grille was the repair shop for the air plant, the shelves stacked full of spare parts for the compressors, meters, gauges, feeder lines and pressure regulators.
“Jackpot!” J.B. grinned and got out his tool to trick open the lock.
While the rest of the companions stood guard, Ryan and J.B. moved along the shelves, taking what they needed, as well as some additional items.
“Teflon tape, plumber’s dope, liquid weld. Nuking hell, what a find!” J.B. chortled in delight, packing his munitions bag full. “I haven’t seen a find like this since that salt dome city in New Mex.”
“Here’s the real prize,” Ryan said, lifting a tapering valve into view. “Adapters. With these we can connect anything to damn near anything. The boat is as good as fixed.”
“Thank God.” Mildred exhaled. “I was starting to think that we might never get off this accursed rock.”
“Once we’re back on the mainland, we can trade these for a month of bed and food at any ville,” J.B. added, tucking away a Stilton wrench. Dimly, he recalled that his father used to call the huge tool a monkey wrench. There was some sort of irony at work there, but the details of it escaped him at the moment.
In the distance, a monkey popped up on top of a cylinder. A few flecks of red paint still adhering to the sides marked it as containing pressurized hydrogen. Bringing up the rapidfire, Jak withheld firing. The tiny animal chattered angrily and ducked back out of sight. The fragging muties were starting to understand that the norms wouldn’t shoot at the gas tanks.
“Time to go,” Jak stated, flexing his hand. A knife dropped into his palm and he flipped it forward.
With a meaty thud, the blade slammed deep into the chest of a monkey, driving the animal off the bottle and out a window.
Knocked off balance, the cylinder toppled to hit another cylinder, which fell into a group of them, the clanging and banging sounding louder than a thousand church bells.
As the companions started for the exit, the cylinders continued to topple over like dominoes, the chaos spreading like wildfire. A dozen valves were snapped off cylinders to no result, then one shattered. A long hissing
rush of a pale yellow gas spread out in a roiling cloud. A scampering monkey darted into the cloud and stopped dead as if hitting a brick wall. Shuddering, it collapsed to the floor, bloody foam bubbling from the slack mouth.
“That’s sulfur dioxide!” Mildred cursed, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Hold your breath. Don’t breathe until we’re safely outside.”
Doing as they were told, the companions backed away, trying to skirt the billowing cloud. But rolling around on the floor, propelled by the hissing exhaust, the canister collided with a score of other cylinders, sending them falling. More valves snapped off, one canister hissing loudly for only a few seconds before becoming exhausted. But another twirled madly in ever-increasing speed, the stream of compressed oxygen roaring upward like a geyser. Then it tilted over and streaked across the floor to crash through the cinder-block wall, leaving a gaping hole a yard wide.
Another six-foot bottle scraped along the floor, throwing off bright sparks as it headed straight for the companions. But before they could move, it ran out of compressed argon and stopped in the middle of the room, gently rocking back and forth.
In the overhead rafters, the monkeys were howling and screaming, throwing down light bulbs and the occasional wad of feces. The companions answered with a long barrage of blaster fire, and a score of riddled bodies fell to the charging floor, knocking over more bottles and releasing even more clouds of compressed gas. Then the ancient feeder line broke, and all of the charging hoses came free, the insulated lengths slashing wildly.
Screeching, a monkey dived out of the shadows to land on J.B.’s shoulder. Instantly the man angled his head, putting the fedora between him and the little animal. Preparing to spit, it paused in confusion for a moment, and Mildred stepped in close to discharge the ZKR into its face. The tiny head exploded, and the decapitated monkey tumbled away, gushing a torrent of red life.
Unexpectedly, several large squat canisters in the corner of the room violently erupted. The bluish contents sprayed upward, washing across a score of gibbering monkeys. The animals went motionless, then toppled to the floor and shattered into pieces like glass figurines.
