by James Axler
J.B.’S EYES WIDENED again as flame blossomed in four yellow petals from the flash suppressor of Mildred’s M-16. A vicious crack left his left ear hearing nothing but a loud ringing. Hot air stung his cheek like a red ant’s bite.
He turned. A squat man in a filthy grayish sweatshirt and baggy sweat pants loomed over him with a fire ax raised over his head in both hands. He had a weird bowl-shaped haircut and was looking cross-eyed at a small, neat blue hole right through the bridge of his nose. He collapsed at the tip of the Armorer’s boot, the back of his head missing.
J.B. blew out a long breath, then threw himself down behind Moredock again to take stock of the tactical situation.
Shots were still cracking in both directions. The heavy weapons still split the sky overhead. They mostly seemed to be working the far ridgeline, trying to hose off any snipers the Barrett gunners had missed. But nobody was charging.
J.B. grinned at Mildred and gave her the thumbs-up. She grinned and bobbed her head back. He dropped the empty mag out of the Beretta’s well, stuffed in one of the extras he’d gotten from the corporal, then shoved the weapon down inside the back of his waistband. He scuttled around Moredock and the bike that had almost run him over, to snag the machine pistol its rider had no further use for. J.B. had a particularly soft spot for that particular piece of Israeli ironwork, overly heavy as it was and shit-for-blowback besides. It was reliable, and it got the job done; he frequently carried one. He was pleased to find three full—he hoped; no time to count rounds now—magazines stuffed in the pockets of the coldheart’s vest.
“Jak,” he shouted, looking around through the smoke and dust that hung in the air. There was a breeze, as always, but the embankment and the train caused it to eddy right here and do a piss-poor job of clearing the air. “Jak, are you all right?”
“Fine.” The Armorer saw the youth staggering toward him through the smoke, holding a trench knife with a spiked knuckle-duster handguard in one hand and a baseball bat studded with cut-off nails in the other. He looked as if he’d bathed in blood, then rolled around in the dust to dry it off. Which was probably about what happened. It made him look even more menacingly unearthly than usual.
“Find a blaster and follow me,” J.B. called. “You, too, Millie.”
“Got him covered, John. Catch, Jak.” She tossed him a Marlin lever-action carbine with brass brads pounded decoratively into it, outlining the stock and foregrip. He dropped the bat and caught it deftly.
He led them up the railway embankment, which, while steep, was climbable. Bullets kicked up little spouts of dust near them, none near enough to pay attention to.
Once at the top he went to his belly and rolled right under the train. Mildred and Jak goggled. They looked at each other, shrugged and followed his example.
ROCKING IN HIS PLUSH CHAIR out of fear for his friends he couldn’t quite suppress, Doc watched the battle unfold on a bank of monitors mounted in the command center in the car just behind MAGOG’s engine. Escorted by a pair of guards armed with MP-5 machine pistols in pristine condition, the General had led him forward through a flexible armored gangway that connected his personal car to the headquarters wag. They had then sat in climate-conditioned comfort, sipped sherry and watched the ultimate in reality TV.
Guilt panged him at sitting there in safety while his friends risked their lives. He wasn’t the greatest asset in a fight, he knew, but he held his own and longed at least to share their peril. But there was nothing he could do.
As with the General’s quarters, the soundproofing was almost perfect. He could hear nothing of the shooting outside, much less the shouts of rage and screams of mortal anguish. He could sense the vibrations of the heavy guns firing outward from the train, weird harmonics weaving subsonic melodies he felt in his bones rather than heard. One sound unnervingly not blocked out was the irregular thunk, thinkthunk, like hail on a rooftop, of bullets striking the armored shell right by their heads and bodies.
“Don’t worry,” the General had said, when Doc’s head had jerked away reflexively from the sound of an early impact. “Nothing’ll get through this baby. And the walls won’t spall, even from point-blank hits from a 30 mm chain gun.” Doc wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded duly impressive.
Doc had been far more impressed by the volcanic outpouring of fire from the train. He was also impressed by how surprisingly ineffective it was, comparatively speaking. To be sure, he could see scores of bodies, or sizable chunks of them, strewed across acres of desert. But that kind of outgoing firepower should’ve scoured the land, not just of all life, but everything, right down to bedrock. Or so it seemed to him.
Still, the carnage had been quite exemplary. He had to admit that. He hoped he hadn’t turned too green.
Something beyond worry and incipient nausea began to bother him as the volume of fire began to diminish.
“If I may be so bold as to speak, General—”
“Go ahead.”
“I notice that all our attention is being drawn to the south side of the train.”
The General nodded crisply. “I was just noticing the same thing. You’ve an acute military eye along with your other accomplishments, Professor.”
He uttered orders. His words broke off crisply and decisively without being barked or snapped, and men obeyed them, it seemed, because it never occurred to them that they might not. Whatever else one could say about the man, he had a gift of command, which Doc couldn’t help but admire.
The techs pressed keys and the views on the monitors rearranged themselves, so that the largest ones showed what the hardpoint-mounted cameras on the train’s north side showed. Even as they did so, the hailstorm thumping suddenly began to sound from that side of the train.
The monitors showed muzzle-flashes sparking from the brush hard by that side. Doc could make out forms prone or crouching in concealment. He realized they were too close for the train’s mounted weapons to touch them.
The General grunted. “I should’ve ordered that brush cleared back at least two hundred yards,” he said. “I’m getting lazy in my old age. Still, we can’t clean up the whole Deathlands.”
He smiled. “At least, not until we find the Great Redoubt. Then what won’t we be able to accomplish? It’ll be a great day, Professor, eh? What’s that?”
Apparently some of the cameras were dirigible. An operator had swept one back to look along the side of the train, then panned back out again. He swung the remotely operated camera inward once more to reveal the heads and shoulders of three people, lying on their stomachs firing outward at the coldhearts attacking from north of the line.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed. “Those are my friends!”
“ESCAPIN’?” Jak asked J.B. as they crouched beneath an armor-shelled wag.
“Not without Doc,” Mildred said quickly.
“Like Millie said,” J.B. agreed.
“Then what?”
“Fighting. Don’t you think it’s a little funny that all the excitement’s been happening on one side of the train?”
Jak looked surprised, bobbed his head.
“What can the three of us do if they’re sneaking up from that direction?” Mildred asked.
“Mebbe keep ‘em from getting onto the rail wag. Mebbe get somebody’s attention, draw us some help. At least keep from getting back-shot, sure.”
“I’ll buy that.” For a moment it looked as if she might say more. After all, the Armorer was talking about helping the people who had murdered Ryan and a lot of helpless women and children, and carried them all off as slaves.
But the MAGOG soldiers held at least some constraints on their behavior, some code of something at least a bit like decency, which was more than the attackers had.
She popped the mag from her M-16, made sure it was loaded, then drove it home with the heel of her hand. “Let’s do it.”
EL ABOGADO’S creepy-crawling artists had been sent, indeed, to creepy-crawl the train. With the major assault attracting everyone�
�s attention everywhere except to the north, it was hoped that would give them some opening to slip inside the train proper. And once within that impregnable metal shell, who knew what they might be able to accomplish?
Fearing, correctly, that the great rail wag had automatic sensors that might detect their approach whether or not any human was looking for them, the would-be infiltrators had been ultracautious. It worked, in that they approached within sprinting distance of the train without detection. It didn’t, because their approach had taken longer than planned. The main assault had already petered out, allowing defenders to think about something other than immediate survival.
J.B., Mildred and Jak had spread out and crawled forward on their bellies just far enough to bring their blasters to bear on the scrub north of the track. The Armorer and Mildred both had M-16s. J.B. had passed Jak the Uzi. Since Jak was an indifferent shot, it made sense for him to have the least accurate blaster.
Marksman or not, Jak’s predator’s eyes spotted movement behind a creosote bush. He splashed 9 mm bullets at it from the Uzi. He missed. The wiry little outlaw reared up and fired back with a decrepit bolt action .22 rifle. He didn’t come any closer to his mark than Jak had, but Mildred planted a bullet unerringly between his eyes.
Detected, the infiltrators went to ground and opened a brisk but wild fire at the trio. The friends fired back, killing two and tagging at least three more.
Then shots cracked out to the left and right of them along the north side of the train. Soldiers were crawling beneath the train and shooting from inside the cars through windows and firing ports. Grens thrown from the top of the train began to burst in the scrub.
By this time, the shooting from the train had almost stopped for lack of targets. The attackers on that side were dead, fled, or hiding. El Abogado’s posse weren’t hang-and-bang fighters by skill or temperament. Sensing that all chance of success was blown, they melted back into the scrub.
A squad of sec men began a fire-and-movement advance into the scrub in pursuit. Several wounded coldhearts were dispatched with bullets behind the ear. The sec men kept moving forward by cover-to-cover rushes, but without much chance of catching any more.
A new voice began barking out orders in a voice not much softer than the crack of a .308. The soldiers at the train redeployed into a semicircle facing the three companions.
Pointing their longblasters at them.
ANOTHER PARTY profoundly impressed by the volume of fire laid down by MAGOG was Chato. The sudden stunning coruscation of really big muzzle-flashes had made his decision for him on a preconscious level. He turned and gave the boot to his pony, and was already below line of sight heading away when the thunderous roar rolled over the hill.
He hadn’t gone half a mile before he rode into a broad shallow wash with a bottom of fine, almost-white sand. At the far side sat a solitary rider: El Abogado in his immaculate frock coat and Panama hat, astride his cream-colored mule with black-tipped ears.
“Where are you going in such a hurry, my friend?” the coldheart asked the fleeing warlord in Spanish.
His life suddenly become a misery, Chato answered truthfully, “Away from this fiasco.”
“Indeed. I believe I shall accompany you.”
“But what of your followers? Do you not seek to avenge them?”
“They’re dicks.”
“Well, do you…do you intend to drag me back in disgrace so that you can take my place?”
El Abogado laughed. “As what? Leader of an even bigger bunch of dicks? Ah, no, my friend. In all the Deathlands, there is no commodity so plentiful as violent fools. It’s as well to be unburdened of this lot, don’t you think?”
Dumbly, Chato found himself nodding.
“What do you want of me?” he asked, still incapable of believing anything but disaster—bloody, painful disaster—impended.
“You are an exemplary sociopath, Chato.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you have yourself a new partner. Such gifts as yours are useful. Shall we ride on? The brighter of our former followers will be fleeing the debacle behind us by now. It would hardly do for them to overtake us, now, would it?”
And so they rode away south together, Chato on his paint pony, El Abogado on his fine mule. As they did, it seemed the weight of the whole world dropped away from Chato’s skinny shoulders.
Chato’s coldheart army was a monster. Sooner or later it would devour him. He had known that from the start. But now—
Now he was free. He began to smile.
It had been a good plan after all.
Chapter Seven
J.B. carefully laid his black longblaster on the cinders and rose, hands spread and raised. “All right, boys. Everything’s easy. Just stay back off the trigger.”
His two companions did likewise. It wasn’t as if they had much choice.
“I hope we just did the right thing, John,” Mildred murmured from the side of her mouth. Any chance they had of slipping away in the confusion had evaporated.
“All right, you three,” Banner commanded. “Down the embankment. Hands behinds your heads.”
Half crouching, Jak shot the Armorer a questioning glance, as did Mildred. He shrugged, then slowly complied. The other two followed.
“Walk over there by the brush,” Banner said. “Don’t turn around.”
“Now, let’s not get way ahead of ourselves, here, Banner,”J.B. said over his shoulder. “We’re on your side.”
“Penalty for civilians carrying blasters is death.”
“But we fought the coldhearts for you,” Mildred said.
“No exceptions.” The wind blew through an endless pause. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, that makes everything just fine.”
“Won’t die this way,” Jak snarled as they approached the scrub, barely bothering to keep his voice down.
“Me, neither,” the Armorer said. “Slim chance is better’n none. When I count three, scatter like quail, children.”
“Sergeant Banner!” It was another familiar voice. “What’s going on here?”
“Firing party, Captain Helton, sir.” The sergeant sounded disgusted. Whether with the handsome young officer, with himself, or with the situation, J.B. couldn’t tell.
“What are you talking about? These people fought for us.”
“That’s what we’re trying to tell the man,” Mildred called. The three had stopped on the edge of the brush. The chance offered by the captain’s intercession seemed better than that of bolting. And anyway, the Armorer counted fast.
“Regulations, sir,” Banner said.
“That’s absurd!”
“One,” J.B. said under his breath.
“General order number twenty-three,” Banner said. “Prisoners caught in possession of weapons are to be executed immediately. No appeal, no exceptions. General’s a real stickler about that. You know that, sir.”
“Two.”
Helton’s face fell. “Well, if that’s the way it’s got to be…”
J.B. flexed his legs slightly and opened his mouth to say “three.”
Somebody new sang out, “Captain Helton, Sergeant Banner! Orders from the General.”
“Don’t leave us in suspense, Corporal McKie,” Helton said.
“General wants to see these three prisoners in his office at once, sir.”
RYAN CAWDOR OPENED his eye.
Blackness. Hintless of stars. Was he blind?
If he was, it would be the capstone misery of a mighty pyramid of them. His whole body was a pulse of pain timed to the pounding of his heart. His head hurt as if it had been recently used as an anvil. He felt the mixed sensations of clammy heat, nausea, and being somehow unmoored from the world that indicated a fever raged in his body. And beneath it all there lay a vast aching void, a sense—a knowledge—of loss. He realized, then, that dim light was seeping into the lower edge of his field of vision. He expelled a long breath in relief and rolled his eye down. Dust-colored li
ght, as if it were shining in through a tunnel mouth just out of sight around a curve. He lay on his back with his head propped on something yielding. His body was swaddled in what he guessed for blankets.
He suddenly remembered. Wags appearing out of nowhere. Uniformed coldhearts with blasters. A great flickering muzzle-flash, pale yellow in the sun. A blow like a sledgehammer to the upper chest.
Falling.
“Krysty,” he croaked. His voice was like a gate that hadn’t been opened in a hundred years.
A strange high-pitched chittering sounded in the darkness right by his head, causing him to start. After the fact he realized it had said, “What’s the matter with his eye? He can’t seem to see us.”
“You forget, Light Sleeper,” said a second voice, lower-pitched enough that Ryan understood it in real time. “Real humans don’t see in the dark as we do. Their eyes are so small.”
Real humans. That could mean only one thing—he’d been captured by muties. He remembered his previous brief flirtation with consciousness, as he lay broken on a rock, half-hanging over the maw of the Big Ditch. The small, furtive figures sidling toward him in the twilight, the misshapen hand reaching out for him…
Adrenaline thrilled in his nerves, the need to escape. He tried to spring to his feet. He couldn’t move. The cloth wrapped around his arms and legs bound him as effectively as steel bands.
“Give us a light, Light Sleeper,” the second mutie said.
Ryan’s body heaved, arching off the cool ground beneath him, once, twice, three times. Then it fell back spent. He was helpless. His consciousness swam from sickness and exertion. Fighting back oblivion he lay, glaring into the dimness in which he could still see only the vaguest suggestion of movement. His chest heaved, far more with rage and frustration at his helplessness than fear. He heard a snap, then another.
What were they? he wondered wildly. Stickies? Scalies?
A third snap. The ancient lighter finally produced a sufficient spark to ignite the butane stream. Yellow light flared.
Ground squirrels?
He lay in a small cave, with an irregular dome of packed-dirt ceiling five feet high. Two creatures sat hunched over him, gazing at him with huge mild eyes. They were about the size of a small chubby child, roughly three feet tall, although they might possibly be closer to four standing erect, presuming they were bipedal. Which didn’t seem a bad presumption, since one was holding the lighter in what seemed to be a furry three-fingered hand. They had little snub noses and round cheeks and round ears that came to black-tufted points. The fur on their bellies was buff colored.
