by James Axler
Oddly, the Hilly did nothing, standing motionless near the mouth of the cave, a hand covering his mouth.
Astonished, LeFontaine and the sec men had no idea what the feeb was doing, and didn’t nuking care. If the Hilly wanted to see a kraken from the inside, that was his choice. But they were going to live!
Bent over their animals, trying to urge them to greater speed, the sec chief and his troops were near the tree line, when suddenly they were engulfed in writhing tentacles.
Indiscriminately, random men and horses were grabbed and bodily dragged back to the lake. Briefly, they shrieked in raw terror, then were hauled below the waves and out of sight.
Reaching the forest, the rest of the sec men sighed in relief, and slowed their advance to keep from getting knocked from their horses by the endless array of low-hanging branches.
“Think we’re safe now?” a sec woman panted, not daring to look backward.
Before anybody could reply, a mottled tentacle lifted her out of the saddle and into the sky. The other sec men heard her scream, but not for very long.
Realizing escape was impossible, LeFontaine reined his horse to a halt under a large oak tree and slipped out of the saddle. Stepping away from the animal, he covered his mouth with a hand and tried not to breathe too loudly. With his heart pounding in his chest, the sec chief burned to tell the others what to do, but knew that would only mean his own demise. They had to figure it out on their own, or buy the farm.
“What the frag are you doing, sir?” a sec man demanded, and then was gone. A few seconds later a bloody boot descended from the sky, the foot still laced tightly inside.
As comprehension dawned, the few remaining sec men brought their horses to a standstill and clambered off, to creep away from the animals as quietly as possible. Set free, the horses bolted deeper into the forest and, one by one, their death screams could be heard from the sky above, heading back toward the lake.
Only a few seconds later, the sec men were alone in the dim forest, a chilly breeze murmuring through the pine needles and stirring the carpet of oak leaves around their boots.
Nobody dared to move, or speak, for an inordinate length of time. Then a new sound began to permeate the woods. Looking curiously around, the sec men blanched as they saw the deadly tentacles of the kraken wiggling along the mossy ground, the questing tip probing every tree, rock and bush in an orderly search for the hidden food.
AS THE TWO MEN FIRED, the soft chug of the SIG-Sauer was lost in the thunderous discharge of the Colt revolver, and they both jerked backward, Ryan grazed across the throat, Donovan spraying blood from a shoulder wound.
“Blasters! The outlanders have more blasters!” Baron Griffin shouted, fumbling for his twin weapons.
Knowing the jig was up, Mildred ruthlessly shot the man smack in the chest. Dropping one of the weapons, the baron staggered backward, splinters showing from the ragged hole in his shirt.
The crafty son of a bitch was wearing wooden body armor, she realized. Now aiming at the baron’s face, Mildred quickly switched targets as Lady Griffin unlimbered her sawed-off shotgun and thumbed back the hammer. Neatly, the physician blew the weapon out of her hands with a well-placed shot from the ZKR. Mildred knew it was foolish, but she still hesitated to ace another woman without provocation, a terrible moral holdover from the twentieth century.
Torn from her grip, the shotgun discharged into the back of a throne and slammed the startled baron off the dais. Screaming in pain, Lady Griffin dropped to her knees, clutching a broken hand to her ripped bodice.
Shooting the sec chief in the chest with a similar lack of results, Ryan triggered his blaster at the falcon, and the bird exploded over Donovan, covering the man with blood and feathers. Blinded, the sec chief clawed at the gore on his face while waving his Colt around and shooting randomly. Feeling the breeze of a passing round on his cheek, Ryan put hot lead into the big man. Crimson erupted from the sec chief’s knee, and from the sleeve of the muscular arm frantically rubbing at his face.
Falling to the floor of the dais, a badly wounded Donovan shot back once more and knocked over the brazier, pieces of flaming charcoal spraying out like a meteor shower as a swirling cloud of black soot filled the chilly air.
By now the ville was in total chaos, screaming civies running around madly, horses whinnying in terror, elks bawing, dogs barking. But the cry of “outlanders” and “blasters” steadily grew louder as it spread across the ville.
Putting a fast five rounds into the roiling smoke covering the fallen sec chief, Ryan heard an answering grunt of pain, then hastily reloaded and turned his attention to the onrushing squad of sec men. He took out the people loading crossbows, then something came at him from his blind side, and Ryan ducked as a boomerang spun by, missing him by inches.
In the distance, Baron Griffin was limping into a squad of sec men and shouting orders. Brandishing weapons, the troops charged toward the dais, firing arrows and twirling deadly bolos overhead. Gunning them down, Ryan felt a brief urge to be furious at the physician for nuking the scam. But that brass wouldn’t load. They had made a mistake, and now had to pay the price. That was life. And death, he added solemnly.
Stepping out of the thick smoke masking the dais, Mildred appeared with the Czech ZKR at the ready, her other hand holding the collar of the panting Lady Griffin. In ragged stages, the barrage of arrows and the spears coming their way slowed and then stopped completely, the ville sec men unwilling to harm the baron’s wife, augmented by their clear terror of the working blasters.
“Let us leave, and she lives!” Mildred bellowed, then fired into the tumultuous crowd edging the ville green. With most of his face removed, a sec man fell back, the bolo spinning in his hands going high into the trees.
Doing the same thing in the other direction, Ryan started to ask a question when he saw Lady Griffin pull a hidden knife from within her bodice and press the sharp stone tip against her own throat.
“You’re never gonna take me to that bitch Wainwright alive!” she growled defiantly, her fist tightening in preparation.
Seeing the raw determination in her face, Ryan knew there was no use trying to convince the woman they had nothing to do with the other baron. In a world of paranoids, nobody believed the truth. “Okay, then we surrender,” the one-eyed man said, dropping his blaster.
Gasping at the action, Lady Griffin eased her muscles, and Mildred swung her blaster hard and fast, the barrel cracking across the temple of the other woman with surgical precision. Giving a little shudder, Lady Griffin released the knife and slumped unconscious to the cold grass.
Around the green, the sec men paused, not sure if their ruler was aced or not, then rushed forward in a wave, pulling out knives and axes. As Ryan and Mildred mowed them down, there unexpectedly came a long trumpet from the guard tower high above the ville, and the gate in the wall began to slowly rumble closed. Then the sec man blowing the horn seemed to jump out of the tower to plummet to a grisly death. A moment later, there came the crack of the Steyr longblaster rolling down from the nearby foothills. However, the gate continued moving until it boomed shut.
“Fireblast, only one way out of here now,” Ryan muttered, snapping off shots. Swinging an arbalest around, the sec men fell, clutching red bellies.
“Yeah, I know,” Mildred growled, dumping out spent rounds to hastily reload. She closed the revolver with a snap of her wrist. “Lead the way, my friend.”
While Mildred laid down suppressive fire, Ryan pulled his only gren from a pocket, yanked loose the arming pin, flipped off the safety lever and threw the deadly explosive charge at the Wendigo.
The military sphere hit the grass and rolled directly underneath the war wag just as a swarm of sec men piled into the machine. With a sputtering roar, the diesel engine came to life…and the gren detonated. The strident blast blew the Wendigo apart, flaming chunks of men and machine flying outward in every direction.
Even as everybody ran away from the explosion, Ryan and
Mildred raced toward the wreckage, using the expanding cloud of dark smoke as makeshift cover. Now that they were away from the baron’s wife, there would be nothing to stop the sec men from attacking with everything they had. Unless, of course, the companions were long gone.
As Ryan and Mildred pelted cross the field, the Steyr spoke again from the foothills, abruptly ending the life of a sec man struggling to aim a black-powder long blaster. Stopping a few yards away from the burning wreckage, Ryan snapped off rounds from the SIG-Sauer, as Mildred prepared her gren and lofted it high to sail over the fence surrounding the bubbling still.
As it landed inside the barricade, the guards raced away in terror, but it was already too late. The military charge cut loose and the huge still erupted, hundreds of gallons of shine igniting into a staggering fireball. Shrapnel tore the fence to pieces, and the limp bodies of the sec men went airborne, the deafening concussion of the double explosion echoing among the rows of cabins and tents throughout the entire ville sounding louder than doomsday.
Waiting for the concussion to dissipate, Ryan and Mildred once again ran toward the explosion, the SIG-Sauer and ZKR removing any potential opposition. Halfway there, they changed direction and headed toward the gallows. There were few sec men in this area of the ville, but that was only to be expected. Nobody considered the execution yard a weakness in their defense. What prisoner would ever rush pell-mell toward his or her own demise? But that mistake would serve the companions well this day.
Holding a throwing ax, a young sec woman valiantly tried to block their way with a wooden shield. Shooting her in the boot, Ryan and Mildred ran past the yelling teenager and proceeded up the long flight of stairs.
Behind them, thick smoke was extending across the ville, the descending umbrella of burning shine setting the roofs of a dozen buildings on fire. Horses, elk and herds of terrified goats were running rampant in the streets, trampling civies and sec men alike, and seriously hindering the clumsy efforts to battle the spreading conflagration with buckets of water drawn from the artesian well.
Halfway up the stairs, the two companions saw a group of sec men climb on top of the only brick building in the ville, obviously the baron’s home. Three of the men attacked with their crossbows, but the half-arrows were unable to reach the staircase, and arched down into the chaos of the streets. However, the third sec man lit the fuse on a thick bamboo tube, then began to swing the homemade gren overhead at the end of a rope.
Both Ryan and Mildred cursed and quickly took aim. Before they could shoot, the man crumpled and the sizzling bamboo tube sailed away to land near the empty dais, violently exploding and throwing out chunks of wood and other debris.
Resuming their hectic sprint up the stairs, the two companions could only assume that had been the work of the Steyr, but the report of the longblaster could not be heard over the growing riot in the streets of the beleaguered ville. The destruction of the still had inadvertently set the slaves loose, and they were extracting a swift and terrible revenge upon the brutal overseers before running toward the gate, their hands dripping blood. Some of the sec men were trying to stop the mass escape, but without orders from their baron or sec chief, their efforts were proving futile, and often disastrous.
Reaching the top level of the gallows, the companions paused to catch their breath. “Good luck, guys,” Mildred panted, watching the slaves battle it out with the sec men near the shatter zone.
“They should have stolen some weapons first,” Ryan countered, untying a rope from a cleat. Handing it to the physician, he took another for himself. Checking the distance, the companions jumped off the gallows to swing out over the stone wall and simply let go.
Their journey forward seemed impossibly brief compared to the fall from the Harrington, and knowing what to expect, Ryan and Mildred braced themselves just before splashing into the freezing water of the Great Lake.
The icy shock banished the exhaustion from their bodies and galvanized their efforts to start swimming toward the surface even before slowing to a stop. However, it was a good thing that the companions had left most of their heavier items behind as the cloth boots soon became soaked, the cold numbing their feet and slowing their efforts considerably.
Fighting to the surface, Ryan and Mildred gasped for air and instantly started for the shore. Irregularly shaped boulders dotted the expanse of the wide bay, waves crashing against them and throwing out an icy mist that nearly formed snow. There was also the gentle tug of a tide below the surface, both Ryan and Mildred surprised that such a thing could exist in a lake, no matter how large.
Suddenly there was a flurry of motion above and a hail of arrows stabbed into the surface around the companions, the wooden shafts oddly hissing as they disappeared into the water. Firebrands! Then from under water, there came a muffled whomp, and a small geyser bubbled upward.
More firebrands arrived as the companions struggled onto the pebble beach and finally out of range. Shaking the water off their bodies, Ryan and Mildred saw that the beach was covered with hundreds of blue-shell crabs, most of them sitting directly under the dangling corpse, patiently waiting for the ripe meat to fall. Remembering the advice from Liana, they moved carefully through the colony, trying not to step on any of the creatures. Just then a large rock plummeted from above, smashing onto the beach and chilling a dozen crabs. That seemed to wake the rest of them, and the army of crabs scuttled forward to examine the new arrivals.
Brushing back her wet plaits, Mildred cursed at the realization that the sec men were now dropping rocks on them from the wall. Clever bastards.
Trying to kick a crab aside with his wet boot, Ryan saw the thing attach itself to the cloth and start crawling up his leg. Quickly drawing the SIG-Sauer, he shook the blaster to make sure there was no water in the barrel, then blew the crab off his boot with a well-placed shot.
Every crab on the beach went motionless at the sound of the weapon, then the smell of fresh blood reached them, and they wildly converged upon Ryan, their pinchers clattering and snipping. After all, everything that fell from the sky was dead, and easy pickings.
Low on ammo, Ryan had to place his shots, the hollowpoint rounds making the body of each crab explode. Pulling out the Czech ZKR, Mildred shot the largest crab in the face, hoping to intimidate the rest. The soft-lead punched a neat hole in the mouth, then came out the back end in a grisly spray of pale flesh and slimy organs. Still horribly alive, the squealing creature began to crawl in a circle, going nowhere fast. In a rush, some of the other crabs attacked it, savagely removing legs and eyestalks, consuming it alive.
Now shooting only to wound, the companions soon cleared a path to the base of the cliff, the scuttling horde turning upon itself in a cannibal frenzy. Soon the battle became pandemic, quickly spreading across the beach like some horrible new disease.
Ryan and Mildred quickly reloaded, then stomped their sodden blanket boots, trying to squeeze out the excess moisture.
Incredibly, there was a splash from the lake as a sec man dived into the water.
Quickly aiming their blasters, the companions relaxed as they saw a crimson red pool rise to the surface, the wellspring of life spreading outward in every direction.
Almost instantly, the army of crabs abandoned their internecine combat and rushed into the bloody lake, disappearing below the choppy waves.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan and Mildred raced along the base of the cliff until reaching a low rill. Clambering over the lava ridge, they dropped down the other side only a moment before a hail of half-arrows peppered the barrier. Suddenly a massive arrow from an arbalest slammed into the rill, smashing through and plowing deep into the pebble beach on the other side.
Keeping to the lee side of the larger boulders on the beach, Ryan and Mildred dodged from one to the other, staying constantly on the move, until the natural curve of the island finally took them out of the range of the ville crossbows.
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
A thick carpeting of lush green grass covered the wide hill, a copse of tall oak trees standing on the crest like an arboreal crown. A feathery rainbow of songbirds twittered in the leafy branches, and a cottontail coney darted among the laurel bushes in search of food. Off to the side, a hulking stone gargoyle sat amid a plethora of clover. The decorative statue was cracked across its weathered visage, giving the fantastic creature a lopsided grin.
Oddly, there were no other remnants of a predark city in sight, and so it was impossible to tell if the gargoyle was all that remained of a once-mighty metropolis, or if the statue was merely windblown trash, just a chunk of debris that tumbled down from the sky into the sylvan field from a thermonuclear explosion a thousand miles away.
Suddenly, a long black tube extended from behind the gargoyle to sweep along the rocky coast.
“Okay, they made it to dry land,” Krysty announced, her relief painfully obvious. Lowering the yard-long Navy telescope, she compacted it back to the size of a soup can.
Crouched on the other side of the protective statue, J.B. lowered the longblaster. “That’s good to know,” the wiry man said, working the arming bolt on the Steyr to open the breech and insert a fresh magazine. “Because the damn smoke is so thick in the ville, I can’t find anybody else to ace.”
“Nobody worth live brass,” Jak corrected, squinting into the distance. There were still a lot of sec men running around on the wall, but shoot too many of them, and the fall of the bodies would reveal the direction of the attack. The prime rule for sniping an opponent was to never let them know where you were hidden.
Opening a canteen, the albino teen smiled. Liana had been right. The hilltop was perfect to recce the ville. The wild bushes gave good cover, and the statue of the predark mutie would confuse anybody looking for snipers.
“Unfortunately, I fear that a choice of targets will not be a problem, John Barrymore,” Doc rumbled, wiping the loose dirt from his hands. “Because here come the Visigoths!”
