by James Axler
“Pawnshop,” Ryan corrected, pressing the ignition button. “That’s where we know the droids were waiting to ambush us. But instead, we’re going to hit them. Hard and fast.”
“Just hope we don’t chill all of them,” J.B. said, starting his own bike. “That would ruin everything.”
WITH THE FRONT window painted over, it was quiet and cool in the ancient store, and the three droids stood patiently behind the front counter, hidden in the growing shadows.
The glass panels had been removed from the display cases to make the collection of rifles and handguns more readily apparent. That was an established procedure to distract looters and prevent retaliatory strikes, before the droids could eliminate the invaders.
Something scurried along the baseboard, and a droid swiveled its belly-mounted weapon to shoot. There was no noise or muzzle-flash from the odd device, yet a wide section of the wooden baseboard was torn apart, splinters flying everywhere, and the tiny body of the mouse was reduced to bleeding hamburger.
The other droids noted the kill in mechanical precision and returned to their long vigil. The norms should have arrived many hours ago. There had definitely been activity at the front door early that morning, but the norm males had departed, claiming to return posthaste with vehicles to ferry away the weapons in the store. The minicomps operating the droids now could comprehend that was nontrue information, and such a trick wouldn’t be allowed to occur again. The 1 mm HK needlers of the droids would annihilate as many of the norms as possible upon the next confirmed sighting. Not again would they wait and attempt to kill the entire group in a single volley. For the sake of expediency, efficiency would have to be overlooked in favor of simple force. There was certainly enough fuzzy logic in their programming to handle such a change of tactics.
The loud crash of the front window was the only warning the trio of droids got before a thunderous explosion engulfed the front of the store, shards of glass flying everywhere. Even as the machines rocked to the buffeting of the concussion, two more blasts ripped the floor apart, making the ceiling collapse as a wave of chemical flame washed through the predark establishment.
Rushing through the billowing smoke, two of the dented droids reached the sidewalk and swept the area for viable targets, their needlers silently sending out probing waves of death. Cars jumped as the barrage of 1 mm needles punched through chassis and engine, every window along the entire street shattering under the arrival of the deadly depleted-uranium, hollow-point slivers.
But there was no reaction to the attack from any of the buildings—no screams of pain, sounds of running footsteps or even return fire from primitive flint-locks. Just the sounds of tinkling glass, and the growing crackle of the fire inside the destroyed building.
A few minutes later, the third droid stumbled from the burning pawnshop, its silvery hull badly dented and dragging a damaged limb behind.
Gathering close, the three machines conversed for a microsecond, the masers from their vid cams strobing as they exchanged binary information. Then the damaged droid limped around a corner, and the other two went back into the raging inferno of the pawnshop to wait in the thick smoke for the expected arrival of the norm looters.
Chapter Eighteen
On the roof of a movie theater situated on the opposite corner from the pawnshop, J.B. lowered the mirror he had been using to watch the street below and nodded.
“It worked,” the Armorer whispered, tucking the plastic square away for safekeeping.
Also lying prone on the rooftop, Krysty, Mildred and Jak quietly finished reloading their 40 mm gren launchers and started crawling for the fire escape attached to the rear of the building.
Reaching the ladder first, Krysty dropped her weapon over the side, then slid down the iron railing of the ladder, her gloved hands becoming hot from the friction before she reached the ground. As she stepped away from the fire escape, Ryan handed her back the combination blaster he had caught just as Jak arrived. Doc was next, and finally J.B. landed.
“One droid,” the Armorer reported. “Bad leg, moving to the west.”
“Go,” Ryan ordered brusquely to his son.
Revving the purring engine, Dean drove off on the motorcycle. Rolling out of the alleyway, he took a sharp turn onto the side street, watching carefully for the damaged machine. Dean knew the droids had the ability to walk along the sides of the buildings, but hopefully this one couldn’t do that with a damaged leg. If it could, this whole gamble could go sour, and they’d be back to square one trying to find the gateway.
Coasting to a stop at an intersection jammed with rusted cars and overturned buses, Dean throttled down the muffled engine and peeked around both corners. Only a block away, he spotted the machine limping down the middle of the left road, traveling between the line of dead vehicles. Retreating slightly to be less visible, Dean watched as it went past the next intersection, then took the following right turn.
Pursing his lips, the boy gave the call of a desert eagle, and the rest of the companions rolled into view with their bikes bristling with weaponry. Holding up two fingers, the boy gestured to the right, already moving after the slow machine.
Soon the others were in hot pursuit, zigzagging their bikes between the ancient cars, avoiding the potholes and open manholes. In passing, Ryan noted that the rims of the manholes weren’t ringed with rust. So somebody had been checking the sewer systems very recently. Maybe those corpses on the vista outside the metropolis weren’t the only pirates to get past the jungle apes.
Straight ahead, Dean darted into an alleyway, and Ryan followed close behind, trying to catch up with him. Increasing their own speed, the companions reached the father and son moments later just as they were going by a group of lizards tearing apart the bloody corpse of what appeared to be a large bat.
“From the sewer?” Krysty asked, swerving to the far side of the alley.
“Makes sense,” Mildred answered, keeping her blaster pointed at the reptiles. “Bats love tunnels.”
“And hate the sunlight.”
“Leave darkness food,” Jak said hesitantly, the soles of his combat boots tapping the ground to keep the slow-moving bike upright. “Or something scare out?”
“Those manhole openings are too small for a droid, or an ape,” Ryan declared, pulling the vented wand from the straps across his chest and resting the muzzle on the chrome handlebars. “But just right for people.”
Using his butane lighter, the Deathlands warrior ignited the propane preburner of the flamethrower and drove one-handed, the other supporting the wand and hose of the flamethrower.
As the motorcycles cut through the rear of a gas station, the alleyway ended on a major boulevard divided by trees on a grassy median. Checking both ways, neither Ryan nor Dean could see a sign of their prey. The road was clear for blocks in either direction, only a few scattered vehicles stalled in the street, none of them large enough to house even a single droid.
“Either it’s hiding, waiting for us to leave,” J.B. said, flexing his hands against a cramp, “or the base is somewhere close.”
“Could be there,” Dean suggested, pointing with the Browning.
Catercorner from the intersection was a large plaza, floored with colorful ceramic tiles and some weird metallic structure standing fifty feet high.
“Busted?” Jak asked, staring at the towering maze of coiled steel dotted with hundreds of tiny rectangles.
“That is the double-spiral of a DNA helix,” Mildred explained. “The basic building block of life.”
The teenager frowned. “Supposed look that?”
“Yes.”
He snorted. “Damn.”
“Blessed Mother Gaia,” Krysty said softly, her hair flaring out in response. “Look at the middle building!”
“Well, I’ll be nuked,” J.B. muttered, removing his fedora, only to replace it again. “There it is in plain sight!”
Fronting the tiled plaza were three great buildings of chrome and glass set in an eq
uilateral formation. Alongside the faded name of each mirrored monolith was their corporate logo, just an artistic squiggle designed to be attention catching. But the logo in the middle got the full attention of the companions.
“That’s the symbol we found written in blood,” Ryan said grimly, “in the gateway when we arrived here. This is where the chilled whitecoat was trying to tell us to go.”
“Or avoid,” Krysty said warily, revving her engine. The machine shuddered once, then smoothed out again. “We were never sure which it was.”
“I’m betting on directions, not a warning,” J.B. said, studying the rooftops along the intersection and plaza for snipers.
Nervously, Mildred clenched and unclenched her hands. “Somewhere inside there is a gateway,” she said softly. “The way out.”
“No sign of any droids,” Ryan added gruffly. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not here. Waiting for us.”
“Let them come,” Dean stated, working the bolt on the Weatherby to chamber a massive .460 round.
With Ryan in the lead, the companions drove their bikes openly across the boulevard trying to draw fire, poised to feed the hungry engines fuel and race to safety. But nothing occurred as they bumped over the curb and parked the vehicles behind the glittering DNA statue. Sliding off the bike, Ryan drew his blaster and gave cover as Jak paused, then sprinted for the front door. Nearing the portal, he dived over some scraggly hedges and rolled behind a marble pillar. Pausing again to listen for any response to his presence, the teenager leveled his M-16/M-203 and checked the interior of the building through the low-power scope built into the assault rifle. Nothing seemed to be moving inside the plush lobby and foyer. Raising a fist, Jak spread his fingers once, and now he and Ryan gave cover as J.B. crawled to the front door on his belly, only to find the heavy glass door unlocked.
Shoving a spent brass cartridge under the lower hinge, the Armorer jammed the door open and Ryan raced inside, the preburner of his flamethrower illuminating the dim interior with an eerie blue light. Taking position behind a cigarette machine, Ryan surveyed the area, his nerves keyed to battle pitch. But nothing stirred among the ancient furniture. The carpeted lobby was dark beyond the wash of sunlight from the glass walls in front, the air oddly scented with dust.
The one-eyed man whistled sharply, and the rest of the companions charged into the office building, quickly spreading out to find cover. Doc was the last, and as he dashed into the lobby the door abruptly swung shut and locked with an audible click.
Instantly, the companions shifted positions and started wildly firing their weapons, the rounds from the Uzi and M-16 tearing up the carpeting and walls. Just then, the ceiling tiles swung apart on disguised hinges and a pair of robotic blasters dropped into view, the tiny barrels hissing death. Only a blur in the air, the crisscrossing lines of 1 mm rounds stitched across the lobby, chewing a path of destruction along the carpeting, tearing apart tables and chairs until hitting the front windows. The slim needles slapped into the resilient Plexiglas, becoming solidly embedded in the clear plastic.
Standing from behind a newspaper dispenser, Ryan hosed a 3-second spray from the flamethrower at the closest needler, the lance of fire brightly illuminating the interior. Dripping flames, the weapon gave only a short burst then shorted out, the burning housing crackling with bright electric sparks as the barrel slumped toward the floor. Ryan turned to get the second needler, and saw it was already trashed, torn to pieces under the combined fury of the chattering Uzi and M-16 rapidfires.
Warily lighting their pressurized lanterns, the companions placed the lamps in different locations before starting to move forward. Immediately, three droids rose from behind the reception kiosk and flashed their lasers, the scintillating beams slashing across the lobby to explode the precious lanterns and plunge the area into darkness. But that lasted only a split second as the puddled oil from the smashed reservoirs touched the glowing metal wicks and ignited into pools of fire. Stubbornly, the droids lasered the spreading oil, and seemed confused at the lack of response from the flames.
Counting to ten under his breath, Jak rolled behind a cigarette machine, yanked the Armbrust off his back, prepared the one round, then stood and fired. The triple lasers stabbed into the predark dispenser, melting deep holes into the machinery as the Armbrust made a crack like a .22 pistol, and a blizzard of plastic flakes mixed with nitrogen snow vomited from the aft end. There was no flash from the muzzle, no contrail or fiery exhaust to mark the path of the AP projectile as it left the tube. The round crossed the lobby at subsonic speed and broke apart in midair, a hellstorm of steel fléchettes arriving to tear the kiosk and the droids apart.
Vid cams utterly annihilated, hull riddled, the blind droids tottered about on their buckling legs, hydraulic fluid pumping from the legs like greasy blood. The lasers flashed again, but only hit the front windows, searing brownish spots in the dense material. Using the ten-second recharge lag, the companions stood and cut loose a concentrated volley from their assorted rapidfires. The incoming barrage savagely pounded the droids until they toppled over to loudly crash onto the tattered kiosk.
Small fires dotted the lobby, the charring carpet giving off thick clouds of smoke. Returning to the bikes outside, Mildred and Jak got the extinguishers, while Krysty and Doc beat out the flames with their coats. If the building went up, there was no way they could find the gateway.
Going to the rubble of the kiosk, Ryan prodded the droids with the SIG-Sauer to made sure they were aced, then pumped a few rounds into their exposed circuitry just to make sure. The armored sheeting of the hull warped apart, CPU and circuit boards shattering easily under the 9 mm rounds.
In short order, the fires were under control. Assuming the position of guard, Ryan stayed at the kiosk with the flamethrower ready as the rest of the companions did a quick recce of the first floor. They came back in only a couple of minutes.
“Nothing,” J.B. reported, walking from the shadows rear of the lobby. “Just an elevator bank and a big cafeteria. A lot of people worked here.”
“Like to know what it was they did,” Ryan growled, going to the office directory hanging from the ceiling above the kiosk. Unfortunately, the bullets from the rapidfires had slammed the board pretty hard, punching dozens of holes through the material and knocking off most of the letters. Only a cryptic scrambling of names and departments remained. Totally useless.
“Okay, we do this the hard way,” Ryan said, trimming the preburner and lowering the pressure on a feeder valve. “We go floor by floor. Stay tight, and ace anything that moves.”
“No prob,” Jak agreed, tossing aside the Armbrust and swinging around his M-203 to work the arming bolt.
“Droid!” Dean shouted, and hit the floor, throwing a gren toward the bathroom.
Slipping out of a men’s room, a droid strode into view as the sphere bounced along the floor and detonated. The blast lifted the sec machine off the ground, slamming it against the marble wall. Broken to pieces, the droid fell back to the carpet, sparking steadily from a dozen short circuits.
Pulling both handcannons, Doc leveled the Webley and triggered a single thundering round, the .44 slug blowing open the armored hull protecting the mini-comp. Then he fired the LeMat, the massive miniball punching through the CPU and smashing it into a million pieces. The sparks ceased abruptly.
“We’ve got to move fast,” Ryan stated, lowering the vented muzzle of his flamethrower. “These things are gonna be on our ass every step of the way.”
“Which direction, basement or penthouse?” Krysty asked, removing a spent clip and slapping a fresh mag against the stock of her weapon before ramming it into the receiver.
“Penthouse,” Ryan answered promptly. “If nothing else, we’ll have a good view of the city from up there. That might be helpful.”
“Agreed.”
Heading for the stairwell, the companions braced for another ambush, but the stairs proved to be clear to the next level.
“The pro
grammers probably have the machines set to protect the elevators first,” Mildred guessed as they swept through the array of office cubicles filling the second floor. “Places like this always have emergency generators for the mainframes in case the city power grid went down.”
There was nothing on the second floor except for some rats, and the third floor was merely vacant conference rooms, as large and empty as the graves of giants. The fourth floor was strictly maintenance. However, the fifth had carpeting once again, the wooden doors elaborately carved, and old paintings in gilded frames adorned the plaster walls. A glass-topped mahogany reception desk was set in a small alcove with several plush wing-back chairs set nearby.
“Protoculte Bio-Medical Corporation,” Ryan said with a frown, reading the name in brass, or maybe gold, letters on the front of the reception desk. “Anybody know what that means?”
“Most certainly, it is a polyglot of classic and antiquarian Latin,” Doc said, placing the strap of the M-16 combo around his neck to distribute the weight more comfortably. “It roughly translates as ‘wondrous new science.”’
“Don’t like the sound of that,” Mildred muttered, lifting a business card from a cut-crystal stand embossed with the company logo.
Scowling, she threw it away. “Might have guessed—this is a damn genetics firm. The kind of idiots who play with DNA to make juicier apples whose blossoms poisoned bees, and bigger cows that freeze to death in summer.”
“And biological weapons for the government,” Doc suggested.
“Exactly.”
Krysty and J.B. paused in the alcove to check the desk, while the rest of the companions continued onward. Branching hallways cut the level into a maze of offices and rooms. Walking slowly along the main hallway, Ryan passed a guard station with a pile of loose clothing and bones behind a waist-high Plexiglas barrier. Bending, he rummaged through the clothing, but found nothing.
“Was hoping for an ID badge,” he remarked, wiping off his palms on his fatigue pants. “Might have made the droids leave us alone, but no luck.”
