by James Axler
“Mitchum.” Jak cursed, then slapped the used clip into the M-16. The nuke-shitting blasters would have lasted them for months in the Deathlands. Was there anything on these stinking islands that wasn’t trying to chill them?
“Let us welcome him properly,” Doc announced, opening the breech of his M-203. “Any more 40 mm shells?”
“Only had six,” Ryan replied, pulling the pin on a gren and throwing it at the oncoming wags.
The HE sphere hit the ground and bounced twice, going over the lead military wag and exploding on the hood of the second. The windshield vanished and the crew inside the Hummer screamed, clutching their ripped faces. Without a driver, the wag veered away from the other vehicles. Cutting across the plaza, it slammed into a fountain and spilled out the corpses, its hood buckling and the horn coming on to blare an endless monotone warning.
Standing, J.B. swung around the shotgun and gave the door two strident rounds of fléchettes. The wood blew apart, and the portal swung open on creaking hinges.
“The bikes,” Dean began.
Ryan shoved the boy forward. “Leave them!”
Rushing inside the building, the companions spread out behind the rows of pillars supporting a mezzanine. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the slit windows along the top, filling the interior with crisscrossing beams of light. Rows of wooden benches badly consumed by beetles filled the open area, phone booths and ticket counters lining the side wall. At the far end was an iron grating, similar to the ones on the downtown stores, completely sealing off the stairs and turnstiles beyond.
“There’s the entrance,” Krysty said, pocketing the spent shells and quickly reloading.
“Save your grens,” Ryan suggested, holstering the handcannon and bringing out the Steyr. “We may have to blast through.”
Watching through the doorway, they could see the horribly wounded spider attack the Hummers, slamming the nearest one onto its side.
Supplies and men tumbled onto the ground, the spider triumphantly raising a screaming norm in its mandibles and slowly closing the pincers, the hoary chitin slicing the victim in two. The body fell away, and the spider charged at the next military wag, tendrils of intestines dangling from its segmented mouth. Its thick legs stomped two more men flat, and Sergeant Campbell was lifted cursing from a Hummer. The spider shook him the way a dog did a rat to snap its neck. But the sec man lived and fired a flintlock pistol directly into the eye of the creature before it cut him in two. His legs fell away, but his wide leather belt got caught on the mandibles and his torso flopped loosely about until the beast shook it free.
The concrete of the plaza was becoming dark with spilled blood, and most of it was human.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Fire!” Mitchum ordered, and a Firebird was launched from the pod of his wag.
Spiraling in fast, the rocket slammed deep inside the creature and came out the other side before exploding. The soft bulk of the spider didn’t offer enough resistance to set off the warhead. Mortally wounded, the insect grabbed a Hummer in its mandibles but was unable to lift the heavy wag.
Flintlocks discharged steadily, and the battle zone was becoming smoky with the fumes of spent black powder, but the sec men raked the beast with their rapidfires, then put two more Firebirds into the gore-streaked mutie.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan and J.B. returned to the broken door of the train station and surveyed the outside battle. The spider was clearly dying, and soon Mitchum would concentrate his attention on the station.
“Spider is losing,” J.B. stated.
Ryan checked the SIG-Sauer. “Gonna be after us next.”
“We could hide in the tunnels,” J.B. went on, firing a few rounds at the busy sec men. One clutched his throat and fell over, crimson blood gushing between his fingers.
“Mitchum would only run us down with the Hummers,” Ryan said, squeezing off shots with his silenced weapon. Two more sec men fell. Then a flurry of machine-gun fire ripped up the doorway, and the men retreated behind the brick wall.
“Our best bet is to stop them here,” Ryan continued, “then go hunt for the redoubt.”
Several miniballs hummed through the open doorway.
Sticking out the Uzi, J.B. triggered a short burst. “Yeah, I’m sick of running away, too,” he growled.
Holstering the blaster, Ryan held out an empty hand. “Give me that launcher,” he said brusquely.
Shifting his bag and packs, J.B. passed over the boxy 4-shot weapon. “Only got one,” he reminded him.
“That’ll do.” Ryan pulled out the arming pin for the remaining rocket and moved away from the doorway to take a position behind some benches a few yards distant.
Then the man assumed a firing stance, but with the wrong end of the launcher pointed toward the broken doors.
“What’s he doing?” Dean demanded from behind a pillar.
“Chilling two birds,” Krysty replied, cocking back the hammer on her blaster. “Get ready, here they come.”
With the roar of a diesel engine, a Hummer crashed through the double doors, the armored fenders slamming the remains of the doors aside and removing most of the jamb. Ignoring the vehicle, Ryan triggered the launcher. Instantly, the LAW rocket shot away from the front on a column of fire to streak across the station and strike the iron grating. Designed to kill tanks, the shaped charge blew the barrier apart and sent a shotgun charge of shrapnel hurtling down the sloped ramp beyond.
At the same moment the rocket launched, the back-blast erupted from the aft end of the boxy weapon just as the second Hummer appeared in the doorway. Holding the weapon steady, Ryan let the sec men drive their vehicle through the fiery exhaust, shattering the windshield and beheading the driver. The sec man standing at the .50 cal was ripped away from the blaster and went flying, leaving an arm behind. The rest of the crew was buffeted by the searing-hot gases, the flesh scalded from their faces. Completely out of control, the Hummer cut a swath through the benches to the sound of splintering wood and crashed into a ticket counter, a whirlwind of ancient paper engulfing the dying men in an impromptu blizzard.
Tires squealing, the third Hummer banked away from the doorway, and J.B. riddled the crew with his Uzi as they drove by. Expertly, the wiry man rode the chattering rapidfire into a tight figure eight, the copper-jacketed 9 mm rounds tearing the sec men apart like rag dolls.
Meanwhile, the companions stayed hidden behind the pillars and rattled the first Hummer as it drove around inside the station. In short controlled bursts, Doc emptied his M-16, chilling the driver. As the rest of the sec men started returning fire with their flint-locks, Krysty rolled a gren under the armored wag. Her aim was good and the sphere detonated under the front of the military wag. The explosion flipped the nose, and, impelled by their speed, the wag flipped over to crash onto the marble floor and slid for several yards.
Pinned underneath, the trapped sec men cursed and beat their fists on the steel plating as the smell of shine from the leaking fuel tank got stronger. Then Dean hit the wag with a Molotov and the vehicle was engulfed with flames, the curses changing into shrieks of terror as the fuel ignited and spread toward the crumpled pod full of Firebirds.
“Gonna blow!” Jak warned through cupped hands.
Realizing their plight, Ryan and J.B. tossed away the launcher and raced past the burning Hummer to rejoin the others and head quickly down the ramp into the subway tunnel. Hopping over the turnstile, they rushed to the edge of the departure platform and looked quickly around for any indication of the re-doubt. The only illumination was a weak shaft of reflected sunlight coming down the ramp. Nothing unusual was in sight. Soda machines, benches and pay phones dotted the long platform. On the walls of the tunnel, a vista of mosaic tiles depicted people playing on the beach, the picture gently sloping into a high vaulted ceiling.
“What now?” Mildred asked.
Before Ryan could speak, the whole station shook under the trip-hammer blast of the detonating Fire-bi
rds. The titanic concussion blew down the ramp like a hurricane and knocked the companions off their feet. Too close to the edge, Mildred was thrown off the platform to land sprawling across the predark train tracks with her face resting on the third rail.
Gasping in horror, Mildred recoiled from the contact, braced for death, only to remember there couldn’t possibly be any power flowing through the rail. But trained responses were hard to break. In her time, even this brief a contact would have been utterly lethal, the dreaded third rail carrying more hard current than a federal penitentiary’s electric chair.
“Got to find the redoubt,” Dean said, starting to light the pressurized camping lantern.
Ryan stopped the boy. “No lights,” he ordered, withdrawing into the darkness.
Heart still pounding, Mildred rose stiffly and shuffled into the stygian darkness beyond the shaft of sunlight pouring down the stairwell.
Then bright lights filled the ramp, and a Hummer bumped its way through the twisted ruin of the grating and rolled slowly down the sloped ramp. Then it surged with speed to ram through the turnstile and screech to a halt at the edge of the platform.
“Over there!” a voice cried out, and the .50 cal started chattering, the big slugs ricocheting everywhere in the confines of the tunnel.
Moving fast, the companions took cover in the darkness of the subway tunnel, splashing through the ankle-deep water and kicking the rats out of the way.
The parallel beams of its headlights washing along the tunnel, the military wag rolled to the edge of the platform, and Mitchum set the brakes but kept the engine running.
“Think we can make that?” he asked aloud.
The corporal at the .50 cal scowled. He really wasn’t sure about anything after seeing the obliterated Hummer lying in pieces in that blast crater upstairs. Damn outlanders were trickier than an old baron, and meaner than a two-headed snake.
“Don’t know, sir,” the corporal replied honestly. “Might bust an axle. But we could winch a wag down.”
“And give them a wag to escape in?” the colonel muttered. “Fuck that. We’ll stay here.”
Suddenly, lights flashed from the ramp and the second Hummer rolled to the platform and parked along the first. But not so close that if one exploded, the other would also be destroyed. The sec men had learned the hard way to be wary of the one-eyed outlander and his crew of coldhearts.
“Orders, sir?” the driver of the second Hummer asked softly.
The private standing at the .50 cal nosily worked the bolt on the massive rapidfire as a preparation to fire.
“Stay where you are and shoot anything that moves,” Mitchum commanded, removing the predark revolver from his shoulder holster and stepping from behind the windshield. The sec man stood there for a while listening to the sounds of the underground passageway before speaking. As long as he stayed behind the headlights, the beams should blind anybody out there to his exact presence.
“Ryan! I know you’re there!” Mitchum shouted, the words echoing into the darkness. “Surrender, and I’ll make your death quick and painless! That’s a promise!”
There was no reply.
“Fight me, and it’ll take you weeks to die!” the colonel shouted, losing his patience. “And your bitch will be the first to get aced!”
There was a distant cough as if somebody were clearing their throat to speak, then a 9 mm round ricocheted off the fender of the armored wag, missing the sec chief by less than a prayer.
“Chill the fucker!” Mitchum roared, fanning the tunnel with his handcannon. The twin black-powder machine guns chattered to life, filling the tunnel with a hellstorm of hot lead.
Keeping close to the tile wall, Ryan placed the shots of his SIG-Sauer, then switched to the Steyr and better accuracy. Most of the companions were ensconced in similar locations, blasters banging away as they tried for the headlights. The triple-stupe sec men couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see, but the moment Mitchum thought of using the high beams this battle would turn against them. Privately, Ryan had hoped Mitchum would be stupe enough to try to lower a wag to the tracks. Then they would take it out with their last few grens and the fight would be equal. But the man was too smart, or too cowardly to risk a direct assault.
Sliding in a fresh clip, the Deathlands warrior heard something deeper in the tunnel, then ignored it as the sound got fainter in the distance. Krysty and Dean were moving slowly along the opposite sides of the tunnel, exploring the wall with their hands, trying to find the entrance to the redoubt. Unless the whitecoats used a subway train to move the supplies, the redoubt was right here, hidden somewhere in the dark, maybe under the very gravel they were standing on. But there were no more clues from the dead Protoculte white-coat. They had to find it by themselves, or get flat-lined. That was all there was to the matter.
Just then, the .50 cals stopped firing and four brilliant beams of light filled the tunnel with blinding illumination, trapping the companions in plain sight. Diving to the ground, they took cover in the shallow pools of dirty water, rats scurrying over their bodies as they crawled backward trying to reach the darkness again. The .50 cals raked the ground, the muzzle loaders adding their firepower to the incoming barrage.
Then a gren bounced along the train tracks from deeper within the tunnel. The sphere stopped near Ryan, and he saw the handle was still wrapped in electrical tape. A gift relayed from Krysty. Reaching out, he tried to reach the gren, but the heavy slugs from the sec men were hitting everywhere and Ryan was forced to duck low again. He tried once more and got a bullet through the hair.
Fireblast! This was triple bad. They were trapped and the next step by Mitchum would be to launch a Firebird and blow them to hell, guided by the tiny pilots in the warheads.
Now they were going to have to try to run for it. Never a good plan, and confined in a tunnel it was damn near useless. But the one-eyed warrior knew to never surrender, never give up. Life wasn’t neat and orderly. Folks made mistakes, got lucky breaks. One lucky break was all they needed. Just one.
Working the bolt to clear a jam in the Uzi, J.B. glanced overhead and saw the ceiling was coated with sleeping bats, thousands of them. They were safe from the blasterfire because of the angle, but maybe he could do something about that.
“Doc, cover me,” the Armorer shouted, switching weapons.
Without pause, the old man dropped the Webley and fanned the LeMat, the smoky discharge of the weapon making a dense cloud of gray fumes in the air.
Immediately, J.B. stood and swung up his shotgun to pump all four shells at the sleeping night flyers. The blasts from the 12-gauge scattergun echoed louder than thunder, and the bats awakened, screaming and squealing. A few took flight, a couple more, then dozens.
Understanding the plan, Ryan whistled loud and sharp, once long and two short, and everybody froze motionless. This was exactly the type of situation they had created coded whistles for, when you couldn’t yell out a warning without letting the enemy know your plans. And the companions never needed to keep their intentions secret more than right now.
The bats wheeled about over the companions, confused and angry, unable to comprehend what was happening. Then they noticed the sec men who were continuing to fire their blasters, all the while shouting and cursing over the engines of the Hummers. Attracted by the noise and lights, the bats poured along the tunnel in a river of wings.
“Shitfire!” Mitchum cursed, covering his head as the bats arrived. “Shoot these freaking things!”
The .50 cals fanned death down the tunnel, dozens of riddled corpses fell to the tracks, but the night flyers swarmed over the warm sec men, getting tangled in their hair and clothing. The warm hoods of the Hummers were coated with the creatures, the headlights blocked by the leathery wings. Darkness enveloped the Hummers.
“Launch some Birds!” Mitchum ordered, crushing a wiggling bat in his bare hand.
“We can’t!” a sec man cried, slapping the bats aside with his blaster. “They’ll only hit the b
ats and detonate yards away. Mebbe right in the pod!”
“Then gut them!” the colonel snarled, drawing a machete and slashing the winged rodents apart.
Knives were used to hack the animals off, but the smell of blood only excited them more and a feeding frenzy began. The tiny fangs first ripping open the flesh of their own dead, then the humans were next and the screaming really began.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Now’s our chance,” Ryan said, standing from the puddle and starting down the tunnel.
Muddy and wet, the companions quietly hurried away from the broiling firefight between the sec men and bats. The high beams were only a flickering glow blocked by the multitude of angry bats. They couldn’t see Mitchum any more than he could them. How long the condition would last was another matter entirely, so they moved fast.
“Over here!” Krysty shouted in the gloom.
Following the sound of her voice, Ryan found her and his son standing before a plain steel door set into the tiled wall. A burnished plate listed it as Access 9 Sewer Pumps. The companions gathered close as J.B. picked the lock in the dark and pulled the door open.
Inside was a small antechamber, closed off by the standard black metal entrance to a redoubt. The alloy was smooth and unmarred, without handle, hinges or keyholes. Just smooth steel. Searching along the sides, Ryan found a small steel plate set into the wall and eased it aside to find an armored keypad. Quickly, the man tapped in the entry code.
As the nuke-proof portal slid ponderously aside, the companions rushed forward, only to stop as a strong smell of ozone filled the antechamber.
“Fireblast!” Ryan cried out, shoving the others backward from the door.
Then the first wisps of crackling white fog flowed into view. A wafting tendril touched the barrel of Jak’s M-16, dissolving the predark steel, leaving only a hollow nubbin sticking out from the frame.
