Zero City

by James Axler

  Spreading out from the building, the bats crawled across the street and sidewalks in an instinctive search pattern, just like a flock of birds in flight. The similarity was unnerving.

  Wiping the sweat off his brow, J.B. reached into a pocket and tossed a few spent cartridges down the road as a diversion. The empty brass landed quietly on the soft sand, and the bats started to go that way, then returned to their unified pattern. The Armorer mouthed a curse and started to unwrap a thermite gren.

  Tucking the Molotov under his arm, Doc tried the same trick with his whetstone, but this time throwing the stone underhand.

  It hit the side of the skyscraper, and two of the bats leaped upon the spot, sniffing and clawing air for the prey. The large bat squealed questioningly at them, and they chittered angrily in reply.

  Oh yes, way too damn smart, Doc decided.

  Surrounded on every side, the old man reached out and touched J.B. on the arm. The man turned with the gren ready. Doc tapped his wrist where a chron would be, and J.B. lifted three fingers, then made a zero with thumb and forefinger. Doc understood and chose a direction to run. If they shot one, all of the others would converge in a swarm. But an explosion would get several and hopefully stun the rest. Ears that big had to be sensitive.

  Doc had already tossed his only gren into the elevator shaft, hoping to seal the passageway. The detonation only roused more of the monsters, including the big male they now faced. Its head was twice as large as the others, so if he wasn't the bull of the nest, he had to be the leader of the hunters. Nature abhorred a vacuum.

  Accidentally, two of the bats bumped wingtips, and they leaped on each other, clawing and slavering, until realizing the mistake. From behind them, a clanging sound announced that the wounded bat was crawling back on top of the Hummer. Probably thought the heat of the engine meant there was a living thing inside the shell. Judiciously, Doc aimed the LeMat at that particular mutie. Let them reach the Hummer and… No, the ignition fuse still had to be reinserted into the fuse box under the dashboard. That would take precious seconds they couldn't afford. Where the hell were they supposed to run? Back into the dark recesses of the skyscraper was certain death. What else was around them? The park with the dried fountain, some burned-out buildings without doors or windows. An apartment complex, which meant too many doors and windows. A tennis court, a bank, a parking lot and a library.

  The library had thick stone walls and slit windows much too small for the bats to crawl through. Unfortunately, the door was out of sight around the corner. It might be locked, or missing entirely. Either of those would cost the men their lives.

  J.B. waved to get Doc's attention and vehemently shook his head. The old man nodded in understanding, then pointed northward up the street to the Hummer, and next to the library. J.B. placed the ignition fuse between his teeth and pointed at the vehicle. After a few moments, Doc hesitantly nodded his agreement and braced himself for the concussion, holding on to the LeMat as if it were a good-luck charm.

  Sliding the Uzi over a shoulder, J.B. removed the sticky electrical tape from the gren and placed the tape on his shirt to get it out of the way. Holding the bomb tight in his left hand, he started to rotate and wiggle the pin.

  Shifting his weapon away from the Hummer, Doc leveled the LeMat at a sniffing bat dangerously close to the Armorer, then realized another was moving toward himself from upwind. Once it passed Doc and got downwind, they would be discovered, and that meant a fight whose lethal outcome was anybody's wild guess.

  With a dry mouth, J.B. released the spoon of the grenade. The curved handle sprang away with a snap, and the bats swarmed toward him until he lightly tossed it at the main group of the muties. It landed with a thump, and they reversed course to converge on the military explosive.

  Tucking away his glasses, J.B. opened his mouth and covered both ears to cushion the effects of the blast. Doc copied the position just as the Army charge cut loose. The street erupted, sending out a stinging sandstorm and flaming chunks of flesh everywhere. The men went sprawling, but so did the bats. Screaming so loud their wails keened into the ultrasonic, the surviving muties took flight and wheeled madly around in the sky, constantly colliding with one another, seemingly impervious to any injury incurred.

  Standing, Doc fired the LeMat, blowing the head off a bat and igniting the rag. He dropped the Molotov and took off at a run, with J.B. right beside him, the Uzi firing into the sky.

  Then a bat careened off another and plowed straight into the driver's seat of the Hummer, squealing in protest. The mutie on the hood took up the cry and the rest flapped toward the Hummer, covering it with their wings, clawing at the metal, ripping the seats and canvas doors apart. The five-ton wag rocked under the assault, and one of the tires hissed loudly as it went flat. The bats screamed in triumph as if making a kill.

  In midstride, the companions changed direction and headed for their only remaining hope.

  "Head for a truck!" Doc shouted, turning to fire, then taking off once more. At his words, the bats went terribly still and started sniffing the air again, cawing their hunting cry, searching for an echo. Both men knew moments were all they had remaining.

  "They might not run," J.B. countered, bounding over a low stone wall. He stopped, spun, fired the Uzi twice, then dropped the exhausted clip and reloaded.

  As the men angled around the corner of the granite building, the muties were out of sight, but their cries were coming strong and fast. The effects of the blast were wearing off the survivors.

  Stopping near a stack of crates, the men saw the line of trucks and knew why the villes sec men hadn't taken them away. The vehicles were wrecks, riddled with bullet holes and discolored in numerous spots as if splashed with acid.

  The men checked their weapons and surveyed the neighboring buildings. They were ramshackle structures without doors or windows. Worse than useless. The double doors to the library were to their left, the brass bound portals wide open and inviting. The interior of the building was pitch-black, and numerous dried bloodstains marked the front step. This was where the others had been slain.

  "Got another grenade?" Doc asked, frantically reloading.

  "Nope. Molotovs?"

  "Negative."

  The hunting cries of the muties started to get louder.

  "We aren't going to outrun them, and the Hummer is out of commission," J.B. stated grimly, lighting the tiny stub of his last cigar. He drew in the dark, then exhaled in satisfaction. "Library is our best bet."

  "Once inside, we are trapped," Doc told him. "The sky is already starting to darken."

  Drawing a knife from his boot and tucking it into his belt for easier access, J.B. growled, "Same can be said for them."

  "A mousetrap?"

  "Yep."

  The sky rumbled ominously, as Doc studied the broken line of trucks. "Might work. If there is still fuel in the tanks."

  "Only one way to find out," J.B. said, lowering his voice to a whisper as the first of the bats crawled over the stone wall.

  The muties looked ridiculous waddling on their chicken feet and tiny clawed hands, those impossibly long elbows sticking high into the air. But their feral faces removed the clownish appearance. These were man-eaters on the prowl. Only six left, but that was more than enough.

  Dropping the sheath of his sword, Doc tossed the ebony cane away. It clattered on the sidewalk, but the muties made no move toward the noise. They were learning.

  "Left door?" J.B. asked, firing short, controlled bursts at the creatures. The bull mutie charged him, raising a cloud of dust in its wake.

  "Right. I mean correct!"

  Doc assumed a firing stance, the old LeMat boomed and the bat flipped over sideways, its muscular body blown in two. The ones behind climbed over the dead, unstoppable in their rage to reach the men.

  Constantly firing, they stepped back closer to the library and parted, one to either side of the outside doorway. Now angling his aim above the oncoming muties, J.B. stitched the first
Mack truck across the lot, punching holes in the steel canister set under the step of the cab. Nothing happened.

  Resetting the hammer on his weapon, Doc triggered the shotgun and blew off a bat's wing. The victim yowled, and the others recoiled from the buffeting of the discharge, but didn't flee.

  J.B. directed their remaining LAW missile at the second cab. A fireball engulfed the vehicle. The gasoline blast lifted the wag into the air, tires coming off and windshields shattering.

  Their tall ears flattened, the muties screamed at the explosion, fleeing from the painful concussion straight toward the two friends.

  Waiting until the very last moment, Doc and J.B. grabbed the ornate handles of the big library doors and swung them farther apart, pinning themselves between the brass doors and the marble building. Trapped in a triangle of shadow, the battered men couldn't see what was happening. They heard crackling fire, another explosion, the bats screaming and several thumps against the doors they clutched tightly.

  Doc waited for as long as he could, then whistled sharply and frantically shoved. His heavy door moved in smooth timing with J.B.'s, but just before closing, an inhuman arm thrust out of the narrowing gap and shoved back, clawing for their faces. J.B. slashed at the limb, cutting off a finger, and something coughed in reply.

  Thrusting the pitted maw of his blaster into the slim crack, Doc fired the LeMat. A piercing scream answered the ploy, the bleeding arm was withdrawn and they closed the doors in perfect harmony. But they noticed a minor flaw.

  "Dark night, we have no way to lock them in!" J.B. said, his cigar drooping as he brushed the smooth brass plate around the sturdy handles.

  "Then find something!" Doc shouted, shoving his arm through the looped door handles. Almost instantly, the brass shuddered from a violent blow, and high-pitched keens came from inside the building. The door shook again.

  "And find one fast!" Doc grunted, digging his heels into the loose sand, "because our captives are most displeased with their new home and desire to leave posthaste!"

  Across the parking lot, another fiery blast ripped apart the overturned truck, sending pieces sky high.

  J.B. sprinted around the corner and returned with a length of chain from the winch of the Hummer. Shoving the stout links through the handles, he and Doc carefully exchanged positions and tightened the chain before wrapping the length through the handles as many times as it could. The screaming and spitting was increasing inside the library, and the sounds of assorted destruction could be dimly heard over the continuing explosions of the trucks.

  "Success," Doc panted, stepping away. The doors shook and rattled, the loose ends of the chains dancing madly, but the library was sealed. No number of muties would force their way through that much military steel.

  Losing his hat, J.B. tried to speak and staggered to his knees. Doc grabbed the man to keep him from toppling over and saw that he was badly flushed, his eyes dilated, his breathing labored. This was a chemical reaction!

  Straightening J.B.'s clothes, Doc found a bleached spot on his friend's shirt, the fabric rotting away even as he watched. Ripping off the garment and casting it away exposed a spreading purple splotch on the Armorer's arm, the flesh inextricably turning a deadly necrotic black. Frantically rummaging through his coat, Doc found a butane lighter and, playing the tiny flame over the blade of his pocketknife, he then slashed the area open. A few drops of red blood rose to the surface, along with a greenish icher.

  Squeezing the wound produced little more, so Doc began to suck the incision as hard as he could, turning to spit when a horrible sizzling filled his mouth and his tongue went numb. Great God in heaven, did these things spit poison or acid?

  Again and again, Doc repeated the procedure until only clean blood was coming from the cut, the discoloration already significantly diminished. Laying the comatose man on the ground, Doc dropped wearily next to him, feeling totally exhausted. Plus, there was a terrible aftertaste that didn't seem to be lessening. Oh, no.

  He hawked and spit repeatedly, but the world was starting to get blurry for him, as if a dense ocean fog were creeping over the landscape. The fire in the trucks seemed distant, surreal, like a movie on a badly tuned television, and the man sluggishly realized he had accidentally swallowed some of the poison. Summoning his last vestige of strength, Doc stuffed fumbling fingers down his throat, trying to make himself vomit. But the universe started to spin faster and faster until he slumped over unconscious.

  Meanwhile, tiny hands squeezed out of the library windows, clawing at the granite walls, trying to enlarge the narrow slits to get free.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The dirty daylight streaming through the barred window of the cell was beginning to fade, and Krysty was still struggling against the chains. The links were solid steel, welded to a massive ring set in the tiled floor. The guards had been painfully thorough in searching her for weapons and lock picks, but oddly none of them tried to assault her. Aside from the occasional quick grope, she hadn't been harmed in any way. Yet.

  The woman bitterly cursed the frightened child in the crowd. Krysty had felt sorry for the babe and removed her hood to cover his eyes from the torture. But the instant her face was exposed, the crowd started gasping and pointing. One man dashed off shouting for the guards, and an elderly couple tossed their own clothing over Krysty to mask her head, but it was too late by then. Knowing she was trapped, Krysty pushed into public view to try to draw attention away from Ryan. If he was free, there was hope of his rescuing her and their finding the med kit for Dean. Hopefully, the boy was still alive.

  As the tainted light from the cloudy sky faded, she was thankful for the odd bluish illumination that came from the lanterns on the table. It smelled like moonshine, almost pure alcohol. The cell was a bare room of cinder-block walls. The paint was peeling off in strips from moisture, and there was a definite stink of mildew.

  A former storage room, it was oddly on the third floor. Dungeons were usually in the basement. The only furniture was a table with leather straps, the wood darkly stained, a padded bench with straps for the obvious function of forced sex and a small wooden stool with a hole in the center and a bucket underneath. The furnishings were crude and simple, but the door was of rusty metal hung in a metal frame with four hinges. A formidable barrier.

  As if waiting for her to make this appraisal, the door swung open and in strode a tall, muscular man flanked by two sec men holding bolt-action blasters. The tall man was painfully handsome, his features finely chiseled. His ornate uniform was spotlessly clean, and twin blasters rode at his hips, the handles turned inward for a cross draw.

  "Leave us," the man ordered with a gesture.

  The sec men snapped their rifles to their chests in a salute and departed, closing the door behind them.

  Krysty saw all this peripherally, as she could only stare at the tall man's hair. She had noticed it seemed to be moving a lot more than anybody else's on the outside platform, but now she could see the truth. His hair was the same fiery color as her own, exactly the same color. Slightly more than shoulder length, it constantly moved and flowed as if stirred by secret winds, even now in a locked room with no ventilation. Her own hair coiled tightly to her head in response, and cold flooded her stomach as Krysty realized he could be kin. A distant cousin perhaps. Or even her unknown father. Krysty could actually feel him standing close, the same way she used to be able to sense her mother in another room.

  "Yes," the man said, as if reading her thoughts.

  "And do you know how long I have been searching for you?"

  "For me?" she asked incredulously.

  "You specifically? No, although if I had known you existed, I would have traveled the Deathlands to find kin. I was referring to how long I have been searching every redhead I could find to locate another one of us."

  His sharp emphasis of the last word wasn't lost on Krysty. And deep inside, the woman was forced to admit she would have done the same. In a world of norms, where all muties we
re looked upon as a filthy evil, to find blood kin was her deepest wish.

  "But I'm being rude, my dear," he said with a slight bow. "Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Baron Gunther Strichland, master of Alphaville."

  Krysty said nothing in return.

  "And you are…?" he prompted with a beguiling smile.

  "Nobody of importance," she muttered, testing the chains.

  In blinding speed, Strichland drew a blaster and fired. Krysty flinched as the round burned past her face and embedded in the cinder-block wall.

  "What was that again, please?" the baron said with a smile, twirling the blaster by the trigger guard.

  He was insane. Good, that gave her an edge. "Krysty Wroth."

  "Of?"

  She shrugged. "The Deathlands. Nowhere. Everywhere."

  "Ah, a wanderer." Gunther lifted a leg and rested it on the corner of the table. He appeared to have something wrong with his left leg. "And now you have come home to me. I was starting to think I was the only one of my kind, doomed, to breed with the norms, casting my superior genes into the stagnant pool of their monkey blood."

  "We're all the same," Krysty said, trying to keep a calm expression.

  The baron laughed. "Are we? Do they heal like us? Have the same control of their muscles as we? Can they sense things in other places? Oncoming danger? Have you ever seen one of them getting a haircut?" Rising, he spit the words like a curse, his hatred contorting his handsome features.

  In spite of herself, Krysty flinched at the memory of the companions giving each other a trim. It had been horrible. The slightest tug on her hair was painful, combing was agony and cutting was worse than getting shot. Her hair was as alive as her fingers and toes, not just dead protein filaments.

  "Yes," Gunther said softly, standing very close. "I can see you have, and the sight affected you the same as it did me."

  Krysty didn't reply, estimating the range of her chains and the distance to the stool. Any weapons were preferable to none.