The Savage Horde s-6

by Ahern, Jerry

  The riot shotgun—a Mossberg—in his right hand, he snapped the trigger, the gun bucking violently in his hand, the muzzle climbing. He slapped at the fore-end with his left hand, pumping it as one of the men went down. He fired the second round, jacking the slide again, chambering another round. He fired as the second man went down, nailing a third. He tromboned the Mossberg once more—the shotgun was empty.

  A wildman was racing toward him with a spear made from a pole or piece of pipe and a long bladed knife.

  Rourke flipped the shotgun in his hands, starting a baseball bat swing, hitting the spear carrier full in the face with the butt of the riot shotgun, then dropping it, running. Ten yards to go until he reached the injured man with the Ml carbine who fought from his knees at the base of the cross from which he had been hung.

  Five yards to go, the man taking a hit, then another and another.

  The Detonics in Rourke's right fist barked twice, one of the wildmen going down.

  He fired again, hitting a second man in the chest, the body flopping back, spinning out and falling, the slide of the Detonics locked back, empty.

  Rourke reached the man with the carbine, prying it from his hands, inverting the jungle clip. He pulled the trigger, three rounds firing when one should have.

  The gun had been modified for selective fire.

  Rourke pumped the trigger, one wildman down, then another and another.

  He looked to the man on the ground beside him, trying to prop the man's head up against his thigh.

  "Cole—Cole—"

  "It's me—John Rourke," he rasped.

  "Yeah—know that—Cole—ain't who he says he is—ain't Cole—you did me good, you and the other guy—did me—" The man coughed once, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, the eyes open wide, staring, reflecting the light from the bonfire.

  Rourke thumbed them closed, then got to his feet, running, firing out the thirty-round magazine in the carbine.

  He was nearly at the far edge of the circle of crosses, could see Rubenstein with two other men, Rubenstein and one of the men half carrying the third between them.

  The carbine came up empty as Rourke pulled the trigger for a short burst on one of the wildmen.

  He had a rifle. It was a lever action. Rourke snatched it up, no time to search pockets for loose ammo. He cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, nothing happening, then found a target. The last three fingers of his right hand in the lever, the first finger locked against the trigger guard, he started working the action, keeping his trigger finger stationary to automatically trip the trigger as the lever closed.

  The rifle bucked in his hands, Rourke eyeing the brass as it ejected as he worked the lever forward—some type of pistol cartridge—likely . Magnum he guessed, not having time for a closer look.

  He jerked back on the lever as a machete-wielding man raced toward him. The rifle bucked again, the body of the man with the machete folding forward at the waist, tumbling then still on the ground.

  Rourke started to run again, levering the rifle at targets .of opportunity, at last the tubular magazine coming up empty.

  But he was beside Rubenstein.

  "You got any ammo left for that AR?"

  "Empty—"

  "Makes an okay club," Rourke shouted, wheeling, lashing out with the lever action's barrel, catching a knife wielding wildman in the face. Rourke inverted the gun, to use it as a club, another man rushing them, but Rubenstein had the AR turned around and was halfway through his swing. The buttstock connected, the man's head snapping back.

  Rourke started to run—"Let's get outa here—up into the rocks."

  He slowed, two of the wildmen approaching, spears in their hands, both men crouched low.

  Rourke swung the lever action, feigning, one of the spears snapping out toward him as he sidestepped, the .rifle in his hands crashing around, impacting against the man's neck. Rourke backstepped, a shot nailing the second man. It was Rubenstein with the Browning.

  "Still got a little left for this!"

  "Save 'em till we need 'em!" Rourke started to move, stopped, the man on Rubenstein's far side taking a hit in the leg, going down.

  "You get the other guy out," Rourke shouted, running back to the second trooper.

  "I'll get this one."

  Rourke dropped to his knees beside the man, the knee apparently hit, blood pumping from it between the man's interlaced fingers. Rourke shifted magazines in his pistols—counting the half spent magazines, he judged he had three dozen rounds left.

  "Lean on me," Rourke rasped, hauling the man's left arm across his shoulders, holding the left wrist in his left hand to keep the man up, a Detonics pistol in his right hand.

  The wildmen were-consolidating—at least Rourke judged it as that looking behind him.

  Had the men who tortured their victims on crosses had the slightest amount of organization, he realized full well he and Rubenstein would have been dead in the first minute of battle.

  But they seemed intent on personal bloodletting rather than victory, using their knives rather than guns—they were insane, he thought absently as he hobbled under the added .weight of the wounded man.

  The man was talking. "My knee—my knee—Jesus help me—my knee!"

  "Not much farther," Rourke !ied, reaching the base of the rocks—but the rocks were still there to climb, Rubenstein now only a few yards ahead, helping his wounded man up into the rocks.

  There would be little chance to run for it, but run for it they must, Rourke realized—to the beach, and hope that Lieutenant O'Neal would have dispatched another boarding party.

  He heard a high pitched scream—a woman's voice. "Kill the heathens!"

  Heathens—despite it all, a smile crossed his lips as he ran.

  Chapter 38

  "Captain—the gunfire's pretty much died out."

  "Hope those men haven't died out with it, O'Neal," Gundersen panted, pulling himself up over a breadloaf-shaped rock and starting for the next one.

  Gundersen judged the distance remaining to the height of the rocks as some twenty yards—twenty yards that could well take another five minutes to traverse.

  "O'Neal—take your men and spread 'em out—both ends of the rocks. We get up there and there's an ambush waiting for us, don't want 'em having too easy a time of it."

  "Like a pincer movement, sir—"

  "Don't give me that Army crap," Gundersen laughed, panting, his breathing coming hard. He realized now—shifting his weight to pull up over another rock—what a soft life it was to be a submariner.

  O'Neal was shouting orders, the men of the landing party fanning out. Gundersen silently wished he had Marines with him—he'd used Marines in a shore party once and despite the massive Navy-Marine Corps rivalry, he considered them consummate fighters.

  He was nearly to the top of the rocks, to the ridgeline there and he stopped, leaning against a slab of flat rock, taking the Government Model . from the shoulder holster strapped across his chest, jacking back the slide. He still wished he hadn't lost the Detonics.

  He raised the thumb safety, then turned toward the rocks again, inhaling deeply, resigning himself to the last part of the climb. As he started it, he shouted to O'Neal and the others, the words coming in gasps because of his breathlessness.

  "We reach the—reach the top—con-consolidate on me and on O'Neal—consolidate on us before fanning out." He didn't know if that was proper tactics, but he didn't want his men too scattered. He reached up with his left hand,-then his right, the pistol in his right hand scraping across the rock. "Kiss off the finish," he murmured, peering up over the ledge.

  He could see Rourke, Rubenstein and two men—the men looked butchered and half dead—running, limping, pursued by what seemed like a hundred men who looked even more terrifyingly feral than the prisoners brought back to the submarine. They brandished knives, guns, torches. And faintly,
as the running bands came even closer, he could hear shouts—savage cries. "Kill the heathens!"

  "Holy cow," he swore. "Christ—"

  Chapter 39

  Rourke dropped the man to the ground, turning toward the mob, a Detonics pistol, freshly loaded, in each hand.

  "Paul—we can't haul these guys any further!"

  "I know," Rubenstein's voice came back, sounding odd.

  "If I don't get out—and you do—"

  "I'll get back—I'll find them—I swear it to God, John—"

  "And Natalia—"

  "I'll take care of her—"

  The younger man was beside him now—no rocks to hide in, nowhere to run, out in the open, the savage horde of wildmen running toward them brandishing spears, clubs, knives, a" bizarre assortment of guns—and the torches lighting the night, their glowing brilliance leaving floaters on the eyes as Rourke watched.

  "John—"

  Rourke stabbed one of the pistols into his belt, his right hand going out, to Rubenstein's shoulder. He said nothing, just looked at the man—his friend.

  He moved his hand away, retaking the Detonics . in his fist, his fingers balling on the checkered rubber of the Pachmayr grips.

  Rourke had predetermined it—he would save one round, to shoot Paul if somehow it looked the wildmen would take him alive. It was better than the cross, far better.

  He held the pistols at his hips, ready.

  The mob was slowing its advance, the leaders or front runners—Rourke couldn't tell which—waving their torches in the air.

  The mob stopped, then began to advance, slowly, at a determined walk. The isolated shouts and curses were gone, but the voices now becoming one voice, a chant, the words chilling his soul. "Kill the heathens! Kill the heathens! Kill the heathens! Kill—"

  "John—remember how you used to tell me—trigger control?"

  Rourke nodded, words hard to come for him, his throat tight. "Yeah. I remember."

  "It's been like a second life anyway, hasn't it," the younger man's voice murmured, Rourke not looking at him.

  "Yes."

  Rourke turned to look at Rubenstein, the pistol—the battered Browning High Power—clutched in his right fist. His left hand, as if an automatic response, moved to the bridge of his nose, to push back the wire-framed glasses.

  "It has—a second life," Rourke nodded, seeing his friend he judged perhaps for the last time.

  The mob was less than fifty yards from them now, the smell of the torches acrid on the night air, the faces of the men and women who held them gleaming and reddened, glistening sweat.

  The chanting of the mob had stopped.

  One man stepped out of the front ranks, a torch in his right hand, a long bladed knife in the left, the torchlight glinting in streaks of orange and red from the steel—blood was there. He shouted, the crowd otherwise hushed.

  "Kill the heathens!"

  Rourke snapped the pistol in his right hand to shoulder height and fired once.

  The -grain JHP brought the man down, the body

  lurching into the crowd, the torch igniting the animal skin covering a woman near him. Her scream was loud, but died in the shouts of the mob as they broke and ran— toward Rourke and Rubenstein.

  Rourke waited, remembering a tine his father had quoted often, but only as a joke. It was no joke now. "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."

  Chapter 40

  Rourke could see the whites of their eyes in the torchlit glare reflected from their steel. He opened fire, Rubenstein's pistol barking from beside him, the pistol sounding louder to him than his own guns, despite the difference in objective noise volume between . ACP and mm Parabellum merely because of the Browning's position relative to his ears.

  The twin stainless Detonics pistols bucked, bucked again and again, bodies tumbling, spinning out, falling, more bodies swelling the ranks behind them—a wave, a human wave that seemed endless.

  The Detonics pistol in his right hand was locked open, empty.

  He fired the pistol in his left, the round slamming into the chest of a man less than twenty yards from him, the man going down, the slide of the second Detonics locking open, empty as well now.

  Rubenstein's pistol was still discharging, Rourke changing to his last full magazines for both guns. He would have to scrounge the partially loaded spares.

  As he raised the pistol in his right hand, Rubenstein's pistol suddenly still, the forward element of the wave, of the mob so near he could feel the heat of their torches, vthere was a shot burst, then another and another.

  The wildmen—they were using their guns?

  Another shot burst—M-I fire as best he could tell,

  bodies going down from the leading ranks of the wildmen storming toward them.

  Now shot burst after shot burst, automatic weapons fire ringing deafeningly across the rocky outcropping on which Rourke stood, Rubenstein beside him.

  "John!"

  Rourke glanced to his right, muzzle flashes coming from the rocks at the base of the ridge which rose then fell toward the beach. There were men, running from the rocks, M-s in their hands, spitting tongues of fire in the night.

  "Rourke! Doctor Rourke!" Rourke heard the shout but didn't look to find the source, instead turning his freshly loaded pistols at the mob, none of them advancing now, some screaming, fleeing, dropping their torches.

  The pistol in his right fist—a shot into the head of a wildman still holding a torch, the head seeming to explode, the torch falling against it, the hair catching aflame. The pistol in his left—a woman, an assault rifle blazing in her hands toward the shore party—her chest seeming to sink into her as the body flipped back, spread eagling against a heavily bearded man who dropped his torch.

  The pistol in his right—the man with the heavy beard who held the woman, his neck spouting a gusher of blood in the firelight.

  The pistol in his left, the pistol in his right, his left, his right, his left, right, left, right, left—the slides of both Detonics pistols, the stainless steel gleaming dully in the torchlight of the burning faggots on the ground, bodies writhing there, were locked open, the guns empty, "Rourke!"

  He turned his head now—Commander Gundersen, running, a . in his right fist, two seamen flanking him, firing M-s.

  "John!" It was Rubenstein. "John!"

  Rubenstein's High Power was licking flame into the night, the pistol at full extension in his locked fists, his body in a classic combat crouch, the mm double column magazine Browning barely rocking in his hands.

  "Rourke!"

  Gundersen was beside them, the two seaman dropping to their knees, firing their assault rifles as they spread prone on the ground, short, rapid bursts, spinning more of the wildmen from the mob, the mob breaking up, running.

  "I've only got fifteen men—all I could spare from the ship—we gotta get the hell outa here."

  "Wait a minute," Rourke rasped. He walked forward, staying clear of the field of fire from the two seamen, noticing others of the landing party drawing back now, consolidating on Gundersen.

  Rourke found what he sought, wrestling an M-from the hands of a dead wildman, searching bodies on the ground for loaded magazines, finding a half dozen magazines, twenties and thirties and some of the non-Colt forties as he found a second M-.

  He started back toward Paul and Commander Gundersen, the two injured men now being helped away by the two seamen who had covered Gundersen's advance.

  "We gotta get outa here, Rourke!"

  "Right," Rourke nodded, handing Rubenstein an M-, distributing the magazines evenly between them, but keeping the thirties for himself—he liked them better.

  He dumped the partially spent magazine in his newly acquired assault rifle, ramming it into his open musette bag, the fresh magazines in his belt, his empty Detonics pistols already holstered. He worked the bolt of the M-, kicking out the already
chambered round, Rubenstein catching it, Rourke smiling as he did, then Rourke letting the bolt fly forward.

  "Now we can travel," he whispered. Already, the mob of wildmen was reforming, coming—and it was still a long way to the beach.

  Chapter 41

  Natalia shivered in the sail. She was cold, and the gunfire she now heard from the height of the rocks above the darkened beach chilled her more—was Rourke alive? Paul? There had been sporadic gunfire, then heavier gunfire—a firefight.

  She felt—it was a man's word and she smiled at it—impotent. She could do nothing trapped on the sail in her damned robe, the blanket around her like an Indian squaw, her bones shivering, her teeth chattering.

  She looked beside her—a young man, almost equally as cold, she guessed, his cheeks and the edges of his ears red tinged in the wind that blew across them both.

  She looked at the M-the young man held, not to guard her but to guard the sail, to secure the submarine from possible boarders. There were nearly a dozen more men on the deck, bundled in peacoats, white sailors caps tucked down on their heads, M-rifles in their hands.

  "Sailor—what did Commander Gundersen instruct you to do if the shore party couldn't get back?"

  "He told the exec to pull out, ma'am—least that's what I hear, ma'am."

  "What if the shore party is coming back, but under fire?"

  "We're to guard the deck, ma'am—that's it."

  "Not return fire to cover them."

  "Against orders, ma'am," and he smiled.

  She smiled at him, too, judging his height, his weight—if he fell, how could she best keep his head from cracking against the rail or on the steel plating of the sail's deck?

  She edged slightly closer to him, her eyes watching the rocks, flashes of gunfire visible there in the darkness and flashes of—she couldn't tell what.

  There was a dull sounding roar, like the waves against the beach, but more indistinct—like a human chant.