The two figures came closer. He waited. They would have to be closer before he fired. The whites of their eyes. He snickered. Well, not quite that close. But closer. He wanted Cutter’s torso to fill the scope before he pulled the trigger. And when he did, that torso would vanish into red spray.
That unpleasant odor came again. Well, not quite unpleasant, but rank, earthy. He glanced aside at the offending bag of dirt again and edged it over an inch or so with his left elbow. He looked back toward the street.
What was this? The boy and Cutter were running, ducking toward a metal stand that had once been an outdoor kiosk. Before Lieber could aim and fire, both of them were crouched behind it and he couldn’t get a good look at exactly where they were. He squinted, looking for the top of someone’s head, or a shadow of their feet. Anything he could use for a target.
And why had they bolted like that? Zombies?
“Fucking stink-ass dirt,” Lieber said. “Fuck it.” He aimed at a point where he imagined Cutter might be cowering. This gun fired .50 caliber anti-materiel ammo. It was meant to take out steel and concrete. If Cutter was behind that kiosk—and Stanley knew he was—then he was as good as dead.
He pulled the trigger.
*
“Goddamn.”
Ron recalled saying that, but not quite why he’d said it.
He opened his eyes.
Cutter was looking straight up into the sky. There was nothing up there but cobalt blue. That was one thing you could say since humans had pretty much stopped ruling the Earth. The air was really clear. No more polluted gun-metal gray skies wrecked by photo-chemical haze. Just clear blue skies and wonderful clouds. That was nice.
He blinked. There was blood trickling across his forehead, warm and wet.
Why was he lying there on the concrete? On the street?
Now, he remembered. He and Oliver had ducked behind that old kiosk in front of the Brazilian restaurant that had once occupied that part of the building. Why had they done that? Had they been running from something? Had they seen something?
Ron lifted his head, carefully, and looked up.
There was an enormous hole punched right through the mass of the kiosk. Wood and sheet metal and insulation had been cracked like a cookie, big chunks of the little building scattered everywhere. Once there had been walls in front of them, but now there was a gaping space with wires and bits of structure dangling. Ron’s ears were ringing. He lifted his head a couple of inches, trying to get his bearings. Maybe he’d remember what was going on if he could just see.
And then, looking through that hole in the kiosk, he realized that someone must have fired at him. But who? And if they had, and he could see the direction from which the shot had come, then they might see him.
He rolled to his right, immediately, without any more hesitation. And that was why the bullet did not hit him but cratered into the sidewalk and turned it into pulverized grit and powder that showered over him and gouged little holes in his right cheek.
Gathering his feet under him he pushed hard, thinking of old football drills from his high school days. There was a twinge from the old knee surgery, but he got himself moving and rolled again until he was lodged in a narrow space—a bit of a narrow stairwell leading down to a plated lift.
Fuck. He was trapped. All someone had to do was toss a grenade at him and he’d be dead. And now he realized what was going on. Someone with some serious firepower was shooting at him. And he knew who would do such a thing. Colonel Dale’s crazy pet.
“Oliver?” he called out, realization slamming home as his senses locked home again.
“Here,” came the answer, a tiny whisper. The boy was curled up, huddled inside what was left of the kiosk. There was maybe a lip of concrete two feet high and perhaps that thick protecting the boy from whatever it was that was raining metal on them.
“Don’t move, Oliver. Stay right there.”
Suddenly, the air erupted again. The shot was hideous, the weapon roaring at them. Ron saw the source. A brief puff of light in the darkness of the ground floor of the Trust Tower. That crazy hacker bastard, Lieber. The top of the kiosk went to bits, the wad of metal wrecking the edge of the roof and the top of the wall, sending shards of wood and plaster in a vast and deadly arc.
“You insane piece of shit,” Cutter whispered.
He was trying to decide what to do when the voice boomed out.
“Cutter. Ron Cutter. Answer me.”
The crazy bastard had that bullhorn again. He loved that fucking bullhorn. Ron did his best to push himself back even further into the tiny shelter of the alcove. He wasn’t sure exactly what kind of gun that bastard had, but he suspected he could power a round right through the granite-faced wall hiding him and that would be that. Cutter just hoped the asshole didn’t realize it.
“Cutter, if you don’t answer me then I’m going to kill the boy. What’s his name? Oliver?” There was a pause. “Yeah, Oliver.” There was another couple of seconds of silence. “If you don’t say something then I’m going to turn that pile of junk he’s hiding behind into pieces of trash and him with it. I know he’s in there because there’s nowhere else he could be. Now answer me, goddamn you!” The madman’s voice was multiplied a hundred times by the bullhorn and focused by the opened window acting as a chimney for the sound waves.
“Okay,” Ron yelled. “What do you want? We’re no danger to you! We’re just going to the compound. To the hospital.”
Lieber’s voice came again, screaming through the bullhorn. It no longer mattered that Ron or Oliver knew where he was. They were at his mercy. “Come out, now. Come out or the next time I fire, it will be right at where the kid is hiding. I know he’s crouched down there and I’m going to lay down three shots in succession right down there and turn him into hamburger. Unless you come out right now, I am going to start shooting.”
“Ron! What should I do? Should I run?” Oliver’s voice sounded small and scared.
“Don’t move,” Ron hissed. He looked around.
“What about the other thing? Do we have to worry?”
Cutter glanced around. Damned if he hadn’t forgotten. He wondered if he had a concussion from that first shot and the debris that had knocked him flat.
“I’m going to count to three, Cutter. You’ve got three fucking seconds.”
Ron saw the shadow move. And he smiled.
*
Stanley Lieber had the bullhorn to his mouth. He liked that bullhorn. It made him feel more powerful to have his voice projected like that. Just as he enjoyed the shoulder-numbing kick of the sniper rifle that was about to win him his wife. He liked proclaiming to his targets who he was and why they were so insignificant. Whether he was firing at people, or things, or animals.
He was so pleased with the situation that he didn’t notice the darkening at the big plate glass window to his right. The sound of his own voice was so impressive to him that he barely heard that glass as it shattered. It was only when something plodded into the building on feet that Lieber could not hear through his ear guards that he turned in that direction.
A tentacle, he thought. What the fuck? What was a tentacle doing in the building reaching toward him, feeling through the space to find him behind the mound of sandbags on top of that office cube? This made no sense, at all. And it was only then that Stanley Lieber, maddest and most gifted hacker left on Earth, realized that the earthy scent he’d smelled had not been dirt. No, it hadn’t been dirt, at all.
*
The bull elephant found the man and plucked him easily from the tight space. It was the same man who had killed his mate, and who had killed his child’s aunt who had replaced his mate in raising his calf. This small, dangerous, noisy man speaking so loud with that monkey voice the bull recognized and recalled so well.
You’re mine, now, you stupid monkey turd.
The bull peeled the man free of his perch. He lifted him up, the trunk wrapping securely about the stupid fellow’s midsection, plucking
him free of his weapon that stank up the confined space, having been fired at new victims who were now cowering before this vile, worthless creature.
I have you now.
With the man firmly in his grasp, the bull elephant backed out of the building until he was standing free and clear in the middle of the intersection. He was huge. Vast. His African bulk settling on the street at five tons, the top of his shoulders looming twelve feet above the ground. He curled his trunk and dragged the man toward his jaws, sliding the coward’s body across his sturdy ivory tusks.
The man screamed. Stanley Lieber screamed and screamed. He breathed in and let out wails of fear and pain again and again.
This made the bull happy. So he put the man down on the asphalt and pretended to let him go. Lieber ran, heading back toward the dark space of the tower. But the bull reached out with a deft flick of his trunk and grabbed the terrible little vermin by the foot.
And he lifted the hairless ape into the sky and smashed him to the ground. Blood and teeth flew across the pavement. Just a moment of silence and then the human woke up once more, recalled what was happening, and continued his screaming. The sounds were still loud, but more liquid now.
Placing the man on the street, the bull held him by the arm and stepped on his legs, crushing them into meat and bits of shattered bone. The little murderer screeched. Still loud. Still wet.
Then, lifting the soggy, moist, breathing wreck of Stanley Lieber, he turned and looked back at the two other humans who had been hiding from the killer, afraid. It eyed them where they stood, backing away from the gigantic bull with his bloody prize.
And then, dragging the dying man along the tarmac, the bull turned from the two humans, father and son, and ambled down the avenue, aiming for the herd where his own child was waiting. He could hear their rumbling call feeding through to the pads of his gigantic feet, miles away. They would not leave this mad place and find refuge elsewhere.
All along the way, into the distance, Lieber continued to call out, his voice fading with the retreat of the giant animal that pulled him along like a broken, mangled toy.
*
“What the hell was that all about?” Oliver asked. “I mean…why was he shooting at us?”
Cutter just stood and stared at the form of the retreating animal, small in the distance, still dragging Lieber along. The hacker had stopped screaming at least. Or else he and the vindictive creature were too far away to hear.
“He was a nut, son. That’s all. He was a nut.”
They both looked around, waiting to see what would happen now.
Neither was surprised when Jean suddenly appeared, jogging toward them, conserving her strength, carrying the Springfield and that little home-made .22 pistol her father had made, bouncing in its holster against her hip. Damn, she was gorgeous, Ron thought.
“You’re hurt,” she exclaimed as she reached her family. Her hands went to Cutter’s face and he flinched, feeling pain for the first time.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
Jean pulled a blue towel from her pocket and dabbed blood away from his forehead. A small cut was revealed, slowly oozing blood. “No. Just a shallow cut,” she told him. Then she stepped back. “Are you two okay? You weren’t hit, were you?”
“Heck, no,” Oliver told her. “We were pinned down. I don’t know what the crazy guy was shooting at us, but it packed a punch.” The boy pointed to the ruins of the kiosk, gone all to painted wood and blasted sheetrock and metal.
“Some kind of fifty caliber,” Jean decided. She stepped back into a clinch with Ron and hugged him tight. “You were lucky. So lucky. I saw that elephant carrying that guy off. It was that weird little bird of Dale’s, wasn’t it? That Lieber guy.”
“Yeah, well…” Ron turned and looked back down the street. The bull elephant was gone, now. Completely out of sight. “We won’t have to worry about him anymore. I hope whatever it is he was doing for the Colonel was worth the trouble.”
With that, they could hear the rumble of an engine heading toward them. A few seconds later, a pickup truck moved toward their location, shiny and red, polished and looking so out of place there in this dying world. It was a contingent from the hospital compound, of course. It eased up to them and four men emerged from it, one of them Colonel Dale, of course.
“What the bloody Hell happened here?” he asked.
And Oliver started in.
NEXT
“Well, it’s over. His work was done and his days were numbered at any rate.” The Colonel glanced quickly at Ron, to see his reaction.
Ron remained stoic. He kept his usual poker-face, sat and continued to stare at the British soldier.
Dale continued, wasting no time in patching over the slip. “I don’t mean to suggest that I was going to eliminate him. That’s not my style. It never has been and never would be with people like him. He was a sick man.” The Colonel stopped, obviously considering his next words; he even relaxed, allowing his body to fade into the chair he’d chosen in that upper floor of the Trust Tower.
“I’ve told you before what he was doing here. When things fell apart this place became—quite by accident—the electronic repository for quite a bit of information. And it was uniquely situated and supplied with the necessary tools to keep certain things running past the point when they should have failed.” He cleared his throat.
“You know all about the communications facilities with which this building is equipped. It’s because it was a world center for finance, but when everything else collapsed, those same facilities were suitable to keep more than just economic knowledge flowing across the globe.” He pointed to the sky. “We’ve already covered how he kept the satellites in their proper orbits. Without those satellites and without him to provide the telemetry, they would long since have failed. And those GPS devices that we still carry around with us would be so much worthless bits of plastic junk.”
His chair squeaked as he relaxed, exhausted, his arms falling to point toward the carpet. “Without him, we might still have gotten some of those flights here to Charlotte. Maybe even the big Galaxy might have been able to lumber here without running out of fuel and crashing to earth somewhere. But I bloody doubt it.” Then he stiffened and leaned forward. “That crazy bastard was working on programs that kept those satellites in place. He was the last one here who could do it.
“When he started, he had three companions of like mind and similar intellect to get the job done. Hell, a couple of them might even have been better at it than he was. And I wish they’d all survived, but this isn’t the old world and you know what happens to people these days. I lost the others one by one until only Stanley Lieber was left and you can damn well better believe I kept him protected until he had completed what I tasked him.”
Ron had not been able to relax since the ambush Lieber had set up. And he still wasn’t sure why the crazy fuck had tried to kill him, but he suspected it had something to do with some kind of obsession the creep had for Jean. His hands kept tightening into fists as he leaned forward to address the man who’d coddle the man who had come so close to killing him.
“And what task was that? Now that he’s gone, what was it that he had to do that was so damned important? And who’s going to see that it continues to be done? You’re hinting that no one is left to do the job he was doing.”
Dale smiled. “That’s why I like you, Cutter. You’re nobody’s fool and that’s why you’re so important to this town, to me, to everyone else here.”
“Like Lieber was important? Didn’t save him in the end, did it?”
“That’s not fair and that’s not a good analog, my friend.” Anger flashed in the Colonel’s eyes, but Ron didn’t care. He didn’t care how the other man felt about his words. He just wanted to know the answers.
“Maybe it isn’t. But I want to know why.” His knuckles were going white.
“Fair enough,” Dale countered. He peered at the ceiling, as if searching for words. “I don’t know much mo
re about computer programming and detailed satellite logistics than you,” he admitted. “But here’s what I can tell you in terms that both of us can understand:
“Lieber wasn’t merely keeping the GPS systems going. There’s more than just communications involved with what he was doing for us. For the past two years—and he did this alone, you must understand—he was working on a program that would keep those satellites in their proper orbits for the next few years. Without a human to husband them along. He was giving them the language they would need to alter their orbits and move their masses as needed so that we would keep getting the precious information with which they supply us and our little gadgets.”
He pointed through the wall toward the airport. “That’s how the transports got here. That’s how they found their way across the continent from Vancouver to Houston to Charlotte. Without him, they wouldn’t have made it to fuel dumps in Texas and they wouldn’t have gotten to this airport to unload their cargo. Without him, there wouldn’t now be two hundred heavily armed men with tanks and mobile flame throwers. And we wouldn’t have that big box that you’ve been wondering about.”
“What is that thing?” Ron asked.
“You know what it is. You tell me.” Dale didn’t move, his hands still like heavy weights above the carpet.
“It’s a nuclear reactor, isn’t it? It’s one of those portable nuclear power plants.”
Colonel Dale smiled. “You are indeed the smartest guy around here,” he said with pride. “I knew it from the day I first saw you moving around the ruins of our fair city. I knew it the days I saw you supplying your safe-houses and producing your own ammunition and making casual contact with all of those people you were helping along the way. Ron Cutter is nobody’s fool.”
Ron stood then. Despite any suspicions he held, Dale’s manner and speech had disarmed him. He genuinely felt nothing from the soldier but honesty. He had nothing to fear from the man. Slowly, he walked around the office, looking at the things there that Stan had accumulated in his years on the three safely-guarded, immaculately kept, very safe floors of that gigantic tower. He stopped at a desk and his tired fingers traced the keyboard of a laptop computer.
The Coalition: Part III 2% Solution Of The Dead (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 3) Page 6
