by Gavin Smith
The SAW ran dry. It had been my last cassette for the weapon and I’d long ago exhausted grenades for the launcher so I just dropped the weapon in the mud. I turned and jumped over the remains of a low wall. We’d been fighting a retreat since we landed. We were now in what had once been a small town. It had been some kind of centre for the surrounding rural communities when people had been able to grow things here. Now it was just a series of mazelike low walls sticking out of the mud, traces of the buildings that had once housed a community. It was mostly night; Sirius B was low in the sky. Fire and manoeuvre was rote now, we didn‘t even really think about it.
I tore the Benelli assault shotgun from the smartgrip back scabbard strapped to my pack and started firing three-round bursts at the Berserks sprinting towards us. The flechette penetrators burrowing into their hardened chitinous bodies before their explosive cores detonated. It was like watching them get chewed up from within. I was going through the motions. Crosshairs from the smartgun link over the next alien, fire, repeat until it was time to reload. Ignore the fact that what little cover I had was being eaten away by their returning fire. Ignore my multiple wounds. Ignore that we were dead anyway.
I watched Gregor sprinting towards me. I covered him as best I could. He turned and my audio dampeners kicked in as he fired a long burst from the railgun at the charging Berserks. I watched as several of them seemed to explode into liquid mid-stride. Gregor hit the quick-release catch on his gyroscopic harness. The whole rig along with the gun and ammo pack fell into the mud. Gregor was running again, pulling his personal defence weapon from a holster on his thigh, unfolding it as he ran. Leaping over the wall, sliding into the mud nearby before scrambling back to join us and then opening fire.
Like most signal types, Shaz favoured a laser. I could feel the heat from its beams as he fired bursts of bright red light into the remaining Berserks. The Tyler Optics laser carbine was set at a frequency designed to superheat what it hit rather than burn through it. Where he hit the Berserks I saw their solidified liquid flesh turn to a greasy black steam. I could hear him through my access to the command net requesting air and artillery support for an immediate evac. I could hear the hopelessness in Shaz’s voice. We were getting nothing from command. I understood the necessity of sacrifice but there seemed to be no gain in sending us to die like this.
Behind us I could hear Ash’s SAW firing long bursts accompanied by Mudge’s AK-47. The AK-47 was a replica of a pre-FHC weapon chambered for 9-millimetre long that he insisted on using. They were all around us and closing. We kept on taking Them down, thinning their numbers, but They kept on charging at us. The uneasy joke had always been that if They ever learnt tactics humanity was really screwed.
Concentrated shard fire had Shaz. Gregor and myself duck down into the mud as the low wall was chewed away and they were on us. I managed to get off a shot point blank into one of the eight-foot-tall monstrosities before dropping the Benelli and extending my knuckle blades. I rammed the blades up, sliding under chitinous plates like they trained us. augmented muscle and prosthetic driving the plates apart as black liquid poured all over me.
With some effort I heaved the dying alien to one side. The Berserk behind him swung a limb, ending in some kind of spiked weapon, into my rigid breastplate. It hit so hard it cracked the plate, causing the inertial undersuit beneath to harden. I landed on my back in the mud, retracted my knuckle blades, drew my laser pistol and the Mastodon and fired a lot. It seemed to take a while but the advancing Berserk fell back into the mud.
I managed to get to my feet before the next one tackled me and sent me sprawling back down. I dropped the pistols and just stabbed repeatedly into it as its power-assisted claws tried to peel me out of my armour. I was still stabbing a long time after it had stopped moving and had leaked all over me. It smelt like burnt plastic.
Eventually it dissolved over me. Gregor was there to pick me up, as ever. It had gone quiet. I retrieved my weapons, watching as Gregor cleaned black ichor off his sword bayonet. Shaz was doing likewise with his kirpan. Mudge was changing a clip and Ash was just looking out over the low wall.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It seemed very quiet. It was now nearly dark. We were entering the short night of a planet in a binary system.
‘They’re just standing there,’ Ash said shaking her head. Mudge stood up.
‘Get down!’ I hissed, Gregor and Ash doing the same.
‘They’re not doing anything,’ Mudge said. He studied them for a while. I wondered how wasted he was and what it was this time. I crawled over to where Mudge was stood, cradling my automatic shotgun in the crooks of my elbows. I peeked over the low wall. Mudge and Ash were right. The Berserks were standing, swaying as if in some unfelt wind about two hundred metres back. Between them and us were a multitude of black, viscous oily puddles that showed where we’d killed their mates. A feeling was making its way through my fatigue, something not felt for a while - interest.
‘You ever heard of anything like this?’ I asked Mudge. who was intently studying the sky. I’d asked him because Mudge was one of the few of us who took an active interest in the rest of the war. He shook his head.
‘Can’t see it being anything good for us,’ Ash mumbled in her thick Brummie accent.
‘What do you want to do?’ Gregor asked. I had no idea. There were obviously too many of them for us to fight. I shrugged.
‘Get yourselves sorted. Patch yourselves and your armour up as best you can, check your ammo, ready secondary and tertiary weapons. Shaz, I know it’s a waste of time but keep on the command net. Got any time after that, we’ll have a brew.’
‘Then what?’ Ash asked. I could hear Mudge giggling.
‘If they haven’t killed us and they’re still playing silly buggers then we head back to the firebase and see if we’re in time for the last shuttle.’
‘Or we’re sharing the planet with a lot of angry demons,’ Shaz said.
‘Where’s Ash gone?’ I heard Mudge say. Then I saw the look of horror on Gregor’s face and Shaz screamed. I swung round bringing my shotgun up. I found an awestruck Mudge staring at a bit of what I can only describe as dark air.
‘She got sucked in,’ Mudge whispered.
‘Mudge!’ Gregor shouted as he brought his PDW up to cover the dark air. ‘We need you in this world!’ This seemed to bring Mudge out of it. He staggered back bringing his AK-47 up to cover it. A red beam lanced out turning part of the dark air into greasy steam.
‘Cease fire!’ I shouted. ‘Shaz, you watch our backs. I want to know what the rest of them are doing.’ Shaz stood there staring. ‘Shaz!’ He looked up at me, his eyes wide around his lenses, and then he nodded. Through the split screen on my internal visual display I could see through Shaz’s helmet camera.
The Berserks were still holding off in their rough perimeter. The dark air hadn’t move. It still stood where Ash had stood.
‘Mudge, what happened?’ I demanded, cursing, though not blaming, the journalist for choosing to get high now. The war was easier for him as a hallucination. I could see his knuckles whitening on the grip of his assault rifle.
‘Mudge, do you want me to come over there and beat the shit out of you?’ Gregor asked quietly. This seemed to shake him out of it. I guess we all listened to Gregor no matter how wasted.
‘It moved up behind her,’ Mudge whispered, but I was hearing it across the patrol’s tactical net. ‘And just yanked her in.’ On my internal visual display I saw Shaz’s helmet camera turn from the perimeter and back to the dark air.
‘Shaz,’ I said. The signalman turned back to the perimeter. Mudge giggled again. I resisted the urge to shoot him.
‘It was like a spatial anomaly,’ the journalist said, ‘a little spatial anomaly.’ Gregor and I exchanged looks. Ash fell out of the dark air, what was left of her. She was covered in her own blood. Her body looked like one big wound as if she had been pierced in every part of her flesh. We lit the night up with our muzzle flashes.
>
Back again. There was just one person at the end of the bed this time. Just Morag. She appeared to be checking over an auto pistol. She had her legs crossed on the bed and I could see a holster strapped to her upper thigh.
‘Where’d you get that?’ I tried to say, but it came out a slurred mess. She looked up at me, made the gun safe and holstered it.
‘Balor gave it to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘People tend to give pretty girls things,’ I slurred. I was slowly beginning to sound a bit more like I was speaking English. Whatever I said it was the wrong thing, judging by her expression. I glanced over at the bed next to me. Rannu was gone.
‘Where’s the Thug?’ I asked, sounding petty even to my own ears. Morag looked up. She seemed kind of angry.
‘He’s away being a warrior with Balor somewhere.’ And she began to get up.
‘Morag, wait.’ She stopped and turned to look at me. ‘You get a cutlass with that?’ I said, nodding at the pistol. ‘Maybe an eyepatch? She cracked a smile but didn’t sit back down. ‘How long have you been sat here?’
She shrugged. ‘A little while.’ She sounded half pissed off and half coy.
‘Prefer it when I was unconscious?’ I asked.
‘You’re nicer,’ she said, smiling again.
‘You okay?’ I asked. She nodded.
‘I was worried about you,’ she managed to say and then looked embarrassed.
‘I was worried about me too.’
‘I didn’t like seeing what happened to you.’ For all the violence I knew she would’ve seen just by growing up in Fintry and the Rigs, somehow she’d not managed to become inured to it. Then I realised what she was really trying to say. I’d been really stupid.
‘You didn’t like watching me do what I did?’ I said. She considered what to say next but it was written all over her face.
‘Morag ...’ I began.
‘I’m being selfish.’ She stood up.
‘Wait,’ I said, and she stopped. ‘Morag, look at me.’ She wouldn’t. ‘Please.’ I couldn’t make out her expression. ‘I would never hurt you. Do you understand me?’ Finally she nodded. ‘Please sit down, stay with me.’ I tried to keep the pleading tone out of my voice but she sat down again. Not surprisingly there was an uncomfortable silence, then she looked up at me.
‘I wouldn’t let you,’ she said, her voice full of that steel-like resolve. It was a declaration. She was never going to be a victim again. Initially I was taken aback. I didn’t want her to think of me in the same light as all the other arseholes she’d met in her short life, but then again maybe I was. Finally I nodded and smiled.
‘So, you like Balor then?’ I asked as casually as I could manage a little while later. Morag let out a little laugh.
‘I was winding you up,’ she said. Good job, I thought.
‘What’s with you and Rannu?’ I asked.
‘I think he thinks I’m some kind of prophet,’ she said, seeming partly embarrassed and partly amused by this.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’ll piss Pagan off.’ She shrugged. I could feel myself fading again but more naturally this time. I was just tired.
17
Crawling Town
Crawling Town was not going to be difficult to find. Balor had given us access to a satellite he bought time on to track the huge convoy. Besides, we couldn’t miss the irradiated and polluted dust cloud kicked up by that number of vehicles.
We said goodbye to our psychotic benefactor on the banks of what was left of the state of New Jersey, near where the city of Newark had once been. Balor had provided us with vehicles, hazardous environment gear and some other bits and pieces that would come in useful. The vehicles, like most of our gear, were treated with a serious anti-corrosion finish or they wouldn’t last a day in the Dead Roads. I think he was helping us because we had the potential to piss people off and maybe even cause some chaos. In fact he’d been pretty good to us except for the bit where I’d had to spend five days in hospital.
I watched, straddling the low rider that Balor had provided for me, as Rannu drove the armoured muscle car off the flat-bottomed boat. Mudge was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, bottle of vodka in one hand, some inhaled burning narcotic in the other. I wasn’t best pleased at Rannu’s presence, but I knew first hand that he was capable, and sooner or later we were going to need all the guns we could get.
Balor and Pagan came to stand next to me. Neither of them said anything. Balor just favoured me with one of his disturbingly toothy smiles. I think he thought he’d taught me some valuable life lesson. He had: if I were ever to tangle with Rannu again I’d shoot him in the back, a lot, preferably while he was sleeping. I noticed Balor was watching Morag now as she walked off the flat-bottomed boat towards us.
‘Balor,’ I said, deciding I had to know something. He turned his monstrous head towards me. ‘There’s a story about you. I’ve got to know whether it’s true or not.’
‘Which one?’ he growled.
‘Did you ever see the Grey Lady? I mean—’
‘I know what you mean,’ he said. Pagan was watching us both, a look of slight concern on his face. Morag was just about with us now, her clothes and the armour she’d managed to scavenge covered by the poncho pan of her hostile environment gear. Balor seemed to be considering my question. We were all dressed in anti-radiation/pollution chic, we had on either ponchos or, as in my case, dusters to keep the worst of it out.
‘She scares me,’ he finally said. Not really what I wanted to hear, probably served me right for trying to be clever. ‘Besides, I only have eyes for Magantu.’ He was looking at Morag. Then he turned and walked back towards the water.
‘Who’s Magantu?’ Morag asked, only hearing the tail end of the conversation.
‘It’s the name of a great white shark from a Polynesian legend,’ Pagan said. We watched as Balor waded into the water. It was a clear but colourless grey day. Opposite us, across the water, we could see the broken spires and grey canyons of New York. Balor disappeared beneath the water. I fixed the filter over my face and then clipped the goggles to it. Rannu gunned the four-wheel-drive muscle car up the small dirt slope that led away from the water. Balor’s people began reversing the flat-bottomed boat away from the shore.
I plugged a connecting wire into one of the sockets in my neck and pushed the other end into the bike’s vehicle interface. Both the car and the bike were typically American, all style and muscle, no handling.
‘Come on,’ Pagan said to Morag. ‘We can work in the car.’ Morag didn’t say anything to him. Instead she fastened her mask and goggles and climbed on the low rider behind me. Pagan was obviously pissed off but didn’t say a word. He headed towards the car and Mudge got out to let him in the back seat. I felt good. Morag clipped her PDW to the bike on the opposite side to the Benelli assault shotgun I’d bought in one of New York’s many arms bazaars. Then she wrapped her arms around me.
‘I’m driving in the afternoon,’ she told me as I gunned the engine and we took off into Jersey, the others following in the muscle car. I heard a cheer from Mudge.
This was a scarred land. It had been hit pretty hard during the FHC as the corporations and the equatorial states had gone after what was left of America’s heavy industry. They’d used nukes as well as biological and chemical weapons. Those, along with the pollution from the deregulation of industry that had taken place before and after the FHC - a desperate attempt by America to hold on to its failing economic power - had left a wasteland nobody wanted. So the people nobody wanted had moved in.
Most of the land was covered in a white ash-like dust. The colours in the sky were vivid and unnatural, and everywhere we passed, from distant tower blocks and empty suburbs, to abandoned refineries and power stations, was eerie and deserted. It was like being alone in the world. I found myself liking it. I liked Morag’s skillsoft driving of the low rider less. Though not as much as Rannu and Pagan disliked Mudge’s driving, and when he and Mo
rag decided to race each other I had to agree with them.
We headed west, further into America. Progress was slow, most of the routes were still partially blocked by debris. All the vehicles that had been abandoned on the Dead Roads had been pushed to the side, presumably by the passage of Crawling Town. There were, however, still craters, rubble too heavy to be moved, downed bridges and the general poor repair of the road to deal with. The satellite info told us that the slow-moving convoy was heading towards the ruins of a city called Trenton, near the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border. This was a border held and violently defended by the US proper.
I knew there were people who lived out here other than the inhabitants of Crawling Town. I knew there were tribes living in some of the towns. I knew there were packs of dogs and swarms of rats, but we saw nothing and no one. It was the evenings I liked best. The sun going down as we rode towards it. The strange half-light before it got too dangerous to travel and we had to stop. The only sound was the throbbing of the two engines as our vehicles became silhouettes. I wondered if Rolleston knew it was us. Was he tracking us? In many ways we were at our most exposed, yet this was the happiest I’d been since it had all begun. Actually it was the happiest I’d been in a long time.
On the first night we stopped and set up the tent. It had an airlock mechanism and we had to maintain decontamination discipline. Morag and Pagan worked on God, tranced into the net for hours at a time. Rannu, Mudge and I took turns on guard, setting up an OP away from the tent. Rannu was uncomplaining about taking the middle watch, which always meant a disturbed night’s sleep, and I doubted if Mudge, who was usually drunk or high, was a great deal of use. When they’d finished working on God for the night and my watch was done, Morag would curl up next to me. Mudge looked amused,
Rannu was as impassive as ever and Pagan looked disapproving but never said anything. I just held her while she slept.
It was my favourite time of the day when we first saw it. In that strange, unreal, twilit half-light we saw a huge dust cloud that obscured the western horizon. Unspoken, we brought our vehicles to a halt. I magnified my vision. Suddenly the huge dust cloud was much closer, filling my vision, impenetrable, though I saw a few outriders on bikes and trikes disappearing in and out of the haze.
