Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1)

by Jane Dougherty

  Then Tab moved. The movement was so sudden, Tully started, but his feet stayed rooted to the spot, his body paralyzed with fear. Tab slashed at his face, and a filthy claw raked across his cheek. Only an instinctive jerk of his head saved Tully’s left eye.

  “First blood to Tab,” Ace crowed, staggering to his feet and raising his beer can over his head.

  The crowd swayed and roared. “Blood! Blood! Blood!”

  “Tully,” a familiar voice shrieked from the back. “The knife, remember. Your knife. Use it!”

  Tully looked at Matt’s knife, the thing in his hand that he was clutching so tightly his fingers had gone numb. It was a broad-bladed butcher’s knife, heavy and unwieldy. Fine for cutting up chops, but not much use in hand-to-hand combat with a madman whose reach, excluding the claws, was far superior to Tully’s. Tully tried to think.

  The creature was moving around in a weaving circle, his shoulders held low, head still held on one side, a lunatic crow sizing up the contents of another bird’s nest. Tully remembered his exercises, his father teaching him how to box—to control his breathing, calming his panic. He shifted his weight, shallow-breathing, dancing from one foot to another, loosening up.

  Then the thing rushed him, jaws slavering, tossing spittle, and with lips curled back in a rictus of berserker fury. The crowd rose to its feet as one man and roared with anticipation. Tully ducked and rolled to one side. The stink of filthy dog grabbed at his throat. The cut on his cheek throbbed with pain, and he felt sick.

  The creature swung his head around, damp with sweat and yellowish foam, and Tully was caught in the inhuman stare, the indescribable hatred of the red eyes. In an instant he sensed it, the total absence of intelligence. Tab was no longer completely human, but he was not animal either. Irrational, all-consuming hatred had taken the place of intelligence inside the thick-boned head. Tully could win, if he was quick and clever. He thought of Carla shouting out to him—his knife.

  The Tab creature swung at him again, and he leaped backward, not quite quickly enough and his chest exploded with pain as the great paw knocked the breath from his lungs and vicious claws ripped across his chest. Tully’s first idiotic thought as the blood pearled up through the tatters of his shirt was how it had been a smart move to take off his beautiful jacket. It would have been ruined. The crowd roared and cheered at the sight of the blood, and the Tab creature smiled, as if accepting their applause.

  Tully fought to get his breath back, rocking from heel to toe, waving the long knife in front of him, switching it from one hand to the other, inviting Tab to have another go. Which he did, snake-quick and deadly. Tully jumped back and the claws raked his shoulder rather than his throat. He panted wildly now. He had misjudged Tab’s rapidity, and he was knocked up, bloodied and losing confidence quickly.

  Tab circled, mouth open, tongue lolling, certain of victory. With an obscene gesture, he raised his left paw and licked the blood. The crowd roared and cheered, and Tully felt the last of his courage seeping out through the soles of his feet.

  “Tully!”

  Just his name. That was enough.

  “Tully! The knife!”

  Carla’s presence forced its way into his thoughts, taking over, soothing his breathing into a regular pattern. Deep breaths. He danced on the balls of his feet, trying to relax. Tab moved in again, grinning now with all his ghastly teeth, balancing his great weight, preparing to hurl it all at the little boy with the puny knife.

  Tully switched the knife to his left hand and feinted to the left. Tab swerved, lunging forward to Tully’s unprotected right, which suddenly wasn’t unprotected at all. Tully’s right hand reached down. The concealed knife left his right boot and flew in a single arc of movement to fix itself in Tab’s throat.

  The movement took them all by surprise, Tab most of all. He stumbled forward, arms still threshing from side to side as if he didn’t realize he was dead. The heavy body crumpled and fell and lay twitching as the last vestiges of fury oozed out of it.

  Tully sank to his knees and bowed his head, feeling sick and dirty and infinitely weary. He didn’t see the tribesmen leap to their feet and surround the still nerve-twitching carcass with whoops of delight. Nor did he see them lay about it with knives and boots until it was just a shapeless pulp, because Carla and Jeff had led him back up to the relative comfort of the shopping mall.

  Chapter Twelve

  They left the car park behind, echoing to the sound of empty beer cans clattering about and riotous, incoherent singing. High-pitched female voices protested, and some cried out in pain and fear, but the sound of male laughter and cheering drowned them out. Jeff led the way up to the second level of the mall to the infirmary—a pharmacy that had long since been ransacked for the more obvious drugs and ointments.

  Tully had removed what was left of his shirt and Carla cleaned the jagged tears across his chest and shoulder with boiled water, then smeared it with antiseptic cream that was years past its sell-by date.

  “As soon as we get you cleaned up, we make a run for it. Okay?” Carla threw the dirty piece of cotton wool into a bucket.

  “You could wait a bit,” Jeff said, helping Tully into a clean shirt and an assortment of jumpers. “Now Tully’s a warrior, Ace will let him do things. He’ll let him have his gear back, probably give him yours too, and weapons.”

  “You mean like that pop gun you cart about with you?” Tully asked facetiously, and Jeff hung his head. “I’d do more damage with a water pistol.”

  “How did you know?”

  Tully laughed. “One, nobody since we’ve been here, even when he’s been attacked by a pack of mad drax, has ever been known to fire a single shot. Two, nobody carries even the whiff of a round of ammo. Three, most of you wave these things about with the safety catch off and you’ve still got all your limbs.”

  Jeff grinned and dumped the useless rifle on the ground. “The other tribes don’t know, though, do they?”

  “They probably don’t have any ammo left either, so you’re all just waiting for somebody to call your bluff.” Tully picked up the deadly looking weapon. “And that would take some balls.”

  Carla pushed a lock of hair behind her ear with an impatient gesture. “Come on, Tully. Stop messing about. Ace and the rest of them are all having a ball in the car park. Anything we want we just take, and we get out of here. We might never have a better opportunity.”

  Jeff fidgeted and opened his mouth to say something. He looked at Tully.

  “Come on, Jeff, spit it out.” Tully nudged him.

  “I can’t go. Not without Kat,” Jeff said, his eyes full of pleading.

  “Kat can come too, if you think she’d want to.” Carla looked dubious.

  “Some of the others are okay too, like Matt. And there’s another guy.” Jeff hesitated as if Tully wasn’t going to like the suggestion. “He came out of a hole ages ago. Ace keeps him locked up over on the east side where the bank was.”

  Tully glanced at Carla. She shook her head. “Sorry, mate, but we haven’t got time to go jail-breaking,” he said.

  Jeff gave him a curious look. “It’s on the way. Wouldn’t take a minute.”

  “Why should we?” Carla wanted to know, zipping up her jacket ready to leave.

  “The Holy Man wanted to kill him, but Ace says he knows lots of stuff and we should make him work for us. But he won’t tell us any of the kind of things Ace wants to know about, like how to get the guns to work and how to make bombs. He says if we want to survive, we should beat our swords into ploughshares. What’s ploughshares?”

  Tully smiled, but there was the glitter of moisture on his eyelashes. He shook his head and swallowed back the hurt. “That’s one of my dad’s favorite expressions. It means stop killing people and put your energies into doing peaceful things like growing food. Though you’d need more than a few ploughshares to make an impression on that monumental tip out there.”

  “He’s big and strong, too, this guy,” Jeff went on, his pointed l
ittle face alight with enthusiasm. “Ace says he’d make a good warrior, but he says it’s senseless to fight. He says if we don’t work together, we’ll die. The Holy Man says it’s blasphemy an’ Ace says he’ll flay him alive if he doesn’t change his mind. We ought to try and get him out. He doesn’t deserve to be left behind. He seems sort of good to me. He could smash Ace to a pulp if he wanted to. But he won’t.”

  “Shame,” Carla said. “What’s his problem? Is he a Buddhist?”

  “A wha’?”

  “Religious. They don’t kill anything, not even a fly.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it might be somebody’s granddad,” Tully explained helpfully.

  “Only another fly’s, though.”

  Carla slapped her hand down on the counter. “Basta! Can we leave the theological discussion for another time maybe? Are we leaving, or are we going to risk getting locked up again by these nutcases just to try save some conscientious objector who thinks he has a good chance of recruiting Ace as an altar boy?”

  Tully scratched his head. “My dad always says you should never turn your back on a friend in need. He might creep up on you and give you a boot in the hole. Why don’t we just have a quick peep at this bloke and see what he’s like? If he told Ace to take a running jump, his heart’s in the right place at least.”

  Carla sighed. “Okay, let’s make it quick, though. I mean it, Tully, I really want to get out of this place.” Her face that had an elfin look about it only a few days ago was pinched and tired—and frightened. “I don’t think you realize what happens to the women here. It’s horrible. And one night soon, that red-haired witch is going to pick on me.”

  Tully blushed. “Nobody’s going to touch you. I’m a warrior now, remember?” The grin he used to reassure Jeff spread over his face. Carla’s expression, though, didn’t change.

  Jeff handed Tully his sheepskin jacket and picked up his rifle. “Come on, then. The bank’s at the end of the mall, practically outside.” He gave an involuntary shiver. “Put on all the clothes you’ve got, the entrance hall’s all smashed in and it’s bloody cold out that end.”

  Tully finished buttoning up his jacket and slipped his knife back inside his right boot. “That was a stroke of genius, hiding a knife in my boot. I might use that trick again. You never know,” he said. “There might have been someone in the crowd who’d nodded off and didn’t see where I pulled it from.”

  “Do you never shut up?” Carla’s voice was strident with impatience. Jeff’s eyes darted nervously to the door and back. Something was up—apart from the bickering in the pharmacy there was no noise. The rumpus below ground in the car park had fallen silent.

  “Have you nearly finished?” Jeff fidgeted with the shoulder strap of his rifle. “We haven’t got much time.”

  “Okay, don’t lose your wig! Now, have we got everything? Bus pass, clean hankie, a bit of stale bread for the ducks?”

  “The wha’?”

  Despite herself, Carla burst out laughing and pushed Tully into the broad, echoing central walkway of the ghostly shopping mall, just as Ace and a bunch of his tribesmen emerged, with a clatter of army boots, at the top of the escalator.

  “Shy or something, are we? Couldn’t face the fans?”

  Dog Skin appeared behind Ace’s shoulder, his breath wheezing out like an airbed with a puncture.

  “Just getting the scratches seen to, Ace. You got a dragon needs slaying or something?”

  Quick as a snake striking, Ace’s riding crop caught Tully in the face, leaving a red welt from the cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.

  “I give the orders around here, and I say when you leave the party.”

  Tully dabbed at the wound with his fingertips, anger silently boiling up inside. Carla saw it in his eyes and caught her breath.

  “It’s your party, mate, not mine. Why don’t you go back and enjoy it?”

  The riding crop whined through the air again, but Tully was expecting it. Still fired up with adrenalin from his combat with Tab, he grabbed Ace’s arm and snapped it down hard across his knee.

  “You broke my fucking wrist, you bastard!” Ace gasped in pain and opened his hand, letting the crop fall to the ground. Tully snatched it up, and as Joe lumbered forward, grabbed Ace, spun him around and tightened the crop across his throat. Ace tried to loosen Tully’s grip and prepared to kick him in the shins, but Tully wrenched his head back and down forcing him to scrabble frantically to keep his balance. Tully held him in that position, with his back arched painfully, and his uninjured hand clutching at the leather baton like a drowning man.

  “Let go of him, you little shit!” Joe lunged. Tully ignored him and jerked Ace’s head back a little more. Joe stopped, fists still poised.

  “You want your chief back in one piece?” Tully said, trying to sound ferocious, despite the pain from his wounds. “Another step and…” He pulled the stick tighter. Ace gasped. Joe lowered his fists. “Okay. Let’s get this clear. From now on, I’m a warrior. And not just any warrior, I’m warrior number one. Aren’t I, Ace?”

  Ace gritted his teeth and hissed his agreement.

  “Thank you, Ace. As warrior number one, I’ll need a good knife, a rifle and all the ammunition you have left.”

  Ace struggled, his face puce, the veins bulging at his temples, but Tully held firm.

  “Oh, and one last thing. I choose my own woman. She’ll be Tully’s woman and none of you bastards are to lay a finger on her. Is that understood?”

  The guards were mesmerized. They nodded in unison, not even waiting for Ace to give the word. Tully had won them over by doing what they had never dared—stand up to Ace. Stripped of his authority he was just a reedy, sickly-looking weakling.

  Carla looked from one face to another. Leaving aside Dog Skin, who had switched off again, only Joe’s ox-like features showed anything except admiration verging on veneration. Joe’s brain moved too slowly to switch allegiance so quickly. He was just angry. His watery eyes fixed on Tully’s face and his fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically, obviously imagining Tully’s neck and how it would feel in the grip of his thick red fingers. Carla shivered. Tully might have impressed a handful of the men, but he had made an implacable enemy. The fight was on now to win over the others.

  “Chuck down your weapons!”

  The men looked at Ace, then at one another. Joe didn’t move.

  “Come on! This is hurting Ace a lot more than me.”

  First Matt, then the others, dropped an assortment of kitchen knives, butcher’s knives, wrenches and spanners to the ground. More reluctantly, the rifles and handguns followed.

  “Here, Dog Skin, lend us your dog skin, will you?”

  The Holy Man behaved as if Tully was talking to somebody else.

  “What’s his name anyway?” Tully asked.

  “Nobody talks to him much. God, I think,” Matt said.

  “God? I’ll stick with Dog Skin—suits him better. Jeff, grab it will you,” Tully said, “the dog skin, and load all this gear onto it. Carla and Jeff, bring the stuff.”

  Carla winced as though she had been slapped in the face and shot Tully an angry look, full of hurt, but he seemed oblivious to everything but the game he was playing

  “There’s a smart little boutique I noticed beyond the main escalator. The metal blind doesn’t look too busted up. I’ll have that as my quarters…if that’s all right with you, Ace?”

  Tully gave the garrote a tweak, and Ace blinked and tried to move his head.

  “We’ll take that as a yes. Off we go then. You lot first.” He nodded at Matt and the others. “Lady Day’s Fine Lingerie Boutique, after the handbag shop and the sandwich bar. I think it sold ladies’ underwear.”

  After the short walk, Carla and Jeff dumped the arsenal and their rucksacks full of gear behind the little counter and waited. The floor was strewn with empty, moldering boxes but no broken glass and none of the usual signs of pillaging—food remains, fire damage, urine and
worse. Ladies’ knickers and stockings had obviously not attracted the attention of the hordes of wild tribesmen who had fought pitched battles in the mall.

  Tully still held the now docile Ace, the riding crop strapped firmly across his throat, and spoke to the men. He jerked his chin in the direction of the assortment of weapons lying wrapped in Dog Skin’s cloak. “I’m going to hang onto this stuff as a first installment. Later, I’ll call in all the toys and Ace and I’ll decide how to share ’em out. But I don’t want you to forget. I’m warrior number one, but Ace is still the boss.”

  The men looked bewildered. Ace stiffened.

  “As warrior number one, I obviously have certain rights, like first pick of the gear and the women, but ultimately, Ace is the boss. I’m just the warlord in charge of military operations. Is that clear?”

  Ace glared at him with hate-filled eyes while Matt and the others nodded in agreement.

  “Right, Ace?”

  A full thirty seconds passed as Joe cracked his knuckles before Ace gave a slight nod of the head.

  “Great!” Tully beamed. Possibly only Carla noticed the relief that flickered in his eyes. His wounds were stiffening up, and only willpower was keeping him on his feet. “Now that we’ve got that sorted out, we can all take it easy until the evening meal. Matt, have the sentries relieved and, Jay, send word to the girls in the kitchen that I’d prefer they produced something that isn’t beans for lunch, as it’s a special occasion.”

  He released his hold on the riding crop and gave Ace a hefty pat in the back, sending him staggering forward. Joe, his face white with fury, lurched at Tully, his fists raised to swing. He almost didn’t see the knife in Tully’s hand pointing straight at Ace’s kidneys. As Joe battled with the desire to rip out Tully’s liver, Dog Skin threw himself to the ground and began to writhe about, legs and arms flailing. Carla reached out in an instinctive movement to help, but Jeff held her back.

  “Don’t touch him! It’s a vision.”

  All attention now switched to the Holy Man. Even Joe forgot his battle lust, and Ace bent down to catch the low muttering that poured from the epileptic’s lips. At first the words made no sense, just disjointed sounds and half-phrases. No one spoke, no one laughed. They all hung on the words of the Holy Man with rapt expressions on their faces.