Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  She looked out at the crowd as if seeing it for the first time, which, in a way, she was. Other times she had been as influenced by the baron as the rest of the population. Now, she was apart, and it seemed an alien and scary presence to her.

  She looked around, eyes wide behind her mask, no longer knowing quite what was expected of her by anyone. Dr. Jean finished the chant and spoke to the crowd in the broken French of the bayou. He told them that the time to begin the sacrifice was nigh. He turned to the nearest slab, which was Marissa’s, and held out his hands, chanting.

  J.B. was nearest to the baron, with Mildred and Krysty around the slab. He cast a glance toward their captive, hoping that she would guide him. It was a vain hope, as her horrified and glazed glare spoke only of someone frozen in fear.

  J.B. decided that now was the time to take matters into his own hands. As the baron drew near, J.B. pulled out his Tekna and stepped in toward Dr. Jean, using the folds of his costume to mask the thrust he made.

  The baron’s eyes, already exaggerated by his makeup, became almost absurdly wide as the Armorer’s thrust took the knife up and into his stomach. Dr. Jean was a big man, sturdily built, with layers of fat and muscle that slowed the progress of the blade as it surged toward his intestines, intent on causing a massive internal hemorrhage.

  The baron had the presence of mind and speed of reflex to push at J.B., thrusting him away. With a bellow that was part rage and part pain, Dr. Jean staggered backward as J.B. went sprawling, the bloodied knife still in his fist. The crowd began to hum with confusion, the people, in their trancelike state, not being sure of exactly what was going on.

  But Mildred and Krysty knew. As soon as J.B. closed with the baron, they realized that they had little time in which to act. As quickly as they could, they released the bonds that kept Marissa on the slab. Because of her jolt-addled state, the sec men hadn’t bothered to tighten the knots on the bonds. They were there merely to stop her struggling too much when her heart was torn from her body.

  Mildred and Krysty pulled the woman off the slab. She stumbled and tried to keep her feet, but they couldn’t assist her. They had to prepare themselves for the firefight that they knew would come. J.B. was already on his feet, Tekna sheathed and the mini-Uzi in his hands. He threw off his costume so that he would no longer be encumbered by it.

  The revelation that something was very wrong sent a visible shiver through the crowd. The people could see Dr. Jean staggering across the platform, bent over and clutching at his stomach, blood staining the rags and feathers around his middle the same shade of red.

  Ryan and Doc exchanged a quick glance. It was obvious what they had to do. The time for subterfuge had passed, and they needed to be ready for combat. Throwing off their costumes, they hastily untied Jak. The albino shook himself, stumbling as he attained his feet.

  “Leave me. Okay,” he yelled as Doc made to come to his assistance. He was far from okay, however. Despite the adrenaline rush that had started to feed life back into his limbs as he was being carried out by the sec men, he was still nowhere near fighting strength, and it was all he could do to stand unaided.

  He had no idea how Ryan and Doc had suddenly appeared from nowhere—he was equally surprised to see J.B., Mildred and Krysty standing near a faltering Marissa—but he had no time or inclination to wonder about that right now. He could see the crowd, could see the sec men beginning to rush the platform, and most of all he could see the bellowing, wounded figure of Dr. Jean stagger along the lip of the shrine.

  Total choas was about to envelop them, and if he was to stand any chance of getting himself and Marissa out of this in any kind of shape, then he had to look after her and make sure that his friends could fight without having to worry about him.

  Lurching alarmingly as his weakened limbs tried to deal with the urgent message of flight that his brain was feeding them, Jak made his way over to Marissa. Watching them go, Ryan knew that he and the others could get on with the more serious business of staying alive.

  Sec men were pouring out of the front of the old courthouse building and onto the platform of the shrine. Diamond was at the forefront, noticeable primarily because he was the only sec man without infrared goggles. Not that this helped him as he charged straight into a hail of fire from the Armorer’s Uzi, which stitched a line of blood from his left shoulder down to his right hip, throwing him backward into a group of sec men who were on his heels, making them stumble. They were unable to aim and fire on the companions, and so were easy targets for the first wave of fire from Mildred, Ryan and Krysty.

  To the left of the stricken Diamond, and coming from another set of doors, was another phalanx of sec men. Doc wasted no time in centering his LeMat on this group, and letting them feel the full force of the shot charge. The white-hot metal pellets ripped through them, tearing at flesh and bone, spreading a fine mist of blood across the group. The group were scattered, some chilled, others wounded too heavily to return fire.

  Driven back by the hail of fire, and the flying bodies of those who were chilled and wounded, the sec force was temporarily pushed back into the old courthouse. But this was not the only source of problems for the companions.

  An awareness of what was happening began to permeate the crowd in front of the shrine. They were hyped up, jolt-fueled, and in a state where they weren’t sure what was real. It was what Dr. Jean relied upon, and it was what had slowed their reactions. But however much it had dulled them, it hadn’t completely wiped them out. Down in the crowd, some of the ville dwellers were beginning to realize that something was wrong. The sight of their baron stumbling around the platform, blood dripping from his guts as he bellowed in agony, was a signal that those on the shrine weren’t all there to help him complete his task.

  As they had discarded their costumes, the companions hadn’t revealed themselves to be swamp dwellers or part of the rebel army. But whoever they were, they were the enemy.

  And they had to be destroyed.

  One by one, increasing incrementally so that a volley of single shots became a hail of fire in a matter of minutes, the crowd in the square began to rain blasterfire onto the shrine.

  Not thinking about who was in direct line of fire.

  Dr. Jean straightened, outraged and shocked as the first of the fire began to hit him. “No—nononononono…” he bellowed, inaudible above the volleys of shells. Standing upright now, blood pouring from the wound in his guts, he was peppered by handblaster and rifle fire, his skin and flesh puckering as the bullets hit home all across his head and body, ripping chunks from him.

  He was chilled long before he fell. His inclination was to fall forward, the direction of his weight, counterbalanced by the spread force of the fire that still ripped skin and flesh from his bones, his blood spraying over his people—the people whose bloodlust he had cultivated; the people whose bloodlust was now the cause of his own demise.

  They didn’t even notice, in their frenzy, when his corpse finally collapsed and fell from the platform.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Something happened the moment that Dr. Jean finally bought the farm. The companions, now clustered together in the center of the platform, between the two slabs from which they had plucked Jak and Marissa, could feel it. The atmosphere within the ville had changed. The baron may have used old tech and jolt to instil the hypnotic suggestion into his people, but it was himself that that they followed, his personality that controlled them. And they had just seen him chilled before their very eyes.

  They had no leader. They had no lead. All they had was an uncontrollable bloodlust that had to be sated at any cost. So they began to turn on one another. Attention that had been focused on the platform was now turned on themselves. Day-to-day disagreements and rivalries now took on a much greater significance than heretofore. Instead of training their blasters on the platform and trying to take out those who had caused the downfall of the baron, they instead turned their blasters on one another. The square turned into a heaving
mass of people indulging in a firefight and in hand-to-hand combat. At such close range, there were plenty of casualties from blasterfire, and it was beginning to look as though the walled ville would wipe itself out in an act of self-destruction.

  The companions were stunned for a second by the sudden transformation in the crowd as soon as it was released from the grip of Dr. Jean. Unable to believe that they were no longer under attack themselves, they were transfixed by the carnage that was taking place before them, their own presence seemingly forgotten.

  “Ryan, look,” Jak yelled, throwing a wobbling arm in the direction of the old courthouse lobby. More sec men were making their way from the rear toward the sets of double doors, primed to repeat the attack that had seen the first wave wiped out.

  “Fuck this,” J.B. muttered, taking a gren from his munitions bag, pulling the pin and tossing the gren underhand into the lobby of the building. He signaled to the others to take cover, which they did by using the slabs on which the sacrifices were to have been made. The gren went off inside the building with a dull roar, almost drowned by the firefight that was taking part to their rear. The hot metal fragments from the detonating grenade decimated the sec force within, and a few of the fragments were flung clear of the doors and out over the platform. The woman who had been their unwilling guide to the ceremony, and who had stood rooted to the spot, unable to take in what was occurring around her, fell victim to one of these. The fragment hit her in the left eye as she watched openmouthed at the destruction within the building. It penetrated cleanly into the eyeball, frying the viscous fluid of the eyeball and cutting right through muscle tissue into the soft brain beyond. She slumped to the floor of the platform, still unable to comprehend the destruction around her, even as the life was extinguished from her body.

  Coming out from cover, the five companions headed for the lobby, ignoring the carnage behind them. As long as the ville dwellers were intent on chilling one another, it meant that they weren’t paying any attention to the companions or Jak and Marissa. Mildred and J.B. held back to cover the two jolt-addled ex-sacrificies as they staggered across the platform toward the ruined lobby.

  “Shit, think you’ll be okay moving?” the Armorer asked Jak, yelling to make himself heard over the sound of a firefight.

  “Yeah, just as long as we not run too far,” Jak replied with a wry grin. He could feel strength returning to him with every step as the adrenaline pumping around his system and sheer willpower fought off the effects of the drug; but Marissa wasn’t doing as well. Perhaps because of her smaller frame, perhaps because she wasn’t as strong, she was still weak on her feet, her eyes still pinpricked pupils and wide irises, staring in confusion at what was happening around her. She tried to run and halfstumbled, as though her limbs were lagging behind her brain. Mildred took her arm.

  “You go, Jak. I’ll take her,” she said to the albino. In truth, he was glad to hear that, as he was still some way short of being up to speed himself, without having to carry Marissa along with him.

  The group entered the lobby of the building. The shrine and the heavy masonry in front of the building acted as a shield for the noise in the square, and they seemed to be in an almost unnatural calm. The lobby was littered with bloodied corpses, some still barely alive and moaning, others long since having been chilled. The walls were damaged and blackened by the blast, and the floor and bodies were covered with debris from the explosion: brick, masonry, plaster, wood.

  “Dammit, where do we go from here?” J.B. asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ryan mused, “but at least that gren bought us some time.”

  The Armorer was gratified, feeling that this time his use of the gren had been justified. At the back of his mind had been the concern that—like back in the ville when he’d attacked the sec force besieging the rebels—he might have made matters worse.

  But this wouldn’t get them out of the walled ville. That had to be their number-one priority.

  “Fireblast, I wish we knew the layout of this damn place a little better,” Ryan ground out. “Feels really weird, as well.”

  Krysty shook her head. As a doomie, she could feel this more than any of them. “It is different…all that old tech shit is still pumping out those noises, and the jolt is still working, but there’s no Dr. Jean to direct what they’re feeling. Now they just want to chill.”

  “Let us look upon the brighter side of this,” Doc said.

  “There’s a brighter side?” Mildred questioned.

  Doc laughed. “Of course there is, my dear Doctor. At least they are not after us, for a start. If we attract fire, it is only because we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—”

  “You know, somehow I don’t find that very reassuring, Doc,” Mildred interrupted wryly.

  “Perhaps, my dear Doctor, if you stopped trying to be humorous and let me finish, we may get somewhere. I realize that cheap jokes are your reaction to stress, but I fear we do not have the time for them right now. As I was saying,” he continued, leaving Mildred openmouthed, “we are not a target as such. So may I suggest we adopt a policy of trying to keep to the shadows? Rather than rush, and make ourselves noticeable, would it not perhaps be better if we kept to the margins and let these people blast seven shades of hell from each other, moving only when we can be sure that we shall not be noticed?”

  Ryan looked levelly at Doc. “You know what, Doc? That’s a damn fine idea.”

  Forming into a line, with Jak and Marissa sheltered in the middle, aided by Mildred, Ryan and Krysty in the lead, Doc and J.B. covering the rear, they set off to canvas the building. The lower levels were deserted. With Dr. Jean gone, and the hypnotic effects of the drugs and old tech causing a desire to fight anyone over anything, the only occupants of the rooms they recce’d were corpses or those who were close to buying the farm—the victors in those particular fights having left the building to take up arms in the square.

  Moving up the staircase, keeping tight formation with blasters ready to shoot the hell out of anyone who stepped into their path, they traversed the whole building. The story was the same on every floor. The only occupants of the building apart from themselves were those who were either already chilled, or were mortally wounded and well on the way. Those who had emerged victorious from these internal firefights had already made their way out into the square.

  On the sixth floor they came across an open-plan office layout that housed a series of comps and tone and noise generators that were running and were linked by cables to the vid machines that were still pumping out the propaganda about the now deceased baron to a crowd that was no longer listening and no longer cared.

  “This is where it’s coming from,” Krysty said, immediately going over to the comp consoles and seeing if she could make much sense of them. Dean had taught her what he had learned at the Nicolas Brody school. Mildred stood over her shoulder.

  “Can you switch it off?” Doc asked.

  “Sure we want to do that?” Ryan asked. “If they’re not out for each other, would they come looking for us?”

  “No more than if we stumble on them by accident while they’re like that,” Mildred replied. “You take this shit away from them, and they’re going to see what they’ve done to one another. Hell, they’re not going to know what to do,” she theorized.

  “Can’t be any worse one way or another.” Ryan shrugged. “It’s convinced me. Can you turn this shit off?” he asked Krysty.

  She shook her head, her long, sentient red hair flowing more freely than it had for some time. “Hard to tell. Some of this stuff is really complex, more so than anything I’ve seen before. If I screw with it and get it wrong, I could make things worse. You want my honest opinion?” she asked, grinning as she looked Ryan in the eye. “You really want to make sure about this, then I’d say blast the shit out of the fucker.”

  “That should work.” Ryan laughed. He beckoned for them to pull back to the doorway, in case the shorting of the comp circuits cause
d a fire or small explosion in the room.

  “J.B., you want to do this?” he asked, indicating the M-4000 that was slung over the Armorer’s shoulder. The load of barbed metal fléchettes would certainly cause considerable damage to the delicate comp circuitry.

  “No, let me,” Marissa said, her voice sounding unusually loud and clear. “It’s my people who suffered because of that shit, so I’m the one should finally end it.” Her voice cracked under the strain of controlling herself while the jolt was still in her system. She held out her hands for the M-4000. J.B. eyed her appraisingly, trying to judge if she was up to the task. She still looked a little dizzy from the jolt, but her expression was set and firm. He could tell that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so held out the blaster to her.

  Steadying herself, she aimed for the main bank of comps and fired into them. The load from the shotgun spread and ripped through the metal casings of the comps, rupturing circuit boards and transistors, breaking delicate chips. The shattered comps fizzed and crackled, flames licking at them.

  She turned her attention to the tone and noise generators that were feeding the hypnotic impulses. Firing at each of the three generators in turn, racking the blaster between each, she reduced them to shattered hulks of metal that now lay silent.

  There was no danger of a fire spreading, as the few flames that had been produced flickered and died with nothing to feed them among the metal of the old tech.

  “It’s over…” she said before handing the M-4000 back to J.B.

  THEY WAITED UNTIL DAYLIGHT, watching the ville destroy itself, from the top of the old courthouse building, resting in turn and feeding from Dr. Jean’s kitchens. They were also able to stock up on their own supplies by looting the deserted building. Through the night the inhabitants of the walled ville of Lafayette waged war, sporadic bursts of blasterfire and outbreaks of actual fire occurring at random around the ville. From the roof they were able to get a panoramic view of the settlement, and could see the same patterns repeated all over.