Hellbenders

by James Axler

  Baron Al climbed from the wreck of his wag, still stunned by the impact of the crash, to come face-to-face with Tad Hutter, who had clambered from the wreckage of his own wag, leaving Tulk long chilled and impaled on the remains of the steering column, the dark metal protruding out of his back where the impact had driven it through his chest after the steering wheel had sheered off. He had died with the certain knowledge that his hated baron couldn’t get out of the conflict alive.

  “Jourgensen, what the fuck are you playing at?” Hutter yelled, leveling his blaster.

  Baron Al looked at him with surprise, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing or hearing.

  “Me?” he said blandly.

  “Asshole,” Hutter muttered as he raised the blaster.

  “No! Leave him—he’s mine!” came a yell from behind Jourgensen that made both barons look around in surprise.

  Correll was charging across the open space, oblivious of the carnage around and the blaster shots that strayed across his path. He had his saber raised, and was upon the startled Jourgensen before he had a chance to move.

  “We’ve waited so long for this, you pox-riddled bastard, but at last you’ll pay,” he screamed, long strings of saliva hanging from his jaws as he set to the baron with a vengeance, the saber chopping through Jourgensen’s flesh and bone, scoring nerves and gouging out muscle so that great gouts of blood flooded from his body. Jourgensen, still not fully alert and now aware only of his own defenselessness, realized too late what was happening to him, and went down under the frenzied attack.

  Hutter raised his blaster to chill the mad dog and also to put Jourgensen out of his misery, but his sole attempt at charity for the baron of Charity was stopped by two streams of blasterfire that came his way from Jenny’s and Rudi’s Uzis. They’d heard their leader cry out and wanted him to achieve his revenge without interruption.

  But in their single-minded desire, they had neglected to watch their backs, and so found themselves open to blasterfire from those few sec men who had decided that they should keep a watch on their baron.

  Jenny and Rudi weren’t the only ones to leave themselves open in this manner. Correll was now in a world of his own, the chaos and carnage around him meaning nothing, failing to register in his addled brain. For Joseph Correll, the Hellbenders and the whole assault and ambush on the trade convoy between Summerfield and Charity was as of naught. The only thing that mattered was that Baron Al “Red’’ Jourgensen was now beneath his blade, the chilled corpse of the baron nothing more than a mess of offal as the saber hacked him into ever smaller pieces. Correll raised his head to the skies, clouded as they were with smoke, sand and the smell of destruction, and laughed long and loud. He looked over to where some of Jourgensen’s sec men had emerged from the mists.

  He knew what was to happen, but it no longer mattered. There was nothing now left for him to live for. His raison d’être was fulfilled. He turned to the sec men and raised the saber aloft triumphantly, laughing wildly and welcoming the hail of blasterfire that ripped into him. The metal box on his chest gave way under the hail of fire as it ripped into his exposed head and limbs, the stress on the primitive welding making it give way beneath the onslaught.

  Correll stayed on his feet—kept partly upright by the force of the bullets ripping into him—long enough for the box to fall open, and its contents to finally be revealed.

  The charred and semimummified remains of Correll’s wife tumbled from the box and fell on the mutilated remains of her tormentor…followed closely by Correll’s lifeless corpse.

  The real battle was over. Now it was just a question of who would get out alive.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dean, Jak and Danny backtracked through the sandstorm and smoke, each with his blaster at the ready, in search of a wag that could be used to get them out of the arena. Doc followed, bringing Ayesha with him. But the one-eyed man held back.

  “What is it, lover?” Krysty asked him.

  “J.B. and Millie,” Ryan replied simply. “We need to find them. They won’t know where we are.”

  “They might if they saw Correll,” Krysty replied. “They knew he was in our wag, and they’d probably guess which direction to take.”

  “That’s a lot of mebbes,” Ryan said grimly. “I’ve got to try and find them.”

  “In this? We could wander forever and still not find them,” Krysty told him.

  “We?” Ryan queried, then grinned when he saw the expression on her face. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  While Ryan and Krysty set off to try to find J.B. and Mildred, the other five in the group were making their way toward the rear of the convoy in search of a wag they could use.

  “Shit, I’ll be glad when we can get the hell out of here,” Danny whispered to Dean.

  Jak heard him and grinned with a vulpine relish. “No one get in our way,” he said simply, a leaf-bladed knife appearing in his hand. “Get close, chill quick and quiet—no one guess where we are.”

  “You don’t know how much I hope so,” Danny murmured fervently.

  The party of five had been lucky so far. The main hand-to-hand was taking part toward the middle of the desert floor, where the Hellbenders had rushed to take on the sec men as they emerged from their wags. So getting back as far as the rear of the convoy was a matter of keeping eyes and ears open and staying close to the wall. Jak, Dean and Doc knew their respective strengths and fighting skills, but Ayesha and Danny were still unknown quantities, so they didn’t want to risk conflict unless it was absolutely necessary.

  The last wag in the Charity convoy was nothing more than a personnel carrier, closed in with welded sheet metal and a few slots cut in the side for blasters to be pushed through. The slots were empty, and there were four people engaged in hand-to-hand combat around the vehicle, with as many corpses between them. Forced up close by the poor visibility, these three men and one woman were fighting full-on, handblasters trying to get into a position where they could get a clear shot.

  Jak looked at Dean. “You take those two,” he murmured, indicating a woman and man—one of whom Dean recognized as a Hellbender—up close to the wag. “And I take them,” he added, indicating two men who were careering across the desert floor, locked in a deadly embrace, the only outcome of which could be one of them buying the farm.

  Both of them would, if Jak had anything to do with it. Before his words had even died on the air, the albino hunter had slipped across the desert floor, through a cloud of dust and was up behind the grappling men. Even in the dull light, the leaf-bladed knife was an arc of gleaming steel as it cut through the air and then through flesh and artery. Jak had timed his movements precisely, so that the edge of the knife sliced the carotid artery of the man whose back was to him, catching him as he turned.

  The knife caught the second man on the downstroke, as he stared at Jak in wide-eyed, openmouthed surprise. It was his last expression, as the knife swathed patterns in the dust and sliced open his throat, his life draining from his eyes as blood drained from his open throat.

  The entire chilling had taken only a few seconds, in which time Dean had slipped through the smoke and approached the other fighting couple. He had the Hi-Power in his hand, and although it was risky to fire, in case the blaster noise attracted other combatants who may be near, two well-placed slugs should see the job done. The two combatants were so engrossed in their own personal struggle that they didn’t notice the younger Cawdor approach them stealthily. Dean loosed two shots at less than three yards. Both were aimed for the head of each fighter, and in less than a second both struck home. The two combatants hit the desert floor unaware of how they had been chilled.

  Jak turned and beckoned Doc, Danny and Ayesha forward. As they joined the pair, Jak and Dean were checking that the wag was empty. There was a corpse in the front, which Jak pulled out and discarded on the desert floor.

  Dean turned with a puzzled expression. “Where have Krysty and Dad got to?”

&nb
sp; THE ONE-EYED MAN and the red-haired beauty were, in fact, making their way toward the center of the arena in search of J.B. and Mildred. Given the degree of cover afforded by the sandstorm and the smoke that filled the area, it was easy to avoid hand-to-hand combat as long as you kept a sharp lookout for any warring factions. Ryan and Krysty found it easy to dodge around the skirmishes, and kept a sharp view for J.B. and Mildred.

  The Armorer and Mildred were following much the same pattern. They had figured that Ryan and Krysty were likely to be in the direction that Correll had emerged from, so they were battling their way through the sand and smoke to try to locate their comrades, dodging the skirmishes that were taking place. The fighting was now localized, of necessity because of the conditions, and it was relatively easy to skip through the troubled patches and conserve ammo.

  Nonetheless, when the two couples nearly ran into each other coming out of a bank of swirling sand, all four had their blasters raised lest trouble was in the offing.

  “Dark night, thought we’d never find you,” J.B. said laconically.

  “Yeah. What took you so long?” Ryan replied with a wry smile, born of the harsh conditions, then added quickly, “the others are back this way securing a wag. Let’s go.”

  The four companions made their way back across the battlefield, sticking to the outer edge of the arena to make quicker progress and avoid conflict. By the time they arrived at the wag, Jak had gotten the machine going, and the engine was ticking over.

  “John Barrymore, my dear doctor,” Doc enthused, “we had some doubt over whether we would see you again.”

  “It’ll take more than this for you to be rid of me, you old buzzard,” Mildred replied as the four piled into the wag.

  “Go, Jak,” Ryan snapped as he closed the doors.

  The albino hunter wasted no time. Putting the wag into reverse, he roared back toward the entrance to the arena and away from the other wags in the convoy. In the dismal light of the storm, he was unwilling to risk reversing the wag all the way through the entrance and perhaps crashing it, so he put the vehicle into a skid and turned it so that he could hit the entrance head-on and get out of the war zone.

  As they broke through the almost solid wall of sand that was swirling at the entrance, where the storm was being forced through the restricted gap, the air suddenly became clearer, vision less impaired.

  “Where you want me to stop?” Jak asked.

  “I don’t,” Ryan replied.

  “But I thought—’’ Krysty began, before Ryan interrupted her.

  “Yeah, we were gonna regroup and evaluate, but that’s all changed. That coldheart hell in there is just gonna sort itself out in its own time. We need to head back to the redoubt, see what happens then.”

  “Then I drive,” Jak said simply, increasing his speed as they pulled away from the arena of chilling and headed back for the Hellbenders’ deserted base.

  The redoubt was eerily quiet when they reached base. They parked the wag, showered wearily and prepared food and drink in a subdued manner, hardly speaking. It was only when they were seated in the now all too empty meeting room that Ayesha spoke.

  “Do you think any of the others will get back?”

  Ryan shook his head. “I doubt it. They were ready to fight to the chilling, like their leader. Correll was that fanatical, and he instilled that into all of them. Even if a few of them survive the slaughterhouse, I doubt if they’ll have the strength left to get back, even if they get any of the wags going.”

  “But we owe it to them to wait,” Krysty added.

  They left it for two days, using the time to rest and recuperate. Ryan and J.B. scoured the redoubt for any armory materials that had been left behind, of which there were few; Mildred and Krysty had better luck with the med lab supplies; while Doc and Jak squabbled good-naturedly over the self-heat and food and drink supplies.

  Dean, meanwhile, joined Danny and Ayesha in starting to explore the old tech that was in the redoubt. From the few things the young men had been able to teach each other, Ayesha was able to add a little from what she had picked up watching her father. It didn’t take any of them much further on, and Dean soon lost heart about being able to crack the secrets of the CD-ROM in their possession, but it was a step in the right direction.

  Dean also noticed something developing between Danny and Ayesha that made what happened a few days later completely unsurprising.

  As they ate, Ryan said, “I figure it’s pretty clear that no one’s coming back. And I also figure our chance of getting any of that old tech is pretty much gone, as well. There isn’t enough here for all of us to survive, so I reckon we get a good night’s rest, get it together in the morning, then jump through the mat-trans.”

  “That should be interesting to see,” Danny remarked, Dean having made him familiar with the machine.

  “That suggests you’re not coming with us,” the one-eyed man said.

  Danny shook his head, then looked at Ayesha. “No, there’s a lot here for us to find out, then mebbe we’ll try a jump and see what happens, or mebbe just go back to Charity and see if we can get at the rest of the old tech. But, seeing as you’ll be gone and there’ll be food and water to spare, mebbe we’ll just stay here for a while, out of harm’s way,” he finished.

  “Shame. I’ll kinda miss you,” Dean said simply.

  Ayesha looked at the companions. “I guess we’ll miss you, too. But this is something we need to do for ourselves.”

  “Parting is such sweet sorrow. You know, that’s a phrase I recall from somewhere, but it eludes me somewhat,” Doc said as he took Ayesha’s hand and kissed it. “No matter—the origin is unimportant when the sentiment remains constant.”

  “You are one weird old guy, but I do like you,” Ayesha replied with a soft smile.

  The companions were gathered in the mat-trans unit to enter the chamber and jump, ready for whatever fate may throw at them next. They turned and entered the chamber, having made their goodbyes. Dean was the last to enter, and as he did he stopped and turned to Danny.

  “Remember, as soon as the mechanism locks then the comp starts charting the course. Never been able to stand outside and see it, but if you watch, it may teach you something. And mebbe one day we’ll cross and you’ll be able to tell me,” he said.

  “Bet on it,” Danny said with a tinge of regret in his voice.

  Dean’s last view of Danny and Ayesha was as he closed the door. He could tell that they were already poring over the comp console, watching intently for the mechanism to grid into action.

  Dean seated himself, with some regret, on the chamber floor and watched as the white, curling mist began to rise from the circular disks inset into the chamber’s floor and ceiling, and he and his companions stood poised on the verge of another leap into the unknown.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-7329-3

  HELLBENDERS

  Copyright © 2004 by Worldwide Library.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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