“The guards? There were supposed to be at least ten,” I said, doing a quick count. The ogres hadn’t slowed at all despite the rifle fire. Behind them, the first wagon loomed over the rise, a dark smear on the sands.
“I make six. Two are down. I count sixty ogres,” Silk said.
“Make that eighty ogres. There’s a rear guard. There’s—oh, shit. There it is,” I said as the Black Room came rumbling into sight. “Six wagons. One torture chamber. There was an open flatbed with bundles and—is that a kitchen?” I asked. The second wagon was open air like a primitive field kitchen. It made sense, given the amount of humans and ogres. There were water barrels on the flat wagon, alongside a stove and bales of dry goods, wrapped against the elements. “Do you see—”
A bullet flew past me to vanish through the garden. “Down. Now! Mira, do you have him? Top of the Black Room, behind some kind of railing.” The wagons were four hundred meters out and closing. I saw few guards, and the ogres made no sign they knew we were there.
“I have him,” Mira said. Her rifle cracked again. The sniper screamed, then fell forward to be crushed under the slow, heavy wheels. The ogres were chained together around the chest, pulling hard against the combined weight of their malignant convoy.
“How many more guards?” I asked. I stepped forward in a low crouch, unsheathing my blades.
“Three. Some must be in the wagon with Taksa and Senet,” Silk said over the barrel of her gun.
“You know what to do. Hold here. I’m going out,” I said, sliding back toward the heavier tree growth of the inner garden.
“Jack,” Silk said.
“I know. Eyes open,” I said. I moved off in a blur, feeling muscles come to life as I drew on my new body for speed I’d never known before. I cut hard right, going out into the sands in a looping arc that brought me to the rear of the last wagon, a large, square structure that was smaller than the next three in line. A single guard looked around, his feet moving side to side with nervous energy as he balanced on top of the rocking wagon.
I threw a blade at him with ferocious speed, the point driving into his ribs with a hiss. As he collapsed, I leapt onto the wagon, breaking his neck with one hand and retrieving my bloody sword with the other. “No guns for you boys. We’re doing this the personal way.”
His answer was a bloody cough as he fell to the sand, his body rolling away as the column went on. I tore the back door open, diving inside with my blade ready to cut. Light flooded the dark interior to reveal a stunned man holding a pistol.
“Good morning,” he growled, firing at my head as I feinted left. The round went wide as I struck low, my fist coming up to crush his gut with a punishing blow. I felt ribs go to powder as he slammed into the wall with savage force.
“Good morning yourself, fucker. Taksa, I presume?” I asked, tearing the pistol away and putting a foot on his chest. He wheezed in agony, his black eyes burning with hate beneath a strong brow and shaven head.
That’s when I noticed the girl.
She was olive-skinned, young, and once she had been beautiful, but now she was still and dead. Her hands were tied, her fingers broken, her small breasts bare to the world. She’d been savaged in every way, blood slick on her legs and neck. The torrent stained sheets of raw cotton, and tools of evil were strewn across the bed next to a decanter of wine and a sodden gag. There were teeth in the gag from where it was jammed into her mouth with brutal force. She’d been a toy, a thing for this man who sniveled up at me, his chest heaving as he fought to keep his lungs from filling with blood.
“You cowardly fuck. I knew you would—"
His hand came up impossibly fast, the small knife driving into my leg to tear upward with cruel efficiency. I punched down, my fist meeting the crown of his head with a thud. Taksa, the great tormentor and would-be god, fell still.
With a curse of pain, I pulled his knife out. I tore the only clean part of his bed sheet and wrapped it tightly around the cut, giving my leg a flex to see if I’d lost any mobility. It hurt like hell, but it was a long cut up the thigh, and I’d live with it.
Time was of the essence, so I unbound the girl with a muttered word of apology, then slipped the bindings over Taksa’s limp arms. “I’ll handle you later, asshole. Our day is just getting started.”
Gunfire erupted ahead in the column, so I climbed to the wagon top with both blades out, flashing in the morning sun. Two wagons ahead, a pair of guards fired away at Silk and Mira, their motion calm and methodical. Return fire struck the left guard, a great spurt of blood erupting from his neck as he spun to the ground with a mortal shriek. The other guard whirled, his weapon rising to greet me, but I jumped even while throwing a sword at him in a glittering whirl.
The blade missed, but the handle struck home on his collar bone, turning his body enough to give me time to close. I kicked his knee into pieces, folding him forward even as I wrenched his rifle away to spin into the sand ten meters away.
“Quick and dirty,” I told him, snapping his neck with a fast turn. He didn’t even have time to protest, slumping into a boneless mass that I let fall without a second thought. I waved my hands overhead, letting Mira and Silk know to stop firing and approach to help free the ogres. The beasts milled about in confusion and fright, a chorus of hoots and grunts from their lines. Silk and Mira bounded over the sand, weapons up, Lasser directly behind them. He held a pair of bolt cutters, going to work immediately on the lead ogres. They stood dumbly still as he began to break their bonds, then Silk urged them forward to safety, pushing at their meaty haunches to direct them into the garden.
Beneath my feet, a scream of primal rage pierced the morning air as a bullet shattered the wood near my foot. Splinters flew up and out, and I knew standing there would be hazardous to my health. There were no windows on the enormous wagon, but there was a door. Good enough for me. I jumped to the rear platform just as the wagon came to a stop, kicking inward with power I’d never imagined. My ‘bots were humming at full tilt, a song of rage in my ears as I shattered the door into kindling, the pieces flying inside the Black Room like shrapnel.
Sunlight scalded the horror show inside, and I stopped to stare at the gun pointed toward my heart.
“Meat,” said the skinny, tall, and pure poisonous woman in her third decade, with skin so pale as to be translucent. Fine, blue veins crossed the skin of her chest, visible above a smock of white fabric that was stained with gore of every imaginable hue. Her teeth were small, even, and white, her lips parted in a sneer of giddy madness, and her tongue running around the outside of her mouth in nervous circles.
She lifted her free hand to pull at a black curl, gray eyes flashing with the kind of feral hatred that only pure insanity can bring. There was fresh blood on her hand, and then on her bottom teeth. She spat something on the floor of the wagon. An ear, small and pale. It was then that I looked behind her on the hideous wall crowded with chains.
People—or what was left of them.
“My subjects,” she said, her voice a silken purr. I expected the voice of evil, but she sounded sane, even coy. I fought the urge to puke at her feet, seeing the open chests and twitching feet of her victims. They were alive. Their tongues were gone, eyes begging for a stroke of mercy from my knife. From anyone at all. Three children, a man, and a woman. All wore similar blue tunics. A family and she was in the process of cutting them apart for reason of purest evil.
Her gun barked, the bullet smashing into my chest as white stars streaked my vision and the bloody floor came up to greet me. Air whistled through the hole in my lung, so I reached up in a daze, sliding my thumb to block the sucking wound. The pain hit like a hammer, then icy numbness and heat braided together in an unholy assault on my mind. Anyone who says getting shot doesn’t hurt is an idiot or lying. It hurts like hell.
Senet’s face hovered over me, the gun dangling at her side. She aimed and fired again, the bullet passing through my right arm. Her smile was childlike, even if her eyes were as dead as sto
ne. “So many questions. You have answers, man from the past? You’re from the tube, trapped in time and only now finding out what it means to be marooned in a world where fear of the Black Room rules all. They think I’m a witch, but I’m far, far worse than that. I read of your witches. Cruel, old women who pretended to be evil for profit, or scare children with tales of monsters under their bed.”
She laughed like we shared a joke, her eyes narrowing to regard me with curious lust. Leaning closer, I could smell the copper tang of blood on her breath, and I knew what she would say next. “I am the monster under their bed, and their fear lets me live like a queen, free from the rules of Kassos. The Empty is my toy, the people my fuel. I open them up for their secrets, even though I already know the answers are in places your old military left toys of such grand design. I will find them all, and I will live forever, just like your scientists wanted. Oh, don’t look so surprised, Jack. I know you. Our boy told us of the scavenger girls decanting you like a fine wine. So many secrets in you; I can’t wait to drink them.”
“You’re not drinking anything of mine, you crazy snatch,” I spat. My body roared with hate at her cool, dispassionate words. I wanted her guts on a stick and she knew it.
“You speak my tongue? Like magic. Of course, magic isn’t real. This is.” She raised her gun again, leaning forward this time while trailing the barrel over my balls. I had to admit, her flair for drama was impressive.
But something was happening in my body. Circuits connected. Messages were sent and received, both organic and machine and the power of everything the world had lost, flared to reality, flared in my blood like avenging angels. I closed my eyes, drawing a breath as my face went slack in preparation of what my body would do. Muscles twitched. My arteries cooked with potential, rage replaced with a strength beyond anything a normal human could ever know.
My hand flickered forward like a ghost, grabbing the gun and holding it to one side. She pulled the trigger twice, both rounds slamming into the floor with deafening effect. Her eyes went round with fear as I lifted my blade, blood running freely down my arm, but slowing, much faster than it should have. The ‘bots had come out to play, and their show was in full effect.
“You heal,” Senet said, and the terror in her voice was sweeter than honey. I looked over her shoulder at the people hanging in chains, their feeble kicks ending as they died like cooling embers.
I reached my decision.
There would be no mercy, but I wouldn’t become what she was. I could not lead a free people without my humanity.
I stabbed her through the gut, my blade sliding through her lungs to rest, swelling in her throat. A twist of my wrist and her eyes bulged, blood spurting from her mouth in a scarlet fountain as she hiccupped, spraying her last wet breath out in a mist that soaked my face, hot and foul. The sword slid free as her corpse hit the planks with a satisfying thump.
I rose to my knees, then my feet, wobbly but gaining strength with each passing second. My wounds were serious but not fatal, thanks to the ‘bots. Score one for the good guys, I thought, thanking Marsten even though his lies had cost me twenty centuries. Staggering toward the fresh air of the door, I heard a noise both sweet and harsh all at once.
An engine roared to life.
“What the—a car?” I asked the air around me, but no one answered. The sound of a rumbling engine ripped through my senses, and it came from the wagon ahead of me. Doors swung open, and someone pushed a metal ramp out in jerking motions, the bright grating landing on the heated sands with a silver flash.
I knew what the fuel was for, and the distillery made sense as the pieces clicked home in my battered mind. Blood loss and ‘bots warred with each other as I made my unsteady way toward the sound of civilization, the engine revving twice in a metallic symphony that made me smile through the pain. A car. Here. Some things hadn’t been lost after all.
I lifted my gun, both barrels pointed at the windshield as the engine revved again. Instead of a warning, I fired.
The buckshot sparkled away without so much as a mark on the glass. “Fucking bulletproof. Of course.”
Taksa laughed from inside the blue car, harsh with triumph. He eased down the ramps, which flexed dangerously low to the sand, tipping the car forward before springing back. When all four wheels were down, his smile was a pale crescent in a face twisted with victory. I stood ten feet away, weapon useless at my side as he cut the wheel and began to pull away at a leisurely pace, his knuckles white despite his attempt to appear unconcerned.
“You never lived in a city, did you asshole?” I asked, moving alongside the vehicle with growing speed. He had to squeeze between the wagons, so acceleration was impossible, which revealed the fatal flaw of a petty tyrant.
I tore the door open with my free hand, dropping my gun and hurling him ten meters through the air with a wailing scream. “Shoulda locked the fucking door.” I pushed the kill button, threw the shifter and stood next to the most beautiful sight of the day. A car. My car and all I had to do was kill the man who had brought more pain to the world than a plague of demons.
I lunged for Taksa, my lips curving in savage glee. All of the anger, hate, and regret for seeing the people hanging in the Black Room came boiling out in a roar of primal rage. Taksa raised a pistol, firing once to strike me even as I sailed through the air to land on him like a hammer of pure revenge. Blood spattered from my side as we rolled down an incline, my weight punishing him with each turn even as I felt myself growing weaker from the wound. He batted at my hands, now firmly around his neck and compressing until his eyes rolled back and he went limp as a ragdoll.
“Jack, we’re here,” Silk said, rolling me over as Mira put her gun in Taksa’s mouth. His eyes fluttered open, going wide in terror as he realized what pressed against his tongue.
“Give me a fucking reason,” Mira growled. “Any reason.”
Silk pressed a cloth to my side, but I pulled hard on her hands to struggle upward. I was going to pass out and had a single question for Taksa that had to be answered. I stood, but just barely.
“Let him talk,” I groaned, earning a hard stare from Mira. She obliged, pulling the barrel free of his mouth, but keeping it close enough that he could smell the metal. Blood pooled at my side as pain lanced through me, but I bit down hard and formed the question. “How many bases?”
“What?” Taksa asked.
“Take his foot,” I told Mira. She fired without hesitation, splattering his right foot in a shower of gore, the gunshot leaving me deaf for a second. “One more foot. Two hands. We start there.” I gasped for breath, begging my ‘bots to give me one more minute. We needed to know. The free people of the Empty needed to know. “How many?”
“S-s-six,” Taksa sobbed, his face no longer human, but a mask of agony.
“Where?” I asked.
“The wall,” he gasped, eyes rolling wild like a mortally wounded animal. I felt no joy in his pain, only disgust.
“Down below? The glass writing?” Silk asked.
“Yesss...we can’t read it, but we know the number six. We don’t—we don’t know were. Six, damn you, six!” Taksa howled, then spat a gobbet of blood at me as he contorted in pain yet again.
“That’s enough,” I said, swaying in the heat. I’ve never felt so weak, cold, or tired. Every nerve in my body cried out for sleep, and every part of my mind demanded justice. I looked down at Taksa, who felt the storm coming with animal instinct.
He started to beg like I knew he would. “No—I know things. I have caches, secrets. I have people in Kassos and beyond. The world! You can command, you can—”
My sword parted his throat with a sigh, his hands slapping up in a desperate attempt to stop the flow of blood. I leaned down and pushed the blade through his stomach, earning a high shriek that caromed off the wagons before fading the light the light in his eyes.
“I will command without you or your sister,” I said, but he was gone. “Are the ogres nearby?” I asked, slumping to the
ground.
“Yes,” Silk answered. I think she knew what I wanted.
“Call them,” I told her. She did, and several of them came over with reluctance, their noses twitching in fear at the fresh blood. “Dead,” I said, pointing to Taksa and then the Black Room. “Yours.”
The ogres hung back, fear slowly turning to rage. A big male stepped forward, reaching out with a huge hand to poke at Taksa’s corpse.
“Dead,” I repeated. “Yours.” I nodded that he could take the body. He lifted Taksa’s blood dripping body and threw the corpse into the middle of a dozen ogres. With an unseen command, they fell on Taksa with their fists, howling with pent-up rage as they broke his body apart in an orgy of violence that made me turn away. “Better to let them work out their own pain. They’re free, and they need to know he can’t hurt them.”
In seconds, the horde descended on the Black Room, tearing it to kindling before stopping when they found the bodies. With odd reverence, the ogres snapped the bonds with ease, setting the victims in a line under the rising sun. As one, they lifted their heads in silent accord, honoring the dead in their own way.
“Still human after all this,” I said in disgust.
“They always were,” Silk said, her eyes shining with tears.
“To the garden?” Mira asked, her eyes focused on my wounds. The bleeding was slowing, but pain slowed my speech and made the air thick around me. We were at the very edge of the saplings, the wagons having made progress after our first attack. The car would keep for now, the ogres were free. I would survive, though just then I didn’t want to. The pain was intense, and I silently hoped I didn’t black out.
“To the Free Oasis,” I said.
“I like it,” Mira agreed, lending her arm to me as I swayed across the sand. “I wonder if anyone will come?”
“I hope so,” I said through my teeth. I put one foot in front of the other until I heard running water, and then I collapsed, the shade covering my face in cool relief.
We’d won. Now the real work would finally begin.
Future Reborn Page 22
