The dog took a step towards Nero and growled. Nero raised his gun, and the dog paused. It stepped back, and Nero saw that it was the same dog he’d shot in the kennels. Nero took a step forward, threatening it. It backed up again and looked to its left at the final guard.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Nero said. The dog backed up again, waited for a moment, before suddenly grabbing a severed limb in its jaws and running off. Nero watched it go for a moment before turning to the remaining guard.
He looked over at Nero, then looked at his gun, and back up into Nero’s face. ‘What you gonna do, man?’
Nero cocked his head sideways. ‘Providing you let me go through those doors, nothing.’
The man’s eyes wheeled around in their sockets as he thought it through and then looked back at Nero. ‘You gonna let me go?’
Nero waved his hand to say he could go.
‘You’re not gonna shoot me?’
‘No, now piss off before I change my mind,’ Nero said.
The man hesitated for one more second before taking off at a sprint, running out into the courtyard. Nero watched him go. He got about twenty feet before a dog slammed into the side of him and knocked him to the floor.
‘Idiot,’ Nero muttered and returned his attention to the door as the dog ripped the guard limb from limb. Walking forward, he grabbed the handle and twisted it, opening the door a fraction. It was unlocked.
‘Who goes there?’ shouted a voice from within.
Nero looked back at Kat. ‘You first,’ he whispered to her. ‘Walk in like you own the place.’
She smiled and walked forward as Nero pulled the door open.
‘It’s me, you idiots,’ she called out before she stepped forward.
Nero heard several guns being cocked as he swung the door wide and Kat walked in. He moved through the door behind her, keeping his head down.
‘Kat?’ one of the guards said, looking confused.
‘The dogs’ gone, we need a few more guards out there now to protect this door,’ she barked at them. Guns were lowered and they looked at each other in confusion. Suddenly, she moved, spinning and slashing her sword once, and then twice, moving in a complete arc. The men screamed and yelled. Nero brought his gun up and took aim at one she’d hardly scratched and fired. Blood and gore flew. Adjusting his aim, he shot again, taking out another as Kat moved and stepped beyond the closest guards to reach the guards she’d missed.
As the men closest to him staggered, holding their sword wounds and yelling in pain, Nero used them as cover as other guards and people in the room advanced on them, bringing their own weapons to bear. Most carried melee weapons, so Nero focused on the people with firearms and took out two with a pair of carefully aimed shots before the other two spotted him and moved to evade him.
Moving up, Nero fired at the third man, clipping him in the side and dropping him to the floor. The fourth moved towards Kat and took aim at her.
‘Kat!’ Nero yelled. She spotted the gun and elegantly sidestepped, putting her current opponent between her and the shooter. He fired anyway, hitting the guard, but removing Kat’s cover.
Nero blasted him and the man fell, dropping to the floor with a grunt.
The other people in the room were running now, disappearing through doors and leaving Nero and Kat alone.
‘Come on,’ Kat said. ‘This way.’
She led them on through a door at the far side of the lobby and into the same audience chamber that they had first met the queen in. Several people were running through here, too, but no one challenged them. Nero kept going, keeping up with Kat who was jogging, looking left and right, keeping an eye out for any threats. Nero did the same, but so far, nothing immediately dangerous presented itself. Kat led him through a door in the back of the throne room and through more halls and chambers until they reached a pair of large double doors that led into another chamber. More doors stood at the far end of this space, and three guards, each carrying a gun, stood before the main door in the far wall. Kat stepped forward as the three guards aimed their weapons.
‘Let us through, I have important infor-’
Kat never finished the sentence as the guards raised their guns and fired. Kat ducked back behind the door, catching a bullet in her thigh. It passed straight through, but she was leaking blood over the floor now.
Nero looked over at her from his hiding place on the other side of the doorway. ‘You okay?’ he asked. It didn’t seem too bad. As long as it had missed an artery, she should be fine, he thought.
A shotgun blast tore a chunk out of the corner of the wall beside Kat.
They were aiming at her, he thought, so he popped out from the side of the door, his gun up and ready, and fired once before ducking back. A man in the room yelled out in pain.
‘Got one,’ he muttered. He looked over at Kat. She’d ripped off some of the bindings she had around her knee and bandaged up her leg, tying it in a knot and pulling it tight with a yelp of pain. Blood soaked into it.
‘Draw their fire,’ Nero hissed at her, trying not to be heard by the men in the room.
Kat flexed her leg. She still had good movement but winced a bit as she did it. Taking a breath, she turned, got to her knees and briefly stuck her head out. A second after she moved, Nero ducked out again and blasted at the remaining pair. He heard two yells, so darted around the corner. Both men were on the floor. One of then sat up and raised his gun. Nero fired again, putting a hole in his head. The other guard lay back and looked up at him.
‘Do it,’ the guard said.
Nero looked down at him, debating if he should put him out of his misery, but then Kat stepped up and stabbed her blade into the man’s chest. He gasped, convulsed for a moment, and then went quiet.
Nero nodded. It was probably the right thing to do.
Something glinted off to his left. Looking up, Nero saw Nyx’s sword propped up against the wall and her clothes on the table. He needed both hands on his gun right now, but took note of where they were.
‘We’re here, the queen’s boudoir and the harem is through those doors,’ Kat said. Nero nodded. Stepping forward, he gave the door a solid kick, smashing it open. With his gun up and ready, he walked into what must be the most lavish and comfortable room he’d seen since before the apocalypse. Just the sheer number of soft furnishings was mind-boggling.
All around him, naked girls huddled together in terror, their eyes wide in fright as they looked up at Nero and Kat. In the middle of this, the queen stood, holding a nude girl before her, a wicked looking dagger at her throat and one of the girl's arms twisted behind her back.
The girl had a passing resemblance to Kat, he thought.
‘Tan!’ Kat called out. The girl the queen held hostage flinched and looked at Kat, a look of hope filling her eyes.
Amongst the other girls in the room, a blonde one stood up with a huge grin on her face. It was Nyx.
‘Nero! You made it, you came,’ she said.
‘Told you I would,’ Nero said, scanning the room and noting the two guards on the two balconies on either side of the room.
‘Don’t move,’ the queen said. Nyx flinched. Nero followed her gaze as she looked back at the queen. The queen peered over the shoulder of Tan at him with a cruel grin. ‘You pathetic little fools, I can’t believe you came back, and for what? For these two? Kat, what the hell are you doing? You had it good. You had everything you could want.’
‘Not really. All I wanted was to get out of here with my sister, but you would never allow that, would you?’
‘You wanted to leave here? You wanted to live out there, in the wasteland? You know what it’s like out there, you know how cheap life is in the wastes. You can’t honestly tell me you want that when you have so much here? I give you everything. I give you my protection, is that not enough?’
‘You give it, all of it, with the threat of torture or death to my sister if I don’t do as you ask. You force me to kill for you, to hurt innocent people, people who are
just trying to survive. And if I don’t do this, you hurt her or me. That’s not freedom. That’s not a life I want to live,’ Kat said.
‘You’re just another petty dictator,’ Nero cut in. ‘A camp leader with delusions of grandeur who needs to resort to threats of violence to achieve anything.’
‘You have no idea what I do. You’ve only been here for a day. You don’t know what I’ve been through, what we need to do to survive. We have rules, and we live by them because if we don’t, we die. I offer a life without fear of death or starvation or exposure, and all I ask is a little loyalty, a little payback. I don’t want much. Just some gratitude,’ the queen said, emotion in her voice.
‘The usual sob story,’ Nero commented. ‘Next, you’ll be saying you didn’t actually want to be in charge. Just shut the fuck up and let the girls go. It’s over. This camp is done for. There’s no escaping it.’
‘Actually, I have always enjoyed being in charge. This is my natural calling, and I fully understand my place in all this. Do you?’
‘Shut up,’ Nero said.
The queen shook her head slowly, a look of pity on her face. ‘Kill them,’ she said to her guards.
Chapter 19
Nero
Nero knew it was coming and ducked left as the queen said it, moving to cover while aiming up at the guard closest to him. He fired, catching the guy in the upper chest. He fell, loosing a spray of bullets across the room as he disappeared out of sight. Looking over, he saw Kat duck behind a sofa as bullets tore it to bits. Nero looked up at the guard that was spraying Kat with metallic death and adjusted his position. The guard spotted him and trained his gun on Nero.
Nero ducked back and hit the stone pedestal he’d hidden behind as automatic fire peppered the ground around him. Nero looked to his right to try and spot Nyx, but she was gone. She must be hiding, he thought as he looked up at the queen and Tan. She’d ducked behind the girl but still had her in a death grip.
The guard let off burst after burst, keeping him pinned down as Nero looked for Nyx again. Where was she?
Suddenly, the gunfire stopped and he heard the guard yell. Nero looked around the edge of the pedestal and saw the guard falling from the balcony, taking some of the railings with him, while Nyx stood where the guard had been a second before.
The guard hit the floor with a thud and grunt. As Nero watched, he saw Nyx, naked as the day she was born, step off the edge of the now broken balcony. She landed on top of the guard, crushing his chest and breaking his ribs. She wobbled slightly and hopped off him, looking up at the queen with a face full of defiance.
‘That’s my girl,’ Nero whispered to himself with a smile as he stepped out from behind the pedestal. He looked over at Nyx, who was moving around the edge of the room. The queen watched her go but didn’t move. Nyx approached Nero, smiled up at him with a cheeky grin and swung her hips a little more. She stepped right up to him and pressed herself into him, giving him a deep and passionate kiss. Nero placed his hand on the small of her bare back and traced a line down to her bum and gave it a squeeze.
‘I like you nude,’ he said.
‘And I like you naked, too,’ she said and pulled slightly away. ‘Alas, I shall have to wait for that little pleasure. Speaking of clothes, though?’
‘They’re on the table outside,’ he said.
Nyx smiled. ‘Won’t be a tick,’ she said and hopped outside. Nero watched her bounce out of the room for a second before he looked back up at the queen.
‘Seems you’re shit out of luck,’ Nero said. ‘Your guards are dead, the compound is being massacred by the daemon dogs you keep here; it looks like you’re fucked.’
The queen peered out from behind Tan. ‘And yet, I still have some leverage,’ she said, pressing her knife into Tan’s neck.
‘Give it up, there’s nowhere you can go,’ Nero said.
‘That’s what you think,’ the queen answered him as she started to move, taking Tan with her. She walked sideways, towards one of the doors over there, being careful to keep Tan between her and Nero.
Nero watched her go, shaking his head.
‘We can’t let her take Tan with her,’ Kat said.
‘I know, we’ll get her, let’s see how this pans out,’ Nero said, watching the queen pick her way through the furniture. ‘I’ll offer you a deal. Leave Tan there, unharmed, and we’ll let you walk out of here. We won’t attack, we won’t hurt you, and we won’t follow you. You’re free to leave,’ Nero said.
‘Yes,’ Kat said. ‘You have my word, I won’t follow you. Just leave her be.’
Nyx stepped in behind Nero and came to stand between him and Kat, wearing her bodysuit and trench coat with her sword over her shoulders. ‘She’s not dead yet?’ Nyx asked.
‘Not yet…’ Nero said.
‘Your standards are slipping,’ Nyx replied with a smile.
‘You think I’m going to fall for that?’ the queen said, her tone mocking them.
‘No tricks,’ Nero said. ‘I mean what I say. You can leave here, freely and without harm. Just leave Tan and these others here.’
‘Hmmm, let me think,’ the queen said, a curious smile on her face. Behind them, the doors to the room burst open. People were shouting. Guns were fired. Nero sprang to his left, diving for cover with Nyx right next to him as he looked back. Five or six guards had snuck up on them, had charged into the room and were opening fire.
Finding cover, Nero looked for Kat. She was on the other side of the room having found some cover of her own. Chaos had erupted in the place as the girls, who had been sitting nervously in the centre, all stood up and sprinted for cover. Tables were overturned, chairs thrown, people trampled. Shouts and screams filled the room.
From across the way, Kat yelled. ‘No!’
Nero followed her gaze in time to see the queen pull her dagger across Tan’s neck. Blood poured from the gaping wound as she dropped to the floor holding her neck, a look of surprise on her face. Guards had entered through the door next to the queen and were guiding her out of the boudoir.
‘Fuck,’ Nero cursed. ‘Can you deal with them?’ he asked Nyx, pointing at the guards who had entered through the main doors.
‘Consider them sliced and diced,’ Nyx said, as she readied her sword.
Nero smiled and kissed her on the cheek before turning and dodging through the crowd of terrified girls towards where the queen had been.
Between the running, naked bodies of the harem girls, one of the guards appeared. Nero fired his shotgun, sending the man flying.
Girls screamed and ran from the altercation, opening up the way between Nero and the other two guards. Running around some furniture, Nero caught the next guard by surprise, leaping up towards him and smashing him around the head with his gun before pointing it at the other still living guard and squeezing the trigger once more. The man hit the floor with a thud.
Something heavy slammed into Nero’s back. He dropped to his knee in pain and rolled sideways, seeing that it was a chair that had been thrown at him. Looking up, the guard he’d smacked around the head lunged for him, bringing down a heavy looking mace that crunched into the wooden floor. The weapon’s spiked metal ball head looked like it could do some serious damage. The guard swept the mace sideways and caught Nero in a glancing blow on his armoured shoulder.
‘Arrgh,’ he bellowed and rolled away from it before he kicked out and knocked one of the guard’s feet out from under him. He stumbled. Nero whipped his gun up and across the man’s face, knocking a tooth out with a clot of blood that wheeled and spun out of the man’s mouth in a lazy arc.
Nero leapt up and jumped on him, raising his shotgun and smashing the butt of it into the man’s face. Blood splattered as he lifted it and brought it down again with a crunch of bone.
Nero yelled in rage as he hit the man a few more times before he stopped. The guard's face was a bloody mess now and he’d stopped moving. Nero looked up as Kat ran over and picked up her sister's limp body, turning her ov
er to look at her face.
Kat wailed as the reality of her now dead sister hit home. Nero sighed. He felt like he’d failed her. Kat had helped him get in here to save Nyx and Tan, putting herself at risk, putting everything on the line, only to have the thing that was most precious to her taken away.
Nero looked to his right and saw Nyx in the middle of the last three guards that were left standing. The other three were already on the floor, dead, or not far from it. As he watched, she danced between the men, dodging or parrying their attacks and cutting each of them down in turn. She didn’t need his help. She was more than capable of dealing with them. The fight had emptied the room of the harem girls. Apart from a few that had been caught in the crossfire, the rest had disappeared. Nero hoped they made it out alive.
Standing up, Nero walked over to Tan and crouched down beside her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
Kat nodded.
‘Will you be okay?’
‘I think so,’ Kat answered him. ‘Where’s that bitch, the queen?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nero said, only to suddenly hear the sound of engines firing up outside.
‘She’s running,’ Kat said, looking towards the door where Nyx swung her sword once more, cutting down the last guard.
‘She won’t get far,’ Nero said, as a determination to chase the queen down fell over him. He wanted her to pay for what she’d done. ‘You stay here, let us deal with this.’
Wasteland Road Knights Trilogy Page 30