The Apocalypse Watch

by J Foster Ward

  “You’re talking too much,” Jake told him.

  “She… she gone, given to wylers. She belongs to them now,” the wizard said through gritted teeth.

  Jake curbed the desire to smash him in the face again. “You better pray to wrist-buddy she’s not harmed! Let’s go. You’re showing me where you took her!”

  ***

  “Stop. Not go.” Krill spoke in broken English.

  She hadn’t shown any sign of resistance and neither had Yanco for that matter. The two unlikely converts to his mission were untied, dressed, and he’d even allowed Krill her big battle-ax made from circular saw blades.

  “Why not? The map says the wylers are this way,” Jacob indicated the holographic map. He’d shrunk it to about ten centimetres across to keep the light low.

  Actually, the map said the dining hall and duty-crew dormitory was this way, but the mutants said that’s where they’d given Milan to whatever these ‘wyler’ things were.

  The wrist-buddy was recording everything Krill and Yanco said in their own language and had started assembling a lexicon but it could take days to get right. In the meantime, Yanco did most of the talking, translating for Krill when he needed to. Jacob got the sense that English was kindof like Latin in the middle ages; Yanco knew it because he was a priest but the rest of the Obeyers had only learned a few words, picked up here and there.

  That Krill had just spoken in English meant it was urgent. And doubly urgent if she was disagreeing with Jake. Up until now the two obeyers of the voice seemed eager to help. Too eager.

  Krill was obviously frustrated and had exhausted her vocabulary. She made a buzzing sound and turned her fingers into mock teeth that made a gnashing motion.

  “Flying bite-beasts,” Yanco supplied. “And the traplayer hunts down here. We must be careful to avoid both.”

  The two new allies had led him from their shrine to a blast door sealing off the main tunnel. Using a hand-crank they’d opened about a foot-wide gap to pass through and sealed it behind them again. Now they were gesturing to a battered hatch doorway – an actual hinged door like inside a battleship – in the tunnel wall. Jacob followed them and the wrist-buddy helpfully put a glowing dot on the map to illustrate his ‘you are here’ locator. The tunnel beyond the door was small enough they would have to walk single file.

  It looked like service tunnels. Jacob had avoided them on his previous runs because they were narrow and twisting. Too easy to get lost in, too easy for something – and at the time he’d only had his imagination to supply something godawful – to sneak up on him.

  It wasn’t that dying bothered him so much, since it wasn’t permanent, it was the part where he was running out of time and resources. He’d only managed to collect an axe and a torch this time; next time it might be a couple of rocks.

  The three of them passed a number of empty doorways and chambers filled with tossed furniture, broken open wall panels and unidentifiable bits of metal and plastec among the blankets of shadows cast by the dim lights of their red grub-lanterns.

  There was a curious crunching sound and Jacob realised it was Krill, clicking tongue against her teeth as a signal. The voxer had flattened herself against the tunnel’s wall. Yanco simply crouched down and his hide robes seemed to let him blend into the shadows. Jacob froze and raised the stunner.

  From the corridor junction ahead, there was a curious sound. Like something huge being dragged across the ground and a sortof meaty sound like a hundred metal drums being rhythmically pounded against the floor.

  Jake had a glimpse up the corridor of a segmented body, as big around as an oil drum, and then the sound was receding up the cross corridor ahead of them. It was the thing with the claw!

  The mutants waited a good long time until Jacob grew tired of holding up.

  “Keep moving,” he ordered them.

  “Too soon!” Yanco said.

  “I’m not afraid of dying, annoying orange. I can’t be killed.”

  The priest gave him a considering look, far smarter than he was letting on. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m the guy with the guns,” Jake replied. Amongst the gear in the shrine he’d found his gunbelts, boots filled with blood, and tattered remains of his jumpsuit. He was bristling with weapons tucked in belt loops. And at least he wasn’t in a towel anymore.

  Reluctantly his guides led the way. They emerged from the side tunnels out another hatch and here the air quality seemed different. It was cleaner, somehow. Less stale, but the scent of some animal filled the place. Like wet dog. And it was tidy. Something had been sweeping this section of tunnel. Jake blinked against the light from up ahead; the clear white light of some kind of electric fixture. Jake and his two followers rounded a bend and he found himself facing a barricade across the entire hallway.

  “Wylers,” Yanco said.

  ***

  Chapter 7

  : Dogfight

  The barrier was crude. Made from scavenged sheets of plastec and metal, wired and nailed together on top of a log frame. It had horizontal firing slit and Jacob caught movement behind it. Yanco seemed unafraid and stepped up and spoke in hurried tones with hands held out empty. Someone on the other side talked back; it sounded like a normal human voice.

  “And?” Jake asked.

  “The servant has gone to fetch the wyler.”

  They waited. Finally, a set of heavy footsteps approached from the far side and the priest started talking again. The person on the other side, when it spoke, spewed a guttural deep mash of words. They seemed to have a heavy lisp at the same time. The longer the conversation took, the less Jake liked it.

  This wasn’t right. He looked at Krill and the huge woman wouldn’t meet his eyes. She looked guilty.

  Jacob whispered: “Buddy, text reply only. Translate what they’re saying.”

  Holographic words scrolled overtop the map:

  LEXICON INCOMPLETE… UNABLE TO PROVIDE FULL TRANSLATION… CONTEXTUAL TRANSLATION OF WORDS BASED ON LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIP TO ENGLISH ALLOWS MOSTLY NOUNS IN THE EARLY STAGES

  “That’s fine, you can do a lot with nouns,” Jake said. “Just show me what you have.”

  The wrist-buddy dutifully began scrolling what it understood. A few moments later Jacob quietly removed one of the objects from his harness belt without being obvious. He should have known.

  Featured prominently in their conversation between Yanco and other voice were the words ‘sacrifice’, ‘artefact’, ‘temple’ and ‘food’. Also ‘human’ and ‘flesh’. The wrist-buddy helpfully managed a few verbs to add context such as ‘trade’, ‘payment’ and ‘kill’ (him) and (enjoy a) ‘delicacy’. When Jake also saw the words for ‘gullible’ and ‘idiot’ he knew he was about to do something stupid like lose his temper.

  Wait for the right moment, Jake. When the barricade finally was unbolted on the far side and swung open, he was ready.

  Or thought he was.

  On the far side of the barricade were a number of, more or less, humans. They were all half-naked, dressed in a ragged loincloth but nothing else. They were remarkable filthy and skinny, and just visible beneath the thick coating of dirt and matted hair they were a pale shade of blue.

  But the thing that really got his attention was the seven-foot bipedal albino rottweiler wearing some sort of ragged military parka, criss-crossed with belts and clothes of primitive leather and sandals made from what looked like scavenged pieces of car tires.

  “Oh shit,” Jake muttered.

  “Restrooms are located in hallway C, third door on the left,” the wrist-buddy helpfully provided.

  The dog-beast that looked Jake up and down seemed to have evolved to almost hairlessness and the body was decorated with jail-house tattoos of swords, snakes, thorns and dog skulls. There were tattooed tears under its mad yellow eyes, and it snarled, licking its chops as it looked down at him.

  “This the wyler,” Yanco said, tiny eyes blinking nervously. “Pilgrims of the temple serve him. You can go
with him to find your female. It will be good.”

  The dogman licked his chops and let out an ear-hurting WOOF.

  The filthy humans scattered further back down the tunnel and from back there another two of the gigantic humanoid mastiffs appeared. Much like the first one but missing chunks of ear. Behind them was a smaller, shorter specimen. Maybe only six feet tall and built more slightly. Suddenly Jacob’s plan seemed woefully inadequate to deal with dogs the size of ponies that had been taught to walk upright, given hands and liked big spiked clubs instead of catching sticks.

  Too late to back out now.

  “This is how you want to play this?” Jacob asked the priest.

  “Play?” the wizard asked.

  “You too?” he asked Krill. The woman kept glancing between Jake and the priest, as if unable to decide.

  “Last chance, Yanco. You’re trying to sell me out, aren’t you? Probably so you could get your grimy mutie hands on this,” he flexed his wrist with the computer.

  Yanco’s eyes narrowed and he hissed a command at Krill. She ignored him and he repeated it. When the woman didn’t respond Yanco snarled and his veins turned green. “Traitor!” he yelled.

  Krill screamed, dropping to her knees and clutching her head. “Run, Walkman Jacob!” she cried out.

  Jake began to draw aim on Yanco, ready to blast the treacherous priest into next week. But at the same moment the first giant walking mastiff charged Jake, club raised overhead.

  Oh well. Jake would’ve preferred to take out Yanco first, but the dogman was so close that as he brought the revolver up, he barely had time to get off a single shot to the throat. From that range the pellets were a single mass that seemed to flip the dog’s head back so he stopped dead in his tracks and was momentarily balanced on his heels. The acid ate outwards from the impact point, dissolving the thing’s throat. Jake fired twice more and then twice more into the center of mass when the huge beast refused to go down, and only when the body cavity was eaten down to the bone by acid di the wyler collapse.

  “Which one of you fuckers wants some of this?” Jake asked aimed the gun at the other wylers in the stunned silence.

  The albino dogs growled displeasure, taking a slow step towards him. Oh well. Worth a shot, Jake thought.

  An invisible force hauled hard at the gun in his hand. Jacob was too shocked to try to grab it, and the revolver flew through the air to be caught by Yanco.

  What the hell? How did this primitive screwhead have… have magic? How was that fair?

  Yanco grinned, aimed the gun at Jake and tried to pull the trigger. Jake had fired all five shells and the gun was empty though, and nothing happened. Jake hoofed Yanco hard in what he sincerely hoped were the balls and the robed mutant gave a satisfying YOOWWW-wwwuughhhhh as he folded and sank to his knees.

  There was a massive series of WOOF! WOOFWOOFWOOF! And The massive dogmen lumbered towards him.

  The old Jacob Mortimer would probably have crapped himself and stared at the gigantic canine flesh-piles until they were clubbing him to death; too stunned by the strangeness. And for the slightest of moments Jake actually was paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Nothing in life had prepared him for anything like this. His mom had owned a dog when he was a kid, but it was a dust-mop Shih Tzu. It had been scared of aggressive ants.

  And in that moment there was a war-cry as Krill charged past him and intercepted the dog, axe swinging. The dog blocked with his club and splinters erupted from the impact. Krill spun, ducked under his guard, and used the butt-end of the axe to ram into the dog’s solar plexus, shouldering the beast back.

  But as big as she was, she was dwarfed by the giant dog. He staggered at her blow and backhanded her in the face. It was a blow that would have caved in the side panel of a car, but Krill stayed on her feet, staggering. The next blow from the club brought her down. She lay unmoving.

  Jake didn’t remember consciously deciding what to do next. The part of his brain that was built by Nevermore with enhanced fight or flight reactions went haywire. Maybe it was just the combat threat, but Jake had been in combat before. It was the drive to protect a mate; he could still smell Krill’s musk from when they’d been together and seeing her killed by the wyler drove him a little… berserk.

  Instead of the X-26 stunbeamer, Jake grabbed the metal rod he’d taken from the dead killmen in the armory.

  Back at the armory he’d scanned it with the wrist-buddy while waiting for his captives to wake up from getting stunned. The mini-computer had identified it as an e-hammer. A powered tool that delivered ‘directed, localized force-screen bursts’ to power-drive whatever happened to be handy. Commercial models had a force multiplier of about x3; use 25 pounds of force and it delivered 75. But the one in Jake’s hand was an industrial model that had a x10 power amplification. It had been dialled about midway when the killman used it to remove his arm.

  Jake jammed the selector to ‘MAX’ as the first wyler came in swinging.

  Using two hands, Jake swung the rod to parry the massive spiked club that was coming for his center of mass. The two connected with an ear-damaging SNAP! as the force stopped the massive spiked club like a twig. And exploded it. More than that, the overpressure of the explosion threw the moaning Yanco aside.

  The club had detonated like a fragmentation grenade had gone off against the dog’s chest. The bloody corpse with half its chest blown open and arm missing from the elbow down was tossed against the tunnel wall with a thud. Jagged bits of shrapnel ricochet made of club splinters and shattered bone turned the corridor behind the beast into a meat grinder. One of the blue men was struck by exploding dog and flew to pieces. Several more screamed and collapsed. The second dogman behind the first was splashed in gore and slammed to the ground.

  Jake’s hands were stuck with an agonizing numbness. Belatedly he realised you probably required special protective gear to safely use the higher power settings. Wincing against the pain, he staggered back and dropped the e-hammer from nerveless fingers. Then realizing what he’d done he dove for cover.

  The hammer tumbled, struck the floor head-first, and exploded again, leaving a dented crater in the plastec before firing straight up into the air with another spiteful SNAP!

  It didn’t end there. The force was enough to drive it into the ceiling and set it off again. And again. And again. Snap, snap, snap, snap! as it ricocheted off every surface down the corridor. It scattered bits of plastec walls, ceiling, floor, humans and mercifully grazed the second wyler in the face before lodging – handle-first – into the wall.

  For a long moment the corridor was filled with moans of the wounded and settling dust, until the second wyler staggered upright, howling to make Jake’s head hurt, and reached for the e-hammer with one gore-covered, human-like hand.

  Which promptly exploded as it closed fingers around the business end of the directed force field.

  Jake winced at the sight of the jagged stump, pumping blood energetically onto the wall as the wyler stared at it. Feeling was returning to Jake’s hands but he didn’t trust his fingers to work the trigger of the X-26 so Jake drew the machete and wrapped both fists around the hilt.

  A sound behind him alerted Jake to the fleeing wizard. Yanco was twenty feet away and gaining by the time Jacob thought to go after and kill him.

  “Fucking pussy!” he shouted at the mutant. Then turned to the dogman.

  The man-dog must’ve been struck by a half-dozen bits of bone shrapnel from its partner, and the sudden removal of its hand must’ve been the last straw. It gave off a yelping whine as, savagely wounded now, it spun and launched itself deeper into its lair, retreating into the dim light.

  There was no sign of the fourth wyler. It must’ve already fled.

  Turning back to find the mutant wizard, Jacob saw Yanco was long gone. Vanished into the dark. He was alone in a blood-splattered hallway with a bunch of moaning, wounded blue people. And the body of Krill, flat out and unmoving on the floor.

  “Fucking basta
rd.”

  At least Yanco had dropped the pistol. Whatever firearms skills had been imprinted on his brain, Jake handled the gun without conscious thought. As feeling returned, his hands automatically worked to eject the shells, reloading the piece and chambering a new round.

  The modified fight or flight reaction didn’t hesitate either. Very carefully he retrieved the e-hammer from where it was sunk into the wall and chased the wyler’s blood trail.

  ***

  His boots slipped in the blood of the giant dog corpse as he jogged down the corridor. He jumped over a human who lay gasping on the ground, collateral damage from the shrapnel. Jacob had a moment to feel sick at what he’d done by accident, but his modified biochemistry was pumping some sort of combat cocktail into him that only wanted to win. To WIN! At all costs.

  Destroy the beast, then worry about some poor bastard he’d almost blown up by mistake.

  He ran into a long chamber, filled with wooden racks, rows of beds against the walls, and all the modern conveniences you might expect from a tribe of cave men. No, not quite. More like native longhouses in the museums he’d visited as a kid; tools, chairs, bowls, sewing needles all made from bone or clay or stone. More of the loincloth-wearing dirt-smeared humans were screaming and scattering, trying to get away from him.

  The blood trail ended in the middle of the room, right next to the mummified corpse of a blue-skinned human, just left laying there. What the hell?

  “Where did it go?” he asked.

  The naked primitives had retreated back against the walls and the room went quiet.

  “Who here speaks English?” he demanded. Nothing. He sighed. “Who has the holy tongue?” he asked, feeling ridiculous.

  “I speak the words,” a voice said from the back or the room. One of the filthy primitives edged forward.

  “You hurt the wyler?”

  “Well I killed one and hurt a second one, yeah. Where is it?”