Zero City

by neetha Napew

  Stepping into the harsh light, Krysty mowed the men down where they stood with the silenced MAC-11, the hissing stream of 9 mm rounds sounding no louder than a tire gently going flat.

  Stepping over the tumbled corpses, Krysty opened the door and there was Ryan, SIG-Sauer in hand. The market square was well illuminated with a ring of torches, and she could see the exterior guards sprawled on the ground, weapons and bodies jumbled on top of one another, in the terrible throes of unexpected death.

  “Clear?” Ryan whispered.

  “Clear,” she said, stepping through and closing the door quietly. “I have the med kit.”

  He touched the bloody cheek. “You okay?”

  “Nothing a bath won’t cure.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carrying a plastic tray of covered dishes, Leonard walked up the stairs to the third floor. The baron hadn’t asked for his dinner yet, so the youth was bringing it to him. And secreted in his pocket was a piece of stale bread for the female prisoner. It wasn’t much, since the kitchen kept a close tally on the stocks, even for the nobility. Every scrap meant another day. But nobody should be allowed to starve.

  When Leonard reached the third floor, the tray dropped from his hands, crashing onto the floor when he saw the bodies scattered along the hallway. The coppery stink of fresh blood filled the air, and red fluid was splashed everywhere, brightly dotted with the shiny spent brass of an autofire blaster.

  Feeling stunned, he moved toward the baron’s private office. At the detention room, the door was ajar and he glanced inside. The chains were empty, the prisoner gone, two additional dead sec men sprawled on the floor.

  Leonard could only hear the pounding of his heart as he headed into the office. More blood and shells. The mirrored display shelves were smashed to pieces, and there amid the shining wreckage was the crumpled body of the baron. Kneeling on the glass shards, uncaring of the cuts received, Leonard tenderly turned over the body, hoping for a miracle.

  The entire universe shrank to just the ruined face of the man who had saved him from the stickies in the desert as a small child, raised him, taught him to write, to sing, to read, bandaged his leg when he broke it in a fall, indoctrinated him as a warrior, the sovereign leader of their ville.

  “Father,” Leonard cried, hugging the bloody corpse to his chest. “I’ll get her, Father. I swear. If it takes my whole life, I’ll kill that bitch for you...”

  THE GURGLING of the nearby river was a low background noise to the sec men walking along the top of the Alphaville wall.

  “Damn flies,” one of the men grumbled, waving a hand about. Something had buzzed past him, and he could only assume it was one of the fat black bugs that bred in the river. Horrid things, the bites stung worse than the rain and took weeks to heal.

  There was another buzz, and a man several yards away made a juicy noise, falling to the ground and dropping his blaster.

  “Billy? You okay?” he asked, coming closer, working the bolt on his rifle. Something strange was going on here. Then the buzzing sound came again and he stopped caring.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, the still of the night was violently shattered as a bright flash washed over the ville, followed by a roll of thunder.

  “What the hell was that?” a grizzled sergeant demanded, walking out of a guard shack holding a cup of steaming soup. The man started to take a sip, but the cup dropped from nerveless fingers as he watched a column of flame stretch into the sky, along with assorted bits of machinery, the blast echoed by the crackling crash of a thousand windows shattering.

  “Holy shit, the brewery blew,” a private gasped, coming out of the barracks and sliding on suspenders.

  “Damn fools got drunk again,” another man drawled, chewing on a pipe. “Quality control, my ass.”

  “That blast must have taken out every greenhouse for blocks.”

  “What?” a young private said, suddenly wide awake. “But without them, we starve!”

  Sergeant Zanders turned. “No shit, genius. Corporal Linderholm!”

  “Sir!” the sec man barked, coming to attention in his underwear.

  “Beg, borrow, steal blankets, then get your squad over there to cover those bastard plants before the night chill aces the whole fucking crop!”

  “On it!” The man dashed off.

  “MacPhillips, gather civvies and start lighting torches around the greenhouses to keep the area warm.”

  “Will that help?” the man asked, sliding on a boot while standing on one foot.

  “Am I a farmer? Get!”

  Not bothering to salute, the sec men rushed to the task, knowing their lives depended upon moving fast.

  Window shutters were opening in every building, throwing shafts of light onto the streets. People stumbled out asking one another endless questions and gawking at the running sec men.

  An officer sauntered from the tavern on the corner. “What’s the commotion, Zanders?” Removing a small box from his vest, he took a dainty sniff of the pink powder inside, closed the box and returned it to his pocket, instantly more alert. “Muties? A jail break?”

  “Stuff it, ya junkie!” the sergeant snapped hatefully. “Go wake the glazers and get their furnace going. We start repairs, right fucking now!”

  The officer stared at the noncom coldly. “I’m in charge here, Sergeant,” he said sourly.

  “Great. What are your orders, sir?”

  A minute passed as the lieutenant buttoned his jacket closed. “Carry on. I’ll alert the glazers.”

  “Fucking officers,” Zanders muttered, tapping the revolver at his belt. Then his expression melted as a rain of flaming debris plummeted from the sky across the ville, crashing onto stores, tents and rooftops.

  “Sound the fire alarm!” the sergeant shouted to a group of gawking sec men. “Now, ya fools!”

  Soon a metallic clanging sounded and people charged into the streets, carrying buckets of sand and brooms. Some beat at the small scattered fires on the street, while others started forming a bucket brigade to smother a large chunk of blazing debris dangerously close to the gaudy house. Inside, the naked women were screaming and throwing things out the windows.

  “Sentries, any sign of rooftop fires!” Zanders yelled at the wall. There was no reply to the summons. “Captain of the guard, report!”

  The searchlights moved back and forth along the palisade, and the guards should have been easy to spot in the glare, but he didn’t see a soul. As he marched closer, his suspicions grew until he spotted a bloody arm dangling over the side of the wall, dripping red onto the streets below. Shit, poor bastards had to have been hit with shrapnel from the blast. Then the sec man drew his blaster. Or maybe Alphaville was under attack. This whole thing would make one hell of a great diversion.

  “You three,” the sergeant barked, pointing with his blaster. “Get the fuck up there and see what’s the trouble.”

  Hesitantly, the men obeyed, climbing the ladders welded to the side of the cars and leading to the wooden walkway on top of the wall.

  “Well?” Zanders shouted. “Any signs of muties?”

  “No, sir,” a private called down. “Just dead men without faces.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  How odd, muties usually attacked from behind.

  “Hey, Sarge! Here’s Leonard!” a sec man cried out.

  The sergeant knew that Leonard had recently reconditioned a big batch of predark fire extinguishers and had to be hauling them over for the troops to use. Good man. The kid was worth ten of the father.

  But the squat APC rolled straight down the street past the burning wooden skeleton of the brewery, then turned right and charged directly toward the tunnel, traveling much too fast to ever stop in time.

  The sergeant couldn’t believe his eyes. That idiot lieutenant had been correct. “Jail break!” Zanders bellowed, leveling his blaster and cutting loose, the rounds ricocheting off the armor plating of t
he military half track as if he were throwing stones. Several of the other sec men followed his example, but the .75-caliber lead miniballs of their muzzle-loaders did even less damage.

  With everybody else out fighting fires, the lone sec man in the machine-gun nest swiveled the repaired blaster on its stanchion and started firing in controlled bursts as he expertly tracked the approaching war wag. The half-inch-wide bullets punched a line of holes through the chassis of the armored personnel carrier.

  Then the machine gun mounted on top of the APC chattered nonstop as it raked the nest, sandbags spitting dust, sparks flying off the ground and car bodies of the wall. A lantern burst, and the lone sec man cried out and dropped. Unencumbered, the vehicle vanished into the tunnel, spewing oil from a punctured housing.

  “WE MADE IT,” Krysty said, shifting the med kit on her back, struggling with the bolt of the machine gun to free a jammed round. The baron didn’t take good care of his weapons.

  “Any damage?” Ryan asked, shifting the steering levers.

  “We got a line of holes along the aft end of the half track. Nothing much.”

  The road ahead was poorly lit by the predark headlights, and Ryan cursed as he worked the gears. He was unfamiliar with this machine. “Get ready to jump. We should be in the middle of the tunnel soon.”

  Krysty glanced at their cargo. The wag was stacked with all of the ammo and fuel they were able to load from the garage in the few minutes they had after killing the driver. “Think it’s enough to collapse the tunnel?”

  The APC took a pothole with only the smallest jounce. “Damn well hope so. With this closed, they have no way to chase us.”

  “No sign of anybody yet,” she announced, checking through the aft ob slit. “Must be too busy fighting the fires. Nope. Here they come.”

  “Buy us some time,” Ryan snapped, killing the headlights. He had already smashed the taillights of the wag before leaving so it would be difficult for snipers to triangulate on the wag. Unfortunately, feeble as they were, the headlights outshone the aft bulbs and silhouetted the APC in stark relief, making it a near perfect target. Driving by the yellow parking lights was tough, but the vehicle took the potholes with ease.

  A small wag of some kind roared into the tunnel, and its driver foolishly clicked on its headlights. Bracing herself against the moving vehicle, Krysty pointed directly between them and fired, moving the stream of bullets slightly upward, the phosphorescent tracers creating a dotted line along the tunnel. The wag veered wildly and slammed into the wall, whooshing into flames.

  “Got one,” she stated, savagely clearing another jam. “But more coming.”

  Ryan didn’t reply, concentrating on his driving.

  Krysty swept the tunnel with the machine gun until down to her last linked belt. However, the next vehicle didn’t repeat the mistakes of the previous one, but drove through the blackness, visible only by the fiery flowers of the muzzle-flashes from the blasters of the sec men. The steady ricochets off the back armor of the APC spoke highly of their accuracy, and the lack of a blaster powerful enough to punch through the 12 mm alloy plating.

  Climbing from the top gunner’s seat, Krysty joined Ryan in the front of the wag.

  “Ammo?” he asked, pumping the brakes for a test. Good thing they were going EVA soon. The engine temperature was climbing like a rocket. The wag had been damaged back in the ville. Cooling system, oil system, something like that. And at the rate the engine was warming, it would never reach the other end of the tunnel. But that wasn’t the plan.

  “One belt left,” she answered. “Can’t use that if we want to get out of this alive.”

  By the dim glow of the dashboard, Krysty disassembled a grenade. Hers had been taken by the guards, but Ryan still had his from the armory in the redoubt. Now it was the key to their escape. Extracting the plastic explosive from inside, she cradled it in both hands and climbed back to the gunner’s seat atop the war wag.

  “Hold on!” Ryan cried, yanking the steering levers hard in opposite directions. Tires squealing, the aft treads dug into the macadam and the APC was brought to a shuddering halt across the middle two lanes of the roadway.

  Reaching under the dashboard, he pulled out handfuls of wires. “Engine is dead,” he stated.

  “Blaster is set,” Krysty added, climbing down and swinging past the chairs to reach the door.

  They hit the ground running and took off into the darkness. Pausing for a moment, Ryan fired his silenced pistol at the vehicles as they braked at the APC.

  Some scattered rounds came their way, and Krysty fired the MAC-11 back at them a few times. “Wonder how long it’s going to take them to think of using the APC’s machine gun on us-“

  A fireball erupted atop the wag, closely followed by an even louder detonation, the concussion knocking the companions off their feet. Burning men dashed about shrieking as an inferno grew in the tunnel, the black lump of the shattered APC a hulking shambles amid the crackling flames.

  “J.B. was right,” she said grimly. “A little plas-ex in the blaster barrel and they blow themselves to hell.”

  Another explosion shook the tunnel, and the entire passageway shuddered, a low creaking moan sounding from the walls. Tiles rained off the ceiling, and chunks of concrete were starting to come loose.

  “Seems to have worked too well,” Ryan commented, taking her arm and starting to back away. “Fireblast! If the containment sleeve cracks, the river will flood in and we’re dead, too.”

  The pair sprinted down the tunnel, trying not to imagine the millions of tons of polluted water pressing against the weakened tunnel walls and struggling to get in.

  IN THE PREDARK RUINS, a pickup truck rattled to a noisy halt in the parking lot of the library, and five sec men disembarked. The alcohol lanterns hanging from the grille of the wag showed the ground was churned with explosions, spent brass everywhere. A line of smoldering trucks edged the parking lot, and two corpses lay sprawled on the sandy asphalt, an old white-haired man, and a short guy without a shirt. Neither man was armed.

  “Well, well,” Benson said, stepping from the pickup. “Look what we have here. Charles, Hawk, recce the area, see if there are any more folks about. Fred, check the trucks.”

  It took only a few minutes to check the perimeter of the parking lot before the men returned, giving the all-clear signal.

  “Great! Let’s check for loot, boys.” Benson beamed happily.

  “But what about the muties?” a nervous private asked. “Shouldn’t we be inside?”

  “Not going back to the ville before we find Harold,” the sergeant admonished. “Besides, between the searchlights and our lanterns, no mutie is coming anywhere near this spot.”

  That sounded acceptable, and the men spread out, hunting for anything usable.

  “Hey, Sarge!” the private called out from near the smoking chassis of a destroyed Mack truck. “Some of this stuff isn’t burned much.”

  “Anything good?” the sergeant asked, walking closer, his boots crunching on the packed sand. With the lanterns behind him, his legs cast long shadows across the parking lot.

  “Don’t know. What’s an MRE?” The sec man tried to open the foil pack and started to turn red from the effort. There were directions clearly printed on the package, but the squiggles were meaningless to the man.

  Keeping a careful watch on the sky, the two sec men proceeded to the library while the driver kicked over the white-haired corpse in a weird coat. The man’s shirt was covered with so much blood it was impossible to tell if it was his or came from the other fellow. “These must be the last of those jolt dealers the muties aced,” the driver theorized. “They came out of hiding to reclaim their stuff and kilt each other.”

  “Good.” A toothless sec man laughed happily, rattling the library doors. There was no sound from inside. “More for us.”

  The foil finally ripped apart, spilling out an assortment of smaller packs and pouches. “Hey!” the man cried in delight. “These are food
packs!”

  “Hell, no wonder they fought,” the driver commented. “Let’s see what else they got on them.”

  Fred rubbed his chin. “Mebbe a little jolt?”

  “Could be.” The driver grinned, bending over the old man when there was a sharp metallic click. The driver recoiled just before his chest exploded, and he flew backward to slam into the pickup with a hole the size of a dinner plate in his torso.

  “Sumbitch!” Benson cursed, clawing for his blaster.

  But the other corpse rolled over, firing a squat machine gun from a prone position. The sec men near the library died on the spot. The sergeant drew his pistol and got off a wild shot before the LeMat removed his head in a grisly spray of bones, brains and blood.

  The last sec man jumped over the low stone wall and took off for his life. Stumbling after him, J.B. and Doc both fired their blasters, but the nimble man disappeared into the ruins.

  “Bedamned, we are shaky,” Doc rumbled, clumsily reloading his blaster.

  “Just be glad we’re still alive,” J.B. panted, leaning against the library wall. He was exhausted from the minor exertion. “When I saw those stupes going for the library, I almost shot them right there.”

  “They were not a good pattern yet.”

  “I know. That’s why I waited.”

  Finished reloading, Doc holstered his piece and took a lantern from the pickup. Hurrying over to the library, he lifted it to a window. Instantly, there was a rustling of bodies and the snapping of wings. He ducked quickly and a juicy gob flew across the lot.

  “Our guests seem most perturbed by imprisonment,” Doc stated, closing his eyes until a wave of dizziness passed. “Perhaps we should amend the terms of their captivity.”

  “Too dangerous to shoot them through the windows,” J.B. said claiming his rumpled hat from where it had dropped. He winced from the pain in his pulsating arm as he beat the dust off the fedora, then reset the crown and brim. “That bat venom is bad news, and they spit way too accurately for my taste.”

  “And mine, sir.” Moving about, Doc found his sword and ebony cane. “Think there is enough fuel in the-well, let’s be polite and call it a vehicle-to burn them to death?”