Zero City

by neetha Napew

  Forcing himself to keep standing, J.B. donned the hat, then tilted it an inch to the proper angle. Dressed again, the man felt more like his old self. “No way, even if the tank was full.”

  “How inconvenient,” Doc commented, glancing at the skyscraper rising about the ruins. The upper levels were lost in the distance of the nighttime sky. “And I can only postulate that we did indeed capture them all, or else we would be long dead and eaten while we were unconscious.”

  “Screw them. Let’s blow,” J.B. said, shivering slightly. “It’s colder than a baron’s witch out here, and I’m starving.”

  Doc slid off his frock coat and it was gratefully accepted. “I shall fix the flat tire on the Hummer while you shop among the trucks for undamaged MRE packs. It will be warmer than the exposed street.”

  “Okay, by me,” J.B. chattered, buttoning the garment shut. Lying on the sand, he had been warmed by the stored heat from the day. Standing, the desert winds took it away, chilling him to the bone. Hadn’t been this cold since the Zarks. “Just hurry, okay?”

  “I shall endeavor to do so, sir,” Doc replied. As he rounded the corner, he leaned heavily on his cane, the lantern held high to light the way.

  Watching where he stepped, J.B. poked though the glowing rubble, gathering items and stuffing them into the voluminous pockets of the coat. Actually, Doc had been correct; it was a lot warmer here amid the twisted metal, and the Armorer felt better with each passing minute. Whatever the toxin was the bats made, it clearly wasn’t lethal. Maybe just knocked a victim out so the muties could feed at their leisure. Grisly thought.

  Several minutes later, Doc drove the Hummer alongside the ruined trucks, and J.B. stumbled inside, the frock coat bulging.

  “Ah, thanks.” He sighed, rubbing his hands before the vent. The military heater was turned on full force, sending out waves of hellishly hot air. “Feels wonderful.”

  “My own pleasure,” Doc said, starting to drive, both hands streaked with grease, a knuckle bleeding slightly. “If I owned a brass monkey, it would now be singing soprano.”

  J.B. laughed. “Good one.”

  “Find anything?”

  Feeling the numbness leave his cheeks, J.B. patted the bulging coat. “A few souvenirs, and enough food to keep us going for a week.”

  “Excellent. Now our top priority is to get inside and get you outside something hot.”

  “Sounds good.” With fumbling fingers, the Armorer snapped the window shut just as there came the faint sound of blasterfire.

  Immediately, Doc killed the lights and slowed the Hummer. “That was close by. Could it be our escaped sec man?”

  “Wrong caliber. He had a .38, those were smoothbore muzzle-loaders.”

  “Perhaps additional people being herded into the tunnel by wolves,” Doc suggested, as if not believing the notion himself. He sucked on the cracked knuckle and flexed his hand.

  “Or Krysty and Ryan leaving in a hurry,” J.B. countered. “We better go check, just in case.”

  The noises came again. A machine gun chattered, the dull thud of a gren, and one of the searchlight beams disappeared.

  “That’s them,” J.B. said, hauling the Uzi into view. “Go!”

  Shifting gears, Doc stomped on the gas, and the Hummer peeled away from the curb, leaving billowing dust clouds in its wake.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A hand reached around the sagging door frame of the wooden barrier closing off the front of the tunnel and blindly fired a blaster three times. The shots zinged off the tiled ceiling and into the distance.

  “Now,” Ryan snapped, kneeling behind some garbage and carefully aiming the Steyr SSG-70.

  Krysty cried out in pain and fell to the tunnel floor. After a few moments, a sec man peeked around the door and Ryan blew away a chunk of his temple. The body collapsed onto the sandy ground, his rusty blaster rolling out of sight. Unseen hands dragged the corpse out of the doorway. Once again, all that could be seen through the sagging door in the barrier was a waist-high sandbag wall and the ruins beyond.

  “That’s two down,” the woman said, getting back up. “How many were there to start, four or six?”

  “Don’t recall,” Ryan growled, firing at the left side of the barrier. The 7.62 mm round slammed into the wood, but didn’t penetrate.

  “Fireblast,” he cursed. “Damn thing is made out of different kinds of planks. Sometimes I get through- most often I don’t.”

  Glancing over a shoulder, Krysty noted the tiny specks of lantern light were a lot closer. She sprayed a few bursts at them, but got no answering cry of pain. Damn sec men had to have the lanterns hanging from the ends of sticks or something. No way she could target the guards.

  “Range?” Ryan asked, the Steyr held loosely in his grip, his single eye wide for any indication of the guards.

  “Too damn close,” she replied, trying the MAC-11. The hissing autofire hosed a full clip down the tunnel with no results.

  High up on the frame, a shiny square edged past the door, and Ryan shattered the mirror, a finger dropping to the ground. A stream of curses sounded and again several revolvers popped into view, firing wildly.

  Ryan shot a blaster out of its owner’s grip, the weapon spinning away over the sandbags. Then Krysty gave a spray from the noisy Skorpion. Lacking a suppressor, its bullets hit harder, blowing chunks of wood from the frame, leaving clusters of splinters sticking out.

  Shifting the med kit on her back, Krysty mentally wished she hadn’t thrown away the dead gren. It would have bought them seconds of shock when they were forced to rush the doorway. Caught between an unknown number of armed sec men behind, and only a few ahead of them, a frontal charge was the logical way out. At least the ville guards were on foot. None of their wags had gotten past the burning APC. Yet.

  Easing a fresh clip into the Steyr, Ryan fired randomly at the barrier, but only two holes showed daylight and nobody shouted in pain.

  Just then, shots boomed from down the tunnel, and a miniball impacted on the ground between them.

  “Shit, they can see our silhouettes,” Krysty spit, crouching lower and firing back. This time, she got a hit, but it was only a single voice.

  “And they have our range. This is it. We got to chance a charge,” Ryan said, rising and drawing his SIG-Sauer. “You ready?”

  Standing, Krysty worked the bolts on both of her weapons. “See you in hell, lover.”

  For a precious second, the man and woman exchanged private glances, then started to creep forward, but froze motionless when a long sharp whistle sounded from outside, closely followed by two more.

  Separating to the opposite sides of the tunnel, Krysty crossed her arms at the wrists and aimed her blasters in both directions as Ryan chanced an answering whistle. A guttural voice on the other side of the barrier asked a question to somebody in the negative just as the wooden slats furiously shook from a barrage of machine-gun fire and the telltale discharge of the predark LeMat. Men screamed, handblasters discharging from their death convulsions. Bodies fell into view. The Uzi chattered once more, followed by another thundering round from the LeMat, then silence.

  Whistling again, Ryan got an answer. Exiting the tunnel, the companions relaxed a notch as J.B. and Doc walked from the idling Hummer parked near a curb. But the smiles on the two men quickly faded when they saw the serious expressions on the man and woman.

  “You folks okay?” J.B. asked in concern, cradling the Uzi.

  “Gaia, no,” Krysty replied, scrambling over the sandbag wall. “We have an army on our tail.”

  “Then we must leave, posthaste!” Doc said, waving away the tendrils of smoke from the muzzle of his black-powder hog-leg.

  Shouldering his rifle, Ryan snarled, “Fuck that. Got any grens, or plas-ex?”

  “Not a thing. Used it all killing the muties,” J.B. said. “Even our one LAW is gone.”

  “How about spare fuel?”

  Seeing where the man was going, J.B. got the idea. “No, but we have
two alcohol lanterns we took from some sec men. That should do the job.”

  “Get them. You two, block the doorway,” Ryan ordered, going for the Hummer.

  Moving fast, Krysty and Doc holstered their weapons and started tossing sandbags from the wall in front of the open doorway until the stack was chest high. J.B. and Ryan returned at a run, lit the wicks on the lanterns and threw them onto the barrier. The lanterns crashed high on the wooden half circle of the tunnel’s mouth, the flaming alcohol flowing down the planks and spreading until the entire front was crackling and smoking.

  “That won’t hold the baron’s men for very long,” J.B. stated.

  “Not supposed to,” Ryan said, blinking in the pale daylight. Rumbling with thunder, the dirty clouds were low in the sky and a lot darker in color. Lightning flashed, and the winds increased slightly. The storm that had been threatening to break ever since they first arrived was now only hours away. Acid rain or a sandstorm, either could be an advantage if handled correctly.

  “Please elucidate, sir,” Doc asked, confused.

  “I only wanted the fire to get rid of the wood,” Ryan said, heading for the Hummer and climbing behind the wheel. The engine caught the first time. “Now let’s get the hell out of here, so we can come back and finish this.”

  “To fight an army?” Krysty asked, dropping the med kit on the floorboards as she took the passenger seat.

  Making room for Doc in the back, J.B. was smiling, as if he already knew the answer and highly approved.

  “Hell no,” Ryan stated, driving away. “We’re going to stop the baron’s army. With one shot.”

  THE BURNING BARRIER smashed apart, the smoking timbers tumbling to the ground as a bulldozer effortlessly plowed through. Right behind the rattling predark machine were a hundred sec men with blasters, then a dozen carts full of supplies. The dozer plowed the front of the tunnel clear of planks, sandbags and corpses as the sec force spread out, immediately setting up defensive posts and starting a perimeter sweep for enemies. A few carried muzzle-loaders, but the rest sported autofires, loot from the baron’s private armory mixed with the fancy blasters recovered from the dead jolt dealers.

  Cradling M-16 submachine guns, the Wolf Pack marched into view followed by a sky-blue Cadillac convertible with the top down. Leonard was standing in the passenger’s seat holding on to the windshield. His longish hair was now a crew cut, and the teenager was dressed in a black jumpsuit, with leather bandoliers full of ammo crisscrossing his chest. A silver Desert Eagle rode at his right hip, and a Navy flare gun rested in a shoulder holster.

  The driver was a grizzled man with an unhealed gash across his face from the destruction of the greenhouses. A sawed-off shotgun lay on top of the dashboard before him, his shirt pocket jammed with homemade shells.

  The crowd of sec men moved out of the way for the Caddy, and it stopped in the middle of the access ramp for the tunnel.

  “Sergeant,” Leonard yelled, indicating a soldier, “have the men establish a perimeter, then recce the local buildings for snipers. I want a safety zone of two full blocks. A storm is coming, and I want that bitch and her friend found before it hits.”

  “Sir!”

  Leonard watched the activity bustling around him as more wags rolled out of the tunnel. The trap with the APC had been extremely clever, but failed. The tunnel was severely weakened there, and the river was steadily trickling in, but the predark storm drains easily handled the flow and diverted the water...well, someplace else. He didn’t know or care where as long as the underground passageway stayed clear for his sec men. Timbers hoisted by car jacks reinforced the ceiling, making a maze for the wags to carefully maneuver through. But it worked. They were here and ready for a fight.

  “Establish camp here, Captain,” Leonard commanded. “We can retire at night inside the tunnel in case of muties.”

  “Or a storm,” the driver added, listening to the angry sky.

  “Is that a good idea, Lieuten-? Baron?” Captain Zanders asked, running an uncomfortable finger along the interior of the collar of his new uniform. Anton Zanders an officer-his mother would have died with pride. “Shouldn’t we make camp inside the sports arena or the high school? They’re both in good shape. Gives us lots of room to maneuver.”

  The young baron stared hard at the grizzled veteran until he felt flush with unease.

  “Safety first, Captain. But thank you for the opinion,” Leonard said with surprising gentleness. “My father had favorites among the troops whom he would promote out of friendship. I do not. That idiot officer in charge of tunnel defense was the first man I sent to the farmers.”

  “Sent to till the farms, you mean, sir,” the captain offered as a correction.

  Looking over the men, the youth said nothing in reply.

  Zanders tried to hide his pleasure and failed.

  “The man was a total jackass,” he spit, “Should have told me, sir. I would have turned on the Machine myself and tossed him in.”

  “Which is why you are in charge now, Captain.” Baron Leonard Strichland stepped down from the Cadillac and walked about.

  “However, I do agree with you about mobility. This area will merely be our base camp. From here, we spread out through the ruins, systematically checking every street every building.”

  The former sergeant scratched his ear. “I don’t know, Baron. That might drive her into the desert.”

  “I’m prepared for that,” Leonard replied, watching a team of specially chosen hunters head out into the dunes. They were his insurance. If this should fail, their job was to track the woman until they brought back her head. The families of the hunters would stay safe and warm in Alphaville as security to guarantee their allegiance to the task. Fear and hunger made all men obedient. In a well of emotions, his chest ached with the thought of his slain father, then the youth forced himself hard again. Only the strong survived, and the weak didn’t rule.

  “Baron, the area is secure,” a sec man reported, crisply saluting. “The buildings on both sides of us are clear, cellar to roof.”

  “Good. Thank you,” Leonard replied, wiggling uncomfortably in his new stiff boots. Sneakers were more comfortable, but didn’t look impressive. Power knew no pain. His father had also told him that many times over dinner, or at an execution.

  “Any footprints or tire tracks?” Zanders asked brusquely.

  “None, sir.”

  “Well, they didn’t fly away, moron. Have the trackers search again.”

  Another salute. “Yes, sir.”

  Zanders slapped the hand down. “And stop doing that, ya gleeb. The boss looks bad enough in his new uniform. You want to tell a sniper exactly who to shoot at?”

  Walking slowly forward, the Cadillac right behind him, the baron arched an eyebrow at the statement, but didn’t speak. Was he overdressed? Damn. Mebbe.

  “Oh.” The sec man had obviously never considered that. “Sorry, sir.” His hand twitched but stayed at his side.

  “Better,” the captain grumped. “Now, have we checked the skyscraper yet?”

  Watching a squad of men dig foxholes, Leonard turned and interrupted. “Is that necessary, Captain? The top is so far away, what weapon could possibly...”

  His words faded as a contrail of white smoke moved across the sky from the top of the tall building, traveling straight for them.

  “Incoming!” the captain bellowed, diving for the ground, pulling the baron with him.

  The contrail arced down to impact directly inside the mouth of the tunnel. The world shuddered from the explosion, bricks and tiles shotgunning out to fell scores of screaming men. Another contrail streaked in to punch through the bulldozer, the ground underneath the machine rising to tear it to pieces. Then a third and fourth contrail hit the tunnel again, cracking apart the concrete apron in strident fury. With the groan of a dying giant, the tunnel crumbled apart, the steel support beams screaming as they twisted out of shape. In slow grandeur, the opening crashed shut, spewing thick billowing c
louds of acidic concrete dust.

  “Rockets!” a man yelled in panic. “They’ll wipe us out! We surrender! We surrender!”

  Rising, Leonard drew his blaster and shot the man where he stood, the .50-caliber round from the Desert Eagle spinning the man like a top before he fell over.

  “There are no more rockets,” the young baron shouted, holstering the piece, his wrist aching from the recoil. “If they had more, they would have used more. Do you hear any more explosions? No. The attack is over.”

  Sullenly, the troops got to their feet and retrieved dropped weapons. For most of them, this was a lot different than bullying civvies or shooting escaped prisoners.

  “Captain, I apologize,” Leonard said, offering the man assistance. “Get a squad up there immediately. Or should we set fire to the building?”

  There was no response from the still form, and the young baron noticed an unbroken tile sticking out of the back of Zanders’s head, his exposed brains a pulpy mass of soggy red tissue dribbling onto the dry soil. Leonard turned away from the corpse, his eyes stinging, his heart pounding. So fast, it had happened so fast.

  “Lieutenant Kelly, you are now in charge of the men,” he barked. “Get a team to the skyscraper and kill anybody you find. Then set fire to the bastard thing!”

  “Sir!” the officer barked, saluting.

  The young baron ignored that for the moment. “Sergeant Jarmal, divide the men into thirds. One group starts clearing the tunnel, the second finds that high school Zanders mentioned and begins fortifying it, the third salvages anything useful from the wreckage.” Leonard paused for longer than he meant to. “And the dead.”

  “Yes, my lord!”

  “It appears,” Leonard said grimly to nobody in particular, “that despite my wishes, we’re trapped here until further notice.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sweaty and bloody, Mildred stumbled out of the tent in the basement of the building. The exhausted physician was holding a lantern. Every other lantern the companions owned was inside the bedsheet tent, backed by a mirror, the glow infusing the food court with almost noontime clarity. The air of the entire level reeked with alcohol, and the floors shone from a fresh scrubbing.