End Program

by James Axler

  * * *

  THE SCENT OF the smoke changed as they got closer, turning from that dry smell of burning vegetation to something richer and headier, the smell of burning meat. Puffs of soot-gray smoke plumed into the sky, curling slowly above the field of corn, painting the nearest ears with smudges of black.

  Jak and Ricky were the first to see the burning property as Jak parted the tall sheaves of golden corn. It was still in the distance, a little down slope with a ring of flames burning all around it. Something moved in those flames, a four-legged animal that could have been a horse or a mule, its back on fire.

  People were walking among the flames, casually making their way from the lone farmhouse that burned in its center. The farmhouse was constructed of wood, and large enough to provide a home to three or four families, mebbe even give them each their own quarters, separate from one another. Jak guessed that perhaps twenty or thirty people had lived there in a commune—maybe not enough to tend to the fields that surrounded the place but at least enough to try. The whole place was on fire now, flames licking up its sides and dancing on its roof.

  Six figures were striding away from the flames, not hurrying and not bothering to look back to the burning building behind them. They were mostly men, tall, broad-shouldered, strong-looking, and they wore denim, hard wearing but leaving tanned skin showing. Jak couldn’t make out the holsters from here, but he knew they would have them—these were predators, coldhearts, chillers. There were vehicles parked a little way from the property, motorbikes and a quad bike, retrofitted engines and patched-up tires testaments to their endurance. The group was making its way toward them, leaving the farmhouse and the fields immediately around it to burn.

  “What’s going on?” Ricky asked, his eyes fixed on the distant farmhouse.

  “Nothin’ good,” Jak replied without turning.

  Waiting in the field, masked by the towering sheaves of corn, Jak and Ricky watched as a figure crashed through an upstairs window of the burning property. It was a woman, her dress on fire. She landed in a crumpled heap beyond the flaming porch, rolling over and over to put out the flames that licked at her clothes, screaming in fear.

  One of the coldhearts who had been striding away from the property swiveled on his heel and shot from the hip without warning, driving a bullet through the burning woman’s skull before she had even had time to put out the flames. The shooter turned back and strode away, not bothering to look as the fire took hold of his victim once more, consuming the tattered remains of her dress and blazing across her flesh.

  Ricky was horrified. “We should do something,” he hissed, grip tightening on his Webley, reaching for his other blaster with his other hand—a repro De Lisle carbine that hung on a sling across his back.

  Jak held up one ghost-pale hand to halt him. “Stay,” he said. “Go now, get chilled.”

  It was sound advice, but it didn’t sit well with Ricky. The burning woman had put him in mind of his sister. Together, they watched as the six figures mounted the bikes, two of them sharing the quad bike, and tore away through the smoky field.

  Chapter Twelve

  You didn’t have to go looking for trouble in the Deathlands for it to find you. It was a lawless state, with too many people vying for too little resources, and far too many of those people comfortable taking from those who could not defend themselves.

  In the cornfield, Ricky and Jak watched as the bikers roared away, kicking up a wall of dirt as their beaten-up tires sought purchase, before tearing away from the burning building. The bikers bumped over the dirt track that encircled the farmhouse like a lasso, before following it through the field in an insect hum of powerful engines.

  A woman passenger was clinging on the back of the quad bike, holding a flaming torch that Jak guessed had been used to ignite the farmhouse and its surroundings. She ran the torch over the crop as they passed, setting light to more stalks of corn. The tops of the corn flickered like a line of candles where the torch touched them with its red-gold tongue, sending winding trails of black smoke into the sky.

  As soon as the bikes had passed the edge of the house, Jak and Ricky began to move, running toward the burning domicile. They exchanged no words, gave no cue; they simply knew when it was the moment act, the moment when it would be safe—or as safe as it was going to get, anyhow. Jak ran ahead, faster than Ricky, his hands slicing the air like knives as he raced toward the house. Blaster in hand, Ricky was slower. He galloped sidewise, eyeing the building’s edge where the motorcycle gang had disappeared. His heart was drumming against his chest, adrenaline pumping and he was ready to blast the strangers if he had to.

  The intensity of heat could be felt even fifty feet away, radiating from the raging inferno that had once been a house. The horse or mule was lying outside the circle of flames, still burning like a pyre, clouds of thick black smoke billowing from its blackened form with an awful stench of cooking flesh. Beyond that, the flames themselves licked at the building, windows lost behind curtains of flame, the open doorway a dark stain amid the flickering wall.

  The woman was lying close to the front door, body aflame, her dress now barely more than a wisp of material where it had either burned away or been singed to her body. Jak ignored her, skirting around the flames issuing from her as he ran for the house.

  This close to the building Jak could hear shouts and screams over the crackling of the flames, a baby wailing, people shouting in fear, children crying. There was a smell too—burning wood plus burning flesh; death by fire. Jak didn’t think about that, he just ran for the dark sliver of open door that was playing peekaboo through the flames. As he raced through it, the lintel gave way, crashing down two inches behind his retreating form.

  Ricky watched in astonishment as Jak disappeared inside the farmhouse, the doorway falling apart around his retreating figure.

  “Jak! Don’t—” he shouted, but his warning was cut short as he swallowed a mouthful of smoke and started to cough. He stood outside the burning house, hacking over and over, his eyes streaming from the smoke.

  * * *

  JAK WAS INSIDE, sweat already running in rivers down his forehead, his cheeks, his chin.

  He stood in the building’s lobby, a wide space with a staircase running up into the upper levels. He could see the staircase even through the flames, the struts of its banister rail alight with fire, like a line of burning jail cell bars.

  The air was thick with smoke, great clouds of blackness masking anything more than a couple of feet ahead. Moving quickly was his best chance for survival—track people by their screams, find anyone still alive.

  People screamed upstairs.

  Jak took a step toward the stairs, feeling the intense heat all around him like a blanket. The house creaked, and he heard something come crashing down on the floor above. Yes, he would have to move quickly if he was going to get out of there alive.

  He eyed the stairs. The people were up there. The coldhearts, whoever they were, would have chased them up there to make sure they couldn’t get out when they torched the place. That’s why the woman had come crashing through the upstairs window, because that had been her egress.

  Standing at the foot of the staircase Jak called out, hoping to get a better idea of where the survivors were. “Anyone?” he called. “Shout out.”

  As he spoke, the thick smoke assaulted his nostrils and a layer of ashy saliva seemed to carpet his tongue. He hunkered down into himself, pulled his shirt out of his pants, and raised the top of the shirt until he could hook it over his mouth and nose. That way he could breathe through the material, filter out the worst of the smoke. Even then, he wouldn’t have long.

  A shout echoed back from above, but whether it was meant for him or just a cry of fear, Jak couldn’t tell.

  Breathing through the makeshift mask of his shirt, Jak ran up the burning stairs. His feet skim
med across their surface as he sped deeper into the burning building, barely touching the stairs before he moved on to the next. Behind and all around him, the walls were burning as well as the banister as spots of flame began to take hold on the stairs themselves.

  * * *

  “SMOKE’S GETTING HEAVIER,” Mildred said as she shoved back a tangled mass of stalks, holding them so that Ryan and Krysty could pass.

  “Get ready,” Ryan warned, drawing his SIG Sauer and brushing the last of the corn aside.

  Behind him, Ryan’s companions steeled themselves for what lay beyond the cornfield.

  * * *

  “MADRE DI DIABLO!” Ricky gritted as he bent double in the dirt.

  He was in the yard of the burning house, still trying to catch his breath. The smoke had tickled his throat, and it was all he could do to stop the coughing. He rubbed his free hand across his eyes, swiping at the tears.

  “Hello, pretty boy,” a voice called from close by. A man’s voice with an affected accent that made it sound almost as though he was singing the words.

  When Ricky looked up, he saw the man poised there, still astride his motorcycle, and his eyes darted immediately to the metal glinting in the man’s hand. The stranger had a patchy beard and long hair. He rested one hand atop the turned handlebars of his bike. He wore a denim vest and had tattoos across his bare chest and arms—but they weren’t decorative, Ricky saw; the tats were lines, like markings for surgical incisions. The biker had similar markings across his forehead and around the left side of his jaw, and Ricky saw something metallic glinting behind them.

  It had taken less than a second for Ricky to see all that, processing what he saw in his brain even as he raised the Webley Mk VI to take a shot at the stranger. The man shot quicker, a blast exploding from the handlebars and whizzing beside Ricky with a howl of splitting air.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ricky dived, cursing himself for allowing someone to sneak up on him. He was around the far side of the burning building in an instant, even as a second shot from the biker kicked up dirt where he stepped. Still coughing, Ricky landed on the ground, rolled and pulled himself into a crouch, bringing the Webley around to train it on the building edge. He recognized the biker as one of the motley crew who had driven away a minute before. They had to have heard Ricky’s coughing and sent one of their crew back to check.

  “Why so shy, pretty boy?” the biker taunted in a loud, singsong voice. “Don’t you want to play?” He laughed at that, the sound mingling with the crackling noise of the inferno at Ricky’s back.

  Ricky took a steadying breath, fighting back the urge to cough again, and peered out from the red-hot cover of the farmhouse. His head popped out for just a fraction of a second, taking in everything he could, confirming the bike man’s position. To Ricky’s left, the sounds of combustion engines grew louder. Damn! They were coming at him from all sides, hoping to surround him, trap him.

  Ricky leaned out again, the Webley extended in his right hand. Out there, the bearded biker was laughing, and he looked surprised when he saw Ricky. Even so, he reacted well, sending another burst of fire from whatever weapon he had resting on the handlebars of his bike. Ricky stroked the Webley’s trigger at the same time, sending a .45-caliber message to his laughing foe.

  The biker’s large bore blast missed Ricky by a foot, disappearing into the burning wall above his head and emerging in a trail of flames like a firefly. Ricky’s shot was better placed, drilling into the biker’s left cheek even as he dipped to avoid it. The biker’s face erupted in an explosion of blood, a line of crimson-black spattering the ground like spilled paint.

  Ricky ran in a weaving, zigzag path toward his would-be chiller, firing another bullet on the run.

  “How pretty do you think I am now, huh?” he spit as he pulled the trigger.

  The bullet struck the biker high in the chest, and he watched as the man sagged back in his seat, head lolling on his shoulders. Behind him, Ricky could hear more engines getting louder, closer.

  As the biker was thrown back, his bike teetered and fell, striking the ground with a crash of metal like clashing cymbals. Ricky stood transfixed, eyeing the fallen biker where his leg was trapped beneath the weight of the fallen hog. He saw now that the man didn’t have a blaster—not in his hand anyway. What he had was a pipe in place of his right arm, like an attachment on a predark vacuum cleaner. The pipe was made of ridged metal, wider than the man’s muscular arm at the elbow, then tapering to a narrow opening at the end, as thick as two of Ricky’s fingers. The youth tilted his head as he looked at it, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. The man had shot at him. But there was no blaster—just this thing. A tube, like the barrel of a blaster, but attached somehow to the man’s limb. But it was too narrow at its extremity to be a glove. So, not attached to the arm then—but in place of it.

  Behind Ricky, the roar of the motorbike engines grew louder, like the angry buzzing of a hornet’s nest. He turned, broke open the Webley and used a moon clip to reload the revolver, spying the first of the gang as the tires of their bikes rounded the building’s edge. They were coming at him from all sides, whooping and cheering, death on their minds.

  * * *

  THE SMOKE WAS SPREADING, painting the sky above the field with a thick smear of charcoal gray. Doc and J.B. pushed on through the cornfield, finally reaching its edge.

  The Armorer parted the last line of golden stalks, warily eyeing what lay beyond. It was a road, just a dirt track really, lined with stones and ridged by the frequent passage of a cart or carts heavily laden with produce. The farmhouse was two hundred yards down the track, off to J.B.’s left, while the barn waited on the far side of road, a little way to his right.

  Doc nudged against J.B.’s shoulder as he slipped the shining blade of his sword back into the sheath that made up his cane. “The fire is still a little ways off,” Doc said, his voice muffled through the handkerchief he had tied over his mouth. “Shall we?” He pointed to the barn as if inviting J.B. to partner him in a grand old dance hall.

  J.B. held his arm out before Doc like the safety barrier on a ride.

  “Hold up, Doc,” he said, the words spoken in hushed tones. As he spoke, J.B. slipped his combat knife back into its hidden sheath behind his hip with his left hand and pulled his mini-Uzi out of its hiding place with his right.

  Doc scanned the road, following where J.B. was watching. Black smoke billowed into the air from the burning field, whipping across road and fields like the tail of a kite. Glowing spots like fireflies danced in that black smoke, the stubs of the corn as they caught alight. Then Doc saw the movements through the dark smoke, vehicles moving along the track toward the farmhouse. “Who—?”

  “Jak mentioned motorcycles,” the Armorer reminded Doc. “They’re circling the house, playing sentry...or worse.”

  “Worse?” Doc asked, alarmed.

  J.B. nodded toward the barn. “Let’s get to cover before we’re seen. We can figure our next move”

  Doc nodded his agreement and the two men darted across the dirt road, wisps of gray-black smoke trailing around them, the long tails of Doc’s frock coat billowing behind him like a bird’s tail.

  * * *

  JAK SCRAMBLED UPSTAIRS and weaved past a burning timber as it fell from the ceiling. Wherever the survivors were, he hoped that it was on this floor and not the one above—because there wouldn’t be much left of that floor in a few minutes, not with the way the roof beams were dropping in firework streaks.

  “Where?” Jak shouted, pulling the shirt down from his mouth long enough to expel the word. “Anyone here?”

  He listened for a moment, trying to detect a human voice over the crackling of the flames. Smoke filled the hallway, doors burned along it like flaming sconces. He wouldn’t have long.

  “Help!” a voice cried back
, sounding strained and fearful.

  “Where?” Jak repeated the word twice more as he turned on the spot.

  “We’re here!” the voice replied. He figured it for a woman or mebbe an adolescent, but he couldn’t be sure. It was high and strained, of that much he was certain. And it was coming from ahead and to his left.

  Jak moved, hitching the shirt back over his mouth and nose as he ran across smoldering floorboards, past burning walls, the smoke thick all around him.

  A door stood to his left, closed tight, the paintwork on the frame and door edges beginning to blister from the heat. Jak tried it once, pulling the cuff of his jacket over his hand to protect him from the heat. “You here?” he shouted as he tried the doorknob.

  Locked, the door held.

  “You here?” Jak repeated, louder this time.

  A voice came back, too quiet, choking on something. “H-help us,” the voice pleaded. It seemed to be coming from behind the door, a little way behind it but behind it all the same.

  Jak stepped back, then kicked out at the doorknob, once, twice, with the heel of his boot. The knob shook in its frame, while the wood around the lock began to splinter. Jak kicked a third time, and the metal lock, knob and a five-inch hunk of door fell away with a crash.

  Inside was a bathroom, tin bath in its center, the walls turning black with smoke. And there was a figure standing by the wall, a hole in its gut wide as a man’s fist. The figure looked like a man, hairless but it was made of metal that shone with the rainbow colors of oil on water.

  Unconsciously, Jak stepped back as he spotted the metal man, his hand going automatically to his holstered blaster.

  “In here!” a voice called from the far right of the room. Jak tracked the voice, saw there was a second door to the side of the metal man.

  “What you?” Jak muttered, eyeing the metal man more closely. The metal man stood silently before the inner door like a suit of armor, its innards ripped out and strewed across the floor like a person’s guts. Something had damaged it, probably just a single shot from a large bore weapon, ripping its middle out as it tried to protect the door. It had succeeded, or its opponent hadn’t cared—either way, there were people behind that door, Jak knew; people in trouble.