by Chris Turner
“Toog’s one of the few who fled from the crawlers, searching other ways. He’s one of the good ones, Rusco. You’ve nothing to fear.” He glanced at my clenched fists on my assault rifle.
To my relief the house pets stayed outside.
“Raised those dervishes from babies. I fed them, tamed them and watered their backs. Now they’re loyal to me, as long as I keep feeding them.”
“What do you feed them?” asked Wren.
“Dead meat. Anything I can catch. I look for the condors or buzzards circling overhead. Anywhere they’re circling means fresh meat is about. Sometimes they sight a sick crawler wandered off to die or some fresh carrion. Rest of the time I hunt whatever I can for food with my bow.”
I nodded as if nothing could be more natural.
The floor was fine white sand, the ceiling beamed with girders; the walls, dried mud, making it cool and dry inside, and a relief to my pounding head. Billy went running over to a shelf of pots to gulp water from a beat-up bucket. I saw the old man kept a crude, fire-stoked stove complete with chimney. Buckets of water ranged around, dozens of them; a chest of junk for fuel, elsewhere a few potted cacti, some low cots. Spartan but serviceable. A mystery where TK got water.
He motioned us to a low steel table with woven place mats in the middle of the room. While we sat around it, the old man fired up the pot-iron stove, rustled up some food, banging various pots and before long he served us a piping-hot soup of green vegetables and some crunchy brown sticks.
I dove in, famished. Munching away, I lifted my spoon to him. “This is not half bad, TK. What is it?”
“The green stuff’s cactus, high in trace minerals and nutrients. The desert insects, those brown sticks you’re shoveling in by the forkful, are common to this region, easy to catch and super high in protein.”
I dropped my utensil on the plate, coughed, and my mouth hung open.
Wren smirked. “What’s the matter, Rusco? There’re more in the pot where that came from. Grasshopper is a novelty on Talyon.”
Loosing a sigh, I studied my company. Toog with his quiet, diminutive movements, never taking a mouthful too swiftly, Wren, her challenging stare, as if everything was wrong in the world, and TK, a glint of amusement in his gray eyes, watching us as if we were all a study in social experiment.
TK read my mind about the next question about the water. “Don’t worry. I have to manufacture my own liquids. I have a rig further down. I call it the hydrophon.” He grinned. “My back’s not what it used to be in the old days so I rig up the AGs and get Billy to help me haul a barrow of filled buckets to this place.”
I nodded. “Seems as if you have everything worked out. Except maybe the bloodthirsty scorps and the zombie mummies lurking about your doorstep.”
“Them…well, I have my ways of keeping them at bay. Xig and Xag, those two brutes outside, help me with that. They’ve killed many wandering crawly boys who’ve come nosing around. If word got out me and Billy were holed up here…” He let the idea hang in dead air.
“So you’ve survived,” I said. “I’d count that as impressive. Was there ever a better yesterday?”
“Dezran City used to be a self-supporting community. A bunch of us used to live in scattered settlements. Along the foot of the desert ridge, not like the big metropolises you see on the settled planets. Talyon was different, had a fresh start, even though it served as the recycling center of the solar system. Then they came and burned up the town.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Some glory-seeking warlords out to make a name for themselves. Heard this place was fair game, rich in mining, beryllium and other elements, and laid waste to the city.”
“Sounds like any of a dozen lowlifes I know.”
TK shrugged. “The strongest of us banded together and we became fighters. In the end, ultimately refugees, living hand to mouth. Many of us drank poison water, I don’t know what else: some became the mutants you saw out there. Messed up their heads, burned their skin, deformed their bodies. That’s why they’re all wrapped up in rags. Used to be human, but they went—feral, let’s say. If you saw them—” he shuddered and cast a sharp look at Toog.
Toog stirred and spoke in a lisp. I caught a flash of harelip beneath the cowl as if his teeth were set the wrong way. “Some genetics company had been brewing toxic bio-mixtures. They got mixed up in the water supply when the outlaws were blasting the place all up.”
TK loosed a choked growl. “That and the toxic waste dump burning and smoldering and seeping scum into the water table. Don’t forget that, Toog. A toxic jury-rigged slurry, a disaster waiting to happen, courtesy of the growing recycle piles!”
“Where did all this junk come from?” I asked.
“Shipped in from innumerable planets. All the worlds far and near used Talyon as their dumping grounds. For generations and generations. That all ended when the wars started.”
I drummed my knuckles on the table. “So how come you guys aren’t all twisted up like our mummy friends out there—no offense to our friend Toog here?”
TK held up a glass bottle of pills, liquid capsules on the table. “Quizanine. Methyl basene—plus a smidge of isopropyl alcohol.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever one,” I marveled.
“I pride myself in knowing things.”
“I can see that.” I frowned and turned to Wren. “What about you?”
“What would you like to know?”
“Why didn’t you turn into one of our mummy friends?”
“Lucky, I guess. Always added a bit of vinegar from fermented cactus to my water.”
TK laughed at the notion. “Some of us are just resistant to the effects.”
Wren shrugged, apparently not in the mood for arguing with the old man.
“Family?” I turned to her. “How have you been surviving?”
“Dodge and blast, nothing else. My crib’s hidden far away. On the other side of the pits. I saw your ship come down. Then I came to look. My rod’s been keeping me alive, no thanks to you, losing it out there somewhere in the sand. Built it myself.”
“Treat that new piece at your waist as your new improved ‘rod’. You still haven’t explained how—”
“Nothing much different from TK’s story,” she said in a harsh voice. “My family was killed, my daughter too.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t know her from Eve. Bad shit happens to good people. Happens all the time. I got over it.”
I could see that Wren hadn’t and probably never would. But I was no grief therapist and so I moved on. “If we get my ship running again, I’m inviting you all out for a ride—you too, skinhead.” I shadow-boxed her playfully on the shoulder. Her body remained rigid. My sudden act of charity was not just in good nature. A little bit of self-preservation was mixed in with a whole lot of scheming. “I could use a resourceful bunch of entrepreneurs like you.”
TK swigged down a gulp of water.
“So, you’ve never made it off this rock?”
“Nope.” He shrugged. “I’ve been off and traveled at lot in my younger days before the space docks and starships were wiped out and communication towers destroyed. A few rogue ships have dropped out of the sky over the years, but on seeing nothing here but desert ruin and mummy freaks they speed off in a hell of a hurry.”
“Nobody’s come to this planet since I’ve been a girl,” croaked Wren in a faraway voice. “Even then the memory is dim. I remember a silver, cigar-shaped craft angling down in the plain once, before it became another toxic waste dump. I watched from one of the recycle hills.” Her eyes clouded over. “They landed, let out a bunch of people—prisoners, I reckoned, with their arms bound behind their backs. Three tried to make a run for it, and the captors blasted them in cold blood.” She shivered. “The rest they let live. Then they flew off.”
“What happened to the survivors?” I asked.
“Dunno, I scrambled away, fast as I could, being j
ust a little kid. When I came back, they were gone. Sand dervishes must have got them.”
I stared in grim silence. “And you, Toog?”
“I kill mad boys as easily as TK here. Sometimes they hunt me, but I lure them to my special place—where an army of dervishes nest. They feed nicely that day.” He gave a snorting exclamation. “Was just checking on TK here, seeing that he’s feeding his pets properly.”
“And was I?” TK asked with a crooked grin.
“Seemed so.”
“A good trick,” I said. “Letting the dervishes control your mad boys. Surprises me you’d kill your own kind though.”
Toog grunted, the first real emotion I’d heard from him. “I owe them nothing. They killed my family, ground them up, ate them for stew. Made me one of them. But I escaped. Now I kill them on sight.”
“You’re one against an army,” I pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I admire your spirit, Toog. All of you. Just think you’re on the wrong world.”
“What world isn’t ‘wrong’?” grunted TK.
“I invite you to come with us, Toog.”
He stared at me a long time. “No, this is the only home I’ve known. Call it sentimental, but I’ve a kinship here. There are others like me, like TK and Billy.”
“Knock yourself out.” I shrugged. But in those eyes I saw the sadness of generations, as I had seen so many times on many worlds. Worlds ripped apart by senseless violence, and privation, sunk in the deepest mire of decadence.
While TK and Wren went off with Billy and Toog to fetch water and look out for more mad boys crawling about, I drifted off in the opposite direction to the repair shop, my Uzi slung over a shoulder, thinking it better to be closer to my ship. I followed what I remembered of the route we took, wiping my brow in the baking sun. No number of nervous glances over my shoulder allayed my suspicion that those damn sand crabs weren’t following me.
The ruins came in sight and I heaved myself down on a sand drift at the edge of the pit. The merciless sun beat down on my head and my mind wandered on how I’d always wanted a tan.
I lay the Uzi on my lap in case a mad boy decided to make a move. It was a good compact submachine gun, modified to fire a heat-swath plus bullets, frying anything within a twenty yard range. Lumo, infrared scope for night fight and laser lock, cool smooth barrel, compact hand stock—I liked the lighter feel, its quickness to slide off the shoulder and into the hands.
The throb in my knee had receded to a dull ache, that or I’d gotten used to it. Nevertheless, I up-ended the last of the pain pill-bottle I’d pulled from Starrunner into my gullet. Seemed I was about due for another dose. I glanced down at the pit: a stark, baking hole with crumbling earth on all sides. No soul would ever guess a hidden workshop lurked down in that abyss holding a Class A starship and stocked with tools.
I shook my head with an amazed grin, hardly aware that I was starting to doze off.
I awoke to the drop of something in my lap, a black-leathered figure crouching before me with a wry smile.
“Must have drifted off.”
“Dangerous place to do that,” Wren admonished, dropping the handful of pebbles she’d been tossing.
I gave a careless grunt, rose to my undignified half crouch, squinting in the obnoxious glare.
“Boring over there hauling water,” she bantered. “Thought I’d bug you instead.” She squinted down at me. “You serious about taking me with you, if the old man fixes the ship?”
“Why not? I’m generally not a liar. There’re things to discuss first. Like business. Not just a free ride here; work to be done.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when the time comes.”
A stiff silence came over us and I could see her pouty frown moving across her fine lips, so it prompted me to mellow somewhat.
“Listen, I’m sorry for what I said back there.”
“About what?”
“About saying you had a butch cut.”
She laughed. “Well, it’s kinda true, isn’t it? Though I’m no butch.”
“Think you’d look a lot prettier with a whole head of hair though, instead of a few bristles like a porcupine. Not that you aren’t pretty. Just saying.”
“Opinion noted,” she said dryly. “This brush cut is more for practical reasons than anything. It’s cooler on the skull.”
“Those leathers sure aren’t.”
“They’re for protection, Rusco. In case I run into some dervishes. Their pincers are deadly.”
Voices drifted from down the path and a scuffling of moving figures.
TK, Billy, and the mummy-ish Toog came trundling up the hot sand, with the old man wearing a worried frown. His two scorpion friends scuttled at his heels.
“Bad news,” he said. “Mad boys are on the prowl. Saw ’em skulking up the ridge farther on. This is the closest they’ve come to this area.” He gave a brusque flourish. “Let’s get into the workshop.”
“Don’t need to convince me.”
We were hardly down the crude stair and moving across the pit when a ghost of motion caught my eye.
I gave a choked cry, shielded my eyes from the sun’s glare up top the pit.
TK lifted his head, swearing a wicked curse. “Into the workshop!”
Shapes came prowling around the edge and began to drop at our feet. Crapola! Our tracks must have led them right here.
“Get down!” I hissed.
Too late. I blasted one as they threw metal spikes at us and I lunged in the same motion. Another tried to gut stab me with a chunk of metal. I whirled, grabbed my knife from my belt, and slashed it soundly across the chest. Steel ripped up to its chin.
Dark blood sprayed over my open shirt and a white pulpy face fell flat at my feet. I kicked away the grotesque corpse.
More malformed shapes gathered in numbers. Wren crouched in attack, fired a spray of bullets into the faces of swaying, reaching mad boys. “Die, you bitches!” she cried. Billy uttered some Neanderthal sound and scrambled back behind the old man.
I tossed Toog the extra weapon in my belt. He opened fire with a bloodthirstiness that seemed uncharacteristic of his mild manner.
Limbs parted and mummy shapes rolled in the sand with mewling sobs. Fresh blood dripped on the sand.
Silence. Heat. The shimmer of an unnatural stillness. The cry of a carrion bird echoed overhead.
Swarms of crazies crawled everywhere, peeking over the rim like feral spectators. I lifted my weapon and opened fire, peppering any I saw. Somehow the presence of Starrunner had lured these ghouls here. And somehow the old man had known they would come.
Hordes of them dropped down on us like monkeys, only the whites of their eyes showing in ghostly, blotched faces partially hidden under brown, cowled hoods.
TK’s two sand dervishes scuttled down the path after the cloth-wrapped zombies, their stingers raised. A pincer clipped out to clamp on a brown-garbed leg, then a stinger fell and arched into a rag-garbed neck.
I blasted two between the eyes but a slinking shape crawling at my legs got hold of my weapon and yanked it out of my grasp. “Motherfucker.” I pulled my knife out, only to reel as a chunk of pipe came angling for my skull. I dodged back, but the thing ended up thunking on my shoulder. I cried out in pain. Wren was yelling at the top of her lungs. She blasted mummy flesh left, right and center.
Shoots of agony rippled up my arm, but I recovered, grabbed my spare glock, slashed out with its butt end and kicked the gnashing scavenger away in the fleshy part of the gut, before blasting open its skull.
“Get to the ship,” I cried.
TK and Billy fought in a wild muddle of bodies. Wise thing that I had given the old man that R3A, else he and his world would have come to an abrupt end.
I slashed a hole in the tarp, pulled aside the burlap and raced through the maze of machine parts with Wren, TK and Billy staggering at my heels.
Toog was too far away. The man was
doomed unless he cleared a path. I saw the head of one of the dervishes squashed by a giant rock. Brown shapes pounced on it like bobcats and pulled off its legs and ripped it apart with their bare hands, metal weapons in their clawed fingers. Like the ghouls they were, they stuck the fleshy pieces in burlap sacks and carried them away.
I reached Starrunner and thrust open the port hatch. Pushing Wren through, I yanked TK in last who had shoved Billy in before him and jammed the door shut just as a mass of flesh thudded against the plated metal. One of the scumbitches rolled in with us and Wren stomped its neck and face. I shook the blood out of my hair, scrambled to the bridge. I got the thrusters warmed up, praying to god that those deep space engines would fire—at least, the impulse drive.
Wren raced to the weapons console and aimed the starboard cannon still operating under auxiliary power.
The clunks of weapons into the metal hull and thuds against the port glass caused me to wince.
“Bloody hell! They’re going to break the glass!”
I reached for the thruster impulse to give it max juice, but TK reached to pull my hand away. “It’s too early to task the ship. The Barenium hasn’t settled yet. Sudden acceleration will—”
“Fuck it! We either get out of here, or those mummy fiends of yours bust through the glass and we’re dead.” I forced the lever up.
Wren cried, “He’s right! Hundreds of them out there. They won’t stop at a few blaster shots.”
Billy stared wild-eyed, holding his head, whimpering like a child. Menacing shapes clustered at the windows.
TK ground his teeth with a fatalistic groan.
I gunned the engines. The impulse drive made an unwholesome growl, but fired up. Starrunner’s curved prow broke through the top of the low ceiling, raining crumbling earth down and scattering tools and benches while hordes of mad boys clung to the fuselage like bloodsuckers.
“Woohee! That’s what I want to hear, baby.” I cranked the thrusters.
I wasn’t worried about finesse now. Those leachy-ghouls wouldn’t last long once Starrunner got going. If she got going.
I cleared the pit and circled back, watching the crawlers fall to their doom. I reamed a generous spray of pulse blasts on those stinking vermin, grinding my teeth in vindication, hoping to give Toog a fighting chance, if he were still alive. Saw no sign of him. Only those hooded creepos parceling up their own dead for the evening stew. I lifted off into the bright sky, a grumble of exultation in my throat. I was glad to see the end of Talyon…or at least I hoped it was the end.