James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  The door to the rest of the ville was closed, though Emma registered that the baron hadn't bothered to lock it. Once they were alone together in the relative stillness, Sharpe seemed to become a little more calm.

  "There, now we can listen to the whispering voices, my own little doomie. We can find you a cage. Crude, I know, but it'll have to do for a while. We can add comforts as you tell me more of your secrets."

  The young woman was feeling sick, her head spinning, prey to a vicious attack of vertigo. The rooms, with their cages and display cases, seemed to spin around her.

  Sharpe stopped in front of the large sheet of plate glass that contained the sandy waste with the mysterious creature lying hidden within it, deep in the dry, barren earth. The overhead lamps turned the glass into a kind of mirror, reflecting the tall figure of the baron in his snowy robe, holding on to the black-clad woman, her face as white as parchment under the stark lighting.

  Sharpe pressed his face against the cold glass, taping softly on it with his fingers. The surface of the pale sand rippled for a moment, so quickly that you could almost think that you'd imagined it.

  "This was my favorite pet. Oh, yes, it was. Yes, it was. It was!" His voice became louder. Once again the sand trembled, but there was nothing to be seen.

  "Death," Emma whispered, but the baron was so busy with his ranting that he didn't hear her.

  "Let's go on, shall we, doomie? Yes, we shall. Shall go on. All the way to the end."

  "ALONG THERE," Doc whispered, gripping the huge Le Mat in the right hand, his walking stick in the other. "Hear the guards talking."

  Ryan and J.B. were three-quarters of the way up the rear set of stairs that led to the room on the third floor where Jak was still, as far as they knew, being held prisoner.

  The Armorer crawled up to the top and squinted around, returning to Ryan and Doc. "Four of them, holding pistols. Seem kind of alert."

  "No way of making this quiet," Ryan said. "Fire-blast! Then we might as well go in and open up. Have to let them know we're loose and running some time. Ready? Then we'll do it!"

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The breaking glass and burst of automatic gunfire brought Mildred, Krysty and Dean to their feet.

  "That was the Uzi," the boy crowed. "And I think it was Dad's SIG-Sauer. Sounded like they're in there and giving them some double-hot tar."

  "On the top floor," Mildred said, peering out from the bushes toward the ville.

  There was a yell that could have been either pain or anger, Krysty reckoned that it sounded like pain.

  "Can't we try and find a way in, Krysty, please? Could be they need help."

  She nodded. "Yeah, Dean. Mebbe they do. But the doors are going to be bolted and guarded. I know it's not what you want, but we still do what Ryan told us to do."

  "Wait and watch!" His voice was sullen, and he kicked out at a loose pebble.

  They all looked up as a single gunshot sounded into the night. But it wasn't repeated.

  IT WASN'T MUCH of a firefight, closer to a massacre.

  Ryan went up the final half flight of stairs, as swift and silent as a striking cobra, opening fire on the unsuspecting group of sec men as soon as they were in sight.

  J.B. was right behind him, the Uzi snapping out a chain of death along the corridor.

  Only one shot was fired in retaliation, and that was merely a postmortem reflex from one of the men as he went down, his finger going into spasm, pulling the trigger of his blaster, the hand-cast bullet breaking a window toward the rear of the house.

  Apart from the sudden burst of gunfire, the attack was almost soundless. Only one of the guards even cried out, a single high-pitched scream of agony as a 9 mm round ripped into his groin.

  The rest tumbled together, arms flailing, blood fountaining over the floor and the walls and dappling the white-plastered ceiling.

  As Ryan and J.B. looked down at the charnel-house scene of writhing corpses and puddled crimson and splintered bones, Doc lumbered up behind them, knees creaking noisily.

  "Upon my soul! I have my trusty Le Mat primed and ready and find that the skirmish is over and done."

  "Open the door for Jak," Ryan said. "Key's already in the lock there."

  One of the sec men was still alive, trying to get up on hands and knees, carrying three bullet wounds. Ryan leveled the SIG-Sauer at the base of his skull at close range and squeezed the trigger one more time.

  "That's it."

  "Likely to bring us some company," said J.B. "Looks like a staircase along the end there. Should bring us down somewhere close to the entrance to the baron's zoo."

  Doc fumbled with the key, before he worked out that it was quicker to holster the Le Mat and lay the sword stick on the carpet, away from the spreading pool of blood, leaving both his hands free to open the door.

  As soon as it swung back, Jak was in the doorway, hair tumbling about his shoulders like the spray from a whiter fountain. His red eyes turned to Ryan, ignoring the tangled pile of corpses that lay at this feet.

  "Emma? Baron?"

  "Seems that he's taken her down to his collection, Jak. Anything happened we should know about?"

  "Saw her own death. Drown in scarlet sea. Before she went down to see Sharpe, told me saw his death. Tongue's turned silver and broke mirror and vanished in desert."

  Ryan shook his head. "Run that past me again, will you, Jak? I didn't-"

  "No time."

  "Wait. I got your Colt here."

  But the teenager was already on the move, running through the dimly lighted corridor, hair blazing like a flare, calling back to Ryan over his shoulder.

  "See you in zoo!"

  Doc coughed, stooping to pick up his sword stick. "Should we not follow the young fellow?"

  "Yeah," Ryan said. "We will. Right now."

  IN HIS ANXIETY, Jak took a wrong turn at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, going to the left instead of right, finding himself in a series of abandoned rooms. There was no sign of stairs down to the first floor that would have brought him closer to the mutie collection.

  And closer to the baron and Emma.

  There was no sign of life in any of the rooms, except for the last of them.

  Jak had thrown open a tall door, sending it crashing back onto its hinges. He coughed as the movement sent up a cloud of fine gray dust.

  The room was much bigger than the others, with a high vaulted roof in black and white. It was filled with dozens of wooden carvings, all brightly painted, looking like parts of roots or branches that had been cut and polished and then covered in layers of startling colors.

  A hammock was suspended between two of the taller sculptures, and the noise of Jak's entrance woke the occupant, an unbelievably ancient man in filthy clothes, with a ragged beard and a mane of long, matted hair.

  "Who in the name of the mips of Beelzebub are you?" squawked a high, cracked, angry voice.

  "How get to ground and baron's zoo?" Jak asked.

  "Why do." Venomous little eyes focused on the teenager. "You're a poxy mutie runt!"

  Jak suddenly noticed a narrow iron staircase that spiraled down from the far corner of the room. Without any hesitation he ran through the room, leaving footprints in the dust, past the hammock, to the top of the stairs.

  "You've not seen my collection, you snow-top bastard! First visitor in a year or more and you don't wait to-"

  The vituperative anger drifted into silence behind Jak as he raced around the dizzy staircase, emerging through a creaking door at the bottom to find himself behind a huge moth-eaten tapestry. The light was poor, but Jak's night sight was preternaturally sharp, and he could see that the wall-hanging showed a handsome youth swooning away as he was attacked by a pack of hunting dogs, while an elegant woman with a bow looked down at his distress with an expression of vicious sensuality.

  Jak cautiously looked around the corner of the tapestry, seeing that he was in a wide passage with torches flickering in all sconces.

&nbs
p; He recognized it from his previous visit to the mutie collection, knowing that only one door now separated him from Emma and the baron.

  RYAN HAD LED Doc and J.B. back down the flight of stairs that had brought them up to the third floor of the mansion. He turned to his right and headed for the main stairs that would bring them to the first floor and give them access to the part of the ville that housed the mutie collection.

  A tall plump sec man appeared at the far end of the corridor, hastily pulling on his green jacket. As soon as he saw the three outlanders moving fast toward him, he yelped and bolted back around the corner like a startled rabbit. There wasn't much time for a clear shot at him, but there was no longer any point in needlessly killing anyone.

  They'd sprung Jak, and Ryan had the strong feeling that events were now moving inexorably toward their ending, going faster and faster, like the progress of a lethal rad cancer. He doubted that the race would still be being run by dawn.

  There was nobody around the stairs to the dining room, and Ryan paused a moment, halfway down, the short hairs prickling at his nape.

  "We got someone." he began warningly, when a musket fired from above and behind them.

  The ball thudded into the rounded oak balustrade, eight inches from his left hand, stripping away a long splinter of white wood. Ryan spun, seeing the giveaway cloud of black powder smoke hanging in the air, a yard from the top of the wide staircase. He had the SIG-Sauer already drawn, and he aimed and fired as part of the same lightning reflex.

  He heard a yell of pain and a body falling to the floor, and a musket clattered down the stairs, sliding all the way to the bottom.

  As Ryan turned back, moving toward the dining room, Joaquin appeared by the door that led through to the rear of the ville. He was holding a machine pistol in his right hand and had two men with him, both armed with the old cap-and-ball revolvers.

  "Far enough, outlander," he said.

  Ryan paused on the bottom step. J.B. was just behind him, Doc about halfway down.

  "Ville's tighter than a duck's ass, Cawdor." The torchlight shone on the sec chief's grizzled hair. "You got nowhere to go from here. Men above you. Doors secure."

  "We got in."

  Joaquin nodded. He was tense, every nerve strained and alert. "Like to know how. My guess is around back, but there hasn't been time to check it. Also, Sharpie told us to keep out of his zoo. He's in there with the doomie slut." He smiled mirthlessly at them. "Guess he's real busy and don't want no onlookers right now."

  "You going to face this one down?" J.B. asked. "Three against three. But we got the better blasters."

  "Stuck halfway up the stairs. Doesn't leave you room to jump, does it? And it ain't three against three. There's half a dozen more in the hallway above you. More scattered around the ville. They don't like the fact that Josh Morgan got butchered." He stared accusingly at Doc. "We know you did that, old man. Be a reckoning soon."

  Doc coughed. "I had no wish to take his life. But he would not accede to reason."

  Joaquin sniffed. "Reasons aren't worth puma shit in a thunderstorm!"

  "Time's running, Ryan," J.B. whispered. "Better we get to the baron soon as we can. Jak might be there by now."

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah."

  Joaquin gestured with the machine pistol, which looked to Ryan like a hacked-down, altered version of the old M-3 submachine gun. "Cut the muttering. You putting the blasters down, or do we take you all out?"

  Ryan's combat mind was racing, considering all the various possibilities, rejecting most of them, setting other ideas to one side.

  Trader used to say that talk beat shooting. But if talking didn't work, then that only left shooting.

  "All we want is Emma."

  Joaquin sniffed. "Doomie slut?"

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah. We find the baron. Take her from him. We all leave. Easy as that."

  The sec boss laughed. "Easy as that?" he mocked. "I don't think so. Baron pays us. Feeds us. You got to have some sort of respect for that, Cawdor. Not counting the blood debt for Josh Morgan and the others." He shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

  The range was around twenty yards. If the sec man had been armed with a revolver like the others, there would have been no need to waste time on talking. But the machine pistol could be lethal at that distance.

  J.B. had exchanged the Uzi for the eight-round scattergun, feeling it might be better suited if they ran into a close-combat situation.

  "Me, Ryan," he breathed.

  The one-eyed man didn't say anything to his old friend, just nodded once.

  J.B. had been holding the shotgun down low, against his thigh, hidden from the sight of the sec men by Ryan's body. Now he eased it forward. Ryan knew what was going to happen and moved his right arm a little away from his side, leaving a narrow gap for J.B. to push the Smith & Wesson M-4000 through.

  "Not goin' to change your mind, outlander? Sure?" the sec chief asked.

  "Do it," Ryan said.

  He felt the shock of the explosion between his ribs and arm, and moved sideways, opening fire with the SIG-Sauer at the group of men, seeing them going down. He spun to put a burst of full-metal jackets into the dark at the top of the stairs.

  J.B. fired a second round into the wounded sec men, while Doc stood half up the staircase, hesitating.

  Each of the shotgun's 12-gauge rounds held twenty of the murderous Remington flechettes, inch-long steel darts that scythed through the still air of the hall, spreading out a little by the time they reached Joaquin and his two henchmen. They cut into and through flesh, muscle and soft tissue, scraping off bones, distorting as they angled sideways, causing terrible injuries.

  Ryan put Joaquin and one of the sec men out of their misery with bullets to chest and throat, while the second charge from the Armorer's Smith & Wesson chilled the last man, who had already sunk screaming to hands and knees, fingers groping at the bloody mask of his face, where the tiny arrows had jellied his eyes.

  There was a shout of pain from the landing above them and the sound of running feet, fading into the distance.

  J.B. had pumped another round under the hammer, and he stood still, eyes raking the dining room ahead of him, turning to peer into the dim light of the stairs above.

  "Think that's it," he said.

  "Looks that way," Ryan agreed, his good eye turning from side to side as he carefully reloaded the five spent rounds into the big automatic. "Scared the rest off."

  "By the Three Kennedys! I had no idea that you were about to release those miniature arrows, John Barrymore! My beloved Le Mat remains unfired."

  "If you'd been a little closer you could have taken them all out with a single round, Doc," the little man said. "But you weren't, so you didn't."

  "That way." Ryan pointed across the dining room toward the rear of the building. "Can't take any more time."

  DESPITE KRYSTY'S and Mildred's efforts, Dean had insisted on moving closer to the back door of the ville. The new burst of firing and shouts had driven him close to panic.

  "Dad's getting chilled in there, and we sit out here with our thumbs up our asses!" he hissed at Krysty.

  "Give it another ten minutes. Nothing happens, then we'll go in. All right?"

  The boy nodded. "Sure hope we won't be too bastard late, Krysty. There's some bad things going down in there!"

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  "I think this would do well for you. Oh, yes, I think it will."

  Emma's arms were bruised from Sharpe's steely grip, and there was a dark swelling on her right cheek where he'd casually backhanded her for refusing to come with him into the dank, dark rear part of the building.

  She had briefly seen the occupants of the four cages: the pathetic stickie and the poor mad old scabbie, the crazed twins and the tall young man. Only the last of them had taken any notice of the baron and his hapless victim. He had moved slowly to the front of his foul-smelling cage, bare feet brushing through the urine-soaked straw, skinny fingers grasping at the rusting
iron bars, eyes staring wildly.

  "The stone will lie deep in the water, and the water shall become dry dust," he said loudly.

  Emma's golden eyes opened wide, staring at the man. "You have something of the power," she said quietly.

  "Power is knowledge and I have little of that. I know that the nuke walls will crumble and the wind carry sightless death around the world to blight the pasture and the animals and people."

  Sharpe had pulled her away with a snort of disgust. "His life is measured in hours. Yes, it is. Why feed a midget when you can have a giant chained to your table?"