by James Axler
The albino teen donned the goggles. “What if not work?”
“Then fire a missile at him.”
Jak grinned. “That do the job!”
“If Pete arrives first, fire two missiles,” Krysty suggested. “Hell, fire all of them!”
With a nod, the youth moved off to merge with the night and disappear.
“What if these folks can listen to his radio transmissions?” Doc asked tersely in a worried tone.
“Oh, they might hear us, but there’s no way they can know what the name code means, or triangulate on Jak’s location,” Mildred replied confidently. “That would require special equipment and several broadcasts. Jak is safe as long as he doesn’t talk too many times, or for too long.”
“That is never a problem for the taciturn Mr. Lauren,” Doc said in obvious relief.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Mildred agreed, awkwardly shifting the M-16 rapidfire in her grip.
The physician much preferred the deadly accuracy of the ZKR over the spray-and-pray of the military assault rifle. But the M-16 had ten times the range of her revolver, and thirty rounds of something were a lot better than six of nothing.
“Okay, we really should split into groups to do a fast recce of this place, and get out of here double pronto,” J.B. said, straightening his fedora, preparing for combat. “But I think we should stick together. Safety in numbers.”
“Agreed, John Barrymore,” Doc replied, tying a dark cloth over his silvery hair. “The more I find out about these folks, the less, and less, I like these dastardly palliards!”
Keeping to the rows between the tall stalks of corn, the companions moved swiftly through the cropland, J.B. constantly checking the compass in his hand. They were about halfway to the stone block wall when there came a low thumping noise and water sprinklers came into action, spraying a fine mist over the crops.
Stopping in her tracks, Mildred was flabbergasted at the display. A modern-day farm in the Deathlands? The technology needed to achieve such a simple action was staggering. Cascade would need a steady water supply, regulated pressure, valves, pumps, electricity, storage tanks, timers…The list was endless! In an uncharacteristic swell of greed, the physician ravenously considered what they had to have in their hospital and how much she could haul away without actually breaking her spine.
Cursing vehemently, Doc shoved the LeMat under his coat and sprinted forward, hunching over to try to protect the weapon. The sprinklers lasted for only a few minutes, then cut off. Coming to a halt, Doc withdrew his blaster and sighed at the sight of thick black fluids dripping from the damp cylinder. Until thoroughly dried and reloaded, the Civil War handcannon was now only an oddly shaped club.
Without comment, J.B. passed over the S&W M-4000 shotgun. Nodding his thanks, Doc worked the pump to eject a 12-gauge cartridge, then shoved it back inside. The two weapons had about the same range, and the shotgun was actually less noisy than the thundering LeMat.
Less than an hour later, the companions approached the end of the farmland and crouched low among the rustling plants to study the area ahead. There was an open expanse of grass about a hundred feet wide separating the crops from the city wall, with a smooth asphalt road going through the middle. A pothole had been recently filled, the new macadam much darker than the rest of the roadway.
Nobody had to tell them that was for the armed war wag, as well as the big combine harvesters needed to handle a farm of this size. The wall itself was made of large granite blocks clearly mined from the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a formidable barrier even without the electrified barbed wire, searchlights and heavily armed guards.
“Wonder where they get electricity from?” Krysty asked, her hair flexing and waving. “I don’t see any smokestacks for a steam generator. Think they might have a nuke plant?”
“It’s possible,” Ryan admitted. “But more likely they have a hydrodam of some kind. That would be easy to build with all of these rivers and cliffs.”
That was when the one-eyed man saw that the sec men on the wall were wearing air-force-issue bulletproof jackets and carrying M-16/M-203 combos, devastating mixtures of M-16 rapidfires and 40 mm gren launchers. Fireblast! Cascade seemed to be wealthy beyond belief, which raised the question of why they would risk exposure to jack Deathlands traders. Mebbe the comps and wags and blasters were merely a fringe benefit, and the real goal was the women, fresh blood to enrich their families and prevent inbreeding. That was a chilling thought, and the companions redoubled their determination to finish this recce and get out of this pesthole as fast as humanly possible.
The dirt road through the cropland joined the paved road a couple of hundred feet to the right and arched around a corner of the high wall, going out of sight. That was probably the location of the front gate, so Ryan headed to the left. The Trader had once taught him that since most folks were right-handed, they automatically went to the right most of the time. So a smart man should stay to the left to get behind the other fellow. The trick didn’t always work, but near enough to make it sound advice.
Reaching a small clearing amid the corn, the companions saw a water pump rising from the ground like a hunchback gnome. Clearly, there were underground feeder pipes.
There was a soft thumping, and the companions took another shower, then moved on again, very thankful that all of them didn’t have black powder blasters. Any invading coldhearts carrying those would find themselves unarmed every ten minutes. Or…was that the point? Just because these folks were amateurs, did not mean they were feebs.
Continuing around the walled ville, several more outriders rode by the companions, oddly watching the sky more than the cropland.
“They must get hit by stingwings a lot,” Krysty guessed. “What else could get past those mountains?”
“Not much,” Ryan agreed.
Crossing into the next field, the companions saw a large bird coop set outside the cropland on the side of a nearby hill. The building was huge, the roof made of tin, or some other sheet metal, the walls made of strong chicken wire. However, inside the coop were only countless pigeons, fluttering about, cooing, picking at lice, or with a head tucked under a wing sound asleep.
Past the coop was a thick forest of poplar and pine trees, the trunks packed together so closely it was impossible to see anything on the other side. But there faintly came the crashing sounds of a white-water river.
“Well, I see that Cascade has some very good chemists, if nothing else,” Doc remarked casually. “Obviously, they did not slaughter their whitecoats and scientists like the rest of humanity. This is deuced clever, indeed.”
“Pretty smart,” Mildred agreed, reluctant to give the locals praise in any way.
“Really?” J.B. asked, frowning. “I would have thought those were, you know, just for food.”
“Pigeons?” Mildred said with the marked scorn of any former city dweller. “Good heavens, no! There is nothing more dirty, filthy or nasty than the common pigeon.”
“They’re just birds,” Ryan said.
“No indeed, sir, these are part of their armory,” Doc explained. “Back in the Middle Ages, kings kept armed guards around their pigeon coops, not to protect the birds, but to protect their…excrement.”
“And what in hell can you make from pigeon crap?” J.B. demanded.
“Gunpowder,” Mildred replied. “You dry the feces and extract the nitrate crystals. That’s step one for making black powder, which can then be made into the much more powerful gunpowder.”
“Are you serious, Millie?”
“Absolutely, John.”
“Gunpowder from shit, that’s a new one on me,” Ryan admitted, moving onward. Mildred and Doc knew the damnedest things.
“Okay, that gets you the nitrates for saltpeter,” Krysty said. “But what about the sulfur?”
Doc started to reply when they heard the sound of a horse galloping along the paved road, the clip-clop of the iron hooves heralding the advance of the rider and moun
t long before they came into view.
Closely studying the cornfield, a young woman was in the saddle, her long blond hair tied in a ponytail and covered with a dark cloth to reduce the shine. She was dressed in denim, shirt and pants, both with quite a few patches, and worn combat boots. But she was also sporting a bulletproof vest, tied in front with lengths of green rawhide. There was a blue-steel wheelgun holstered in her gunbelt, the loops full of brass, and the stock of an AK-47 rapidfire was sticking out of a leather boot set alongside the pommel of the saddle. A few moments later, she disappeared around a corner of the wall, the sound of the hooves fading into the distance.
“If that’s an outrider, somebody the ville can afford to lose, then we are out of luck,” J.B. whispered, removing his hat to wipe the sweatband inside with a handkerchief before replacing it. “We’d need a fragging army to take this place!”
“Don’t need to ace the whole ville,” Ryan replied grimly. “Just find out how they plan to attack Roberto, and then haul ass. No need to ever come here again.”
“You got that right, old buddy!” J.B. whispered, but then paused as the needle of his compass began to spin madly. Dark night, proximity sensors!
“Run!” he yelled, the need for secrecy over. “They know we’re here!”
Instantly, weighted nets came crashing down, driving the companions to the ground with stunning force.
“Got ’em!” somebody shouted in glee.
Savagely fighting to free themselves, the companions found the actions only seemed to make the tangle of ropes and cables contract tighter. Then a harsh blue light filled the world and the companions stiffened in agonizing pain, several of them firing their blasters as their hands spasmed into gnarled fists before a tingling warmth overwhelmed their ravaged senses and they fell into a terrible inky blackness…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sluggishly, Ryan awoke with a major headache, throbbing and pounding like badly tuned machinery.
The room was pitch black. There was an awful metallic taste in his mouth and a dull pain just to either side of the small of his back, near his kidneys. The one-eyed man knew what that meant. These were the exact same sensations as that time in the South Pacific when he had been electrocuted. The nets had to have been wired. And unless the he missed his guess, they were now on the other side of the wall.
A low moan sounded from somebody nearby. Ryan tried to turn his head, but the exertion was almost more than he could bear. Every muscle ached, and he was blind. Stone blind! A brief panic filled the man, then he snorted in annoyance and used his bound hands to push the leather eyepatch to the left side of his head. Probably just a little joke from the captors.
Now, Ryan could see that they were in a small brick room. There was no window, and a single cot was bolted to the wall. There was a toilet and a sink in the corner, and a large metal door without visible hinges, doorknob or lock. It was a predark jail cell.
The other companions were nearby on the cold stone floor, and everyone was stripped down to their underwear.
“A-anybody hurt?” Ryan croaked softly, his throat raw.
Coughing and trembling, the companions began to stir, their motions stiff and awkward, but they were awake and moving.
Just then, footsteps could be heard coming from the other side of the closed door, and the lock rattled. Immediately, the companions lay back on the icy floor and pretended to be unconscious.
As the door swung open, Ryan risked a peek from his good eye and saw a big man wearing a baseball cap enter the room and softly close the door behind. Holding an oil lantern, the sec man was carrying a ring of keys, and there was a wheelgun tucked into his gunbelt, along with a set of handcuffs, a can of mace and a large knife.
“So, how they doing?” somebody yelled from down a hallway.
“Still out!” the sec man replied, nudging Jak with the toe of his boot. “Hell, they’ll be out until dawn after the voltage we zapped ’em with!”
“Then leave ’em alone, and come back to the game!” a third voice suggested. “At least let the condemned have a decent night’s sleep before we start the interrogation!”
Ryan felt his muscles tighten at those words. So they were condemned, eh? Bad move, fleeb, Ryan thought.
“Yeah, guess so,” the sec man said, gently nudging Mildred with his boot.
At the touch, the physician rolled over and arched her back, wantonly thrusting out her breasts. The man stared at the display, then J.B. grabbed his blaster, Jak snatched away the lantern, and Ryan lashed out with his bare foot to bury a heel in the stomach of the sec man. Breath exploded out his mouth in a rush, and he doubled over. Ryan grabbed the man by the hair with iron fingers and rammed his knee into the man’s face again and again, to the sound of breaking bones. Then he twisted the head sharply, and the sec man went completely limp.
Looting the corpse, the companions took what weapons he had, and Ryan went to the door with the cocked blaster in his grip. Listening for a moment, he turned and pointed at the others. They nodded and quickly assumed positions.
Jak and Doc hid the corpse under the bunk, while Mildred lay on the cold floor and faced the door. Quickly donning the cap and pants of the dead guard, J.B. knelt between Mildred’s legs while the others went back on the floor and feigned being unconscious. Turning the lantern to the lowest setting, Ryan placed it on top of the bunk to mask the body underneath, then bundled the shirt of the aced man into a ball and held it tightly to the barrel of the S&W .38 blaster. A small part of his mind wondered why the guards would have a predark blaster when Cascade could make new blasters.
At a nod from Ryan, J.B. started thrusting between the physician’s legs, and Mildred began moaning and groaning.
After a few moments of no reaction from outside the cell, the Armorer began slapping her thigh, miming the classic sounds of rough sex.
“What the fuck was that?” a muffled voice asked.
“Sounds like Jimbo is already interrogating one of the female prisoners.” The other man chuckled. “Probably that redhead. You see those big tits?”
“Sure as hell did. Gave ’em a squeeze when nobody was looking, too.”
“You dog!”
“Flesh is flesh.” He chortled. “Even that of stinking outsiders.”
Sprawled on the floor, Krysty’s animated hair began to writhe furiously, then with an iron effort of will she commanded it to be still. Gradually, the movements slowed and the filaments went still.
“You know, the mayor’s gonna be madder than a wet hen if she finds out old Jim been riding a prisoner,” the second voice stated.
There was a pause, then the sound of a wooden chair scraping across a stone floor. “Yeah, guess so.”
“You gonna stop him?”
“Nah, just bring a bucket of water to make him wash her out afterward!”
The two men roared in crude laughter, and Mildred paused for a moment in the pretend rape, her pretty face distorting into a feral mask. Looking down at the woman he loved, John Barrymore gave a snort, and she fixed upon his eyes, and the two lovers nodded in unison, then started making more noise than ever before.
“Aw fuck, the folks outside are gonna hear that shit,” the first voice complained unhappily. There came the jingling of loose keys on a ring. “Hey, Jimbo, cut out the noise, old buddy! You’re gonna get us into trouble!”
“Goddamn, stupid ass, son of a bitch…” the voice outside the closed door grumbled, keys jingling. Then the lock rattled and the door opened slightly, admitting a slice of light across the dark cell and the people on the floor.
Instantly, Ryan fired, the report of the wheelgun greatly reduced by the wad of cloth held to the barrel. The two slugs hit the guard in the belly, and he folded over with a groan, exposing the other sec man sitting at a desk with playing cards in his hands. His jaw dropping, the man threw away the cards and clawed for his blaster. Firing from within the cell, Ryan got the guard in the face, blood, eyes and teeth flying away to splatter on a corkboa
rd covered with maps of the ville.
Easing out of the cell, Ryan swept the stolen blaster around the office, looking for more targets, when there came the sound of a toilet flushing, and an elderly sec man stepped out of a bathroom, drying his hands on a small towel.
Ryan fired, but the old man dived out of the way and came up with a sleek black automatic pistol. He aimed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Muttering curses, the man fumbled with the safety. Ryan almost felt bad as he shot the sec man directly in the heart, and then again in the head to make sure the job was done. These people were total amateurs. The sec men probably hadn’t been in a real fight their whole lives. Well, he thought, that was about to change triple fast!
Doing a fast recce to make sure the rest of the small building was empty, Ryan found four more cells like the first, and one more with a wooden chair bolted to the floor, the armrests and back covered with leather straps and hooks for chains. There were no knives or screws or other torture instruments on the walls, so he guessed the locals did their questioning the old-fashioned way. Simply punch the victim long enough, and eventually he or she would talk. Once when he had been captured by a mad baron out west, Ryan had seen an outlander last four whole days of just such a brutal beating before finally breaking and telling the baron where he had hidden the precious cache of stolen machine parts. When death finally came, the poor bastard had seemed honestly pleased. Most barons could find a lunatic eager to disassemble folks, but vital information was often lost that way as the madman lost control.
Past the interrogation room, Ryan found a large supply closet full of ammo, blasters, bulletproof vests, several LAW rocket launchers and a lot of assorted grens, the different types separated into individual milk crates: thermite, shrapnel, stun, white phosphorus and so on. It was an impressive collection. Only the implo gren was missing, which meant that somebody had recognized the advanced technology. There was also a small safe, but the steel door was locked. Sagely, Ryan guessed that was the location of the implo gren. From some of the faded wanted posters on the walls, it seemed clear that this had once been the evidence room for a sheriff’s office, but now it was the armory for the ville sec men.