A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3)

by John Triptych

  Captain Pillinger’s voice was loud as it reverberated through the wooden paneling. “Get in here already!”

  Tyrone meekly opened the door and stepped inside. The captain was still standing in front of the ship’s wheel as he kept glancing at the open laptop sitting on the nearby table. There were a number of sandbags that had been placed just below the windows but the area around the ship’s wheel was fully exposed because of the glass windshields.

  Captain Pillinger turned and looked at him. “Get over here and man the wheel.”

  Tyrone bit his lip. If someone was going to get shot, it would be him. He was the expendable one. The wheelhouse was totally out in the open since it was the tallest compartment in the whole ship. He walked over and grabbed hold of the lacquered wooden handles, just as Captain Pillinger moved over to the side before sitting down on a stool. The captain started looking at a topographical map on the laptop.

  Pillinger cursed. “I didn’t want to make the crossing at night, but we ain’t got a choice now. There’s a sunken highway overpass somewhere ahead and we gotta make sure we get over it. If we cross over the wrong part, the boat could get stuck.”

  Tyrone gulped. That was when he realized that the sniper fire was meant to make them veer towards where the sunken overpass was. If their displacement wasn’t shallow enough, the ship’s hull would end up sitting on top of the underwater highway. Once that happened, they would be at the mercy of whatever the enemy had in store for them.

  Pillinger had his eyes glued to the laptop, but he would periodically look out of the forward window of the wheelhouse, just to make sure he got his bearings right. “Okay, at my command, turn the wheel thirty degrees starboard.”

  Tyrone blinked as he glanced at the captain. “I dunno what starboard is, sir!”

  Pillinger let out a deep breath. “Port is left, starboard is right. Got it?”

  Tyrone nodded as he kept his eyes straight ahead. He was a bundle of nerves now. “Okay, sir.”

  Shouts were heard coming from the decks below. From the corner of his eye, Tyrone could see that the men were running around the main deck and screaming to each other. He heard footsteps coming up the stairs from behind the wheelhouse.

  Glanton opened the door. “Captain, we’re seeing a couple of airboats coming up behind us. They’re a couple miles away but closing in fast.”

  “Then get ready for ‘em,” Captain Pillinger said tersely. “Make sure everybody’s armed.”

  “Yes, Cap’n,” Glanton said just before he closed the door behind him.

  Pillinger got up and locked the door behind them as he pulled out a Remington 870 shotgun from a cabinet underneath a side desk. He rummaged through one of the top drawers until he found a box of 00-buck shotgun shells, then he proceeded to load the gun. He pumped the weapon to place a round into the barrel chamber, then loaded another shell into the magazine tube. Pillinger then placed the shotgun on the table where the laptop was before sitting down again.

  “At my command,” Pillinger said as he looked at his laptop again. “Turn thirty degrees starboard… now!”

  Tyrone was about to turn the wheel left, then realized that starboard as right as he turned it a few notches to his right. The Nimrod was now going at 15 miles per hour, its diesel power plant driving two traction engines, which pulled the rear paddlewheels via two forty-foot long chains as it cruised along the black waters near the sunken town. The enemy had apparently expected them to veer to the side of the supposed sunken part of the overpass. Just as the ship began crossing near the sunken onramp that lead up to the overpass, its flattened hull slid just underneath two school buses that had been deliberately sunk vertically, with their front sides embedded in the bottom of the flooded highway. The Nimrod angled up slightly, but the moment the center part of its top heavy hull passed over the upright school bus underneath, the ship immediately shuddered to a halt as the top part of its hull was nearly raised above the waterline. The enemy had also placed underwater steel poles that lined around the sunken buses. These thirty-foot long metal rods immediately were made from lamp posts and they broke pieces of the ship’s rear paddlewheel as one of them was torn loose and imbedded itself onto one of its spokes.

  In the engine room, Eight-Ball immediately realized what had happened as he pulled the lever to shut down the engines before any more damage was done to the paddlewheel. The ship was suddenly idle.

  Captain Pillinger cursed as he reached for the ship’s telephone box. Loud whizzes were heard all around the wheelhouse as holes suddenly appeared in the glass panels. Pillinger and Tyrone immediately ducked down beneath the sandbagged part of the room as bullets started peppering it. One bullet tore off the top of one of the handles of the ship’s wheel while another punched a hole into the wooden telephone box of the ship’s intercom.

  Tyrone crouched up and stared out from the lower edge of the windows as he shifted from one vantage point to another. He could see at least three airboats that were modified with armored canopies circling the stricken riverboat. Shots continued to ring out as the Nimrod crew continued to engage the circling craft from their sandbagged positions. One of the hunters stood up like an idiot in order to get a better shot and was instantly shot through the neck. The doomed man fell over the upper deck railings and into the murky waters below. As Tyrone shifted his vantage point to the stern of the boat and tried to look behind them, he let out a gasp.

  Pillinger was breathing hard due to the stress and frustration. He noticed Tyrone’s shocked look as he cradled the broken rotary telephone system in his arms. “What is it?”

  Tyrone pointed at something out in the distance. It was an object that moved in between the two partially sunken buildings that they had passed by just a few minutes earlier. When it finally revealed itself as it came closer, Pillinger let out another curse.

  It was a black-painted SURC, a small unit river craft used by the Navy. An armored patrol boat that was fast and could easily withstand small arms fire, this was very bad news for all of them. Tyrone could see that the bow of the SURC had an armored turret on it and it looked like it was equipped with a machinegun. He now had a sinking feeling he should have never left Shreveport. There was a good chance that the ship would be taken.

  As he sensed his hopes slipping away, Tyrone felt a rough hand clenching his left shoulder. Pillinger got close to his ear and Tyrone could feel the short, desperate breaths coming from his mouth. “Time to prove you ain’t the coward everybody thinks you are, boy,” the captain hissed. “I need you to head over to Eight-Ball and do what you can to get the engines restarted. Otherwise, I’m gonna shoot you myself. Ya hear?”

  Tyrone nodded. He didn’t feel like they had much of a chance. He preferred to do something instead of just surrendering to those pirates. He quickly got up and got the back door open. Just as he was about to make a run down the white painted stairs, he heard a whistle behind him.

  “Here,” Pillinger said as he threw the Remington shotgun at him. “You might need it!”

  Tyrone caught the barrel of the shotgun and he cradled it in his arms as he waited for a lull in the firing below. He had been trained with rifles in the army but he figured that there wasn’t much difference, just point and shoot. Tyrone immediately sprinted past the doorway and was down the first stairwell the moment one of the airboats passed behind his line of sight. Just as he started running towards the second stairwell, the SURC began to open up with its machinegun turret as it finally got into range. He saw the heavy machinegun tracers streak by like laser beams, as they punched multiple holes in a nearby group of sandbags. One man who had been hiding behind it with an AK-47 instantly fell to his side and stopped moving, the rifle clattering on the deck. Tyrone kept on running and dodging from one spot of cover to the next as he headed for the stairs leading down. The almost continuous machinegun fire began to throw wood splinters all around as it chewed up the ship’s walls and railings. People were screaming and cussing all around him.

  Instead
of running down the side stairwell, Tyrone slid down its steps using his buttocks. It was painful, but it gave a little bit more cover than running down the stairs in an upright position. By the time he reached the level of the main deck, his butt as well as his lower back was in acute pain. He would probably have bruises in the morning, but it wouldn’t matter unless they got the engines restarted.

  The main deck was in chaos. One of the airboats was foolhardy enough to get within ten feet of the starboard side of the Nimrod. As the pirates lifted up their armored canopy to try and get onboard, a group of hunters lying low at the upper deck instantly stood up and poured several dozen rounds of full automatic and semi-auto fire into them. The four men in the airboat died almost instantly as they were shot full of holes. The turret gunner on the SURC saw what had happened and began to return fire, just as the hunters were able to get back into cover once more, although he was able to wound two of them.

  Tyrone crouched and then sprinted through the double doors of the main deck saloon as he started to run past the bar. Several bullets tore through and broke the glass portholes of the doors just as he sprinted through them. As he twisted to his right in order to run towards the engine room, he noticed another hunter lying face down on the barroom floor. It was Mohawk, and he had a small hole at the back of his head. A puddle of crimson was forming on the wooden floorboards beside him. Tyrone looked away and then opened the engine room door. As he stepped inside, he quickly saw that Eight-Ball was pinned along the steel railings that housed one of the pistons for the engine. One of the pirates was able to board and he had a knife that he was slowly pushing towards the chief engineer’s throat. Eight-Ball had his hands on the pirate’s arms to stop the blade, but he was losing the battle.

  “Hey!” Tyrone said as he aimed the shotgun.

  The pirate was startled as he let go of Eight-Ball and turned around. He wore military fatigues but his hair was long and unkempt. The blast from the shotgun caught him square in the stomach as he doubled over with a grunt. The pirate writhed on the floor for a few seconds, then he stopped moving altogether.

  Tyrone grimaced from the pain on his shoulder. He hadn’t anticipated the recoil as he pumped another round into the shotgun’s chamber. Then he looked at Eight-Ball. “Are you alright?”

  Eight-Ball just stood over the dead pirate as he was busy catching his breath. “Thank you, I was hidin’ in here when he burst through the door. I was able to knock his rifle away with my wrench but then he pulled out a knife and almost gutted me.”

  Tyrone quickly moved over to him. He could hear the clanging noises as the gunfire would sometimes hit the outer steel casing of the engines. “We’ve got to get moving again! If we don’t then we’re all dead!”

  Eight-Ball turned around before pointing at the gap in the rear where the giant paddlewheel was. “There’s that long steel pole that’s stuck in the wheel. We gotta get that thing out before I can restart the engine.”

  Tyrone handed the chief engineer the shotgun before scrambling up the idle paddlewheel. It was like climbing on a wooden, slippery Ferris wheel. Tyrone’s feet nearly slid out from under him as he made his way to where the steel rod was sticking out, but he managed to hang on using his arms and got himself into an upright position. By the time he got close to the pole, he was already fully exposed outside. Fortunately, nobody noticed him in the dark as he climbed to the upper part of the paddlewheel. As he gripped the metal rod, he realized it was jammed fast, the pole had bent and was now stuck in between two of the steel spokes.

  At that moment, one of the airboats noticed him and it started to maneuver to go around to the stern so that the marauders on it could get a clear shot. The SURC continued to get closer as it kept raking the upper deck with withering machinegun fire. Tyrone sensed that they were now out of time. As he locked his arms along the top part of the spokes, he used one leg to brace himself. Then, with all his strength, he started kicking at the rod with his free leg. Tyrone could hear the grinding sound of metal as the rod began to give way. Just as he was about to deliver a final kick to jar the pole loose, a bullet ricocheted off one of the steel spokes and hit him in the side of his arm.

  Tyrone screamed as the pain in his right arm made it go limp and he nearly slipped off the paddlewheel and into the water. He could hear more bullets whizzing by as one of the airboats was concentrating their fire on him. From the corner of his eye he could see that the SURC was less than thirty feet away from the ship. Gritting his teeth for one last try, Tyrone ignored the pain on his arm as he willed it to grab hold of one of the spokes. His sense of time and place narrowed down to this single instant as his whole life flashed before his eyes. He was like a hamster in a wheel, hanging on for dear life, while men around him were trying their best to kill him.

  Screw it, he thought. Tyrone didn’t care anymore. If he was to go down then let it be this way. With his remaining strength, he kicked at the steel rod with both feet, just as another bullet grazed his skull. The pain disorientated him and he let go with his arms and the added weight finally pushed the steel rod loose from the spokes. Tyrone’s shoulder bounced off of one of the spokes as he fell into the dark water.

  Eight-Ball had been watching the whole thing from the gap at the rear of the engine room. He immediately saw that Tyrone was able to get the rod loose from the paddlewheel. The chief engineer quickly ran over to the controls and placed the throttle on full. Since the engine was merely idle, the paddlewheel began to turn almost immediately. The extra force from the engines was able to shake the rear part of the undersea school bus loose as the Nimrod’s hull tore through its rear body.

  Just as the SURC started getting in close, its machinegun jammed. While the boat’s gunner started to clear his weapon, two of the Nimrod’s crew members stood up and threw a pair of Molotov cocktails that hit squarely on the deck of the attacking boat. The incendiary bombs instantly ignited, and the river patrol boat was now on fire. The captain of the SURC immediately went to full throttle as it veered away. The two remaining airboat crews were so demoralized, they too turned and fled away from the battle.

  When Tyrone regained consciousness, he realized that he was lying on the barroom floor. He felt a bandage over his forehead where the rifle bullet had grazed it. His right arm was aching but he could feel it was whole. As he raised his hand to test its grip, he noticed Captain Pillinger and Eight-Ball were standing over him.

  “Looks like you got real lucky,” Pillinger said. “We saw your big black head floating on the water so we just had to reverse and pick you up.”

  Eight-Ball had a smile on his wrinkled face. “You did good, brother. Your injuries are pretty minor too, the bullet to your head merely grazed it, and the bullet that hit your arm only tore a little bit of skin and muscle off of you. I say that you’re either the luckiest sonuvabitch on this earth or there must be a god looking after you.”

  Pillinger was holding the Remington. “You’ve earned this.” He placed the shotgun beside Tyrone along with a box of 00-buck shells. “Rest up. We’re now along the Pearl, in a few hours we make the turn into the Leaf River. Then we ought to be in Mobile in a day or two.”

  As the two men walked away, Tyrone couldn’t help but smile a little. Looks like he earned their trust, and about time too. Then he shifted his gaze to the side of the room and he saw half a dozen men being treated for gunshot wounds.

  13. The Dream of the Smoking Mirror

  Teotihuacan

  Unlike the temple area, the outskirts of the city were being constructed along more modern means. High Priest Tepiltzin could see that the factory had steel roofing and the walls around them were concrete. The newly installed machinery was humming as the factory workers were busy churning out weapons for the resurgent empire. It had taken weeks to install the new electric grid, but it was absolutely essential in order for the city’s industry to work.

  The factory manager that was showing him and his assistants around no longer wore the traditional Aztec loincloth an
d feathered cloak. Instead, this man was wearing overalls underneath his embroidered robe. The fashion seemed strange, but it was a new way of combining the old with the new. As high priest to the Flayed One, Tepiltzin could have easily ordered all city workers to stick to their traditional clothes, but he had been distracted by strange dreams in the past few days.

  As Tepiltzin pretended to listen to the factory manager’s boasts and salesmanship, his mind began to wander again. Less than a day after his brother Yaotl had been reassigned at his request, his once peaceful nights were now being inundated by dreams of a young, fair-haired boy holding a small mirror made of black obsidian. At first, he dismissed it as nothing more than the dreams of a distant past, when he was addicted to watching telenovelas on TV while still living his previous life as a rich playboy. For some strange reason, the dreams continued and in fact, began to intensify to the point where he would wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. Even when he increased his personal bloodletting in order to appease the gods so that they would give him a more restful sleep, the dreams were unabated by it. In the past week, he had hardly been getting any sleep. Tepiltzin would stay awake all night, using the painful spines of the manta ray to bleed himself, fearful that he would see the boy in his dreams if he dared close his eyes once more.

  The plant manager smiled as he gestured at the finished piles of bullets that were lying in white plastic crates in front of them. “This is the end product, High Priest. As you can see, our quality control has increased exponentially. We had a problem at first because our warriors preferred to be issued rubber bullets over the lead ones. The reason, of course, is because they prefer to wound their opponents rather than kill them. We all know that is so because the empire needs captives for sacrifices. So it was a bit of a problem when we took these machine parts from an ammunition factory in Dallas and then set it up here. The calibration for rubber bullets is slightly different and we needed to find the right kind of rubber too.”