by James Axler
The farther they got from the road, the more the land sloped downward. The ground got wetter and wetter, too. Mud soaked into their elbows, knees and stomachs. Incoming fire gradually dwindled. After they had squirmed about 100 yards into the bush, the shooting stopped altogether.
“Hold it,” Ryan ordered from the head of the file.
Mildred turned to look over her shoulder. Behind her, the tree limbs had closed in like a door slamming shut. She could see less than a yard into the scrub. Weak daylight filtered through the mesh of branches overhead. Under the low-hanging canopy it was like a bake oven.
Breathing hard, Mildred wiped away the cobwebs that clung to her face. There was dirt up her nose and in her mouth. Grit crunched between her back teeth.
In front of her, Junior rolled onto his side, gasping. His shirtfront was black with mud, and so were his pants. He had big holes in the soles of his boots. She could see the balls of his dirty feet.
Why would cannies be hunting the road on foot? Mildred asked herself. It made no sense. All the flesheaters in wags had driven past without giving the companions a second look. It was their turf. And they knew they’d already picked it clean.
From up the line Krysty whispered, “What now?”
“We make them come in and get us,” Ryan said.
“Think they can track us down?” the redhead said.
“For sure,” J.B. answered. “But to do that, they’ve got to crawl on their bellies, and meet us face-to-face.”
“We chill enough of them,” Ryan said, “and they’ll turn tail.”
Then they heard a rustle of movement in the brush ahead of them, not behind where they expected it.
A second later, autofire swept through the branches, bullets whistling over their heads, toward the road.
It was a warning, brief and to the point.
“We’re boxed in,” J.B. said. “The bastards had a trail cut through the boonies parallel to the highway.”
At Ryan’s command, the companions squirmed into a fighting circle, bootsoles at the center. J.B. rested his pump gun’s barrel on a low limb. The others drew their blasters and braced their elbows for rapid fire.
“Breathe through your noses,” Ryan reminded them. “Don’t waste ammo. Don’t start shooting until you see them.”
Nothing moved. Not even a leaf.
The long silence was broken by a raspy male voice from deeper in the brush. “Give up, you murdering bastards. Give up right now, and you’ll die quick.”
His accent was so thick it took a few seconds for the sense of the words to sink in.
“Know that kind of talk,” Jak said. “Man is Cajun. Know that voice, too.”
“Fair enough,” the speaker drawled after about fifteen more seconds had passed. “You had your chance. Now you cannies gonna die triple hard. Got buckets of big ol’ black leeches saved up. Gonna shove ’em up your asses with a long wooden pole. Then we gonna smoke some ganja, play some music, watch while you devil dance yourselves to death.”
“Who is he, Jak?” Ryan said.
“Triple mean,” the albino teen replied. “Stone ass chiller. Quick with blaster and blade. Not miss.”
“Perhaps it is an appropriate time for you to get reacquainted with your old chum,” Doc suggested.
“Yeah, do that,” Ryan said.
“Cheetah Luis, that you?” Jak called out.
“How you know my name, flesheater?”
“From times I kicked your scab ass,” Jak told him. “I’ll stand up if not shoot.”
“Nobody shoot, hear me. Get on up, cannie. Show yourself.”
Jak rose from his knees, then struggled to thrust his head and shoulders through the scrub branches.
“My, oh my, lookee what we got here!” the Cajun exclaimed.
“Hot as hell in bush, Cheetah Luis. Friends stand up now, too.”
“Come on ahead, then,” the Cajun said. “But keep your blasters tucked away.”
Mildred holstered her weapon, then pushed up through the crisscrossing branches. Dirty, tattered men and women stood lined up along the trail, well-worn assault rifles shouldered and aimed. They looked grim and impatient, but their leader seemed delighted.
“Snow Wolf, I been away. You, too?” Cheetah Luis said, displaying his even, yellowed teeth. “Shitstorm going on down here now, man.”
From Jak’s description and the deep baritone voice, Mildred had expected someone more formidable-looking. More menacing. The Cajun was a skinny black man no taller than five-foot-eight. He wore a little snap brim hat on his head and a moth-eaten jaguar cape tied around his stringy neck. A crudely rolled cigarette dangled unlit from the corner of his mouth. Over his right shoulder, a machete hung on his back in a canvas sheath; in the holster under his left armpit was a hogleg .45-caliber Smith & Wesson wheelgun. In one hand he held battle-scarred M-16 with duct-taped back-to-back mags.
“Been traveling some,” Jak told him.
Cheetah Luis took the jumbo handrolled cig from between his lips, looked at its extinguished tip, then relit it with a wooden match.
The pungent aroma wasn’t tobacco.
“You still smoking that fuddleshit?” the albino said. “Thought you give it up.”
“Helps me focus on the chilling,” Cheetah Luis replied, blowing smoke out from between his clenched teeth. Then he turned to his firing squad and waved for them to lower their weapons. “This here’s the Snow Wolf, for you who never met him,” he said. “You all know what he done. How he fought off Baron Tourment with his little army, how he saved us from that crippled butcher. Heard he and his friends here cleaned up a mess a few weeks back. We owe him, if what I heard was true.”
He turned to Jak. “Sweet girl told me you lit out after the chillin’.”
“Not have reason stay,” Jak stated. “Your people safe?”
“Nah,” the Cajun said. “I came back from a huntin’ trip. Cannies got most of our people. Chased ’em down and ate ’em up. Wiped out man, woman and child. Left the split bones piled up in their firepits. When they were done eating, they burned down the homes out of pure cussed meanness. We chill the bastards every chance we get. They hunt us, but we hunt them harder, we hunt ’em smarter. It’s our daily chore. It’s what we do. I wasn’t foolin’ about them buckets of leeches, neither. That’s just the beginning when we get hold of a live one. When we catch cannies, we hurt ’em triple bad before we send ’em to hell. Nothing sweeter than seeing the bastards die slow.”
As he spoke, Cheetah Luis had the look of a man possessed, his eyes bulged from their sockets and gobs of cottony spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth.
Ryan glanced around. “Where’s Junior?” he said.
Mildred quickly counted heads. There were seven instead of eight. She and J.B. ducked under the brush for a look. Not that they could see very far. The cannie wasn’t there.
“He’s gone, dammit,” J.B. told the others. “Sneaked off into the bush when we stood up.”
“Who’re you talking about?” Cheetah Luis asked.
“We had a cannie captive,” Ryan said. “We starved his ass and made him lead us here.”
“There he goes,” one of the black man’s crew announced, pointing at barely rustling treetops farther down the hill.
Even though they turned to look, none of the Cajun fighters bothered to take aim.
“Don’t fret about that one,” Cheetah Luis told Ryan. “Nothing but swamp in that direction. He might not come out, neither. Cannie butt smells like fresh baked bread to a gator. If you need him, we can track him in the morning.”
Ryan nodded, then the companions busted through the belt-high brush to reach the narrow path.
As Mildred stepped out, Cheetah Luis’s eyes lit up. He swept off his snapbrim hat and said, “How de do?”
“Been better, thanks,” she replied.
“Boss, we got company…” said one of the Cajuns.
Cheetah Luis tore his gaze from Mildred’s stocky figure.
Even before she looked over her shoulder she heard the sound of multiple wag engines and the screech of brakes locking up. A cannie convoy from the north had stopped on the highway behind them and armed folk were jumping out of every wag.
“Too many to fight,” Cheetah Luis stated. “Got no surprise working for us.”
Slapping his natty hat back on top of his head, he turned to Jak and said, “You all come on this way, Snow Wolf. We’ll lose the bastards right quick.”
The companions fell in behind the Cajun fighters as they hustled down the winding track. Before the cannies on the road could bracket them with fire, they ducked below the line of sight and squirmed into a tunnel bored into the brush. The entrance was well hidden by branches, invisible if a person didn’t know exactly where to look. The path ahead had been cleared of springy branches, but was still so low that they had move ahead on all fours. As they descended the slope, the roof of the tunnel rose overhead. The trees at the base of the hill were taller than those on the summit, but the branches were just as densely intergrown. Looking across the treetops from the road, the difference in height wasn’t evident.
Mildred scrambled to her feet. As she ran, her boots made sucking sounds in the mud. This trail had seen heavy use. Foot traffic had exposed the backs of tree roots. Sprue stumbled over one but caught himself before he fell. For a big man, he moved well.
The farther they went, the deeper the mud. They had to jump puddles of sour standing water. The puddles grew wider, joined together, turned into ribbons and pools. Soon there was more water around them than land, and the land was isolated in little, vine-choked islands.
The Cajun called a halt in the middle of a shallow, leaf-littered pool.
“This is where the rubber leaves the road,” Cheetah Luis said. His giant cig had gone out again, his saliva stained the cigarette’s paper yellow. “Cannies can’t follow us through the deep water,” he said to the companions. “You best unbuckle your gun belts and hold them over your heads.” The Cajun looked at J.B., and made a wry face. “Short stuff, there, he gonna need some water wings.”
“I’m taller than Jak, you asshole.”
“Just yanking chain,” the albino teen said. “Loves doin’ that.”
Cheetah Luis grinned, sucking on his cold smoke. “How you holding up, Buttercup?” he asked Mildred.
“Bring it on,” she said.
The Cajun chuckled at that. Then he told the others, “You all keep a tight sphincter, now. Lots of hungry leeches in this swamp. Don’t want none crawling up where the sun don’t shine.”
Cheetah Luis led the way, heading down a five-foot-wide canal between the stands of tightly packed mangrove. Tepid water slid over their knees, then their waists.
Sunlight streamed in through breaks in the canopy, lighting floating patches of bright green slime. Spanish moss draped the higher branches, trailing down to the water. The air hung heavy with the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulphide. They were entering a fetid, malarial swamp. As they waded, insects buzzed in dense clouds around their heads. They couldn’t help but inhale the soft, fluttering bodies. Jak wiped a gob of black mud on his face and neck to keep the bugs off. The others followed suit.
They slogged on for an hour without another break. It was too dangerous to stop. Time and again they saw huge gators sunning themselves on mud banks where the canopy gaped. The swamp wasn’t quiet. The steady whine of insects was punctuated by loud splashes just out of their sight. Splashes followed by shrill cries and more splashes.
Gators weren’t the only danger. Mutie water moccasins prowled among the exposed mangrove roots. Six feet long, with gaping white mouths and long fangs, they swam just out of the travelers’ reach, waiting for the chance to turn and strike.
When a snake made a rush for one of the Cajuns, the man waved his arms and splashed to drive it away. This particular cottonmouth wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Jak shook a leaf-bladed knife from his sleeve, and in a blur hurled the blade at the snake’s triangular head. A razor sharp point slapped into its skull just in front of the ear hole, cutting the critter’s pea brain in two. The snake went as rigid as a stick, then weighted by the blade, sank headfirst into the discolored water.
“See you ain’t lost your touch, Jak,” Cheetah Luis said as the tail disappeared.
After another half hour of trekking, they walked out of the far side of the swamp onto a dry plain. The trees were more widely spaced and mixed in were bursts of color, pink azaleas thriving along the banks of trick-ling creeks. The going was much easier, even though daylight was starting to fade. Mildred could see the Cajuns’ spirits lift. This was their domain.
Another fifteen minutes passed before they reached their destination. From a distance, the rounded hills looked like solid mounds of green. Only when they got close could they see the bone-white of the bedrock peeking out from tangled roots and sprouting vines.
“It’s just us!” the Cajun hollered through a cupped hand.
From behind the tumbled-down limestone blocks, people rose, blasters in hand. From bordering stands of tall trees, more armed sentries showed themselves.
Cheetah Luis led the companions past them to an irregular opening in the hillside. “Welcome to our hidey-hole,” he said.
They stepped into the torchlit entrance. The original limestone cave had been extensively excavated, the work of many years. Wide galleries for sleeping, cooking, storage and livestock had been hacked out of the living rock on either side of a central passage that stretched deep and straight into the hill.
The Cajun gestured for the companions and Sprue to sit on benches carved into the walls. He took a place beside Mildred, lit up a fresh ganja stick and sucked down a long pull.
“Why you come back here, Snow Wolf?” he said as he exhaled.
“To chill La Golondrina,” Jak said.
The Cajun frowned and shook his head. “That’s a tall order, even for you.”
“How did she come to be here?” Mildred asked.
“No one knows for sure. Rumor is that she slipped in along the Gulf coast a short time ago with a few other cannies. The pack started off raiding small fish camps and farms for meat. People just up and disappeared. Young ’uns at first, then folks of all ages. By the time we figured out what was going on, there were lots more of the bastards hunting these parts. They come down here from the east, west and north to join up with the bitch. When La Golondrina had collected herself a big enough crew, she set up business on Marsh Island, at the mouth of Vermillion Bay. There’s a big old freighter wreck on the island’s south shore. That’s her headquarters.”
“The cannie who got away told us about some other bay,” Ryan said.
“West Cote Blanche,” Krysty said.
“Same thing, really. There’s a little spit of land that divides the two. Closest way to Marsh Island is from West Cote Blanche.”
“You fought from beginning?” Jak said.
“Hell, yes, we fought ’em. We attacked the island with everything we had. Cannies’ firepower was much better than ours. And they had fortified the place. When we got to the freighter, we couldn’t make a dent in that steel hull. We lost a lot of good folks that night.
“After that, the cannies started driving deeper into the countryside. We couldn’t stop ’em. They come ashore from Vermillion Bay to Atchafalaya Bay in canoes. Stole horses to ride, or wags if they could get ’em. Chill poor folks and take their bodies back to the island to eat.”
“You ever see this queen cannie in person?” Ryan said.
“If I had, I wouldn’t be breathing, now. I’d be a pile of shit, drying in the sun.”
“She hunt with her cannies?” Jak said.
“La Golondrina never goes off that island no more,” Cheetah Luis said. “Cannies come to her. Hundreds of them. We try to pick them off both coming and going, but they control most of the territory around here. Chilled and ate just about everybody inside it.”
“What do they use for food, t
hen?” Mildred asked.
“We saw the tire marks from heavy wags,” Ryan said.
“Them’s the meat wags,” the Cajun said, his eyes once again radiating pure hate. “Cannies are doing their hunting on predark roads. They round up folks from a long ways off and truck them back here, live on the hoof. The bastards use semi-trailers. When they run out of tractors to haul the trailers, they hitch up teams of horses and cattle.”
“Cannie called it the Red Road,” J.B. said.
“Now that’s the truth. Trailers go out full of cannies, come back full of norms. Norms go to the island, they never leave.”
“How many strong are you?” Doc said.
“Sixty-three.”
“Have chill queen, friend,” Jak said. “Help?”
Cheetah Luis flicked his cigarette away. “You’re talking about a suicide mission, Snow Wolf. No way to chill that bitch. She’s got herself too well protected.”
“You just going to let her whittle you down?” Ryan said.
“Better that than us dying all at once,” the Cajun countered. “Don’t forget, we’re whittling them down, too. Making ’em pay for what they done. Taking our revenge.”
“For every cannie you chill, ten more are gonna pop up,” Ryan told him.
“How you figure that?”
Ryan had no choice but to lay out the cards. He started with the cannie queen’s cryogenesis. “La Golondrina’s blood is what’s drawing the cannies here,” he said. “The power of her blood. It can cure the oozies for a while. Longer cannies live, more cannies there will be. Simple as that.”
“All that freezie stuff is bullshit,” Cheetah Luis said. “I heard it before and I don’t believe it. She got no special powers. What she got is soldiers. Lots of them, and lots of guns.”
“You won’t help?” Jak repeated.
“Shit, no,” Cheetah Luis said. “We ain’t fools. We can’t hurt ’em no more if we’re dead.” Then he changed the subject. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
At his signal, other Cajuns carried in wooden platters heaped with long black sausages, fried okra and stewed mustard greens.