Sunchild

by James Axler

  In the middle, it was hard to tell who was the more surprised, Ryan and his companions, or Jenna and Harvey.

  "J.B., better be triple red just in case," Ryan whispered, leaning close to the Armorer. He was careful not to approach his weapons and spark a reaction.

  J.B. nodded agreement and swept his gaze over the others. While shocked, they had all taken in the judgment and were prepared to believe the baron. No one had reached for a blaster. Not even Dean. The Armorer blinked, momentarily surprised at the stealth with which the youngster had infiltrated the center of the circle.

  J.B. wasn't the only one to notice Dean. Harvey reached for his Colt Magnum Carry blaster as soon as he spotted Dean, but was stayed by the hand of the baron, who said something that J.B. was unable to make out in the surrounding noise. The Armorer also noticed that Jenna had turned pale.

  Alien held up his hand once more for silence, and made to speak as the hubbub subsided. But before he could actually speak, Dean began.

  "Listen to me! Alien is being lied to—Jenna and Harvey have a lab hidden at the end of one of the tunnels, and they're making muties down there. It was them who took me, and I wasn't able to escape until now."

  Alien listened to the youngster with a puzzled frown. Noticing this, Jenna grabbed her husband's arm.

  "Don't listen to that shit! Get them out of here," she screamed with an almost hysterical edge to her voice.

  But when her husband looked at her, there was a coldness in his eyes that made her shrink.

  "No," he said quietly. His voice was almost a whisper, but over the shocked silence of the gathered ville dwellers, it carried like the loudest shout. "No, let the child show me. If he lies, then it will be shown for that. If I do not allow him that chance, how can my people ever trust again that I am fair and honest?"

  "Don't do it," Harvey said, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and anger. "It may be a trick of some kind."

  "Well, if it is, Harv, then mebbe we'll chill anyone in sight," Downey said slowly.

  "Right. 'Cause we'll go along, just to keep things safe…all of us. With the boy and his father, and the rest, in front. Just to be sure," Blake added. He looked at Jak before adding, "You learn who to trust when your life is on the line, and let's just say I've been having a few doubts about you lately, Harv."

  There was nothing that the sec chief or the mutie woman could do at that moment to change things, and as the crowd parted to allow Blake and Downey to usher Dean out of the hall, followed by his father and companions, Harvey held Jenna back from her husband as he followed.

  "Shit's about to hit," he said softly. "Follow, I'll try to round up those who'll follow me straightaway. We've got to move now."

  Jenna nodded her agreement, then followed Alien, who was looking back to see what had happened to her.

  In the swell of the crowd, Harvey managed to slip away in order to locate those he knew would be loyal to him first and foremost. The moment of truth was approaching.

  DEAN LED THEM through the tunnels and corridors of the ville, heading unerringly for the outer reaches and the tunnel that terminated in the metal door. He felt better for having Jak by his side, as the albino also knew where the lab lay.

  "I hope for your sake this isn't true," Alien said to Jenna in a quiet voice. "Because if it is…"

  "Of course the child lies," she hissed back at him, venom dripping from her tone. "You trust him against me?"

  "You forget I have the legend and history of Raw and the Illuminated Ones passed down to me from my forefathers," the baron replied. "I know something of your forefathers, and the taint that may have traveled down."

  "You've never said anything of this before," she said quietly.

  "I had hoped…but perhaps not," Alien replied with an infinite sadness in his voice.

  They had now reached the tunnel that terminated in the metal door. Dean halted before it. The lock was still in place. He turned and looked back at Alien and Jenna.

  "This is it. She has the key," he said simply.

  Alien turned to his wife. "Well?"

  "I don't have a fucking key," she spit. "I know nothing about this place."

  There was such conviction in her tone that, for a moment, Dean found he was even doubting himself.

  "Well, we've got to get in somehow," Blake said, stepping forward and examining the lock. "Think I could shoot it off?"

  J.B. leaned forward to get a better look, being careful not to move quickly or arouse any suspicion about his actions. "I'd say you need some plas-ex for that," he commented. "I've got some, so if you'll let me…"

  Blake nodded. "I'm pretty sure I've got nothing to fear from you," he murmured, "but just for show, make it slow."

  The Armorer grinned and reached slowly into one of his capacious pockets before producing a small container of plas-ex.

  "Now I think we'd better get back around the corner before we go any further," he said.

  Blake nodded and ushered Alien and Jenna back around the bend in the tunnel, followed by the companions, with Downey bringing up the rear. J.B. stayed by the door, attaching a small amount of the plas-ex to the lock and fitting a fuse before running back to join them.

  "Down," he shouted, clutching his ears and opening his mouth as the plas-ex blew, taking the protective measure as the explosion was in such a relatively confined space.

  The lock had indeed blown, and the door was hanging open, the thick steel buckled by the force of the blast.

  "Hot pipe, you made sure there." Dean whistled as he led the way toward the lab.

  The baron turned toward Jenna, who was noticeably hanging back. "Well?" he asked. "Why not come with us, if you have nothing to be afraid of?"

  He felt a creeping sickness in his head, and closed his eyes against the pain. When he opened them again, scant moments later, he could see the back of his wife as she ran from him. Setting his jaw, already knowing what he would find, the baron turned and strode toward the lab.

  As soon as he entered, he could smell the decay and corruption, as though they were tangible.

  "It's true…" he whispered to himself.

  "THIS IS SICK. I remember the reports about Mengele, and how they always said it couldn't happen again. My daddy always said they were wrong. Jesus Christ, Dad, you were right."

  Mildred fought back the tears as she stood over the cots where the hideously mutated results of Jenna's experiments lay. The eyes of the speechless mutie children looked up at her in fear and despair. They had known nothing but hate and pain, but knew that she was a stranger, and may end that pain.

  Alien joined her. "There's no hope for these poor souls," he said softly. "We must—"

  "I know," Mildred interrupted. "But I can't."

  "Then I must. And as her husband I must take responsibility for not knowing."

  Alien held out his hand, and Mildred knew what he wanted. She handed him her ZKR.

  The baron took the blaster, checked the breech, then put the barrel to the head of the first mutie child.

  "Please forgive me," he whispered before pulling the trigger. The noise was intense in the small room.

  Alien repeated this with all the children, tears coursing down his face.

  When he had finished, Mildred took his arm, and they reentered the main lab. The others were standing there, not knowing what to say to the shattered baron.

  Alien looked around at the legacy of his wife.

  "Destroy it," he said quietly, giving Mildred back her ZKR. "Destroy it all. Then we find her, and put her on trial."

  "I don't think it'll come to that," Ryan said gently. "If she's gone, and so is Harvey, then you're going to have to fight for your ville. 'Cause we're the only ones who have seen this for sure, and there's no telling who'll side with who if the truth isn't yet known."

  The baron nodded. "So be it. If it comes to a firefight, then we must be ready. So smash it all, as quickly as possible."

  "How?" Downey asked. "You want us to blow it up, mebbe se
t fire to it? We need to get rid of those chilled experiments, that's for sure. Can't risk disease on top of this."

  "Too dangerous down here for grens or firing," J.B. commented. "The best thing would be to shoot up the equipment, and plas-ex that room to bring the ceiling down in there and bury those poor bastards."

  "Let it be so," Alien said quietly, striding from the room.

  He was joined by everyone except J.B. and Ryan. While the Armorer sprayed the comp and medical equipment with his Uzi, Ryan laid the charnel house of the side room with plas-ex, which he fused and timed.

  "Okay, people, let's get the hell away," he said urgently as he and the Armorer exited the lab. They ushered the others down the tunnel and around the corner as the plas-ex detonated in the lab, bringing down the walls and ceiling of the side room, burying the corpses of the experiments.

  "Some of those children were from the ville," Alien said quietly. "She and Harvey must have been taking children and experimenting on them."

  "How come we never knew?" Blake asked, bemused. "I mean, it ain't that big a place, right?"

  "I believe I may be able to offer a possible solution," Doc commented. "The Sunchildren have always taken children that strayed to the outside. What better cover for Jenna and Harvey to abduct children? Then, when they had finished with them, they turned them loose on the outside, where they did, actually, become victims of Samtvogel."

  Blake shook his head in disbelief. "I thought I knew that bastard."

  "Throughout history, man has had an almost boundless capacity for deception and savagery. There are some things, friend Blake, that never change." Doc pursed his lips, an expression of infinite regret crossing his brow.

  "That may be," Ryan said, bringing matters back to a practical level. "What we've got to worry about now is what sort of a reception we're heading back to. Stay triple red, friends."

  As if in answer, the sounds of a pitched battle began to reach their ears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It had taken Harvey only a few moments to melt into the crowd. Despite the doubts voiced, the sec chief had his followers, as did the baron's wife. There were those who had often wondered if the ville would prosper more under a firmer hand. Alien was, in their view, too nice to be a baron. He lacked the ruthless and sadistic streak that kept people in line. People like themselves. And so they had harbored, some openly and some in secret, the view that the steely sec chief and Jenna would make a better team. There was something about Jenna. No one but Harvey knew the extent of her experiments and her evil, but she had an aura that some could sense, and this made them respect and fear her.

  And fear was what they wanted. What drove them and led them.

  So it was that there were hands to cover them as they both tried to hide themselves in the uproar that followed the exit of Alien, Ryan, the sec men and the companions. Was this just a trick to buy them time, to chill the baron and take control? Or was it true that Jenna and Harvey had contrived to keep such experiments secret?

  After the raid on Samtvogel, and coming on top of what had seemed like the sudden and shocking end of years of relatively peaceful consolidation, the confusion among the inhabitants of Raw was immense. In the main hall, people argued and started to get heated, pushing and hitting out. Tempers flared and the temperature was raised.

  "Boss, this way, and quick!"

  Harvey, grabbing behind him for Jenna's hand and trying to keep her close, heard the voice loud and urgent to his left. Looking up and across, he could see Bodie pushing through the packed mass of humanity, using the butt of his snub-nosed blaster as a club to hammer down on the necks and skulls of those who would block his path. Considering the frayed atmosphere and the confusion, Harvey was more than glad that only his sec force carried, by habit as much as enforcement, blasters on a day-to-day basis. At least no one was going to take a shot at him.

  "Let's get the fuck out," he yelled at Bodie. "Regroup, get the boys together."

  "They ain't all gonna come with you, boss," Bodie replied.

  "Don't matter. That stupe Alien is out of here right now, with Cyclops and his goons. That gives us time to rally those good ol' boys who'll stay the course."

  "Okay, boss." Bodie grinned, savage and humorless. "Follow me."

  The fat sec man chopped them a path out into the ville. Most of the people inside were too busy fighting one another to try to get out, and those that did found themselves hemmed in by the sec men at the sole entrance. The two men carried longblasters, which they held across their bodies, using the whip-thin barrels as weapons, not wasting ammo as they hit anyone trying to get out.

  Anyone, that was, except Bodie, Harvey and Jenna.

  "Stay here while I round up our forces," Harvey ordered crisply. "Any sec who go against you, they ain't with us, so chill the fuckers."

  The sec men exchanged vaguely puzzled glances.

  "Our own?" one of them queried.

  Harvey fixed him with a glare. "Son, if they ain't with us, then they're the enemy. Understood?"

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and rapidly sped toward the armory. The first step would be to secure all weapons for his force alone.

  ANT AND DEE STOOD in the center of the fray, possibly the only two people calm in the center of the storm.

  The dreadlocked twins still carried their battered shotguns, cleaner than at any time in the past but showing the scars of use and misuse. Ant raised his, looking at it with a shadow of regret crossing his face.

  "Looks like we're gonna need these again, bro, and sooner than I would have liked."

  His twin returned the look, gazing at his own weapon with sadness. "Sure looks so. You reckon that one-eyed dude and his sprog are right, or should we go with Harv?"

  Ant gave his twin a look of disbelief mixed with disgust. "You kiddin'? Harv hates anything and anyone except himself and mebbe that weird bitch. Think we've got any chance of a good life with him as big boss?"

  Dee laughed, a hollow, bitter sound. "Yeah, like fuck."

  Ant shrugged. "Then let's get to it, dude."

  And with a cry that sounded as one, both twins let out a bloodcurdling shriek, turning in opposite directions, waving their blasters and cutting themselves a swath through the crowd until they reached the exit, where they came up against the twin longblasters blocking their path.

  "Where you going, boys?" asked one sec man.

  "Who you with?" asked the other, so rapidly the two almost sounded as one.

  "What do you think?" Ant asked in an exasperated tone. It was, however, a neutral question. It elicited exactly the kind of response they both wanted.

  "I knew you'd be good ol' boys for a pair of blacks and side with us," one sec man said, grinning.

  "Yeah, make the new order work," the other added.

  Ant and Dee exchanged the briefest of glances before moving as one with a speed like a striking rattler. Their powerful arms pumped, using the stocks of their respective blasters as baseball bats, coming from the level of their elbows in an upward arc that caught each sec man under his chin, jawbones shattering on impact as both sec men crumpled into unconscious heaps, neither having time to respond to the attack.

  "Never did like those dudes, bro," Ant said sadly.

  "Yeah, even the best of places get insects," his twin replied. "Figure we should find Cawdor and the baron. Reckon Blake and Downey'll be with us, if no one else."

  "Yeah, they're good people. But where the fuck were they going?"

  Dee grinned. "Shit, you got the one flaw in my plan, dude!"

  WITH THE SEC GUARD now rendered ineffective, the fighting in the main hall spilled out into the tunnels and passages of the ville. Men and women who had peacefully coexisted in the enclosed ville all their lives now found that they hardly knew their neighbor at all. Those sec men who were still loyal to Alien tried in vain to calm the crowd and prevent the violence and conflict, but they were outnumbered both by the crowd and those sec men who wanted to stick with Harv
ey.

  It wasn't long before the crowd had separated into two distinct forces, and lines of demarcation were drawn up in the ville as each side took whatever cover it could, using whatever came to hand as weapons to augment the few sec blasters.

  It was clear that whoever controlled the armory would win the war. Something Harvey was already attending to…

  "HEY, HARV. What the hell are you doing, you rad-blasted gaudy spawn!"

  The chief armorer had elected to miss the meeting in the main hall, figuring that her presence wouldn't make much difference. Besides, someone had to clean and stockpile the blasters, grens and plas-ex after the raid on Samtvogel. It would be a lengthy task, and she figured that the sooner she got to it the better. Besides, she'd taken a liking to J.B. Dix, and had the feeling that his people would be hitting trouble. It made her feel uneasy, and she felt happier with complex but inanimate pieces of metal than she did with complex but animate human beings.

  She had been in the middle of stripping one of the RPKs when Harvey, Jenna and Bodie burst in on her. It was hard to know who was the more surprised. Harvey had truly believed that everyone was in the main hall, and that he would find the armory empty. The chief armorer had no idea what to make of the sec chief, one of his trusted lieutenants, and the baron's wife bursting in on her, wild-eyed and looking for all the world as though they were about to commit mass murder.

  Which, of course, was their very intention,

  Harvey stopped dead, staring at her, and then without another word took the Uzi from its wall mounting, grabbed spare ammo from the carefully labeled and stored boxes and tossed it to Jenna.

  When he ignored her, she repeated her question. But this time, suspicions aroused that something was very much amiss and that she'd have no choice but to get involved, she left the RPK and reached slowly and stealthily for her own personal blaster, the Springfield Loaded 1911 that she kept secured in the waistband of her old camou pants. They were faded and patched, but she kept them because of the special loop she had sewn into the back. Stitched time and again until it held the Springfield perfectly balanced, it made her pants almost a second skin, and she didn't feel comfortable unless she could feel the Cocobolo grip's texture nesting against the base of her spine.