by James Axler
It was advice that Dee would have done well to heed. At the moment he reached the end of the small tunnel, and stumbled around the blind corner, he came straight out on Harvey and Jenna, who were making their way back toward the barricades in the center. Like the twins, Harvey had decided to utilize the shortcut.
The dreadlocked giant stumbled as he cornered, and crashed to one knee, momentarily losing his grip on his shotgun. It was a vital fraction of a second before he looked up…directly into the barrel of Harvey's Colt Magnum Carry.
It was difficult to know who was more surprised by the encounter, the dreadlocked twin or the sec chief, both stopped dead in their tracks. For one absurd moment they were frozen. Then Jenna's shrill voice rent the air.
"Chill the fucker!"
Harvey didn't think. The voice made him jolt, his finger tightening and squeezing on the trigger as the twin began to raise the shotgun.
The explosion from the snub-nosed blaster was deafening in the enclosed space, and the impact at such close range blew Dee backward into the mouth of the smaller passageway, where his already dead body cannoned into his brother.
"No!" It was an anguished yell from Ant as he saw what had happened. Without pause he pushed past the inert form and out into the larger passage.
Jenna, leaving Harvey to deal with things, had already brushed past him and was heading in the opposite direction without a backward glance. Harvey, stunned, looked after her. Things had happened just that bit too fast for him to react. He was still looking as Ant emerged.
Stupidly, Harvey turned his head back in time to see the twin bear down on him, spattered with the blood of his brother. His shotgun was raised. Harvey's own blaster was at a lowered angle, and in the fraction of a second it took him to bring it up, the dreadlocked sec man was on him, his shotgun rammed up against Harvey's throat.
"You chilled my brother, you fuck. Now it's your turn," he yelled as he squeezed the Smith & Wesson shotgun's trigger, the blast shaking him as the recoil and impact was contained between his own body and that of the sec chief.
The blast was enough to actually sever Harvey's head from his body, the bone and flesh of his throat and neck disintegrating under the charge. His nervous system spasmed in shock as it lost contact with his brain, and his finger squeezed again. The Colt Magnum Carry avenged his chilling by discharging into Ant's stomach before he had a chance to move away from the sec chief.
His scream of agony was high-pitched and despairing as he lost his own life in avenging the loss of his twin's.
Ryan emerged, taking in the carnage in one swift glance, also noting the retreating Jenna. He turned to follow, but was stayed by Krysty's hand on his arm.
"Leave her to me, lover," she said rapidly. "I can deal with her tricks. You get the nuke."
Ryan agreed, but even as he did, the titian-haired beauty was already speeding off in pursuit of Jenna, her blaster poised as she ran, already making up ground.
One thing was for sure—there was no one else now between them and the nuke. He looked back to where Doc, Mildred and J.B. were approaching.
"Hurry, people," he called. "We've got a clear run, but who knows how much time."
DEAN, JAK AND BLAKE had assumed their initial positions of cover, returning fire from the barricade and moving forward by degrees as the covering fire from behind drove the opposition down.
"How many they got?" Dean shouted to Blake.
"No more than a dozen blasters, most of 'em probably low on ammo now," Blake replied.
"Draw now," Jak called to Dean on hearing that.
The younger Cawdor knew exactly what the albino meant. He left cover and headed for an overturned barrow, deliberately slowing for a fraction of a second to show himself more clearly before executing a dive into cover. That fraction of a second drew three tempted marksmen into the open, showing themselves above the barricade.
Jak had been waiting for it. As the three men rose, so, too, did the albino with three leaf-bladed knives in his hand. In one fluid motion, the knives left his hand, flying with uncanny accuracy to their targets.
"Only nine now," he called as he took cover again.
On the other side of the opposition barricade, ville dwellers started to melt away into the units as much as possible, leaving only the sec men standing, firing back, hopelessly outnumbered and certain to be chilled.
The nine men exchanged glances. There was only one option.
Shouting to spur themselves on and try to work up a frenzy, the suicidal sec men mounted their barricade, firing at random.
The volley of blasterfire that tore into them ended the conflict in a matter of seconds. All caliber of shot tore into them, cutting them down before they were even over the barricades.
"Stop!" Blake yelled. The noise was so great he had to repeat himself several times before the noise ceased, and the suddenly silent air was filled with the spent smell of burned cordite.
"Guess it's over," he said quietly.
JENNA WAS GASPING heavily for breath. The slim, small mutie woman had never had much time for building her strength and stamina, and even the relatively light weight of the Uzi was slowing her. She threw it away as she ran, hearing it clatter to the floor behind her. She didn't need a blaster, she was confident of other abilities to save herself.
Turning into a side corridor, she took shelter in a sleeping unit, throwing the curtain back and leaning heavily against a wall, trying desperately to catch her breath.
Krysty saw Jenna throw away the blaster and made herself ready as she, too, turned into the side corridor, slowing to a halt as she tried to determine which unit the woman had hidden herself in. Krysty gripped her blaster with both hands, knowing she would need to have a steady grip before this encounter was over.
She walked slowly down the corridor, glancing from side to side.
"Here," she heard from behind her. Turning slowly, she saw Jenna standing by the entrance to one unit. She looked small and vulnerable until Krysty looked into those raven eyes. The whole world seemed to disappear.
Krysty raised her blaster and prepared to fire.
"You know you won't," Jenna said in those soft, sibilant tones.
Krysty felt the tendrils of darkness snake out and start to encircle her mind. The wave of nausea started in her gut, her ears blasted by the blow to her equilibrium. She fought to stay on her feet, to keep the darkness at bay.
Her hands trembled. She felt the urge to turn the weapon on herself. She gritted her teeth, grinding them to keep herself focused.
"You know you won't," Jenna repeated.
"IT'S ARMED, all right. And running."
Ryan stood over the nuke, feeling as helpless as a child. He looked at J.B., who was scratching his head. The Armorer pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose.
"Dark night," he cursed softly, shaking his head, "Arms I know, but it's the comp on this that stops me. I just hope Doc and Millie can sort it out."
The two doctors stood over the incongruously painted nuke, examining the panel.
"There must be a series of codes that program it, and so there must be a series that deprogram, right?" Mildred asked.
Doc nodded briskly. "I believe I saw something like this in one of the files I was privy to study. Usually, it is a combination of letters and numbers that relate to those on the actual cone itself. Probably to trigger an association in an emergency—much like this one, but not perhaps under the same bizarre circumstances." He favored her with a ghoulish smile.
"Spare me the gallows humor, Doc. At least until this mother's stopped ticking," she said.
"Very well. Although to be pedantic, it cannot be said to actually tick. Now, if we can just scrape some of this paint from the cone," he added, tapping a section of the nose cone with his swordstick.
J.B. stepped forward and began to scrape the top layer of paint away with his Tekna. "Is this safe?" he asked.
"Well, if we don't try, it will go off anyway," Doc replied cheerfully.
"That makes me feel so much better," the Armorer told him.
"Fireblast! This is so slow," Ryan muttered, watching the countdown continue on the LED.
"Patience, friend Ryan, patience," Doc murmured distractedly as the numbers came to light. He punched in a corresponding series, but nothing happened.
"It's still going," J.B. said.
"Obviously," Doc replied without the slightest sign of urgency. "There is a fail-safe backup I cannot enter, something only the programmer would know."
"What?" Mildred exploded. "But you didn't mention that before, you stupid old buzzard. How the hell are we supposed to know that?"
"Well, my dear Dr. Wyeth, I would deduce that the programmer was someone in the redoubt we arrived in…and it would be something personal. A name perhaps, six letters, and no more. They were all six-letter codes…"
Mildred's mind raced. "Have you got any ideas?" she said, making it a general question.
"Frankly, no," Doc said sadly, while Ryan and J.B. just looked blank. For them, it could be anything.
But inspiration suddenly hit Mildred.
"It's our only chance, but it's a long shot," she stated, tapping in six letters.
The LED flashed, the figures frozen. Then, with a beep, it turned itself off.
"What the hell did you tell it?" J.B. asked her with a mixture of awe and admiration in his voice.
"I just put in the name Garcia." She smiled. Then, seeing their blank expressions, she laughed aloud. "It was just something on one of the posters from the redoubt… I'll explain it sometime. Let's just say you'll be grateful when you're dead."
"I very much doubt it," Doc said, bewildered.
THROUGH THE BLACKNESS and confusion, a wave of strength hit Krysty. Somehow, she had picked up on her friends and the wave of relief from them. It gave her strength, and within her mind she saw her mother back in Harmony, telling her about the power that could be wielded by those who worked together for a common good. It wasn't a power that could be measured like blasters or grens, but it had its own strength.
A strength that, for one moment, allowed her mind to clear from Jenna's influence.
Krysty's hands were twisted awkwardly and painfully toward her own body, pointing the blaster at herself. She straightened them, so that the blaster was pointed directly at Jenna.
The baron's wife realized that she had momentarily lost her grip on her adversary. In that second, fear entered those glittering black eyes.
It was all the relief that Krysty needed. She squeezed the trigger, and let fly a shot that entered Jenna's forehead neatly between her eyes, puncturing a small entry wound and a larger exit wound that took a large chunk out of her skull, pulping brain tissue as it did so.
The glittering raven eyes dulled and died.
Krysty, drained of all energy, fainted.
She was still unconscious when Jak and Dean found her some minutes later.
Epilogue
It took several days for Blake—the new sec chief— to set straight the mess that Raw had become. The chilled bodies had to be disposed of, and those ville dwellers who had sided with Harvey had to be searched out. Those who didn't recant on their decision were to be exiled. Needless to say, all of them swore to be loyal to Alien. Blake wasn't so stupe as to believe them out of hand, and so established a list of those citizens who needed to be watched.
"Things will never be the same," he said sadly.
And they wouldn't be. Alien was a shadow of his former self. The knowledge of his wife's betrayal, and the depth of her depravity, had severely dented his belief in his ability to rule, and it would take him time to rebuild his barony. He attended the cremation of Jenna supported by Doc.
J.B. helped the Armorers set the armory straight, Mildred assisted the medical staff of the ville, and Ryan and Jak sat in with Blake as he attempted to build a new structure to the ville that took account of what had happened, but didn't stray too far from the precepts of Alien and his ancestors—the precepts in which Blake also believed.
Krysty took the entire period to recover from the psychic attack she had endured before chilling Jenna. Although she hadn't drawn on the Gaia power that aided her in times of great physical demand, she felt as though she had. She tired easily, ached all over and felt as though she could sleep all day. Eventually, she was well enough for them to leave.
BLAKE ACCOMPANIED THEM to the exit that led out to the forest. Alien wouldn't go with them, wouldn't even acknowledge that they were leaving.
As they stood on the threshold of the ville, the new sec chief grasped Jak by the arm.
"I'm sorry to see you go," he said quietly. "I need all the good people I can get, and you're good people. If you ever come back this way…"
"Mebbe. Mebbe not wander some day," Jak replied, knowing that in some ways he would always be searching.
Blake watched them as they marched through the forest until they were out of sight, then returned to his own battle.
J.B. SIGHTED THROUGH his minisextant and took their direction. They were on the edge of the forest, back on the road out of old Seattle toward the valley of Samtvogel.
"Which way shall we head?" he asked Ryan.
"Can't go back to the redoubt and jump," the one-eyed warrior mused. "No way of getting back in there."
"Could follow the blacktop north," J.B. said.
"Mebbe find stupes with lasers," Jak added.
"That would be most interesting, always assuming they do not just want to chill us," Doc said wryly.
Krysty noticed that Ryan was staring at the horizon.
"What do you say, lover? Think they could be the key?"
"To the promised land?" he replied. "Mebbe. I feel like we've been cheated somehow, like we could have learned more in Raw if Jenna hadn't been a crazie. If the Illuminated Ones are still out there, still living apart from the rest of us, we could have mebbe learned something about them that would have taken us away from this."
"Maybe we still will," Mildred said softly. "But not out here. If there are any answers—and perhaps we're getting closer to finding that Erewhon—then we need to get to shelter before the sun goes down."
Ryan smiled. "Fireblast, I should be that smart, not just leave it to you. Let's head north toward the nearest redoubt."
J.B. sighted in his minisextant, plotting a course north that took them past old Seattle and up toward the old predark borders. Up toward the lands where the Illuminated Ones and the promised land were said to be.