Wretched Earth

by James Axler

  A peculiar whistling roar came from the open front door. Backlit by garish fire, a vast, bulky figure appeared just inside it. It thrashed and struggled mightily.

  “Levon,” J.B. said, and this time his voice wasn’t laid-back at all. It cracked like a blaster. “Jacks’s torturer. He’s so big and fat he’s having trouble getting out the door.”

  “Especially with rotties hanging all over him,” Ryan said. He saw gray hands clutching at the stocky figure.

  Then a weird pale moon-face appeared in the doorway as Levon remembered to duck under the lintel. Despite Perico’s earlier command, a volley of blasterfire cracked out. The three-armed mutie bellowed, staggered back, fell.

  “Seems like former Jacks boys were shooting as enthusiastically as Miranda’s crew,” Ryan said.

  Supine, the vast misshapen form thrashed on the floorboards of the gaudy house’s foyer. Flames enveloped it. Levon’s roars became high-pitched screams.

  “Being on fire doesn’t seem to dampen the rotties’ appetites any,” Ryan observed. He could see the changed ripping mouthfuls from the wounded mutie despite the flames that charred and melted their lifeless flesh.

  “Wish Mildred could be here,” J.B. said.

  Ryan looked at him. “Thought she was still on the squeamish side.”

  “Not in this case.”

  At last Levon’s howls and struggles subsided as the smoke finished him. A mad screech drew Ryan’s eye to the fourth and top floor of the gaudy house, where what looked like a khaki prune with a cotton ball on top was stuck out from a window right beneath the roof’s white painted scrollwork.

  “And there you see Geither Jacks’s grammaw,” the Armorer said.

  “Lovely,” Ryan muttered.

  “You pricks!” she shrieked. “Burning an old lady out of her home!”

  “It was your own fool sec men,” someone shouted back, “fighting with the rotties you done brought inside, you old stupe.”

  “Lies! All lies! You murdered my poor boy, who was the light and only hope of this ville! And you’re all going to die! All…going…to…die!”

  The last syllable rose into a protracted shriek as decaying, blue-skinned arms seized her and dragged her back into the room. She screamed for about a minute as gray smoke first seeped, then boiled out the window.

  As near as Ryan could make out, the rotties chilled her before the flames found her.

  “Least she won’t be coming back as one of them,” he said. “Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure putting a bullet through that face.”

  “Still,” J.B. said, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief, “it’s a bastard shame, this fire.” He had slung his shotgun for the moment.

  “Why’s that, J.B.? You all said you got your gear out and stashed when you broke free. You got a soft spot for the place?”

  An explosion sent a bright yellow fireball rolling into the sky toward the thickening clouds, riding a pillar of black smoke. Uncountable smaller secondaries rattled inside. Sparks danced white in the flames that now fully involved all four floors.

  “Nope,” J.B. said calmly, putting his specs back on. “But all the ammo and blasters Jacks had stored in there might have come in handy in another hour or so. Guess it really is the gate to hell, now.”

  “My gaudy!” a short man with a potbelly and a pencil-thin mustache said over and over nearby. He clutched his bald head. “My beautiful gaudy house! How will I live?”

  “Your girls’ll still need to work,” a bystander said helpfully. “Leastwise, the ones that didn’t go up with that crazy old Grammaw Jacks. Course, they might wanna take up with somebody who can better keep hold of his property.”

  “Move in with your pal Itomaru,” another said. “Go work for him. Be plenty call for coffins now.”

  “Specially ones with locked lids,” a third man said. The listeners laughed.

  Having watched the whole bizarre show slack-jawed, Colt came suddenly to life. He began gesticulating and shouting about keeping the fire from spreading. Perico hustled over and tried to calm him down. Because the gaudy took up a large area, there were no other structures in the immediate vicinity, he pointed out. Figures were already visible on the rooftops of the buildings nearest, poised to douse any wayward sparks with buckets of sand or dirt in lieu of precious water.

  Then from behind Ryan and J.B. came the wild cry, “Rotties! They’re hittin’ the east gate! Must be a million of ’em!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “It was a complete exaggeration to say there were ‘a million’ of them,” Doc declared. “Why, that’s three whole orders of magnitude off!”

  “And what does that mean, exactly, Doc?” Ryan asked.

  “Why, plainly, my dear Ryan, there’s only a few hundred of them advancing on the town.”

  The six companions were reunited at the gate that closed the eastern road into town. A mob of ville residents and sec men gathered around them, all staring slack-jawed to the east.

  A wave of blue-and-gray-faced human figures came shambling toward them down the long, sloping road.

  “Ryan,” Krysty said, “shouldn’t you be doing something?”

  “Like blasting some heads with that nice scoped rifle of yours?” Mildred suggested. “They’re in range, aren’t they?”

  “Nearer ones are. For me. But if I start blasting, it’s going to be hard to keep everybody else from cutting loose and shooting a lot of holes in the air. We’re going to get tight on ammo here, directly.”

  He shook his head. “The few I can take down at long range aren’t going to be a raindrop in a lake, anyway.”

  “Actually, I meant shouldn’t you be setting up the defenses, lover?” Krysty said.

  Again Ryan shook his head. “No. I’m not the man in charge.”

  “I am not sure this is the occasion for such niceties,” said Doc. He held his big LeMat in one hand and his sword-stick, still sheathed, in the other.

  “It’s not that, Doc. We’ve gone to some trouble to get the ville calmed down to where it’ll stand a chance.”

  He nodded to where Colt Sharp stood apart from the crowd, a little ways north along the perimeter. Some of the older sec men clustered around, jawing at him, as were Perico and Jacks’s former chief adviser, Coffin. The black man’s wound had been cleaned and his shin splinted by Mildred. He now was piled atop some pillows in a handcart.

  “If I go giving orders, the new baron might not be happy. All we need is more wrangling right now.”

  People were yammering at one another, scared and uncertain what to do. Some cried. Some screamed. Others told them harshly to shut their holes.

  “It won’t matter if we don’t do something soon,” Mildred said. “Ryan.”

  He just raised his head and gazed out at the horde. The nearest were still about five hundred yards away. Too close for comfort.

  “Mr. Cawdor,” Colt called. “Uh, Ryan.”

  Ryan looked around to see the freshly minted baron approaching, trailing advisers. A quartet of sec men took it upon themselves to thrust a path through the unquiet crowd for him. He didn’t even notice.

  “What can I do for you, baron?”

  Colt came up close. Pitching his voice as low as he could and still have a hope of being heard above the crowd, he said, “What am I supposed to do? I mean, there are so many of them. Is there any chance we can hold them off?”

  “Yes. We can, if we do everything right.”

  “Tell me,�
�� Colt said. “Please.”

  Ryan looked past him to where Perico stood and Coffin sat glowering at him. The sec men mostly looked uncomfortable.

  “There’s no time to talk things out anymore,” Ryan said. “We need to just do, and do fast.”

  The young baron mulled that over for about five seconds. “Will you be my sec boss, then, Mr. Cawdor?”

  “Yes.”

  The youth wavered on his feet. Krysty put up a hand to steady him. “Thank you,” he breathed.

  Then he turned to address the crowd and the ville in general. “Everyone, listen up! I, Baron Colt Sharp, hereby appoint Ryan Cawdor my head of sec! And his friends are all appointed as my personal bodyguards.”

  Ryan doubted that would settle well in every growling stomach out there, which didn’t bother him a bit. He wasn’t here to make friends.

  “All right, people,” he said, pitching his voice to carry over the wind without shouting. The crowd clamor died out.

  “We need to conserve ammo. Head shots are the only things that’ll drop these creatures anyway. Most important thing is do not get bit. Anybody who does will become the enemy, in any amount of time from hours to right nuking now.”

  “So how do we stop the bastards biting us?” somebody shouted. He sounded not sarcastic but frantic, his voice throbbing on the verge of tears.

  “Sticks, clubs, long poles, axes. Axe handles. Shovels, hoes, rakes. Things to push them off you. Anything. Push them away, knock them down, smash their heads. And stay away from their jaws. If you don’t have something to poke or hit or cut with, go find it. Now. And get back pronto!”

  People scattered in all directions. About half the crowd stayed put. Some hefted blasters, smokeless or black powder. A few held crossbows or conventional bows. At least half the remaining defenders were already armed with melee weapons.

  “Will they all come back?” Perico asked sourly.

  “If they won’t turn out to defend themselves and their families from something like that,” J.B. said, nodding toward the slowly advancing swarm, “do we want them fighting next to us?”

  “Now, you sec men,” Ryan directed, “start getting people spread out along the fence. Tell them not to shoot unless they’re sure of a head shot. Go.”

  That was something the sec men from both factions knew how to do: push ville folk around. Of course, these people were all armed and ready to fight, but that wasn’t Ryan’s problem. Most would work it out themselves. He and his friends could pick up the slack.

  “What about cover?” Colt asked.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Ryan said. “These things don’t use blasters. Or even throw rocks, as far as we know.”

  “If they start using missiles,” Doc said, “may heaven help us all.”

  “What do I do, Ryan?” the young baron said.

  “Stay out of the way. Mebbe get on a roof where you can shoot with less danger of blasting your own side. Matter of fact, why don’t we start getting shooters up to the roofs right now?”

  Colt nodded and went away. Perico and Coffin started shouting orders, which people mostly followed.

  “Ryan, sec boss,” Jak said in a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

  “Not like it’s a job I aim to keep,” he growled.

  “What about us?” J.B. asked. “What do you want us to do?”

  “You take Mildred and Krysty up on a roof and shoot heads. Jak and Doc, stay with me. We’ll shoot while we can, then fight them hand-to-hand when they get inside.”

  “When?” Mildred asked in alarm.

  “When. Move.”

  Ville folk were already filtering back, armed with a variety of long-hafted weapons, as per Ryan’s instruction. Some carried bundles of poles, boards and tools, which they handed out to those who lacked close-combat weapons.

  A few shots went off, then a quick ripple. “Off the triggers!” Ryan yelled. “Cease firing!”

  A rottie went down, still a good two hundred yards off. Too far for any but the best marksman to hit with a non-scoped rifle except by sheer luck. The crowd cheered. A few opened fire again in defiance of Ryan’s shouted command.

  The rottie clambered back to his feet and lumbered on again as if nothing had happened.

  “That’s what we’re up against,” Ryan said in the sudden silence. “Just shooting them does jackshit. So hold your fire until it counts.”

  Bracing his legs, taking a quick turn of his sling around his left forearm, he shouldered the Steyr and sighted on the rottie that had been shot. Ryan was good at picking up a target in the scope right off—a tougher trick than most people realized.

  He almost wished he hadn’t. The rottie’s face had shrunk, or been gnawed on, until it was little more than a greasy-looking skull with two shrunken gray eyes staring out of it. It also lacked a lower jaw. Ryan had no idea how the bastard ate.

  He had already drawn a deep breath. He let part of it out, held it, and as the field of vision briefly stabilized, squeezed off a shot.

  Ryan saw the skull-head snap back before recoil kicked it out of his view. When he brought the longblaster back down online the rottie lay in a heap on the short sere grass. A changed woman following behind tripped over the corpse and fell on her face. When she got up on all fours to crawl, an eyeball was bouncing around on her bluish cheek by its optic nerve.

  With more than a little relief Ryan lowered his blaster. People stared at him with new respect.

  “Pick your shots and aim,” he commanded. “Waste a bullet, you risk wasting your life. Or your wife’s or your husband’s or your kid’s.” Unsurprisingly, a number of woman had joined the defenders.

  “One thing we can say in our opponents’ favor,” Doc said, standing at Ryan’s side. “Their deliberate approach gives us ample time to prepare and even adjust our defenses for the onslaught.”

  “Yeah.” The former sec men were doing a pretty good job of herding the ville folk into a fairly spread-out line. “I admit I’m kinda surprised by how many ville folk’ve turned out for this,” Ryan said.

  “Is it not likely that, after weeks of fear and frustration as they suffered the effects of the power struggle within Sweetwater Junction, they are eager for an opportunity to take action—even if it is against their worst nightmares made of decomposing flesh?” Doc murmured.

  “Talk less,” Jak said peevishly from Ryan’s other side. “Not helping.”

  When the rotties had closed to about a hundred yards, an arrow arced toward them from somewhere to Ryan’s left. He frowned, but by either luck or amazing skill—likely both—it struck a swag-bellied male rottie in the right eye. He pitched forward onto his blue face.

  A cheer rose from the Sweetwater Junction ranks. Gunshots began to break out.

  There was no point trying to make the crowd hold fire any longer. Ryan knelt and started aiming shots with his Steyr between the horizontal panels of the old steel cattle gate that blocked the east road. The changed made easy targets. They moved slowly, and pretty much straight ahead.

  Then he heard screams of alarm and pulled his head back from the sight. One rottie, who had been a gaunt young woman in a tattered gingham dress, suddenly darted forward at sprinter speed. She hit the perimeter fence of scavvied chain link in a jump like a monkey and started over, oblivious to the dully gleaming knife-wire spirals that cut her arms bloodlessly to the bone.

  So shocking and abrupt was her onslaught that defenders ran in terror from her.

  A single shot b
roke the brief lull the astonishing charge had brought to the shooting. The resurrected woman’s head snapped back, and then her decaying face dropped forward into the wire. She hung on the fence, truly lifeless, as if she’d been cruelly and crudely crucified.

  On the nearest flat rooftop, Colt Sharp stood holding his big pistol in the isosceles stance Ryan had taught him. His guards and advisers were slapping him on the back, praising his shot, which for a fact had been pretty good; a twenty-yard head shot with a handblaster was no downhill slide, even at a fairly stationary target.

  “For a fact the lad has a gift,” said Doc, who was methodically reloading his LeMat. “Or he’s lucky, which is almost as good.”

  “I’d rather be good,” Ryan said. “Skill lasts. Luck doesn’t.”

  Whether lucky or good, the youthful baron’s shot had a tonic effect on the defenders, who had recoiled from the rottie’s lunge like sheep from a wolf. They slunk shamefacedly back into position—so close Ryan had to shout, “Not too near the fence, dammit! Stay out of reaching range!”

  The defenders started shooting hard and fast. Ryan’s jaw muscles knotted at the rate that ammo was being burned, but he remembered Trader’s wise words: never die with rounds in your mag.

  He slung his longblaster. Even though Miranda had replenished their stocks as part of their contract, the big 7.62 mm rounds were hard to come by.

  Not all the hits were head shots. While mere bullets couldn’t actually knock a normal human down, they presumably wouldn’t even have the system-shock effects on the rotties that often resulted in shot humans falling. Still, Ryan saw good leg or torso hits drop some of the shambling horrors. The rotties behind tripped over them or trampled them. It made little difference. Those who could get up did; the rest crawled relentlessly on. As long as a rottie could move a single limb, it kept dragging itself toward living flesh.

  Bluish bodies pressed against the gate and the wire. Despite having the breeze at their backs, the defenders began getting the full whiff of decomposing flesh. Some gagged. Others puked their guts up.